The Best American Mystery Stories 2002

Scott Wolven The Copper Kings

From HandHeldCrime & Plots with Guns

After my wife divorced me last August, I left upstate New York and drove west. My plan was to live in Seattle, but money ran thin in Moscow, Idaho. I got stuck there. I devoted a lot of time and attention to heavy drinking and found I was really good at being drunk.

Functional alcoholism requires a delicate balance of solitude, booze, and money, and I worked on making a science of it. Keeping the money part of the equation flowing is always tough, so I was relieved when Greg showed up on my doorstep early one Saturday morning, talking about getting paid cash for a day’s work.

Greg was a big ex-football player of a man who lived with his girlfriend and her son in one of the trailers that surrounded my little cinder block, one-bedroom shed. Greg sold insurance, he painted houses, but his main sideline was bounty hunting and skip tracing. He was licensed by the State of Idaho, so most of the things he did were somewhere in the neighborhood of legal. My first week in Moscow, Greg roped me into helping him catch a fugitive, then we transported the bad guy to the U.S. Marshal’s office in Spokane. He had given me some of the reward money, which I promptly drank. Every time I saw Greg outside near his girlfriend’s trailer, I waved to him and he waved back. We were partners, in an unofficial sort of way. I saw him walking up the gravel road that wound through the trailers, and I opened the door before he knocked.

“Hi,” I said. Greg wore a denim shirt, jeans, a tan hunting vest, and black cowboy boots.

“Early to be stinko, isn’t it?” he asked, pointing his chin at the beer in my right hand.

“That’s a myth,” I answered. “Alcohol doesn’t even begin to affect your brain before noon.”

“Sure,” Greg said. He nodded. “Feel like taking a ride? I’ve got a potential client and we could get paid cash for working today.”

“How much?” I asked.

Greg shifted his weight and looked out over the trailers. “I think that depends,” he said.

“Ballpark it for me,” I said. I leaned against the doorjamb and sipped my warm beer.

“It’s a missing person job,” he said. He turned to look straight at me. “Could be a couple hundred bucks in it, and probably no guns.” He paused. “Well, maybe guns, but definitely no cops.”

I nodded. “I’m in,” I said. I tilted my head and drained my beer, tossing the empty can back into my apartment. “Can I use your pistol?” Greg owned a Beretta that I coveted.

Greg smiled. “Sure. Let’s drive over.”

We walked back down the gravel road together and got into Greg’s ugly truck. It was an old Toyota four-door that he had rigged with a Plexiglas barrier, separating the front seats from the back, just like the cops. He started it up and we drove across town and out into farm country. Mile after mile of lentils and corn stretched toward the horizon.

“Nice country,” I said. I was wearing my work clothes — a pair of jeans, work boots, blue T-shirt, and tan work jacket. There was a bottle of whiskey in my jacket pocket. I took it out and had a swallow. I looked at the fields passing by.

Greg leaned over, reached into the glove compartment, and handed me the Beretta. I stuck it in the right hand pocket of my work jacket. “Farms always scare me,” Greg said. “Too much work.” He watched the road straight ahead, oceans of grain fields passing by on both sides. “I like town,” he said. “No matter how small a town.”

We passed a long-abandoned church and made a right turn onto a dirt driveway. A hand-lettered sign at the side of the driveway read Ryan’s Farm. I sucked back some whiskey. We drove down the dirt driveway and stopped in front of a white house surrounded by farm buildings. A sagging picnic table sat on the front lawn. An old man walked off the porch toward us. An older, white-haired woman stood on the porch steps, in front of the house. We both got out of the truck and I left the whiskey under the passenger’s seat.

“Hi,” said the old man. His voice was a ton of gravel coming off a truck. “I’m Harry Ryan.” He wore farmer’s denim coveralls and a green ball cap.

Greg nodded. “I’m Greg Newell and this is my partner, John Thorn,” he said. I nodded and lifted my right hand in a half-wave.

“Sam Haag said you were a good man for this job. Sam said you were tough.” Harry Ryan looked at Greg, then at me. “I need somebody tough,” he said.

“We’re tough,” Greg said.

Harry Ryan came closer. “I smell booze,” he said.

“I spilled some on my boots last night, out playing pool,” I lied.

Harry Ryan came a step closer. “Smells like you spilled it in your mouth first thing this morning,” he said.

“It helps me be tough,” I said.

Harry Ryan nodded.

“His wife divorced him,” Greg said.

Harry Ryan put his hands in his pockets. “I understand,” he said. He walked over to the picnic table and sat down. Greg and I followed and stood on the other side of the table. Harry Ryan looked up at us.

“Well,” he said, “I want you to find my son.” He held out an envelope. “He went up into the Panhandle to get a job and sent us some letters, like this one. But the letters stopped three weeks ago and I haven’t heard from him.” He handed the envelope to Greg and Greg opened it, taking the letter out. He held it over near me, so I could read it, too. It was written in a bad scrawl.

“Dad — here’s nine hundred dollars and more is coming. Everything is fine. I’m working up north, mining, working for the copper kings and the pay is good. I’m working hard and will see you and mom soon. Love Mike.”

“I want you to find him,” Harry Ryan said. “If you find him, I’ll give you five hundred dollars.” The older, white-haired woman slowly turned and walked up the porch steps, back into the farmhouse. The screen door closed with a smack against its wood casing. Harry Ryan went on, at a low volume. “Mike was in some kind of small trouble in Boise that I didn’t even know about. Some probation officer and a state cop stopped by here yesterday, but they wouldn’t tell me anything. Just said they were looking for Mike.” Harry Ryan put a photograph on the picnic table. “That’s Mike,” he said. The picture showed a smiling young man next to a brand-new pickup truck. In the back of the pickup truck was a Doberman. Greg picked up the picture.

“Is that his dog?” Greg asked.

“That’s Max,” Harry said. “Mike trained him and never went anywhere without him.”

“Was Max a vicious dog?” Greg asked.

Harry smiled. “He’d take your leg off. Max was better than a gun, as far as I was concerned.” He looked up into the giant blue sky and then out over the fields. He stood up and handed Greg some money. “That’s two hundred fifty. You get the rest when the job is done.” Harry Ryan started to walk slowly back toward his house.

“Fine,” Greg said. He nodded and I nodded, too. “That’s fine.” He handed me the picture and we both got back into the truck. Harry Ryan never turned around, just walked up the porch steps and into the farmhouse. I took a slug of whiskey and watched the same fields roll by as Greg drove back to town.

We drove through town and Greg pulled over at a phone booth outside a gas station. I watched him making call after call, laughing and shaking his head in the little booth. Then he came back to the truck.

“Who’d you call?” I asked.

Greg looked at me and narrowed his eyes. “It pays to cultivate reliable underworld contacts,” he said.

“Who’d you call?” I asked.

“Smitty and my ex-girlfriend,” he said. Smitty was an old biker friend of Greg’s who owned a bar just outside Bonner’s Ferry, way up north in the Panhandle. I didn’t know the ex-girlfriend. “Smitty says he knows a reopened copper mine in the hills, might be just what we want. He’s going to ask around and get us directions. But we need cover.”

“What?” I said.

“Cover,” Greg said. “A disguise, so we can get in the place.” Greg turned around in the gas station parking lot and doubled back into town. He pulled off onto a side street and stopped in front of a red house. “Just a minute,” he said. A woman came out onto the front porch and from the excited way she looked at Greg, she appeared ready to move off the ex-girlfriend list, back into the active rotation. She and Greg went inside and I had a couple shots of booze. I wished for a cup of coffee to kind of even me out, but all I had was the whiskey. So I took two more swallows, just to stay steady and tough.

The minute turned out to be three quarters of an hour and finally, Greg came back down the front steps. Walking next to him was the biggest dog I’ve ever seen on a leash. The dog was black and tan, about the size of a small pony. He let the dog in the back seat and the whole truck rocked. Greg got in and started to drive.

“What the hell’s that?” I asked.

“Mister Lucky,” Greg said. “He’s our cover. He’ll get us in.” Mister Lucky’s head slammed into, the Plexiglas barrier as we hit a pothole. He didn’t even seem to notice it. His head was bigger than a basketball.

“What breed is he?” I asked.

“Neapolitan mastiff,” Greg said. “Real killers.” Mister Lucky lay down across the back seat. He looked cramped and slightly mad.

“How much does he weigh?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” said Greg. “Maybe two thirty, two forty. A real killer.”

We drove north toward Bonner’s Ferry. I looked out the window the whole way, but I didn’t see anyone who looked like Mike Ryan. The Rockies were on our right and they seemed to grow as we headed north into them. I think the whiskey made me fall asleep for part of the ride.

We stopped at Smitty’s. There were two motorcycles and a pickup truck outside in the dirt parking lot. Greg and I both got out and I followed him inside. It was a dark bar, with a jukebox, a pool table, and not much else. Mounted over the bar was a full-sized log, split down the middle. Somebody had used a wood-burning set to carve the words IN GOD WE TRUST AND YOU AIN’T GOD. There were three or four regulars inside. They must have been regulars, because even the most simple-minded folk wouldn’t wander into Smitty’s. For all the country up the Idaho Panhandle, nobody wandered. It was all very deliberate. There were places you weren’t supposed to go, sort of a widely held secret. We were headed for one of those places. Smitty talked in low tones with Greg, gave me a half-wave, and we walked back out to the truck. It was mid-afternoon at this point. We got back in the truck. Mister Lucky didn’t move.

“Did Smitty help out?” I asked.

“Sure,” Greg said. “Here’s where you earn the money.” He took another pistol, a .45 Colt Combat Commander, out of the glove compartment and slid it under his left leg. “Just in case,” he said. I reached into my jacket pocket and clicked the safety off the Beretta. I took my last slug of booze and put the bottle on the floor. We were ready.

Greg drove up into the mountains for forty minutes, following winding roads and occasionally cutting off one onto another. My ears popped as we went up. Eventually, we drove up about a mile of dirt road.

“I think this is it,” Greg said.

Ahead of us, there was an iron gate and a small shack. A man was sitting on the gate. A rifle was propped up against the shack. We pulled up to the gate. There was a small sign that read COPPER KINGS MINING on the shack. The man got off the gate and walked over to the shack. He called to us as he picked up the rifle.

“Mine’s closed for the day, boys,” he said. He walked toward us, cradling the rifle in his arms. “Mine’s closed and we aren’t hiring.” He looked into the truck at Mister Lucky, who stood up and looked back. “Nice pup,” he said.

Greg leaned out his truck window and held up two twenties. “Look at that,” he said. “These are some of those new twenties.” He looked closely at the bills. “Much bigger picture of Jackson,” he said.

The man who was pretending to be a legitimate guard came over. He took the two twenties out of Greg’s hand.

Greg nodded. “Aren’t those new bills?” Greg asked.

“It’s hard to tell in this light,” the man who was a guard said.

“Well, you keep them for me and find out,” Greg said. “I understand you might have to spend them to do it, but you be sure to find out.” He gave the man who was a guard but didn’t want us to think he was a guard a friendly fake smile. The man gave the same smile back to him. The man walked over to the shack and the gate went up. Greg pulled up.

“Go on in and tell Charlie you’ve got a dog on for tonight,” the man who was guarding something that wasn’t a copper mine said.

“How will I know it’s Charlie?” Greg asked.

“He’s the biggest biker you’ve ever seen,” the man said. “And he’s got the biggest gun you’ve ever seen too.” Then he waved us through.

Greg drove in. There were some abandoned mining buildings, some industrial equipment and covered conveyors. A couple of pickup trucks were parked next to the buildings. There was no mining going on here.

“Smell that?” Greg asked. I nodded. It was a strange mixture of gasoline and ether. “Copper mine my ass,” Greg said. “This is the biggest crystal meth plant in the world.” I reached down, got the whiskey bottle, and took a sip. Ahead of us was a crowd of men, mostly lounging around on the backs of pickup trucks, talking and drinking beer. Most of them had some type of dog, ranging from German shepherds to Huskies. Once in a while, a dog barked. A huge biker, Charlie I assumed, sat behind a table in front of an entrance to a mine shaft. We heard the small roar of a crowd coming from inside the shaft, along with the sounds of dogs. Greg parked the truck and got out with Mister Lucky on the leash. “You take the gun,” he said quietly. We walked up to the table. Mister Lucky dwarfed all the other dogs we saw. We stepped up to Charlie.

“You want to fight that dog tonight?” Charlie asked. He was huge, even sitting down. He must have weighed more than three hundred and fifty pounds. On the table in front of him sat the wickedest-looking gun I’d ever seen. It was a nickel-plated shotgun, short-barreled, but with a cylindrical magazine attached at the butt end. Charlie noticed my gaze. “That’s a Streetsweeper. Nineteen shots as fast as I can pull the trigger, one in the chamber, eighteen in the clip.” He looked at me. “Evens things up pretty fast, know what I mean?”

“I know what you mean,” I answered.

He turned back to Greg and Mister Lucky. “So how about it?” he said.

Greg shook his head. “No,” Greg said. “We just used him to get through the gate.”

Charlie’s face did something that it probably considered a smile. “Got to get better help around here.” He spit into the dust and looked up at Greg. “If you’re a cop, this is your grave.”

“Do I look like a cop?” Greg said.

Charlie shrugged. “They look different nowadays,” he said. “Used to be easy — anyone with shiny shoes and a short haircut. But now—” He paused. “Well, it’s not so easy.”

“Sure,” Greg allowed. “I’m just looking for somebody.” He took the picture of Mike Ryan out and put it on the table in front of Charlie. The terrible sounds of dogs fighting came from inside the mineshaft, echoing out over the buildings. “Ever seen him?” Greg asked.

Charlie was quiet and then he coughed. “That kid’s gone,” he said. “Forever.”

“How did it happen?” Greg asked.

“He stopped breathing, that’s how it happened. Like it always happens.” He looked at Greg. “Pure accident,” he said. “Lots of accidents in this life.”

“Right,” Greg said. Lightning moved slower than Greg in that next instant, and I was the thunder only a second behind. He had Charlie down on the ground, his right foot on Charlie’s throat and Mister Lucky’s mouth less than an inch from Charlie’s right eye. I had the Streetsweeper, safety off, and was keeping an eye on the men behind us. “Whisper it to me,” Greg said to Charlie. “Tell me about the accident. And don’t do anything to disturb the dog. He’s edgy.” A low growl, like a distant airplane engine, was coming from Mister Lucky. Charlie whispered.

“The kid was on probation in Boise. He worked up here for three weeks, transporting meth and winning with his dog. Then we caught him wearing a wire.” Charlie’s breathing was shallow. Greg increased the pressure of his foot. Charlie croaked it out. “We put him in with the dogs.”

Greg took his foot off. Mister Lucky stayed ready until Greg tugged on the leash. The crowd of men behind us was quiet. Charlie got up slowly.

“No hard feelings,” Greg said. “I had to know.”

Charlie rubbed his Adam’s apple. “Your nights are going to be very dark and scary,” he said. He gave Greg a hard stare. I turned around with the Streetsweeper and my tough kicked in.

“You drugged-out freak!” I shouted. “I’ve got about ten of my buddies from ’Nam within an hour of here. You want me to call in a hail storm from hell?” I was shaking, the Streetsweeper less than an inch from Charlie’s nose. “They’ll feed you your own ass,” I said. “You want some?” I stared at him. “Do you want some!” The trigger pressed against my finger and the whiskey tough wanted to squeeze it.

Charlie shook his head. He watched us as we walked back to the truck and pulled away. We waved to the man at the gate as we passed through. He’d probably be dead by morning for letting us in. He waved back.

The sun started to set as we drove back to Moscow. Greg cleared his throat as we reached the outskirts of town.

“Do you have buddies that were in Vietnam?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“You even fooled me,” Greg said.

We pulled into Harry Ryan’s driveway and Harry Ryan came out of the farmhouse. We got out of the truck. The older white-haired woman was sitting on the porch steps. Harry, Greg, and I walked over by the lentil field. It seemed to stretch out forever. Harry had his back to us, looking at the field.

“How’s my boy?” he said. “Did you find him?”

Greg looked at the ground and then at Harry Ryan’s back. He looked up at the sunset blue sky. “He’s working,” Greg said. As soon as Greg spoke, Harry Ryan started to gently cry. “He’s working up north for the copper kings, just like he wrote you,” Greg said.

Harry Ryan nodded. I could hear him crying as he spoke. “Lie to me again,” he said. “Lie to me, tell me the best one you’ve got.” He was sobbing. “The money’s on the picnic table,” he said, turning around. Harry Ryan started to walk toward his farmhouse. When I turned to look, the old woman on the porch was gone. I picked up the money as we walked back to Greg’s ugly truck and drove away.