FrostLine (6 page)

“They ever find me with my head blown off, you'll remember I told you.”

“Have you actually seen people on your property?”

“They been tapping my phone. It's clicking.”

I said, “SNET's lines are pretty old up the hill. I get clicks on Main Street. But these lines gotta be thirty years old. Mr. Butler, I think there are two questions here. Who are ‘they' and why would ‘they' watch you and tap your phone?”

“Trying to scare me.”

“To make you sell the lease?”

“Tell Henry King the United States Army taught this tin soldier demolition. Tell him if he gives me any more trouble I'll blow his dam and make his fancy new lake look like a crater on the moon.”

As mildly and conciliatorily as I could, I said, “Mr. Butler, I'm not going to repeat that and I don't think you should, either. That's a pretty serious threat.”

“Get off my land.”

He stood up, balling his fists. DaNang lurched purposefully to his feet, menacing as a bitter old prize fighter sunk to dance club bouncer for drinks and tips.

***

Finishing-school posture, bright eyes, and thick, curly white hair made Great-aunt Connie Abbott look considerably younger than her many years. Days she felt well, it was hard to believe that on a school trip to the White House she had met President Herbert Hoover. And challenged him to help the victims of the Crash. Two years later she helped establish soup kitchens in every city in the state.

I invited her over to watch Henry King's A&E “Biography,” hoping for an historical perspective on how to handle him. It seemed a fairly tame puff piece, with little taste for exposing villainy. Actions that had propelled a significant portion of the population into the streets thiry-five years ago were labeled “controversial.”

Five minutes into it, Connie was perched like a sparrowhawk on the edge of her chair. And at the first shot of burning flags, she couldn't contain herself. “How
dare
they impugn the patriotism of the protestors!”

King had spent his early career lurking. Still young in the Vietnam years, he was ever at the elbows of Kissinger, Haldeman, Erhlichman, Nixon, his bright face alert, body poised like a runner in the blocks. But after the war was over, he stood taller; and now the eager faces were behind him. Of course by then, Connie smiled, his former mentors were all in prison or disgrace.

As the Republicans shuffled off in leg irons, King had finessed himself into the Carter Administration, then bailed out by resigning publicly—“Sanctimoniously,” Connie snapped—over the Iran hostage crisis in time to join the Reagan Act. That's when he began to look like money. His suits became handmade; his transport, corporate jet.

Around that same time, his harsh Brooklyn voice evolved into the vaguely English tones Wall Street guys pick up when they parachute into the London office. He spoke more slowly, too. He was probably trying to concentrate on his new accent, but it made him sound very important, as if, Connie noted acidly, his elocution teacher had painted his larynx with
gravitas.

By the time Bush I took away his White House pass, the transformation from scholarship student was complete. Henry King sounded as wise and sure as a Harvard professor who published regularly and was endowed with an immense family fortune and friends in the highest places.

Henry King Incorporated hit big and soon he enjoyed all the perks of a top CEO—private jets, personal helicopters, full floors of the best hotels—combined with all the courtesies due a visiting head of state—Third World military salutes, palace luncheons, and presidential dinners.

“Have you noticed that young brunette?” asked Connie.

“Julia Devlin. I met her up there.”

“There's something odd about her.”

“There was something about her. I wouldn't call it odd.”

The pleasures of a world-class world-beater included servants, flocks of aides, and luscious protege-personal assistants. Since he had gone into business for himself, Julia Devlin traveled everywhere with him like the Emperor's concubine.

“What do you think?” I asked Connie when the DVD ended.

“If a vulgar, self-serving, unprincipled betrayer of the public trust rates a reverent biography on television, then our country has gone to Hades in a handbasket,” she said, and went home without thanking me for the show.

Clues to handle him? Hard to tell. The latter part of the bio, which ballyhooed Henry King Incorporated's contribution to world trade and everlasting peace, showed a man surrounded by admirers who were convinced that if they could only be near him some of his immense power and wisdom might rub off.

People so attended lost their sense of humor. The only way to negotiate with them was to possess something they wanted very much and feared they couldn't steal. Mr. Butler did not enjoy that position—a disadvantage of which he was ignorant. That put the local “fixer” between a fast-moving rock and a grim and bitter hard place.

***

Henry King declared he was surprised to see me back so soon. I said No thank you to mulled cider, but he insisted. It was the King of Norway's recipe.

It was late afternoon the next day, with a cold night looming. His library was lit splendidly by dying daylight and a bright orange crackling fire of applewood. Josh Wiggens, the CIA man, had brought the cider, which he appeared to have been sampling since lunch, and seemed barely to notice when King dismissed him on the flimsy pretext that so-and-so in Washington was awaiting his call.

Julia Devlin stuck her head in the door. I smiled. She smiled back and said to King, “Excuse me, shall I sit in with you?”

“I told you, no,” King snapped at her.

She held her face blank, as she closed the door.

Alone at last, cozied up on the chesterfield, he repeated, “You have come back so soon.”

“It didn't go well.”

“Why not?”

I related my conversation with Mr. Butler, minus references to Vietnam on the theory that King, too, might have a sore spot there, and if he didn't, then he wouldn't understand a word Butler had said.

Turned out he didn't understand a word I said either. Angered, he sent the Harvard professor on sabbatical, and I got a taste of what Julia had to work with.

“What the hell did you tell him?”

“I told him,” I repeated patiently, and more politely than his manner deserved, “that you asked me to intercede to try to make peace between you.”

“What about the lease?” King shot back.

“As I told you a moment ago, the good news is, he doesn't really want the pasture. He only took it to please Mr. Zarega.”

“What the hell did Zarega want with a dollar a year?”

“Mr. Zarega wanted to look at cows.”

“Are you joking with me?”

“When Mr. Zarega's bear died,” I explained, evenly, “he wanted animals around. Mr. Butler obliged by shooing some cows into that pasture.”

“I'm next door to a lunatic asylum.”

I smiled, hoping he had a sense of humor after all. But King did not smile back. Instead, he raked me with that laser gleam of intelligence. “Something's missing, here. What did you leave out?”

“Vietnam. He's a vet. He blames you for the war.”

“He's not the only man who suffered in Vietnam.”

“He blames you for them, too.”

King sighed. “I did not start the Vietnam War.”

He stood up and walked to a shelf and ran his hand along the books. “But there are eighty volumes on this shelf that blame me for Vietnam. And my friends in publishing warn me that the revisionists have only begun to stir. Decisions I agonized over thirty years ago—and still torment me—have spawned a vigorous cottage industry.”

King returned to the couch and sat heavily. “If those writers and professors and reporters and memoirists and historians refused to believe that when the United States bombed the North, the enemy came to the table—and when we stopped bombing, they left the table—then how can I convince the farmer next door that I did my best to stop the killing?”

“I can't answer that. All I know is he experienced it up close, and he's not ready for any revisionists.”

“Hundreds of thousands came home and resumed their normal lives. They don't look back. What's different about him?”

“He's not hundreds of thousands. He's just one guy.”

“Is this my penance? I'm supposed lay back and open my knees?”

“Laying back would be sufficient.”

“It's not fair,” he said. “I served my country, too. I served it as I knew best.”

“Look, I was five years old. I can't judge either of you. All I know is you'll be neighbors a long time. Maybe, someday, you can agonize together over a drink.”

King did not look convinced. “What's next?” he demanded. “What's your next move?”

“I just told you. Sit tight. Let him cool down.”

“How the hell long is that going to take? I want my lake finished by summer. I want my guests here. Do something.”

I stood up to go. “The sooner you stop pushing him, the sooner he might come around. My advice is leave him alone. No lawyers. No more offers. Just let it lay awhile….And you might tell your helicopter pilot to find another landing path. I thought we were getting someplace, until he buzzed the barn.”

“Am I supposed to pay you for this advice?”

“No charge. I didn't deliver.”

“That's for damned sure. I suppose you expect me to call you back when he's cooled down?”

“He set his dog on me, Mr. King. I take that as a signal he doesn't want me back.”

“If that damned dog comes around here, I'll have it shot.”

I leaned close and made him look me in the eye. “Don't shoot his dog or you'll answer to me.”

“To you?”

“And let me give you some more advice.”

“Keep it.”

“Mr. Butler is your neighbor. He's not going away. And whatever you do, don't rile his son.”

“I've got people who can handle his son.”

“I wouldn't count on that.”

“I don't mean those bozo cousins of yours.”

No surprise that the camera on the gatehouse had recorded the fight.

“I still wouldn't count on that. The State of Connecticut has tried and failed for twenty years.”

King tried to have the last word. “My people aren't bound by their rules.”

By his “people,” I supposed he meant that his retired spy could call up hitters on a per diem basis. Or maybe former national security advisors had Secret Service protection.

“Diplomacy by different means?”

“Every war has a winner, Mr. Abbott.”

I went home wishing I'd done a better job.

Chapter 5

The following Saturday I got a phone call from a frantic Mrs. Henry King. I could barely hear her over the noise of a revving chainsaw.

“Mr. Abbott—Ben—can you come up here? Henry's really upset. The farmer's sawing trees.”

I said, “If you're outside on a cell phone, go inside and close the door.”

The racket ceased with a bang. “Can you hear me, now?”

“Much better. Is he on his leased land?”

“Henry's going crazy. I'm afraid—”

“Where's Josh Wiggens?”

“He took the Chevalley boys shopping.”

“Shopping?”

“For spring work clothes.”

There was a picture: the patrician security man herding those two through the Danbury Fair Mall like bulls in search of china.

“How about Julia Devlin?”

“London.”

“Is Mr. Butler's son with him?”

“I don't see him.”

Pray you don't, I thought.

“Please come. He's killing our beautiful trees.”

“Twenty minutes. Open the gate and—”

“Henry, don't,” she cried.

I ran for the car, and made Fox Trot in fifteen. The gate was open, the driveway spikes latent. The motor court and parking area were empty, the offices dark, the workmen off for the weekend.

I jumped out of the car and squished through the mud toward the whining, growling din of Mr. Butler's chainsaw. It stopped abruptly. There was a sharp
crack
and, as I rounded the house, a triumphant, “Timmmmberrrr!”

I saw a beautiful tulip tree, tall and straight as a square rigger's mast, quiver against the sky. It leaned, slowly at first. Then, gathering speed, it fell with a nearly silent rush of leafless limbs and hit the ground with a tremendous
whoommmp
.

King, decked out in a shooting jacket, came running to me. He was red with anger and indignation. “Stop him!”

“I'll try.”

There was real anguish in his voice. “We had four beautiful trees in the corner of the wall. You could step inside them. It was like a cathedral.”

I suspected that if DaNang weren't standing guard, he'd have climbed the deer fence and tried to stop Butler with his bare hands. But the big yellow dog
was
standing guard, hackles stiff, ears flat back. Mr. Butler sat on the fallen tree and began nonchalantly sharpening his chain with a file.

“Turn off the fence,” I told King. He yelled at Mrs. King, who ran up to the house and threw the switch. “It's off.”

I climbed through the wire. DaNang eyed me. I said, “Call him off, Mr. Butler.”

Butler looked up from his sharpening. “
Stay
!”

DaNang sank reluctantly on his hunches, like a gigantic rat trap set to spring.

“What do you want, Ben?”

“Mrs. King called me. They're really upset about the trees.”

“Not their trees.”

“I know that….What are you cutting 'em for?”

“Pawloski's paying eight cents a board foot.”

“Sixty bucks a tree?”

“For the poplar. More like a thousand for those oaks.”

“You're kidding.”

“Proper veneer wood in some of 'em.”

They looked more like ordinary piss oak to me. I said, “Let me sell 'em to King.”

“What's he gonna do with 'em?”

“Pay you the money and leave them standing.”

“Naw, I'd rather sell 'em to Pawloski.”

“Come on, it'll save you snakin' 'em out of here.”

He thought about it a while. Logging was back-breaking work and no fun at all with a light farm tractor. But if he asked Pawloski to send his dragger truck the price would drop even lower. And no Yankee worth his salt was going to turn his nose up at found money extorted from a city person.

“But King's got to pay me more.”

“Give me a minute, I'll see what I can do.”

I walked back to the fence, climbed through the strands, and spoke to King. The diplomat started trying to negotiate me downward until I asked, sternly, “Are you out of your mind?”

At last, I reported back to Mr. Butler. “He's getting his check book.”

King came marching stiffly down from the house, across his lawn and through the fence that separated his field from Butler's leased pasture. He shoved the check at Mr. Butler, But when the farmer reached for it, King snapped it back. “What guarantee do I have that you won't cut them down when I turn my back?”

Mr. Butler regarded him for a long moment, while I tried to think of something to soften the insult. Before I could, he picked up his saw. “Guarantee? You
would
have had my word, you son of a bitch.”

He reached for his ear protectors.

“Wait!” King yelled. “What are you doing?”

“Cutting timber.”

“You're destroying beautiful trees.”

“You're lucky I'm not spraying Agent Orange.”

“What?”

“Or napalm.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Nope. My head's fine. Memory, too.” He covered his ears and yanked the starter cord.

“Listen to me. We had a deal.”

Butler crouched beside the thick trunk of another tulip poplar. Of the original four in the corner clump, the three still standing were an awesome sight. In the summer, crowned green, they would touch the clouds. On this late winter afternoon, they were taller than anything in sight, even King's house.

Mr. Butler revved the saw and scored the bark to mark the wedge he would cut to direct where it dropped.

King ran after him and grabbed his shoulder. Butler turned—real anger in his face, and something more, something a little crazy. I moved toward them, thinking, Boy I don't want to get into this.

“Get away from him, Henry.”

I reached for Henry King and tried to pry him loose from Butler's shirt. There was a slurry underfoot of mud and sawdust from the first cut, and all three of us were slipping in it. Mr. Butler whipped the saw around.

A chainsaw—for the uninitiated—consists of a motor-driven chain that spins around a flat metal bar. The chain is studded every inch and a half with sharp hooked teeth. You can get a nasty cut just brushing by it with the motor off. Running, it's a circle of moving razors. A plastic surgeon once told me that they “didn't leave much to work with,” and strongly recommended cutting wood in a motorcycle helmet and face shield.

I yanked King out of the way. I didn't know if Butler had slipped or whether he had deliberately aimed for King's face. My problem was, having yanked King aside the saw was now wheeling at my face.

It wasn't the kind of thing you wanted to block with your hand. I tried to fall away from it.

Butler tried to arrest his swing.

But it was Henry King who saved me, inadvertently, or not, swinging his gloved hand between us. His cry mingled with his wife's scream.

He and I tumbled to the ground. Butler choked the motor, and the sudden silence was almost touchable.

King stared in disbelief at the shredded fingertips of his glove. Slowly, fearfully, he pulled it off his hand. “Oh, God,” cried Mrs. King, creeping closer. I braced for the blood. But the chain teeth had miraculously pulled the glove away from his fingers and only cut the leather. A single bright drop balanced like a red BB on the tip of his index finger.

Mr. Butler laughed. Veins were popping in his forehead. “You're a lucky bastard.”

King's face was white as snow. “You tried to cut my hand off.”

“You tried to grab a chainsaw,” Mr. Butler retorted. “Damned fool.”

“I'm going to sue you.”

“Get off my land.”

“It's
my
land.”

“Get. Off. My. Land.”

“You f—”

“DaNang!”

“We're outta here,” I said, throwing a firm arm around King and marching him toward the fence. Just as Josh Wiggens came running down the lawn and vaulted the fence with remarkable ease for a man his age. The automatic pistol in his hand didn't seem to unbalance him at all. “Call off the dog,” he yelled at Butler, “Or I'll shoot him.”

Great. We'd just gone from chainsaws to guns.

I finished pushing King through the strands. “You want to put that away before someone gets hurt?”

Wiggens wasted no words. Without warning, and without taking his eyes from the dog, he flicked the gun at my temple as if he were swatting a fly.

I was still wired from dodging the chainsaw and not in a charitable mood.

I caught his wrist behind the gun, separated him and it, and tossed him on his back. He bounced like he had landed on a trampoline and tossed
me
on my back. Which surprised me, but not enough to keep me from getting to the gun first. I snatched it off the grass and threw it as far as I could onto King's lawn.

Wiggens came at me, moving easily, all long arms and legs.

“This is getting silly,” I said. “You've got grass stains on a perfectly good suit and I'm going to be sore for a week. It's clear we're both capable of hurting each other.”

That was for sure. The spook wasn't even breathing hard.

“Okay?”

His eyes were cold. King shouted something. Wiggens hesitated, then made a noise that might have been a chuckle. “Got any influence with the dog?”

“I'll deal with Butler. You deal with King.”

Then I went back to Butler. “You okay?”

“Sure I'm okay.” The veins looked like snakes under his skin. I was afraid he would have a stroke.

“Where's Dicky?”

“Out with some tramp.”

“Can you get up to the house okay?”

“Sure.”

“You don't look too good.”

“I'm fine….Should have taken the goddammed money. Stupid.”

“I'll talk to him when he cools down.”

“No.”

“You need money.”

“Who don't?” He glared across at Henry King who was glaring back, then doggedly picked up his saw again.

“Wait! You know your little upper woodlot near the top? Where it's real steep? Let me try and sell it.”

“I don't sell land.”

“It's steep as hell, there. You don't cut the wood and you don't farm it.”

“How much?”

“You could clear eighty thousand.”

“I don't know, Ben. You get city people and they start complaining about the fertilizer and tractor noise, and first I know I got Henry King problems on the both sides of me.”

“You're not farming near there. Except, what do you cut hay twice a year?”

“Eighty thousand?”

“Clear. After commission.”

His mouth worked. He didn't like it. But it was a way out of a lot of problems for very little cost and less effort. He glared across the fence, again, where the Kings were trudging up the lawn toward the house. “But swear you'll sell to good people. People'll leave a man alone.”

***

The couple I had in mind to buy Butler's acres were a pair of Price-Waterhouse lawyers living together in a midtown co-op they'd paid too much for. Which made them a little gun shy about overextending themselves, again. But they really wanted to build a house in the country and when I walked them over the land the next weekend, they were suitably enchanted.

When I hadn't heard from them by Wednesday, I got nervous. I made a follow-up call. Turned out they'd been talking to one of our more larcenous builders who had quoted them a hundred and sixty bucks a square foot for quality construction, and they had begun to re-think in terms of two-week villa rentals in Tuscany.

“You'll never get rent back,” I said. “Listen, I did a little research. Why not think of the house in two parts? One part is the necessary stuff: extra bedrooms, utility room, mudroom, offices, kitchen and garage. The other part is special: spectacular living room and drop dead fabulous master suite.”

“Which we can't afford to build.”

“You
build
in top quality the living room and master suite. You
attach
for the other rooms a log cabin or cedar post and beam kit. Thirty bucks a square foot for the kit—ninety turn-key—will buy you a handsome, solid wood house that opens into a living room of pure glass. And a marble bathroom,” I added hastily, because both had grown accustomed to five-star hotels on the client.

When I'm good, I'm good, and it worked. They were suddenly so happy that they were terrified someone else would buy the land out from under them before the weekend, and actually sped up from New York after work that night to give me a binder. I drove immediately up Morris Mountain, despite the late hour, to press the check personally into Butler's calloused palm.

Dicky wasn't there. Mr. Butler stood in the doorway, with the TV blaring behind him.

“Congratulations. I got a binder on that property we discussed.”

“Changed my mind. I'm not selling.”

“But you said you need money.”

“Let's see how we do with the false arrest suit.”

“But—”

“Warned you, Ben. I don't sell land.”

“Mr. Butler, I gave my word to customers.”

“How do you know they aren't fronting for King?”

“I beg pardon.”

“Maybe King's paying them to steal my land.”

“In two acre chunks?” I retorted angrily. “At building lot prices? It'll take him ten years and when he's done you'll be the richest man in Newbury.”

Mr. Butler shot back a reminder that while maybe nuts, he wasn't stupid: “At forty thousand an acre it would cost him less than five million bucks. He's got five million bucks, Ben. He'll just keep chopping away until I'm gone.”

“Mr. Butler, I swear, these are ordinary people, a couple of lawyers who want to build a weekend house.”

“
Lawyers
? Lawyers working for Henry King.” He slammed the door in my face, and turned up the TV.