But the movie and video business was centered in southern California, and by the time he’d made enough money to move here, he’d gotten sucked into that L.A. lifestyle, and it was not until several years later that he finally made the break.

It was a decision he’d never regretted.

He passed through Chimayo and could not help glancing down the small one-lane road that led to El Santuario. The small adobe church had always creeped him out. All those crutches and braces hanging in the small dark room with the miracle dirt. Legend had it that the church was built on dirt that had healing powers, and each year, hordes of believers flocked to the spot to have their diseases and deformities cured, the ones who claimed to find relief from infirmity leaving their walking aides behind. He wasn’t a religious man himself, he neither believed nor disbelieved, but there seemed something paganistic and primitive, something pre-Christian about this sort of Christianity. Maybe he’d just been watching too many of the movies he distributed, but the whole thing made him uneasy.

Ten minutes later, he hit the highway and was speeding toward downtown Santa Fe.

He arrived back at his office before three.

“How’d it go?” Joan asked as he walked through the door.

“Who knows? That bastard’s impossible to read.” He sat down in the oversized chair behind his desk, opened the jar of candy next to his computer, and popped a handful of M&Ms into his mouth. He’d been in Taos talking to the organizer of the film festival, trying to get one of his properties shown in competition this year. He had what he thought was a legitimate find, a retelling of Macbeth on an Indian reservation, made by an untrained twenty-five-year-old Hopi kid who’d financed the film by working as a park ranger at Betatakin and saving his money over several summers.

It was one of those success stories that the entertainment media seemed to love so much these days, and he knew he could get a lot of hype out of it. The movie was part of a package deal he’d made with Four Corners, a local distributor that’d gone belly-up, and while most of the titles were routine action flicks, this was an honest-to-God film, and for the first time in his life, Stormy saw the opportunity to present to the viewing public a legitimate work by an undiscovered talent.

Maybe he’d try to take it to Sundance.

That would certainly up his cache in the business.

And, besides, the kid deserved it.

He tried to imagine the reaction of his old L.A. friends when they discovered that he was distributing a film that had been shown in competition at Sundance, and the pictures in his mind made him smile.

“You want me to call back tomorrow?” Joan asked. “Apply a little pressure?”