“Chase isn’t a last name—it’s a verb! Anyway, I love ’em but they prefer to ride. Boys like to shoot.” Donnie picked a lever-action carbine off its pegs and offered it to Hungerman, who accepted it with the guarded interest of a man presented a tray of engagement rings. “You bring ’em in October, we’ll take ’em out to the dynamite shoot. They won’t have to kill anything.”
Hungerman handed back the rifle. “They’ll be in school in October.”
“Okay, s’pose not. They’d have to show a safe hunter card, anyway.”
“I don’t think Lew is in Grand Junction to learn how easy it is for everybody to discharge explosives,” said Meg.
“I like to start with the best stuff and work my way down.” Donnie had waited for a meeting as far from Hungerman’s comfort zone as possible and now the developer was about to get the full treatment. “I get she didn’t drive you up here to test the mattress. I’ve checked out your company. Looks to me like you know how to squeeze insurance nickels into dimes, and I now hear you got some big development on the burner. I grow beef, patch roads and move a little dirt around. And we both seem to have an interest in longevity.”
Hungerman cast a glance at Meg. She’d told Donnie nothing and hoped her expression said so.
“Where you staying now?” Donnie said.
“The Entrada.”
“La Entrada! I spent a night there once. Had this brown oatmeal shampoo you squeezed out of a tube. Wasn’t sure whether to put it on my hair or spread it on the toast.”
“Donnie’s kidding,” Meg said.
“Yes, appearances can be deceiving,” Hungerman said.
They had just moved to the table when Hungerman asked her to retrieve his bag from the car. “I have an NDA for Donnie in there.” Seeing Donnie’s raised eyebrows, he translated: “Non-disclosure agreement.”
Donnie raised his hand as Meg stood up. He said, “I know what it is. If you bring back a piece of paper for me, I’m not going to sign it, so save yourself the trip.”
“It’s standard,” said Hungerman.
“Not with me. I’m not going to blab or steal your damn secrets, and I hate paying lawyers. So let’s just agree to be straight and not screw each other, all right?” He extended his hand to Hungerman, who took it. The wrestling match had begun.
Hungerman quickly sketched the Betterment Longevity Institute plan. Meg had no idea what Donnie knew, but she’d seen enough of him to know his blunt let’s all get our cards on the table style was the way he concealed the card kept in reserve. Hungerman had been coy about his interests, too. He would lose negotiating leverage once Donnie knew he had settled on Las Colonias. The men talked about the construction business and the new infrastructure a Betterment campus would require, never quite getting to the subject that interested them both—the properties near the riverfront. At one point, Meg caught Donnie watching her as Hungerman spoke. Of course. Donnie couldn’t read Hungerman, but he might pick up something from her reactions. She wondered what she’d already given him.
“Most of the out-of-town boys I know come here to spend their money, not to make any. The richest one of all’s built himself a whole frontier town. At least he owns a coal mine down the road but it hardly covers the overhead. Then there’s Devin Magruder, the cowboy actor. Nice guy, family man, my ex-neighbor. He built him up a nice el rancho, but it’s hard to flip a twenty-five-million anything around here. We got a fancy resort over south where you can stay in a casita, ride a horse, take a helicopter spin and gawk at the owner’s classic cars collection. I hear you can also get in touch with your inner self. Personally, I’d be distracted by the fifteen-hundred-a-day it cost me. Honestly, how can that make any money? What I’m saying is, all those were vanity projects. We’re simple folk, diggers, growers and builders. So when you start talking about the money in destination healthcare, my head gets a bit scratchy.”
“Let me know if you need a translation,” Meg said.
“No, I’m good,” Hungerman said. “I appreciate the candor. I’m not here to become one of Donnie’s beautiful spendthrift stories. I’m here for advice.”
“Well my advice is, if you put up a headquarters and hotel, build a parking ramp. Cars here turn into a toaster oven after an hour, and you don’t want all that pavement around your resort so it looks like a shopping mall. Anyway, we didn’t clean up the junkyards just to park cars on the river.”
So Donnie knew somehow.
Hungerman looked at Donnie, then Meg, then back to Donnie. “You people are something,” he said.
“Thank you,” said Donnie. “Would you like any other advice?”
“Sure.”
“Parking ramp construction is a specialty deal.”
“And I suppose you know a local contractor who could build one.”
“You could probably sell the City on events parking. If they kick in, they’d have to bid it out, but yeah, I do,” Donnie deadpanned. “Just a thought.”
“And if we were interested in property down there owned by DTB, LLC and Claybar Investments, I suppose you could put us in touch with the principals.”
Terri Barclay let the screen door bang to announce her arrival. “I hope I left you enough time,” said Terri. “If Donnie hasn’t made his pavement-is-civilization speech yet, I’ll come back later.”
“No, we’re good,” Hungerman said. “Freedom needs freeways. Farm to market. Factory to store. Ambulance to hospital. Kids to Gramma’s house.”
“You’re a quick study,” Terri said.
“Well, he did repeat himself.”
“For emphasis!” said Donnie. “You all laugh. Roads built empires, all the way back to the damn Romans.”
“Capital flows build empires now,” Hungerman said. “Servers and fiber optics. Bandwidth. Information.”
“Yeah, well, next time your airplane comes down out of the clouds, try to land on bandwidth,” said Donnie. “Take away pavement and the Grand Valley’d be Mexico without the limes.”
They were scarcely back on the road before Hungerman said, “You were right to set this up. I need him whether I want him or not.”
“He sounds on board.”
“You think so.” It was a statement, not a question. “He’s played hard-to-get for months and suddenly he’s all ready to build me a parking ramp? I’m waiting for the other cowboy boot to drop.”
“I think you handled him fine. I’m sure Donnie would love to see this go through. We all would.”
“I know he’s your buddy but you have to be with me on this. I need an advocate with Barclay and a back channel to the mayor. Plus the homeless factor. If a retainer makes it cleaner for you, let me know.”
Now was the time to mention Wesley Chambers. But she knew better than to present clients with problems or surprises. She would make this tent city thing go away. Sister Rose had told her it wouldn’t be the worst thing. A call to Eve. Some feedback to the coalition. A courtesy call to Lyle Sandstrom. It would be all for the best.
“No,” she said. “No retainer. I’m doing this for the town.”
Hungerman reached across the seat and placed a hand on her arm. Meg didn’t look over. The road was dangerous and so were blue eyes that oozed sincerity on demand.
“I see why Eve and Dan like you, too.”
That was funny, since Eve and Dan barely tolerated each other.
“Has either of them talked to you about running?”
Running? She hadn’t run in years.
“They tell me the city council doesn’t have a clear majority to support the proposal. Some could go bonkers over any Las Colonias privatization. And those pinch-penny, one-year-a-time guys. We need to redraw the lines in the spring election, elect a progressive businessperson who’ll also be palatable to the enviros and bleeding hearts. I think you’d be a factor. Really dynamite, in fact.”
Oh, you don’t know me. The prospect of public office made her carsick. Not campaigning or the grinding, petty details of running the city. Not the dron
ing meetings with their proclamations and obligatory ceremonies. Not even the infighting and public abuse. Everyone postured. It came with the job. It came with her job. But underneath, leaders were supposed to be uncorrupted. Not just act better—be better. Knowing where the bodies were buried was supposed to be only a metaphor.
Trips to Glade Park always took Meg back in time. It was a decade earlier there, maybe more. The present was still closer and more attached to the past than to the future. The old-time ranchers like the Barclays had survived and built their wealth in a land that didn’t easily give up abundance. They were like the juniper, willing to let a limb die if it meant they could hang on, and they were suspicious of people whose families had not suffered in kind, preferably for three generations. In the valley, affairs aimed more toward the future, which came down to the pursuit of money and hope.
Hungerman was absorbed in a call with Vince Foyer. He didn’t notice when they passed Cold Shivers Point.
They were halfway down the face of the Monument when Hungerman broke it off and said, “I have half an hour. Show me the one thing I should absolutely know about you.”
“About me?” she said, startled.
“You, the town. I’ve already gotten the message that you, the woman, aren’t interested.” He said it carefully, as if setting down something where he could find it again.
What did someone like Hungerman see? Did he even notice the ancient and contradictory walls of the valley? Did he care about caverns that coughed up dinosaurs, junipers dating to the crucifixon, the river that had carved the Grand Canyon? He seemed more interested in the works of man. She could show the plucky Main Street, the hospital’s hilltop kingdom, the university’s burgeoning campus, the teeming acres of malls and industrial parks, but those had likely all been rolled up in the initial site survey. Development, she’d heard someone say, was based half upon facts and half on hope, but always going forward. How much could he know of the town’s real life if he was always going forward?
She parked along the Riverside Parkway beside the old mill. Hungerman took in the massive masonry structure with its metal roof and bricked-over windows. Across the park, a ragged crew of Community Service workers tossed sticks on brushpiles scraped from the remains of the tamarisk fire.
“An empty field and an abandoned, fenced-in building. Are you trying to make me feel at home?” Hungerman seemed amused.
“I was hoping you’d know where we are.”
“This is Las Colonias,” he said. “What’s left to show? I’ve been all over this place.”
“You’ve seen the landscape, the maps and the soil reports. But have you seen the past?”
He moved to open the door.
“This isn’t a walking tour,” she said. “This is about what’s gone. Like the Utes. They were too nomadic to be farmers, but they did grow corn along the river. The tribes signed a treaty that let them keep the western third of the state. No white men wanted this arid valley, but after the silver boom, they wanted the whole state. Three treaties and an uprising later, the Utes were removed to Utah. About two minutes later, Grand Junction’s founders put up over five thousand city lots for sale.” She smiled. “We were a creation of speculators from the very start.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” he said.
“Small farmers were lured by stories of abundant orchards springing from the desert. The mining towns paid boomtown prices for fresh fruit, but after the Panic of ’93, silver prices collapsed. The fruit growers who didn’t go under had to farm at a more corporate scale and ship to distant markets. Then along came the Spanish-American War. It cut off trade with Cuba, the country’s main sugar supplier. Investors convinced the county government to kick in money to build the state’s first sugar beet factory.”
“Let’s hear it for wars of opportunity!” Hungerman said.
“Farmers here weren’t so keen on the hard field work a beet crop required. The brand new factory went broke within a year. Later, Holly Sugar took over, imported Mexican labor, built company housing and made a go of it until the Depression. That’s when the stockyard closed, too. In those days, a man grew flowers on the island. He sold out to a junkyard. Are you with me so far? Indian corn, fruit, sugar, beef, flowers and then junk.” She pulled away from the curb, as if to emphasize the shift she was about to make, and headed for the Entrada.
“After the Second World War, that old plant was converted to process uranium. The Bomb created a market and Atoms for Peace inspired a boom. Uranium prospecting went crazy. By the time the Feds shut the mill down in 1970, it had produced two million tons of radioactive waste and provided free tailings used as fill all over town, around homes, roads and sewer lines galore. In the mid-90s they finally finished the cleanup. Not a great chapter in our history. Bombs, pollution, cancer and Federal cleanup. Twenty years later, there’s nothing here, except the Botanical Gardens, a burned out homeless camp and a historic building nobody would touch until you came to town.”
“You must’ve been a good teacher,” he said. “The history doesn’t worry me. Or are you telling me Las Colonias is cursed?”
“Not cursed. Sort of laden. Inhabited by the ghost of everything that’s ever happened.” Everything. The junked cars and Neulan’s Jeep. Amy Hostetter’s blood added to the polluted soil. The glue factory and Wesley’s doomed plans for independence. The tamarisk roots that would rise again. “It’s like there’s this glimmer of radiation from past mistakes, not strong enough to kill you, just to remind you there’s no such thing as a clean slate.”
“I don’t think I want you to write my leasing brochure,” he said, “but I might have a marketing job for you after the election.”
He either expected her to lose or to be okay with a massive conflict of interest.
“We do believe in the future. And the proof is, we’ve believed in it again and again and again. We’ve followed socialists and libertarians, Rotarians and Klan members, Republicans and Democrats, utopian dreamers and hardheaded businessmen, enviros and polluters. So please don’t come here with pretty promises you can’t keep—because we will believe you.”
Meg stopped at the Entrada’s portico. Hungerman sat for a moment. Was he reflecting on her account or simply composing himself before his next meeting? Finally he said, “Good job today with Barclay. You have ideas. You speak your mind. People respect you. I think there’s so much we can do for each other. Let’s get together for a drink before I leave.” He gave her arm a light squeeze and was out of the car before she remembered.
“Your bag!”
He continued toward the lobby. Meg stepped out and called again. He turned and thumped his temple with the heel of his hand, grinning, playing the charming idiot. But he didn’t come back for the bag. God, what it must be like to be waited upon for everything! Jules was right. The leather was spectacular, a thousand-dollar whimsy. No working messenger owned a bag like this. She handed it over. He reached through the strap, shouldered it and circled her wrist as he drew back his arm, stepping toward the entrance as if it were all one dance move. When she did not follow, he stopped with his thumb resting over her pulse point.
“I’m trying to figure you out,” he said.
“I sell houses, Lew.” It was the first time she’d used his first name. Once out, it felt too intimate.
“That’s not what I meant,” he said.
She was afraid of that. “This really isn’t the place…”
“Then let’s find a better one. In a few days, I fly to Idaho Falls, and I could use a realtor’s advice.”
Did he really think she’d fly off with him? Based on what? Make it light. “I’m only licensed in Colorado,” she said.
“No need for a license. I’m just looking, and you already have a good idea of what I’m after. Think about it. I’ll be in touch.”
He released her wrist but his eyes stayed locked on hers, his smile still trying to draw her his way. If not now, later. She felt the flush rising in her face and she broke for the ca
r, hoping it didn’t show.
Was this how timesaving executives handled assignations? Surely a man so practiced at pitching to strangers should know his we don’t need a license innuendo was atrocious. Had he shortened the house tour so he’d have some free time with her back at the inn?
Can I ask you a question?
May I.
How much experience with boys did you actually have when you were advising me?
Some.
Could you quantify, say, in total bases reached? Because I’m beginning to doubt your credentials. In fact, maybe I should be the one giving advice, and I’m still a virgin!
I’ve always wondered.
Don’t you find this Lew Hungerman just a tiny bit creepy? He practically groped you.
This is business. We’re adults. You don’t have experience in either one.
I have a hard-earned education in the subject of manipulative behavior, though, and I’ve been watching this guy.
He’s nothing like Neulan.
Oh, like they only come in one flavor.
So what have you seen that’s so revealing?
The same things you have.
Have you ever been treated for drug or alcohol problems and returned to drinking or using drugs?
—Vulnerability Index Prescreen for Single Adults
Kayakers found Jimmy Johncock well downriver from Las Colonias, speared on a river snag. From the burns on his arms and legs, the coroner figured he’d tried to beat out flames before he stumbled into the water and drowned. It seemed like Jimmy—fighting fire to the last breath, being brave and fucking up. He wasn’t afraid of a fight but he was never any good at it. Sober, drunk or hung over, Jimmy went down pretty easily. He was always a good loser, though, someone said. A real good loser.
Sylvia Tell identified Jimmy. The police knew they could go to her because she didn’t want any of her Day Center guests to end up in the potter’s field by the police gun range having to listen to target practice for eternity. Someone came up with the idea of sprinkling a little of Jimmy in every cop car in the city. The project seemed doable and quickly attracted volunteers although any of them holding a baggie of ashes would never get it as far as the back seat. But in the end, everyone agreed Jimmy’s proper resting place was in the river, and The Point, where Jimmy had lived off and on, was the best location for the farewell service. That it would require all the mourners to trespass did not enter anyone’s mind.
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