Clearly, there was no way this overly muscled, sullen, and obnoxious beefball and I were ever going to get along; and right then I knew, with the same conviction a man falling off a seaside cliff has about landing unattractively on the rocks below, that Cimarron and I were going to collide, crash together somehow, and one of us was going to crunch onto the rocks. It would for sure happen eventually; sooner or later, maybe now.
But it didn't have to be now. Sweet reason demanded that I be nice for a while longer. So I said mildly, “Thanks for answering my questions in such helpful detail, Mr. Cimarron. Incidentally, that's a good-looking piece.” I indicated the pistol in his hand, still not pointing at me, not quite. “Getting in a little target practice? Knocking off the neighbors’ kids, maybe?"
He scowled. Even before that, his visage had not been such as to encourage the timid. But, scowling, brows pulled lower, corners of the wide mouth depressed, he looked a lot like one of those squat statues explorers find down there in the South American jungles. And not much more fun.
I went on, heedless of sweet reason, “Yeah, I'd say that's a custom job—must be, unless it came equipped with a supercharger, or whatever that thing is on the front end there. I'd say single-shot target piece, probably a modified Hammerli free pistol going for around ... what? Fifteen hundred clams maybe?"
The squat statue did not move. At least, not the whole statue. Only its nostrils stirred, flaring slightly and then subsiding as breath was sucked in and snorted out, in and out again, disturbing the little jungles of hair in those nasal orifices. For a queer moment I imagined little twittering creatures in there, clinging to the microscopic equivalent of vines and roots and tree trunks, waiting for the storm to subside so they could get on with their lunches, I also thought for a moment that Cimarron might get even more violent, but he merely turned his head and gazed briefly at the far horizon.
When he looked back up at me, the scowl was gone and he said, almost pleasantly, “You got a pretty good eye, pal. This started out as a Hammerli Model one-fifty, but the guy who owned it had it silenced so he could use it as a takeout gun. It's very good—they tell me—for killing people when you don't want to make noise doing it. You want it real quiet, then you use subsonic ammo, muzzle velocity of maybe seven hundred feet per second.” He opened his left hand, glanced at the two remaining long-rifle slugs in his palm. “Like these, from Fiocchi.” Then he looked up at me again and said, “I, of course, only use the gun for target practice, plinking at rocks and twigs."
“Of course,” I said. “You hit any? Rocks and twigs, I mean?"
“Well,” he said, “I've never missed the mountain."
That one surprised me. It sounded almost like levity. Cimarron shifted in his chair, pressed down the Hammerli's trigger-cock lever, which sprang back up by itself. So the gun was now ready to fire. Meaning, I presumed, that Cimarron intended to fire it. Hopefully, not into me.
All around us were scraggly mesquite trees and creosote bushes that grow all over the desert, here covering the earth and sloping hillside along with some feathery cassia and manzanita trees. About forty feet before us was one creosote bush larger than most, with a narrow crooked spire sticking almost straight up into the air at its top.
Cimarron, still seated, raised his right arm, intricately carved and convoluted wooden grip of the gun snugly nestled into and around his big paw, sighted briefly, and fired. The sound was a sort of ffft, no louder than a girl blowing somebody a kiss. But the tip of that upright spire disintegrated.
“That's good shooting,” I said. “Damned good."
“Not bad. But you can probably do better, right? Wanna give it a try?"
Actually, I didn't. It was his gun, his party. But I couldn't very well refuse, not when he so obviously wanted me to make a fool of myself. “Sure,” I said, with only a small sinking feeling, “why not? But one more little thing, if you don't mind."
He waited, seeming quite pleased with himself. Either because of his making that very good—perhaps even somewhat lucky—shot, or because-he'd maneuvered me into attempting to match his already-accomplished bull's-eye, his disposition appeared to have improved slightly. And with him, slightly seemed like a lot. Whatever the reason, when I asked my next question, he not only answered at some length but appeared to enjoy responding.
What I said was, “One other little thing, Mr. Cimarron. I know you're president of Golden Phoenix Mines, and that the shares are trading at about fourteen now—largely, I gather, because of a recent assay report. I talked to a couple of people who say the stock might go to twenty. But some others think it might wind up at a buck and a half. Any comment?"
He startled me. He laughed. He got his mouth clear open and let out a bull-like roaring sound and slapped his thigh with the fist holding the .22 cartridges.
“A buck and a half?” he said, still snorting a little. “I can guess who told you that. The same guy who went long in the market on Black Friday. Or maybe the guy who sold all his International Tabulator just before they changed the name to IBM. Somebody with his head so full of bullshit he craps out his ears, that's who. Yeah, Phoenix isn't twenty yet—by the by, this morning's quote is sixteen and a half bid, pal, you must have got your numbers a day or two back."
“OK, so it's sixteen and a half. But that's today, and the people I talked to are worried about tomorrow—"
“Screw ‘em. Those goddamn losers are always worried about tomorrow. I tell you Phoenix is sixteen and a half today, in a week it'll be twenty, and in a month or two it could be forty."
“You giving me a tip?"
“If you've got enough sense to take it, yeah. Too good to be true, right? Worry about tomorrow, right? Scott, how much do you know about GPXM—Golden Phoenix, in case you're a market idiot?"
“Not much. I know it's a former producing mine that was called Maricopa something. And three or four years back, Liberty Enterprises—whoever that is—asked you to check it out, get it running again, named you president, and the stock's done pretty well since then."
“Yeah, pretty well. First year earnings a dime, next year twenty cents, last year forty cents, and we might hit eighty this year, still got a chance—there's nearly three months left. Do you understand what I'm telling you, or are you too goddamned dumb to know I've just described a rate of earnings increase of one hundred percent? Earnings smack-doubled each year since day one, and it's gonna happen again."
The change in Cimarron's attitude, his earnestness, and even his expression—which, while not now exactly cute, was at least not horrifying—amounted to a metamorphosis. Either he was a great actor—and most con men are actors deserving of solid-gold Oscars—or he really enjoyed talking about his Golden Phoenix, about mining and shares and rates of earnings increases, maybe even believed what he was saying.
And what he was saying, not having stopped yet, was, “Another thing you're dead wrong about, Scott. Liberty didn't ask me to turn Maricopa into Golden Phoenix and make it one hell of a mine—I asked them."
“You lost me there."
“I got a hunch that's easy to do. But in this case it's understandable. I'm going to assume you don't know your ass, don't know mining, don't know gold, don't know shit."
“Pretty quick, you're going to bug me—"
“I live in Arizona, right here in Maricopa County. Love it. This place is the nuts. And I keep my eye out for the big cracker, all the time. Now, the Maricopa Minerals property—Golden Phoenix today—isn't far from the Roddy Resources Bighorn property here. A while back, Roddy brought in an independent engineer to work some of their land and I got a copy of his report. In it he said, about Bighorn, that it had—and I can quote it exact for you, verbatim—‘an excellent possibility for the delineation of several million tons of gold-bearing material in the .05 to .10 ounce per ton range which might be mined by low-cost, bulk mining methods.’ Now, that's low mineralization, nothing to get me steamed, see? But Roddy drilled thirty-five rotary holes with twenty-eight of them confirm
ing gold mineralization over very impressive widths ranging up to—and here it gets a little more interesting—up to .410 ounces per ton. OK? You with me so far, Scott?"
“Well—"
He went right on, “The old Maricopa is just about on strike with that Roddy ore body, and I got a hold of all the old Maricopa Minerals records—skip the how, it's not important—and studied the development work the former operators did back then, in the thirties and forties, memorized the whole megillah like it was the new Penthouse special-beaver issue. Those records told me the gold mineralization continued down to a vertical depth of nearly two thousand feet. They never did explore those lower levels, they never went below nine hundred feet—well, hell, gold was thirty-five back then, no wonder. More important than that—we're getting up to the latest assay you mentioned. You were talking about last week's AGL assay report, right?"
I assumed AGL was Arizona Geological Laboratories, and said, “If you mean the Thomas Toker report, I've seen it."
He blinked, pulled the beige-brown brows down over the red-veined eyes. “You've seen it, huh? Well, then you know what gangbusters those numbers are."
“Not exactly. I didn't understand much of it."
“Well, it's goddamned good numbers. But what I was getting at a second ago, in those old records there was also a report of mineralization due east of the main shaft. They never mapped it, never did a thing about it. Just took the first look and then died on it. Skip the rest. I went to Liberty, told them what I had, and talked them into putting me in charge. Which they did, along with putting up the bucks. Big bucks. Of course, the old shafts were flooded, we had to clean the mine out, buy machinery—big bucks."
“I'm kind of interested in that AGL report. Didn't those diamond hole cores, or whatever the hell, just come out of nowhere? Sort of out of the blue, say, as in blue sky?"
Cimarron ignored the implied reference to con games and said irritably, “Diamond drill holes, it's a goddamned diamond drill...” He shook the big head, pulling his lips back far enough to show the square teeth again, not in a smile but a grimace. “Shit,” he said. Then, “You asked, I'll tell you. And you'll probably know less then than you do now, which'll be under zero. I always had a gut feeling about that mineralization east of the shaft, and earlier this year I took my chief engineer out there and told him how and where I wanted the holes drilled. He thought I was nuts. I told him, drill ‘em. I spit on the ground, and that's where the first hole went. We pulled seven holes, all in a line due north, each one about four hundred feet farther out on the line. My man just about crapped his shorts, but I told him, do it.” He stopped, looked up at me, rubbing his big chin. “Maybe it hadn't occurred to you yet, Scott. But when I tell somebody do it, I don't remember the last time anybody didn't."
“When I figure out what the hell you said, maybe it'll impress me. But probably it won't. Weren't you telling me about drilling for diamonds, or—"
“Shit,” he said, not for the first time, grimacing yet again. “So we pulled those seven. That's some of the ore samples AGL assayed for us. First two, forget it. But every one of the next five, we hit ore-grade intersections. It was that once-in-a-lifetime crapshoot, all naturals. Listen to those five assay results. The first hole intersected fourteen feet averaging .151 ounces of gold per ton. The second assayed .198 ounces of gold per ton over eighteen feet. The third, .214 ounces over twenty-one feet. The fourth, .437 over twenty-three feet, and the last .611 over twenty-two feet. You get the picture? That grab you? The farther north we went, the better the mineralization got. We're drilling more holes, and the next assay results should make the stock go crazy."
“Is AGL—this guy Toker—doing those assays, too?"
“Yeah, but there's going to be so much holler we'll probably duplicate the results with a different lab, just to pacify the goddamn losers. This is the big one, I can feel it in my balls. Before we're through we'll prove two million tons of ore minimum with a gold-purity ratio of up to .6 and maybe better than that. Shit, man, Campbell Red Lake mines a grade of only .62 purity. There's a billion down there, a billion bucks, a goddamn billion smackeroos, maybe twice that, I can feel it in my balls. Does that grab your ass, Scott?"
“Well ... Maybe if you could show me some Krugerrands, or those gold coins with pretty pictures of pandas—"
“Sheee-it,” he bellowed. “Get the goddamned hell out of here, Scott."
“Temper,” I said pleasantly. “I guess I don't get to try out that little popgun of yours."
I thought he might throw the popgun at me, but instead he slowly smiled. Which meant I could see a little bit of his two front teeth. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I wouldn't want to miss that, would I? Being a P.I., you must be a real hotshot, right?” He didn't expect an answer to that, and didn't get one.
Cimarron reloaded the gun and sealed the chamber, handed the gun to me uncocked. I didn't really care a whole lot about firing the pistol, particularly at anything I was supposed to hit, but I did want to get a closer look at it. The handsomely crafted piece was a beauty, no doubt about it. Its large wooden wraparound grip, probably mahogany, covered most of my hand as I held the gun. The right side and rear of the grip were crosshatched to provide friction against the shooter's palm and thumb pad, while the left side and front were scalloped with grooves that would fit Cimarron's big fingers. Cimarron's, not mine.
I looked along the barrel, not aiming over the front sight but just getting a feel for the weapon's weight and balance. “That big silencer makes it a little difficult to aim,” I said.
“I managed to aim it, hotshot. Besides, we wouldn't want to annoy the neighbor kids’ ears, would we?"
I smiled at him. “Certainty not, Mr. Cimarron."
I hefted the gun, feeling at a distinct disadvantage in what Cimarron was clearly viewing as some kind of contest between us. Guys like Cimarron love games they can't lose. What bugged me was that I couldn't easily avoid playing at this point, couldn't avoid letting him win. And I sure didn't like letting this guy feel he was one up on me this early in the game. Well, if I couldn't outshoot him with his own fancy pistol, maybe I could keep him from knowing how badly I missed; maybe I could change the rules a little.
So I said, “I'm not much good at plinking. No incentive. So why don't I pretend a guy out there”—I waved the gun over half an acre—“just took a shot at me, and missed. And I've got to drill him.” I tapped the end of my nose. “Right here."
“Sure. Why don't you?” I could see three or four of his big teeth now. This was fun. This was aces wired in five-card stud. “Where is this guy, Scott? Sitting at the bar here?"
“No."
A mockingbird had flown past our canvas-covered patio and I watched it swoop, turn, flutter down to land on the projecting limb of a paloverde tree out in front of us. In front, and at least a hundred feet away. The bird had landed near the end of a thin smooth branch snaking out a couple of feet farther than any of the other branches. It, and the bird on it, were about six feet above the ground.
“That mockingbird just lit on the poor guy's head,” I said with forced cheerfulness.
“Tame bird, huh?” Cimarron said, almost chuckling.
“No,” I said quietly. “The guy's Fred Keats. And the bird is clairvoyant. He knows Fred's gone."
No chuckles now. Those unhealthy-looking eyes of Cimarron's opened wider, locked on mine. I could see those red veins clearly in the dull whites around the mottled blue irises. Quite a long time passed, or so it seemed, before Cimarron's glare softened a little, wavered, and he looked back toward the paloverde tree.
“For Christ's sake, quit stalling and take your shot,” he rumbled.
“I'm not stalling, Mr. Cimarron. I'm waiting. You wouldn't want me to miss Fred and hit an innocent bird, would you?"
Yeah, he would. The look he gave me was one of monumental contempt. Contempt mixed with growing anger. I was standing only about a foot from the seated man, holding the gun down by my right thigh, and he clampe
d the fingers of his left hand around my wrist, reaching with his other hand for the pistol.
This guy was astonishingly strong. His fingers dug into my wrist like gear teeth grinding. I do not have small and delicate bones, like a bird's, say; but for a second I thought he might break something. Cimarron pulled the .22 pistol from my fingers, his left hand still clamped around my wrist. I squeezed my own left hand into a fist, shifted my feet—as the pressure went away.
I was hot. I was suddenly boiling. I do not like being touched even in friendly camaraderie by those guys who like to slap you on the back and dislocate your cervical vertebrae, or squeeze your shoulder in hearty good fellowship. And when the touch or slap or squeeze is not friendly, then something extreme and undoubtedly quite poisonous happens to my blood and various glands.
I had hauled back my left arm and was about to cream this guy, but he wasn't even looking at me. Instead, he had cocked the gun and was aiming toward the paloverde tree, toward that mockingbird on poor Fred's head.
I jabbed my right hand out, fingers extended, and hit the gun's barrel, knocked it six inches to the side.
It's possible that pleased Cimarron less than his grabbing my wrist had pleased me. His already ruddy face got pink and then quite red. I could see the pulsing of a wide vein over his left temple. My right wrist still ached and I rubbed it, kneaded it, flexed and wiggled the fingers for a few seconds.
Then I said, “Cimarron,” for the first time not prefacing his name with “Mr.,” “let me give you fair warning. If you ever latch on to me like that again, I'll deck you."
He rose easily to his feet, and for the first time I was looking up at those cold red-veined eyes. This guy was huge. He blotted out the little mountain behind him, a flesh mountain himself. “You really think you could do that, Scott?” His voice was soft.
“Probably,” I said. “But I'll never know for sure until I try, will I?"
Shellshock (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 21