Black Mountain

by Laird Barron

  Replaying the afternoon with Devlin and absorbing secondhand what Meg endured on a daily basis, contemplating her anxiety and exhaustion, I acknowledged she was diamond hard compared to me and my relatively soft life.

  After a while, we retired indoors for cups of cocoa laced with brandy. She looked in on Devlin and returned to the living room in a brighter mood. Moms possess that ineffable power; the ability to set aside grief and misery, to stabilize and set anchor against the vicissitudes of mortal existence.

  “Much as I applaud the mission—and I do—you are gallivanting into the Catskills with the hottest babe in New York.” She said this, half teasing, half not. “I’ve only myself to blame.”

  “Second hottest.” I put my arms around her and squeezed. “She and Lionel are gallivanting, and probably worse. I’m the driver.”

  “Second hottest?”

  “Distant second. Eating dust.”

  “What a woman wants to hear. We should go get you out of those pants.”

  “What a man wants to hear.”

  * * *

  —

  NIGHTMARES ROUSTED ME AT 3:30 A.M.

  I was a boy again, and naked and injured. Wolves stalked me in the forest and among the ruins of large, elaborate buildings. The buildings were familiar; lodges and hotels rotting to their foundations. A park ranger in a tattered, blood-stained uniform joined the wolves. We raced through the ruins and across a meadow strung with loops of barbed wire and rusted mesh fencing. These were the wolves of the Wild Acres Animal Sanctuary, except in their red-eyed nightmare incarnation. The park ranger drew close, eating the gap between us with terrible strides. He wore a stocking mask that grotesquely twisted his features out of joint. He raised his knife and I woke.

  Minerva crawled into bed as I rose. She stretched into the warm depression I’d left. I limped into Meg’s kitchen and made a ham sandwich and poured a glass of milk. My reflection blurred in the window as I unsnapped a briefcase containing file folders and hunched over a ream of notes the accountant had compiled. It wasn’t me for a second or two; instead, an ancient iteration of myself, wrapped in rancid pelts, squatted in a dimly lit cave, savaging deer entrails. The atavistic me glared in fear.

  Sanctuary. Preserve. Refuge. I highlighted these words among the documents. Valero Technologies. Rowden Refrigeration. Anvil Mountain Refuge. Morris Oestryke.

  Interesting words. Potentially crucial words. How a wildlife refuge fit into the greater web of intrigue remained to be seen; but there it was in ten-point type. Scanning methodically, I selected another pair of words that tied these disparate elements together, yet left the core mystery unresolved.

  Zircon Corporation. Threads linked the corporation to each important designation on my list.

  Either the universe continued to expand every day or earth and its flea circus shrank further into minuteness.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Since learning that Morris Oestryke might be the culprit behind a heap of misery, I’d sent feelers into the criminal underworld, searching for intelligence on his Croatoan alias, actionable or otherwise.

  The fact that Marion Curtis swore to snuffing Oestryke added a wrinkle without altering the basic premise of my investigation. Accepting Curtis at face value meant someone sympathetic to the Croatoan was at large. The only way I’d get any closer to solving the problem would be to learn everything possible about Oestryke’s circle—which mainly included wiseguys and wiseguy wannabes.

  I clutched at any straw, precisely as Lionel had intimated in his sardonic fashion. Rumors, hearsay, tall tales—I prepared to entertain, and evaluate, whatever far-fetched crap came down the pike. Similar to panning for gold; a man has to sort through a lot of sand to find the merest glint of color.

  It’s not as if we have a club, Hitmen “R” Us. Technically, I remained persona non grata with the Outfit. But there were a couple of guys from my Outfit days who’d risk talking to me. I phoned an independent contractor in Chicago; a former colleague. I asked what he remembered about the Croatoan, or if he could pretty please steer me in the right direction. The guy in Chicago knew zilch; however, he promised to broach the subject with his northeastern associates who might be better placed.

  That’s how I got in touch with the only person who’d talk to me—a hitter who’d worked up north in Buffalo and owed my Chicago associate the courtesy. Mr. Buffalo also knew Curtis and Curtis’s word counted for plenty. Buffalo reached out on Friday morning. His ID and location were masked. We exchanged passwords provided by our mutual friend in Chicago. The hitter quizzed me about Curtis to satisfy any lingering misgivings.

  The anecdote he relayed didn’t assuage my mounting sense of worry and misgivings.

  “I ain’t in the life no more.” Mr. Buffalo’s voice crackled and distorted. I got the impression he’d called from a windy beach. “Coleridge, I heard of you. MC vouches for you, you’re okay by me. You know Gene K? Gene moved to Alaska. Maybe you met him? Fuck Alaska. Too cold for my bones. I retired and put Buffalo in the rearview. Froze my nuts every winter. Maybe worse than Alaska, I can’t say. Did you run across Gene K up there? Hell of a guy. The absolute best. Shoot your fuckin’ eye out at a hundred paces, no problem. Shoot your eye right fuckin’ out.”

  I explained that by some miracle I retained both eyes. Could he relay any firsthand knowledge about the Croatoan or his methods?

  “Oh, I saw him around at parties in . . . Fuck, Reagan was president. Parties and the clubs. Went by Donnie Duster. Donnie Duster. What’s that? Advertising you’re a cleaner? Fuckin’ porn handle, or what? The guys got a laugh outta that. Congenial fella, although he didn’t really mix, kinda kept to himself. You couldn’t get him talking. He didn’t do too many jobs for the Outfit. His territory was farther south in Albany, and Philly and Pittsburgh. He contracted with the Five Families and their friends. Everybody knew he was a serious dude. We didn’t know how serious. He wasn’t the Croatoan then; he was just Donnie D.

  “I got a personal glimpse into his dark side on account of a coke deal that went wrong. Superfucking clusterfuck, lemme tell you. Three weeks after the deal, everything supposedly died down. I was at a card game with some of those guys who’d fucked the deal so bad. I stepped out to grab some booze and when I came back they were all dead, with their brains and their guts splattered every-fucking-where in that apartment. Okay, all except two guys who’d actually run the coke deal. Those two were on their knees, pleading for mercy.

  “One of the capos and Donnie Duster stood over them, having a discussion about who was gonna live and who was gonna get whacked. Donnie D was, like, ‘This one?’ and the capo said, ‘Yeah,’ and Donnie sliced the guy’s throat with a knife, and the other guy got it in the neck too. I’ll never forget Donnie staring at me while I’m in the doorway, holding a half rack of suds in one hand and my pecker in the other. He says, ‘Him?’ and the capo shook his head and says, ‘Nah, he’s okay,’ and I set the beer on the table and fucked right off. The cocksucker iced a roomful of seven or eight armed men, and he didn’t have no whites in his eyes. Weren’t regular fuckin’ eyes. Just a couple pieces of black ice stuck in the sockets.

  “Last thing I saw was Donnie D in a leather coat and leather pants and a big hunting knife in his hand and somehow not a fuckin’ speck a blood on him. He set the knife down and pulled a nylon stocking outta his pocket. He was sliding that stocking over his head as I beat feet. Got to ask myself, who the fuck puts on a fucking mask after they’ve whacked everybody?”

  I agreed it was an excellent question.

  “You are welcome, fella,” Buffalo said. “You’ve got no worries. The Croatoan ain’t around. He’s dead. Surely dead, or dying like the rest of us. And I gotta go to the whorehouse because it is high time for me to get my pecker wet. Have a day.” He hung up.

  * * *

  —

  DELIA LABRADOR couldn’t escape the family mansio
n in Rhinebeck until midafternoon. We planned to rendezvous at a Kingston art gallery, where she had pressing last-minute business, and proceed from there. Delia instructed me to pull into the alley at 4:30 p.m. precisely. I did and she ducked out of the service door and into the car. She giggled, and that’s when I realized her ubiquitous bodyguards had been thoroughly ditched.

  “Those oafs would be a real anchor on our fun.” She snapped a selfie. “I’ll text Father that I’ve run away for the weekend. Otherwise, he’ll inform the National Guard I’m being held for ransom.”

  Lionel entrusted me with the keys to the Monte Carlo. He and Delia snuggled in the backseat, smitten as a pair of teenagers. Periodically, one of them momentarily surfaced to criticize my driving. It was great.

  I am a believer in karma. Obviously, I had a truckload to work off.

  Our destination lay an hour northwest of Kingston. One of Harold Lee’s brochures expounded upon the virtues of West Kill Lodge and its magnificent environs, which encompassed thousands of acres of game trails, winding streams, and timber.

  Delia had insisted that we spend the night at the lodge and venture into the boonies at first light, or at least by brunch. Since deer hunting season was under way, I said there’d be no room at the inn. Lodges typically book to capacity months in advance. She’d vowed her Palladium Visa would find a way. Ten minutes later, she secured a bungalow for Lionel and herself and a woodshed for me.

  I’d churned Lee’s history with the West Kill Lodge.

  Lee’s papers provided passwords to his online bank account. The account languished at four hundred bucks and had seldom contained more than fifteen hundred. Scrolling back in time, I ascertained that he’d patronized the lodge regularly for a decade. He never rented a room or purchased any of the guided packages. Just dinners and bar tabs exclusively. No need for a pricey room if he had a place to bunk nearby.

  Lionel extricated himself from Delia’s embrace, popped the top on his second or maybe third beer, and cursed as it foamed over. He chugged, inhaled, and gulped the rest.

  “Anybody from your death board kick it near this lodge?” he said.

  “No confirmed murders.”

  “How many unconfirmed murders?”

  “Three disappearances in 2006 and 2008. College girls. A couple and a lone hiker. The cops don’t have them listed in the tri-state murders profile. I’m more suspicious.”

  “Game wardens and forest rangers are realists,” he said.

  “The purported innate pragmatism of forestry experts seems to be at odds with the inherent romanticism of capering around the great outdoors and insisting it’s a career.”

  “Scoff all you like. They know from bitter experience that idiot greenhorns wander into the woods and disappear without help from serial killers. Plus, there’s a shitload of wilderness to be searched. Ain’t nobody got time for that.”

  “‘Ain’t nobody got time for that,’” I said under my breath.

  Lionel toasted me and had another slug of beer.

  I met Delia’s eyes in the rearview.

  “Not to stick my oar in, or anything—”

  “Preamble to your butting in,” she said, freshening her lipstick. She’d dressed in an eye-popping designer T-shirt and fashionably torn jeans.

  My intuition forecast this weekend would feature more costume changes than a Broadway musical.

  “Yes to butting in. Isn’t he kind of young for you? Aren’t you happier if they’ve got one foot in the grave?”

  “He’s broken down,” she said.

  “This Marine is fully functional,” Lionel said. He sounded borderline sober and on the road to drunk.

  “Got a mint tin chock-full of Viagra,” she said.

  “When I say ‘fully functional,’ I promise you—”

  “Dudes always say one thing.”

  “Ms. Labrador is a Girl Scout,” I said to Lionel.

  “Be prepared is a great motto,” he said. “Don’t say it like it’s a bad thing. It’s good.”

  “That’s the Boy Scout motto,” she said. “I adhere to the Girl Scout Law, which I’ve rewritten as To thine own self be true; do unto others as they do unto you, in honor of Anton LaVey . . . How’s your heart? Will it tolerate heavy stimulants?”

  “Lionel, you’re gonna die,” I said. “Mind if I keep the car?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Greene County is lonely. Flat in the north and east; thickly forested and mountainous to the south and west.

  Two miles of winding lane off the main road, the lodge occupied a low hill. The lodge and a collection of smaller wooden structures overlooked a dinky lake. Not the lake I’d come to see. Pretty, though; slashed purple and red by the falling sun. Fields of brown grass marched into the foothills south of the lake. Evergreens and cottonwood demarcated mountain slopes.

  Combines rustic charm with modern convenience was how my former client the realtor would’ve pitched West Kill Lodge. Huge bay windows aglow with soft interior light; logs planed on two sides and buffed and stained for that distinctive faux-Colonial appearance; a clay-shingle roof; and a gravel courtyard. Sparrows flitted around the cedar hedges. I counted twenty vehicles in the adjoining lot. My fears were unfounded—the inn wasn’t completely full; three-quarters capacity, perhaps.

  When the front doors swung wide, warmth and the scent of baked sourdough wafted forth.

  The lobby ceiling rose to a peak buttressed by timber joists. Deer-antler chandeliers hung from the center beam. Dead animal heads adorned the walls. Bearskins spread before the hearth. The furniture was wooden and heavy. Underfoot, a muted diamond pattern in slate was broken by throw rugs.

  Delia checked our party in with an unaffected breeziness. The staff responded warmly and sincerely. She’d brought a valise and her purse. For a snooty heiress, the woman conducted herself with flawless grace when circumstances demanded. I reminded myself that it’s best not to underestimate a beautiful person of incalculable means who doesn’t mind chatting with the plebs. Such an individual represents a triple threat.

  She and Lionel clasped hands and vamoosed to their bungalow. I was shown to a “cozy” room at the rear of the longhouse—a single bed, sink, and closet. The closet door jammed into the bed if I swung it all the way open. One of the ubiquitous hedges crowded outside the window and blocked it completely.

  “Fantastic,” I said to my favorite duffel bag.

  Nobody had batted an eyelash when I waltzed into the lobby carrying the Mossberg in its soft case. The odds of using the shotgun were low to nonexistent. It seldom hurt to blend in. The people here fully expected the clientele to mosey to and fro armed for bear.

  I secured my weapons in a cabinet, except for a jawbone hunting knife, which hung from my belt, concealed by the tail of my untucked shirt. The legal-sized briefcase containing the investigation notes went into the closet. Bedtime reading, albeit largely moot. Delia and her father, going forward, were the keys to the mystery. My challenge was the best method to pry this information free.

  I detest hunting lodges almost as much as I hate zoos; encircled by trophies to the vilest form of narcissism, with strutting creeps whose weaponry couldn’t scream overcompensation any louder. A man kills a wild animal by necessity—food, fur, or self-defense. A man does not hunt an animal for the joy, nor to acquire a trophy, nor to demonstrate his dominance. The latter breed of Homo sapiens is almost invariably a coward and a boor. It sorely tests my fortitude to abide either.

  * * *

  —

  SUPPER HAD BEGUN in the dining hall. More scents of warm bread; also stew and roasted chicken. A wolf’s head over the entrance stopped me cold; a bolt of déjà vu—the black wolf’s glassy yellow eyes fixed upon my own.

  I trembled as a wormhole dilated, connecting this moment to the foggy past. I instantly recalled the wolf’s snarling countenance from the Alaska roadhouse
Gene K and I visited. This might have been the selfsame beast, inhabited by an identical savagery that neither time, nor death, nor taxidermy could exorcise. Beneath its ever-shifting surface, beneath its changeable moods, dark-hearted nature is implacable and unforgiving.

  In a gesture of bravado, I cocked my thumb and forefinger at the wolf before retreating to gather my composure. The recent nightmares and my compulsion to divine specific patterns within the greater mystery was a sign of delusion, or my intuition kicking in hard. Invariably, left to its own devices, my subconscious will detect the murky fin of doom cutting through the water. I’m stubborn, not stupid. A man ignores his instincts at his own peril. Currently, those instincts counseled me to stay alert to sudden danger, and, more important, to be patient.

  Patience comes at a premium for a man of my temperament, and I’ve shed much blood and many tears along the path to enlightenment. Patience contributes to a fighting man’s longevity with a reliability that few other qualities will. Sun Tzu’s venerable quote about waiting beside the river long enough for one’s enemies to float past is one of my golden rules. There are related applications. Insomuch as I regarded Delia Labrador as a vital lead, my gritted teeth and foot-dragging already paid dividends compared to the time-honored Mafia foot soldier tradition of running around with one’s hair on fire.

  Up to this juncture in the Croatoan investigation, I’d proceeded systematically, favoring incremental steps. I determined to tread lightly until my enemies appeared and their machinations were revealed. Or until somebody pushed back. Another golden rule in the Coleridge Survival Manual—I assume the default existence of enemies. My very existence is liable to run at cross-purposes to someone, somewhere, sooner or later.

  Several guests lounged near the parlor hearth; another handful played poker at a card table. I find it expedient to categorize such groups. These people didn’t fit into a niche, besides the incidental detail they fetishized the great outdoors and expensive weaponry. This was a higher-end resort, although hardly exclusive, which guaranteed rich assholes would bump elbows with blue-collar assholes. Some dressed the part in plaids and big boots; some dressed for a ski lodge vacation in cardigans and turtlenecks. Whatever their class differences, these boys pretending to be grown men bonded garrulously over booze, cards, and machismo.