Hardrock Stiff

by Thomas Zigal

  “Stop being such a wuss, Harry,” said the lanky guy. His snarly hair and cap looked all of one piece, a clown’s wig. “This prick shot at us with a shotgun and fucked up your bike. You leave your balls at home today, man? It’s payback time.”

  Something in the shift of tension must have struck Tyler as critical. He chose this moment to break for the toilet but the Beard was surprisingly quick and cut him off, throwing a shoulder, tackling him to the floor. Kurt slid off the stool in a hurry, tugging the small container out of his pocket. He sprayed the three closest dirt-bikers and they clutched their faces, screaming, knocking over chairs as they stumbled backward, dropping to their knees. Pepper spray was nasty stuff, worse than Mace. Their day was ruined.

  “Hey, whoa, hey, don’t do it!” Harry cried out, wiggling his hands in front of him. He and the last biker backed quickly away from Kurt. “We are not a problem,” Harry assured him, extending his arms in surrender.

  The pungent mist lingered in the air, drifted around them in a bitter vapor. The Latino shuffleboard players jerked their shirts over their faces and rushed for the door. Kurt had caught a whiff of the spray himself and his eyes were beginning to burn. “Better fill up your sink,” he shouted at Skank, who was fumbling around for something underneath the bar. “These boys need to stick their heads in some water. It’s the only thing that’ll help.”

  When he turned around, he saw that the Beard had trapped Tyler in a headlock on the floor. Kurt seized the man by the bushy hair. “Let him go,” he said, pointing the sprayer at his eyes.

  The biker released his grip and raised his hands. “Easy,” he said.

  Tyler was up on his feet immediately, adjusting his cap, wiping grit from his cheek. He kicked the biker in the ribs and the guy moaned, curling into a ball.

  “That’s enough,” Kurt said, shoving Tyler toward the door, where Skank was waiting with a sawed-off ax handle. The bartender tapped it against his bony thigh, a steady, menacing cadence. He looked unsure of himself, unresolved about his role here.

  Kurt bent down to advise the three men writhing on the floor. “Water,” he told them. “Find a garden hose, or stick your head in a sink. You’ll feel better in a couple of hours.”

  When they neared the bartender, Skank spread his legs and gripped the ax handle with both hands, like a cop with a billy. Tyler grabbed a chair, lofting it back over his shoulder. “Get out of the way, Skank, or I’ll take you out,” he said.

  Kurt yanked the chair away from Tyler, took his arm, and escorted him past the bartender, brushing Skank aside with a persuasive forearm. “Get serious,” he said, staring the skinny man in the eyes. Skank exhaled a shaky breath and backed off, searching desperately for the cigarette pack in his shirt pocket.

  Outside, Kurt squinted painfully into the bright afternoon sunlight, relieved to breathe real air again. Six mud-caked dirt bikes rested against their kickstands like a formation of battle-weary recruits. He found a faucet protruding from the side of the building and soaked his handkerchief under the tap, pressing the cool wet cloth against his face. A bruise on his chest, a knot on the back of his head, now his eyes. He was going to be a lot happier when he was miles away from the Black Diamond Saloon and this day was over.

  “Where’s your truck, Tyler?”

  “Back in Basalt,” he said, rubbing at the red finger marks on his throat. “Came with a chick but she got pissed about something and split on me.”

  “Having a bad decade, man?” Kurt squeezed the handkerchief over his head, dribbling water into his hair. “Come on, I’ll give you a ride.”

  They were almost to his Jeep when the tavern door flew open and the entire force of enraged dirt-bikers spilled out onto the sidewalk. The Beard had appropriated Skank’s ax handle. He marched directly to the Jeep, his eyes fierce and unforgiving. “Eat this, asshole!” he howled, smashing Kurt’s headlight with a furious swing.

  Kurt pulled back the tarp in his backseat, jerked the lid off the dynamite case, and grabbed a DuPont Straight with a long attached fuse.

  “Give me your lighter, Tyler.”

  “Unh-unh, man.”

  “Give it to me now or I’ll leave you here.”

  Tyler reluctantly handed over the plastic Bic bulging in his jeans, and Kurt lit the fuse. “Get your redneck butts back inside the bar,” he told the congregation, “before this gets real ugly.”

  The fuse hissed loudly, a slow sulfurous burn. Kurt had no idea how much time he had before the flame reached the cap and everyone realized it was a dud.

  “Jesus,” Tyler said, his eyes wide, fixed on the burning fuse. He was the only one here who knew how much damage they were talking about. “Put that damn thing out, Muller. You’re scaring me.”

  When Kurt looked up again, he saw that everyone had disappeared except the big guy with the ax handle. “It’s your move, pardner,” Kurt said, walking over to the collection of dusty Yamahas and lodging the fizzing dynamite stick between the spokes of a bike. “Now why don’t you say you’re sorry about that headlight and let’s get on with our lives.”

  The biker stared in disbelief at the sputtering fuse rammed between the spokes. “Fuck you, man,” he said. “You don’t have the stones for this.”

  Kurt walked back and slid his long legs into the Jeep. “Next time try to sound more convincing,” he said, cranking the engine.

  Tyler was staring at the fuse, primitive man mesmerized by the magic of fire. Nearly half of the detonating cord was already gone.

  “Better get in the Jeep, Tyler. I’m leaving.”

  As they drove away, Kurt adjusted the rearview mirror and watched the Beard extract the dynamite stick from the bike spokes and stomp on the blazing fuse. When it wouldn’t snuff out, he raced with the smoking stick toward the huge industrial Dumpster next to the building.

  “Are you out of your fucking mind?” Tyler whined. He turned around in his seat to witness what was happening behind them. “That shit’s not Play-Doh, man. You could have killed us all!”

  “Relax, Tyler,” Kurt laughed. “It’s a dud.”

  Tyler toyed with his waxed mustache, blinking nervously.

  “The whole box,” Kurt grinned. He watched the dirt-biker hurl the stick into the metal Dumpster and sprint back to dive under a parked van. “I’m not kidding. It’s bogus stuff. Worthless.”

  The sudden explosion ripped out the sides of the Dumpster, launching jagged metal panels thirty feet away. The ground shook, garbage rained down, a thick cloud of dust billowed high above the building.

  “Uh-oh,” Kurt said, slowing the Jeep. Time to have a serious talk with Miles Cunningham.

  He stopped the vehicle and got out. The Beard was crawling out from under the Dodge van. He stood up and studied the wreckage with his hands on his hips. The others were outside now, Harry and the boys shouting irately and pointing at the smoldering warps of metal.

  “Where are you going, Tyler?”

  “I’m not riding in that Jeep,” Tyler said, jerking his thumb at the tarp. He had hopped out and was heading off up the road toward the farmland outskirts of Carbondale. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere with you, Muller.”

  Kurt watched the big dirt-biker turn and glower up the road at him. Shielding his eyes from the sun, he raised his cammo sleeve high in the air and gave Kurt the finger.

  “Suit yourself,” Kurt said. “Those scooter boys will be coming along any minute now. Maybe you can hitch a ride with them.”

  Tyler kept walking. “I’ll take my chances,” he shouted back over his shoulder.

  Kurt slipped the Jeep in gear and edged up the road to roll alongside the young miner. “We didn’t finish our conversation,” he said. “You owe me some consideration, pal. By now they’d be dragging your ass behind one of those shitty bikes by a tote rope.”

  Tyler didn’t respond, didn’t look at Kurt, kept walking.

  “Don’t make me get out of this Jeep, son.”

  Kurt heard how his words sounded, the fatherly admonition rev
erberating back through his head. He saw a fleeting apparition of Lennon hitchhiking along a country road ten years from now, bitter and petulant, running away from home. His old man had finally driven him over the edge.

  “Who was the woman?” Kurt asked him. “You owe me that much.”

  Tyler spoke without moving his eyes from the road ahead. “Get out of my life, Muller,” he growled.

  Lennon in ten years. Same attitude, same punishing rebuke. Kurt wondered if he should consider a good military academy while there was still time.

  “Come on and get in,” he said, his voice softer now, more conciliating. It was always this way with his own son. Bark and back off. “It’s a long walk to Basalt.”

  Chapter eight

  Tyler’s Ford pickup sat in front of a rundown trailer house with geraniums withering in a flower box under the tin-foiled windows. The truck’s windshield was spiderwebbed where someone had struck it with the baseball bat that lay in the tall weeds nearby.

  “Fuck a duck,” Tyler said, rubbing his day-old whiskers with a weary disbelief. He was making no effort to get out of the Jeep. “Girl’s got a hair trigger, don’t she? What’s the difference between a chick with PMS and a pit bull?”

  Kurt pinched the flesh between his eyes.

  “A little lipstick,” Tyler said.

  Kurt left the engine idling in case the girlfriend decided to come outside and take another swing at the windshield. Or at them.

  “There’s something that’s been bothering me, Tyler,” he said. “You know there’s an accident up at the Ajax, maybe Ned’s hurt, maybe he’s dead. And your response is to pick up this gal here and head for a bar to drink beer and play a merry round of shuffleboard.”

  “Call it the Irish in me.”

  Kurt grabbed his ear and twisted. “Listen to me, you chucklehead. I’m in no laughing mood. You think those dirt-bikers were a nightmare, wait till you spend eight hours in a talk tank with me and Muffin Brown.”

  “Oww,” Tyler grimaced, slapping Kurt’s hand away, stumbling out of the Jeep. “I’m turning you in for police brutality, Muller.”

  “Do that. Sit down at a tape recorder with my investigators and tell them all you want. Starting with why a man goes off partying when he knows his partner might be dead.”

  Tyler stood for several moments in silence, hands in his pockets, observing the damage to his pickup with a haggard resignation. MINERS DO IT DEEPER, said one bumper sticker. And NUKE JANE FONDA AND THE BABY SEALS. The boy was such a sweetheart.

  “If it was a mine accident,” he said finally, his jawbone setting hard, “then Ned died doing what made him happy. You can’t ask for anything more than that out of this life. There’s no use crying about it when your number’s called.”

  The macho fatalism of the Old West. Tink Tarver must have felt the same way.

  “And if he was murdered?”

  Tyler dug his hands deeper in his pockets, rattling change and his pocketknife and the other greasy trinkets that had found their way into his jeans. “If it was murder,” he said, his voice as rough edged as the metal pieces in his pockets, “then somebody’s gonna have to pay.”

  Kurt had wondered if the boy truly loved the old man, would grieve over him, and he thought he saw the signs of loss in that one brief moment. But there was something else inside those dull, impassive eyes—wariness and a stubborn secrecy, his own fierce code of silence. Kurt suspected that Tyler knew more than he was willing to divulge, and the knowledge was chewing slowly on his conscience.

  “Let me take care of this, Tyler. Ned was my friend too.” He studied the young man’s chiseled features. “The best way you can help now is to come back to Aspen with me and talk to the officer in charge of the investigation. Tell her when you last saw Ned, what he talked about, what was bothering him, anything that seemed out of the ordinary. You listening? She’ll also need your help up at the mine. We’ve got to inventory Ned’s office and disarm that Airstream trailer. I don’t want anybody else getting hurt up there.”

  Tyler reached in his shirt pocket for a pouch of Red Man tobacco. “I ain’t talking to that little dyke Brown,” he said. “She tried to break my neck with that cop choke hold.”

  The trailer’s front door opened and a woman in jeans and a white peasant blouse stood watching them behind the dark screen. Kurt could make out the Bud can rising languorously to her mouth.

  “Women are not your strong suit, are they, son?”

  “What I hear, you’re no expert on the subject yourself, Romeo.”

  Kurt smiled. No expert indeed. “Why don’t you go tell that young lady you’re sorry, for Chrissake, before she comes after us with a meat cleaver?” he said. “Buy her some flowers, take her out to dinner.”

  Tyler stared at the screen door, hesitant, uncertain. “Jake Pfeil’s sister,” he said with a sour smirk, as though something wet and loose had shifted in his bowels.

  “What?” Kurt glanced quickly at the figure in the doorway.

  “You been asking who was with Cunningham that night at the road grader. It was that bitch that blew herself up with her own pipe bomb in Oregon.” He stuffed a pinch of tobacco in his cheek. “Too bad she didn’t do better work.”

  My god, Kurt thought. Kat Pfeil. Little Katrina. What was she doing back in Aspen?

  “Her and that drunken shutterbug are mighty queer on trees.” Tyler frowned. “If they had their way, the country’d go back to the hoot owls.”

  60 Minutes had featured her as an attractive, charismatic leader of the Northwest green movement, which was well known for its militant confrontations. Kurt knew she’d survived the blast, but soon afterward she had disappeared from the media attention that had once surrounded her.

  “I’ll talk to her,” he said.

  “Yeah, right. I bet you will,” Tyler said, lifting the bill of his gimme cap to wipe his sweaty hairline. “The Mullers and the Pfeils. The Fords and the Rockefellers. You people always look after each other, don’t you?”

  “I’ll handle this, Tyler. Stay away from her and Miles Cunningham. Are you listening to me?”

  Tyler spit a long stream of tobacco, his line of sight directed at the woman behind the screen. “When you talk to that bitch,” he said, sucking in a deep breath and pulling himself up to his full height of five foot eight, “tell her she ain’t the only one in this valley that knows how things go boom in the night.”

  “Don’t go making more trouble for yourself. I won’t think twice about locking your gnarly ass in the county jail until this thing is over.”

  The woman opened the screen door and sat down on the front steps without uttering a word. She was dumpy and overweight and looked older than Tyler. Either she had been crying or her swollen eyes were the forewarning of a life spent inside a bottle. She smoked a cigarette and watched them both with sullen suspicion.

  “Now go tell her you’re sorry and then get in your truck,” Kurt said. “I’m following you to Aspen.”

  Chapter nine

  He sat at a desk in the observation room, concealed from the interrogation by a two-way mirror, and tried to listen as a rookie deputy named Linda Ríos asked Tyler the usual questions: Did Ned Carr seem despondent? Was he taking any medication? Can you recall the details of your last conversation with him? But Kurt was distracted, his thoughts straying back nearly thirty years to that spring when he first noticed Jake’s little sister had grown into a stunning beauty. He remembered how guilty he had felt about his secret crush on her, a freshman when he was a senior in high school, how he had hidden his attraction, even from his brother. Katrina Pfeil had stolen his boyish heart.

  The last time they’d run into each other she was strolling along Hyman Avenue before it was bricked into a tourist mall, the summer after her college graduation. She had landed a job with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and was leaving soon for a salmon hatchery in Oregon. A new boyfriend from Boulder, tall and long haired and reeking of weed, was hanging on her arm, smiling proudly. Kurt di
dn’t give a damn. He was so happy to see Kat he had lifted her in his arms and swung her round and round like a squealing child. She told him she would write, and for years he waited patiently for the letters that never came.

  Kurt had kept up with her mostly through rumors and gossip and the occasional press clipping. He knew that she had married, and that she and her husband had become central figures in the Green Briars, a group of guerrilla environmentalists who had been waging a protracted war against the corporate timber industry in the Pacific Northwest. One night two summers ago, after a week of tree sit-ins and violent confrontations with loggers in the Siskiyou forest, a pipe bomb exploded in the motel where they were sleeping. Her husband was killed, and while Kat was still unconscious and undergoing extensive surgery to save her life, the FBI informed the press that the couple had intended to plant the device in a local sawmill and were themselves the victims of their own negligence. The Bureau charged her with possession of illegal explosives and conspiracy, and as far as Kurt knew, the case was still dragging through the courts.

  So why was Kat Pfeil back in Aspen after all these years? And why was she hanging out with Miles Cunningham? Ned had shot at them for trying to monkey-wrench his road grader, and a month later the old miner was blown to bits. Kurt didn’t like how things were falling in place.

  He picked up the phone and punched an outside line, wondering if Meg and the boys were back home from their outing. She answered on the second ring. “How are the guys?” he asked.

  “They’re fine,” she said. “It’s amazing how resilient kids are. I’m sure Ned’s death will sink in sooner or later and we’ll have some serious comforting ahead of us. Like maybe for the next ten years.”

  The next ten years. He realized suddenly that it wasn’t Lennon he had envisioned walking down that country road, running away from home. It was Hunter.

  “But right now they’re out in the yard kicking a soccer ball,” she said, “yelping and rolling around like two pups.”