by Wood, Ted
"The main ore body is there," Graham explained to his investigator painfully, with his broken jaw. "There reckons to be ten million ounces of gold. And if Jim had reported his findings to his company, they would have said thank you very much and given him his month's pay and forgotten about him."
They asked Graham about the unproductive hole that had been drilled there, putting the Darvon people off the place. He explained that one very simply. Prudhomme's boss had a share of the action. He had substituted useless rock cores for the ore they had found. Kinsella had made the switch when he flew the samples out. It was all so clean then. And then Prudhomme was too clever.
He knew that the startup costs for a gold mine could range anywhere from ten to a hundred million dollars. The size of this ore body made it likely that the figure would be high, not low, because they would go after it full tilt. He was afraid that if anyone started looking for that kind of money in the legitimate mining community there would be an enquiry and the plot would be uncovered. So he went to Laval, knowing that Laval had Mob connections.
The Mob had done what it always does. It had moved in, politely, and then taken over. They had sent Huckmeyer north to cut down the number of their shareholders. Prudhomme had to go. So did Misquadis, whom Huckmeyer killed. So did Sallinon, killed by Graham under Huckmeyer's instructions, for leading the police into the case. Next on the list were Tettlinger, as expendable muscle, and Graham himself. Only he got lucky—I put him in the hospital and later in jail, before the Mob had chance to finish him.
But in the beginning, Prudhomme had been smart. He had registered the claims he wanted by using a dummy company with Misquadis working as the errand boy. Misquadis hadn't known anything illegal was involved; Prudhomme and Graham had stayed away from him, working through Arnie Sallinon. All of them grooving on the money they thought would be coming in. They expected to make a royalty of ten percent of the gold extracted, millions of dollars between them.
And so they had worked out how to make Prudhomme disappear. At first they were going to pull the same stunt Graham had pulled. He would go overboard from his canoe and vanish. But they worried about the coincidence. And on top of that, he needed another identity, something that would put an end to any chance of blackmail when he tried to get phony identification. So he had pulled in a transient the same size and age and general coloration as he was and had taken him out to the island in Kinsella's helicopter.
"That was why Prudhomme didn't have the samples bag with him," Gallagher said when I gave him the news next morning. "I'll bet he took the guy out with that first bang, the one that broke his skull. He probably swung at him with a rock in the bag, then had to get rid of it because of bloodstains."
I agreed, stirring my coffee which had come with an unexpected shot of rye in it, courtesy of Millie. "And then he used the teeth and the claws from the bearskin he'd bought off Sallinon to muddy up the face and hands. His lawyer identifies the body, they cremate it, and they're home free."
"Well, they would've been for a year or two, anyway, if it hadn't been for that long nose of yours," Gallagher said.
"Well, Prudhomme screwed himself with that receipt from Arnie Sallinon for the bearskin," I argued. "And then, the bloody arrogance of keeping the skin and passing it on to Laval. They must have thought they were so smart and the rest of us were too dumb to think."
"They figured me for a lame duck," Gallagher agreed. "They'd never seen me do anything more clever than write a parking ticket. They thought that was all I was good for." He was pale and unshaven and there was an intravenous drip in his left arm, but he was as sharp and gruff as ever. I could sense his pride.
"Dammit, I've done more detective work from this bed than I had chance to do the whole year I've been here. I've already had Jackaman check Huckmeyer's boots. They're the right size and sound like the right shape for that print you found near Misquadis. So he's getting charged with that killing too."
"What about this guy Laval?" I had a personal grudge with him and I wondered just how much of a figure he'd cut in the exercise yard of the big old St. Vincent de Paul penitentiary in Montreal.
"The Montreal police are looking for him already. They went around to Prudhomme's house and had a word with his widow. According to the detective who talked to Jackaman, she didn't have anything to do with the case. She and Laval were an item and she just accepted her husband's reported death as an act of God, kind of gratefully."
"Well, the whole thing's in pieces now," I said and he nodded.
"You bet," he said happily. "The Thunder Bay guys talked to Sallinon's sister. She's a female him, blonde and soft, the officer called her. Anyway, she was just collecting money for dear Arnie. He told her he was gambling and didn't want his wife to know. We'll look in his safety-deposit box when the banks open, see how much he was socking away."
"Must have upset him, having to kill Eleanor. She was, if you'll overlook the pun, the goose that laid the golden eggs."
"Hurt her worse," Gallagher said. "And it was all out of greed and I just know they'd have been caught anyway. Once they'd started collecting their royalties in all those millions, somebody would've done some digging. I'd have got them someway."
"I wonder who's going to get the money now," I said, sipping the wonderful coffee and yawning.
Gallagher laughed. "It's just my legs hurt, not my phone finger," he said. "I called the claims office and got them to check it out at nine. The company that owns that island is called Turtle Holdings. Jack Misquadis is listed as the president. That means the profits will go to his family. And that means his whole band."
We both laughed at that one. Native rights are very touchy news in Canada today. If any sharp mining lawyer tried to skate around the ownership he would have to come up against the Indian Affairs Department. They would see an easy way to win some popularity for themselves by taking the side of the Olympia band against the big bad multinational mining company. That would mean success for the locals. They would have good modern homes to live in, instead of the shacks they lived in now. Their kids would grow up with investments to worry about instead of traplines. Misquadis would have liked that, even though he might have thought it softened them too much, made them poor trappers.
I left Gallagher after a while, when Millie came back in and shooed me out maternally. Gallagher sighed, but I had a feeling he was enjoying himself. And it looked to me as if she wanted to make looking after him a life's work. But then, coppers and nurses have always been close. We both do society's dirty work for them.
Me, I went back to Alice's house. I didn't count on being welcome, but I didn't have a room anywhere else. On the way I reclaimed Sam and fed him, then went in, restarted the stove that had saved my life the night before, and fell asleep on the couch. As I dozed off I noticed it was marked with tiny cuts from the bullet casings that had exploded, but I've seen damage a lot worse so I just grinned and slept.
I woke in mid-afternoon and found Alice sitting across from me. She smiled and I sat up and tried to look alert. "You looked so peaceful I left you to it," she said.
"Hell, I shouldn't have slept like that. I would never have done it when I was younger, not with somebody moving around me." I still felt sluggish, but she only smiled a sad smile.
"How are you feeling now it's settled down?" I asked, running my hands through my hair and trying to look less ragged.
"Lousy, if you want the truth," she said. "Ivan is my husband. I loved him but he would have killed me for enough money to run away with. That's a tough one to swallow."
"But it's all over now. The worst is behind you. The trial will come and go. He'll go inside for years. You can start your life from today as if he never existed. I'm not sure what your legal status is, but I'd imagine the marriage is ended." She said nothing, so after a pause I asked her, "What will you do, carry on running the motel?"
She shrugged. "I guess so." Then she shook her head. "That sonofabitch. If he'd robbed a bank or murdered somebody without dis
appearing first, I'd have stood by him to the end. But instead he just treated me like I didn't exist, let alone matter to him."
"Maybe you could hand over the motel to somebody for a while, come on down and spend some time at my place, do some painting and cussing, if it makes you feel better."
She rewarded me with the ghost of a smile. "The cussing sounds about my speed right now. But I can't go. This place would fall apart without me and it's the only asset I've got."
There was nothing else to say to her. I wasn't going to add to her problems by coming on dependent. If she wanted to leave this place she would but she might be better off staying here, putting up with the local gossip and the pointing fingers, making good money against the time she decided to branch out somewhere else.
After a moment or two I stood up and walked away to the wall, to the painting of her husband that dominated the collection. Looking at it, I recognized the rock on which he was sitting. It was on the island where the gold lay, the island at the center of her misery. All this time it had hung there, mocking her with its secret.
She looked up at me and smiled blankly, a stranger's smile. "Thanks anyway, Reid. It's been good, but things have changed now. I'm going to have to work it all out on my own."
I didn't argue. I figured she was probably right. I was only glad that the magic hadn't happened, that we hadn't developed anything it would hurt to break. We were two friends, parting on good terms. For now, the best thing I could do for her was to get in my car and head back to Murphy's Harbour.
"I have to be on my way," I told her. "You know where I live." I found my combat jacket and slipped it on. "I've been away too long. That's where I earn my pay." She smiled again but didn't speak and I stopped and kissed her cheek gently. "Take care of yourself," I said.
She smiled a braver smile. "I will," she promised. Then she stood up and kissed me with more warmth. "Thanks," she said, and patted my arm as if I were a kid.
I walked toward the door and she followed me. When I reached it and put my hand on the doorknob she stopped and picked up a picture from the floor. It was wrapped in brown paper. She offered it to me without speaking.
"For me?" I was surprised. She had been so secretive about her painting.
"Yes," she said. "Think of me when you look at it."
"Can I look at it now?"
She shook her head. "Please don't. Unwrap it when you get home." Then she craned up and I kissed her very softly on the lips and left. She watched from the door and waved as I drove off down the drive with Sam tall beside me in the front seat.
I waved back and kept driving until I was almost out of gas and daylight, a hundred miles east of her. Then, as the attendant filled the tank I opened the brown paper around her present and looked. It was a picture of me, with Sam, standing on that same bloody rock. I showed it to him, but he just looked over it at me until I let him out for a run. He'd seen rocks before. And so have I, and this one was behind us now, like a lot of other painful landmarks in my mind.
