The Next Cool Place

by Dave Balcom

  “Well, she heard you took Jan to dinner.”

  “It was a professional courtesy, that’s all. One newspaper guy to another,” and I heard my defensive tone even as I spoke. “Not that she’s not a nice woman, er, umm…” I stalled out.

  He couldn’t help but laugh. “Relax, I didn’t mean to shake you up.”

  “It was just dinner, but that’s where we met a guy named Santiago, do you know him?”

  “Yup, he’s a big time player from downstate. Owns some property where the Copper joins the Manistee. It’s a compound of about three cottages, I’m told. I’ve never seen it, but the guys who installed the utility, phone and security systems told me it’s pretty well protected.”

  “Do you know his full name?”

  He thought for a few seconds. “Richard?”

  “Well, see, there’s another one of those little connections that makes me ask questions that put the local police on edge. It’s not my nature to offend…”

  “So, what’s the question again?”

  “Was there anything about that scene that didn’t jibe with what you would call normal?”

  “The lack of skid marks.”

  “I read that in the paper. You figure Mickey fell asleep?”

  “Musta passed out. When his car left the highway it musta bounced like heck. There’s a good foot drop off the pavement onto the shoulder, and that shoulder there was really rutted. It’s hard to imagine how you could sleep through that, but he did.”

  “You think he was pretty drunk?”

  “You could smell the tequila and beer from a distance.”

  “Was there a bottle in the car?”

  “Two empties. And his clothes were soaked in it.”

  “And, that, Sergeant, is another one of those anomalies that makes my hackles stiff.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, you’re going to laugh at me, but, well, I’ve seen Mickey as drunk as any one human can. I’ve seen him when he couldn’t walk, much less drive, and I’ve seen him carry that drunk for more than a day and never fall asleep or pass out, even in a bed.

  “Mickey had one of those metabolisms that helps make lots of drunks because he never threw up or passed out, and he never woke up with a hangover. Normal people take the cure when they wake up with a bad enough head the next morning. It was Mickey’s curse that he never did.”

  “Was there something else?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s that?”

  “In all the years I ran with him, I never saw him spill a drink on himself, much less become soppin’ wet.”

  “You see, that’s the thing about growing old. The liver doesn’t do the job it once did, and old drunks become sloppy, especially on St. Patrick’s Day. It’d take more than that for me to think I missed anything.”

  “And then there’s St. Patrick’s Day.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sergeant, Mickey Buchanan was as Irish as it gets. He was drunk more often than he was sober, but he had two days of sobriety every year – St. Patrick’s Day and New Year’s Eve. They were, like, sacred non-drinking days to him.”

  “Why was that? Was he religious in some way I’ve never heard of?”

  “No sir. He just used to say that he wasn’t about to drink with amateurs, and he never did. Never.”

  “That’s cute, but again…”

  “And then there is the BAC in the coroner’s report.”

  That stopped him short. “I never saw the report. I called Doctor Schwarz and she said it was an accidental death with alcohol. That’s it.”

  “His BAC was point zero eight, according to the doctor. On his frame, I’m not sure you could smell oh eight if you were sleeping with him.”

  “Listen. I always appreciate it when some amateur sleuth comes around to help, but let me review some stuff and maybe we can talk again. Will that work?”

  I tried to smooth his feathers. “Listen, I didn’t call you to bust your ass. I can’t justify the feelings I’m getting right now, and I hoped you’d explain away some of the stuff I saw and heard this week.

  “I’m on my way home to Oregon tomorrow. Let me give you my contact information, but only if you come up with something you think I should know; I’m not some self-appointed watch dog.”

  He gave me his email address as well, and we ended the call on a conversational, if not friendly, note.

  The crew announced the beginning of approach into Minneapolis, and I let my reverie fade to the task at hand, quelling my fears of landings and take offs.

  Flying Northwest Airlines into and out of Minneapolis is like the old days of flying United in and out of O’Hare. You don’t wait too long on the pad before you hook up with your gate, and your connecting flight can’t be miles and miles away. A hub airline has a corner all to itself. It’s a big corner, maybe just one mile, but as long as I had to walk past a bar going from gate A-14 to A-6, I was comfortable, and I had about an hour to kill.

  Sitting at the bar with my Bloody Mary in hand, just people watching I felt an almost physical shock as I noticed Ron White at the other side of the room. He turned away just as I saw him.

  As I grabbed my drink and computer bag to go say hello to him, a group of passengers wearing Hawaiian shirts and leis descended on the bar, blocking my view of him. When I had worked my way around them, he was gone.

  I went back to my original spot at the bar, found someone else sitting there, so I retreated to a stand-up table.

  As I reviewed my memory of what I had just seen, I became uncertain. Had he turned away on the verge of being noticed by me? Had he held a drink in his hand? I couldn’t be sure, and that bothered me. Once again I thought about how much my training had slipped through the years.

  I sipped my drink, looking at the gate where I would fly to Portland, and then on to Pendleton, trying to remember and make sense of what I had just seen, but it didn’t work.

  16

  There wasn’t enough time for more alcohol as I made my way from the Northwest gate to the Horizon terminal in Portland.

  That was a shame, I handled the stress of take offs and landings much better with a pop in me, but not two, that much drink exchanged nerves for stark terror, another symptom of my aging body and brain.

  As I hurried along the corridor with the tile that traces the Columbia/Snake River flowage I regretted I couldn’t take the time to pause; it’s one of the neatest airport things I’d ever encountered.

  Walking through the hub of the terminal I came to an abrupt stop as I saw Ray Means in the company of a well-dressed and well-groomed man of about my age walk out the door and into a waiting car.

  Means, gaunt and tall, is unmistakable. He was standing at the open car door, looking this way and that as the guy he was with entered. With a final glance back at the terminal, our eyes locked for a second, but he disappeared into the car without acknowledging me.

  I stopped dead in my tracks. I thought there had been a second of recognition from Ray, but then it had been erased with another look, as if he’d been caught at something.

  I nearly missed my Horizon flight, but an hour later I was touching down in Pendleton.

  Finding my car in the long term parking lot, I completed the drive down off that mountain to I-84 and up the Cabbage Hill pass less than an hour. The day was sunny and hot in Pendleton; at home it was drizzling its standard May wetness, which matched my mood to a tee..

  My house had been cleaned and freshened in the last day, something I knew I could thank Shirlee Nelson for. I wasted no time walking down the road to the home she shared with her husband, Jack, and to retrieve Punch. I was caught up on local news in minutes, and then walk at a more leisurely pace going home, just in case there might be a late-season volunteer morel.

  The morel season was finished in our woods. We were too low, but I knew that up above 4,000 feet, I would find the beginning of the season again and the start of those lighter colored mushrooms that would make weight in the
bag.

  Back at the house, I was confronted with domestic chores. The stack of mail was impressive and I knew there would be bills.

  I’m one of those guys who has to do it now or never, no matter what that entails. So I put Diana Krall, Nora Jones and Frank on shuffle in the CD player and buckled down to business.

  It was hard work, though. I kept replaying the two surprise encounters on my trip home. Ron and Ray both? Was Ron following me? What was Ray doing with that “suit”? He surely was in protection mode, but what was that all about?

  Ray had been on hand that time back in Michigan in the diner when I had blown my cover and ended once and for all any thought that I needed protection.

  We had been steelhead fishing on the Marquette River outside of Baldwin, and had stopped into the café for a late lunch before heading back to Lake Lucy.

  There were five of us. Mickey, Ray, Howard and Gunderson all took seats in a booth; I sat across from them and alone at the counter. We were all tired and talked out. We sat quietly as the waitress put water and poured coffee for all of us with just a raised eyebrow.

  She was a smiling gal in her 20s and seemed to be alert. After putting in our orders, she had stood at the counter and we chatted about the weather, it was cold; and the fishing, was slow.

  Howard started a conversation with her. Nothing fresh, just asking about a guy he knew in the area, a fisherman. She knew the guy, and they were chatting when I saw a change in her eyes that sent alarm signals, but before I could react or even look, somebody grabbed Howard by the hood of his sweatshirt and yanked him backwards with a crash onto a table.

  I hadn’t heard the two guys come in, but in an instant they started putting boots to my friend, and I just went off in a way I had vowed I never would again.

  I caught one guy by the sleeve with my right hand, and spun him easily because he was on one leg, ready to deliver another kick.

  My left hand came out in a straight line, the hand relaxed as I’d been taught so long ago, and connected with the guy’s throat, just below the Adam’s apple. His eyes bulged, his leg went slack and he was a pile on the floor.

  The other guy was screaming and cursing as he tried to stamp his foot on Howard’s face under the table. “I’ll teach you city fuckers to mess with my,…”

  Again, my left hand came out from me in a straight jab, only this time it was aimed just below the sternum in the solar plexus. His breath whooshed out as my right hand came down in a chop where his shoulder met his neck, and the sound of his collar bone breaking was audible to everyone.

  He screamed. I stomped on his instep, and he went down in agony, writhing on the floor for a second before he passed out.

  The place was stone silent. My three friends in the booth, all self-described tough guys, stared at me as if I had just sprouted wings.

  Howard was on the floor, sputtering and trying to find his feet. “What the hell was that all about,” he screamed. Once on his feet, he was looking for someone to fight.

  “I was just wondering the same thing,” Mickey spoke up with a laugh. “Jesus, Jim, where did that shit come from?”

  “That was some professional combat shit, that was,” Ray Means said with a touch of awe, “Whodafuck wouldda thought…”

  I straightened Howard out, and sat him on a stool. “I don’t feel so hungry now,” he said.

  “Me neither. I hope you understand if we just leave now,” I said to the waitress.

  She couldn’t take her eyes off the two guys on the floor. “Didja kill ‘em?”

  For a second and it might have seemed to everyone that I had already forgotten about them. “No, they’re going to hurt, but they’ll live.”

  I herded everyone into Mickey’s van, and he drove us home. They peppered me with questions, and I swore to them I had no idea what had happened. “I was just scared for Howard. I guess I lost it.”

  “Memo to file,” Means said, “don’t nobody scare Jim.”

  17

  I was just finishing up the bills and filing things away when the phone rang.

  “A girl has to be pretty quick to keep tabs on you, Mr..”

  “Jan?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid it is. Pretty simple plot, this is: Small town girl unabashedly throws herself at tall stranger who waltzed into town and stood everything on its ear.”

  “Throwing I understand, and it’s pretty flattering, but standing on ears?”

  “On several levels. I don’t know how you did it, but yesterday afternoon we had an entire troop of State Police crime scene investigators crawling all over town. Very hush hush, but Sgt. Fish told Pat that they were re-opening the Mickey Buchanan accident investigation.”

  “Who is Pat?”

  “Patty Patterson, the reporter you met.”

  “Oh, of course. Well, I can’t believe that will turn up much new evidence after all this time. From what Fish told me Saturday, he was thorough the first time, and he seemed competent on the phone.”

  “They’re interviewing everyone who saw Mickey that night; that’s the plan anyway.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Mrs. Buchanan is nowhere to be found, and all the business partners are scattered around. The staff at the Schaeffer’s had nothing new for them, but they confirmed one thing, wherever Mickey might have been to get stinko, it wasn’t there.”

  “Are you working?”

  “Always, why, do you know something I should know?”

  “I think you should put Fish’s accident report and Doctor Schwarz’ autopsy report side by side… makes good reading for a reporter-type.”

  “What do you know?”

  “Just what I read, or, honestly, what I had read to me.”

  “Can’t read, that it?”

  “Dyslexic, no doubt.”

  “And not all that bright, either, from what I’m told. You don’t know the difference between a date and ‘professional courtesy.’”

  “Sergeant Fish has a big mouth.”

  “Nope, but his wife, who I’ve known since high school, does. So, now that you’ve kicked this ant hill, are you going to come back here and follow up?”

  “Not planning on it. I can follow this from here if I’m curious, but, frankly, I’m not that interested any more.”

  “That’s not how to treat a woman who is unabashedly throwing herself at you.”

  “Treat? Like how?”

  “Like lying through your teeth.”

  “If you want to talk nasty, why don’t you do the twelve-hour day and come out here and do it to my face?”

  “Just don’t think I can’t, mister. Goodnight.” She hung up in a make-believe huff. I wasn’t sure what to think, but then wrote it off to fatigue – her’s or mine, I wasn’t sure, but it was nearly midnight her time.

  Punch and I went for his nightly walk. The drizzle was just a mist. The wind had the firs sighing nicely and my eyes were getting gritty.

  “Well,” I said to Punch, thinking about Jan. “Buddy, what do you think about that?”

  18

  When I woke up on Monday morning, my head was busy with suspicious thoughts about Mickey Buchanan and Penny Point. Like a piece of food caught in the teeth that your tongue can’t stop worrying… it was like that.

  The development was just getting off the ground, why would there be a big argument in March? I Googled Willis Crocker, the Buchanan’s attorney, and a bunch of hits, including a biography, came up.

  Crocker had graduated from Michigan State University in 1969 and received his law degree from Wayne State University in 1972. He had served three years with the Navy’s Judge Advocate General’s office, and then opened his own practice in Lansing, Michigan in 1976.

  He was divorced and had no children. After almost 20 years of solo practice, in the most recent decade his office had grown to encompass 14 associates, specializing in real estate law, with offices in Denver; Salem, Oregon; and Lansing.

  I found him in the Salem directory, and dialed the number
while my coffee perked. It was just after 9 a.m.

  “Crocker and Associates,” the receptionist answered on the first ring.

  “May I speak to Raymond Means?”

  “One moment, please. May I ask who is calling?”

  I told her.

  “Please hold.” Then there was about a three-minute delay and she came back on the line. “I’m sorry, sir. Who is it you’re trying to reach?”

  “Raymond Means.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but we have no one of that name on staff here.” Her voice had lost its cool efficiency. I felt she was talking to me for someone else’s benefit.

  “I figured he’s not on staff, but I thought he was there with Mr. Crocker.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I’m new on this job, and I’ve asked, and there is nobody here by that name.” And she hung up.

  I sat back in my chair. “Really,” I said to Punch. “No, ‘Can anyone else help you?’ or ‘What is the nature of your business?’ nope. Just click.”

  When Punch and I returned from a mushroom hunt up in the higher country, my message light on the phone was blinking. I cleaned up a few morels, salting them to remove the critters out of them. All the wonderful morels in the Blues had these worms in them. A little salt removed them, and then you could treat them like any other mushrooms. Sometimes I just fried the fungi on low heat and watched the worms crawl out of the caps, but salt was less intense.

  After lunch of scrambled eggs and mushrooms, I set the rest of the morning’s catch in saltwater and then checked the messages.

  The first call was a friend, Randall Albright, a retired wheat rancher and a sometimes real estate dealer from Pendleton who wanted to set up a morel walk for some clients and wondered if I’d guide. Randall and I hunt and fish together, and he is almost always the guide for those outings, but he has no passion for fungus.

  The next was Jan; she just left a message for me to call her ASAP.

  The third was a hang up, as were the fourth, fifth and sixth.

  The last call was from Rick Edmonds, and he asked that I call him. He said it was pretty urgent.