Who in Hell Is Wanda Fuca?

by G. M. Ford

  The driver, no longer impeded by the bouncing of the truck, braced his left arm on the window frame and showed me a mouth full of yellow teeth. The bore of his chrome automatic looked as big as a sewer pipe. My chest ached as he brought his face right down into his shooting hand and sighted in. He grinned again. I was paralyzed.

  Then the windshield of the truck exploded. Daniel had righted himself and lay prone on the ground beside me, using two hands, calmly squeezing off rounds at the driver, who, unexpectedly faced with the prospect of return fire, went wide-eyed, threw the truck into reverse, and bounced back more or less the way he'd come.

  The remnants of the windshield slid down over the hood as the truck picked up speed. The driver, his attention welded to Daniel and me, steered with one hand and fired repeatedly out through the gutted front window with the other. He was still firing wildly when the rear of the truck struck a large stump, spun wickedly to the right, and toppled over on its right side into the open trench.

  "Look at ‘em scurry," Daniel breathed.

  He was right. The other workers, having witnessed our encounter with the truck driver, had abandoned pursuit and were hunkered down behind the trucks and machinery.

  I wiped the sweaty side of my neck. My hand came away red. I stared idiotically at my hand, rubbing the oily blood between my thumb and fingers. I scraped more blood off my neck and stared some more.

  "You lost an earlobe," Daniel said.

  Before I could comprehend, the passenger door of the green pickup, now pointing straight up in the ditch, opened, and the driver's head appeared through the window.

  I pulled the automatic up, flipped off the safety, and tried to rake the truck. The automatic pulled violently up and to the right. The first few rounds were low, puffing the dirt in front of the trench. The next five or so hit the truck, shattering the passenger window. The rest could have been considered out-of-season goose hunting. By the time the clip was empty, the little gun was pointing nearly straight up. All heads had disappeared.

  "We better get out of here," I panted.

  "Good idea."

  We lunged back down the mountain a hell of a lot faster than we'd come up, picking our way among the maze of roots and snags that littered the ground, keeping as far away from the road as the terrain would allow. Halfway down, running out of control, I tripped over an exposed root and fell headlong into Daniel's back, slamming us both to the ground.

  I scrambled up and offered Daniel a hand. His nose was bleeding. Wiping it with the back of his index finger, he shook his head and put the bloody finger to his lips. We listened together. Nothing.

  "They're not coming after us," he said finally. I silently agreed.

  "It looked like maybe only the guy in the truck was armed."

  "You think we discouraged them?"

  "What you mean we, white man?"

  I couldn't argue. Instead, I pulled him to his feet and pointed him back down the mountain. Under control now, I watched my feet and followed.

  We hadn't gone a quarter mile when the road, now two hundred yards to our left, overflowed with the sounds of straining vehicles. We hunkered down in the bushes, listening intently for sounds of pursuit.

  While we listened and counted vehicles, I fumbled the exhausted clip from the automatic and reached for one of the spares. There was only one in my pocket. I'd lost the other two. Cursing myself now, I snapped the clip into place, swinging the gun in a wide arc as if to frighten off would-be attackers.

  "They're running," Daniel announced. I listened. He was right. I could hear the trucks moving up through the gears as they hit the main road, their labored roaring fading slowly into the distance.

  "How many went by?" I asked as the silence settled in upon us.

  "Four."

  "How many were there?"

  "I was too busy saving your ass to count," he answered. "But the one in the ditch ain't goin' anywhere."

  I changed the subject. "We need to get to a phone."

  "No phone anyplace around here. We'll have to head back to that store we passed about six miles back."

  "It's time to call in the cavalry."

  Daniel got to his feet and brushed himself off. When he got around to his hair, he noticed that his hat was missing. I couldn't remember whether he'd had it on when we'd started down the mountain. Daniel was disgusted. "The cavalry, huh. You do have a way with words, Leo. You truly do."

  Moving slowly now, we picked our way carefully back down the mountain, until we came to the edge of the road. Daniel stepped into the ditch, poked his head out between the bushes, and surveyed the road in both directions. Nothing. We were directly across from the abandoned driveway where we'd parked the truck.

  We trotted across. As Daniel disappeared up the drive, something beckoned me to turn and take a last look at the hillside. The sight stopped me in my tracks.

  "Daniel!" I shouted.

  I heard the sound of his feet on the loose gravel beside me. I couldn't drag my eyes from the enormous plume of black smoke that was trying to rise from the top of the hill. The plume shot up a couple of hundred feet and then flattened out, refusing to drive with the wind, as if pulled back to earth by its own opaque density.

  "Jesus," I head Daniel mutter.

  "They set the woods on fire."

  "That ain't wood smoke. Woods are too wet to burn." He scratched his head. "I never seen smoke looks like that."

  This last comment snapped me to attention. I remembered Charles Hayden's warnings. Involuntarily, I held my breath.

  I squeezed "Let's go" out from between my teeth.

  My tone got his attention. Exchanging as little air as possible, we hustled back to the truck, rolled up the windows, and bounced back out onto the paved road.

  A mile up the road, driving far too fast for a particularly nasty corner, I had to swerve to avoid crashing into three blue chemical drums that, having burst on impact, were now spewing their gleaming, black, tarlike contents onto the road.

  "Looks like one of the trucks lost part of its load."

  "Hurry," he said. "We gotta report this."

  "Then we're gonna have a talk with this guy, Howard Short," I said.

  "After we report it," Daniel insisted. "This is bad stuff, Leo."

  He was right. First things first.

  Chapter 21

  "First we had a deal you tried to screw us. Then we give you the benefit of the doubt, cut you another deal, and now you try to screw us again. I'm beginning to wonder about you, Hayden. I'm beginning to think Wendy was right." The last part fried his brain.

  "The deal didn't include murder, dammit," Charles Hayden snapped. "I'm way outside my umbrella of authority here, Waterman. My ass is in a sling. Not only is this guy Short found sitting there, big as life, in his office with a bullet in his head, but he's an Ind" - he remembered Daniel - "Native American. The local authorities . . . I'm a public serv - " He threw up his hands.

  "A deal's a deal," I insisted.

  "Another broken promise by the Great White Father," Daniel solemnly intoned, shaking his head sadly. I tried not to laugh.

  Hayden turned his back to us, running both hands through his thinning razor-cut hair, staring out the front window of the little store as yet another fire engine raced by to join the melee up the road.

  Daniel bobbed his eyebrows up and down, grinning at me behind Hayden's back. I forced my face to stay still. My ear throbbed. We waited.

  It was now nearly ten at night, the purple sky straining its way toward complete darkness. I felt as if I'd been sitting in the store for days.

  It was a little after three-thirty when I'd first burst through the door of the Lucky Seven Mini-Mart demanding to use the phone. I must have been a sight. One look at me and the woman immediately bent down behind the counter. In my confused state, I thought she was going for a gun and raised the automatic to waist level. She came up with a baby.

  "No, mister, please," she wailed. Two big tears plowed furrows down her round ch
eeks. "Take whatever you want, but please - " She stopped. "Daniel?" she said tentatively.

  Daniel stepped around me. "Winona," he said, "take the baby and go on back to the trailer. We got trouble here. Go." He pointed.

  Winona needed no further encouragement. Clutching the baby to her chest, she turned on her heel and hustled out the back of the store. I called Charles Hayden.

  He must have left my name with the receptionist. She immediately slipped me through the system.

  "What is it, Waterman? I've got a meeting."

  "I've got your smoking gun."

  "What? Christ. Who?"

  "I don't know. They got away."

  "What were they doing?"

  "Dumping waste."

  "What waste?"

  "I don't know," I said again. "Barrels. They set them on fire. You told me not to get anywhere near it." I could hear him gulp air.

  "Where are you?"

  "I need a deal."

  "What deal? This is no time for that crap. Don't' you realize - "

  "You'll keep both of us out of the hands of the local authorities."

  "How in hell am I going to arrange that?"

  "Arrest us. You Feds have authority over the locals. I don't give a shit. Do whatever it takes. When this is over, we go with you, or we just go."

  "I can't - Where are you?"

  "Deal?"

  He expelled the air he'd gulped earlier. "Deal," he said.

  I put Daniel on the phone. He calmly gave Hayden directions. Daniel handed the phone back to me.

  "He wants to talk to you again." Mindlessly, I jammed the phone onto my injured ear. I reeled around the store in pain. Transferring the pone to my good ear, I said, "Hurry."

  "Make sure you stay there," he said. The line went dead.

  Honor was not Charles Hayden's strong suit. He called the cops. A pair of Washington State Police were the first to arrive. Young and edgy, they came in crouched, SWAT-team style, one in the front, one in the back, guns at the ready. I was glad I'd remembered to return the automatic and the nine-millimeter to their hiding place under the seat cushion.

  "Don't move," the front door cop growled.

  Daniel and I were sitting, side by side, on the counter.

  "Who's moving?" I asked.

  "You see anybody moving?" Daniel deadpanned, scanning the ceiling.

  "Maybe you should try ‘stay where you are,' " I suggested. "That would make more sense, under the circumstances."

  From behind us, "Put your hand up. Now."

  "No," I said calmly. "Our hands are in plain sight right here on the counter. Your partner can see them. " Partner moved his head up and down.

  I could hear their labored breathing. The academy hadn't covered this.

  "Didn't they tell you about the spill?" Daniel asked.

  "What spill?" From behind us again.

  "There's a toxic spill five miles up the road. Somebody needs to block the road. God only knows what's in those drums."

  "God only knows," Daniel parroted.

  "You said that call was from EPA?" From behind the ice cream freezer in front of us.

  "Yea." From the back of the store.

  Still combat-ready, they emerged from the cover. "Hold your arms out."

  This seemed reasonable. We complied.

  Even after patting us down, they listened to the rest of our story over the sights of their revolvers. The big one, whose name tag identified him as Probationary Trooper Derek Coffey, stayed with us, while his partner raced off to set up a roadblock.

  Trooper Coffey was a man of little faith and even less humor. The dust from his partner's exit was still in the air when he reverted to type.

  "All right, you two, over there" - pointing at the north wall - "assume the position. Let's go, move it. MOVE IT," he bellowed.

  "No," I said again. "And hold the command voice, will you?" Daniel reamed an ear with his pinkie. "You've frisked us. We're not armed. Besides that, Daniel here is a Native American. A Tulalip. This is the Tulalip Reservation. You have no authority over Mr. Dixon. Only the Tribal Police Force has jurisdiction here." Daniel silently agreed.

  Rebuffed and unsure, Trooper Coffey kept his slitlike eyes glued to our chests and his hand on the butt of his revolver, uncertainly waiting for help to arrive.

  Charles Hayden and an eight-man toxic disposal team arrived forty minutes later. The clock on the wall read four-twenty. On his way through the door, he flashed his credentials at Trooper Coffey and then fumbled the badge to the floor when he spotted Daniel and me. "What - " slipped out.

  He turned on the cop. "I thought I told you to - "

  "This is the reservation. Only the Tribal Police Force . . . " the cop blurted.

  "There is no goddamn Tribal Police Force."

  Disgustedly, Hayden snatched his identification from the floor.

  The young officer reached for his piece again. Hayden stopped him.

  "No, no - never mind," he sighed.

  He turned to us. "One of you will have to show us the place," he announced without enthusiasm. "First we need to identify the specific agent. We need to know exactly what we're dealing with here."

  "There's several drums of the stuff spread all over the road about five miles up," I said.

  "My partner's got a roadblock set," announced Coffey.

  Hayden ignored him, dashing back out the front door. his white-overalled team, which had already begun unloading its gear, flung everything back into the sparkling unmarked white truck and disappeared up the road. We waited.

  At five o'clock straight up, the truck returned. The guy in the passenger seat was out and sprinting toward the door before the vehicle was fully stopped. He was wearing the spaceman hat that zipped into the overalls.

  "Liquid PCBs," was his muffled shout from behind the plastic faceplate.

  "Damn," muttered Hayden.

  He collected himself. "Okay, first clean up the road; we're gonna need it."

  Spacesuit nodded. Hayden continued, shouting his way through the headgear. "I'll get us a lot more help up here." More agreement.

  Hayden jerked his thumb toward Daniel and me. ":One of these guys can show you the site that's on fire," he shouted at spacesuit.

  Spacesuit shook his helmet. I couldn't make out the garbled phrases leaking out from the suit. Obviously, Hayden could.

  "Good, good," he said finally. "Okay, get to it."

  "The can see the smoke," he said to no one in particular.

  Charles Hayden trotted for the phone. Daniel and I leaned back against the counter and waited. When he finished mumbling into the phone, Hayden turned his attention back to me and Daniel.

  "This is reservation property, right?": I shrugged and turned to Daniel.

  "Sort of," Daniel replied. "This whole end is land that the tribe sold a few years ago for a couple of gold courses and housing developments. That's how come nobody lives out there."

  "So where's the houses?" Hayden demanded.

  "It's all tied up in court," Daniel. "Lots of the property turned out to be under the Wetlands Act. A bunch of environmental groups stuck their faces in. The developers can't get permits to build anything." He stopped. "Gonna be years," he added with a trace of a smile. "Maybe never."

  Hayden pulled out a little notepad. "Who handles this sort of thing for the tribe?" Daniel silently looked my way. So much for our little talk with Mr. Short.

  "Might as well tell him," I whispered. "They'll just bust everybody's balls until they find out." He thought it over.

  "Howard Short," he said after a minute. "Resources department. He's got a little office out by the highway. Right behind the liquor store."

  Hayden crooked a finger at the impassive Trooper Coffey. Coffey reluctantly separated himself from the poop cooler, the contents of which he was making a serious dent in, and shuffled over. Hayden tore the page from his pad and held it out to the officer.

  "Round up your partner and get this guy down here."

  Coffe
y eyed him sullenly, a silent challenge to Hayden's presumed authority. He stared blankly at the piece of paper without making a move to take it. Charlie Hayden shook it in his face.

  "You want to call your superior? Is that it?" No response. Hayden's ears were bright red.

  "Feel free to use the radio in the aid unit out front. Check with anybody you can think of, but get your ass in gear unless you want to finish your career as a school crossing guard. Is that clear, Trooper Coffey?"

  Coffey took the page as if he were holding a dog turd, stepped around Hayden, and made his way out front.

  "Fucking locals are such a pain in the ass," Hayden said after the door had swung shut. "Every time we - "

  His tirade was interrupted by the scratching of his hand-held radio, which rested on the counter between Daniel and me. Somehow, from all the squeaks and burps, Hayden could tell it was for him. He turned his back, held the radio to his ear, and screeched back and forth for the better part of five minutes, then signed off and headed for the phone again.

  After that, things really got rolling. Within an hour, no less than four fire engines, their crews wearing full respirator units, had roared past the Lucky Seven on their way to the site.

  Fresh out of people to call, Hayden turned his attention to us.

  "It would have been better if you'd just called me and not gone blundering in there yourselves." Daniel shot me a knowing grimace.

  "You wanted a smoking gun," I said.

  "What I didn't need was a smoking pile of PCBs. Do you have any idea how toxic PCBs are?"

  "Not really," I answered.

  "Lung cancer, skin cancer, lymph cancer. You name it, you can get it from that stuff." Daniel shuddered. Hayden continued. "If the wind were from the west, we'd be evacuating Marysville right now, but we got a break." It was his turn to shudder as he rant that movie. Local bureaucrat evacuates entire city. He shuddered again. "Thank God, the smoke cloud is blowing out over the Sound." He shook his head. "What I can't figure out is how they got that stuff burning at all."

  "Why? Is it hard?" I asked.

  "Damn hard," he replied. "Incineration is the only approved method for getting rid of PCBs, but it takes twenty-one hundred degrees and a kiln to incinerate the stuff. That's why it's so expensive to dispose of. It all gets sent out to Kansas to be incinerated in a wet-walled slagging kiln. It takes- "