by Thomas Zigal
Before Jaworski could respond, a gummy, drawling voice said, “That boy’s done shit in his chili. Won’t find him around these parts anymore.”
An old-timer named Tink Tarver was sitting under a wagon-wheel chandelier at the far end of the bar, making use of the light to fool with an oily motor he had disassembled on a spread of newspaper. His hands were black with grime, and there was a long smear of grease across his beaklike nose. Kurt had never seen Tink Tarver in any other condition. Soiled khaki pants, muddy work boots, holes in the elbows of his flannel shirt, his chin shiny from tobacco juice. The town eccentric, a junk man and inventor by trade, opinionated, surly, at odds with everyone who crossed his junk-digging path. Once a week for the past thirty years the local newspaper had printed his belligerent letters to the editor—amusing, erudite missives attacking everything in modern civilization from fluoride to microwaves. He had been Ned Carr’s only friend by virtue of age and elimination. No one else could tolerate the two men, and they in turn often quarreled over the petty grievances that occupy cranky minds, more than once coming to blows.
Kurt walked back toward the old junk man. “I’m sorry about Ned,” he said.
“What’re you sorry about?” Tink said in his usual irascible manner. “You didn’t do it, did you?”
Peering through jeweler’s glasses, Tink employed a long-handled screwdriver to probe at the motor—something from a refrigerator, a lawn mower—his attention riveted on the dangling wires. He wasn’t wearing his false teeth today and his mouth had caved in so deeply his nose almost touched his chin. Wide ears protruded under a rakish navy-blue beret, his peculiar trademark, and decades of bad weather had carved enough troughs and crevices in his face to qualify those features for a farm subsidy.
“When was the last time you talked to Ned?” Kurt asked, sitting uninvited on the stool next to him.
“I don’t keep a calendar, son,” Tink said, prying open the motor’s casing with his screwdriver. “Couple weeks ago, maybe.”
Near his legs rested an old Radio Flyer wagon, its faded red finish pocked with rust bubbles. He dragged that wagon around town wherever he rambled, searching through trash barrels and Dumpsters for rubbish to tote back to his fix-it shop near City Hall. Today the wagon was loaded with a toaster, a digital alarm clock, a rolled-up bamboo curtain, three crusty paintbrushes, and several scraps of baseboard.
“Did he seemed worried about anything?” Kurt asked.
“Yeah. His hemorrhoids was acting up.”
What was it Ned had said on the phone? He’d cut a deal with the devil.
“Like maybe about—” Kurt was groping for something. He didn’t know what. “About a business arrangement?”
“A business arrangement?” The absurdity of the idea prompted Tink to raise his glasses and look directly at Kurt. “Oh, yeah, the old sombitch had backers lined up all the way to Timbuktu. One time him and Prince Charles of England was going fifty-fifty on the Ajax. Another time he told me Liz Taylor come up to look things over, write out a check. To hear him talk, he was always just two shovels shy of the Comstock Lode. I guess that’s why he lived so high on the hog.”
Kurt smiled. “Was he getting along okay with Tyler?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Ask the little shitass hisself, if you can find him.”
This was going nowhere. Kurt should have known better than to even try. He stood up and nodded goodbye to Frank Jaworski, who was pouring the old man another draft from the tap.
“See ya, Tink,” Kurt said. “Enjoyed the genial conversation.”
He was halfway to the door when the old man called out something. “Bonedale,” Kurt heard him say.
He stopped and turned around. These old-timers were strange men. Ned’s friend for forty years, not one hint of emotion over his death.
“The Black Diamond in Bonedale,” Tink Tarver said. He was hunched over the motor again, tapping and prying. “Only beer joint in the valley that’ll still put up with that pissant.”
Chapter seven
Carbondale. The name alone described how the place might have looked a hundred years ago, a layer of fine black soot settling over every leaf and pasture when coal was mined in the nearby hills, fired in beehive coke ovens, hauled by wagon to this small railroad spur on the Denver and Rio Grande Western line. The short strip of redbrick buildings remained intact, thirty miles north of Aspen, now mostly gentrified bean-sprout cafés and antiques shops for the meandering tourist. The real commerce had moved out to the highway, supermarkets and video stores, and the industrial yards that serviced local hay farmers who drove their pickups into town on Saturday mornings for butane and cattle feed.
Kurt parked his Jeep in front of the Black Diamond, a corner saloon whose upstairs boarding rooms had offered women for sale in the old days, a few convenient steps from the D & RGW depot. Now the Black Diamond was a no-nonsense shitkicker bar without the usual bubbling beer signs and animal heads. The stark concrete floor and cracked plaster walls gave the place the feel of a warehouse for damaged spirits.
Tyler Rutledge was arched over a warped shuffle-board table, sliding his puck back and forth in the sawdust, working up a rhythm before letting it fly. Three young Latino men stood nearby, studying his moves, teasing him in Spanish. Nine thousand migrants had appeared in the Roaring Fork Valley over the past four years, and though most of them worked in Aspen as waiters and maids, they lived downvalley in affordable trailer parks and old rental houses.
“You going to take all day, carnal?” one of his opponents goaded Tyler.
Tyler’s arm stretched in a smooth release and his red puck sailed down the long, blond-wood lane, splitting two blues, cracking them both into the gutter. A roar of disbelief went up from the Latinos. Grinning slyly, twirling one end of his waxed handlebar mustache, Tyler fetched a Moosehead bottle and tilted back his head for a guzzling victory drink.
“Nice shot, Tyler,” Kurt said, walking slowly toward him.
When he saw Kurt, the young miner spilled a little down his chin, wiped himself with a shirtsleeve.
“How about I buy you another round at the bar?”
“Middle of a game here, Muller,” Tyler said, his eyes dancing about, searching for the nearest exit. “Got some serious business going.”
Kurt noticed the dollar bills wadded in two piles on a nearby table.
“I’ve got some serious business of my own,” Kurt said, grabbing Tyler by the collar of his denim work shirt. “Let’s have a drink together.”
Tyler put up no measurable resistance. Kurt was eight inches taller, seventy pounds heavier, sixteen years smarter. He escorted the young man to the initial-carved bar and found the only two adjoining stools with functional seats.
“If you try and run on me, Tyler, I’m going to chase you down and kick your scrawny ass.”
Tyler caught the bartender’s eye and pointed to his Moosehead. “I never run on a sport that’s buying,” he said.
He was a small-framed man whose exceptional strength and agility were well suited to the narrow stope-work of the mines. Ned Carr had often bragged that Tyler could handle a pickax, a pneumatic drill, and an ore car better than any hardrock stiff twice his size.
“I think you know what happened to Ned this morning,” Kurt said, sipping dark ale from a glass that tasted like cigarette butts.
“Yeah, I know,” Tyler said, biting at his bottom lip. He removed his stained John Deere cap and placed it on the bar, expelling a deep breath. “I was on my way up the mountain when I saw the smoke and all the emergency rigs. I couldn’t handle it, man.”
“He’s dead, Tyler. Dynamite. How did that happen?”
Tyler scratched his scalp. Stiff, sweaty hair curled on his collar. He looked as if he hadn’t had a shampoo since the last time his mother held him over a sink.
“The old bird was getting sloppy. His eyesight was poor but he wouldn’t wear his glasses in the mines. I told him not to set any more charges unless I was there to check ’em. Stubb
orn fool thought he could do everything by his own self.”
Tyler had grown up in the back rooms of a trading post near Old Snowmass. His parents sold thermal clothing and outdoor gear, taught cross-country skiing, raised sled dogs. When Tyler was eleven years old, Ned Carr came into their store for his winter supplies and the boy told him he intended to become a prospector when he grew up. Tyler had read Jack London and two dozen books about the history of silver mining in Colorado, the Forty-Niners and Sutter’s Mill, the Comstock Lode. Ned was amused by the boy’s enthusiasm and gave him one of the silver nuggets he carried in his leather pouch. He invited him to tour the Ajax Mine, and the following weekend Tyler showed up with a tent and a bedroll. For the next seven years he shadowed Ned’s every footstep through the dark shafts. The day after Tyler graduated from Aspen High, he went to work for Ned breaking rock.
“Ned called me in the middle of the night,” Kurt said, “worried that somebody was after him. Four hours later he was fried.” He crooked his finger at the bartender, a graying, ponytailed dirt-biker named Skank, and asked for a clean glass. One that hadn’t been soaking in mop water. “You know anything about that? Was somebody down his neck?”
Tyler shook his head, his lean hard face showing fatigue. “He was always in some kind of shit, man. Bill collectors, the Infernal Ripoff Service, the fucking Freddies.” The U.S. Forest Service. “Every time he turned around, the pimps at the Skicorp were siccing their lawyers on him, ragging him over the ski lease and doing their best to weasel out of the money they owed. The goddamned tree huggers have been trying to shut us down since Christ was a cadet. Somebody down his neck?” He laughed bitterly. “Take your fucking pick, man.”
Skank brought Kurt another ale and waited for approval. This one tasted like barfly lipstick but Kurt gave up and waved him off.
“He said he’d been double-crossed. Any idea what he was talking about?”
Tyler drained two inches from the beer bottle. “I’d like to meet the man who could put one over on Ned Carr.”
Kurt stared at the cuneiform of initials etched into the oak surface near his coaster. “It looks like someone did,” he said. “Now I want you to tell me everything you know, Tyler. Front to back. Let’s do this the easy way, shall we? I would rather not have to drag your butt back to Aspen hog-tied to the hood of my Jeep.”
“This ain’t Pitkin County, Muller. It’s Garfield.”
“I guess you don’t know me very well, son. I have been known to bend the rules.”
Tyler gazed for a long time at the Moosehead bottle sweating in front of him on the bar, then finally shifted his upper body to look at Kurt. His red-rimmed eyes were angry and resolute. “I loved that old man like a daddy,” he said, a sudden huskiness creeping into his voice. “Somebody messed with him, I’m going to cut their throat. It’s that fucking simple.”
Kurt hoped Tyler wasn’t foolish enough to try and settle this on his own. He didn’t cherish the idea of trailing after the little hot-head while the assault charges started piling up.
“Who was the woman with Miles Cunningham?”
Tyler’s attention was diverted to the tavern door, where a half-dozen men wearing identical cammo flak jackets had just entered. “I don’t know. Some gimpy chick,” he said, reaching for his cap. “Gotta go take a whiz.”
He slid off the stool but Kurt caught his arm and sat him back down. “In a minute,” he said. “Right now I want you to tell me what was going on up there on your access road. The newspaper mentioned gunplay.”
“Ask that asshole Cunningham,” Tyler said, pulling the cap’s bill low on his forehead. He seemed more restless now, fidgeting with his mustache, his eyes darting back toward the men’s toilet. “Fucker was out there trying to cut our grader into sardine cans.”
“Well well well,” someone said in a loud booming voice, one of the men in cammo standing near the entrance. A crash helmet tucked under his arm, the husky dirt-biker made his way back toward them, road dust puffing from his fatigues, his large bearded face flushed from this unexpected discovery. “Look who’s here, boys! Our favorite mine rat! Must be our lucky day.”
He set the helmet on the bar near Tyler and laughed again, a deep happy growl like the roar from a dancing bear. “Didn’t ever expect to see us again, did you, mine rat?”
Kurt now understood why Tyler kept glancing toward the toilet. There was a window in there just large enough for a mine rat to slip out.
“What’s the matter, fella? Cat got your tongue? You didn’t seem so timid that day behind a twelve-gauge shotgun.” He was a big son of a bitch, at least 250 pounds, a thatch of coarse hair on the back of each hand. His dark beard flowed down his neck into the cammo jacket. “Hey, boys, this is the gopher turd that trashed Harry’s bike! Him and that crazy old man.”
His five comrades swaggered back to join the fun. Sewn to each man’s jacket sleeve was a patch depicting a dirt bike surrounded by the words THE AUTOBAHN SOCIETY. Kurt had heard of them and their lame redneck pun. A gang of mindless yahoos out of Grand Junction, insurance men and plumbers who spent their weekends in the mountains, buzzing up and down nonmotorized hiking trails, scaring off backpackers, their noxious gas fumes lingering for hours in the woods. Nobody liked dirt-bikers. Not even the macho bow hunters.
“You owe me for that bike,” said a short fat man, his dust goggles pulled up high on his blistered forehead. “It was brand spanking new, junior.”
Harry looked a little softer than the others, a dentist maybe. He needed sunscreen. In a couple of days his entire face and ears and the dome of that melon-shaped bald head were going to peel off in long papery strips.
“You can have it back,” Tyler mumbled, hunching his shoulders slightly as though expecting a blow. “I can’t use it anymore.”
“So you admit you did steal it, you fucking little mine rat!” Harry the dentist was incredulous.
“Confiscated,” Tyler corrected. “Impounded.”
Kurt realized that Harry and his riding club had made the mistake of trespassing on Ned’s mining property with their obnoxious noisemakers. They weren’t the first intruders to feel Ned’s wrath.
“So where is it, butthole?” Harry demanded.
Tyler studied his beer. “Me and my partner dug a pit and set it on fire and roasted some marshmellers over it.” He looked up at the men who had gathered close by. “You boys ought to try it sometime. Flavor’s a mite gassy, but you get used to it.”
They had surrounded Tyler now and were not amused. “Get a rope!” roared the bearded biker. “Let’s show the mine rat our favorite kind of drag race!”
His buddies laughed darkly, punched one another on the arm.
“Hey, you. Beard,” Kurt said. “I’m trying to have a private conversation with this guy. Do you mind?”
The gathering grew silent. The Beard shoved off from the bar and set himself in a wide stance behind Kurt’s shoulder. “Who is this big pile of shit?” he asked Tyler. “Your bodyguard, mine rat?”
Tyler sipped his beer. “He’s a cop, Einstein,” he said without looking up. He peeked at Kurt under the lowered bill of his gimme cap. “Or used to be.”
“Well well well,” the man said. He folded his padded arms and glared at Kurt. “A use-to-be cop. I guess that gives us something in common, mister. I’m in the cop business myself. Makes us damn near blood kin, don’t it?”
Kurt glanced over his shoulder at him. Rent-a-cop. Security guard. A hard-on every night wearing his holster and badge. “I said I’m having a conversation here,” he said. “I would appreciate some privacy.”
The man turned to his buddies and laughed defiantly, his meaty cheeks beaming. This was the most fun he’d had in months. “The big guy’s getting greedy!” he sneered. “He wants the mine rat all to himself!”
The others laughed, too, shifted about nervously. Kurt could see they weren’t bar fighters, just weekend cowboys out for an adventure on their dip-shit scooters. Anything to make them forget they install
ed aluminum siding for a living in Grand Junction. The Beard standing over Kurt’s shoulder was the only real threat.
“We got us a conflict here, Mr. Use-to-be,” he said. “This little peckerwood destroyed valuable club property, and we have very clear guidelines dealing with that kind of antisocial behavior. Specific policy in our bylaws. A sacred code.”
His buddies grumbled in agreement, exchanged conspiratorial whispers. Their code had been tampered with.
Kurt swiveled slowly on the stool until he was eye level with the dirt-biker’s sternum. “I have to be honest with you, brother,” he said. “I’m starting to get bored with this. You’re logging in on my time.”
The Beard’s brow was as prominent as a rock overhang. He narrowed his gaze at Kurt, his small eyes sinking farther into the dark recess of bone. “And what the fuck do I care about your time, Mr. Use-to-be?” he said.
Kurt looked at the bartender standing several feet away, both hands braced against the oakwood scrolling of the bar, his shoulders stooped, observing this interchange with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. Kurt wasn’t sure whose side Skank was on. “Why don’t you do everybody a favor and ask these gentlemen to walk away?” he said to him.
“Not my movie,” Skank muttered, wagging his hands to absolve himself of any involvement. He turned his back and ambled farther down the bar.
“I guess it’s just you and us and the mine rat,” said the Beard. A vein bulged on his forehead as he stooped closer to breathe on Kurt. “You want to flip for him?”
“Your math is a little off, my friend,” Kurt said. “It’s you and me and this tube of pepper spray in my pocket.”
The man straightened his wide shoulders and squinted at Kurt, glanced uncertainly at his buddies, “Girl stuff,” said a lanky rider wearing a Rockies baseball cap pulled tightly over long stringy hair. The others laughed.
“Hell, let’s just forget about it and have a drink,” said Harry the dentist. He had had enough excitement for one day. “I think I’m starting to dehydrate.”