by Joe Corso
“I see.” he said, clearly disappointed. He had her aunt’s address so he decided he’d go there to see her. What could she do? Throw him out? Not likely. He rented a car with a GPS in it and punched in the address. Callicoon is located on the banks of the historic Delaware River in Sullivan County, New York. Jenkins programmed the GPS in his rented Lincoln. It was a two-hour trip to Virginia’s aunt’s house and the car told him how to get there.
Jenkins arrived at the correct address. It was easy these days driving with a GPS in your car. It certainly earned its keep with salesmen because instead of them driving in circles trying to find a customer’s address, the GPS took you right to their front door and announced in understandable English, “You have arrived at your destination.”
A frightened voice came over Harlbager’s earpiece just as he was about to take a bite out of the donut he had in his hand. “What are you doing here? What do you want? How dare you come here?” It was Virginia’s frightened voice he was listening to. He looked at the house, and noticed for the first time a strange car parked in front of it. How the hell did I allow that to happen? He thought. Harlbager was already out of his car, even as the thought flicked through his mind. The donut fell to the street, forgotten, as he raced toward the house. Harlbager bounded up the front steps, two at a time, and stopped to listen for a moment before turning the door handle. It was unlocked and it opened when he turned the knob. Jenkins didn’t hear the door opening. He was busy trying to explain to the two frightened women that he meant no harm. He just wanted to talk to Virginia to explain his feelings to her. That was all. He was using his entire charming con man persona to calm the ladies down, but to no avail.
“Let’s go down to the corner and get a cup of coffee and talk about this. Come on, what do you say?”
Instead of Virginia answering him, Harlbager answered the question for her. “She says she doesn’t want to go with you. She also says that she doesn’t like you. She wants you to leave her alone. That’s what she says.”
Jenkins turned to see where the voice was coming from. He was surprised to see a very large man standing behind him with his jacket open, revealing a very large gun attached to a holster on his belt.
“Who are you?” Jenkins asked Harlbager.
“I’m her friend. That’s who I am. Now let’s go.”
“Where are we going?”
“Me? I’m going nowhere. I’m staying right here. You? You’re getting in your car and driving away from here right now. Consider yourself lucky I’m letting you off easy. But if I ever see or hear of you bothering this lady again, I won’t be so pleasant. I promise you that if I ever see you again, you’ll rue the day you ever met her. And that’s a promise you can take to the bank. Get out of here. NOW!” Harlbager watched Jenkins get in his car and drive away. Once he was out of sight, Harlbager went back into the house. “You did the right thing, ma’am. I don’t think he wanted to hurt you. It looked to me as if he was smitten by you. Seems like he’s got it real bad for you. Well that’s too bad for him. I wonder if he had any hand in framing your fiancé?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
After listening with interest to a satisfying short dialogue, Sweeney hung up the phone. “The call was from Dan Harlbager, the agent I assigned to watch your daughter. My hunch was right. Jenkins followed Virginia to New York. When he discovered that she took an earlier New York Delta flight, he made a bee line straight to your sister’s home. What alerted my agent was that he heard Virginia’s voice asking Jenkins what he was doing there.”
Hayes interrupted Sweeney. “I don’t understand. How he could hear her? How did he do that?”
“Dan gave her a transmitter to carry on her at all times and showed her how to use it. He told her that she was never to go anywhere without it. If anyone came to the door, and he meant anyone, she was to press a small button that activated the transmitter, which allowed him to hear what she was saying. The button allowed her to carry on private conversations without him listening to what she was saying. But if anyone rang her bell or knocked on her door, she was to press the button before encountering that person. And she did just that. Dan heard her frightened voice quavering as she talked to Jenkins and he immediately rushed over and confronted him.”
“And?” Hayes asked excitedly.
“And Dan ordered him to leave and to never come back . . . or else. Jenkins had no choice in the matter, but to do as he was told. He left the house sulking, then he got in his car and he took off.”
“Do you think he’ll come back?”
“No. I don’t think he will, but you never know about these kooks. That’s why I told Dan to remain on the job a little longer. Just in case Jenkins comes back, he’ll be there waiting for him.”
Sweeney remained with Hayes just to make sure nothing further happened to him. Hayes worked his business just as he did when he first started. He was so deep in debt he didn’t know if he could reverse the downward slide. He spent weeks streamlining each office. Downsizing when he needed to, and hiring when the need arose. But it was like steering the Titanic. He just didn’t know where the iceberg was. McCormack had done an almost perfect job in sabotaging his business, but not perfect enough. He saw a glimmer of daylight at the end of the very long tunnel, and if he could get his sales a little higher, he could hold out until the economy picked up again. Hayes knew he couldn’t keep Sweeney on the payroll indefinitely, but he could keep him on for a little while longer without it breaking him financially.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The slot opened and a dish looking something like beef stew was passed through. The old man took the tray to his bunk and took a spoonful, then spit it out. No way, this was beef stew. It might have been rabbit or it could have been rat. Guards at these off-the-radar and out-of-the-way prisons were known to occasionally feed rat to a prisoner as punishment. He knew he had to eat something, so he took another spoonful. As he was about to put it his mouth, he felt a sharp pain in his chest and the spoon dropped to the floor as his hand clutched his chest. After a few minutes, the pain abated. Damn, he thought as he picked up his spoon. I’ve got to get some good food in me. This prison grub is giving me stomach problems. Probably my old ulcer acting up again, he thought. I’ve got to have better food or my stomach will never get better.
His symptoms today were very similar to the symptoms he had a few years back when he checked himself into a local hospital, thinking he was having a heart attack. When he was stabilized and the tests were completed, the doctors found he had a large ulcer, which they attributed to nerves and a poor diet consisting mostly of overindulgence in spicy Mexican foods, which he always topped off with plenty of red chili pepper. His problem this time, though, was far more serious than he realized. He knew he had a heart problem . . . something to do with a faulty valve. Doctors told him he didn’t have to have it fixed right now, but he had to have it attended to in the near future. Well, ten years had passed since the doctors told him to have the valve in his heart fixed.
When the guard left for the night, the old man bent down to pull the rock out of the wall. As he tugged on it, a god-awful pain shot up into his chest and ran down his arm. He got on his knees and pressed his chest against the metal rim of his cot trying to relieve some of the pressure of the terrible pain he was feeling in his chest. Then, as he tried to stand, so he could get to his cot to lie down until the pain went away, he passed out. He couldn’t remember anything after that, except when he felt a pillow being placed under his head. He opened his eyes and he was staring at the concerned face of John W.
John W said, “I waited for you, but when you didn’t show up, I became worried, so I came to see if anything was wrong and I found you lying on the floor unconscious. What happened to you, old man?”
Dutch Henry gasped as he spoke. “I wanted that to get out of this prison so bad, that my body couldn’t keep the promise my mind made. I have these terrible pains in my chest that just won’t let up.” The old man gasped for breath, as he ma
de an effort to tell John W something important before his time ran out. “Come closer. I . . .don’t have . . . much time,” he said through his pain. “I thought it was my old ulcer acting up. But I was wrong. It’s my heart.” He lifted his arm and with a trembling hand, he pointed to his shoe. “Get my shoe - the left shoe – and. . .bring . . .it here.”
John leaned over, grabbed his left shoe, and tried to hand it to him, thinking Dutch Henry wanted to put it on. He wondered why he only wanted to put on his left shoe. “Do you want me to put it on for you, Dutch Henry?”
“No - No not … to put on. Turn the heel – there’s a map - in - the heel. It’s the lost Four Peaks - Gold Mine - take it - I want - you - to have - it.” The old man’s eyes grew wide as he grimaced from pain. He grabbed John’s shirt and pulled him toward him with a strength he didn’t think the old man was capable of. He pulled John close, he whispered in his ear, and with his dying breath, he told him, “In the heel of my right shoe - a - twenty dollar gold piece. Use it - get to the - mine. You must - get out of here. You have to - do it - by yourself - now. The lever to the door - is in plain sight on the right wall - facing the desert. Pull it - down and the door - will open. Don’t -(gasp) - worry - it will open. Go - now - and remember your promise - get those bastards.” The old man’s body shuddered - he gasped in a last struggle for breath. “You best be goi. . .,” He never finished the sentence. Dutch Henry’s head slumped against his chest and John heard the death rattle as his last breath left him. In the short time John W knew the old man, he came to love him as much as the father he lost. His body was warm, as if he were asleep, when John picked him up and placed him gently on his cot. John said a silent prayer over him, then he turned and crawled back through the tunnel to his cell.
Still on his hands and knees, he crawled across his cell and into the tunnel to the hidden room. John checked every part of the room to see if he missed anything. Without the old man, this room was kind of spooky, but it was nothing more than a cave or a mine and nothing in it would ever spook Dutch Henry. Not even the grinning skeleton sitting in the chair staring at them as they prepared to leave. John W kept putting off a last-minute chore he had to do, and it wasn’t something he looked forward to doing. He had to pump up his nerve a notch, in order to do it. He knew he had to see what the skeleton had in his pockets. He started with his shirt pocket. He felt something and took it out. It was a picture of a young woman. Probably his girlfriend, or his wife or maybe his sister, although a sister didn’t seem likely. Probably his girlfriend, but who could tell what this woman was to him? John put the picture in his shirt pocket, fearing he might forget it then he bent down behind the dead man. He looked through the back of the chair at his pants and noticed a bulge in the back pocket. He reached through the chairs slats and tried to open the button, but the skeleton suddenly and unexpectedly slid off the chair and fell in a clatter to the floor. This spooked John and he sprang back falling on his haunches. His heart was beating like a drum. Man, was he spooked, staring at the skeleton with his bones lying in pieces on the floor and his skull resting eschew on top staring back at him. John couldn’t wait to get away from this place. That solved that problem, he thought. At least now, he could open his back pocket. John removed his wallet and opened it. He must have just been paid or maybe he had nowhere to spend his money because his wallet contained $285.00 in cash, which in those days, was about four months pay. If he could just get this balloon in the air, this money would help him better than the gold piece. John kept the guard’s wallet with his badge secured to it. The badge may help if he was stopped by law enforcement, and the information in his wallet would allow John to inform the guard’s kin what happened to him. John was glad that he decided to do a search of his clothes and he was about to walk away when he realized he didn’t check the front pockets. He discovered a small Buck-folding penknife in his front trouser pocket, which he placed in his pocket. The knife was important and he knew he would use this old knife before the night was over.
It was time to leave. It was dark and there were no guards in sight. He guessed they were upstairs playing cards like they usually did this time of the night. He lit up the forge and waited until it was burning freely. Then as he got to work, laying out the hose that fed air into the balloon, he noticed another switch in the corner that had been hidden by the hose on the wall, diagonal to the wall that contained the handle. He stopped what he was doing, walked over to it, and stared at it for a minute, trying to figure out what it was for. The handle was vertical, just like the handle that opened the hidden back door. Without thinking, he pulled the handle down. Suddenly he heard a rumble and he noticed the hose spring to life. He quickly pushed the small handle to its original position and walked over to the hose. “I’ll be damned,” he said to himself. Smith was a genius. They had electricity back then and Smith figured a way to hook the fan up to electricity. Boy, wouldn’t the old man be amazed if he saw this. No time for that now, he had to get himself out of here. He pulled the cage toward the door and then he pulled the large lever down, praying that after all these years, it would still open the back door. But would it? he wondered. For a moment, nothing happened. He waited a few seconds - still nothing happened. He thought maybe there was electricity to the door that had accidently been disconnected. Maybe a wire came free. Maybe it didn’t work by electricity. Maybe pressure would open it. He didn’t know what to think. He had to do something. In desperation, he leaned against the wall near the lever and pushed with all of his might. To his surprise, after briefly grating a bit, the wall moved a little. Then it appeared to free itself and move freely. The section that opened was about the size of an average door and it was designed to slide into the upper portion of the wall. John took a moment to study the locking mechanism. He smiled inwardly, realizing that he accidentally stumbled upon the correct process of opening the door. By putting pressure on the wall, it moved the locking mechanism on the bottom about an inch. That short movement released the tension on the door’s locking mechanism freeing it - thus allowing it to slide up along the channel. Once you left, this door had no reason to automatically slide back down; it wasn’t designed that way. It would have to be reset by hand. Outside the door, there was what appeared to be a shaft with a series of metal rungs bolted to the wall on the right that led to the surface. Old Willard Smith had lined the top of the shaft with cut stone that blended in with the rest of the structure. The stone was secured on a three foot by six foot sheet of wood with hinges. The wood sheet covered the hidden door from the outside and it had a lock on the underside where someone who was escaping could simply slide the latch open and push up on the wood covering. If everything worked the way Smith planned, it would open on its hinges. John pulled the latch, but it was stuck shut and it wouldn’t budge. He climbed back down the opening and looked for something heavy with which to tap the latch. Finding nothing, he decided to use the butt of the guard’s gun that he carried on his belt - this should work, he thought. He climbed back up, pulled out his gun, and tapped the latch gently with the butt. Nothing. Then he tapped a little harder a second time, and was rewarded as the latch slid open. John put his shoulder against the wood and pushed hard. The wooden enclosure resisted for a moment, but then as if it were spring loaded, it opened. John wasted no time. He quickly hooked a rope to the cage and pulled it out of the room, up the shaft, and onto the desert sands. He did the same with the canvas. Once they were on solid ground, he placed the canvas in a neat row alongside the cage so that when air was blown into the balloon it would inflate over the cage in an orderly manner. This was a three-man job and he didn’t know how he would manage it alone, but he had to try.
He thought of Smith, and he knew he must have known something like this could happen, and he must have planned a way around it. But for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what Smith’s plan might have been. He held his breath as he pulled down on the small lever activating the fan. He expected a loud noise, which he feared would have alerted the gu
ards. But the fan, being rather small, was quiet. Since from where he stood he heard nothing, he reasoned that the guards, being higher up in an enclosed room, wouldn’t hear anything either. John placed the can of propane in the cage, making sure he placed the flint striker to ignite the flame beside the propane.
As he was about to climb back down into the hidden room, John spotted two rungs similar to the ones in the shaft leading to the surface. These two rungs were attached to the bottom part of the outside wall in the rear of the prison. Anyone looking at them would have no idea of what purpose they might have served. Since they apparently had no function and served no purpose other than being decorative, they wouldn’t have been given a second thought. Standing alongside the cage, he thought about how he almost missed the two rungs that were secured to the base of the outer wall approximately eight feet apart. This answered the question of what Willard Smith’s solution would be if only one man escaped. Smith placed the two rungs there in case one man had to secure the balloon. Smith had truly thought of everything, even the eventuality of someone escaping alone. John quickly tied down the canvas balloon to the two newly discovered rungs so when the balloon inflated, it wouldn’t become airborne without him. Smith’s two rungs allowed him to tie down the balloon by himself and made the task of escaping alone much easier. It was as if the fates were guiding him - showing him what had to be done and the proper sequence of how to do it.
When the balloon was about two-thirds full, he shut off the fan and placed the hose over the forge. He pushed and pulled the bellows, which quickly filled the rest of the balloon with hot air. John looked around to make sure he didn’t forget anything. He took special notice of the fuses tied to the dynamite. They appeared to be set properly, so he bent down and lit the main fuse. Once it was lit, he paused a moment to make sure the flame didn’t go out. Satisfied that it was burning properly, he rushed to the hidden door, climbed the rungs, and then ran quickly to the balloon. He lit the burner to push more hot air into the balloon to increase its lift. He jumped into the cage, but before cutting the lines tied to the two rungs, he looked at the fuse one last time. He let out a breath and relaxed as he watched the fuse burning steadily toward the dynamite. He cut the ropes, freeing the balloon. Immediately the balloon lurched upward, causing the makeshift cage to jolt and sway wildly for a moment, and then it stabilized. When the balloon drifted higher above the prison, the desert winds caused the cage to sway violently at first but then it settled down as it reached the colder higher levels. John put his sweater and pants on and he felt better knowing he wouldn’t freeze at the higher altitudes. He kept his eyes on the prison as it shrunk away in the distance as the balloon gained altitude and soared higher into the night sky.
