Bubbles Ablaze (22 page)

It was all I could do to keep myself from drop-kicking the phone into Roxanne's flowers.

“Oh, Bubbles? One other thing.”

“Yes, Mr. Salvo?”

“You're fired. Don't forget that.”

How could I? I was working harder than ever.

T
he old brick Union Hall was near the end of Shale Street, a quiet side road framed by trees and juniper bushes, and it was deserted when I arrived in my Camaro. I had expected that at least a few people would be inside setting up for the big Hoagie Ho tonight. Thankfully, I was wrong. The joint was empty.

Except for Stinky, I hoped.

I parked a few blocks away and strolled around the building. There were two main entrances, a rear door and a front door, both padlocked shut. There was also one storm door to a basement. I tried it and it was locked, too. Though not always. I guessed Stinky used it to slip in and out undetected when folks weren't around.

I stood back and surveyed the setting. The Union Hall was one block east from the white and tidy St. Stanislaw's Church, where Mama was making hoagies, and one block west from that grungy bar called the Hole. I zeroed in on the pay phone by its back door. So that's where my fateful fax had been sent from. My would-be killer had stood on this very spot Wednesday night and dialed the Passion Peak. It sent a cold shiver down my arms.

I heard a car pull up and park on the other side of the hall. That was my cue. I had to get into the building and find Stinky now.

Access came in the form of a first-floor bathroom window that had been opened a crack for ventilation. It was wooden and had been painted so many times that it didn't need a lock. I zipped open my cosmetics case and found an old waxy lip pencil. I rubbed it along the casing and with some pushing and
shoving, moved the jamb about a foot. Enough for me to scramble inside.

I landed on the dirty tile floor with a crack. Dang. I unzipped my right boot and frowned. Broken heel. Well, what can you expect for $15.99? I put the boot back on and
click, clumped
out of the bathroom into a long, dark hall.

“Hello?” I called,
click, clumping
toward the back. The wooden floorboards, dark with coal dust, dirt and wax, creaked as I made my way.

“Stinky? Are you here?”

I cupped my hands to my mouth. “
Hey! Stinky! It's me, Bubbles
.”

Still nothing. Except for another creak that seemed to be coming from the main meeting room. I pressed my back against the wall and cautiously poked my head through the cased opening. Nada.

The dark green curtains that hung from the floor-to-ceiling windows were still drawn, but there was evidence that someone had been there earlier in the day. A wooden stage at the far end had been set up with chairs and music stands. A large white banner proclaimed the date and time of the Fifth Annual Hoagie Ho. The room smelled of spilled beer and stale cigarette smoke, spicy sausage and coffee.

I was about to leave when I noticed a series of intriguing black-and-white photos along the wall by the door. They were like ghosts peering out at me. Eyes bleached white by age and chemicals. Faces blackened by coal dust. Silent. Stunned. As though their souls had been lost and long forgotten.

Miners. Men mostly. But children, too. Haunting.

The first photo was of smudge-faced boys younger than G in caps and coats sitting hunched over bins sorting through coal to pick out the culm, or refuse, with their bare fingers while a stern man, a breaker boss, with a whipping stick stood nearby. The daily pay in the early 1900s, the caption below read, was seventy
cents. One sweet-faced boy wore a wilted dandelion in his cap. He was dead by now.

The next photo was of the rickety breaker where coal used to be broken and sorted by the boys. Miners loaded the coal into a cable car that climbed to the top of the breaker. At the top of the breaker the car tipped and dumped the coal and slag into long chutes, breaking up the rocks in the process. The process also sent up clouds of deadly black dust that permeated everything, including lungs.

The three photos after that were of life inside the mines. Workers wearing nothing on their heads but wool caps, standing by buckling beams of timber that held up the shaft. Men and mules posing together in tunnels. A father and son, arms on each other's shoulders, their faces unrecognizable in their black soot masks.

“Heaven help me,” I said out loud, suddenly realizing that I knew little, so very little, about my own father's family history here in coal country.

This is where the Yablonskys had first settled after the turn of the century to work for the English-speaking foremen like the Welsh and Irish. But as my father was dead, due to a safety glitch in the ingot mould of Lehigh Steel, there was no way for me to ask him what life had been like for his relatives here. I could only examine these faces and wonder. Which ones were my great uncles and distant cousins?

The next photographs were of mining disasters. Cave-ins. Explosions. A house that had fallen into the ground above a mine that had collapsed underneath. That was followed by a list of all the miners from Slagville who had been killed on the job. Many, if not all, of them had been related. Darrah, John and Joseph. Howland, Robert and John. O'Connell, Seamus and Sean. A son found dead in his father's arms during a flash flood. Brothers who had clung to each other after being trapped by a cave-in. All that for seventy cents a day. Sixteen tons and what do you get?

The last photo was of the Carbon County Prison where seven of the Molly Maguires had been tried and hanged for murdering coal mine bosses in the 1870s. An account of the Molly Maguires legend was pasted below. Granted, it was biased in favor of labor—this was a union hall, after all—but one wondered. Were the Maguires terrorists? Or had they been framed by the businessmen of their time?

Taken in the best light, the Molly Maguires had fought for better working conditions, often by resorting to violent means, the account said. They had relied on intimidation and physical threats to get results. They blew up coal cars, terrorized their supervisors and would willingly beat and cripple anyone who spoke against them. In short, they were a scary lot.

They were especially scary to those who owned the railroads and collieries. Industrialists like Franklin B. Gowen, owner of the Reading Railroad, and Asa Packer, founder of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, who left behind a $54 million estate when he died. Gowen and Packer suppressed all labor movements, including the Maguires. And so, bypassing the public legal system, they had used their own private police forces and judges to investigate, prosecute, try and execute the Molly Maguires.

I shook my head in amazement. That's not what they taught us in grade school. In grade school I'd been taught that Asa Packer was a hero philanthropist who had founded Lehigh University, donated millions to our town's hospital and started half a dozen charities that still bear his name.

No one ever told me that Asa Packer had framed the Molly Maguires, that he had squelched what some historians considered to be the birth of America's labor unions. On all those elementary school field trips to coal country, I'd have thought that some half-witted teacher might have mentioned that Asa Packer had been partially responsible for the deaths of seven labor activists who were hanged without legal trial and jury.

Seven men hanged in Carbon County.

Alexander Campbell. Michael Doyle. Edward Kelly. Thomas
P. Fisher. James McDonnell. Charles Sharpe and John Donohue. Yellow Jack, he was called. Yellow Jack Donohue.

“Donohue,” I said out loud.

“Right behind you.”

“Before we start,” Chief Donohue said, throwing open the green curtains, “I think it's best that you don't try to lie to me.”

“Oh, I—”

“Don't interrupt.” Donohue moved to the next window. “I know everything in this town. That's my job. For example, I know that Zeke Allen's been on your tail, that McMullen met up with you in St. Ignatius and that Koolball stopped by your house yesterday in Lehigh.”

Dust motes from the curtains caught the late morning light and made the stuffy air sparkle. I was sitting on the stage in the Union Hall and I prayed that Stinky wouldn't make the mistake of strolling past the window.

“I also know that Chrissy Price has gone missing, that her daughter ran to you, of all people, and that you are here.” Finished with letting in the day's light, Donohue came over and sat beside me. “What you're doing here is what I don't know. So why don't you tell me so I don't have to bust you for trespassing, breaking and entering and,” he waved his pudgy hand, “uh, misdemeanor property damage.”

“What did I damage?” It was I who had the broken heel, thanks in part to landing on that hard tile floor.

“The bathroom window. The jamb's broken. That's how I figured out someone had broken in.”

I crossed my legs and tried to act nonchalant. “I had a crazy idea that Stinky might be hiding out in the Union Hall. Obviously, I was wrong.”

“How do you reason?”

“Look around.” The place was terrifically silent. “The hall is locked tight. That bathroom window hadn't been opened in
years and there are too many people here during the week for Stinky to hide out successfully.”

“So when Stinky stopped by in Lehigh, he didn't say, ‘Hey, Bubbles, why don't you meet me at the Union Hall?' ”

“No. I can honestly say he did not ask me to meet him in the Union Hall.” Okay. That was a bit of a fib, since Stinky had said the Hoagie Ho and the Hoagie Ho was at the Union Hall. “But I came here using my own stupid logic and it was wrong.”

Donohue was old, I thought, seemingly older than when I first met him. His hair was snowy white and thinning. His skin was pink like a baby's and his irises had that weird clear blue rim old folks get when they're fading away. He should retire.

“Okay, Bubbles. I'll buy it this time. But I've got a piece of advice for you.” He put a fat hand on my shoulder. “Go home. This afternoon we're holding a press conference, the coroner and me, to say that we believe Hugh McMullen shot Bud Price over some business dealings. They had conflicts over the Dead Zone, like your story pointed out. The show's over, in other words.”

I had already whipped out my notebook and was writing this down. “That doesn't explain who sent me the fax and Stiletto the e-mail Wednesday night.”

“You're right. That's why I need to talk to Koolball. So if you know where Stinky is, if you have been given any information about his whereabouts, you have a legal obligation to let me know.”

I could feel Donohue's piercing gaze on me, but I just kept writing, afraid that if my eyes met his, I'd be forced to blab. “And what about Chrissy Price?” I continued, still focusing on my notes. “Who took her?”

“No one.” Donohue stood and cracked his knuckles. “Chrissy Price is a case and a half by herself. From what I've learned about her personal history, she couldn't stay faithful if she was shackled to her wedding bed. The manager of Le Circe called me after he talked to Chrissy's daughter. Seems Chrissy left the restaurant
last night with some guy in a blue sports car. Never returned to collect her own car or her family. I'll tell you, my heart goes out to her kid.”

He pointed to my notebook. “Hey. Don't write that. That's off the record. Come on. I want you out of here.”

“Sorry.” I clicked off my pen and slid off the stage. “How did you find out Zeke Allen was tagging me?”

“From his mother, though she's more worried about you having a bad influence on her son than the other way around.”

“She told you that?”

“No. That's what she told her pastor, Reverend Wyatt, on the phone last night.” Donohue strode ahead of me, the handcuffs from his belt clinking as he went. “We got kind of an open communication policy in this town.”

“Meaning?” I
click, clumped
faster in my broken heels to catch up with him.

“I listen to any call I want. It's perfectly legal, seeing as I have a tap warrant.”

“Who gave you that?”

He unlocked the front door and we stepped out into the fresh sunshine. “I did. Hey, what's wrong with your foot?”

I showed him my boot.

“Jumping Jehovah. What the heck is going on?”

“Broken heel,” I said.

“No, I mean over there.” Donohue pointed toward the lawn in front of St. Stanislaw's Church where a dozen women in flowered dresses, wrinkled pantyhose, aprons and hairnets were gathered around what appeared to be a hulking referee and her biker sidekick. Vilnia was wagging her finger toward the odd pair, who pulled out rolling pins and started waving them about like French swords.

“That's my mother, her friend, Genevieve, and Vilnia,” I said with a sigh. “Vilnia stole Nana Yablonsky's diary and Mama's seeking retribution.”

“This a joke?” Donohue asked.

“It's no joke. It involves secret pierogi recipes and two Polish-Lithuanian housewives. What do you think?”

“I think that combination could be deadly,” said Donohue, reaching for his walkie-talkie. “I gotta call backup. No way I'm handling them alone.”