Black Mountain

by Laird Barron

  Spring thawed our mountain retreat. Scant green and loads of slush and mud. The bright morning, I returned to civilization. He clasped my hand and gave me the rarest of smiles—one of the real ones he hoarded like gold.

  Embarrassed to admit, I was suspicious that Apollo sent you, an expendable kid, on a suicide mission. The reason I didn’t snuff you the day you knocked on my door? Them rabies tags hanging around your neck. I had a dog when I was young. Good dog.

  His parting gift to me, besides his sterling advice? A ballistic vest, custom-designed for my height and weight, give or take a few pounds. Extremely old-school and too heavy for military deployment, yet ideal for brief and deadly excursions. Unlike the majority of contemporary Kevlar vests, this beast was lined with ceramic plates and designed to retard a spectrum of kinetic-force impacts, including bullets and slower-piercing weapons, such as knives and arrowheads. Impossible to fit under a suit; I could wear it with bulky outdoor jackets and pullovers and for short durations. It went into a closet with similar treasured, albeit impractical toys; namely, a gothic battle-ax, an authentic clay-forged katana, and an iron breastplate modeled on the Late Roman Republic centurion model.

  We embraced like father and son and I walked down into the trees. Once screened by spruce branches, I glanced back and saw him on the porch; a small, somehow wan figure, pallid and diminished. I turned and kept on and lost sight of him forever.

  Ironically, the Outfit boss in Anchorage, Mr. Apollo, had indeed encouraged me to put a round through Gene’s brain—if, and only if, the opportunity presented itself. Mr. Apollo promised to make the hit more than worth my while. I lived with Gene for an autumn and a winter; there were plenty of chances to punch his ticket. Man’s got to sleep. Man’s got to obey the call of nature.

  I’d had my chances. I didn’t have the balls.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The late-night message from Agent Bellow wormed into my brain and stirred the sediment. Memories of Gene K, blue-collar philosophizer and avuncular assassin, haunted me as I tossed and turned over that other relic of the dark ages of mob warfare, the Croatoan. Small wonder. Both Gene and the Croatoan were of a generation. Both men harbored love for a violent profession. It’s a grim truth, we’re all headed across the threshold to the other side. These men swam through rivers of blood to get there.

  That’s where the comparison broke down.

  The Croatoan represented a bogeyman, especially among East Coast mobsters. A mysterious freelancer, true identity known by a select few, who conducted wholesale slaughter on behalf of the Family (and other nefarious bidders) since the latter 1970s. Older mafiosos speculated that he’d done three hundred and fifty hits. A fantastical, impossible total. Others argued that the number was far higher—four hundred or four hundred and fifty. All agreed the killings were done with extreme prejudice.

  When the Croatoan didn’t cause his victims to evaporate, he scattered their fleshly pieces to hell and gone. A renowned torturer, he’d allegedly filmed several of his interrogations on VHS and circulated the cassettes as a method of striking fear into the hearts of would-be enemies. Mission accomplished. He was seldom referenced in polite conversation. However, when liquor flowed and tongues loosened, a hush ensued and bystanders crossed themselves.

  Gene attested to meeting him in Buffalo in ’86 on the occasion of a major intrafamily whacking. A regular mob party. Five wiseguys were shredded in a blaze of machine-gun fire and buried in a mass grave. Gene flew in special from Chicago. He missed his connection and arrived after three Carlucci Family foot soldiers and another independent contractor had finished their wetwork. The crew celebrated with a few drinks at a neighborhood bar called Scottie’s.

  Carlucci’s boys were festive, whooping and kibitzing and annoying the locals. The other shooter, a quiet man dressed to blend, introduced himself as Joe. Gene knew that was a fake name. Everybody went by fake names or monikers. He suspected the stranger’s identity from the jump. Rumors had floated for days that the don planned to bring in a real heavy. This caliber of hitter could’ve handled the job solo, no sweat, but the don wanted to ensure his young pups got a taste of blood at scant risk to themselves.

  I asked my mentor what sort of impression the Croatoan made.

  Gene had shrugged. I dunno, killer. He was a guy. He drank Yuengling Porter and smoked . . . Benson and Hedges, I recall. Here’s the deal, though: I knew three or four contractors who did work with “Joe,” and a few more who made the brag, but I got no way of verifying.

  They all said the same thing. The Croatoan had a trick; leastwise, that’s what wiseguys muttered. Hypnotism—the fancy shit stage magicians use, not the tepid stuff where quacks talk you out of smoking. A hitter in Boston said it was a voice modulator that fucks with your mind. Somebody else swore it was the eyes, the way a snake freezes its prey. I dunno. The Croatoan could paralyze a whole carload of mooks and whack them at his leisure. Nuts, right? It’s what I heard. Others claimed he wore a mask, a nylon stocking. Not nylon, something else, and it warped his face when he pulled it loose.

  Since “Joe” and I were parked at the bar, killing an hour or two, I bit the bullet and asked him how he managed crowds. Figured he’d bullshit me and he did. Looked me in the eye and said he knew words of power. One word could blind a man or cause his brain to leak from his ears. There were other words that caused worse effects.

  “Don’t make me raise my voice,” Joe said. He grinned to prove it was a joke and we drank another round.

  Years later, I talked to a mechanic who’d seen the Croatoan in action. A standup guy too. We cut our teeth together in Chicago before he moved to Philly. My friend said he and the Croatoan took down a Russian crew all by their lonesome. Odessa wannabes; dangerous all the same. No shit, the Croatoan told him to stay a step or two behind him on his flank where it was safe. He had a device, something he’d tested for the military in ’Nam. Then he fit his hand over his mouth, like you do with a harmonica, and . . . I dunno, screamed, or howled. Boom. The Russian gangsters dropped. My friend ran over and capped ’em while they writhed on the ground. “Shooting gallery,” he said.

  I pestered my colleague to tell me everything about the Croatoan. My friend says, “He’s a guy, Gene. Nothin’ special. I tell you what—I see him, I’m walkin’ the opposite direction. He’s so ordinary, he scares me shitless.”

  * * *

  —

  AT DAWN, while the coffeepot perked, I placed a call to my FBI friend. I had a feeling he’d be stone-cold awake.

  Agent Bellow, in full-bore G-man mode, jumped in without a hello.

  “Get a pen and write this down. Brother, oh brother, you hit the jackpot. I’m friendly with a couple of agents assigned to a case that may involve whoever did in your loan shark associates. You ready?”

  “Ready,” I said.

  “The murders of Harold Lee and Raymond Anderson fit an M.O. of a suspected serial killer active along the corridor between New York and Danbury, and west into Mount Pocono, for the past eleven or twelve years. Seventeen working girls and drifters have gone missing during that period. The eight recovered bodies exhibited a variety of wounds—decapitation with a serrated blade chief among these. The corpses are frequently, albeit not always, disposed of in lakes or rivers.”

  “You mentioned the Croatoan in your message.”

  “My friends’ theory is that the Tri-State Killer and the Croatoan are one and the same. At a minimum, the murderers share methods. Execution via serrated blade is a common denominator. Main difference is the tri-state killings target a high percentage of women with decapitation as a preferred method. The Croatoan hits male criminals almost exclusively and his methods run the gamut, including decapitation.”

  “Bit of a racist moniker,” I said. “He’s probably not even a Native American, much less a Croatoan.”

  “File a complaint with your pals in the mob,” Bellow said. “They groome
d the asshole. Whacking wiseguys is well and good. Should earn you a tax credit. Whacking civilians is a whole next-level kind of problem. If our theory is sound, he began moonlighting as a serial killer. The Family owns that garbage.”

  I didn’t remind him that pals was a strong word. This wasn’t badminton; I didn’t need to score points. The explanation I’d heard about the Croatoan nickname concerned some college-educated wiseguy’s fascination with the Lost Colony of Roanoke legend. Since the hitter disappeared a heap of people from Florida to Maine—boom, he was the Croatoan. Considering his body count and grisly methods of dispatch, what began as a bit of clever wordplay wasn’t amusing anymore.

  “Touché!” I said. “Any leads?”

  I heard Bellow shuffle papers.

  He said, “Yes, there’s a guy my colleagues like for this. Beginning in 1976, the chief suspect is one Morris Oestryke of Deering, Michigan; DOB, 1951. Only child. Father not in the picture. Mother died of cancer in 1969. No other close relatives, no sweetheart. Played football in school; average grades. Served 1969 through 1973 as a red-blooded Army volunteer. Two tours in Vietnam. Made staff sergeant. Humdrum, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Not really the potboiler,” I said.

  “Hold on to your hat. Except for notation of rank promotion, Oestryke has next to no record between his Army induction and the day he showed up at a vocational school, post ’Nam. His military records are largely redacted on authority of the Department of Defense. Upon his discharge, he slipped beneath the radar for several years. We have no idea where he lived or what he did.

  “In early ’78, after he came into view again, he relocated to Albany, attended Smithfield Technical College, and eventually toiled a route for a refrigeration company. Repairs and installations, then promoted into sales. Married in latter 1978; three children. Oestryke died in 1987. Factory explosion. Three casualties, no identifiable remains. Widow collects a wad of life insurance dough and moves on. Cops don’t give it a second glance.”

  “Extra-crispy convenient,” I said. “We’re going to reach the part where you reveal why you suspect Oestryke worked for the mob between Freon runs . . . ?”

  “Okay, before his untimely obliteration, Oestryke maintains his cover as working-class family man. Meanwhile, out in the world, the Croatoan is whacking people left, right, and center. Gradually, this activity slows. Sightings of the hitter become rare, then stop. Word among the wiseguys is, he’s either retired or kicked the bucket. Either way, the recent slayings of Anderson and Lee notwithstanding, the Croatoan hasn’t accepted a contract or shown his face in gangland since 2006. The tri-state murders begin around that time.”

  “When was the last-known murder that fits the tri-state profile?”

  “Roughly thirty-six months,” Bellow said. “That doesn’t mean he isn’t piling corpses up somewhere for us to find later.”

  “Try this on,” I said. “Oestryke survives the explosion and changes his identity. Eventually, he retires from hitting. He still has a taste for blood. By no degree is this dude a regular contractor. More of a rogue tiger. Dusting prostitutes and vagrants satisfies those old familiar urges.”

  “Why didn’t we think of that?” Bellow said. “Shut up and let me finish my story. Behold the big reveal: five years ago, forensics unearths a partial print match from a cold case murder—Teamster boss got assassinated in Philadelphia, 1993. Wiseguy scuttlebutt indicates the Croatoan did the hit. No reason for the Bureau to be skeptical; Teamsters and mobsters go together like peanut butter and jelly.

  “CSI initially lifted the print from the hilt of a Ka-Bar knife dropped at the murder scene. Serrated, wouldn’t you know. Evidence packet was misplaced. The Teamster boss gets his wake and the world turns. The FBI doesn’t forget, but it doesn’t lose much sleep dwelling on lost causes. Years go by. A zealous intern recovers the evidence during an annual inventory sweep and a supervisor initiates a new review.”

  “The print belonged to Oestryke, which outed him as the Croatoan,” I said. “He made a mistake. It happens, sooner or later.”

  “Ding-ding.”

  Bellow quickly and succinctly laid out the rest of it:

  Way, way back in ’74, before the Croatoan whetted a blade, Oestryke, freshly discharged from the service, got pinched for a minor beef with a couple of hard cases at a bar. He brandished a knife and the cops hauled his ass in. Released him the next morning and dropped all charges. Local DA had a soft spot for veterans. That was the moment he vanished from the grid and didn’t resurface until 1978.

  Voilà, that incident eventually connected him to the slaying of the Philadelphia Teamster boss in ’93. As Oestryke was allegedly six years dead at that date, the FBI forensic department became rather intrigued, to say the least. Furthermore, nothing in Oestryke’s background explained why he’d transitioned from a regular guy to a hitman-cum-serial-killer. He represented a right-angled pivot on the spectrum of aberrant psychology.

  “Wouldn’t the Army have fingerprinted him when he enlisted?” I said.

  “Noncriminal records prior to 2000 aren’t in the database,” Bellow said. “Your tax dollars really go to Christmas parties and stripper slush funds. We’re supremely fortunate a civilian agency tripped him.”

  He went on to reiterate that the Croatoan didn’t exactly amount to a Bureau priority. The aforementioned long-suffering field agents drew the short straw and whittled away at the case in their spare moments. Chatted up every man jack who ever knew Oestryke—colleagues, family, and mafiosos alike. A time line of his movements between the latter 1960s and 1987 was charted alongside eyewitness accounts, crime scene reports, and known activities of the Croatoan and the more recent tri-state slayings.

  “The emergent picture is compelling, albeit inconclusive,” Bellow said.

  Assuming Oestryke survived the explosion, I asked if Bellow had any clue what identity he assumed next.

  “None. Legend goes, only select Family muckety-mucks knew the Croatoan’s real name. Capos handled him the way we manage our own undercover agents. The whole double-life charade: limited chain of command; need-to-know basis. Sources claim the hitter communicated almost exclusively through dead drops. The old capos who were aware of his true identity have long since crossed over to the afterlife. Even so, a man has to ask himself how much Curtis knows and if he ever availed himself of Oestryke’s services.”

  The notion that Curtis might function on a collegial basis with a guy like the Croatoan didn’t surprise me, which is not to say I welcomed the development. Best to arm myself with more data before cracking open that potential can of worms.

  “It gets weirder,” Bellow went on. “My colleagues use the word stymied to describe their progress. Support is sluggish, to put it politely. Reports are dropped into a black hole. Essentially, they’ve run into a brick wall. And it has less to do with the evidence than it does the bureaucracy.”

  “Think they’re being waved off the case?”

  He hesitated.

  “A bunch of paperwork is missing or redacted. More DoD interference. Smells like a parallel investigation running farther up the food chain. The agents won’t comment further. Either because they’re in the dark, or because they’re smart. Whichever, the case is in suspended animation. Part of the reason I’m letting you in. Maybe a bull in a china shop is the cure.”

  “Interdepartmental cooperation would ruin a perfectly acceptable cliché,” I said. “What if—and this is pure speculation—what if the DoD or the CIA was directly involved somehow? We know the government ran shady ops during Vietnam. Suppose Oestryke was an asset? It would explain the weird discrepancies in his background and why FBI brass is hiding intel and freezing its own investigation.”

  “I’ll never know. That’s one rabbit hole I’m not hopping into this close to retirement.”

  “Understood. Any chance I could get ahold of a photograph of Mr. Oestryke? And—this
might sound morbid—do you have a copy of any snuff tapes the Croatoan made?”

  Dead silence stretched for a few seconds and I knew the next thing he said would either be a half-truth or a full-blown lie.

  “Mobsters are as paranoid as Cub Scouts gathered around a campfire,” he said. “Those tapes are a myth. Not much scares professional hard cases. They spin bullshit stories to get under each other’s skin. Even if the damned tapes existed, why would you want to screen them anyway?”

  “I’m morbid. What about Oestryke’s photos . . . ?”

  “You’ve got email. Military headshot and another from his company profile. Shitty and dated, obviously. Passed along some of our data as well. Be sure to lose it when you’re finished.”

  “Hey, Agent B, I’m a detective. Totally legitimate for us to collaborate.”

  “I’d rather not push that line of reasoning in front of an inquest committee.”

  “You’ve done a manly deed; take the rest of the day.”

  “Fat chance. The kids are already climbing the chandeliers. Mind sharing your plans?”

  “Back to shaking trees,” I said. “Indulge me in one more question. Where does a man like Oestryke go to ground? Is he hiding in plain sight—a kooky resident at a trailer park or apartment complex?” I thought of Gene K and how he spent his golden years in the woods. “A bunker?”

  “If this investigation were really a thing and not a façade? And if I were assigned? I’d map all the murders and disappearances attributed to Oestryke. The Catskills region would be bloody with red pins. This is a man who moved in mob circles for thirty years. He associated with monied scumbags of all ethnicities. As predators grow long in the tooth, they remain closer to familiar hunting grounds. He’s lurking somewhere in the Jewish Alps among those abandoned resorts and bungalow colonies. Mark it down.”