If you squinted you could call his property a compound. Trailers and storage sheds and a rust-eaten metal building. A dilapidated wooden corral, the lumber blackened by the sun. Trails had been etched through the enormous boulders everywhere you looked, disappearing downhill toward Jacumba and its labyrinthine caves and tunnels used for smuggling drugs and humans from Mexico to California.
As I parked, the first truck pulled up well behind me, turned broadside and stopped. The second one curled away and disappeared.
Strait’s home was an asymmetrical rock-and-concrete anomaly with a roof made of old license plates. Views of Jacumba, the border and beyond — deep into Mexico and Imperial Valley. It was early morning, the day after I’d talked to Ash Galland and seen Natalie Strait’s resounding HELP written in the back seat of her luxury SUV.
Virgil Strait had the leathery neck and wrinkled face of a desert tortoise, and small, clear eyes. He wore a knit cap against the morning chill. Flames lapped in a cavernous fireplace at the far opposite end of the room. He sat in an old-fashioned wing chair with his back to the window, giving me the endless eastern view. The walls were made of irregular rock slabs, closely cut and precisely mortared. Hung with rifles and shotguns, vintage and modern, lightly strung with cobwebs. Revolvers heavy in their holsters. Posters of cowboys and Indians in combat, Civil War and World War I battle scenes. Some faded and some slipping off their mounts.
His granddaughter Tola, Dalton’s younger sister, handed me a bloody Mary, smiled, then delivered one to Virgil. Tola owned a chain of legal marijuana emporiums in the rural county, and was often quoted and interviewed on the subject. She was a green-eyed redhead in skinny jeans and a long-tailed blue-striped business shirt that might have come from Brooks Brothers.
“Thanks, dearie,” said Virgil.
“Enjoy your primitive booze, gentlemen,” she said on her way out. “But remember, good cannabis doesn’t rot your liver or your brain.”
“Kids these days,” said Virgil. “I’ve tried that stuff. I wandered through the boulders singing the Sons of the Pioneers’ ‘Cool Water.’ Saw a rabbit almost as tall as I was, then I saw a posse of county, state, and federal officers all in cannibal masks, heading up the road here to arrest me. Their guns were drawn. Five hours later I’d sobered up enough to realize I’d imagined it all. But I also knew the coming-to-get-me wasn’t paranoia. Story of my life, Mr. Ford. People like you always ahold of my ankles, trying to drag me down.”
“I’m a private investigator,” I said. “As I’m sure Dalton told you.”
He peered at me. “I admire that. I’m private, too. The only thing I believe in is family. I have two living ex-wives, three sons and three daughters, eighteen grandkids and a dozen or so great ones. And cousins, nieces, nephews, and bastards of all description running around this fine county. They’re my confederacy, Mr. Ford. My partners and my protection. One snap of my fingers and they appear like a herd of banshees. I’m sure you took note on your way up my mountain.”
“I did.”
And the night before, in anticipation of this interview, I’d spent some time on IvarDuggans.com, searching the extensive Strait family entries for possible enemies of Natalie or Dalton. IvarDuggans.com is the best of the online investigator’s services, and I pay good money for my membership. And it paid off, as it almost always does: nearly twenty-five years ago, Dalton’s older brother Kirby had beaten Dalton bad enough to require hospitalization for a concussion and twelve stitches. Dalton was fifteen. The reason? An apparent problem with Dalton’s new girlfriend, Natalie. A year later, Dalton had retaliated with a ball-bat beating of Kirby for which Dalton, still a juvenile, was never questioned or charged. Both incidents took place in the small border town of Buena Vista, in Imperial County, whose three-man police department included Chief Everett Strait, Virgil’s brother. Thus, little press or media. Kirby had recovered in a small Buena Vista hospital owned by his grandfather, San Diego Superior Court judge, the Honorable Virgil Strait. Virgil had taken the hospital as payment for services rendered in his lawyering days.
The brutal brother-on-brother violence had gotten my attention. “Is there anyone in your family who would abduct Natalie?” I asked. “Maybe to get at Dalton?”
“Mr. Ford, the Straits may bicker a-twixt ourselves, but we prey on the world, not each other.”
“Except maybe Kirby.”
“Best leave Kirby out of this.”
“You know what I think when I hear that.”
“Think what you want. He’s hardly six months out of prison. Give the boy the benefit of the doubt.”
“Do Dalton and Natalie have other enemies?”
“Name me one consequential man or woman who does not.”
“Then who are these enemies, Mr. Strait?”
“You would have made a good bailiff in my court,” he said. “Beefy but polite.”
I made a mental note of that evasion and sipped the bloody Mary. Looked past him to the clear spring day. Two vultures circled slowly in the eastern blue. A black SUV came slowly down a dirt road from Jacumba, dragging a cloud of dust behind. So far as current-day enemies went, I had Natalie’s divided into two camps: sexual hunters and enemies of her husband. They both sought to use her, in different ways and for different reasons.
Tola strode back into the room now dressed in black and red motorcycle leathers and boots. Carried her helmet under one arm like a pilot. Her hair was pulled back and channeled through a long medieval leather-and-brass tube that rode to the middle of her back. She gave me a brisk smile. Reminded me loudly of Justine — the hair and eyes, the strength of presence. Quick and bright was the spark that flared up in me as I watched her.
Next came a white-clad orderly pushing a hospital bed, half-reclined, in which a sixtysomething man lay peacefully, his head bobbing slightly with the motion of the bed. Eyes closed. The orderly was a large, muscled Anglo with a jarhead’s high and tight haircut.
With a glance my way, Tola bent down to whisper in Virgil’s ear. The old man nodded and whispered something back, while beyond them the orderly steered the bed to a sunny window, got the angle right and pressed the foot brake.
Tola kissed her grandfather’s cheek, then came my way, extending a hand and a card. “Don’t get up,” she said.
I already was. I took the card.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Ford. If you find yourself in need of peace or excitement, swing by one of my Nectar Barns and we’ll fix you right up. We’ve got some incredible edibles if you’re the type to be discreet about such things. You look like you may be.”
Biker boots on tiles. The orderly followed her out. Then a small-toothed grin from Virgil and the distant slam of a door. “Beautiful, isn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“Thirty-five, but not married yet,” he said. “Teamed up with the Indians and making money hand over fist but no bank will take it. Dangerous — all that cash in boxes. She’s still looking for Mr. Right, Mr. Ford, but she’s fussy, fussy, fussy.”
I refrained from laughing at the prospect of joining the Strait family.
Through the big window I saw the candy-apple-red and black Harley Davidson come slowly down the drive, flatulent and loud, a customized Sportster with dazzling paint and sleek saddlebags streaming leather pendants. It rumbled past. The pickup truck driver waved at her and followed her down the mountain.
Virgil pointed a bent old finger. “Meet my firstborn son, Archibald. Archie, this is Roland. As you know, some years ago bandits shot up Archie for less than a thousand dollars in Better Burger money. Not one of them lives today. You may approach the bed.”