Meanwhile, most of the flies in Randolph County had arrived at the site, which meant that the food had to be covered between servings.
“Maybe we should have scheduled this in the evening,” Huning whispered to Thaxton.
“I’m told that’s when the mosquitoes come out,” he replied.
Perhaps fifty people showed up, most simply to take advantage of a free meal. A few had more questions to ask the visitors.
“Sugar’s not going to like this,” Fogarty told Zoe. “This is part of her lunch crowd.”
Most of the guests had finished eating and were starting in on the cookies when Cassie Ledbetter, her sister Breeze, and several other odd-looking characters came walking purposely down the road, two of them at either end of a large metal pot. They stopped not ten yards from the barbecue gathering and set the pot down.
The visitors from Philadelphia were somewhat taken aback, but Rex Thaxton recovered enough to wave his arm at Cassie and her entourage.
“Hi, neighbors!” he said. “Come on over and have some barbecue—we’ve got plenty.”
“Sorry,” Cassie said, peering over at them. “We’re vegetarians. But I would like one of your brochures, if you don’t mind.”
Thaxton took one off a table, walked over and handed it to her.
“Anything I can help you with?” he asked.
“Nope. We just need a picture of your company so we can cast our spell.”
Thaxton noticed for the first time that Cassie was wearing a long black dress, black boots and black lipstick. Breeze had on a tie-dyed t-shirt. A young man with shoulder-length hair standing behind them kept pointing to the front of his own t-shirt, where it was written, “What you put out will come back to thee.”
Without another word, the group turned around and returned to their original post. Breeze produced several plastic envelopes, the contents of which Cassie tossed into the open mouth of the iron pot, already half full of some dark liquid. A large wooden spoon appeared as if conjured from air, and Cassie began to stir, muttering something to herself. The Thaxton trio stared at this unearthly scene, transfixed, as did their barbecue guests.
Even Stan Caulfield, hardly someone to buy into Wiccan mumbo-jumbo, looked nervous. There was something about the set of Cassie’s jaw, the wild look in Breeze’s eyes. Or maybe the human skull held by a female member of Cassie’s entourage.
When the stirring was done, Cassie lit a long match, tossed it into the pot, and a sound like a thunderclap emerged from within, complete with a cloud of white smoke. Almost everyone on the other side of the road jumped.
At that point, the six people involved in the ceremony stood side-by-side and held hands. Cassie, standing at one end of the human chain, lifted the Thaxton-Klein brochure and began speaking in a loud and shrill voice…
“They shall pay for what has been done. With the power from the sky, the earth, the sun. I use my will for all their trouble. For now on they shall receive struggle.”
A silence fell over the field, so Cassie said it again. Then she looked squarely at Rex Thaxton and said, “God help you all.” Whereupon the pot was hoisted up again and the group made a measured exit up the road.
“It’s called a ‘struggling vengeance’ curse,” Cassie told Fogarty a few minutes later. “I’ve been practicing it.”
“I wonder where they got that skull” Ellen Huning asked.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
THE SNITCH
Not far into his career in what the highbrows call journalism, Eddie Fogarty realized that he was something of a fraud.
Ever since the first newspaper was distributed—perhaps on a sheet of papyrus alongside the Nile—those who deliver the news in print have tried to foster an image of clairvoyance. Or, failing that, they at least demanded credit for clawing through all the lies and digging out the facts singlehandedly.
Actually, most news gets printed because someone, somewhere, has told a reporter about it. Even the Watergate coverage that made newsroom superheroes of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein could not have burst forth without the clandestine aid of Deep Throat.
So it was with Fogarty, dating back to a fortuitous call at Syracuse University that enabled him to torpedo Jim Kolar. Later, Lamond Morgan reached out from a Jefferson Springs phone booth and set in motion the machinery that put Wardell Franklin behind bars. Even the disastrous Marty Ventura story had been fed to him.
People who contact newspapers all have, as Ken Donnelly liked to point out, their personal agendas. They call out of a guilty conscience, they call to seek revenge. On rare occasions, they even call because they think it’s the right thing to do.
Jamie Fallon seemed to belong in the latter category.
“Mr. Fogarty, my name is Jamie Fallon,” he said when Fogarty picked up the phone in his office one afternoon, and the name tugged at Fogarty’s memory.
“The guy who played for the Eagles? Defensive back?”
“Yup, that’s me,” the voice replied. “That’s pretty good—not many people remember me from then.”
“I’ve always been a Giants’ fan,” Fogarty said, and Fallon knew exactly what he was talking about. It had been an interception by Fallon that had knocked the Giants out of the NFL playoffs ten years earlier.
“Hey, don’t hold it against me,” Fallon said, chuckling. “I think that was one of two interceptions I had during my whole career. The ball just landed in my hands.”
Zoe had walked into Fogarty’s office and was standing nearby, making curious faces.
“Well, I know you didn’t call here to talk football,” Fogarty said. “Especially not with a Giants’ fan. What can I do for you?”
Fallon’s next sentence caused Fogarty to snatch up his notebook and scramble around for something to write with. Finding nothing within reach, he made frantic writing motions in Zoe’s direction until she brought him a small pencil.
“After a bum knee chased me out of football, I went into the waste hauling business,” Fallon said. “Independent contractor. I’d saved some money from playing ball, and I used it to buy a few dump trucks. My brother-in-law had the business, and he wanted to get rid of it.”
“I remember asking my wife, ‘Honey, would you still love me if I wasn’t playing football anymore?”
“Bless her heart, she said, ‘I’d love you if you were a garbage man.’ So I became a garbage man.”
As a freelancer, Fallon’s biggest customer was Thaxton-Klein, and for a while their relationship went smoothly. Then Fallon got a visit at home one night from Bingo Noudi.
“I knew that Noudi Construction was doing work for Thaxton-Klein, too,” Fallon said, “but I had never met Bingo. Like you, he told me he remembered me from my playing days, and said he had bet and won a lot of money on that Giants-Eagles playoff game. Then he got to the point. His dad could make it worth my while, he told me, if I would take on a few Thaxton-Klein loads that were, well, questionable.”
“But they won’t take that stuff at the landfills,” I said.
“I know,” he said. “That’s why you dump it back in the woods, or off a bridge.”
“Why would Noudi want to cut you in?” Fogarty asked.
“Because they had more business than they could handle with their trucks. They figured the more drivers they had working these runs, the happier their clients would be, and that would be good for everybody. Also, I knew Noudi would want a cut of anything Thaxton-Klein paid me.”
“So what did you say?”
“I told him no, because I didn’t want to lose my hauler’s license. I told him, ‘I’m not very good at sneaking around, but more power to you. I’m not going to tell anybody.’”
“He just smiled and shook my hand and left. Three nights after that, two of my trucks had their tires slashed and all the wires ripped out under the hood.”
Bingo was hanging around the Thaxton-Klein garage when Fallon stopped by. “And he just said, ‘Heard you had some trouble last night. That’s a shame.’ I didn�
�t like the way he said it, but I had no proof.”
That was five years earlier, Fallon told Fogarty, and it just got worse. The tipping point came when Fallon took a load to a Jersey dump not far from Pennsauken and the inspectors discovered twenty-five creosote-coated posts buried at the bottom.
Creosote, often used as a wood preservative, is supposed to be dealt with separately at a disposal site. That’s because it can cause chemical burns, rashes, kidney damage, and exposure to its vapors can damage corneas.
“I told them I didn’t know who put them there,” Fallon said, “and they all looked at me like, Yeah, right. I had to pay a pretty hefty fine.”
At that point, Fallon said, he had enough.
“I sold my trucks and went into business with my other brother-in-law, who ran a construction company. Good thing I married up—lots of well-placed in-laws.”
Fallon heard later that the man who bought his trucks wound up going along with the Noudis. He had no choice.
“It’s kind of a sweet deal for everyone concerned,” Fallon said. “Thaxton-Klein keeps its hands clean by outsourcing the illegal stuff to Noudi, who likes the money. Their clients save a lot by not having to dump according to the EPA regs. I mean, a lot.”
Fogarty shifted the phone to his other ear and turned to another notebook page.
“I guess the only losers are the people who live where the stuff is dumped,” Fogarty said.
“That’s why I wanted to call you,” Fallon said. “I heard through the garbage grapevine that Thaxton-Klein planned on setting up shop down there, and I wanted to make sure you had the scoop about them.”
“Why did you wait so long?”
“A while back, somebody took a tanker full of used sulfuric acid on the Turnpike during a rainstorm and let it run out the drain plug. It actually melted the windshield wipers on a couple of cars, and took the paint off some others. Only an idiot would do that, and it concerned me that they were becoming that reckless.
“There’s a company in that area that deals in recycled steel, and they use that stuff to remove rust. It sits in tanks, and after a while they drain the tanks off and dispose of the contents. There are a lot of regulations in hauling sulfuric away, and it’s expensive.”
Fogarty was writing so hard that the lead snapped off his pencil, causing him to curse softly and repeat his pantomime in Zoe’s direction. This time, she found a pen.
“So what can I do about all of this?” he asked Fallon.
“Well, there’s nothing you can do about what’s going on up here—and it’s getting bad, let me tell you—but maybe you can write something that will stop Thaxton-Klein from moving in down your way. Because you know what’s going to happen if they do.”
“I do now,” Fogarty said. “The problem is they’re so clean. They have only one bad mark on their record, and an excuse for that. I’ll bet they also have some well-paid libel lawyers lurking around.”
“You got it,” said Fallon. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, though. Noudi Construction’s office building up here in Orange is generally deserted at night and on weekends. The guy who handles the books, George Capanis, is old school, and he still saves everything on paper in a file cabinet to back up his computer files.”
“They have a keypad entry system for the front door, and I’m going to give you the numbers. If you were to come up one night and look through the files, I’ll bet you could find something that would link Noudi to Thaxton-Klein.”
“Just don’t let anybody from Noudi’s operation catch you. I guess I don’t have to tell you that. And try not to leave any sign that you were there—they probably won’t even notice.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not stupid,” Fogarty said. “But how do I write a story based on something I’m not supposed to have?”
“I’m sure you’ll figure out something,” Fallon said. “Here’s the number to that key pad. Don’t lose it.”
The last admonition irritated Fogarty, prompting him to ask, “Why don’t you go and look through those files yourself?”
There was a long pause at the other end, so long that Fogarty found himself saying, “Hello? You there?”
“Because I’ve got a wife and two kids,” Fallon said finally.
“Okay,” Fogarty told him. Then a thought struck him.
“You know what?” he said. “This could be your third interception.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE
One morning in early September, Fogarty dispatched Zoe to, as he put it, “take the pulse of the community on the landfill issue.”
“I’m not sure Jefferson Springs has a pulse,” she said.
On this question, however, it did have opinions. From the regulars at Red’s Barbershop to the lunchtime diners at Sugar’s, a general consensus emerged as Zoe trudged along Main Street, wielding a notebook and a tape recorder and asking the simple question, “Are you in favor of bringing in a private landfill, or opposed?”
“Big surprise,” Zoe announced when she returned around three. “All the folks who live in Bonifay are against the landfill—not in their backyard, and all that. Everybody else said they didn’t want their taxes raised. I’d say the ayes have it.”
“I’m sure Buddha Booker will be glad to hear that,” Fogarty said.
“I actually ran into him at Sugar’s,” Zoe said. “He gave me a ‘no comment.’”
The more he found himself dealing with the Randolph County Board of Supervisors, the more Fogarty was struck by the difference between that body and the elected officials he had encountered in New Jersey.
The latter were, in many cases, people addicted to the give-and-take of politics and the ego boost it provided. A few of them even had ideas of parlaying their performance on the board of chosen freeholders to a seat in the state legislature—and, perhaps, beyond. Delusions of grandeur, in most cases, although a few actually did advance.
True, there were members who came onboard waving the flag of a single issue—taxes, abortion, etc. Others honestly saw their participation in local government as an act of charitable volunteerism. But those tended to be outshouted and overshadowed by the hardcore politicians.
Given that, the freeholders in the counties the Jersey Progress covered were always unveiling new ideas at public meetings, the better to attract the spotlight. Their approach to governing was proactive and aggressive, and their feuds could be vicious and lingering.
The more effective of them knew that the public, like a circus lion, could be managed only by not showing fear. Most progressive measures, at least in the opinion of their sponsors, had to be stuffed down the complaining throats of an ungrateful populace.
Sometimes this was done by warning of an even worse alternative; other times, by sheer force of personality.
The secret that every local politician needed to learn, Fogarty knew, was this: Voters have a short attention span. No matter how vehemently they might protest some action by their local board that would force change upon them, they would adjust to that within a few months. It would become part of their new reality, and thus grudgingly accepted.
That was a truism the Randolph County Board of Supervisors had apparently missed. All of them, for various reasons, tended to be swayed by citizen indignation.
Part of that was the issue of proximity. A local government official in a populous area was less likely to be recognized—and perhaps, confronted—on the street. In Randolph County, however, it was almost impossible to escape face-to-face, finger-wagging criticism.
Of the five supervisors, Fogarty realized immediately that Buddha Booker and Clinton Apperson were using their elected status to further their personal business agendas. Neither had any intention of leaving Randolph County, but their inside positions on the board made Randolph County a more profitable place for them. They weren’t even subtle about it.
Archie Edmunds was conservative on most issues because it fit with his love for the good ol’ days, which he defined
as prior to the New Deal. Prentice Dixon—the purist among the group—was lugging the heavy responsibility of representing the interests of the county’s black voters. Sam Bishop first ran as a tax opponent, tapping into a rich vein of Randolph County outrage, and continued to rail against government of all kinds, from the State House to the White House.
In many ways, Bishop was a mirror held up to his board colleagues. Like him, most voters in the county stoutly resisted the upward nudging of taxes in any form. It was a contradiction that had always intrigued Fogerty—the same people who might give generously to a stranger at their door, or donate hundreds of dollars to the cause of converting distant Asians or Africans to Christianity, were likely to treat a suggestion to raise school or property taxes even a few dollars as subversive.
“It makes sense, when you think about it,” Eddie told Zoe one day as they were pasting up pages. “A lot of Americans are descendants of malcontents who came here because they felt oppressed by their governments. Then you have blacks, whose mistrust of government goes back to slavery.”
“It’s in our genes to be suspicious of the people in power.”
And so the landfill controversy exploded upon the Randolph board, tearing at the members’ individual agendas. This is how Fogarty laid it out in a front-page piece under the headline, “New Landfill: A Lose/Lose Proposition?”
There are two possible scenarios at work here, both of them potentially disastrous. If the board votes to approve the plan to outsource the new dump to a private company, on the site that has been purchased, there is the risk that hazardous waste could find its way into the out-of-state garbage loads. That could poison a nearby aquifer—and, by extension, hundreds of wells in that section of the county. Those homeowners would no doubt sue the county in response.
Plus, the new company would import most of its own people, leaving only a handful of jobs for county residents.
The Kudzu Kid Page 23