“He’s got a tattoo on his arm and blond hair. Maybe he goes by the name Conrad.”
“Go away.” The man started to close the door.
Ogden put his left palm flat against the door. His right hand was wrapped around the pistol in his pocket. “No, I need you to think about this.”
“Are you crazy?” the man asked.
“Pretty much.”
After a pause and a look back into the hut, the man stepped from the door. There were two other men inside, as unfriendly and tough-looking as the first. Ogden stepped inside and saw that in fact this was a meth lab. Was a meth lab. They had disassembled their equipment. One man was a little shorter than the first. He wore a flannel shirt not unlike Ogden’s and khaki pants. His sneakers were strangely clean. The third was a flyweight. He wore a white wifebeater and jeans, had a cross branded onto his shoulder, and had a diagonal scar across his face. The mustachioed man stepped in front of the door as Ogden entered. Ogden could feel his pulse quicken as he watched the men’s hands. He was in a bad place and he didn’t wait, couldn’t hesitate. He pulled the pistol from his pocket and at the same time sidestepped the man who had let him in. He grabbed him by the hair and pushed the barrel of the little pistol into the man’s face, past his mustache, into his mouth.
“No estoy interesado en que los hombres.”
“What do you want?” the flyweight asked.
“I’m looking for a man. His name is Hempel.”
“We don’t know anybody’s name, stupid. We sell drugs.”
The man had a point and Ogden understood and even agreed that he was stupid. More so now that he had pulled out a weapon. “I don’t want any trouble with you,” Ogden said and felt ridiculous. “I need you to put your guns on the table.”
The two men pulled pistols from their waistbands and put them down.
“Knives, too.”
The flyweight tossed away a switchblade.
Ogden’s arm was getting tired. The mustache wasn’t fighting, but he was big and heavy. “Where does my friend keep his gun? ¿Dónde está su arma?”
“In his belt,” the flyweight said.
Ogden reached down, grabbed the mustache’s cheap 9mm and pushed him away. “Okay now, I just want to talk. Move over there.” He herded the men toward a corner away from the door, away from their guns. He walked to their weapons. There was a white five-gallon pail of what Ogden was sure was ammonia beside the table and he dumped the guns and knife into it. The men started to protest, but stopped. “Okay. I’m looking for a white male, about six feet, light brown or blond hair, and a tattoo on one of his arms. His last name is Hempel. His first name is Leslie. He might use the name Conrad.”
“We don’t give a fuck what somebody’s name is,” the mustache said. “You don’t know who you fucking with.”
“I’ll ask again. Have you seen anybody who looks like that?” Ogden asked.
“Unless they got boobies they all look like that,” the flyweight laughed.
“Tattoo,” the mustache said to the other two. “¿Que habla Meth-mouth?”
“This dude got no teeth?” the flyweight asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Meth-mouth,” the flyweight said, nodding. “We don’t know his name. He sleeps around here someplace. In the woods, maybe. We don’t know.”
No teeth. Ogden hadn’t noted that the man Terry was arresting had no teeth. He was barking up the wrong tree, he thought. But this was all he had. “I’m going to wait outside,” he said. “If this door opens, I’m going to shoot without looking who it is. ¿Entiendes?”
Ogden backed out through the door and immediately broke into a stumbling sprint toward his truck. He glanced back once he was behind the wheel and saw no one and no movement of the door. He started the engine and drove away, kicking up dust and gravel. Ogden drove back south, then west toward his little trailer. He tried hard to remember every detail of the previous day. He was trembling, even beginning to doubt himself, his memory, to doubt everything. Felton said he had seen no boy, was particularly adamant about that. Ogden found himself wondering if there had in fact been a boy.
Warren Fragua was sitting on the step of Ogden’s trailer, playing with a stick. He didn’t look up when Ogden rolled in, got out, and walked toward him.
“What’s the word, Warren?”
“State troopers are down in Plata,” Warren said, spitting onto the ground between his feet. “A bunch of them.”
“They send you to arrest me?”
“If I see you, that’s what I’m supposed to do.”
“Looking bad, eh?”
“Not looking good.” Warren wouldn’t look up. “What can I do to help? I need to do something.”
“Did you find Willy Yates?”
“If that’s his name, he’s not enrolled in any school in northern New Mexico. No Billy, William, Wally, Wilson. In fact, no boy named Yates. Two girls. One in Santa Fe and the other over in Chama. Both mothers have different last names because of marriage.”
“You’re telling me there is no kid.”
“I’m telling you there is no Willy Yates enrolled in a school. Any ideas how I might find him?” Warren dropped the stick.
“None. I’m going to go to the hatchery and see if the guys up there saw anything unusual.”
“Don’t tell me that.”
Ogden sat beside his friend. He looked at the man’s boots. Fragua always laced his shoes up extra tight. The black leather was covered with dust. The heels were worn on the outside, Warren being slightly pigeon-toed. An inch of white sock shone between his left boot top and his khaki pant leg. Ogden drew a circle on the ground with the stick that Warren had just dropped.
“You were friends with Terry, weren’t you?” Ogden said. “You two were close.”
“Yeah.”
“Sorry.”
“What’s going on, Ogden?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Last I saw, Terry had that guy in his truck and was driving away.”
“Had he called it in, that he was arresting somebody?”
“I thought so. Yeah, I’m pretty sure he did.”
Warren shook his head. “We’ve got to find who did this. For Terry. And for you, ’cause if we don’t, well, you’re shit out of luck, cowboy. They think your Sig fired the bullet that killed him.”
“That’s insane.”
“Maybe, but that’s the story. I guess it’s not conclusive, whatever that means. What do you want me to do?”
“Find that boy.”
“What about the guy? What about Conrad Hempel?”
“Find the boy, Warren. You can’t chase two rabbits.”
Ogden left his county rig and drove away in his pickup but did not go back to the hatchery. He remembered that the main office for some reason had been closed that day and he hadn’t seen anyone walking the fish ladder or the raceways. So there was no reason for him to go the hatchery. Also, he had told Warren that he was going there. Warren was too honest to hold in the truth for too long, especially when Bucky looked him in the eye. He was driving up into the mountains to the yurts. The felt-covered structures had been erected in the sixties, just one in a slew of failed utopias in northern New Mexico. Now, perhaps there were more utopias than anyone had ever dreamed, inhabited as they were by like-minded or no-minded drug users. That was at least the common perception. Ogden was fairly sure the man the Mexicans called Meth-mouth was not Conrad, but he was a Hempel and it was the only lead he had to follow. There were policemen out looking for him, he knew that, but though this was small-town America, the space was also huge. If he wanted, he could get lost forever in these mountains. The thought crossed his mind.
The yurts were relatively high, at about eight thousand feet, too low for the aspens to grow but thick in the firs. Another tassel-eared squirrel ran across the old mining road and reminded Ogden to focus on his driving. Ahead in the trees he saw glimpses of white and yellow, the yurts. He pulled his truck off the road and into some brush, covered it as best he could. He approached the village.