Page 20 of Making His Bones

I said, “I don’t blame you for getting out.” I reached across the table but wasn’t anywhere close to holding his hand. “What happened then?”

“We drove to Seeker, no problem. ¡Órale! That was a narrow one. I saw in the mirror that they grabbed Mateo and punched him. God was murdered in the desert that day.”

I asked, “Your friend was murdered?”

Tiago gulped the remainder of the beer. “No, but they charged him as adulto although he was only thirteen. We didn’t know this was their new way of . . . “He waved his hand around, mumbling something to Galileo.

“Go ahead,” said Galileo. “You know the words.”

And indeed, the kid did. “Their new way of discouraging people like myself from bringing things over. We worked in Agua Prieta in a factory making timing belts for cars for forty-seven dollars a week. The drug runs are giving us four hundred. Now they are treating Mateo as an adult, they are charging him forty thousand to get out on bond.”

“But that is not the worst,” said Galileo, tenting his fingers. “Tell them, Tiago.”

A dark cloud overcame Tiago’s eyes. “A bunch of us mules were found in the desert—not all at once, in different, ah, groups—wandering with no concencia in their eyes. Some were found by agentes and sent back to Mexico. Some were found by citizens. I was able to talk to one. I knew Roberto from Agua Prieta. I knew he was a mule also. He said after leaving their heroin in Seeker, they were then dropped off in the desert with a big bottle of licore destilado.”

“Moonshine,” Galileo clarified unnecessarily.

I looked at Gray. He said, “This sounds like the work of Bud Pitchfork. Trying to get rid of the kids without driving them back to the border. Do you know that name, Bud Pitchfork?” he asked Tiago. “Who did you turn the heroin over to?”

“We never knew. We’d meet at different hotels. The Motel in the Trees.”

“The Motel in the Pines,” I said. “They have a restaurant. But who would you meet with? Who would take the drugs from you?”

Tiago shrugged. “Some guy.”

Gray was tapping away on his phone. Great idea! No doubt there was a photo of Bud Pitchfork on the website of the Beautiful and Immaculate Church.

He showed the phone to Tiago. “This guy?”

Tiago became animated, pointing at the photo. I strained to see it too. Yup, that was the guy. Shriveled, arthritic, and he grossly never bothered shaving his neck. I’d seen him around town ten years ago and more. That was it. I’d never seen him preach, much less make films of boys playing together—or with older men. “That’s him!” Tiago cried. But it wasn’t what we thought. “That’s the guy who comes into the back room of the music store. He talks to the camera men. He tells people what to do more and do littler of. He brings . . . “ He looked at Gray, as though he knew Gray had a background in that type of thing. “Toys.”

“Dildos?” Gray asked.

Tiago looked blankly at Galileo.

Galileo said, “Consoladores?”

“Si!Consoladores and other things.”

Lytton asked, “Did he run the filmmaking?”

Tiago nodded definitively. “Sí. He was the jefe of the business. But he was not who took our heroina.”

The heroin and kiddie porn businesses could be totally unrelated. There had been no sign that anyone had tried to force Delilah into kiddie porn. It would be pretty stupid to do basically in plain sight behind the record store, anyway. To take a girl and force her into porn in the same town she had grown up in? Pretty slim chance.

Still, I knew there was something up with these men. The sheriff had told Gray and his friends that Bud Pitchfork knew something about Delilah’s abduction and murder. The next step would be for Gray to go question him, as he’d questioned the sheriff.

I went over and shook little Tiago’s hand. “Thank you so much for your help. I’m glad Galileo is taking care of you.”

“I take care of myself!” Tiago declared. “I work at his dog store, and a Joint System is teaching me how to make CBD oil.”

I half-frowned and half-smiled at Lytton. I could have no beef with him, as the club would say, since it was legal now.

“Please,” I said to Lytton, “track down this Bud asshole and question him more closely.”

Galileo said, “I’d like to find out who’s dumping kids in the desert with moonshine. Those poor kids remind me of myself in the desert as a kid, micro-dosing LSD, sleeping in a box.”

I told Galileo, “Maybe it’s better if you look over Tiago and just stay in your shop. Others can find the idiots with the moonshine.”