“… They might. But don’t worry about it; as I said earlier, I’m probably being overly cautious.”
“Maybe not, though.” Briefly I recounted my experience in the tufa forest.
When I finished she was silent for a moment. “I think you should call All Souls and tell them not to give out any information about you.”
“Good idea.” I stood up, looked for a phone.
“Isn’t one,” she said, “but you can use Mrs. Wittington ‘s.”
I glanced at my watch. “Isn’t eleven-thirty a little late to bother her?”
“No way—she’s a late-night movie buff like me. A couple of times this week I’ve gone up to the lodge and watched till two with her. She loves anything bloody or with truckers in it.”
“Truckers?”
“Uh-huh. They Drive by Night, Smokey and the Bandit. Don’t matter who’s in it, how bad it is, or from what era so long as there’s a truck and a hairy guy driving it. Rose is a bundle of contradictions: talks salty as can be and enjoys a stiff bourbon, but she’s also a born-again and attends a Bible-study group up in Bridgeport every Saturday night.”
“Interesting woman. Well, if it won’t disturb her, I’ll go up and call right now.”
When Rose Wittington admitted me to the lodge she wore a pink quilted bathrobe and fleece-lined slippers, and a glow that I suspected was bourbon-induced on her round face. Over by the stone fireplace was a grouping of chintz-covered furniture and a big-screen TV that showed not one but two hairy guys leaning against a semi truck. The pillow and afghan on the settee told me Anne-Marie was right about how Mrs. Wittington was spending her evening. She showed me to a phone behind the reception desk and went back to her movie.
I placed a credit-card call to All Souls. No problem there about the late hour, either: Ted Smalley, our secretary, is a night owl, as well as one of those rare and much-treasured individuals who considers his job a twenty-four-hour proposition.
“Hi, Shar,” he said, recognizing my voice. “If you’re calling to check on Ralph and Alice, they’re fine. I went over to your place around six, herded them inside, fed and played with them. They should be sacked out by now.” My cats—still kittens, really—originally belonged to a friend of Ted’s who died of AIDS. Ted takes a very proprietary interest in them, to the point of willingly pet-sitting whenever I go out of town. He would have been horrified to know that I had scarcely given them a thought since leaving them in his capable hands.
“Thanks, Ted,” I said. “I’ve got another reason for calling: has anybody phoned there tonight to ask about me?”
“You mean messages?”
“No, an actual inquiry, possibly about my job title.”
“I don’t … Wait a minute. Some guy called a while ago. Rae answered because I was in the can. Hey, Rae!”
He set the receiver down with a clunk, and in a few seconds my assistant, Rae Kelleher—who, like Ted, lives as well as works in the co-op’s big Bemal Heights Victorian— came on the line. “Hi, how’s it going?”
“Fine, so far. Tell me about this guy who called. Did he give a name?”
“Mr. Something-or-other. He sort of mumbled, and I didn’t quite catch it. I guess I should have asked, but I was watching TV and distracted.”
“What did he want?”
“Well, he asked for you, and when I said you were out of town, he said maybe I could help him. All he wanted, he told me, was to get your exact job title so you could be approved for your new Discover Card. It struck me as odd for him to be calling so late, but a lot of these credit centers work around the clock and, like I said, I was trying to watch Arsenio. And I know how important good credit is, so I told him you were our head investigator.”
I was silent for a moment. “What did he sound like? Anything distinctive about his voice?”
“… No. It was just … normal.” She paused, then asked, “Shar, did I do something wrong?”
“No, of course not.”
“Well, that’s a relief. For a second there … but you know what Willie says about good credit.”
“I know.” How well I knew: Willie Whelan, Rae’s boyfriend, is probably the world’s foremost authority on deficit spending. His chain of cut-rate jewelry stores is making him rich by extending credit to anyone at any time—and at usurious rates. “Listen,” I added, “I’ll be back on Tuesday at the latest. Can you manage till then?”
“Sure. They don’t call me ‘Nero’ Kelleher for nothing.”
“Nero?”
“As in Wolfe.”
“Ah, of course.” Rae had recently become enamored of mystery fiction and was rapidly working her way through one of All Souls’ numerous bookcases.
After I hung up, I called my thanks to Mrs. Wittington and trudged back downhill toward the cabin. What would Hy Ripinsky, alleged former CIA agent, call this? Having one’s cover blown?
Up until a little while ago, I hadn’t seen any need to have a cover. Now I felt vulnerable without it.
Four
The unpaved road to Stone Valley climbed into rocky sagebrush- and mesquite-covered hills; a creek paralleled it—narrow, shallow, bordered by rusty gold aspens. In the distance rose barren snowcapped mountains, made blue by a high haze. Above them a jet out of Fallon Naval Air Station over in Nevada laid lazy contrails across the noonday sky. They were the only evidence of life as we know it in the late twentieth century.
I kept a sharp eye out for potholes and held the MG’s speed below twenty. After more than four miles, the road flattened out on a high meadow of dry brown grass. The land was fenced with sticks topped by a single strand of barbed wire; to my right a rough board fence enclosed a pen. Two men in denims—from their appearance, I guessed they were descendants of the Paiutes who had lived in this country long before the Euro-Americans arrived—were rounding up a flock of sheep. Hy Ripinsky’s ranch hands, I thought, remembering he’d said that I would come to his place about five miles beyond the intersection where this road branched off the highway east of Vernon.
The ranch house appeared around the next bend— sprawling, but with no apparent architectural plan, constructed of pine and native stone. The Morgan was in town, where I’d left Ripinsky at the Coalition’s trailer half an hour ago, but a Land Rover stood between a huge satellite TV dish and a dilapidated barn. I eyed the Rover suspiciously as I drove past, thinking of the off-road vehicle that had sped away across the alkali plain the evening before. Then I shrugged; my suspect pool would be large indeed if I chose its members on the basis of their owning a vehicle tough enough to withstand the terrain in the Tufa Lake area. Besides, Ripinsky would have had to drive like a demon—impossible on this road in a low-slung car like the Morgan—to get the Land Rover and return to the tufa forest.
After another mile or so the road began climbing again, in switchbacks this time, with cliff face to one side and a sheer rock-strewn drop-off to the other. The stream meandered below, glinting silver where it tumbled over rapids. I steered carefully around a particularly sinuous curve, and then the whole of Stone Valley lay before me.
I pulled onto the shoulder and studied the vista, unsure of what I’d expected but knowing this wasn’t it. The valley was depressingly barren. Not a tree, not a blade of grass grew there; the only living things were the sagebrush and mesquite that clung to the dark hills. It was easy to spot the site of the proposed mine by the new chain-link fence on the flat top of a high eastern mesa. Nothing moved up there or in the valley; even the waters of the stream looked stagnant. And scattered across the valley floor were husks of the buildings of what had once been called Promiseville.
No promise here now. Just some two dozen small weathered pine structures with rusted iron roofs. Most clustered in a central area, but a few others straggled haphazardly up the eastern slope toward the remains of an old stamp mill. The mill had caved in, was nothing more than a heap of splintered wood and twisted metal; debris from it spilled down the hillside. The road that led past it to the chain-lin
k fence showed evidence of recent grading.
I eased the MG back onto the road and continued the descent to the valley floor, past a hillside cemetery with wind-scoured tombstones and a sagging iron fence. A red-tailed hawk perched on one of the stones; it regarded me with flinty eyes as I drove by. The air was hot and still here, the silence unnatural and oppressive. I didn’t know which would have gotten to me first had I lived there: the seasonal extremes of heat and cold or that terrible silence. Much as I often deplore the fog and noise of the city, I’m a San Franciscan at heart and function best in a temperate urban environment.
When Anne-Marie and I had met with Ripinsky at the trailer at ten-thirty that morning—Ned Sanderman being unaccountably absent—I questioned him about the people in the valley and got a rough idea of where to find them, plus directions to the claim of the missing prospector, Earl Hopwood. Then I set out to recheck the stories they’d told previously. In particular I was interested in Lily Nickles’s tale of the strange lack of activity at the mine site; if necessary I’d go up there and look around myself.
After I guided the MG onto what I assumed must have been the main street of Promiseville, I stopped by a burned-out ruin and consulted my list. According to Ripinsky, Nickles had been squatting for more than three years in a house on the hill below the stamp mill. I left my car where I’d stopped and proceeded on foot, unable to resist peering through the dust-covered windows of the buildings I passed.
What I saw further deflated my spirits: caved-in ceilings, wallpaper hanging in great peeling swaths, broken floorboards, exposed lathe. Ripinsky had told me that many of Promiseville’s residents had remained after the boom days, eking out whatever living they could, until fire destroyed most of the town in the late 1920s. Then all had fled, taking with them only their most portable and cherished possessions. This was borne out by the pathetic assortment of objects remaining in the little houses: corroded iron bedsteads; once-fancy curtains hanging in tatters at the windows; a cookstove with a skillet still standing on one burner; rodent-gnawed armchairs; the smashed porcelain head of a child’s doll.
As I turned and trudged up the hill, I wondered about the people of Promiseville. Why had they remained so long after the boom days ended? Life here had to have been extremely arduous, given the blizzards of winter and the searing dryness of summer. While in the 1920s the rest of the country had taken for granted electric lights, indoor plumbing, motorcars, and silent movies, I saw no evidence that any of those improvements had made it to this remote outpost. But something had encouraged the people to stay—perhaps inertia, or simply the fact that Promiseville was home.
And then fire had dealt the town a final devastating blow. Many people had been forced out; those who hadn’t had fled with them. There had been panic, despair, and—in those who might have stayed anyway—a fear of isolation and loneliness. But Promiseville had been home to all of them, and I wondered if in the ensuing years many hadn’t regretted their hasty departure, even come to miss this place.
Ripinsky had told me Lily Nickles’s house was the largest on the hillside, with a front porch positioned so it commanded a view of the valley. I identified it easily by the tan Jeep parked beside it. It faced west, away from the tumbledown stamp mill and the mine site. The front steps had been mended with new lumber that seemed raw next to the weathered pine; a sagging wicker rocker stood by the door. As I stepped onto the porch I saw a mud-caked and rusting assortment of prospecting gear—picks, shovels, pans that looked like my wok—jumbled in one corner. I knocked at the door but received no answer. The windows were draped in burlap, so I couldn’t see inside.
If Nickles wasn’t home, Ripinsky had said, I’d be likely to find her prospecting half a mile to the north where the stream took a sharp bend around a field of boulders. From Nickles’s porch I surveyed the terrain and decided against risking the MG’s tires and suspension. Then I went back down the hill and followed the streambed. The water was shallow and rock-filled, as torpid as it had looked from the road above. Debris littered the banks: artifacts of the past such as rusted containers and tools mingled with modern-day refuse, including beer cans, shotgun shell casings, and Styrofoam cups. I passed a couple of other ruins—one merely a crumbling brick wall and foundation—and then saw the boulder field on the opposite side of the stream. From behind an outcropping the size and shape of a sleeping elephant came the chug of a gasoline-powered engine and a gush of water so strong it couldn’t have been the stream itself. I quickened my pace until the rock no longer blocked my view.
The Tiger Lily stood knee-deep in water. Floating beside her on the inner tube of a truck tire was a peculiar-looking machine. Two hoses extended from it into the stream, and next to the engine compartment was an aluminum contraption resembling a sluice box, which spewed water. Nickles wore a turquoise tank top and faded cutoff jeans; both were dark with moisture, and her cropped brown hair was plastered to her head. The machine made so much noise that she didn’t hear me when I called out to her.
I sat down on the bank, took off my athletic shoes and socks, and rolled up my jeans. When I stepped into the stream, its iciness was a shocking contrast to the noonday heat; the rocks under my bare feet were slick with moss. Nickles noticed me as I began wading toward her.
Above the chug of the engine she yelled, “Hey, you, get out of there!”
I kept going.
“You heard me, dammit! Get outta my stream!” She made a fist and shook it angrily.
“Take it easy, Lily.”
She frowned, clearly surprised that I knew her name. Then she rolled her eyes in exasperation, reached down, and shut off the engine. In the sudden quiet, the gush of water from the aluminum trough was very loud.
“What the hell do you want?” Nickles demanded.
“To talk about what you told Hy Ripinsky you saw up at the Transpacific mine site.”
Her eyes narrowed. “That fuckin’ tree hugger sent you?”
“Right.” I told her my name and that I was associated with the Coalition.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “You were there yesterday—at the trailer.”
“Yes.” I waded over to her, pointed at the machine on the inner tube. “What’s that?”
“Hydraulic concentrator. Works like a dredge.”
“And does what?”
“Sucks up gravel and sorts it.”
“Why?”
She glared at me. “You don’t know anything, do you? Must be one of those city tree huggers. Why do you think it sorts it? For gold. Gold’s heavy, heaviest metal you’re likely to find; it sinks and gets trapped in the hopper. The rest gets washed out again.”
“I thought you panned for gold.”
“Panning’s for sampling, helps you read the stream, see which gravel bars’re worth working. Or it’s for weekend prospectors—assholes, most of them. This baby”—she patted the concentrator—“it can process fifty times the material in a single day, plus I can haul it around on my back.”
Nickles was still eyeing me narrowly, a disagreeable twist to her dry cracked lips. But something in her tone told me she was secretly pleased at an opportunity to show off her expertise. I said, “You’re a high-tech miner, then.”
“No, they’re high-tech.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder at the eastern mesa. “Me, I’m just lucky I scored enough nuggets last year so I could afford this baby.”
“Can we talk about them?” I nodded in the direction that she’d mentioned.
She hesitated, then said, “Ah, what the hell? I can use a break. You want a beer?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
Nickles seized the plastic line that anchored the inner tube to a rock and gently towed the concentrator to shore. I helped her boost it onto the high bank, and then she gave me a hand up. “Sit down over there,” she told me, motioning at the sleeping-elephant rock. “And get into the shade—the sun’s a killer today.”
While I picked my way through the boulder field, Nickles squatted down, pull
ed on another plastic line, and fished a six-pack of Coors from the stream. She broke out two cans and lowered the rest back into the water. When she came over and handed one to me, I thought of how the fervent liberals at All Souls would cringe to see me drinking a brand they boycotted. Well, the fervent liberals had never been in Stone Valley in the blistering early afternoon heat…
Nickles and I sat on a flat slab of granite at the base of the elephant, our backs against its cool flank. The shade was welcome, the icy beer more so. I drank deeply, then said, “First off, the Coalition people tell me you never heard of Franklin Tarbeaux, the man who sold the seven hundred acres to Transpacific.”
She swigged beer and shook her head. “Name like that I’d remember. Plus the guy’s got to be loaded now; sure as shit I’d make it my business to get to know him.”
“Were you aware that the land on the eastern side of the mesa belonged to a private individual?”
“Well, no, I wasn’t aware that any private individual had got his hands on it—or even that it was being mined.” Her voice mimicked mine, but she smiled to take the sting out of it. “I thought it was BLM land, like most of it around here.”
“And the missing prospector, Earl Hopwood—”
“Who says he’s missing?”
“Hy Ripinsky says no one’s seen him for over two weeks.”
“So? Knowing Earl, I’d say he’s over in Reno or Carson City, shacked up with some whore and losing all his profit from that land deal at the blackjack tables.”
“Does he disappear like that often?”
“Often enough. Earl’s sixty-nine years old, but he’s still randy as a billy goat. Except for me—and I wouldn’t let that old bag of bones touch me if his pole was ten feet long— there’s nobody around here for him to get randy with.”
“But would he take off for two weeks?”
“If he was flush enough—and he had to be, after selling that land.”
Where Echoes Live Page 4