Canyon Secret

by Patrick Lee

  A patented David Sednick smirk covered his face, “You tellin’ em’?

  “I don’t want to. But it ain’t right. They gave their money.”

  David started to walk away and stopped ten feet away. He turned and wrote a note in his pad. “Meet me here tomorrow morning at the same time and I’ll have it then. Then get off my ass. After everything I’ve done for you. Got you and your old man a job up here. You’d be nowhere without my help.”

  “David! We’re all doin’ this for Anna. Have you forgot?” “Wait right here! I’ll be right back! David walked away toward the bosses shack and flipped Tomas the finger over his head with both hands. He slammed the makeshift metal door shut behind him. A few minutes later David walked back out the door and slammed a personal check for six-hundred fifty dollars into Tomas’ hand. “Now stay the hell away from me. You’re just like your old man.”

  Tomas turned, jogged across the Dam roadway, and ran down the haul road as fast as he could go. Finally he stopped in the parking lot at the barracks. He bent at the waist and placed the palms of his hands on his knees as he searched for a normal breath of air. Sweat drenched his entire body. His feet stung from the blisters on his feet from the pounding of his work boots and sweaty socks on the gravel road. Tomas Anzich ran his anger deep into the rock bed of the road. But a proud smile filled his sweaty face. Carol Davis would get her money later that afternoon.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The August 16th afternoon brought the warmest temperature of the summer of 1952. Record breaking heat shot the temperatures into the nineties for the fourth day in a row. The third floor of the Federal Building in Butte roasted the four FBI agents who sat around the turn of the century oak round table. Stacks of photos, notes, and files covered the surface of the table. Agents labored in rolled up white shirt-sleeves and loosened ties. Suit jackets hung on the back of the heavy wooden chairs.

  Special Agent Moore set his water glass down, wiped his forehead, and tapped the tablet in his hands against the corner of the table. “I feel good about this list of possible victims here. The victims from the other murders were bosses. Each of them had large savings accounts. All three men were in their mid to late thirties. They also hit the bars pretty hard at night. We have two guys here on Hungry Horse who fit that profile.”

  Agent Ted Hughes looked up from the opened file in front of him. “Who are the two again?”

  “Robert Mular and David Sednick.”

  “Let’s take a closer look at both of them. Mular worked at both Coulee and Hoover. You’d think he would have been a target at one of those projects. If Mular was our guy, why wasn’t he killed working one of those jobs?”

  The elderly gray haired agent sat at the head of the table and cleared his throat before he spoke. He pushed his glasses up on his nose with his index finger and said, “Sednick is our man. He flinched at some of the questions Superintendent Scalf asked him. There’s a reason a workingman like him has eight-thousand dollars in his bank account. Mular has ten-thousand but he damn near had that much when he left Coulee City four years ago. It’s Sednick all right. He started as a laborer at Hungry Horse and then became a walking boss. We zero in on him. Follow Sednick and we find the killer.”

  Moore set his paperwork back into his manila folder. “Okay. That settles it. We plant one of us to hide in Sednick’s back pocket. Superintendent Scalf will set up the job alongside Sednick. We can begin right away. Who goes in?”

  Agent Hughes nodded his head as he convinced himself he was the best person to go undercover. “I think I’d work out. God knows Moore cannot fix a flat tire, let alone work tools on a Dam project.” The timely humor lightened the moods and lowered the temperature of the men in the room. “Scalf assured me one of us can work his way in pretty easily with Sednick. Apparently, the guy’s shy on friends and men who trust him.”

  Back in Martin City, the Montana Liberty Bell parade started in front of Mabel’s. The ladies in the Care Less Group laughed amongst themselves at the irony of kicking off the U.S. Savings Bond Independence drive in front of a cathouse. The mayor of Columbia Falls didn’t share their opinion of starting places, but the truck hauling the copper liberty bell rolled down the hill into the main street of Martin City. Hannah worked her way through the crowd that lined the street on the south side of the gravel road while Lila slid in and out of the men, women, and children on the north side. The ladies distributed pamphlets, which explained the savings bond drive to the adults. They gave small bells to the children. Betty Hansen walked with the sheriff in front of the truck. She tossed small bags of candy to the children standing with theirparents. A big smile filled Sheriff Schustrom’s face as he waved to the parade watchers. Betty left his bed only an hour earlier and the glow from their passionate love making changed his attitude about another parade in his area. The drum and bugle corps from Kalispell rallied the crowd who clapped as the liberty bell truck crawled by.

  Two men stood between the Club Café and Byrd’s Grocery. Both men looked ahead as they quietly took care of their business. The shorter older man in the blue suit sipped on a bottle of Pepsi as he uttered his instructions. “Just like Coulee and Hoover, right?”

  “Five-thousand. Half up front. The other half when he’s dead.”

  “Agreed. Today is August 16th. Truman dedicates the Dam on October 1st. You’re to kill David Sednick on the last day of September. With Truman and secret service people all over the place, the murder will be hushed up.”

  “I’ll come back in five weeks and track your man and pick my spot and time. You can meet with him then so I can see him. Call me in Seattle and tell me when and where you’re meeting him. He won’t see Truman dedicate the dam.”

  As the liberty bell passed in front of him, the man in the suit slid his hand into the pocket of his suit coat and retrieved a white envelope. He nonchalantly handed the envelope across to the other man and whispered out of the side of his mouth, “You’ll get the other half when I learn Sednick is dead.” He smiled and waved to his wife Betty Hansen as she paraded by next to the sheriff. The man’s hand paused in the air as he noticed his wife smiling as she looked up at the sheriff. It had been quite awhile since he noticed that happy of a look on her face.

  Roy Devers slipped the white envelope into his right pant pocket and slowly walked away from the main street. He turned his back on the thousand people that turned out to watch the Liberty Bell Parade. As he rounded the corner to the side street, he yelled at the three teenagers gathered around his 1952 Lincoln Capri, “Get away from my goddamn car you little punks!”

  The boys jumped and stepped back from the luxury sedan parked under a withering cottonwood tree. The taller boy yelled back at the quickly approaching man, “We was just lookin’ at her. Go screw yourself you old prick!” They sprinted away, nervously laughing as they disappeared down the alley toward the back of Whitey’s Bar.

  Roy stood by his two-tone yellow luxury car that looked out of place in the midst of older Chevy trucks and well used cars from the 1930’s and 40’s. With his bare hand, he rubbed the slightly noticeable mark left by the boys touching his car as they admired the beautiful lines. He mumbled to himself as he noticed dust on the Washington license plates. “Goddamn hick town. Can’t wait to get back to Seattle.” He brushed the dust from his shoes with the cloth he retrieved from the floor behind the driver’s seat. After adjusting his mirror, he started the eight-cylinder engine and drove to the two-lane highway that ran below Martin City.

  Once he cleared Columbia Falls he relaxed. He placed the envelope with the twenty-five hundred dollars into the glove compartment. With this payment, he’d pay off the short loan on his two month old Capri. The hot August air brushed his salt and peppered flattop back as he pressured the gas pedal up to sixty-five miles an hour. Soon he’d be racing toward Spokane where he planned to take a hotel room at the Davenport. He liked the way they cared for his car in the underground parking garage.

  As he cruised along, Roy flashed
on his meeting in Martin City. Seemed like the same day over again when he met and planned to kill that skinny fella in Coulee City. This guy in Hungry Horse will make the third man he eliminated for Slick Hansen as he called his employer. Slick dressed the same most of the time. Blue suit, gray tie, hair perfectly combed. He looked like he just climbed out of the bathtub. But he paid on time and his marks were easy. This one’ll be the same. One shot through the head at fifty yards. No problem.

  After all, he made head shots in Germany during the war from three-hundred, four-hundred yards and never missed. That was his job for the U.S. Army. Kill Germans. It was more fun to kill them at a distance. He and one of his buddies bet on long distance shots.

  He never got to meet any of them before he killed them. These Dam workers were different. He’d actually talked to the other two men several times before he took them down. Roy planned to get real friendly with this Sednick fella before he killed him. It was more interesting that way. He could get closer and the challenge of a night shot also interested him.

  On the way back to the contractor’s office where he worked, R.T. Hansen loosened his gray tie a little and rolled his neck to relieve the tightness that plagued him whenever he met with Devers. Devers frightened him. He hoped there was another way around killing David. But there wasn’t. David knew too much. Once he laundered the money, he wasn’t needed any longer. He became a liability. Just like the other two men. It was just the way of things. He suspected that maybe Devers thought the same way about him. Nothing to lose for a man like Devers. Their business ended with Sednick. “I better put a twist to the ending of this story if I plan to stay alive.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “Only sixteen days ago, Johnny Davis died unnecessarily! Now another one of our vibrators got killed today. It’s got to stop!” The anger in Jiggs Quinn’s voice roared in the faces of the safety-first committee members. “There’s not an excuse in hell that can cover how a crane can fall off a crawler track atop a cliff and land on a man below working a concrete pour covering a water line. No goddamn excuse in hell!”

  The other members of the committee sat silently as the words banged against the metal walls of Superintendent Scalf’s makeshift office. Two bosses, a member of each union craft, and Scalf conducted their weekly morning meeting. W.R. Scalf started to respond, but Jiggs cut him off with a continuation of his tirade. He slapped down the front-page copy of the Hungry Horse News. The grizzly photographs of Shorty’s death punctuated Jigg’s point. “Too dangerous of work anymore! We got to slow her down some. I don’t care if the President of the United States is gonna throw the switch on October 1st. We’re pushing too hard, too fast, W.R.

  “Whatever happened to safety first for Christ’s sake?”

  “Hold on there Jiggs! The weather caused Shorty’s death. It was an act of God. There was no way we could’ve seen that short-out with the power. The wet conditions—”

  “Bullshit! Act of God, my sweet ass. We should’ve shut her down for the dayshift. Let things dry out some. We all feel under the gun all the time. That crawler today should’ve been supported with another bulldozer and more tie down cables. Too many men in too much of a goddamn hurry.”

  Buck Morris stared at Jiggs. He couldn’t rein in his temper and grief for the loss of another good man any longer. “Maybe you been at this too long, Quinn! You can’t cut the mustard anymore. You—”

  Jiggs Quinn rose out of his gray metal chair with his calloused hands firmly gripped to the edge of the table. He now directed his tirade at Morris. With a trickle of snoose seeping down the side of his mouth he yelled at Morris, “You sayin’ I caused Johnny’s death. You sayin’ that, you dirty son-of-a-bitch!”

  The ironworkers superintendent Dick Kearney stepped in, “Knock it off, Jiggs! You too, Buck! This ain’t gettin’ us nowhere. Let’s cool off and meet back here tomorrow. In the meantime, we can all be thinkin’ of some ways to prevent accidents for the comin’ weeks.”

  Jiggs pushed away from the table, and stormed out of the office. W.R. sat back in his chair and folded his arms. His blood pressure boiled, and his head pounded. He caught his breath and said, “Dick’s right. Back here at 7:30 tomorrow mornin’.” The men quietly picked up their note pads, slid back their chairs, and left.

  Scalfs’ secretary, Mary, hesitated before she entered his office. She opened the door only halfway. “Sorry to interrupt W.R., but there’s an agent from the FBI on the telephone. He wants to make an appointment with you in the next two days.”

  He shook his head back and forth and then signaled her to forward the call to him. “Just what I need now, Mary. The goddamn FBI. What’s next, an earthquake that’ll take out the Dam?”

  She faked a half-hearted smile and returned to her phone.

  Mikhail looked out the window of Bill’s Texaco Station while he held the black telephone against his ear. He watched Bill wash the windshield of the logging truck while his son pumped gas. His daughter Kat enthusiastically caught him up on the weekly news from Butte. She apparently had finished one too many cups of coffee. “Daddy, the strike settlement was in the paper this morning, and the union agreed to a 3 percent increase on the cost of living increase.”

  Mikhail switched the phone into his other hand,” What was the total wage increase?”

  Kat scrolled down the news article with her index finger. “Oh, here it is. Let’s see. This brings the total wage increase into the six to six and a half percent range. Is that pretty good, Daddy?”

  In his head he calculated what that meant in increase wages for him. “Not too bad. Anything on health insurance?”

  Her finger continued to search the Montana Standard front-page article, “It says that there isn’t any increase in insurance, but there is a good increase in the pension each month. It also says the Company backed off the demand for cross-productivity, whatever that is.”

  Mikhail swiveled in the worn rocking chair in the gas station, “Ya. I’m happy they got the pension increase. Too bad about nothin’ goin’ on with the insurance. That was somethin’ I was after—” He caught himself as he remembered he wasn’t returning to Butte. “Anything new about people sellin’ their houses in McQueen?”

  She sipped the final drops from her pink plastic coffee cup. “George told me yesterday that the Company’s man got close to signing the first deal with the Marinkovichs. The rest of the neighborhood is up in arms with the Marinkovichs maybe sellin’ out. We goin’ to sell our house before we move up to Columbia Falls in October?”

  A few seconds breezed by as Mikhail’s stomach flip-flopped with the thought of selling their place. He promised himself to hold out for a while, but he wanted the money from the sale of his house in Butte to buy a nice place in Columbia Falls. He decided not to talk to Katya about it. He would come down in person to deal with the business of selling the family home and dealing with his neighbors and close friends. “We’ll just wait and see how this goes, Katya. Don’t worry about it now. We’ll get you and Anna moved up here before we do anythin’.”

  “That’s a relief. Just movin’ away from Butte is goin’ to be tough enough without losin’ our McQueen friends. They’re like part of our family.”

  Mikhail knew it was time to change the subject. He needed time to make a plan. “How’s Anna feelin’ this week?”

  Her voice changed and her excitement sailed through the phone lines, “Daddy. Your granddaughter took a few steps today. This portable oxygen tank is wonderful. George rigged a harness around her waist that will let her pull the small tank around with her. She’s so thrilled.”

  He licked his lips and swallowed hard. “She walked?”

  “Yes, that’s what usually happens when you take a few steps.” She laughed and rested back in her chair. “She can also go a little longer without the oxygen mask around her mouth. Her eating has improved and everything. We’ll be ready to move in October all right.”

  “Well, someone else wants to use the phone, Honey. When she wakes
up from her nap, tell her how proud I am of her.” He wiped the tears from his cheek and turned away from the other Dam worker waiting to use the phone. “I’ll call you next Sunday, okay?”

  “Okay, Daddy. Say hi to Tom and John Nolan. Goodbye now.”

  Mikhail hung up the phone and walked into the men’s room. As he used the urinal, it occurred to him that his daughter never mentioned her husband. He took this as a good sign. His family would be together again in about seven weeks.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Ash they drove toward the Going to the Sun Road, Tomas shared the information in the Glacier Park Travel Guide.

  The Going To The Sun Road in Glacier National Park stretches across fifty-two miles of alpine heights and connects East and West Glacier. Men armed with shovels, hemp climbing ropes, and several tons of explosives carved a road that followed one of the most difficult and expensive routes in United States road building history. Engineers from the Bureau of Public Roads and the National Park Service designed the road together and laid the foundation for road building in America.

  In 1910, transcontinental highway projects sprang up as auto travel became popular throughout the country. Major William Logan looked to build a road through Glacier Park’s backcountry. The only road in Glacier at that time was a washed out wagon trail that connected Belton to Apgar near the foot of McDonald Lake. One recommendation for connecting East and West Glacier was to build a road that lead from Belton, along McDonald Lake, over Logan Pass and into St. Mary’s Lake on the eastern front of Glacier National Park. The project employed about three-hundred men who moved two-hundred fifty tons of explosives. Men were paid by the cubic yards of material moved. The workers used four three-ton locomotives with dump cars and three-thousand feet of gauged track, portable compressors, a Fortson tractor, two graders, and anassortment of trucks, teams, and wagons. The work season was two-hundred days long, and the men moved snow by hand.