“Sorry. I didn’t recognize your name on my cell. I don’t even know how you managed to get your name on my cell. Usually it’s just a number, unless I know you.”
“Oh, that. You can pay extra for that,” he said. “It’s a service.”
“Well, service or no, I didn’t recognize your name out of context. Thought you might be a salesman.”
Luster sniffed. “Context? What the hell kind of a thing is that? Let me ask you, you have some college, Slim?”
“I’ve driven past a couple,” I said. “You could have left a voicemail, you know? That’s a service, too.”
“Okay. Fair enough. But this ain’t the kind of thing you leave phone messages lying around about.” He waved a hand. He wanted to get down to it. “Let’s turkey shoot. What job you working down there these days?”
I told him, and he sucked it around for a moment. He looked at the young guy and nodded, and the young guy slid off the desk and out of the room without a word.
“You’re off that as of now,” Luster said. “You want your bolter back, you can have that. You want to be shift captain or dust boss, or you want to get up here in the daylight for a while, maybe, you can have that, too. Jonathan is off taking care of it for you now.”
“He got all that from you with just a look?”
“We been together since he was a pup. We got to where words aren’t always needed.” He crawled forward some on the top of the desk. Words were needed between us, I guess. “Listen, Slim, I do this for you because I want you to see what I can do for you.”
“Okay.”
“I can do more,” he said. “Don’t think I can’t. I’m what you call a person of means.”
“I’d say that’s putting it mildly. I’m guessing you own most of the county. Underside of it, anyway, which is just as well, because that’s where the money is.”
Luster shrugged. His lips pressed together and for an instant his eyes showed memory and a spark of something like regret. He said, “One time, maybe. Not so much these days. Business ain’t what it used to be. I’ve sold out some to Roy Galligan, too. You know Roy Galligan?”
“We’ve never been introduced.”
“Know of him, I mean. Anyway, I’ve sold out some to him. Couple of them smaller outfits, and that surface mine over there to Holly. Headaches for cash. Still, what I’ve got left pays the bills.”
“I bet,” I said. “Maybe a little left over. Only question is what any of it has to do with me.”
“You know a guy name of Sam Dooley?”
“Dooley-Bug? Yeah, him I know,” I said.
“You worked with him once.”
“More than once. Dooley-Bug’s been in the mines a long time.”
“True that. So long he owes Underground Jesus a nickel. But what I mean is, last year you found his kid for him.”
I hesitated. This was suddenly getting into some pretty confidential territory. I wondered how Luster knew about it. Surely not from Dooley, who was a close-lipped sort, but others were involved, too, not least Dooley’s daughter. Some of them weren’t so close-lipped. Not least Dooley’s daughter. Others, too, probably.
I decided to play noncommittal. “Something like that might have happened, one time or another.”
Luster waved his hand.
“Don’t lawyer me, boy. Word is, the kid started running with a pretty dubious crowd. Something to do with this meth shit we got running wild these days. Maybe the kid was just using or maybe she was selling, too. Whichever it was, she was being used by her gang. Bag whoring, they call it. Pussy for drugs. You know anything about that?”
“Nope.”
“Nasty business. Anyway, story is that Dooley went to retrieve her. I hear he didn’t want her back so much. The kid had been trouble for a long time, a bad seed. But his wife was brokenhearted over the whole deal and talked him into it. So off he goes to confront these black-toothed bastards, and for his trouble he gets the holy dog shit beat out of him. Word then has it that he set you loose on them, and you tore through ’em like a tornado through a trailer park. They say you left a lot of hats on the ground.”
“I can’t say.”
“Hell, Slim, I don’t expect you to tell,” he said, and smiled and winked at me because we were men sharing things. “Secrets are secrets. It’s a rare man these days who understands that and can keep his hole shut. I just wanted you to know that I know. They say you’ve got a bloodhound’s nose, and you’re either too brave or too stupid to be afraid.”
“Thanks.”
He didn’t care for that. He had a wealthy man’s touchiness, and he showed it to me.
“I just mean you got tangled up in a rough situation with bad actors and came out of it on top. Jesus, Slim, sit down.”
His words were barely audible over the sound of rain tapping the window glass, but as soon as he said it, Jonathan came back in through the door pushing a roller chair. It was like a magic act. I sat down.
Luster pressed on. “And I hear you helped out a few more fellas here at the mine. Finding folks for them, I mean. Bringing ’em home. They say you have a knack for that kind of thing. Bloodhounding. That true?”
I didn’t like saying so, at least not until I had better idea of where all this was headed. Facts were facts, though, and the fact was that after the aforementioned business with Dooley I’d been approached by a handful of folks eager to locate this missing person or that. Sometimes I found them and brought them home—runaway kids, mostly—and sometimes I found them and left them alone, if leaving them alone felt like the right thing to do. But I always found them.
Luster waited. I waited. Jonathan waited. Somewhere, a turkey buzzard fell out of the sky. Finally, the old man said, “Okay, let’s assume it’s true, then. And let’s assume also that this talent of yours is something I’m currently in the market for. You know about this business in the Knight Hawk? The body they found down there?”
“It was in my section, so I knew right away. I even got a look at him.”
“Name was Dwayne Mays. Local press, dead-tree division. Someone screwed a pistol in his ear and separated him from his brains, so this won’t be one of those things that burns off with the morning dew. The cops are plenty interested in how and why Mays’s body ended up down in my Knight Hawk.”
“It makes sense they would be,” I said. “It’s their job, isn’t it?”
“Backcountry parts, their job is usually stroking their chickens and soaking the local yokels, boy, but this county sheriff might be different. Name of Wince. You know him?”
I said I didn’t.
Luster said, “Well, keep clear. He’s the worst kind of cop there is.”
“Corrupt?”
“Committed.” He leaned back in his seat and looked at me, about the way a gator eyes the bird on its nose. He tapped a finger on the desk and said, “Lot of bad press for coal mines these days. You follow the Upper Big Branch story?”
“Everybody did.”
“Lot of bad press,” he said again.
“Lot of dead miners.”
Luster considered that. He did a powerful job of considering. For a moment, I was afraid his hair would catch fire. He said, “You got politics, Slim?”
“Some. Some politics, some college.”
“Liberal?”
“Because I don’t like a company killing its miners through sheer stupidity? Sure. Liberal as hell.”
Luster looked at Jonathan. Jonathan looked back, his face handsome but empty. Probably he’d been to some fancy school somewhere and they’d taught him the trick of emptying expression from his face. Probably charged him a pretty penny for it, too. He shrugged. Luster looked at me again. I felt my asshole tighten. It was coming, whatever it was.
“I’d like to see about having you do a little work for me. You be interested in something like that?”
I already worked for him, so I didn’t say anything. He didn’t want me to anyway. I just sat there.
He seemed okay with that. “What we got here is
an industry under watch. Handful of things go wrong. Bullshit or bad fortune. Fire breaks out. Meteor strikes. Miners die. Lawsuits happen. You’re right: Massey Energy stepped in it good with that UBB thing down in West Virginia. Worse was the way they handled it after. Exposed their shareholders to risk. And now we got a situation where reporters all over the country are looking to make a name for themselves, trying to catch any big mining outfit they can in a slipup.”
“You think that’s what Dwayne Mays was doing?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. He was up to something, though. Chances are he didn’t end up down there by accident.”
“Chances are.”
“Problem for him is, we’re not up to anything.”
“That, plus the problem that he’s murdered and half buried in a gob pile.”
“That, too. But what I said stands. We’re entirely and completely aboveboard, Slim.”
I just sat there.
“You believe me?” he asked.
“You need me to?”
“I do not,” he said. “Meantime, the cops are all over us, stink on a monkey’s ass. They’ve already shut down part of our operation, and it’s likely they’ll shut down more of it, this thing drags out any kind of time. That’s bad for business. These are lean days as it is, and we just can’t take them getting any leaner. Plus, a shutdown will attract attention—all kinds of attention, some of it the wrong kind. Before you know it, we’re completely under the microscope. All that’s not bad enough, we got us another complication here.”
“Which is?”
Jonathan sat there like a stump, except for one hand, which came to life and slid a photograph across the desk: a balding Average, early fifties or so, striking a pose in the Herrin city park. They’ve got this memorial statue out there of a World War I doughboy, and the Average was standing beneath it and staring off into space like he’d worked out a plan to beat the kaiser.
Luster pointed at the picture. “Name’s Beckett. Guy Allan Beckett. He’s Dwayne Mays’s photographer. Or they paired up on quite a few jobs, anyway. Beckett went missing the same time Dwayne Mays showed up in pieces, and ain’t nobody seen or heard from him since. He can’t be raised by any means, and his bank card hasn’t been used. His wife thinks he’s come to evil. The cops are probably thinking the same thing, though they’re not talking just yet.”
I set down the picture and breathed out heavily and said, “Mr. Luster, I appreciate your moving me upstairs. More to the point, my back appreciates it. You probably saved me from an early wheelchair. But I’m not a policeman. I’m not a private eye, and I don’t know a thing about professional mystery-solving. Top of that, near as I can tell, cops like folks poking around in their business about as much as they like the criminals themselves. And that’s just what I get from books and TV. I can’t even imagine what they do to you in real life. It’s true, I once helped some friends who were having family woes, but I’ve got a soft spot for that kind of thing—family stuff—and I let them talk me into it. It wasn’t maybe the prettiest thing I’ve ever done, but in the end it was small fuss and the law was never involved in any way. I don’t know what I can do for you.”
For the first time, Jonathan spoke. I didn’t know he could, frankly, and the sound of his voice shocked me like a clap of thunder.
“What you can do for us, Slim,” he said, “is attempt to locate Mr. Beckett. At least look for him. Use that nose of yours to track him until you find him, then bring him to us.”
“Not the cops?”
“Us first. Remember who got you off slide-back.”
I guess Luster liked that one okay. He nodded. Jonathan nodded. I didn’t nod. The whole thing was ridiculous. But these were the type of people you couldn’t easily say no to, so instead I decided to go for the stall. I glanced at the picture again. He went maybe five ten or so, Beckett, though it was hard to tell from just a photo. He sported the regulation middle-age gut but otherwise appeared reasonably fit. Nothing interesting about him—no missing limbs or scars or anything like that. From a seek-and-find standpoint, that would probably make things tougher.
I said, “You don’t think you ought to give the police investigation some time? This only happened yesterday. They probably haven’t even finished brewing the coffee yet.”
“Not my style, Slim,” Luster said. “I’ve made my whole life by jumping into the game early and with both feet. You know who stands around waiting for other people to solve their problems?”
“I got a sense of it, yeah. Why me, though? I got to tell you, I can’t figure out your angle here. Why not hire a real detective?”
“Hell, son, hire one from where? Case you haven’t noticed, Slim, this ain’t exactly what you’d call a major metropolitan area. Southern Illinois has all of three private investigators, all of them graduates of a community college summer program and not a one of them worth using to scrape shit off your shoe.”
Jonathan said, “We checked into them.” He made a purse with his mouth and shut his eyes and shook his head slowly at me.
Luster said, “Besides, I use some outsider, I have to dick around bringing ’em up to speed on the local terrain. Whereas you already know the territory. And the people. Oh, and then there’s your daddy. That’s the other reason we called on you.”
“My daddy?”
“Not my favorite person, I admit,” Luster said. “But there’s no denying what he was and what he did down here. A lot of folks think he’s a damn hero.”
I said, “He’d probably agree with them.”
Luster just shrugged. He said, “I got to think there’s not a door in the downstate his name won’t kick down. Do more than a badge or a private investigator’s ID from godforsaken Chicago, that’s for sure. Slim, I feel pretty sure you can get to places a pro couldn’t, and I know you’ve got contacts it would take someone else months to cultivate. That’s time I don’t have, son.”
“I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“Just start anywhere. Hell, it’s what the police do. Pull on some thread, see where it leads. You think they’ve got a team of Sherlock Holmeses stashed away in the Randolph County sheriff’s station? Goddamn, boy, it used to be a Pizza Hut.”
“Pizza Palace.” Jonathan.
“Pizza Palace. Just jump in anywhere. Ask a few questions. See what you turn up. You might get lucky. If not, well, we can at least say we tried.” He fixed me with his frosted eyes. “Like I said, we can do things for you.”
“You already got me off the worst shift-duty of them all,” I said. “That’s probably enough.”
“Oh, hell, Slim, that was just for openers. I’m talking about something more substantial. And permanent.”
Jonathan said, “Your job, one. As long as Mr. Luster owns this mine, it’s guaranteed.”
“Your pension, too.”
The bit about the job was nice, but that last thing knocked me asshole-over-teakettle. Jonathan produced a glass of water. I drank it. The glass went away. He really was a magician. I waited for him to fart out a platinum coin.
Luster said, “Times are tough, Slim. You know how it is. Lot of pensions guaranteed at one point are disappearing today. And that’s health coverage, too. Security for you and your family. You got a family?”
“A daughter.”
Luster nodded. “Security for your daughter. I sell this place eventually, it gets bought up, and suddenly those pensions aren’t worth the promises they’re printed on. You’ve seen it happen before. But yours goes into a special account. Starting today. This afternoon.”
Jonathan said, “It’s a generous offer, Slim.”
“This is southern Illinois, son,” Luster said. “Coal country. The best friends to have around here are friends in low places.”
This was the case and I said so to Luster, but I wasn’t really listening to me. I was thinking about that pension and all that it meant. For a coal miner—or any working person, really—a pension means just about everything. Luster was right: a pension w
as health insurance into your dotage and financial security after you retired. It was a monthly paycheck and food in your tummy and a roof to keep the sun off your bald spot. But more than that, it was a promise kept. That pension was the reason a lot of miners went into the mines in the first place, and it was the reason a lot of them stayed longer than they should. It was, in a very real sense, the light at the end of a very long, very dark night.
Luster picked up my thoughts and carried them forward. “So do it for that. Do it for your daughter,” Luster said. “Hell, Slim, do it for Beckett’s wife.”
“Beckett’s wife?”
Luster cleared his throat. “You told me you have a soft spot for family, Slim,” he said. “Well, this woman, her name’s Temple.”
Jonathan said, “Temple Luster Beckett.”
Luster said, “She’s my daughter. This Beckett who’s gone missing is my son-in-law.”
THREE
It was a Saturday afternoon in the springtime, and my mother was crying in the kitchen with a gun in her hand. My sisters were huddled on the floor away from the windows with their backs to the stove and they were crying, too. I was crying. I was six years old. The door opened. My sisters screamed and my mother screamed with them and discharged the gun into the floor, and then my father walked in.
Like I’d be one day, my father was a coal man, but unlike me he was an important one. Maybe the most important in the downstate. He was a union leader and strike organizer and an inspiration to every other coal miner in the area. His name opened doors, or closed them, sometimes slammed them. He was an organizer or a bureaucrat or a thug, depending on whom you asked, and I hated him and was afraid of him. He was tall and skinny like I was becoming and had slightly stooped shoulders and a hawkish nose on an angular face. His eyes were gray and his hair graying prematurely. He looked at us now without expression and stepped smartly to my mother and took the gun from her.
He said, “You’ll hurt somebody,” but he might have been chiding her for being careless with a potato peeler.
My mother said, “There was a person here.”
“A person?”
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