by Jack Lynch
“Honest in what way?”
“Not on the take from any elements, local or outside either one. We had a fellow we suspected of just that a few years back, so we tied the can to him.”
“Okay, Chief, you run a tight ship. Maybe you can tell me how Armando Barker left town.”
“By automobile, I suppose,” he said with a little smile.
“I meant did he leave any hard feelings behind? With Carl Slide, for instance, or you, or anyone else in town?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Are there any other places like the Truck Stop or the Sky Lodge that you underpolice around here?”
“Nope.”
“How do Slide and Ma Leary get along?”
“I haven’t heard any complaints from one about the other.”
“So the official police position is that everything in town is just swell.”
“Sure. Just the way we like it around here.”
He was reminding me I wasn’t from around there. I thanked him and drove over to a municipal parking lot on Nevada Street. The sidewalks were bustling. In the daylight I could see there were a lot of attractions. They had a historical museum full of old mining gear and displays of local lore and legend. A stable off Nevada Street offered rides in buckboards and a restored stagecoach. The bus station had tours out to the Rancho Sanchez. And the Rancho, according to the advertising boards, offered gun collections, rodeo exhibitions, old-time dance halls and a recreated range war featuring opposing gangs of cowboys, a band of real Apaches and units of the U.S. Cavalry. Sounded like fun for the whole family.
I went into the Sand Valley Home Bank, a trim, brick building next door to the branch of a brokerage firm. I told a gimlet-eyed woman that I was from out of town, was thinking of starting up a business in Sand Valley and wanted to speak to one of the firm’s officers about the lay of the land. A few minutes later I was ushered into a glass-enclosed office and introduced to a vice president named Howard Morton. Morton was of medium height with a slight build. He’d lost most of his hair, had a nice suntan, wore rimless glasses and wouldn’t have offended anybody with his handshake. I told him I was a printer of posters and other specialty items distributed nationwide by direct mail. I said it was the sort of business a man could run from anywhere, and my doctor had told me I’d probably add several years to my life by moving to a dry desert climate. Morton sat there nodding his head as if it was the sort of thing that brought a lot of people to Sand Valley. We chatted for twenty minutes, and at the end of that time I wished maybe I was what I’d told him I was. The way Morton described it, you couldn’t find a better combination of reasonable commercial properties and favorable tax situation.
Then I asked him about the whores and gambling.
“I don’t think they’ll interfere with your poster business, Mr. Bragg.”
“Maybe not. But sometimes those activities attract elements that could make my doctor change his mind.”
He chuckled at my little joke. “You needn’t worry, Mr. Bragg. One thing we in Sand Valley pride ourselves on is that we keep the bad elements out. These are just homegrown activities.”
“Do all the homegrown folks get along with one another?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I hear a fellow named Slide owns the Sky Lodge and a woman calling herself Ma Leary owns the Truck Stop. Is one of them apt to get jealous of the other’s activity?”
“It wouldn’t seem likely. They really attract two different kinds of crowd. And then there is the Rancho Sanchez, just outside of town. That attracts a third kind of crowd. Whole families of people.”
“I was wondering about that operation. Who owns it?”
“A medium-sized conglomerate headquartered in Los Angeles. Western Seas, Inc. It was a small piledrive and dredge outfit started by some ex-Seabee right after World War II. Now it’s into everything from fast-food stands to plastics and entertainment complexes like the Rancho Sanchez. They were very astute to build the Rancho here. It’s a natural stopping place for folks traveling the shortcut route over the Rockies.”
“What happened to the ex-Seabee?”
“I understand he goes into the office a time or two each year. The rest of the time he’s hunting in Africa or flitting around Europe. He certainly will never have to look at another piledriver the rest of his life. Anyway, do you see my point? We have all sorts of people making money in different ways here in Sand Valley, because we have all sorts of different people coming down that lovely new highway.”
“It makes sense. One more thing, Mr. Morton. On my way into town I noticed a small airstrip outside of town. Any chance of getting some sort of air service in here, you think?”
“Not in the foreseeable future, I’m afraid. It’s privately owned.”
“That’s too bad. I have to do some traveling in my business. It’d be a lot easier if I didn’t have to drive over to Spring Meadows all the time.”
“I know. There used to be a nonscheduled air operation out there, but it went out of business about eight years ago. The town fathers made queries to see if they could interest another carrier in operating from here, but they didn’t find anyone. Then they put the field up for sale, hoping the Western Seas people might buy it as a part of their Rancho Sanchez operation. But the Western people didn’t bite, either. Then about a year ago a fellow came through town, made an offer, and the city sold it.”
“What does the fellow use it for?”
“Don’t ask me. He flies airplanes in and out.”
“What’s his name?”
“Saunders, I believe. You could find out at city hall.”
“What did he pay for it?”
“I think ten thousand dollars. It isn’t very big, really. It has the runway and a couple of old hangars. That’s about all.”
“Has the city ever thought about buying it back?”
“As a matter of fact, yes, once the tourist business started getting heavy. But this Saunders wanted something in the neighborhood of a million dollars for it. He plainly doesn’t intend to sell.”
I thanked Morton and went out to walk along the street some more. It was some town, no question about it. I was beginning to suspect there was more quiet wheeling and dealing going on than even banker Morton knew about. I passed a drugstore with newspaper racks out front. There were papers from Los Angeles, Phoenix, Denver and Salt Lake City. They also had an eight-page weekly newspaper called the Sand Valley Piper. It carried a lot of advertisements, vital statistics, columns written by correspondents in places called Wind Canyon and Salt Bluff, innocuous town gossip and an editorial about the mess in Washington. The editorial was signed by one Roland Carrington, who identified himself as editor and publisher. Inside the drugstore I asked for directions to the Piper office. The clerk told me it was three blocks over, where the town started to dissolve into sage and sand, the only concrete-block building in town that was painted pink.
Carrington turned out to be a stout old fellow with a cold cigar in his mouth. He was working an adding machine at a scarred desk just inside the front door. There was the rumble of a flatbed press behind a door leading to the printshop. I introduced myself as a former newsman from San Francisco who had always wondered if there was any money in weekly newspapers. I also congratulated him on his Washington editorial.
He grinned, leaned across the desk to shake hands and said people called him Doc. He also said the only reason he ran the editorial was because one of his travel ads fell out at the last minute.
“I batted it out one afternoon when I was sitting around with nothing much to do but feel righteous. Washington is far enough away so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to get some of the steam out of my system and still not offend anyone. I also wrote it cleverly enough so that it was timeless. Been sitting back there in type since the last administration was in office. All ready to be slapped in when some emergency comes up leaving a hole. Now I got to sit down and do another one.”
“Do your edito
rials always involve problems so far away?”
“You’re damn right. That, my boy, is your first lesson in how to make money in weekly newspapering. You cannot afford to tweak the people who fill your pages with all those lovely advertisements. There aren’t that many people who spend money on ads in a little town like this. It’s plain economics. I used to live and work in Los Angeles. Spent a while writing editorials there as well. Wrote some stuff you could be proud of, and it didn’t matter whether it concerned local people or not. If you hurt Bill’s feelings and he yanked an ad, your salesmen could always go sell one to George. And pretty soon Bill would be back because he needed you. In Sand Valley—hell, any little town—it’s different.”
“Sand Valley seems different from most.”
Carrington took the cigar out of his mouth and grinned up at me. “Noticed that, did you? We’re trying to create the robust sort of atmosphere they have up around Virginia City, in Nevada.”
“I’d say you’re even a little more robust than Virginia City. I stopped by the Truck Stop on my way into town last night. I thought that operation was pretty robust until a gang of guys came through at about closing time and tore up the place.”
Carrington leaned forward. “That so? I’ll be damned. Doesn’t surprise me all that much, though.”
“Why not?”
Carrington screwed up his face and scratched under one armpit. “There seems to be some conflicting currents here in town. I try to keep my nose out of things, like a good weekly publisher should, but a fellow hears stories.”
“What sort of stories?”
“Oh, folks at one end of town not getting along with folks at the other end.”
“You mean Carl Slide and Ma Leary.”
“Yes. But they’re both advertisers. God knows they don’t have to be. The people who go to either one of their places aren’t much apt to pick up a copy of the Piper. So I try to remain an impartial observer.”
“Meaning not observing anything.”
“That’s right, son, and what’s your interest in all this?”
“Like I said…”
“I heard what you said, but you’ve been pumping me pretty good. What do you do now that you’re not newspapering?”
I gave him a card. He studied it and nodded.
“I see. Now I really gotta be careful. What’s your business here?”
“My client keeps getting threats in the mail to do with the people close to him. One of them proved genuine; a man was killed. The weapon came from here. I’m trying to find out why.”
“That all you have to go on?”
“Just about. That’s why I shotgun my questions. I don’t know where the threat comes from. Hopefully I’ll stumble across something. The problem is, I’m stumbling across too much down here. In fact a man can hardly take an uncluttered step around here.”
“How do you mean?”
“Places like the Truck Stop and Sky Lodge.”
Carrington scratched a match and sucked a little life into his cigar. He sat back and stared at the ceiling. “You would think a community of civilized people could carry it off, wouldn’t you?”
“Carry what off?”
“A little gambling. Girls. Things like that, so long as it doesn’t offend the local residents. It’s really a nice little town, Mr. Bragg. We don’t have any of the problems a lot of towns do, let alone all the terrible stuff happening in the big cities.”
“Everybody keeps saying that. Merle Coffey even boasts about firing a dishonest cop a while back. But at least an old newspaperman from Los Angeles must be aware of the risk you run when you start looking the other way about things. Things tend to drift and become other things. The guys who ripped apart the Truck Stop last night were from out of town. It hardly matters whether they were hired by somebody from around here or out of town. And I don’t think it’s the end of it. From what Ma told me afterwards, I don’t think the prudent traveler should be booked into the Sky Lodge right now.”
Carrington chewed his cigar. “I’d sure hate to see something like that get started. The shame of it is, it hasn’t anything to do with the rest of us.”
“It’s your town.”
“I know, but…” He thought some more then threw up his hands. “Ah, hell, if it happens, it happens. And don’t think I kid myself about being a newspaperman any longer, Bragg. I’m a space salesman for a little weekly shopper. It’s funny, though, that you should mention the fellow that Coffey fired. I was thinking about him when I wrote my Washington piece. If I were still a newspaperman, or had been back then, it’s an episode I might have looked into.”
“How come?”
“Because despite what Coffey will tell you, the fellow he fired might well have been the most honest cop this town had. John Caine was his name.”
“What excuse did they use to get rid of him?”
“There were rumors of a bank account he had that was a whole lot bigger than a man on his salary could be expected to have. But all I heard were rumors, and it’s been a long time since I followed up a rumor.”
“Did Caine seem like the sort of cop who might go bad?”
“No, he didn’t. He was a third generation native of the area. Loved Sand Valley. Didn’t want it to change, I think.”
“You’re almost telling me something.”
“When Slide and the fellow who owned the Truck Stop before Ma Leary started to expand their operations, so to speak, I don’t think Caine liked it. I don’t know just what all he was looking into, but you might say he was starting to fight city hall.”
“So they fired him.”
“Yes, sir. For a while it didn’t seem as if it were going to make much difference. He kept poking around, and I think he was in touch with somebody in the state attorney general’s office. Then all of a sudden he just dropped it.”
“Do you think he was threatened?”
“I have no idea. But John Caine wasn’t the sort to be threatened very easily, I can tell you that. His wife was dead. His kid had left home. No, it was more as if he just got tired, like we all do sometimes. He started hitting the bottle pretty hard.”
“Where could I find this Caine?”
“In the cemetery.”
“Natural causes?”
“If you can call it natural for a fellow to stick the barrel of his service revolver inside his mouth and pull the trigger.”
“When did that happen?”
“Christmas season before last.”
“You mentioned a fellow who owned the Truck Stop before Ma Leary.”
“Yes, let’s see now. His name was Barker. He left here a couple of years ago.”
“What was he like?”
“I never got to know him much. I’d only bought the paper a short time before he left town.”
“Does his name ever come up?”
“Not that I ever hear. But then…”
“I know. Hear no evil, speak no evil.”
“You’re catching on fast, son. You might make a good weekly newspaperman some day.”
TWELVE
One time, early in my own newspaper career up in Seattle, there had been a mass slaying in the middle of the night of a family of seven. I was one of the people working on the story. I learned in the course of my asking around that there was a remote cousin of the slain family who lived up in Bellingham, near the Canadian border. That was before the freeway was built, and I never got around to going up to interview her. It was a long, irritating drive on a two-lane road in those days, and I figured she probably couldn’t have added much color to the gory stuff we already had. For purposes of the story right then I was right. It turned out she was a plain, mousy-looking girl who wasn’t very glib or bright. In the long run, though, it turned out I was very wrong indeed, because she was the one who envied her relatives and had hired the dude who pulled the trigger and snuffed the family of seven. It was a lesson my city editor back then was to make sure I never forgot. I call it my plain girl rule. That’s why
, when my major job was to protect a little girl up near San Francisco, I took a drive out of town to look at the airfield that had come up in a couple of conversations.
I took the road out past the Truck Stop and Rancho Sanchez. A fence ran along the road near the airfield, and there was an open gate leading down to the hangars, but I didn’t drive in. Somebody else was already there. I parked alongside the road and got out my binoculars from the trunk of the car. A camper truck was parked alongside one of the buildings. Two men lounged against it as if they were waiting for somebody. They appeared to be in their twenties. One wore old army fatigues. The other had on an Australian bush hat with the brim tied up on one side. He was bare chested and had some creature’s missing ivory tooth on a leather thong around his neck. Out beyond the runway itself, in the land of desert, were a bunch of guys on horseback dressed like Custer’s Cavalry. They seemed to be getting ready to go charging into the Rancho Sanchez.
I decided that was a good idea. I got back into the car and drove to the Rancho Sanchez parking lot. I paid a five dollar admission and hiked on through the replica of an old frontier town among a couple hundred other tourists. At the end of the town, near the desert’s edge and not too far from the airfield, was a riding stable. There was some curious activity going on that made me pause near the corner of a building where I wouldn’t easily be seen.
A gang of guys dressed in new Levis and blue workshirts and cowboy hats were talking about renting some horses. They looked familiar despite the costumes. They all wore holstered pistols. Some of them thumbed their noses at authenticity, in the event they were trying to recreate history, by wearing shoulder holsters. They were some of the same people who had torn up the Truck Stop the night before. One of them was telling the guy in charge of the stable that they weren’t all that used to riding, and they wanted some gentle mounts. The guy said he would do the best he could and whistled some helpers together. They began bringing out the horses and showing the other fellows which side to climb up on and things. I skulked on past and took a hike out into the desert.