by Dave Balcom
He thought for a few minutes and then gave a “what the hell” kind of shrug and started talking.
“Did you ever think Mickey was a real tough guy? I mean, you know, a real tough guy. Not just a Podunk town tough guy? I never did. But then I’d grown up knowing Charlotte and Ricardo and Frank…
“Those people are just flat ruthless, man. They made Mickey, Rick, all those people in Lake Lucy; they made them look like a Scout troop, you know?”
“I knew Char back in high school; we met at a football game in Eaton Rapids, where I was from. She didn’t have much to do with the boys in Charlotte; she had been a bit too radical, too far ahead of the curve for the rest of the kids in Charlotte High School.
“She was physically mature when I met her, and her mental growth wasn’t very far behind by the time she was sixteen. She made great grades when the purpose of learning something made sense to her, otherwise school was just a place she had to go to keep peace at home.
“And she really liked having sex with me. She even thought that I might be her ‘one and only true love.’ I knew she was just practicing for the rest of her life. We been falling in and out of beds together ever since. I never married.
“As soon as she was sixteen she started making the drive up I-69 to Lansing every chance she had. She easily passed for eighteen, which was the legal age to go to the clubs that surround Michigan State, and it was just a matter of time before she hooked up with Ricardo and Frank Santiago.
“She introduced me to them long after she’d had her first taste of violence; it was that time when Mickey and Rick Edmonds were trying, they thought, to buy some drugs to take home and turn into profit.
“She told me that the whole thing seemed to her to be some kind of test. She thought Frank and Ricardo were trying to find out if she was tough enough to pull it off. She said she promised Frank, ‘They won’t resist, Frank. They only think they’re tough.’
“She couldn’t wait to tell me about how it went down in that parking lot. She described the look on Rick’s face in front of the barrel of her twelve-gauge pump gun, and how Mickey’s eyes went large when she said, in her sexiest purr, ‘You can have your head, but your money or the drugs are out of the question.’ She called it the greatest buzz she’d ever experienced.
“She told me she had practiced saying that just so into her bathroom mirror for hours.
“It had been the beginning of her learning curve. She had delivered on the assignment, and they gave her half the sixteen grand. While she had dabbled with product, and didn’t mind the buzz, she certainly knew she could use sex like a weapon. What she learned that night was the high she copped holding that gun on those two guys had hooked her deep.
“She started on a road to find out how tough was tough enough, to see if she could always measure up. She had a real jones for the surge that came with each test, and like any good drug, she had to keep upping the dosage to find the same high.
“She was a natural. And the bunch of them set out to prove to themselves just how tough they could be at every opportunity. Things had started to change when Frank, who was really the criminal in that family, went off to prison on a tax fraud charge.
“Ricardo grew concerned about his older years. Miguel joined the company, but with little or no formal education, he wasn’t much help with the development business.
“She told me she had thought their life of danger had ended when they bought the properties in Mineral Valley. Frank had purchased the first piece in nineteen eighty-two, just before the tax boys took hold of him. He was facing at least another two years inside – is just now getting out with all this shit going down – and all he ever talked about in his letters or when they visited was coming home to the compound.
“Then Ricardo decided they needed to put their money to work in an honest business, and that’s when Crocker had joined the group. He invested them into the Next Cool Place, LLC. Not that she or Ricardo had any interest in playgrounds for the rich and famous. That’s about when I asked for a meeting with Ricardo.
“I figured if he wanted to put his money to honest work, I should explain about all the oil and gas that was under their feet.
“I told him, ‘You gotta figure that when the time’s right, when gas hits five dollars a gallon and keeps right on going, the oil and gas reserves under this property will be worth millions and millions.’
‘“How does that calculate?’ Ricardo had asked, always ready to know if the deal would ‘pencil.’ He saw himself as an assured business man, and he acted the part, talked the language. He didn’t fool anyone who really knew him.
“The calculations were easy to understand. The typical oil well in that part of the world could safely be expected to pump sixteen barrels of oil a day – three hundred sixty-five days a year for the rest of time.
“I had old maps showing pinnacle formations from seismic measurements taken during the nineteen seventies when oil and gas fever had hit this region.
“You can expect to hit gas, oil or both in their turn from every one of those peaks. There were many of those peaks on land adjacent to the compound, land that wasn’t for sale, but I figured people like us could make the sales happen one way or another.
“See it’s simple, if you think of fifty bucks a barrel for oil, sixteen barrels a day times three hundred sixty-five days and say forty-three wells… that’s a hair more than fourteen million dollars a year. The cost of drilling will be covered in one full year of production, and you know that fifty dollars a barrel, once the supply really tightens, is a very conservative number.
“And those peaks? They run right up the creek all the way to the National Forest and all the mineral rights are still with those properties.
“My plan was to carefully acquire the two forty-acre plots next door. I figured if we bought the land under a disguise of a new Next Cool Place development, nobody would catch on before we had control of all those peaks.
“I told him, ‘There’s lots of time. Gas is hovering around a buck twenty-five a gallon right now. We can wait, bide our time and be ready.’ Like, as if I knew that Mickey fuckin’ Buchanan was going legacy on me.”
I nodded. “You took those maps back when you were working for Shell, right?”
Means laughed. “We were mapping this part of the region back in the seventies when the map of the Pigeon River formation hit Shell between the eyes. Everything stopped for us, and all the attention went up there. I was going off into my own company in eighty and I just happened to end up with these maps and the GIS printouts… Shell just wasn’t watching so I took ’em.
“In nineteen eighty-one, when the Pigeon River strike really hit, nobody was thinking about this region, and nobody had ever come through and captured the mineral leases. I had income from two wells, and I left Shell then.
“I went to work on the farm, out of sight and out of mind. I just kept looking for the right time and the right partners to start making real money.”
Means asked for some water, and an officer brought bottles for all of us.
He nearly drained his bottle in one pull, and then continued, “Everyone knew Mickey had his property upstream, but we didn’t have a clue about his dreams for Penny Point. We focused on the two parcels separating the compound from his property.
“So one day, I talk Ron White into going to the Kalkaska County Courthouse and make a contact so they could keep track of who owned what in their target area. White made friends with one of the clerks there, a real Bossy-cow woman who thought White was hot for her. She taught Ron to work the property search, and then the next day, he comes screaming into the compound to tell us that Buchanan had deeds or options to buy all the property from his place east to the forest boundary.
“The next day, Crocker calls us to tell us that Buchanan has approached Next Cool Place with a partnership proposal for a massive development… It was like I’d planned it all along, but it meant bad news for Mickey.
“So a few weeks later, I’
m in bed with Char and I tell her that I know Buchanan from way back, and she knew him, too, in a way. ‘I think he’d divorce his wife, leave his kid flat to hook up with you,’ I told her. ‘Really?’ She said, and seemed to be amused at the thought of some unknown admirer.
“So I asked her, ‘You ever point a shotgun at two guys in a Kroger parking lot in Charlotte, ’bout nineteen seventy-four?’ She smiled, ‘In an IGA lot, I did. He was there?’
“Whatever, but he was there all right. Said you were the damnedest, stone cold bitch he’d ever seen. Said if he ever had a chance to be with you he’d drop everything or anything like a hot rock. Been saying that for years…”’
I finished it for him, “So Crocker just played it coy, put Mickey in line with Charlotte, and let bad nature take its course?”
He was looking straight down at his hands. “Pretty much.” His voice was calm, his tone matter of fact. “You know, I finally thought that deal in Baldwin was just a fluke. I always liked you, but you never struck me as somebody who could really handle himself, you know? You always seemed, I dunno, just soft like. Looks can be misleading…”
It took a little more than two hours, and I had never heard him talk so much. As I listened, I realized that his look had misled me, too. He wasn’t just coherent. He was organized in his thinking. His speech was the product of a well-developed intellect.
We broke for lunch about 2. I had a zillion questions.
“How you holding up?” D.A. Lund asked me as I came back from the bathroom. “Can you do more now?”
“I have to. I still don’t know how or why they thought killing was necessary unless they knew about the will. If they did, I’d want you to put protection on Phillip and Seth ASAP.”
They brought Means back into the room. Asasso took his seat, “I guess you’re the only ear he wants.”
“Raymond? Mickey. Tell me why and how.”
“It wasn’t planned before that night, at least not with me. Mickey wanted to develop that point. He kept talking about his legacy and horseshit like that.
“Charlotte and Ricardo wanted him to pull out of that and let us go ahead and develop the oil and gas. There’s a fortune waiting there once the prices become right.
“Anyway, he was dead set on pushing through the last of the zoning variances he needed, and that night, after dinner, Ricardo, Charlotte and Crocker sat him down and explained that they wouldn’t go forward on anything but the drilling.
“Mickey went hostile; just lost it. He was cursing and started yelling, all the way out the door.
“Ricardo told Charlotte to go to the compound, and said he’d meet her there later. He sent Crocker back to Lansing. He had Ronnie and me go with him, and we went to Mickey’s. He was there, like we knew he would be.
“We told him he had to come with us, and when he told us to fuck off, Ricardo pulled a gun. We took him to the compound, and Ricardo and Charlotte started working on him.
“I have no stomach for that shit. Ronnie stayed in the room, punching Mickey when he was told to. They wanted him to deed all his land to the company…”
“You mean Next Cool Place?” I interjected.
“Yeah, the company. Anyway, at some point, Mickey told ’em that he wasn’t going to do it and that this was all for nothing. He said he had predicted it and had taken steps. He kept saying ‘I got your number, you fucks!’ and ‘He’s got it too, I’m not the only one.’ And ‘Your number is up,’ and shit like that.”
Means shook his head. “I think he knew then that he wasn’t going to walk away. He started taunting Ricardo. I think he thought the old man would lose his temper and kill him. He wasn’t that lucky. But he proved to me once and for all he really was a tough motherfucker, you know?
“They told me to bring his car. While I was gone, they really went to work on him. They broke every finger and every toe. They broke his knees and they started breaking ribs.
“Shit, man. When I saw him again, they had him in the driveway. I could hardly recognize him. He was alive, but he was really fucked up. Ricardo was in a god dammed frenzy. Charlotte was just pale white she was so mad.
“I asked them, ‘What the fuck you so mad about?’ and they told me he hadn’t said another word, just the same shit, over and over. ‘He’s got your number, fuckers. This is all for nothing. He’s got your number.’”
He finished his bottle of water, tossed it on the floor and reached for mine. “They told me how he’d pass out from the pain, they’d wake him up, and he’d just start ranting that same shit again.”
“How did you do it, Raymond?” I asked softly.
“It’s an old oilfield trick with a twist.” He described how they had put Mickey in the back of the Escalade, and Ronnie had driven Mickey’s sports car up to the River Road, about half a mile up from the culvert.
“We put battens, you know Styrofoam bats? I put them just so between the back of the Porsche and the truck, put the car in neutral and strapped Mickey behind the wheel, with his arms in the steering wheel so it couldn’t turn, you see?. He was out, but he was breathing. Then we started pushing the car with that Caddy. We had it tucked right under the front of that bigger vehicle, and Ronnie was just standing on the gas. He was really concentrating to keep those two going as one down that hill.
“That shit ass could really drive, you know? If he ran it up to a hundred, I wouldn’t be all that surprised, but I doubt it. They were really goin’ though, and then, right where that little bend is in the road, he hit his brakes, not hard, just enough to separate the two.
“Remember, objects in motion…”
I wondered. “How did he keep the Escalade from marking up the road or going out of control around that bend?”
“Like I said, the fucker could really drive.”
He said they then cleaned up the bats, went back to the compound, and Ronnie took the Escalade to Lansing and dumped it into the chop shop world they knew well. Charlotte and Ricardo went inside the house. He cleaned up the garage where they’d had Mickey. “You gotta know, that was a mess. I had no part in that. I just wouldn’t.”
We sat there in silence for a good 10 minutes.
He let out a long sigh, as if he had been holding his breath. “And he was right. You came along just like he said and fucked us up but good. But you have to know, that just puts a bull’s eye on you and yours. Nobody gets away with fucking up our action. You have to know that. Nobody gets away.”
58
There was a horde of reporters, print and electronic, waiting for us outside the jail that afternoon.
Jan and I directed every question to District Attorney Lund and worked our way through our media cousins toward the rental. Finally, at the car, Jan addressed the pack, raising her hands, “Folks, I’m not at liberty to say anything, but all the details will come out in this week’s edition of the Mineral Valley Record.”
As we drove away, I couldn’t help but laugh, “So, it really is all about selling newspapers?”
On her phone looking for Julie to start planning her next edition, she pulled her head away, “My every waking breath is about selling advertising in well-read newspapers.”
I laughed and kept driving; she went back to work with Julie.
On Sunday, we went to church and on Monday, I started making moves to go home.
Big Mike cornered me alone on his porch after breakfast on Tuesday. He put a cup of tea in front of me. We talked about my immediate plans, and I told him I had booked a flight home that afternoon.
“I can’t help but be worried about Jan,” he said. “Rhonda and all the staff are worried. They… we all… wonder how she’ll handle it when you go back to Oregon.”
“I can’t not go back. It’s where my life is. I have work to do. I can’t just go on staying with you.”
“I would think a guy doing what you do could do it most anywhere they choose.”
“That would be right, Mike. And for many reasons, at this time, I choose eastern Oregon.”
/> He sighed and allowed his gaze to settle on the river rolling past us. Thoughtful men who attain a certain age gain patience, I have been told. Here was proof. Pauses in our conversations never seemed to bother him, and I decided to wait him out.
“You know, I’ll bet that she’s fallen deeply in love with you.” He spoke softly and then met my eyes, “Can you walk away from that?”
“I don’t know, Mike. I just don’t know.”
59
I was driving back to Traverse City on Monday afternoon when my cell phone broke a reverie that had Jan playing a starring role…
“Jim?” Jan was excited. “You’ll never believe what happened this morning.”
“A big newspaper company offered you fifty times your cash flow for the Record?”
“As if that would turn my head. No, up in Traverse City. Ray Means escaped.”
I pulled the Bronco off the road.
“How? When? Where?”
“I don’t have any details. I just know that the T.C. radio is reporting that the police were transferring Means to Cadillac this morning for arraignment in Wexford County Court on the murder charge. But on the way, before they hit Fife Lake, there was some kind of holdup; two deputies were killed and Means is loose.”
“Wexford? I thought Mineral Valley was in Kalkaska County?”
“It is, but the county line is at Cross Creek. That culvert where Mickey died was in Wexford.”
I whistled. “I never gave it a thought, but what happened?”
“I’m not sure, it’s all pretty sketchy, and scary… Where are you?”
“Just west of Kalkaska.”
She was silent. I thought about it. “I think I’ll turn around and come back there.”
An audible sigh preceded her words in a small voice, “Thank you.”
I dialed up Lawton’s cell as I made my way back to Mineral Valley.
“I wondered when you’d call,” he said after I identified myself. “Can you believe this shit?”
