by Neil Mcmahon
I stood up, shook his hand, and told him the drinks were on me. He said my own setup, a bottle of Pabst and a shot of Knob Creek bourbon, looked pretty good. Renee sat him down beside her and turned on her quiet charm; as I waited at the bar, I could see her listening attentively and nodding. By the time I got back to the booth, he had lit a cigarette and seemed to be relaxing.
"Buddy used to live in Phosphor before he moved here," Renee said to me. "He was telling me about what happened to Astrid's cabin. Remember, the roof was half-gone?" She turned back to him inquiringly.
"What I heard was, her family wanted to get rid of it, so they found a guy who was going to take it apart and reuse the logs somewhere else." He spoke in a raspy voice, with his gaze constantly shifting. "But he walked off before he got too far. Didn't like the feel of it."
I had no trouble understanding that.
"And they just left it?" Renee said.
"Guess so. I haven't been over that way for a long time." He took a swig of beer, then returned to his posture of hunching over the table with his forearms encircling his drinks. I'd read somewhere that that protectiveness was a habit men picked up in prison.
"Bad memories?" she prompted.
"Worse than memories. I'd get stomped." His quick gaze flicked back and forth between her and me. "I was a rat. I'd worked in the woods around there, and I knew a lot of the guys who were on the mine project. I'd hang around in the bars and bullshit with them like I was their friend. But I was really finding out what was going on up there and when nobody would be around."
"You must have believed in what you were doing," Renee said soothingly.
"Yeah, the noble cause," he said, now with a bitter tone. "I told myself that for a long time, and some of it's true. You watch places you love getting trashed so assholes in New York or Hong Kong can get richer. But I finally figured out the real reason I was into it-I was on a big power trip. I was the dude who knew the secrets, I was pulling the strings. I thought I was so cool, like an undercover agent." He shook his head unhappily. "Now I can't believe I did it. I'm not some fucking trustafarian-I grew up the same way as those people, they were my friends."
His tough eyes had dampened. I reached across the table and pushed his shot glass closer to him.
"Finish that off; I'll get us a couple more," I said.
When I got back from the bar this time, he looked like he was feeling better again, no doubt under Renee's calming influence.
"So how did this outfit work?" I said. "Was there an organized group? You, Astrid, other people?"
His gaze swung to me combatively. "Look, I'm glad to talk to you guys, on account of Tom Dierdorff-he saved my ass. But I'm not naming names."
I realized I'd touched a sore spot. "Sure, I understand. That's not important," I said, although it might be. I'd worry about it later. "Keep going, please."
"It was half-assed organized. We'd have meetings, act like we were commandos. But the only thing that ever really happened was when a few of us fucked up that equipment."
"And the others walked, and you took the hit," Renee said.
Buddy nodded grimly.
I decided to cut to the chase.
"Buddy, we heard Astrid was planning to sabotage the mine," I said. "Actually blow up the construction. But it doesn't seem like the sheriffs ever really investigated that."
He snorted scornfully. "They never really investigated anything. Those guys were like Reno 911!-only not funny. The one thing they were good at was busting balls on dudes like me."
"Did Astrid ever talk about that?"
"She hinted around at it."
"You think there was anything to it?" I said. "For openers, it doesn't sound like your people had that kind of know-how."
"Not even close, man. But there was this rumor-like an urban legend, nobody knew where it started or if it was pure bullshit. Supposedly, she met some dude in Colorado who was righteous for the cause, and he was an ex-Special Forces ranger. He took her with him to raid a gyppo logging camp that was poaching old-growth timber. They didn't kill anybody, but one guy wouldn't back down and they shot him in the leg. Then ran them all off and wrecked their stuff."
Renee's gaze on Buddy was already intent, but now it turned to a stare.
"Was it Astrid who shot him?"
Buddy shrugged. "Same as the other deal-nobody knew for sure and it wasn't the kind of thing you asked her. Anyway, the buzz was that the Green Beret dude was going to come up here and blow up the mine-plant the explosives, all that. But I don't know if he was even real."
"Did you ever hear anything linking that to the murders?" I said. "Like somebody found out what she was planning, and decided to stop her? Maybe even somebody from the mining company?"
"Never anything solid. Of course, with the Keystone Kops in charge, who knows?"
Then his eyes narrowed, and he emphasized his next words with little jabs of his forefinger.
"But I can tell you this, man-there were people who thought she had it coming."
Renee flinched, and Buddy's face turned anxious with apology.
"Hey, sorry. I didn't mean that the way it came out," he said.
She managed a wan smile. "Don't worry, I'm learning all kinds of new things about her. So what finally happened with your group?"
He leaned back in his seat, almost flopping, like he was overcome by the thought.
"It was way weird. The last couple meetings, she was all of a sudden like a different person. That fire was gone-you could tell she didn't even want to be there. Then she told us all to chill for a while, she'd get in touch. But she didn't, and the whole thing just fell apart."
This was another surprising piece of news, with no ready explanation. The possibility that Astrid had simply lost interest seemed highly unlikely.
"What brought that on?" I said.
"Never found out." He groped distractedly in his shirt pocket for another cigarette. "I tried to talk to her, but she turned real nasty-basically told me to fuck off. Other people said she was the same way with them. The feeling I got was, she was really pissed about something."
"Something?" Renee said sharply. "Because you and the others screwed up?"
He shook his head decisively. "If that was it, she'd have told us. She got right in your face about shit like that."
His restless gaze had kept moving all along, his head frequently swiveling toward the door. It went there again and paused, apparently on another young man who had just walked in and was scanning the room.
"I'll be back in a minute," he said, getting up.
I was sure that the newcomer also saw him, but there was no sign of recognition between them. Buddy headed down the rear hallway to the restrooms. The other guy turned around and left the bar.
There was an alley around the side of the building, and a back door at the end of the hallway, that both led to a parking lot. I suspected that in its shadows, some kind of illicit substance and a sum of money were about to change hands. It had crossed my mind earlier that Buddy must have a backup source of income for the winter months, when the lawn and garden business wouldn't cover the bills.
Renee wasn't paying attention to that or anything else around us; her gaze had gone unfocused. I touched a finger to her forehead.
"What's going on in there?" I said.
"I'm wondering where I've been all these years. Can you think of anything else in particular we should ask him?"
"I'd say let's just keep him talking."
That wasn't hard. When Buddy returned, he still had plenty to say. But after another half hour he started to run around the same bush, and he edged more and more into bitterness at his mistreatment by the Dodd Company and the local authorities. Tom Dierdorff's wry warning crossed my mind-getting him to shut up would be the tricky part.
But our patience was rewarded when he let drop another eye-opener.
Astrid's infidelity hadn't been one-sided. The young mining company manager who'd been murdered along with her had a girlfrie
nd at the time-a local woman from Phosphor named Tina Gerhardt, whose family owned the town's small grocery store.
That news put Phosphor on our itinerary back to Helena tomorrow, a detour of about an hour. Tina might be long gone by now, and if she was still around, she might not want to talk to us. But the opposite could just as well be true, and like Buddy, she might even have an ax to grind. The grocery store was a local hub where everybody in the area stopped by frequently and gossiped, and she was connected to the crime. She very well might have gleaned information that had never officially come to light. It was definitely worth checking out.
As Renee and I were getting ready to leave Knuckles, I bought Buddy one more drink and set it in front of him.
"For what it's worth, seems to me you've carried that weight on your back long enough," I said. "Paid your dues, all that."
He looked surprised and pleased. "Thanks, man." But then his face turned almost plaintive, like he found the thought more unhappy than reassuring. "I keep telling myself I should go someplace new, get something else going. But it's hard when you got a record. And, you know"-his fingers opened and closed, like he was trying to take hold of words-"there's something about this town. It's got a drift you get caught up in."
I'd heard other people say that about Missoula, and I'd felt the tug myself.
44
The town of phosphor looked a lot more appealing the next afternoon than it had when we'd driven through at night, a few weeks earlier. Yesterday's gray sky had cleared to blue, filled with billowing, wind-tossed white clouds, and flashes of sunlight gave a warm glow to the funky old brick buildings. Kids with bulging daypacks were wandering home from school, stretching out the interlude between the responsibilities at both ends. There was the sense that things were hard-used but wholesome, and even the western touches-a rack of antlers mounted above the door of the Elkhorn Bar, a big log lintel carved with a cattle brand at the entrance to a mom-and-pop motel-which would have seemed clicheed elsewhere were authentic here.
I slowed my truck to the main street's 25-mph speed limit and headed for the Phosphor Food Emporium, where Renee and I hoped to find Tina Gerhardt.
Last evening and during the drive here, we'd rehashed our talk with Buddy Pertwee from every angle we could think of. The importance of the new information he'd provided seemed to boil down to this:
If the story about the mysterious Colorado commando was true, it lent more weight to the premise that Astrid was serious about sabotaging the Dead Silver Mine, and had gone so far as to acquire construction plans and enlist his explosives expertise.
But then she'd shown an abrupt, astonishing behavior change. Her passion for the cause so dear to her had vaporized; she'd seemed angry, distracted, and had harshly rebuffed her former comrades. Buddy Pertwee was convinced that this wasn't caused by their group, but by an outside factor.
For sure, Astrid had worries. Her marriage was in trouble; she was despised by many of her neighbors; as time went on, her secret, Mata Hari life had probably gone from exhilarating to nerve-racking; and however dedicated and naive she might have been, she had to realize that she was flirting with massive property destruction, possible injury and death to others, and a lengthy prison term for herself.
But all of those factors had been present over a long period of time. Maybe she'd finally bowed under all the pressures, but everything I knew about her told me she was determined to get what she wanted, and the more difficult that was, the more stubborn she became.
What had caused the sudden change? Had she been murdered because of it, or because she had changed too late?
The Phosphor Food Emporium, which you could have picked up and put down a dozen times in a supermarket, was in the center of town. We hadn't tried to call Tina in advance; we agreed that she'd respond better to Renee's physical presence than to a voice over a telephone, and also that Renee would have a better chance of breaking the ice if she went in alone, at least to start with. She wouldn't mention the developments that had led us here; she would use the semi-true pretext that she'd never learned much about that dark chapter of her family history, and her father's recent death had made her feel the need.
But when I pulled the pickup into an angled parking space in front of the store, she sat without moving, hands gripping her purse in her lap.
"Talking to other people hasn't been hard," she said. "But this time-I keep thinking about how hurt she must have been. And then a complete stranger walks in out of the blue, and drags it up again."
"That was kind of what happened to you, with those photos," I said.
"In a way, I guess. But that was a fluke. This is deliberate, and so personal."
"You don't have to do it, Renee. If you're uncomfortable, let's just leave."
"No, I want to. I'm trying to convince myself I have a good enough reason."
"How's this? It was no fluke that two people got killed."
She sighed. "Pretty convincing, I'm afraid." She popped open a compact mirror and nervously touched up her lipstick, then gave me a mock salute and stepped out of the truck. I stayed where I was, with the sour taste of hypocrisy in my mouth. That kind of shit was easy for me to say. I didn't have to walk in the door and chance facing the outrage or tears of a deeply wounded woman.
I didn't feel right just sitting there in the truck, so I got out. But Renee was back from the store immediately, with the deflated look that I had come to recognize when she absorbed a punishing disappointment. I met her on the sidewalk.
"Bad?" I said.
"Bad enough. There was an older woman at the cash register. I asked to speak to Tina. Turns out Tina was her daughter, and she was killed in a car wreck six years ago."
I winced. "Was she upset?"
"Just cold. She asked what I wanted. I told her. She said, 'Well, I guess Tina can't help you, now can she?'" Renee shrugged helplessly. "I apologized and left."
"My fault," I said. "I should have done some homework before sending you barging in. Something like that never crossed my mind." I opened the pickup's passenger door for her. "Time for you to kick back. I'm taking you to a rustic retreat in the fabled Big Belt Mountains. Log fire, bottle of fine wine, charbroiled filet mignon."
Her face softened toward a smile. "Sounds expensive."
"We can work out a payment plan."
As Renee was getting into my truck, another woman came out of the grocery store, hurrying toward us. She looked like she'd been working; she was wearing an apron and her hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She possessed a kind of faded prettiness that I'd often seen in these small hardscrabble towns, as if the people took on the same worn look as their surroundings. But she was probably about Renee's age-certainly not old enough to be Tina Gerhardt's mother. There was no hostility in her face; she seemed uncertain, anxious.
"I heard you talking to my mom," she said to Renee. "I could maybe tell you some things, if you want."
45
Her name was Janie Gerhardt; she was Tina's younger sister. She led us back into the store, past the unwelcoming gaze of her rawboned, bespectacled mother.
"Where you going? I need help," Mrs. Gerhardt called after her, although there weren't any customers.
"I'll send the girls out," Janie said. Both spoke in sharp tones that suggested a long-standing battle for control.
Then Janie exhaled dramatically, stopped walking, and about-faced.
"Come on, Mom, let's talk to these people. How can it hurt?"
Mrs. Gerhardt didn't answer. We followed Janie on through the Phosphor Food Emporium's short aisles of modestly stocked shelves. I was reminded of the pretty good grocery market in Prairie Home Companion-if they didn't have what you wanted, you could get along without it.
The building itself was bigger than it looked from the street, with a newer addition built onto the rear. As we came to learn, the extra space had been intended to expand the store, during the days when the Dead Silver Mine seemed a sure bet to jack up the local economy and populatio
n. After that failed, Janie's father had been forced to take a truck-driving job to make the payments, and was on the road much of the time. She and her mother ran the store. The family had closed off the addition and converted it into an apartment-cinder-block walls and concrete floor-where Janie now lived with her two teenaged daughters. Her husband was long gone. This was a female dynasty.
The daughters were home when we walked in-one at a computer desk, the other lying on the couch surrounded by a spread of books and papers, both with an eye on the TV screen, which appeared to be featuring young celebrities misbehaving. Competing music pulsed from an open bedroom door. They were about thirteen and fifteen, with a resemblance to their mother and to each other; both were wearing skin-tight lowcut jeans that exposed their navels, skin-tight lowcut tops that made the most of their striving young cleavage, and enough makeup to put on a stage production of Grease.
"Turn off the noise and go help Gramma," Janie said. The girls responded with groans and eye-rolling, but no complaints. While the power struggle between them and their own mother had doubtless started, kids who grew up like this understood from an early age that the family was in the sea of life together, to swim or sink.
Their glances at me were only mildly curious-I was a kind of guy they were used to-but they lingered on Renee, sizing her up carefully. She was dressed much the same as them except with less flesh on display, but I supposed there were signals telling of her worldliness-another facet of that mysterious chain of female communication that endlessly passed me by.
When they were gone, Janie stepped to a shelf with several glassed photographs, and touched one.
"This is Tina," she said.
Tina Gerhardt had been an attractive young woman, with a chiseled face framed by soft, thick, light brown hair. There was a touch of Barbie doll about her, although some of that came from the generic studio portrait,
Janie wiped her hands nervously on her apron. "Nobody's brought this up for a long time," she said. "What do you want to know?" She seemed slightly accusing now, like she was wishing she'd listened to her mother after all.
