Call Me Joe (22 page)

I could see Aaron shaking his head when I glanced in the mirror.

"Aaron, you want to answer this or you want me to?"

"No, no," Aaron sighed. "I've got it. Mr. Bartinelli …"

"Jack," Jack said wearily.

"Jack," Aaron responded, "I don't know the other places you build, but here … here, people live for the view out their window, for open roads and no traffic, for walking into Barney's and sitting right down to eat, for knowing their neighbors and letting their neighbors know them. To us, none of that is petty. And all of that comes from the land. Maybe people in Florida don't give a shit you cut down their trees. Hell, they've got beaches and ocean and swamps. All we got here is trees. Whatever problems you "proved" won't happen, who'd you prove that to? Buncha suits in Olympia? Never set foot in this end of the state? You think they talk to us anymore than you do? Think again. The problem with guys like you is, you're all the time lookin' at the big picture and ignoring the little details that make up the big picture. Yeah, people around here are happy to have the jobs but there's always a catch, isn't there?"

"Yeah, Aaron," Jack nodded, "there is. You want the jobs, you have to put up with some stuff. Can't build a resort like this without some noise and dust and big trucks and a bunch of strangers hangin' around. In the short run, that's the price you pay. But, eventually, that stuff goes away. Then you have the jobs, the tourists, the resort dollars, the residual money from the tourists spending outside the resort, and small businesses that start up to service the resort. In this case, in about 10 years, the tribe literally gets the resort. I'm selling it to them. Then you have a locally-owned business that cost you nothing to build—other than some inconvenience. If people here have to grit their teeth a little, really, it doesn't seem like that much to ask."

"That's fine for me," Aaron replied. "I'm not dodging the trucks and my land doesn't sit next to yours. And maybe, if you sat down with those people who'd like to see you go away and said what you just said to me, they might see it different. But some of 'em won't. Some of 'em might get frustrated enough to do something drastic. Some people around here feel helpless enough that they see nothing wrong with using a gun to solve their problems. You can sniff at that if you want but that doesn't make it any less true."

"Do you know somebody who's bent that far out of their frame?" Jack asked.

"I know half a dozen," Aaron nodded. "Not all of your land sits inside the res or the national forest."

"Of course it does," Jack sputtered. "We checked that out completely before we even approached the tribe and the feds."

"Yeah, well you forgot a couple of things," Aaron yawned. "Did any of the Colvilles bother to tell you about their trusts in perpetuity?"

"What? No!" Jack yelped. "What trusts?"

"Jesus, what a mess," Aaron chuckled. "Okay … back in the late 1800's, when the res treaty was signed, there were six registered deeds that abutted the property. They were all tribe elders and, out of respect, the tribal council offered to include their lands in the res 'cause they were all failing as farms and the federal grants could bail 'em out. All of 'em said no at first because … well, y'know, Uncle Sam has this convenient habit of ignoring or legally invalidating treaties when they want to. They were all scared of losing the farms, so the first res council wheedled the government into granting six trusts in perpetuity, which basically said that, if anything ever happened to the res or the tribe, the families' claims are guaranteed.  In effect, they can't be removed for ANY reason.  But, legally, the farms are part of the res. The council is empowered to enter into contracts that might involve the lands. They just have to break out a lease payment to the families."

"So the families got paid something, already?" I asked.

"Right, they got nice, fat checks… well, the remaining ones, at least," Aaron replied.

"Remaining?" I shot back. "Some of them died out?"

"Two," Aaron said. "One family line died out and the last son's wife was childless and a convicted felon. The tribe voted to negate her claim and exercise the clause that grants the land back to the tribe if no heirs can be found."

"The other family came down to a college age brother and sister, twins. They hated the farm, the tribe, and Washington, in general. It was the only really profitable farm in the bunch; a dairy/cattle ranch that covers 175 acres on the east side, including a mile of riverfront. Some fat cat Seattle lawyer gave them $2.2 mil for it, ostensibly for the waterfront. That was … 12 years ago and the land is still empty. He renovated this big cabin up on a ridge and lived in it for maybe six years. Then he sold it. I met the new owner once. Nice guy, gives money to the food bank and the Trident Gospel Mission, every year. I know it wasn't him that was complaining. Mrs. Peasley, from the library, asked him about the resort, kinda crabbin' about the truck noise. And he just smiled at her and said, 'well, doesn't seem like much to ask for a buncha new jobs'."

"Jeez," Jack smiled, "a realist. Anyway we can talk to him? What's his name?"

"Joe, … Joe something," Aaron replied. "Don't know if I ever heard his last name. And … well, he's kind of a hermit … not literally. He's in Colville every other Saturday or so, doin' his shopping and picking up lumber, paint, that kind of stuff. I've talked to him a couple of times. He's a decent guy."

"What about the remaining families?" Jack asked.

"Well, there's two Georges.  There's William George and his family and then there's Franklin and his wife, who live with their grown kids, Jeff and Callie." Aaron said carefully, "Franklin is Wild Bill's uncle, I think. Then there's Eagle Dixon and his mob. Must be 15 of 'em. And the fourth one is Rick Whitetail and his wife, her parents, and about … hell, eight kids, maybe."

"And they're all honked off?" I asked.

"Rick Whitetail, mainly, but he's a chronic activist. Wild Bill, I know, was happy to get the money. Hell, he's so laid back, he probably wouldn't care if you pitched a tent in his front yard. Everybody else is pissed because the cabins wound up on their property."

"How many cabins?" Jack asked.

"One each," Aaron replied. "Bill doesn't care but he's going along with the rest of 'em because Franklin is."

"That's easy," Jack chuckled dryly. "We'll cross off those cabins."

"Really?" Aaron said, surprised. "You'd do that? What about 'the price you pay' and all that?"

"You don't deliberately fuck somebody if you expect their cooperation," Jack said slowly, "
ever
. We dump those four, we still have 18 or we just find other sites."

"Look," Aaron said earnestly. "What pisses them off is that they weren't consulted. Just meet with 'em – you, not a team of lawyers. Pay each of them some token amount and draw up, individual leases. They're good people. They just feel ignored."

"That's pretty … uh, diplomatic, coming from you, Aaron," Jack grinned. "Sure I shouldn't just beat the shit out of 'em?"

Aaron chuckled uneasily.

"Guess I'll have some of that to put up with, huh?" he asked, catching my eye in the rearview mirror.

"Your whole life," I nodded. "No matter how much you change. Just like I do. We're large, menacing-looking guys, kid. People will
always
assume that we think with our fists. The fun part is proving them wrong."

"I'm gonna change it," Aaron muttered. "I've got to."

Jack looked at me and arched an eyebrow. Behind us, Aaron cradled his cheek in his hand, staring out the window, his eyes distant and full of clouds.

I gave Jack a small smile and a nod. He shifted in his seat, a tiny smile playing about his mouth, and drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the pages of the fax.



Joe didn't have a lot of rules. In his life, maybe a total of five or six, and most of those, he thought, were follies of youth, long since discarded. He enjoyed the whole concept of life without rules, but recognized the need for some minimal guidelines aimed at self-preservation.

The one rule he had always had and never found reason to question was never to act in either anger or haste. Cool, equilibrium, efficiency, perspective. They had kept him safe, prosperous, and independent.

So, here he was, squatting on a rooftop, deep in the north London suburbs, listening to his molars grind softly in the evening air, head full of spiders and gut in a twist, reflexively running a thumb along the barrel of his rifle.

A little over 600 yards away, on the second-floor deck of a large, California-style mansion, Cedric Danvers sat at a small glass table with a decanter of spendy French brandy and an H. Uppman Robusto. He read the "London Times" and scratched idly at the peeling remnants of a sunburn he'd brought back from Barbados the previous Sunday.

Joe watched the brilliant sunset but found it unsatisfying and somehow ominous. His mind was too tempestuous and he was both angered and a little frightened at such foreign tide of raw emotion.

He knew he should get off the rooftop, ditch the rifle, and walk away from this. He knew this was the banana peel that had claimed so many others in his line of work and knew that his preparation had been less than thorough. He knew that the other voice on his phone would be scornful, critical, just from details gleaned from newspapers. He, the mentor, would see the flaws and intuit the emotions behind them. And yet miraculously, watching himself as though from a distance, he did none of the wise and prudent things. He simply sat, fidgeted, and waited for the vivid sunset to burn itself out.

Finally, just as the last corona of the sun's brilliance reduced Danvers to an immobile silhouette, Joe sighted in, now taking the sort of obsessive care he was known for.

He needed no such theatrics as a moistened index finger to sense the temperature, wind, and humidity. The breeze on his face told him everything and he cleared his mind to focus on it alone.

It would be a long, hard shot. Gravity has its way, even with a speeding bullet. Wind can tug it entirely off course; humidity weighs it down and causes it to destabilize.

Joe couldn't have said how he calculated all this in the approximate five seconds it required. It was second nature by now:  Elevate exactly three degrees above target, correct 1 degree to the right.

Deep breath. Hold. Still and calm. Picture the result. Squeeze.

He knew he had made a perfect shot from the angle at which the silhouette fell.

Up. Police the area. Dismantle the gun. Pack the pieces. Back to the stairs. Nice and slow, sedate.

Just another weary suburban warrior on his way home from the office..



Derek Althorp was a newly-minted journalism grad whose somewhat less-than-valedictory grades did little to diminish the aura of that marvelous opener of doors:  An Eton diploma.

In America, Derek would have been called a slacker and only escaped it in London by virtue of a remote kinship to the late, much-lamented Princess Diana. Between the Eton sheepskin and his carefully, casually-dropped references to Diana, Derek found his pathway as easy and fast as if it were sprayed with WD-40.

He was breaking in with the sports reporters, motivated mainly by the fact that sporting events were one of the few news beats in which one could plausibly drink on the job.

He drank like a veteran, the other staffers agreed. If not for that pesky writing business, one joked, Althorp could probably run the place.

The one rookie shit job he hadn't been able to wriggle out from under was the sorting and routing of e-mails. It took a solid two hours, every shift, and was as agonizingly boring as anything Eton had ever inflicted upon him.

The typical e-mailer, he soon found, possessed even less in the way of compositional skills than he did. He began a file called "Wank Mail," into which the most outrageous efforts were copied. The other newbies contributed daily and even the older staffers enjoyed reading it and urged Althorp to find more.

The net effect was to make Derek very nearly competent, as he mined the opinion box for the ultimate wankisms.

He was through only six e-mails, this slow weekday evening, when the subject line of the seventh caught his eye.

"Gone to join Percy," it read. Though Derek wasn't much at writing news pieces, he was a bear for reading them. His morning ritual was two newspapers, two cups of Chinese gunpowder tea, and a couple of hits off the bong. He always took his time at it, since he didn't work until 3, and read anything that looked juicy. The name "Percy" immediately produced the surname "Kensington," a sometime crony of Derek's dad, who was so luridly gunned down in his own driveway just three days earlier.

He suspected, from the title, an overwrought poetic elegy to poor Percy. There were at least six regular contributors who fancied themselves the next poet Laureate of Great Britain, penning bombastic memorials to any handy tragedy. He still received at least a couple of 9-11 tributes each week and marveled at both the obvious poetic ineptitude and the ability of any Brit to crank up that much fervor over a bunch of dead Yanks.

He was immediately disappointed, then, to find the message only one brief paragraph long, with no poetic structure in sight.

"Wanker," he huffed, finger poised on the mouse to click the delete button, when the content of the text began to penetrate.

"Fuck me," he gasped. He immediately burst into action, swiveling spastically in the desk chair, one hand going for the phone to call Scotland Yard, the other fumbling with the mouse to be sure he saved the text.

He stopped and took a deep breath.

"Gotta think," he panted. "What's to do, boy-o?"

It was an admonition he had almost never given himself and quickly realized that he didn't really understand how to decide what to do. Do what's right? That came down to calling Scotland Yard or calling his editor. That was a no-brainer, then. He'd get no cash, slack, or perks from calling the Yard.

"Think," he told himself. "What's best for me?"

Like the sun breaking through the clouds, his course became clear. Call the publisher, Arthur Figgins, a long-time crony of his dad's, who had only grudgingly gotten Derek the job.

"Fuck editors," Derek grinned ferally.

He popped the handset off the desk phone and dialed up the paper's switchboard.

"Operator 9," a feminine voice said.

"Get me Mr. Figgins," Derek barked.

"We don't ring through to Mr. Figgins on anyone's authority except for the managing director's," the voice coolly informed him. "Shall I ring Mr. Portale for you?"

"Listen, my girl," Derek growled. "I have a news item that's so sensitive
no
one
but Mr. Figgins can handle it. Now, I can just send this up the pipeline and, later on, when Mr. Figgin's is screaming about why nobody called him first, I can mention Operator 9.  That work for you, dear?"

There was a significant pause. Derek suddenly had to pee about as badly as he ever had in his life.

"One moment," the operator said stonily.

There was a series of clicks and beeps. The voice came in so abruptly, Derek was momentarily unsure what it had said.

"Uh … beg pardon," he gulped.

"Who the hell is this?" Figgins thundered.

"It's … uh … sir, this is Derek Althorpe, down at the … uh … y'know, the paper," Derek managed.