The Making of Blackwater Jack

by Roy F. Chandler

  “And, Jack, because I am not an idiot, when you return my truck, you will pay me to have it repainted in its original color as if it were fresh out of a motor pool. Is that agreeable, Blackwater?”

  They shook hands on it.

  29

  They sprawled on the immense beds in Jack’s motel room.

  Jack said, “I’m buying a house, Shooter.”

  “What? Where? And what in hell for? Just move the tenants out of your folks’ house. Buy some furniture off E-bay or that deal they call Craig’s List and move in. You need your barn, and you need to be near, well, anything that might be going on.”

  “Just the opposite, Shooter. I want to be far away from everything that might be going on.

  “Do you happen to know Harry Sorenson?”

  “No, but I’ve heard the name.”

  “Well, Sorenson made his money in chickens. Then he built a small house up on top of the ridge. Said he could see the whole world from up there, and he’s about right. He tried living there for part of a year, but his wife liked Florida better, so that is where he is.

  “The only trouble is that his road going up to the house would be steep for a mountain goat.

  “The way I figure it, up there, I won’t ever be bothered by strangers dropping by that I don’t want to see.

  “I’ll buy an all-wheel drive to make the climb easy. I’ll make a few changes to the house, of course, but when I first looked, the part I liked best was that Harry had cleared a long swath planning to fly some kind of ultra-light airplane in and out. I’m not getting into flying, but I can get about a four hundred yard rifle range out of it, and that I would enjoy having.”

  “How come you never mentioned this before?”

  “Well, I had a place to live before. Now I am homeless. I’m not claiming I will want to live up there forever, but right now, I like the idea.

  “Oh yeah, the house is made out of poured concrete. Sorenson hired that company from over past Markelsville that pours basements to form up a sort of above ground cellar. Harry said that they had to hitch a bulldozer to the front of the cement trucks to pull them up the mountain. One thing is for sure, the house won’t get blown off the mountain. Damned expensive, I gather, but when a guy has a dream—you know how that can be.”

  Shooter thought some about it. The mountain house explained Jack’s otherwise inexplicable interest in a snowplow and the 5-ton truck that could climb damn near straight up.

  Galloway said, “Well, for right now, that might not be a bad idea. Having broad fields of fire might discourage some people we know. Has the place got electricity, toilets, running water? You know, Jack, those minor conveniences.”

  “Of course, or I wouldn’t be interested. The electric lines are buried alongside the road so that no poles are showing, and there is a huge propane generator and buried tank in the side yard. Harry made some serious money with his chickens, and he was willing. It turned out that his wife was not.”

  “Been known to happen, pardner.” Shooter thought some more. “I’ve got almost a thousand yards in my notch, but I never use much of it. It gets boring to haul yourself half a mile or more just to check some bull’s eyes.”

  Jack asked, “Have you seen anything of Saltz or his thugs poking around my ruins?”

  “No, but I’ve been out of the county working, and I’ve been down here spending too much time with you. Jacque will be busy for weeks filming out in the Rockies, and I’ve got a couple of long hauls to make. Call your insurance man; he is certainly looking for you.

  “So, I’ll be gone a while. After today, you are on your own, Jack. “

  “Well, you’ve helped me a hell of a lot, Shooter, and Maloney is becoming a real friend.

  “An interesting guy, but Shooter, I’m learning he would be a bad one to cross. You see it once you get to know him a little. I’m staying on his good side, and I’m having fun doing it.

  “Still, it wouldn’t surprise me that other things than our little box were secretly buried on Maloney’s land. Anyone missing from his past? Say a mob of Crips or a bunch of Bloods, for instance, or maybe a few Rap singers or guys with beards wearing towels around their heads?”

  With Maloney, Shooter feared to speculate.

  — — —

  Jack figured he had waited long enough. He considered driving up and seeing for himself if Saltz’s boys were watching his house ruins. If they weren’t, all his planning, the truck, and everything would be wasted effort. He resisted the urge as impatience and lack of trust in his scheming.

  For at least a year, Jack had pondered solutions to the dangers presented by Saltz’s hoods. If the former colonel loosed them, his three-man pack would beat or kill him without compunction. That unquestioned fact nullified any lingering qualms about removing three sub-humans from the scene. Blackwater Jack’s primary difficulty was just how he could accomplish such a feat.

  Jack considered enlisting Galloway’s help. Shooter knew about such things. Galloway had apparently evaluated every mode of violence an ordinary individual could conceive.

  Well, Gabriel Galloway had lived for decades with those kinds of problems in the front of his mind—and he had successfully acted on his solutions.

  However, it had not seemed right to involve his friend to settle personal problems, unless he could not work them out on his own. And there was the deniable plausibility that Galloway had stressed. So, Jack would find his own way.

  And he had.

  — — —

  Tom Groves always drove with ex-lieutenant Billy Kalvin riding shotgun. If he was along, Tony Polombo rode in back usually dozing the hours away.

  Since they had burned Carlisle’s shed, Saltz had kept them watching the place from their outpost on Mahanoy Ridge.

  About a century earlier, limestone had been quarried, cooked, and used to fertilize farm fields. As the Mahanoy quarry had chewed into the stone, a cliff nearly seventy feet tall had been created. In modern times, Carson Long Military Academy cadets practiced rappelling and rock climbing on the exposed limestone.

  More infamous among those who lived nearby was the small clearing on top where lovers met. Sitting in their cars, all could look out across the valley to see automobiles rushing along the valley road. Because of thick timber, there were no similarly romantic overlooks the length of the miles-long ridge.

  Romancing was mostly shared at night, and other vehicles seeking solitude only occasionally challenged the long black Saltz car.

  The important detail for the ex-colonel’s team was, of course, the perfect view of the Mormon Chapel on Cold Storage Road and the Carlisle place just beyond.

  Tony Polombo, who had experience in burning buildings, had lit a candle that, as it melted, would eventually ignite a black powder fuse which would burn its way to a blasting cap and five gallon glass containers of wood alcohol and some gasoline in open saucers amid more black powder in vulnerable spots.

  The candle provided get away time for the arsonists, and they had retired to their overlook to enjoy the action. The results had been spectacular to the former military men and satisfying for the more experienced Polombo.

  Unfortunately, Blackwater Jack had not appeared within the crowd, and he had not been seen since.

  Saltz became infuriated, and he decided that he had endured enough. A proper interrogation building had been selected and prepared. When he finally surfaced, the three-man team would snatch the one-footed idiot, take him to the silence of their deepest room, and convince Blackwater Jack to share all that he knew about anything they asked.

  Then, they would smash his head with a length of three-quarter inch rebar and bury him in an already dug hole in the same room They would pour bags of ready-mix concrete until the cement floor was again level. A scattering of dirt, trash, and some used engine machine oil, and Blackwater Jack would be as undiscoverable as the long searched-for James Hoffa.

  The trio would report their findings to their ex-colonel, and the matter of ex-corporal Ti
m Carlisle would be forgotten.

  — — —

  A generations old three-strand barbed wire fence protected the Mahanoy Ridge overlook. A sign had once warned of danger, but the letters had faded, and the wood had rotted. It now hung by a single staple, relatively unnoted.

  Tom Groves did not handle heights well, and he gave the high cliff utmost respect. He eased into place with never failing fears that the entire stone face might collapse and drop them straight down amid the rubble.

  They parked, nose forward so that they had only to raise their binoculars to see everything, but Groves kept the heavy car a least two lengths back—and he always set the parking brake to back up the transmission’s parking gear.

  A paratrooper before his military difficulties, Billy Kalvin occasionally set Groves’ teeth on edge by stepping over the sagging wire protection and standing on the very lip of the drop off. Once, he had pretended to slip and disappeared from view onto a narrow ledge some feet below the edge. Tony Polombo’s braying laughter at Groves’ panicked consternation was still easy to arouse.

  Groves lowered his binoculars and said, “Nothing! Nobody around. Again.” His impatience was obvious.

  Kalvin remained composed. “He’ll come. Everything he owns is in that barn, so wherever he decided to settle will include getting his bikes and the rest of his junk from here to there.”

  Polombo roused enough to agree. “No sweat, Tom. Sometimes this sort of job takes a long time. This guy, Jack, figures his shack didn’t burn itself.

  “He will wait until he believes no one is watching. Then he will come. There is a lot of stuff in there. He will need a big truck and a lot of time. We’ll pick him off then.”

  Groves put in with intensity, “When it is time to do him, I want to swing the rebar. This bozo has made us look small more than once, and he has been a complete pain in the ass.”

  No one answered until Groves exclaimed, “What in hell?” and straightened in his seat. Behind them the narrow packed dirt trace leading to the cliff edge was being filled by a monster of a snowplow blade attached to some kind of a huge truck.

  Kalvin swore and said, “Hell, we can’t move until he backs out. Stay calm and we’ll see what the hick does.”

  Polombo unhooked his seatbelt and drew his pistol, but he held it against his thigh, well out of sight.

  Blackwater Jack had slept in the big truck for two nights. He, too, was sick of it. He had parked off the road, but where he could see vehicles as they approached along the ridge top. One pickup with two occupants had visited the lookout. When they passed, Jack could see enough to tell that they were young. He did not investigate further, and they had not stayed long.

  Then, in late morning, the familiar black car had appeared. It had moved with exaggerated caution to the best viewing spot in the clearing. Jack had scrambled behind his wheel and started his engine while the black car was still settling in. He was far enough back that the rumble of his idling motor would not be heard.

  Perfect! There was no reason to wait. Jack powered up, and the 5-Tonner moved ahead. For a short instant, Blackwater Jack sought reservations or uncertainties. He found none.

  This moment had been too long in the making, and its completion had long since been resolved. As he rolled into ramming position, Jack lowered the big plow.

  In his side view mirror, Tom Groves saw the plow descend. His recognition was accelerated by his fear of the nearby cliff edge. His panicked scream mixed with his frantic struggle to claw open his driver side door. Of course his seat belt held him in place.

  Kalvin’s astonished question “What in hell is the matter?” went unanswered.

  An instant later the heavy car was solidly struck in the rear. It lurched, tossing the occupants, and began to slide forward as if propelled by an irresistible force.

  The cool and experienced Billy Kalvin panicked as completely as had Groves. He added his own frightened squall only an instant before Tony Polombo’s pistol began firing through their car’s back window.

  Jack added power to keep the black car skidding ahead. With its brakes and transmission locked and its engine off, the automobile could only slide. Jack pressed harder, his speed picked up, and the car slid faster, the driver’s door hung partly open but no figure came through.

  Bullets hit his plow. Jack had never heard the sound before, but he recognized the clanging and their rhythm as if they were familiar. He had expected such a response, and his plow was high enough to protect his windshield.

  The puny wire fence snapped a strand and more fencing was pulled along with the car.

  Then, with only a slight bumping dip, the automobile’s front wheels went over the cliff edge.

  Jack prepared for the car’s rear end lift and it came, with the crushed trunk lid popping open and into Jack’s view.

  His left foot poised above the brake pedal, Jack kept his right boot on the accelerator just enough to encourage the car’s continued flight forward.

  Then, almost anti-climactically, the car was gone—over the cliff edge and into its long fall to the rocks below.

  Jack got his foot off the gas, slammed the brake, worked through the double clutch shift into reverse, and backed well away before he eased even a little.

  It was done! Jack used no valuable time wondering how it had been in the falling automobile. His task now was to remain unnoticed while he put comfortable miles between himself and the dead bodies lying amid the broken rocks and the utterly smashed automobile.

  Two problems remained. The first was possible tire tracks. The big truck’s tire tread was to say the least, distinctive, but Jack had closely examined the overlook’s hard packed surface and believed that even his war time treads would not leave identifiable marks. If even a whisper of rain came through, even that remote possibility would disappear.

  The second detail would be discovered during the police investigation. The car’s brakes were set and the transmission was in park. Obviously, then, the car had help going over the cliff edge. But there, Jack expected the hunt would die with nothing further forthcoming.

  His escape route had been long planned. The only irregularity had been to use local roads until the 5-Ton was back into Maloney’s barn.

  As he rumbled along at a comfortable forty miles per hour, Jack examined the possibilities of skilled examination of the wreck in the quarry.

  Perhaps the car would burn. In movies they always did. Until bodies were discovered, anyone finding the wreck would suppose that kids had pushed a junker car off the cliff to enjoy the excitement of the crashing fall.

  Next the investigation might suspect a simple driving error, but once the bodies were identified, and as weapons were uncovered, real investigators would appear.

  What would they determine?

  A mob hit would leap to the fore. The presence of a minor but known Philadelphia gangster would add gravitas to the theory, and the investigation could stall right there.

  Not likely though. Big names, including that of Colonel Frank Saltz would surface.

  Saltz could very well slip ex-corporal Timothy Carlisle’s name into the mix. Carlisle, known by the name of Blackwater Jack—certainly a suggestive nickname—had his home burned not that long ago.

  As help to the investigators and to demonstrate his willingness to contribute anything he knew, Saltz might even mention joining his murdered men and the ex-corporal at a local eating place some months before.

  There could be a connection he would suppose, but, he, Colonel Frank Saltz, an important personage around the Commonwealth’s capital, although under investigation, and suspected to be deep in felonious projects with mobsters of recognizable names, would know nothing more.

  Jack strengthened his earliest expectations that he would continue to reinforce his own “evidentiary body” demonstrating that he was far away and had nothing to do with anything happening in the Perry County area since long before his shack had burned. Why he had been too busy even to return to evaluate his remai
ning property.

  Jack examined the sky, but no rain threatened. Well, perhaps in the next day or two some would come. Anything that would help remove tire tracks up on top would be welcome.

  It was at least as probable that no one had seen the car’s fall and that no one would visit the long deserted quarry for weeks, even for months.

  Not bad, all in all. Jack wished he could describe it to Galloway, but as soon as he heard, Shooter Galloway would understand it all anyway.

  30

  The motion detector at the foot of Jack’s still treacherous roadway buzzed in the living room. Both Shooter and Blackwater stopped their activity and listened. A few moments later, the second detector, the one that showed a climbing vehicle’s serious commitment, sounded and the first ceased its buzz.

  Shooter asked, “You expecting company, Jack?”

  “Nope, but once in a while some character looking ahead to deer season tries my road hunting for a spot on this ridge. You know, the secret place where the big antlers hide.

  “They get near the top and begin to believe the ‘No Hunting’ and ‘No Trespassing’ signs, but they can’t turn back until they reach the summit.

  “So far, they have all turned around and gone back down.” Jack added, “I’ve got to take a dozer to that cart path anyway, so I’ll make a wide flat spot about halfway up where unfortunates can turn back before they overheat their vehicles.”

  “That’s likely it, but I’ll just take one of your shotguns and step across the yard. If unfriendlies arrive, we will have them flanked.”

  “You are a paranoid jerk, Galloway, but just in case you start shooting, I’ll arm-up, too.”

  Blackwater was busy at a wall peg removing a pistol belt studded with .357 cartridges and wearing a holstered Smith and Wesson Model 19 revolver. He strapped it on as his third alarm announced the visitors past halfway.

  Galloway was already departing, Jack’s Model 12 pump gun in one hand and a bandoleer of 12-gauge shells in the other. Blackwater stepped outside to lean against a porch post as if that were something he did often.