Midnight Haul (14 page)

“About you, or about Kemco?”

“Crane. Please. I want you to know something. I want you to know that I understand where you’re coming from. Or at least I think I do. Hope I do. Shouldn’t presume that I do, really. But I’m guessing that you took Mary Beth’s suicide hard. That you found it hard to believe anyone as full of life as Mary Beth could end that
life, voluntarily.” He stopped and rubbed his forehead. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound so trite. To sound like I’m trivializing this. Christ. May I go on?”

“Yes.”

“I think you ran into Annie. Possibly at the funeral, or maybe later at Mary Beth’s mother’s home, or whatever. And Annie filled your head with her crazy leftist lunacy. Normally you might not have bought it. But it was easier accepting what Annie was saying than accepting Mary Beth’s death as suicide. I’m not far wrong, am I?”

Crane said nothing.

“I know that you’ve been asking some questions,” Patrick said. “I know that you have some suspicions.”

He’d been right: it
was
Mrs. Meyer. Patrick did not know about the trip to Pennsylvania last night. Did he?

“There
are
some disturbing statistics,” Patrick was saying. “We’re aware of the number of suicides in Greenwood; we’re aware of some illnesses that may be related to Kemco employees and their families. We’ll be looking into it ourselves.”

“I’ll look forward to
that
investigation.”

Patrick smiled sadly and shook his head. “She’s really poisoned you, hasn’t she? Don’t you see it? Don’t you see that this is a family squabble? That Annie is getting at me through the company I work for? I sold out, remember? It’s not enough to attack me. She has to attack the institutions I sold out to.”

“All because the poor kid’s stuck in time.”

“That’s right. It’s the ’80s now, Crane, in case you haven’t noticed. Damn near the ’90s, chilling thought though that is.”

“I noticed.”

“How close to her are you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I understand you’re staying at her house.”

“I’m just crashing there.”

“Crashing. There’s a Woodstock-era word for you. Did she tell you why we split up?”

“No.”

“Drugs.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was doing drugs. Nothing much. Some hash. Some coke.” His frankness was surprising, if somehow smug.

“You buy coke on thirty grand a year?”

He shrugged. “I dealt a little on the side. That upset her, too. Almost as much as me wearing a suit to work.”

“She said she wasn’t into drugs.”

“She’s lying. Oh, she isn’t
now
. But back in our college days, she was deep in it, deeper than me. She dropped acid like you take Alka Seltzer.”

“I don’t take Alka Seltzer.”

“Well you get my point. Then she reformed. There’s nothing worse than a reformed
anything
. She got on her health-food kick. She read books and articles on the bad effects of acid. Same with pot, for Christsake. Said it ruined brain tissue, affected the sexual organs, some bullshit. I don’t know. But she turned fanatic. I tried to do right by her. I stopped dealing. It was dangerous for me, anyway, now that I was with the company. I needed a straighter life-style. So no more coke, no more anything except smoke a little dope now and then. But even
that
was too much for her. I remember saying to her, the last generation liked its martinis, right? Well I like my pot. But that didn’t cut it with her, because alcohol’s on her shit list, too. It was like living with a religious fanatic. The screaming fucking arguments we had. Christ. But that’s neither here nor there. It got to be too much.”

“It broke up your marriage.”

“Yeah. She was on a real guilt trip, and believe me, it all ties in with what she’s doing now, where Kemco is concerned. She’s worried she fucked up her chromosomes dropping acid. She’s worried
about Billy. The repercussions her doper days will have on our son.”

“Aren’t you worried?”

“No. I don’t believe that alarmist bullshit. But she does.”

“I’ll tell you something. Maybe Boone’s motivation for all this does stem from her hating you. But I’ve been reading up on some of your precious chemical industry, and some of what I read scares me.”

He shrugged, swigged the last of the Pepsi. “Haven’t you heard that TV commercial? Without chemicals, life itself would be impossible?”

“So would cancer.”

“You really believe that bullshit Annie tells you?”

“I believe 350,000 Americans will die from cancer this year. And I believe the reason is largely chemical companies unleashing untried, untested chemical compounds on an unsuspecting environment.”

“You even sound like her. Like a goddamn pamphlet. You’re a writer yourself, I understand.”

“I’m working on it.”

“Studying journalism?”

“That’s right.”

“Everybody needs a hobby.”

“Like dumping hazardous wastes in the middle of the night?”

Patrick sat up. “Some of that goes on. Not here.”

“Are you sure?”

He shrugged. “I won’t say some of it hasn’t. I don’t know that any’s going on now. We have a manifest system in this state. We keep track of everything we dump.”

“So you say.”

“So we say. And if somebody says otherwise, they better be prepared to prove it.”

“Maybe somebody will.”

Patrick smiled. “It won’t be you and Annie.”

“Is that a threat?”

“No.” He laughed. “Are you kidding? Annie has no credibility as a journalist. She’s published a few pieces in minor league leftist nothings. You? You’re just a grad student. She’s the ex-wife of an exec at Kemco she wants to crucify. You have your own grudge, where your late fiancée is concerned. With credibility like that, you and Annie are finished before you start. Get serious.”

“You’re as much as admitting…”

“Nothing. I’m admitting nothing. Let me ask you something. Is that shirt you’re wearing one hundred percent cotton?”

“No…”

“You’re goddamn right it isn’t. We probably made fifty or sixty percent of that shirt. You want to talk chemicals? You’re wearing ’em!”

“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

“It has to do with everything. You and Annie and everybody else can blame the chemical industry for America’s environmental ills. But you conveniently ignore the major accomplice: the American public. A public that wears clothes made of synthetic fibers. A public that drives cars made of plastic parts. A public that eats food raised in chemicals, and wrapped for sale in chemicals. A public whose collective ass rests on plastic furniture. A public that includes people like Annie, who buys her ‘No Nukes’ and ‘Live AID’ albums ignoring the fact that records are a petrochemical by-product, then plays them on her stereo, thanks to nuclear-generated electricity.”

“Now who sounds like a goddamn pamphlet?”

“Hey, I’m not ashamed to be working in the chemical industry. I think we provide a service,
many
services, the public wants. Needs.
Demands
. The chemical industry’s
booming
, pal—recessions don’t touch us. $133 billion last year. And next year, who knows?”

“Kind of like cancer statistics.”

“Don’t be an asshole. We don’t live in a zero-risk environment. Never have and never will. And if we tried, there’d be no creativity. No scientific advancement. Innovation would be stifled.”

“Let me see if I got this straight. If we want to keep listening to ‘No Nukes’ albums and Willie Nelson, we need to accept the fact that the environment may get fucked over.”

“Crane, it’s bad business to market hazardous products; it’s good business to market safe products. Have you been around Annie so long that the simple logic of that is lost on you? It’s crazy for you or Annie or anyone to think the chemical industry is going to make a practice out of being irresponsible. Just to make an extra buck or two. It just ain’t necessary, Crane. It ain’t good business.”

Crane sipped the Pepsi. His first sip. It was warm now. “Then why do some Kemco plants still make Agent Orange?”

“You mean 2,4,5-T.”

“Yes. They’re not dumping it on Vietnam anymore. But it’s still being dumped on American forests.”

“Of course it is. It’s an established tool of forest production.”

“It’s got dioxin in it.”

“Yes.”

“Dioxin is only the worst foul fucking thing in the world, Patrick. It causes cancer. Birth defects. You name it. Good shit, as a retread ’60s doper like you might put it.”

“Accusations like that have been leveled at 2,4,5-T for years, but the government has yet to ban it. And we believe it provides an important service.”

“Sure.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t realized yet how one-sided Annie’s research is, Crane. How conveniently she ignores the facts she doesn’t like. The U.S. Forest Service did a study on the use of 2,4,5-T in the Northwest, and found that discontinuing the use of the herbicide would have an economic impact of several hundred million dollars on Oregon alone. That’s jobs that would be lost,
Crane. Families that would suffer. All because without that herbicide, the brush would come in and take over what would’ve been a healthy new forest. Did Annie’s research tell you that?”

Crane said nothing.

“You know, Crane, these well-meaning leftists are engaging in what you could call ‘chemical McCarthyism.’ The chemical industry makes such an easy target. The public doesn’t understand the science, the technology involved. The environmentalist types come along and spout some half-truths and whole lies, all because of an irrational, unscientific distrust of anything that isn’t ‘natural,’ that might tamper with Nature in a way God didn’t intend, only most of them don’t believe in God, so go figure. I don’t know. I’m just a guy trying to make an honest buck. I never hurt anybody.”

Crane said nothing.

“I’ll get somebody to take you home,” Patrick said. No more smiles. No more rhetoric. He seemed tired.

“I’m sorry about Mary Beth,” he said. “I really am.”

The hell of it was Crane believed him.

Crane was sitting on the couch in Boone’s house, watching a late movie without paying attention to it, when Boone got home.

He could tell things hadn’t gone well for her. Her face looked tired. Her hair was messy, greasy. But she still looked pretty, as she gave him a weary smile and came over and joined him on the couch.

“I could use a kiss,” she said.

“Who couldn’t?” he said, smiling a little, kissing her.

He put an arm around her and she cuddled against him.

“How did you and Billy get along?” she asked.

“Swell. He spoke twice: ‘What’s for supper?’ and ‘I’ll stay up as late as I want.’ ”

Tired as she was, she managed a smile. “You cooked for him?”

“Sure. Another of my specialties: frozen pizza.”

“When did he get to bed?”

“Half an hour ago.”

“He’s got school tomorrow.”

“That’s his problem.”

“Well, you didn’t fare much worse than most of his baby-sitters.”

“How did you fare?”

“With the ‘Hazardous Waste Strike Force,’ you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t ask.”

He didn’t say anything for a while; neither did she.

Then she rose and said, “How about some wine?”

“Sounds almost as good as another kiss.”

“Doesn’t it?”

She went away for a few minutes, came back with a bottle of red wine and some wineglasses. She poured. They drank. They kissed again. Then she got thoughtful.

“It was like talking to you,” she said.

“What was?”

“Telling my story to the Task Force guy. His name was Hart. Sidney Hart. He was a nice guy, about my age. A special investigator assigned through the state police to the Task Force. He spent hours listening to me.”

“What did he say?”

“Like I said, it was like talking to you. He was interested in what I had to say, polite, but skeptical. He said he’d heard rumors about Kemco, but that the company had never been caught in a major violation. He questioned what we’d really seen last night. Yes, it’s suspicious for trucks to haul waste to a landfill at night; but it isn’t necessarily illegal.”

“What about the manifest system? What if Kemco didn’t report the dumping?”

“Then it’s just our word against Kemco’s that any dumping took place at all. We didn’t even write down the license number of the fucking truck, ’cause we thought we had it on film.”

“It was New Jersey plates.”

“But you don’t remember the number, do you? Me either. So all we’ve got is our story, and who’s going to take us seriously? Who are you, but the fiancé of a woman you think Kemco killed? And who am I, but the disgruntled ex-wife of a Kemco executive, out for blood, right? What kind of credibility does that give us?”

“That’s what Patrick said.”

“Patrick?”

“Yeah. I talked to him this afternoon.”

“You talked to Patrick?”

Crane told her about the Kemco car stopping for him, about going out there and spending half an hour with her ex-husband.

“I can’t say he struck me as… a monster or anything.” Crane said.

She moved away from him on the couch, just a little. “How
did
he strike you?”

“I didn’t exactly like him. And I can understand why you couldn’t put up with his attitudes. But I find it difficult to believe he’s in any way involved with Mary Beth’s death.”

“He
must
be.”

“You really think your ex-husband is a murderer? Your son’s father?”

“Patrick is… it’s possible.”

“You can’t say it, can you? The guy’s selfish and self-centered and I think he’d do a lot of shady things if his bosses asked him to… like maybe pay off some midnight haulers in cash… but not murder. I just don’t buy it. And I don’t think you do either, if you’d be honest with yourself.”

“It’s a criminal conspiracy, Crane. It’s Watergate. It’s something that got out of control, that people got caught up in. And Patrick was one of them.”

“It’s not Watergate, Boone, and even if it was, I don’t remember anybody getting killed over Watergate.”

“Who really knows?”