Hardrock Stiff

by Thomas Zigal

  Hurrying into the room, he slid to his knees and dragged the rattling cigar box from under the bed. Samples of feldspar, mica, granite, quartz, marble. And one slate-gray chunk he couldn’t identify, chisel marks grooving the sides, a rough-edged piece that fit snugly in the palm of his large hand. A rock the old man didn’t want anyone to see.

  He stood at the window, hefting the ore in his hand, feeling its weight and sharp facets. A hazy blue light was rising over the valley. There was a trace of snow on the juniper windbreak and the meadow below the house. From this promontory on Red Mountain he could see lights in the sleepy village of Aspen, and the tiny stark headlamp from an ATV bobbing along the slope of the ski mountain, ascending into the cottony clouds obscuring the peak. At this distance the Ajax Mine adit could not be marked by the naked eye, but he knew exactly where it was.

  He turned the fragment over in his hand, examining its color in the soft light from the window, then stared again at the mountain. Deep inside that tunneled-out heap of dirt and hardrock, perhaps down in the hollow center Kurt had feared would someday collapse upon his entire world, Ned Carr had found something worth killing him for.

  Chapter thirty-nine

  For at least twenty years Tink Tarver’s neighbors had been trying to have his property condemned, his house torn down board by board. It was unclear how the old pack rat had survived the periodic health and safety inspections for so long. From time to time Kurt had sent county prisoners to help him clean up the scrap metal lying around his yard, but Tink had grown increasingly resistant and the last time had chased off some poor hungover DUI with a tar-paper knife.

  Ever since Kurt could remember, a tanklike ’52 De Soto had hunkered undriven in front of Tink’s house, and the car had now been transformed into a flower planter, long tendrils of ivy spilling out the windows, tall sunflowers poking their heads up through rust holes in the roof. He unwired the gate and made his way across the dead yard, a dumping ground for lumber and ancient appliances and lawn mower parts and threadbare tires that lay about randomly, wherever they had rolled to a stop. It was just after six A.M. and the Radio Flyer was still parked by the front steps, a sign that Tink had not left for his morning rounds of the town Dumpsters and trash heaps. Kurt knocked and stood waiting in the cold, blowing on his hands to warm them, his breath becoming little white chuffs of vapor. When there was no answer he opened the creaky door and called the man’s name. A half-dozen mangy cats rushed from the foul-smelling darkness to lick his boots and stare up at him through hollow eyes, mewing for food.

  “Come on, guys,” he said, stepping around them. “Take me to your leader.”

  Cat odor permeated the old house. He forced himself through the cluttered living room, where a quilt-draped army cot served as Tink’s bed. More cats emerged from under sour laundry piles and cardboard boxes, a feline army following him into a kitchen whose buckling linoleum floor was as sticky as fresh paint. Coffee brewed on a warm woodstove in the center of the room. Two scrawny toms licked at the crusty dishes piled in the sink. Tink’s false teeth soaked in a jelly glass on the windowsill. Kurt could hear an electric arcing noise coming from the rear of the house, where the old kook kept his workshop.

  At the end of a dark hallway there was a door tacked with a sign that said ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK. Bright sparks flashed within, the smell of burning coil. Kurt gave the door a cautious push. “Hey, Tink!” he called out above the welding din. He didn’t want to spook the man. “It’s Kurt Muller.”

  Tink valved off the torch, a makeshift device connected to a surplus airplane generator. He lifted his mask and squinted at Kurt, deep lines etching his forehead, scarlike furrows from nose to jawbone. He looked astonished that someone might actually find him in all this junk.

  “Pretty damn early in the morning to come calling, son. I ain’t had my second cup.”

  He was wearing a tattered bathrobe, laceless army boots. Grizzly, week-old whiskers stubbled his sharp chin. He reached over to a flattened beer can serving as an ashtray, withdrew the wet stub of a roll-your-own, and plugged it in the corner of his mouth.

  “There’s something I want you to look at,” Kurt said.

  He nudged aside the cats purling around his ankles and walked over to place the rock on the welding bench. Tink stared at it, glanced warily at Kurt, dragged on the cold cigarette. The old man was an expert assayer and at one time, twenty-five, thirty years ago, had been the only reliable authority in the entire valley. His gravimetric setup still inhabited the far corner of the shop, an alchemist’s secret laboratory, weighing scales and stained beakers, a Bunsen burner as charred as a chimney brick. If anyone this side of Leadville could compute the composition of that ore, Tink Tarver was the man.

  “Can you assay it for me? I want to know what it is.”

  The junk man raised one wiry eyebrow. Without his teeth he sounded like Gabby Hayes. “Where did you get that from?” he asked.

  “From a cigar box, Tink. What does it matter? Can you figure out its makeup?”

  Tink picked up the silver-gray chunk with a grimy hand and brought it close to his eyes. He turned the piece slowly round and round. “You got this from Ned, didn’t you, son?”

  Kurt wasn’t surprised. He suspected that Tink knew much more than he was willing to let on. “How do you know that?”

  An orange tabby jumped up into the old man’s lap and he dropped it back on the floor like a bundle of rags. “I seen it before,” he said.

  “He showed it to you?”

  Tink nodded.

  “What is it?”

  Tink examined the rock one last turn and set it on the bench like a chess piece. “It’s the closest damn thing to pure platinum I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Worth many times what silver’s going for. Rare as a hen’s tooth.”

  “Platinum?” Kurt said. “Where did it come from?”

  Tink lifted a shaving mug full of black coffee. “According to Ned, it come from the Lone Ute Mine,” he said, winking one eye as he drank.

  The shop walls were braced from floor to ceiling with board shelves containing jars of nails, screws, bolts, unidentified gelatinous suspensions. A collection of dead things floated in brackish liquids. Tarantula, scorpion, coral snake. The fetus of a baby pig.

  “But you got to consider that Ned was a notorious liar, like ever’ Pickax Pete in the history of the trade,” Tink said. “Hell, he mighta swiped that rock in South America, for all I know. Miners love a good leg-pulling.”

  “What would lying get him?”

  “Your wallet, son. Anytime some hardrock stiff tells you he’s made a big strike and there’s three backers lined up in Mexico City, hold on to your hip pocket.”

  Kurt looked at the ore. “How long ago did you assay this for him?”

  “I reckon it was last fall. ’Bout the time he was drawing fire from the owl lovers.”

  “Did anyone else know about the platinum?”

  Tink massaged the back of his neck. He seemed annoyed at Kurt. But then he always seemed annoyed about something. “You’re not catching on here, son,” he said. “I knew that rascal fifty years and in all that time I never heard him once tell the truth about a damn thing, not even what he had for breakfast. After a while he tells you something, you figure it’s just another nursery rhyme.”

  “Okay, fine, Tink. What nursery rhyme did he tell you about the platinum?”

  The old man spit the wet cigarette butt on the floor and fumbled in his bathrobe pockets for rolling papers and a small cloth bag of tobacco. “You got any store-bought smokes?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Figures.”

  He sprinkled tobacco on a creased paper, rolled and licked, taking his sweet time, pulling the bag string with his gums. Kurt felt like twisting one of his jug ears to hurry him along. Finally the man peered up at him and spoke.

  “He told me he’d sold off a piece of his works to a big outfit, and that they’d brought in their own engineers and shovel jocks to give his mine
the once-over. Said they went in deep and messed around for a week, and then come back two or three times with more hotshot foreign experts and such, and that that hunk of ore sitting right there was from a seam they found about ten levels down.” He puffed his cigarette, squinting through the smoke. “That was his story, son. A platinum strike. I shelved it alongside the one about the president of Mexico asking him to come down and run their bureau of mines.”

  “Is it possible, Tink? I’ve never heard of any big platinum strikes in this country.”

  The old man made a face. “What the old-timers called white gold comes up with the native silver. High-grade platinum showed up in that big copper mine down in the San Juans, and they shipped a lot out of the old Boss Mine at Goodsprings, Nevada, and from the iron hat at the New Rambler in Wyoming. Trouble is, the South Africans got their gatekeepers in all the fancy labs in Denver and Reno. Any platinum or rhodium they see gets reported to Johanniesburg first.”

  The South Africans, Kurt thought. Gentlemen in natty golf hats.

  “Did Ned tell you the name of the outfit?” he asked. If the old codger had heard a name—Metcalf, Free West, anything remotely close—the DA could pull him in for corroborating testimony. Maybe. If the grand jury believed a man who kept a pig fetus in a jar.

  “Did he mention who they were?” He repeated the question.

  Tink rubbed his nose with the back of his cigarette hand. “Nah,” he said, draining his cup. “And I didn’t ask.”

  Chapter forty

  Kurt made a pot of coffee and sat in an old recliner in the book-lined study that had once been his father’s office, trying to focus his thoughts and weave together the strands from this tangled weed lot of an investigation. Corky Marcus possessed a document naming Hunter as the heir to the mines. Jesse Nighthawk said that Ned had wanted SPIRITT to manage the day-to-day operations until the boy turned twenty-one. But Arnold Metcalf insisted that the Free West Legal Coalition was the sole executor of Ned’s estate, and it was likely that they now owned part of the mining enterprise itself, probably in exchange for legal favors or a forgiven loan. Perhaps this entire scenario made sense only in a perverse logic that Ned Carr alone could have constructed, his final twisted joke. Cowboys and Indians in an alliance of mutual distrust, overseeing one of the few platinum strikes in the continental U.S. The perfect composition of checks and balances, with Hunter benefiting no matter what happened between the uneasy partners. If this was what Ned had in mind, he was one ingenious old coot. So what went wrong?

  Kurt drank his coffee and shuffled through the stack of photocopied articles Meredith had given him, choosing one at random, reading about the origins of the Free West Rebellion and the oil and mining corporations that were its most loyal financial supporters. It occurred to him that Meredith and her reading group and every environmentalist in Colorado were going to be outraged when they learned that a major platinum-mining operation would soon be under way in the national forest on the backside of Aspen Mountain. More truck traffic and noise, a bigger tailings pond for the acids and cyanides, maybe a stamp mill to pound the ore. No wonder Ned and his Free West legal counsel had fought so hard to widen and pave the access road. It was crucial to their future endeavor.

  Something nasty and ratlike began gnawing at the back of his mind and he stopped and removed his bifocals. What if Meredith and her allies had somehow known about the platinum? More than anyone in the Free West Rebellion, the greens would’ve been happy to see the old miner dead and buried. But who would they have hired to make the hit? Not J.J. Chilcutt from the other side. Miles and Kat Pfeil? They weren’t the killing kind.

  He picked up the rock fragment, lying like a paperweight on the pages, and scratched at the hard surface with his thumbnail. It’s easy to short out blasting wire, make a spark, Jesse Nighthawk had told him. I could have done it myself.

  Kurt went to his father’s work desk and dialed the rotor on an antique black telephone. Directory assistance in Santa Fe, New Mexico, had no listing for the acronym SPIRITT. The operator requested more information and Kurt remembered the Society and the Indian, thought the P might stand for Protection. It was close enough.

  “I hope I’m not calling too early,” he said to the young woman whose verbal rhythms sounded Hispanic. “I’m trying to reach Jesse Nighthawk. He gave me this number.”

  “One moment, sir.”

  She put him on hold and returned after a long wait. “I’m sorry, sir, but Mr. Nighthawk cannot be reached at this number. He is no longer employed by us.”

  Kurt squeezed until the rock bit into his palm. He identified himself as the sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado. “Is there somebody I can talk to who might have worked with him?”

  She hesitated, a low-level administrative assistant not paid enough to make these decisions. “I don’t think so, sir. He hasn’t been associated with our organization for three or four months.”

  “May I please speak with the head of your security division?”

  “Our security division?”

  “Yes. Whoever’s in charge of your building security.”

  Another pause. “One moment, sir.”

  This time the wait was even longer, and Kurt wondered if his line was blinking away in some unattended office, possibly the janitor’s storeroom. He was about to hang up and call again when a male voice came on the line.

  “Alvin Birch. What can I do for you?”

  Alvin Birch sounded like an older man, Native American, whose larynx had been graded with a gravel rake. He sounded like someone you didn’t want to fuck with. Kurt inquired politely about Birch’s title.

  “Security,” the man said gruffly. “Who am I talking to?”

  Kurt introduced himself as the sheriff and asked if Birch knew Jesse Nighthawk.

  “Is Jesse in trouble with the law?” Birch asked with a knowing weariness, a familiarity with such matters.

  “I’m not sure yet,” Kurt said. “He told me he worked for SPIRITT and now I find out he doesn’t. I met him at a Free West golf benefit in Colorado Springs yesterday. He said your organization had hired him to take photographs.”

  The man breathed into the line, and Kurt imagined a large chest with heaving lungs. “It’s been a while since we’ve needed his services,” he said.

  “I see. Is there a reason why he doesn’t work for you anymore?”

  A measured hesitation. Several slow, wheezing breaths. “Do you mind if I verify your status with the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Department?”

  “Verify away.” Kurt gave him the phone number of the department and his social security number. “You want to call me back when you feel like talking, Mr. Birch?”

  “Information about our employees is strictly private. There’s not much I can tell you, buddy.”

  “Tell me this much. Is Jesse a good man? Or should I be worried?”

  “You want to hire him to do a job?” he asked. “Is that what we’re talking about?”

  Kurt thought it over. “Something like that,” he said. “I’m looking for a character reference.”

  “Me myself, I got along just fine with Jesse,” Alvin Birch said. “No complaints about his work. He rubbed our legal eagles the wrong way. Maybe you better talk to them.”

  Kurt made a joke about lawyers. Could anyone get along with them? They both laughed.

  “You have any idea how I can get in touch with him?” Kurt asked. “Is he still living in Durango?”

  “Far as I know. I haven’t talked to him in a couple of months.”

  “You have his phone number?”

  “Sorry, brother,” he said. “I cain’t help you out on that one.”

  Kurt thanked Alvin Birch and hung up. He tried directory assistance in Durango, Colorado, and was given the number for Nighthawk Investigations. After three rings, a taped message with Jesse’s deep, polished voice began to play. Kurt pressed his finger on the receiver button and canceled the call.

  If Jesse Nighthawk wasn’t on the SPIRITT payroll, w
ho was he taking pictures for? The private dicks Kurt had worked with wouldn’t walk a dog unless somebody else was covering their time.

  Rhombic shaped and dull, the platinum ore lay on the desk in front of him, the source of so much grief. It didn’t look like something a man should lose his life over. Kurt understood now why Jesse Nighthawk had broken into Ned’s cabin that night. He was searching for solid proof. A rock in a child’s cigar box.

  In less than fifteen minutes Kurt was sitting in his Jeep in front of the elementary school, watching parents in bumper-to-bumper vehicles stop and let out their kids. He was usually in that line, giving Lennon one last squeeze, reminding him about the homework pages and signed forms in his backpack, urging the dreamy boy to walk quickly out of the weather. There were only two weeks left until his graduation from kindergarten, another milestone that had come and gone too fast. Kurt wished he could slow everything down, drag out these innocent moments a little longer. But the months were already running away from them, turning into years.

  He watched the county squad car slip into the stream of traffic. Kurt got out of his Jeep and crossed the street to meet Lennon and Hunter at the sidewalk. This was his only chance to see them today.

  “Hi, Dad,” Lennon said with that familiar pale, sleep-faced expression he always wore this time of morning. Kurt knelt down and hugged his son, helping him put on his backpack.

  “How is everything, champ?”

  “Fine,” the boy said cheerfully. “We’re helping Bhajan plant a garden.”

  “Bhajan?”

  Meg opened the passenger door and said good morning. She seemed happy to see Kurt here.

  “Bhajan is Mom’s friend,” Lennon explained.

  “I see,” he said, smiling at Meg. Bhajan indeed.

  “Hi, Coach,” Hunter said, hopping out of the backseat. “We got to ride in this awesome police car!”