Call Me Joe

by Steven J Patrick

  “No,” he mused, “and I woulda noticed. I saw a lot of the Mercedes, though. Little burgundy thing, goes like a scalded cat.”

  “So, apparently, does Jane Wright,” I sighed. “Jack, Clay seem like the kind of guy who might be up to pullin’ a fast one?”

  “I’m going to rely on the gross generalization that says anybody from L.A. is an amoral pig,” Jack replied. “He seemed like a good guy, but so does every con-man you meet. But…just because the little missus is up to no good doesn’t mean he is.”

  “You don’t mind if I find that sorta hard to believe for a while, do ya?” I snorted.

  “I would expect no less,” he chuckled.

  “Rumor has it,” Aaron said quietly, “that she’s fuckin’ some guy up here.”

  Jack and I exchanged a quick glance and I moved the rearview mirror a bit to see Aaron better.

  “How reliable is that?” I asked.

  “Well, it is a rumor, so as solid as that’ll ever be, but it’s not a new rumor and there’s a lot of evidence,” Aaron mused, staring out the window. He had an odd, distant look about the eyes that rang a couple of my alarms.

  “What are you not saying, Aaron?” I asked pointedly. “You know the guy?”

  “Yea,” he sighed heavily. “He’s…he was my best friend, most of my life; maybe the only real friend I’ve ever had.

  “But no more,” Jack probed.

  “No, no more,” Aaron almost whispered. “We…uh…we had a…thing, a fight about two years ago. We haven’t spoken since.”

  Aaron sat quietly for a long moment. As I looked at him in the rearview mirror, he seemed to shrink inside his clothes. The hurt and confusion on his face made him look about 12 and I started to get that crawly, prostrate-clenching surge of shame that my job sometimes entails but to which I’ve never fully adapted. In these moments, I start to wonder what it would be like to move to Yakima or Walla Walla and grow grapes on some idyllic south-facing hillside. Or to sell insurance. Or work at Burger King.

  “The guy’s name is Adam Fletcher,” Aaron said slowly. “He lives about three miles out of Colville, towards Spokane. He’s about five years older than me. He was best friends with my cousin, Baylor. Baylor and him used to pick on me like crazy when we were little. Time I got to be 14 or so, they had to stop that. Baylor was a hard-head, so I had to whip his ass maybe eight, nine times before he caught on. Not Adam. I don’t remember how or when but about that time, we just…clicked. He’s a…was an athlete. Not big, like me, but wiry and fast and agile. Good-looking cuss, too, so there were always girls around. Thing was, he never seemed ashamed to be hangin’ around with some 15-year-old kid. Maybe it was just that I didn’t look 15 or that I’m just big, but he always treated me like anybody else. But…”

  He sat quietly for a moment. Jack started to say something. I grabbed his arm and shook my head discreetly.

  “But…,” Aaron repeated, “Adam was different. He didn’t really fit in around here, either. He read books, and studied art and listened to jazz and painted. Y’know, not houses. Paintings. He bought me my first camera for my sixteenth birthday. Taught me how to use it. When Mama left…Adam got me on at his job, doing unskilled construction stuff. He helped me get the truck. I can’t even imagine where I’d be now if not for him.”

  “He had another side to him, though,” Aaron continued. “He had secrets. Stuff he did that he never talked about. He spent weekends in Spokane a lot. That’s where I got the idea. I always guessed it had something to do with a girl, ‘cause he was always grinnin’ when he came back. And, he pretty much stopped dating anybody around here. Now, of course, he’s living in Spokane; comes back here maybe a weekend a month, to visit his folks. If he is messin’ around with Janie Wright, I figure that’s where he met her. I dunno how, of course. Not like they ran in the same circles.”

  “Isn’t Janie Wright a lot older than him?” Jack asked. “Clay’s got to be in his early ‘50’s.

  “You haven’t seen her?” Aaron blinked. “That’s strange ‘cause she’s Doctor Wright’s major trophy wife, what I hear. No, Janie’s about 32-33. She was Miss Idaho back in…uh…‘91 or so. One of those gals who just get better looking as they hit 30. Story goes, her daddy finally gave in to her askin’ to go to Los Angeles for plastic surgery and flew her and two of her girlfriends out there. Dr. Wright was the best, so she went to him and, one thing leads to another, she’s married to him. Eventually, though, she figures out she’s never gonna be the prettiest girl in L.A., way she was here, so she talks him into moving to Spokane. Rumors again, but they say it took her all of about six months back before people started spottin’ her out dancin’ with other guys.”

  “Goddamnit,” Jack growled, “this is all stuff Art should have told me! Hell, what am I saying? Her old man is one of Art’s best friends. Art’s probably known her since she was born. She probably thinks of him as Uncle Art. Why would he bother checking her out?”

  “Look,” I said emphatically, “even if he thinks she’s made out of vanilla ice cream, even if he would have dismissed it, he still would have heard things. Spokane’s a large town but those good ol’ boy circles are as incestuous as a boat load of shipwrecked hillbillies. He’s heard. And he didn’t tell either one of us. I think we should find out why.”

  

  “Why? Because I had no idea anything about this involved Clayton and Janie, at all,” Art said flatly.

  We were back in his conference room—the three of us, Art, two of his clerks, and his secretary, Bettijean Moorage, a 50-ish, flinty, trash-mouth blonde that I usually took out to dinner whenever I was in Spokane. She was such an unbridled spirit and so fundamentally contrary that her stolid silence since our arrival had me a little back on my heels. Art’s clerks, as always, seemed to undergo an actual physical metamorphosis and disappear into the grain of the oak paneling. Art was rumpled but engaged. All of them sneaked periodic, furtive glances at Aaron, much like zoo patrons who had wandered into the rhino cage.

  “What do you mean?” I grunted. “They’re partners, right?”

  “They’d prefer the term ‘investors’, and that’s more accurate,” Art yawned. The clock was creeping around to 8:30. That’s p.m. I knew he was missing happy hour at the Barristers’ Corner, as were the clerks. God alone knew what Bettijean was missing, aside from her personality, but I resolved to pin her down afterwards for a ‘what gives’?

  “Yeah,” Jack nodded, “that’s what Clay said when he and I went to dinner. He said he’d be willing to do P.R. here in the area but he wasn’t sure Jane would do anything public.”

  “Guess she changed her mind,” Bettijean muttered.

  Art shot her a quick glance, which Bettijean totally ignored.

  “Did you even talk to her, Art?” I groaned, rubbing the back of my neck.

  “She and Clay were at her parents’ house last Saturday for a Rotary gala,” Art sighed. “She said she had been up to Colville once, since the signing, to visit her great-aunt. She said she had been out to the site once.”

  “Once?” Aaron snorted. “More like two dozen times. Mr. Steptoe sent me out to ride the border with her twice.”

  “Twice?” I asked. “It took two trips?”

  “No,” Aaron replied, “takes about six hours, on the ATV’s, so we rode the whole thing the first day. The second day, she just wanted to redo the area down by the river.”

  “Art, much as I hate to say this, you dropped the ball here,” Jack murmured, shaking his head. “Hell, you gave Clay Wright a background check the Secret Service would have settled for. How could you just gloss over Janie?”

  “Jack,” Art sputtered, “what do you do in a background check? Janie’s never worked a day in her life. Her friends are all daughters of my friends, and she went to school at Idaho, rooming with my daughter! That’s her background.”

  “You never heard anything off about her? She never got into trouble, told a big lie, cheated on exams, got knocked up, nothing?” Jack signe
d. “I know she was married at least once.”

  “That was just one of those adolescent rebellion deals,” Art sniffed. “Lasted all of four months. Oh, he was a nice enough kid; one of the Colville kids who got a football scholarship at Idaho. I don’t even doubt that she loved him but you know how that is when you’re 19. It’s true love but it’s the starter kit—not meant to last forever. Way she tells it, they woke up one morning, looked at each other, and went ‘Yikes!’ Aside from that..oh, you know how it goes in a city the size of Spokane; especially one that got big fast. Everybody who’s a native knows something about everyone else in their social circles. There have been dozens of rumors about Janie, since she was fifteen. At one time, she was supposed to have been dating Ryan Leaf. She never even met Ryan Leaf. As far as anything illegal or even immoral, not a whisper.”

  “Where’s the ex now?” I asked.

  “Muerto, sadly,” Art murmured, staring up at the ceiling. “Wrapped his car around a utility pole one Saturday night, drunk, about two years after they split, so presumably it had nothing to do with her.”

  “He and my cousin Lewis died in that wreck,” Aaron said quietly.

  “Aaron,” I managed, after the moment of stunned silence. “You got anymore of these little cherry bombs you want to toss in? Now would be a good time.”

  “Sorry,” he sighed. “I’m not seeing the big picture, I guess, so I only think of stuff right when you’re talking about it. And, too, I don’t have a whole lot of firsthand knowledge about Janie. I only spent those two days with her, and she wasn’t exactly a chatterbox, either time.”

  “So, what exactly did she do on those trips, Aaron?” Art asked. “I’m baffled by that. Why the hell would she want to do that, in the first place? If she wanted to know the land plots, I’ve got those right here. I even have aerials, low altitude and satellite. She never even seemed too interested in any of the details. She was into planning for their lodge and that was about it.”

  “Well, that’s what I thought was odd,” Aaron nodded. “To begin with, she sure didn’t seem like no outdoorsman…outdoorswoman, I guess you’d say. I can usually spot a tenderfoot and I’d bet that the closest Janie Wright ever gets to nature is when the florist guy shows up with her centerpiece. That’s some seriously beautiful country back in there, and she ignored all of it. Spent most of her time with her map out, askin’ me where we were. I pointed out a family of deer to her, at one point, and she sorta glanced at them and then said, ‘Yeah, great. Let’s get moving.’ What was really weird was that I thought all along that she was looking for the best trail into their lodge site but she barely slowed down when we went by there. Where she got really interested was clear in the other side of the development, over by that little strip of waterfront. It’s part of the land, technically, but nothing’s planned for it. It’s too steep. Most of it is that biggest hill that dumps down to the river on one side and the main valley on the other. It’s that odd-shaped tract; one looks like a barbell, on a map. I think that guy Joe owns it.”

  “What was she interested in about that?” Art snorted. “Hell, it’s impassable. The W.S.U. geologists said it’s basically just a huge outcropping of limestone covered with about enough topsoil to grow petunias. It’s riddled with caves. The only usable land on it is that long slope down to the riverbed, where old man Clement had his cattle and barns. After he died, the twins sold off all the cattle and knocked down the barns. They lived in the little house that Mackie Clement built for his hired man’s family and sold off their place in Kettle Falls. After they sold the land, they moved to France. There’s just…nothing there.”

  “Did Janie say anything, while you two were there?” I asked Aaron.

  “She knew the twins pretty well, so she played out there a lot when her mom was out visiting her folks. She told me all about that. She said she went back there sometimes when she married Billy Hollis, just to see the old place, again.”

  ”The new owner didn’t object?” Jack asked.

  “Prob’ly never knew about it,” Aaron observed. “She didn’t even know it had been sold twice until I told her. She, like nearly everybody else, just assumed that it reverted to the tribe. A lotta people will tell you these farms can’t be sold. That’s what the Council thought, back when the Clement twins sold it off. They were all freaked out, hiring lawyers, filing motions. Turns out, the treaty only requires the sale to or takeover by the tribe if the owners go to jail or get declared incompetent. There’s nothing in the treaty says they can sell, but nothin’ says they can’t, either. The lawyer guy bought it for his own hunting and fishing preserve but only showed up on weekends and then only about a dozen times. He eventually hired Tom and Maddy Painter to keep up the cabin and the fences and never came over again. Janie coulda built an airport out there and nobody woulda noticed.”

  “Who is this Joe character, owns it now?” Jack mused. “Maybe Janie has some connection to him?”

  “Beats me,” Art shrugged. “It was within the tribe’s purview to negotiate the leases and rights-of-way, so we just dealt with them. I know we wrote the guy a check but…oh, wait—that was the individual lease that paid directly to a law firm in Portland. Yeah, uh…Blackwood, Portale, and Meeks. Chuck Portale was in my dorm at Stanford but I didn’t know him. Still, as I recall, it was one phone call, maybe five minutes we cut a check and that was that.”

  “See if you can find a last name on that, willya?” I suggested. “There has to be some reason Janie Wright was prowling this guy’s land. Maybe there’s some history there.”

  “I don’t think so,” Aaron replied. “I can usually tell when someone is flat-out lying to me and I doubt she was. She was pumping me for information about him. Asked me to run him on our security databases. She was as curious as you are.”

  “Did you run him?” I prompted.

  “Well, I don’t…didn’t do the computer work. Simmons was the big techie. But he said he couldn’t find any records on the guy at all. Of course, we didn’t have his last name…”

  “Did he check D.M.V., registrar of deeds, military?” I asked.

  “Uh, all that. But the deed is in the name of a trust down in Oregon and, for the rest, like I said, no last name. Can’t run just ‘Joe,’” Aaron replied.

  “Didn’t that make you curious?” Jack sighed, exasperated.

  “Yeah, it made me curious,” Aaron shot back, an edge creeping into his voice, “but what was I supposed to do, brace the guy on his own land? He’s not quite a hermit but he ain’t exactly throwin’ dinner parties. I’ve met him and talked to him. Lot of people have. Around here, people believe, if you ain’t hurting anybody, your business is your own business.”

  “How ‘bout just maybe, asking him his name?” Jack snapped.

  “Some people done that,” Aaron replied, “and he answered them—supposedly. Just that I never asked.”

  “Why not?” Jack growled.

  “Because I didn’t have any fuckin’ reason to, that’s why,” Aaron said levelly.

  “So, let’s see,” Jack chuckled. “Here’s my big, risky, expensive resort project and, right smack in the middle of it, here’s some asshole nobody knows anything about, not even his last name. Guy could be a Nazi war criminal, Osama Bin Laden’s right-hand man, an eco-terrorist, an unregistered sex offender, or Jimmy Hoffa, and that’s just okay with you and Steptoe? The tribe? Everybody here? That about right?”

  “Look,” Aaron barked, “you’re the one preachin’ about your principles—never stepping on local customs and values. That just a flowery speech you give the Rotary Club? ‘Cause, if it’s not, then it’s gotta be for real, and not just when you happen to agree with the customs and values. Around here, if a man don’t want to tell you his last name, we respect that. If he happens to be hiding something, fine - long as he behaves himself here. People who don’t find themselves trussed up like a Christmas goose and dropped off in Spokane, over by the Trailways Station. Plenty of examples of that. Our biggest local custom an
d value is privacy. Now, you gonna respect that, or what?”

  “Aaron,” Jack said levelly, “I respect your opinion but I suspect that’s all this is—one man’s opinion. I don’t have to agree with it…and I do think I have a right to check out my neighbors.”

  “The very fact that you’d say that just proves that you didn’t check out your neighbors. If you’d gotten out and just listened to the people who’ll be affected by your development, you would know. It’s not just ‘one man’s opinion’,” Aaron replied coolly, “and I’d think about using that word ‘neighbor’ so lightly. A ‘neighbor’, traditionally, is a person who lives near you, shares the challenges, the risks and rewards, the common good. I don’t think some billionaire from Maryland can call himself our ‘neighbor’ just by throwing money on the ground. ‘Neighbor’ is something positive, something you earn, not just buy…but, then that’s just one man’s opinion.”

  “That’s obviously something you’ve wanted to say for a long time, Aaron,” Jack said quietly, “and I respect your right to say it. I’ll even admit that I, personally, didn’t do enough to put the tribe and the community at ease. I’m sure there’s some resentment about that, and it’s justified. My only explanation is that this arrangement between me and my partners hasn’t worked from the get-go and it’s getting worse as we speak. But, like it or not, I am the guy who’ll be running the sales and marketing phase of this. I am the guy who’ll be here, 24/7, eating in local restaurants, staying in my motel, creating business partnerships, so I am your neighbor. And knowing your neighbor is not a one-way street, you get to know me and I get to know you, too. I even get to have an opinion about those customs and values and maybe influence them a bit, along the way. My treaty with the tribe, I think, buys me that. And I absolutely believe that I should know if one of my neighbors is doing things which may, eventually, wreck everything we’re building. So, if anyone is going to dislike me for simply checking out ol’ Joe up there, well, they’ll just have to dislike me. Maybe, eventually, I’ll do enough good here that they’ll change their opinion.