by Dave Daren
Bam whistled and the various cats and dogs trotted towards the front door. I joined their group as we all headed inside, herded along by Bam. As a unit, we all headed for the kitchen, where Bam grabbed a set of keys from a hook by the door, patted each animal on the head, then signalled me to follow him once again.
This time, we picked our way through the darkness to the other side of the house, along the back, and stepped through a flimsy door into a three car garage. There was a dark blue Mercedes C-Class in one spot, but Bam walked past it and opened the driver’s side door for a silver Toyota truck.
As I walked to the passenger side, the garage door behind the truck started to rise up quietly. I glanced outside and saw that we were indeed on the back of the house, with a lovely view of the flowering trees that dotted the landscape. There wasn’t a driveway, though, just some ruts in the grass that circled around towards the front of the house. Bam grinned as I climbed inside the truck and waved the cigar around again.
“I fuckin’ love automatic garage openers,” he declared. “It’s the whole reason I added the garage.”
“They do make life easier,” I agreed.
Bam nodded, then grabbed a lighter from one of the many drink holders. A few moments later, he had the cigar relit, and after yet another sip of his green drink, he eased the truck out of the garage and headed back to Digger’s Creek Road.
The shocks in the Toyota were a vast improvement over the Ford, and the seatbelt kept me from bouncing around too much. Still, Bam’s speed towards Jenkins Road added another round of bruises to my skin and I decided that a long soak in the tub would be required.
“So tell me about Belle,” I said as Bam slammed on the brakes halfway down the hill to avoid a deer.
The startled animal leapt gracefully up the craggy hillside and vanished into the trees before the truck had come to a complete stop. Bam checked the hillsides for any stragglers, then started down the road once again.
“She left here to go to college, and then law school,” Bam replied. “We all figured she would head to one of the cities to practice since she was big into causes even back then. And she did work up ta’ Columbus for about ten years at one of those fancy law firms. When her ma died she came back to deal with the estate and decided to stay. She told Hup to his face at her mother’s funeral there was too much around here that needed to be fixed and she was gonna fix it.”
“She sounds tough,” I remarked as we bounced to a stop at the bottom of the road.
Bam grunted, but rather than turning back towards town, he pointed the Toyota towards Marion. The truck tires squealed for a moment as they struggled to get traction, and then we were bouncing along a road barely big enough for the truck on our way towards Marion.
“She is,” Bam finally said. “And she’s certainly put a crimp in some of Hup’s plans over the years.”
“So why didn’t you hire her?” I asked.
Bam shrugged, somehow, despite trying to steer the car and smoke a cigar at the same time. I noticed that some of the green stuff had bounced from the cup but Bam didn’t notice or didn’t care.
“Thought about it,” Bam said. “But I figured the company would have their own ace attorneys and I figure Charlie could always use the work. If I’m being completely honest, I just want to sell the land and be done with it. I wasn’t looking to be part of one of Belle’s causes.”
“What about Hup and Shifty?” I pressed. “Did you really think you could finish the deal without cutting them in?”
Bam pondered that as we sped past a collection of small shacks and a convenience store with one fuel pump. One of the last buildings in the group was a church, I realized, and the sign out front identified it as the Marion Righteous Baptist Congregation. Bam honked at two elderly women who were standing out front, and I saw them wave as we barreled through the tiny town of Marion.
“I had hoped to get things done without their usual interference,” Bam mused.
“I guess I’m trying to understand your relationship with them,” I said. “Are you part of their group or not?”
“I was,” Bam replied. “But we had a fallin’ out a while back. We’ve kept clear of each other’s business since then, but I guess they decided this deal was too good to pass up.”
“Would you be opposed to hiring Belle?” I asked.
Bam took several long puffs on his cigar as he finally started to slow down, and then turned up an old paved road that still had ruts from the constant wear of heavy trucks. Unlike the other roads that I’d traveled so far, this one was devoid of trees along the hillsides, though I noticed a few saplings had taken root. The road circled around a hill, and at first, I thought the gently sloping road would have been just fine for my old Ford. But then the road hit a near vertical stretch, and I was glad that I hadn’t attempted it in my truck.
“I’m fine with having Belle on our side,” Bam finally said. “Now that Hup and Shifty have decided to get involved. If anyone can get those two to back off, it’ll be her. Besides, you know if Hup starts using the word tax, it ain’t gonna be a one time thing.”
I’d considered that possibility as well. Tax suggested a regular payment, on a schedule to be set by Hup. I had no doubt that Anthony would happily cut a large check for the Property Appraiser’s office to close this deal, but at some point, the Febbos would have to wonder if it was still worth it to keep paying the tax. Heck, Salvatore could wake up and decide it was easier to deal with the corruption back in Italy than to keep paying off the officials in Folsom. And what would happen if I added Belle Lucent to the mix? Would she really be able to help us finish the sale, or would the whole thing explode into a quagmire we couldn’t escape?
As I debated the usefulness of having another attorney on the team and how much ‘tax’ the Febbos would be willing to pay, the Toyota reached the top of the hill and then bounced down onto the suddenly flat surface. A chain link fence stretched away on either side and a few feet in front of us stood a padlocked gate with a warning sign that mentioned armed guards, trained dogs, and the right to shoot trespassers.
“How on earth did they get big rigs up here?” I asked as Bam eased us closer to the gate before putting the truck into park.
“This is just the closest entrance to the town,” Bam chuckled. “There’s another road that runs alongside the old railroad tracks, down by the river. That’s the main entrance. But that takes a while to get to.”
“It does?” I asked as I peered at the flat pitch of treeless land in front of us.
“Adds almost twenty minutes to the drive,” Bam replied as he grabbed a key from yet another cup holder.
He stepped from the truck and started to walk towards the gate as a figure approached from behind a pile of boulders. There was a dog with the figure, and I glanced at the sign again. I realized Bam hadn’t called anyone before we’d ventured out here, and I hoped the guard would recognize him before any shots were fired.
But Bam had seen the approaching guard as well, and he waved his cigar towards the man even as he pushed the gate open. Bam stood there, cigar firmly clamped in his teeth, and waited for the guard to arrive. The dog did first, and I saw that it was a German Shepherd, though its playful bark and lolling tongue as it ran towards Bam didn’t do much for its image as a fierce defender.
The guard eventually arrived, dressed in a loose-fitting uniform that leaned more towards the UPS delivery look and less towards the tough guy on duty look. The guard was probably in his forties with a trim mustache over thin lips, a few surviving strands of straw blonde hair on top of his head, and a pair of plastic wrap around sunglasses like the ones opthamologists hand out after laser surgery. But the thing that really held my attention was the sidearm he carried in a hip holster. It looked like an old Smith & Wesson 29 like Dirty Harry carried and I wondered if we’d find bullet holes on some of the old equipment that Carl had decided to turn into targets.
“Carl!” Bam declared as the two men shook hands. “Everything quiet
?”
Carl nodded and said something, but not loud enough for me to hear. Bam laughed and pounded Carl on the back, which nearly sent Carl face down into the dirt. Bam didn’t seem to notice and Carl was apparently used to the treatment, because both men continued to talk as if nothing had happened. The dog, meanwhile, stood between the two men and waited patiently for whatever pats came his way.
After a few more back slaps and some time spent hugging the dog, Bam returned to the truck and his spot behind the wheel. He handed me the cigar, then slurped down more of the smoothie before he held out his hand for the cigar.
“I’m gonna drive down and park near the guard shack,” Bam said. “I’ll show you the main entrance. Now, if you promise not to venture too far inside, I’ll let you take a look on your own while I talk to Carl.”
“You’re not going to show me around?” I asked in surprise.
“It’s just a mine, son,” Bam replied. “And you were all set to come out here on your own.”
“I don’t mind,” I said quickly. “I just thought, since you were here…”
“You don’t need me,” Bam said as he started forward. “All the equipment’s right there by the entrance.”
We drove around the pile of rocks to an old trailer on blocks. There was another warning sign like the one on the gate stapled to the door and a potted fern hanging in one of the windows. An old jeep was parked nearby, even older than the trailer, and everything had a thin coat of black dust. It would have been easy to write the whole thing off as a low rent operation, but I spotted the small satellite dish and the cables running into the trailer and figured Bam must have paid for more than just a security guard when he stopped digging, which would explain how Carl had known about our arrival.
“So, Carl just comes out here every day?” I asked as I looked around. There wasn’t a sign of another human being anywhere.
“He’s the last mine employee,” Bam sighed. “He was the guard when I had to shut the mine for good, and he offered to stay on until I could figure out what to do with the property. The rest of the security guys all moved away and took jobs elsewhere.”
“Does he live out here?” I asked as we stepped from the truck.
I glanced back and saw that Carl had closed the gate behind us and he and the dog were now slowly moving our way.
“He does,” Bam replied. “But he understands that will change once the property is sold.”
Bam walked over to the trailer then and stepped inside as if he were still the boss and the trailer was still the office. I waited outside for Carl, since it seemed rude to just walk in uninvited into what was the other man’s home.
“Must get lonely out here,” I commented when Carl finally arrived.
“I don’t mind it,” Carl replied. “Gives me time to read when I’m not patrolling the perimeter.”
Before I could say anything else, Bam appeared in the door with a flashlight. He tossed it to me and grinned when I managed to catch it one-handed.
“Now, remember, no wandering,” he said. “If you can’t see daylight any more, you’ve gone too far.”
“Is that what happened to the last person who tried to buy this place?” I asked. I managed to sound like I was joking, but I had to wonder if that was the reason Bam had broken with his cohorts.
“Ol’ Shifty told ya about the missing man, did he?” Bam snickered. “Well, I did tell ya that the mine is a great place to hide a body!”
Carl shook his head and turned his plastic frames towards me.
“That man was perfectly fine when he left here,” Carl sniffed. “What was his name? Tweedle?”
“Of course he was,” Bam chuckled. “And his name was Tweedy. Roger Tweedy. But it don’t serve Shifty’s purpose to tell people that he left here alive. Don’t know what happened to him on the interstate. Ain’t none of my business to know.”
No doubt that was supposed to be reassuring, but there was some real anger behind Bam’s aw-shucks reply and something unsettling about the way Carl fingered the gun. I glanced back and forth between the two and a few strums of banjo music played inside my head again.
“But weren’t you concerned that you wouldn’t be able to complete the deal?” I asked. “I understand the wife said she had no interest in the property.”
“There’s always other buyers,” Bam insisted. “Just gotta find the right one.”
“Someone who’s willing to do the deal without including Hup,” I guessed.
“Man’s a menace,” Bam said with a scowl. “Thinks he runs everything. Wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Tweedy bought some nice property in the next county over instead.”
“The Sheriff said he never made it home,” I replied.
Bam and Carl exchanged another long, knowing stare and Carl looked as if he were about to pull the gun from its holster. Bam gave a quick shake of his head, then looked towards the gate.
“That could be,” Bam replied. “But I don’t know anything about it. Now, why don’t you go on over to the mine while Carl and I look over his records?”
“Fine,” I said. “It won’t take long.”
“Just follow that path there,” Bam said cheerfully as he pointed towards a scuffed trail that led off towards a group of hills. “Carl and I will be inside.”
I waited until Carl and Bam had retreated inside the trailer before I turned and followed the path through a field of rocks, boulders, and lumps of coal. The path cut between a rise, and I found I was standing in front of the entrance as I came around the curve. It wasn’t much to look at, just a patch of blackness surrounded by rotting wood beams. It was hard not to think about all those scenes in westerns where the cave collapses on some poor, unsuspecting soul, but I had the flashlight, and two men who knew where I was, though that seemed like poor protection against a thousand tons of rock.
I squeezed past the old coal cart that had been left to block the entrance to the mine and switched on the flashlight. As Bam had promised, there was a ton of equipment just inside the entrance, though I could see larger pieces, including a giant drill bit on wheels that had to be the boring machine, further down the tunnel. With Bam’s warning in my mind about not losing the sunlight, I started to walk slowly along the track and took photos of everything I found. The pictures weren’t great, but at least we’d have some idea of what should be here when we were ready to set up operations.
After that was done, I walked along the track again and studied the objects as best as I could with just the flashlight. It all looked old but someone had made an effort to care for it. Even now, I didn’t see the signs of rust that I was expecting to find, and I saw a few oil stains along the wheels of the carts.
I also found graffiti scratched into some of the cave walls, as well as some more recent spray painted additions. It was mostly hearts with initials as well as a few variations on who ruled. There definitely wasn’t a hidden Banksy among the local artists, though I had to admit that painting by the light of flashlight in a dark tunnel probably didn’t lend itself to great artistic works. I shrugged it off, at first, then turned to study it one more time.
Carl lived on-site and had known we had arrived at the gate, so how were a group of teen-agers able to slip in here and paint the walls? Sure, they could have waited until Carl decided to venture into town, or maybe Carl wasn’t as lonely out here as he declared. A few dollars to look the other way, and Carl could stay inside his trailer and read his book while the teens held a party in the old mine.
It wasn’t a big deal, but it was yet another issue that would have to be dealt with before we started loading the place with barrels of vinegar. With a sigh, I turned the flashlight over the ground, curious to see if I would find the other usual remnants of a teenage visit. I quickly spotted the remains of a couple of marijuana cigarettes in the dirt and an empty Schnapps bottle beneath a cart. As I moved back towards the sunlight, I also noted a hamburger wrapped half buried in the dirt and the top for a spray can that someone had probably kicked unde
r a wheelbarrow with a flat tire.
I was nearly at the exit when something metallic flashed in the beam of light. I stopped and played the flashlight more slowly over the area until I saw it again, caught in a crack along the wall near the floor. Whatever it was, it wasn’t large, and my first thought was that Carl must have dropped a bullet. Or maybe one of the kids had lost a piece of jewelry.
I knelt down and pulled the round item from its hiding place and nearly dropped the flashlight in surprise. I’d seen one of these before, when one of Anthony’s IT guys had swept the Febbo house for listening devices. He’d shown me some of the latest versions in the Fed’s arsenal and the easiest ways to find them before he’d turned his attention to scanning each and every room.
So what was a high-end bug doing in an inactive coal mine in the heart of West Virginia? And what the hell were they listening for?
Chapter 7
I stared at the device for several moments as I tried to decide what to do. The problem was that I had no idea who had planted it or why, but I seriously doubted that the local teens were suddenly the target of a government investigation. That left too many other options, though, from Bam to the Sheriff, and of course, Hup and the rest of his cronies.
The obvious answer was that it was Bam someone was recording, though I couldn’t imagine why. I slowly replaced the microphone and studied the area, this time looking for other signs of use besides visits from underage drinkers, but whatever criminal activity might be going on in the cave wasn’t obvious, at least not to me.
I debated whether to mention it to Bam during the walk back to the trailer and I still hadn’t made up my mind when I arrived. I knocked on the trailer door and heard the shepherd bark inside. There was the sound of people moving around, and then Bam threw the door open and gave me a pat on the shoulder.
“Ya didn’t get lost,” he pointed out.
“Nope,” I agreed. “And I think I’ve got a pretty good idea of how much equipment there is.”
