Gauntlet (35 page)

Leon’s mother, oblivious to her father’s treacherous physical and mental state, sometimes left her young boys in their grandfather’s custody, especially during the summers. Leon didn’t mind. He was more than happy to get away from his mother’s home in Fernie. It was crowded with more than ten children, most of the time. James didn’t mind much either. “You’re the most like me, Leon,” he would say. “The only one worth the effort.”

The high point of any visit was when they entered Devil’s Anvil, James’ half-century-old mine. The mine lay directly below Sawtooth Ridge, a high mountain that was a part of the Flathead-Boundary range. Leon had never forgotten the magic of the tunnels and the rails.

The last weekend that he had spent with his grandfather was especially memorable. Leon had begged the old man to take him into the mine again, and Grandpa James had bowed to the young boy’s pressure. Together they walked the short distance from the trailer to the mine’s opening. Leon had not noticed his grandfather’s unsteady gate, or the effort that every step seemed to be taking. Into the mine they went, down the central excavation on an unsteady ladder, and down further tunnels, to the mine’s southern-most point.

There James had sat down for a minute, sweat pouring off his face, seemingly oblivious to the youngster’s excited prattle.

“Is this where it ends? Does the mine stop here?” asked an enthusiastic Leon.

“Yes. This... this is the southern reach of the mine. Right here.” James was gasping for breath. Leon didn’t notice. “Do you want to hear a secret, boy?”

“Yes,” said Leon. “I do.”

“Every mine in the province has something called a ’development plan.’ It says where the tunnels can go and how they can be built. Well...” James’ voice trailed off, and his breathing became more labored.

“Tell me, tell me,” Leon urged him on.

“This here tunnel went further than it was supposed to. I drilled almost a mile beyond where I was supposed to stop. A whole goddamn mile. There was a particularly rich vein that I wanted to follow. Do you know what’s directly above us?”

“No,” said Leon, his sharp eyes watching his grandfather. All his boyish exuberance had vanished, and his tone was now deadly serious.

“Why, the US of A, boy. The United States.” James emphasized the “U,” and slowed down the syllables for dramatic effect.

“You mean we’re across the border?” asked Leon.

“Yes, son, we are. In fact, almost half a mile beyond it. If we drilled another 200 or 300 feet straight that-a-way, we’d come out on the other side of the mountain that’s behind the house.” James pointed toward the end of the tunnel. “We’d have drilled straight through. I gave it some thought during the prohibition days, you know. That kinda thing. Good money. But the laws in the States had changed by the time I’d drilled far enough, and it wouldn’t’ve been so profitable. So I went back to trying to convince the politicians and railway guys to build a track to my mine. They screwed me over good, you know. They were in league with the mines in the Kootenays. Tried to hire lawyers, but after a few years and more than $10,000, I realized they were screwing me too.”

They turned around and walked back toward the central excavation. James started puffing again after they’d been walking for only a few minutes. He was sweating profusely. “Hold on a sec, boy. Need to rest for a bit.” He sat down where he was, not even looking for a chair or raised edge. For 15 minutes he sat on the tunnel floor, while Leon entertained himself by throwing rocks at the central excavation. Finally, James rose with a grunt, and said, “OK, boy, let’s go.”

When they arrived back at the trailer, they found Leon’s mother waiting. “Back to Fernie, Leon. School will be starting in a few days.”

So they bid their goodbyes. That was the last time that Leon saw his grandfather. He died of a massive heart attack later that same night. He’d been dead for two days when one of his numerous children finally found him. The funeral was in Fernie, but Leon didn’t go. It never occurred to the boy that he was, in fact, the last person to speak to the old man. It still hadn’t, even a decade and a half later. What he did recall was the substance of that conversation, word for word.

L
EON OPENED THE DOOR of the ancient trailer without knocking. Dennis jumped up, wanting to hug him, shake his hand, or greet him in some way. Leon, however, made a beeline for the refrigerator and found himself a beer.

“So here’s what we’re going to do, Dennis. And either you’re with me or it’s your ass,” he said. “You with me?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“No. I can get you big money, Denny, really big money. But you do exactly as I say and you keep your fuckin’ mouth shut. Got it?”

“OK, Leon,” Dennis answered. “What do you want me to do?”

“First thing,” said Leon, taking a long swig of cold beer, “get me some food and turn off the goddamn TV.”

“OK, Leon,” responded Dennis. “I’ll grab some food, you turn off the TV. Then we can talk.”

“Denny, didn’t you hear me? You do as I say. Now gimme food and shut off the fucking TV. It’s pissing me off.”

Dennis walked into the kitchen and returned with a loaf of bread, butter, and cheese. “My hands are full here, Leon. You turn off the TV.”

“One last chance,” said Leon. “Turn off the fucking TV. Now.” His voice had gone soft which, as Dennis recalled from their childhood days, was not a good sign. But Dennis decided to push his point. This was his house now.

“My house. You turn off the TV.”

“OK, Denny. Your call.” Leon pulled out his custom-made Sig-Sauer 9 mm, and put six shots into the TV. When the racket subsided and the smoke cleared, the TV speaker was still emitting some garbled sound, and there were still some sparks inside the shattered TV screen. Leon reloaded. He heard Dennis scream no, but Leon didn’t usually give a fuck what other people thought. Another nine shots were fired at the catastrophically damaged TV. When the smoke settled again, the TV had stopped giving out any sound or visual images. On further inspection, both the dog and the cat had mindlessly fled the house. The dog had crapped on the floor before it left.

“Clean that shit up,” ordered Leon. “And if I get any more static from you, I’ll bury you in the deepest parts of the mine. Not even the fuckin’ rats’ll find you. Now do we have an understanding here?”

Dennis did understand, although he forgot from time to time. Over the years of their association, more bullet holes appeared in the walls, floor, and ceiling of the dilapidated trailer. If Dennis forgot to turn off a light, Leon shot it out. If the doors were not opened, they were generally shot open. Dennis obtained prescriptions for Paxil, and then Prozac. The dog and cat seldom, if ever, came into the house anymore; they scurried into the woods whenever they saw Leon.

A
FTER HE WAS SET UP in Dennis’ house, Leon went to a Kamloops merchant who dealt in used mining parts. He told him what he needed and found out that the drilling machines would cost him $50,000, freight extra. When the merchant said that he would take cash, Leon went to his saddlebags and counted out the bills. Transportation was arranged, and within days the equipment was sitting beside the tunnel opening behind James Leon Hallett’s old trailer. It wasn’t hard to get a crew of Halletts and Lestages together to go to work. Leon made the terms of their employment plain. One hundred dollars a day, but if anyone breathed a word to an outsider, Leon would shoot his balls off, and then drop him down one of the mine shafts to die a slow and painful death with only rats and bats for companions.

The work was relatively simple, and the payment even easier. The rail system had to be repaired. A few stacks of hundreds solved that. They needed a functional lift system, which was easily built. More hundreds paid out. The drilling itself was underway within two weeks. At a rate of 30 or 40 feet a day, the project would take five or six months tops. Leon planned to drill a good mile beyond where Grandpa James had stopped. He had done a lot of calculation and measuring on both sides of the border. He had gone to Montana, to Kalispell, and north along State Highway 486, to follow the northern roads that seemed to mark the border. He knew when he was looking at the deserted southern slopes of Sawtooth Ridge that the plan was virtually foolproof.

Leon didn’t intend to have the workers punch the tunnel all the way through to the American surface of the mountain. He kept them on until there was about 100 feet to go. It was important that none of his idiot cousins know exactly what he was doing. He thanked them all, paid them in cash, and took five days to punch through the last 100 feet on his own. He resisted the temptation to shout his success at the top of his lungs when he got to the other side of the mountain. Caution was now the order of the day. Instead, he took a few moments to quietly survey the landscape.

It was a pleasant view. Behind him rose the soaring vertical lines of Sawtooth Ridge. Ahead of him, the rugged Flathead River Valley opened up to his gaze. He could see a road in the distance, leading to a solitary farmhouse. He realized that he’d have to pay that family a visit and give them an irresistible offer. But first he would explore a little, get some maps, talk to some locals in that easy way of his, just so long as they didn’t get him mad enough to pull the Sig-Sauer on them. He wanted to make sure that this was a very pleasant exercise. Give it a month or two, he thought, and the house on the southern side of the Ridge would be his.

It didn’t take him long. Two hundred thousand American dollars bought the farm in northern Montana. Mr. and Mrs. Peterson, the owners, were very taken with the charming, polite Mr. Lestage, and his old-model pick up truck. “Such a nice young man,” they said. “So considerate, and charming, and kind.” He thought of everything, even hiring and paying for the moving company to deliver their goods to an old folks’ home. It hadn’t taken long for them to confide in him that they had been thinking of selling for a long time now. They were way too far north for their age. They wanted to be closer to clinics, and pharmacies, and hospitals. It was time to leave remote, northern Montana and get back to civilization. Within a month, Daniel Hallett had moved into the Peterson ancestral home. Both the northern and southern ramparts of Devil’s Anvil were now secured by offspring of James Leon Hallett.

Once he’d moved in and made himself comfortable, Daniel, on Leon’s orders, purchased a number of Honda four-wheel-drive ATV’s, and put in a very rough trail between the farmhouse and the tunnel. He had disguised the entrance to the tunnel as best as he could, with boulders and brush. It looked like just another part of the rugged mountain range. Not that anyone ever came this far north.

Leon installed a large generator and a series of lights in the tunnels. He improved the lift system and installed rails in the lower tunnel. He created a series of storage tunnels and rooms where equipment and product could easily be hidden. Within another two months he was ready to go. He bought ten kilos of heroin from his connection, Bartholomew, a smuggler from Pakistan with whom he had been dealing for the past year. It was time to give the new and improved Devil’s Anvil a test run. The whole process took four days, from pickup at the Vancouver docks, to delivery in Los Angeles. Before he left Fernie, he cut the heroin and was able to resell it in Los Angeles for $100,000 a kilo. He’d paid Bartholomew a scant $50,000 for that much. His profit from that first trip, after supplies, travel costs, and payment to his workers, was $500,000. Leon had definitely reached the next level. As an added bonus, he purchased a couple kilos of cocaine while in Los Angeles, and took that back through Devil’s Anvil to sell to the surrogate biker gangs in Vancouver. His path was very clear — at this rate it would take only months for Leon Lestage to become one of the heavy hitters in the drug-smuggling game.

A few more runs left a few hundred thousand dollars sitting in his mine. By the spring, there was, by his estimation, close to $1 million stashed away in Devil’s Anvil. However, he had a growing problem. How to get rid of it? How to launder it? He already had all the Halletts and Lestages of Fernie and the surrounding area smurfing for him full time. Of course, too much money is never that large a problem. He gradually purchased all the houses and properties along the Corbie-Flathead Forest service road, and even bought the bicycle tour company that ran through the area, to ensure that any contact between the public and the mine would be minimized. In this way he controlled virtually all activities along the road.

There was only one really big wrench in the works. The little Paki asshole who had bought Bartholomew’s smuggling outfit. He had come with one sailor and put 200 keys of horse on the docks. Leon gave him $25,000 per kilo, and the little bastard told him that he wanted more. Even told him that he owed him the money from the last time they traded. Then he took off with the money and the drugs, in his piece of shit Pakistani boat. When Leon had tried to take action, the Paki’s psycho-eyed sidekick had killed three of his guys. The nerve of the little fucker. These days they had a grudging understanding. Leon had vowed to himself that one day he would make the Paki die a slow and horrible death. Until that day, he might as well make money off of the foreigner.

D
ROP YOUR UTILITY BELTS and packs right now. Guns on the ground.” Dennis Lestage barked. Catherine and Indy did as they were told. “Now turn around and walk forward, slowly. One false move and I’ll kill you where you stand. No one will ever even find your bodies.” They turned and headed south, back toward the four rooms, Dennis following them. He noticed that the four doors were open.

“A little break-in, I see,” said Dennis, grimacing. “Get in there, now.” He shoved them roughly into the American money room. The door slammed shut. They heard a padlock slide into place; even if it was broken, a padlock could keep someone inside a room from getting out. A solitary light bulb hanging from the ceiling provided the only illumination in the room. A minute or two later they heard Dennis return to insert and lock a new padlock.

Catherine looked around her. She started to laugh.