by Dave Daren
“Yep,” my host said happily. “I used to imagine it when I was a kid and pretend to drive camels across the valley while I rode my bike.”
“I gather your grandmother was opposed to the idea,” I said.
“She was,” he replied. “And she was probably right. Still, grandpa wanted his camel, so he found some guy in Marietta who could make one for him.”
“At least it makes it easy to find the house,” I noted.
Bluefeld nodded as he patted one of the hounds on the head.
“Well, I guess we should get down to business,” he sighed. “Though I’m not sure what else we really need to discuss.”
“I just wanted to go over some of the terms with you,” I replied. “And talk about some of the equipment that’s still on the property. I’d also like to take a look at the property myself.”
“The equipment?” Bluefeld asked in surprise.
“The reports on the property mentioned that some of the mining equipment is still there,” I said. “I’d like to make sure that certain pieces will remain, and perhaps make an offer for some of the other pieces.”
“Well, obviously the track’s not going anywhere,” Bluefeld replied. “And the carts are still there.”
“There’s that,” I said. “There’s also electrical equipment, a large boring machine, bins, a conveyor system….”
“It’s all yours if you want it,” Bluefeld said quickly. “I don’t have any use for it, and if you don’t take it, I’ll just have to find someone to haul it all out of there.”
“Good,” I said. “I’ll put together a detailed list after I’ve had a chance to visit the property.”
“Just let me know when you want to head out,” my host replied. “I’ll make sure the Sheriff knows so he doesn’t try to arrest you for trespassing.”
“We’ve already met,” I noted. “As I was driving out here, actually.”
“Is that so?” Bluefeld snorted. “Ol’ Shifty didn’t waste much time.”
“Ol’ Shifty?” I snickered.
“Got that name in high school,” he replied. “Because he always seemed to be able to get his hands on the answers to all the tests. Course, you had to have the money to pay for the answers.”
“And now he’s the Sheriff?” I laughed.
“Sheriff Tater Harris,” Bluefeld intoned. “Better known as Shifty to the residents of Folsom.”
“Well, I’d say he’s still pretty shifty,” I replied. “He basically told me that the deal would only go through if enough people were paid.”
“Dang burn crooks,” Bluefeld spat. “I should have known they’d tried to hone in on the deal. The lot of them can’t stand someone else making money and not be a part of it.”
“The lot of them?” I asked.
“Shifty and Hup mostly,” my host replied. “Course, those two run the town now, so the rest have to do what they say if they want in on the action.”
“Mmmm,” I murmured.
“Well, you don’t need to worry about them,” Bluefeld assured me. “I know how to handle the good ‘ol boy network. And I got my own boys with guns when I need ‘em.”
“I’m not sure there’s anything that really needs to be handled,” I replied as I pictured a shoot out between the Sheriff and Bam in the middle of the park.
“Oh, right,” Bluefeld said with a wink and nod. “Nothing to see here.”
“Um, right,” I replied as I tried to figure out what he was trying to signal.
“So, if I could ask a question now,” Bluefeld said. “Since we’ve sort of gotten around to the topic.”
“Sure,” I replied though I wasn’t clear on how we had arrived at whatever topic he was about to raise, unless it was something to do with the local bribery scheme.
“What’s the company going to do with the mine?” he asked.
“There’s a couple of plans,” I hedged. “Though the first stage is to use it for production.”
“Production,” Bluefeld repeated in a puzzled tone. “You know there’s no coal left.”
“Not coal production,” I explained. “We need the steady temperature in the mine for producing vinegar.”
Bluefeld stared at me like I’d just announced I was an alien from Planet Gorp and I was there to eat his brains.
“Vinegar?” he finally asked.
“Balsamic vinegar,” I added. “It’s a long, complicated process, but we think we can replicate here.”
“Vinegar,” Bluefeld said again. “Well, dang son, I can make that in my own kitchen.”
“Well, see balsamic vinegar has to be aged in different types of barrels over several years,” I began.
“Years?” Bluefeld chuckled. “Sounds like some mighty fancy vinegar you’re going to be making.”
“That’s the plan,” I agreed. “And if it goes well, we’ll be able to sell it in high-end stores for a hefty price.”
“Is that right?” Bluefeld mused. “And that’s phase one?”
I nodded.
“So what else you got in mind for the place?” he asked.
“Nothing else is definite yet,” I said. “Maybe storage.”
“Oh, right,” he said with another wink and nod. “Storage. You know, you could toss a body in there and never find it again.”
And then I understood. Bluefeld might have been doing business with Campania Oil, but somehow he had learned that the money behind the company was probably Mafia money. I had looked through everything in the file, and Salvatore Febbo and Lyle Landis had been very careful never to mention the Febbo name or any other connection that might be traced back to the Mafia. So how had Bluefeld figured it out?
“Soooo,” I drawled while my host grinned at me.
“Now, I’ll talk to Shifty and Hup,” Bluefeld said when I didn’t offer anything else. “Tell them to keep their noses out of my business. And I can let them know that they’re up against some real tough guys this time.”
“This time?” I asked though what I really wanted to say was ‘don’t piss off Shifty and Hup before we close the deal’.
“Don’t worry about it,” Bam said quickly.
“Look, you don’t need to warn them about us,” I insisted. “We’re just a company that wants to make vinegar.”
“Yup,” he chuckled. “You just keep on sayin’ that. Maybe people will start to believe it.”
“I’m not sure what you think you know about my client,” I sighed. “But we really are only here to make balsamic vinegar. There’s no mysterious purpose and we don’t plan on hiding anything in the mines.”
Bluefeld squinted at me, then shook his head.
“Sure, okay,” he agreed though he sounded disappointed that Campania Olio wasn’t planning on turning the mine into some sort of Mafia catacombs.
“I’ll finalize the documents for the sale and send you a copy,” I replied. “I just need to call my boss first.”
“Oh, sure,” Bluefeld replied. “Gotta make sure the big boss man is on board.”
“Right,” I agreed. “Is there an email I can send the files to?”
“Oooh,” Bluefeld said. “Well, now, I do have one but I don’t always have a good connection out here. I usually end up printing it out down at the public library, and if I do that, then Mrs. Barnes will probably see it and read it. Now, I’m okay with that, but if we’re still keeping this under wraps, then maybe that’s not the best option.”
“I’m not sure it’s really under wraps,” I replied as I remembered the reactions of the various people I’d encountered so far. “But if you’re concerned about keeping the details quiet, I could print it out at the hotel maybe.”
“That would be okay,” Bluefeld agreed. “If you stick it in an envelope and leave it at the desk, I can pick it up tomorrow when I go by the feed store.”
“I’ll do that,” I said.
I stood up, as did Bluefeld and the animal contingent. My host led the way back to the front door, where we shook hands on the porch surrounded by
Bluefeld’s cats and dogs and the neighbor’s horse, who had indeed returned and was grazing on the grass by the edge of the drive.
“Damn it, Sherman!” Bluefeld yelled.
The horse barely lifted its head at the imprecation while the hounds ambled off the porch and spread out across the lawn to sniff and pee. The cats watched it all like two Upper East Side Manhattanites watching the tourists flock around the Met.
“One of these days,” Bluefeld warned the horse.
I slipped back to the car, unnoticed by Bluefeld as he shambled over to the horse and tried to shoo it away from the grass. I took a last look in the rearview mirror as I drove back down the drive, but Sherman the horse appeared to be the victor. The big bay was still munching the grass while Bluefeld split his time between yelling at the horse and then at the hounds.
“I hope you know what you’re getting into, Anthony,” I said to myself as I pulled back onto Digger Creek Road and drove slowly down the steep slope towards Jenkins Road.
I briefly considered calling my client from the car, but I wasn’t sure I could navigate the slope and the potholes while trying to explain my suspicions to Anthony. I made it back to Jenkins Road with a solid thump as I failed to navigate the last pothole, then pointed the car back towards Folsom. With a smoother road beneath me, I told the phone to dial Anthony, but instead of the sound of a phone ringing, all I heard was silence. I risked a glance at the phone, and saw it was searching for a signal.
“Well, shit,” I muttered.
I spotted the flashing sign for Babes! Babes! Babes!, which was starting to fill up, and pulled into the far end of the lot. I fiddled with the phone, but it continued to insist that it couldn’t find a signal. I tried to think back to the last time I had heard it ring or at least signal an incoming text and decided that might have been at LaGuardia when Anthony had sent me a simple good luck message. In fact, now that I thought about it, I hadn’t seen hordes of people walking blindly along the street while they peered at their phones.
Frustrated, I pulled back onto Jenkins and drove back into the main part of town. I noticed there was still a sizeable crowd at the diner and that business at the Emporium seemed to have picked up. But I only spotted one person with a cell phone, a teen-aged girl with waist-length hair, who seemed to be using it for music purposes only as she danced down the sidewalk.
I also noticed that the Chevy was still drawing plenty of attention, and the reactions ranged from angry scowls to happy curiosity. Since I didn’t spot either of my lunch companions among the townsfolk, I didn’t bother to wave as I passed by. I pulled into the parking lot of the hotel where I was interested to see that a few more cars had appeared. I walked into the lobby and looked around, though there wasn’t any sign of the clerk or even Jess.
“Can I help you?” I heard someone call from the office door.
“Oh, hi,” I replied as a young woman in a West Virginia Mountaineers sweatshirt stepped into view.
She looked young enough to still be a student at the university rather than an alumnus, though there were a few white hairs tangled in with the brown. She also had a pair of rubber gloves on her hands and held a damp cloth rag loosely in one palm.
“You must be the man who’s here to meet Bam,” she said.
“I am and I did,” I replied. “Actually, I was going to work on some papers tonight and I was wondering if the hotel has a printer I could use. The sign on the back of my door showed a business room on the first floor?”
“Just through the dining room,” the woman said as she pointed towards the quiet kitchen. “But you should know that Jack Harrington checked in not that long ago and he tends to use the center a lot when he’s here. Last time he checked in, he used all the paper printing out fliers.”
“Ah, thanks,” I replied. “I’ll try to slip in there when he’s not around. Um, and I did have one more question.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Is there anywhere that has good cell reception?” I asked.
She chuckled and shook her head, obviously amused at the stupidity of the outsider.
“Down in the valley, it can be hard,” she agreed. “But if you head over to the government building, they’ve got some sort of special box from the phone company that lets them get a signal. You’ll find most people stand on the back side of the building to get a call through. Of course, you could always drive up to the top of one of the hills. You can usually get a signal up there.”
“Like Bam’s place?” I suggested, though I was pretty sure Bam had suggested his service was spotty.
“Well, I don’t know about Bam’s,” she said thoughtfully. “But if you take Jenkins road the opposite way, you’ll be heading towards Fairmont. When you get close to the river you can get a signal.”
“What about the hotel?” I asked.
“We’ve got a cable,” she said, “so the computers are all wired in. But if you really need to use a phone and you don’t want to walk across the street, then you’ll have to use the phone in the room.”
“Good to know,” I replied.
She made a sound that sounded like one of approval, then disappeared back into the office. I debated whether to walk around the government building or to head up to my room and take my chances with the landline. It was still on the early side, though, at least for someone who was used to the long hours of a New York City job, and the weather was still pleasant enough that I didn’t need a jacket. My mind made up, I left the hotel again and walked towards the government building.
The structure itself was rather ordinary, though at four stories it was easily the tallest building around. It was little more than a beige gray box, though some architect had added two small towers to either side of the doors to try to give the place a more interesting look. The more impressive display, at least to me, was the riot of flowers that filled the beds along all four sides of the building and the hummingbirds that I realized were buzzing between the blooms.
I soaked in the display as I made my way to the back of the government building, then stopped when I saw a crowd of about twenty people scattered around the grass. Everyone of them had a phone out, and while some were talking, others were feverishly typing messages and a group of four teens looked like they were video chatting with someone. I pulled my own phone out and saw that I did, finally, have a signal though it wasn’t very strong. I moved closer to the crowd and saw the little bars move up. I finally found a spot on the steps that led to the back door of the building which also got me the best signal and a bit of distance from my fellow phone users.
“Hunter,” my client’s voice drawled though there was definitely some static as well. “You made it?”
“I did,” I replied. “I’m in Folsom as we speak.”
“Excellent,” Anthony replied.
“I’ve even met with Mr. Bluefeld,” I said. “He’s amenable to leaving the equipment we want. I’m going to work on the draft agreement tonight, then see about getting out to the site to get a precise list of what’s still there.”
“That’s great,” Anthony enthused. “This is really going to get done!”
“Should happen soon,” I agreed. “But I feel I should tell you that we may have an issue.”
There was a long pause though I could hear something tapping in the background.
“An issue,” Anthony said with a good deal less enthusiasm.
“I met the Sheriff today as well,” I said. “Tater Harris, also known as Shifty.”
“Are you fucking serious?” Anthony asked and I could have sworn he snickered.
“I am,” I replied, “and according to Bam, Shifty and someone named Hup are running the local bribery scheme. The Sheriff suggested that the deal may face difficulties if the wealth doesn’t get spread around.”
“Oh, is that all?” Anthony chuckled. “Well, sure, that’s the way it always works.”
“Ummm,” I muttered in surprise. Whatever reaction I had been expecting from my client, this certainly wasn
’t it.
“What do you mean ‘ummm’?” Anthony teased. “Come on, you worked on Wall Street, you know the deal. It doesn’t matter if it’s the CEO of a corporation or the sheriff of some podunk county in West Virginia, everyone’s got to get their cut. It’s how business is done. So what does Shifty want?”
“He didn’t specify,” I replied. “You’re not serious about paying this guy off, are you?”
“Like you haven’t done this before,” Anthony replied.
“I… it’s just… I’m….”
“An officer of the court,” Anthony finished. “Yeah, I know. But come on. All that time on Wall Street and you didn’t pay someone off?”
I shook my head even though my client couldn’t see me and I tried to find the words to tell my client that I wasn’t going to play delivery boy in a bribery scheme.
“Hunter,” Anthony said in a more soothing tone. “Tell me this, have you ever handled a case where a senior officer of the company was investigated for skimming money?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“And what happened?” my client asked.
“Not much,” I said. “We reported it to the SEC, who opened their own investigation. The guy was fired and copped a plea with the Feds, so he basically just did community service for a year.”
“And how did that come about?” Anthony asked.
“What do you mean?” I retorted. “We negotiated.”
“In exchange for?” he pressed.
“Details on how the scheme worked,” I said. “But that kind of deal takes place all the time. It’s not a bribe.”
“And the other people?” he asked.
“What other people?” I wondered.
“The CEO or the CFO,” he explained. “The ones who were supposed to be keeping an eye on things.”
“Retired, with a substantial package,” I admitted.
“And why did they get such a sweet deal?” he asked.
“The contracts they signed when they were hired,” I said.
“Forget the contracts,” Anthony insisted. “If someone was stealing during their watch, the company has the right to revoke the guarantees.”
“Right,” I agreed.
“So why did the company pay?” Anthony asked again.