Vineyard Chill (10 page)

When I opened the door to their knock, the man in front smiled a friendly smile.

“Mr. Jackson?”

“That's right.”

He put out his hand. “My name is Jack Blume. I'm a friend of Clay Stockton. I understand he may be staying here. I'd like to see him.”

He was a medium-sized man but his companion took up considerably more space. As I shook Blume's hand, I glanced over his shoulder. The second man wasn't wearing a smile or looking at me but was peering past me into the house with a gaze as cool as the March air.

“Come inside,” I said. “It's pretty chilly out.”

“Thanks,” said Jack Blume, and the two men entered. I waved them toward the fire and shut the door.

“I noticed your plates as you drove up. You're about as far from California as you can get,” I said. “What brings you to my place?”

“Like I told you,” said Blume, “I'm a friend of Clay Stockton, and I heard he was staying with you. We happen to be on Martha's Vineyard, so we thought we'd drop by and say hello.”

I turned to the other man and put out my hand. “I'm J. W. Jackson.”

He didn't seem to want to take his hands out of his coat pockets, but it's hard to refuse to give your name when someone offers his, so he pulled out his right hand and shook mine. “Mickey Monroe.” I noted a lump in the pocket before his hand returned to it.

“Any relation to James or the Doctrine?” I asked.

Mickey looked perplexed.

“Mickey doesn't read much history,” said Blume with a laugh.

My memory banks didn't hold any references to Jack Blume or Mickey Monroe. If Clay had ever mentioned the names, I'd forgotten them.

“Sit down and warm yourselves,” I said. “I'm having some mulled cider and there's more on the back of the stove. I'll get you a couple of cups.”

“What's mulled cider?” asked Mickey.

“It's a hot drink made of apple juice,” said Blume. “They drink it here in the wintertime to warm themselves up.”

I got two mugs of cider and handed them to my guests. Mickey sniffed his and took a sip. “Not bad. Be good with some whiskey in it. You got any whiskey?”

“Forget the whiskey, Mickey,” said Blume. “Just drink the cider.”

“I have whiskey,” I said. I got some and poured a slug into Mickey's mug. The smell of bourbon filled the room.

“Better,” said Mickey after a gulp of his drink.

“Who told you that Clay Stockton was living here?” I asked Blume.

“I don't think it's a secret,” said Blume. “We used to work together out west. He wrote me that he was here.”

“That must have been a while back,” I said. “He hasn't been here for several weeks.”

A frown floated across Blume's face then disappeared. “Where did he go?”

“Didn't he write and tell you?”

Blume's face hardened. “I've been traveling and I probably missed his message. Can you tell me where to find him?”

“Maybe the police can tell you,” I said. “The last I heard, he was working with them on a case. Contact the state police. Their office is up in Oak Bluffs. Talk with Dom Agganis. He's head of the unit down here on the island.”

“Clay had his tools shipped here, to you,” said Mickey. “He must be staying around here someplace and you must know where.” He drank his cider and stood up. The heavy mug looked like a weapon in his hand.

I tried not to appear nervous. It wasn't easy. “I knew Clay almost thirty years ago,” I said to Blume. “He showed up a few weeks back. Out of the blue. Said he didn't have a place to stay but wanted his tools and could he have them shipped to this address while he found himself a house. I said sure. He stayed here until his tools came. We talked about the old days, but he said he didn't want me to know much about what he'd been doing and he didn't want me to know where he was living because what I didn't know wouldn't hurt me.” I looked at Blume. “I thought that was kind of a funny thing to say. But that's Clay. He always liked to kid.”

“What's he doing working with the police?”

“A woman went missing last year. The police think they finally have a lead. Clay's been in the search party for her body.”

“Why?”

I shrugged. “I don't know. Clay's a friendly guy. Maybe he and Dom Agganis have hit it off.”

“What's he doing with his tools?”

“Clay's always been good with his hands. You've probably noticed all the building that's going on here. Mansions going up everywhere. A guy like Clay can get all the work he wants.”

“I don't suppose you know where he's working.”

“I don't suppose I do. He mentioned the Chilmark Store a couple of times, so maybe he's up-island someplace.”

Blume looked around the room.

“You married, Mr. Jackson?”

“I am.”

“Kids?”

“Two.”

“I have a family, too. It's good to have a family, but if you're like me, you're always just a little bit worried that something might happen to one of them. You know what I mean? Your kid will fall off a swing or something like that. Get hurt.” He smiled and shook his head. “I guess it's the price we pay for being fathers, don't you think?”

I felt my muscles stiffen. “I guess. I try not to worry about things I can't do anything about.”

“That's a good philosophy. You sure you don't know where Clay's staying?”

“I'm sure. If I see him, do you want me to tell him you're looking for him?”

“Yeah,” said Mickey. “Tell him that. Tell him we want to talk with him.”

“All right,” I said. “If I see him, I'll tell him. Where are you staying?”

“That big hotel down in Edgartown,” said Blume. “Out by the lighthouse. You know the place I mean?”

“The Harbor View.”

“That's the place. You ever try their Sunday brunch? Terrific! A raw bar like you dream of. All the oysters you can eat. You're sure you don't know where Clay's living?”

“He's never said. My guess is up-island someplace. There are a lot of winter rentals up that way.”

“Well, if he comes by, tell him we'd really like to see him.” Blume looked at his wristwatch. “Your kids both in school? I imagine they'll be coming home before too long. Wife'll be coming home, too. Come on, Mickey, we'll leave Mr. Jackson alone.”

Mickey looked at me without love and followed Blume out the door. I watched them climb into the Mercedes and leave.

The room still felt chilly after they'd driven away. My impulse was to immediately drive up to Ted Overhill's barn and tell Clay about my visitors, but I decided to wait an hour or more to give Blume and Monroe time to stop watching for me to leave. No need to lead them where they wanted to go.

I had some more cider and put more wood on the fire. I thought about Blume and Monroe. They weren't making any effort to hide their presence, so maybe they were as innocent as doves and just what they claimed to be: a couple of Clay's old West Coast pals who happened to be on the island and wanted to say hello.

But I didn't think so. My guess was that they were being open about their presence because they were so far from California that they figured island police would have no reason to look twice at them.

In any case, they'd given me a problem I could have done without. If Clay weren't my friend, I could simply wander downtown and tell the chief of the Edgartown police that a couple of guys I took for West Coast hoodlums were ensconced in the Harbor View Hotel. I could tell him what they'd said to me, and then he could do what he saw fit: maybe make some calls west to see if Blume and Monroe were people he should be watching or perhaps even arresting.

But Clay
was
my friend and if I told the chief of my visitors' interest in him, it was in the cards that the chief would include questions about Clay when he got in touch with West Coast law enforcement. I didn't want that to happen. I didn't know what had brought Blume and Monroe looking for Clay, but I didn't want the law after Clay, too.

Friendship has gotten a lot of people into trouble, but I could stand a little trouble if I was the only one involved. But Blume had hinted a threat to Zee and the kids, and I didn't like that at all. I wondered what Monroe had had in his coat pocket. Whatever it was, it was heavy enough to make the pocket sag. I didn't think it was a rock he'd picked up as a Vineyard souvenir.

I saw Blume as the brains and Monroe as the muscle, but I could be wrong about that. Just because you talk smart doesn't mean you are smart, any more than looking stupid is the same as being stupid.

Still, if the two were not the nefarious types that they seemed, they were both great actors.

I wondered how convincing my own act had been. Had I come across as the simple guy I hoped they saw? Or maybe by their standards I
was
simple. Could be. I'd always suspected that I wasn't as smart as I thought I was.

When my hour was up, I shrugged into my winter coat, got into the Land Cruiser, and drove into Edgartown. I didn't see the Mercedes parked on any side road or either of the men shivering in the trees and staking out my driveway. If I hadn't watched them when they arrived and then when they left my house, I might have wondered if they'd stuck a tracking device on my truck, but they hadn't done that, so I knew they weren't trailing me at a distance. But maybe Jack and Mickey were better shadows than most. Maybe they had changed cars. Maybe they'd hired somebody else to watch me and let them know when I left home and where I went.

My guess was that they'd just returned to their hotel, but when I got into the village, I drove around some back streets until I was confident that no one was behind me, then, just to be sure, drove out on the West Tisbury road until I got to Metcalf Drive. There, feeling wicked as wicked could be, like the Pirate Don Dirk of Dowdee, I took a right and, ignoring the signs proclaiming this was a private road and not a through way, drove all the way through to the Vineyard Haven road. Criminal acts don't have to be significant to be pleasurable.

No one was following me when I drove down Ted Overhill's driveway and stopped in front of his barn beside Clay's blue Bronco. Inside the barn, progress was being made on the schooner. The spars had been laid out on sawhorses, and fittings were being attached to them. I climbed the ladder that leaned against the boat and went into the cockpit. Clay was alone in the cabin, fitting a piece of teak to a counter. He looked up as I blocked the light coming through the hatch.

“Hey, J.W., what's up?”

“Ted around?”

“No, he's out taking care of a few errands. You want to see him?”

“No, I came to see you.”

“Talk away. I'll listen while I make this board fast.” He slid a bronze screw into a predrilled hole and began to screw it in. The board was a perfect fit. I could barely see the line where it joined the next board. I admire such skill but am incapable of it. I do all right with two-by-fours, but any carpentry more subtle than that is pretty much beyond me.

I told him of the visitors. When I said their names, he stopped working and listened in silence. When I finished my description of the visit, he rubbed a hand through his beard, then looked at me.

“How long have they been on the island?”

“Not long. I saw Eleanor down at the coffee shop and she mentioned them coming off the ferry. They caught her eye because California convertibles driven by guys in summer clothes don't often show up in the wintertime.”

“Describe the guys.” I did that and he shook his head. “I don't know them. Stupid of me to have the tools shipped to you. I never should have done that. They must have pressured the guy who was storing them on the coast, and he gave them your address.”

“They've come quite a way to find you.”

“Yeah. I went to some trouble to drag red herrings across my track, too. Stopped several places as I came across country and left signs that I'd been there before moving on. I was hoping that I'd convinced them I was in Arkansas.” He gave me his old smile. “I'm sorry as hell I brought this trouble to you.”

“I've lived in a lot of places and done a lot of things and made some good friends,” said Clay, looking absently around the cabin of the schooner. “But I never liked anything better than what I have here: a good boat to work on, friends, Elly…” He paused. “I thought I might finally settle down, but I guess it's time to move on.”

“Maybe not,” I said.

He shook his head. “If I stay, some innocent people might get hurt. I don't want that.”

“Where would you go?”

He smiled a small, humorless smile. “Arkansas? They don't believe I'm there, even though I tried to make them think so.”

I patted the side of the hatch.” You're a cruising man. Arkansas is a long way from salt water.”

“Well, there's the Mississippi,” he said, with irony in his voice. “Maybe I could build a riverboat. I've never tried that. Or I could change my name to Finn and live on a raft.”

I said, “Do you want to tell me what this is all about? If you don't, that's still okay, but if you do, we might have a better chance to neutralize these guys.”

He looked up at me. “You're the one I'm most worried about. Jack Blume didn't come here just to take the waters, and Mickey Monroe doesn't teach Sunday school classes. If they think you can lead them to me, they'll do what they need to do to get you to tell them. They think I have something that belongs to somebody else and they're here to collect it.”

“Do you have it?”

“I know where it is.” He put aside his tools and thought for a moment. “You really don't know much about my life, J.W.”

True, but faith is the evidence of things unseen. “I know you,” I said. “That's all I need to know. You can tell me as much or as little as you want. How I feel about you won't change.”

He said nothing for a moment, then said, “Do you know what the largest cash crop in the United States is?”

I thought of the horizon-to-horizon fields of middle America, the breadbasket of the world, but shook my head. “I'm not sure.”

“Marijuana. It must drive the Reefer Madness people and the DEA crazy that in spite of all the money they've spent and all the effort they've made to keep kids from smoking dope, weed is the biggest cash crop in the country. Do you have any idea how much money it brings in?”

“No.”

“Well, the pot industry doesn't pay taxes or keep official records, but the best guess is that the crop is worth about thirty-five billion dollars a year. Corn is second. It brings in twenty-three billion. The soybean crop is worth seventeen billion. It's third.”

“I can't think in numbers that big,” I said, surprised that soybeans were such moneymakers. “Where's wheat on your list?”

“Fifth or sixth,” said Clay. “I can't remember which. Hay is somewhere in there, too. I've never worked in the soybean or corn trade, but in my travels I've cut and stacked hay and threshed wheat, and I can tell you that farmers earn their dollars. Ranchers, too. Raising cattle and sheep is chancy business. The industry produces a lot of money, but individually, many a farmer is living on the edge and takes a job in town to make ends meet.”

On Martha's Vineyard we have farms, but mostly they're owned by people who don't have to live off what their land produces. They're gentlemen farmers who love to plant and harvest but often hire professionals to do the real work. My father used to say that it was the only way to farm. He said he'd come north to Summerville and become a fireman so he could eat steadily. Down in Georgia, his parents had a hardscrabble one hundred acres that included just a scrap of bottomland, which never produced enough to do much more than pay the taxes. The boys had all been hunters and the girls had all married early and moved away because the land didn't bring in enough money to put food on the table for a big family.

My father liked the Vineyard farms, with their painted buildings and nice fences and no junked machinery out behind the barns, and sometimes he'd drive my sister and me around so we could admire them. He'd never expressed an interest in owning such a farm but instead had taught me and Margarite how to fish and how to shoot a rifle and shotgun fairly early in our lives, just in case we ever needed to live off the land.

Now I said to Clay, “Nobody's written a song about amber waves of grass, as far as I know.”

He grinned. “I've never heard it either, but somebody may have done it. There's a whole drug culture out there that has entertainments of its own.” His grin went away. “As I recall, you used to smoke the occasional weed. We weren't much more than kids, were we?”

I nodded. “A long time ago. I liked dope. It made me feel good and I laughed a lot. I think they should legalize MJ and sell it through liquor stores. The government could control the quality so people would know what they were getting and wouldn't be buying fake grass or weed hyped with more powerful stuff. And it could stop spending all that money on arresting dealers and users and keeping them in jail.”

“You aren't worried about people getting addicted?”

I shrugged. “I'm willing to bet that nicotine is more addictive.”

“How about harder stuff. You want to legalize that, too?”

“
Decriminalize
is a better word, maybe.”

“Are you hedging your bet?”

“Probably. I think people have a right to do whatever they want to do with their bodies as long as they don't hurt anybody else. I think it's stupid for people to shoot up or do other self-destructive things, but I don't think they're criminals if they do.”

“Why'd you quit?”

I thought about my experiments with some really good grass I'd gotten hold of when I was about twenty. We called it “one-toke dope” because that was all you needed to have your head go floating up to the ceiling and stay there for an hour or two. We also called it “laughing grass” because it made everything incredibly funny so that we could hardly speak a single sentence without bursting into laughter.

Then, because I am who I am, I tried some tests. I got stoned, but told no one, then attended a party to see if anyone would notice that I was higher than a kite. No one did, so apparently I didn't act differently from normal even though I felt sure anyone could tell I was high by looking at me or listening to me.

Then I got stoned and tried to read but found myself forgetting the beginning of paragraphs by the time I got to the end of them. I read the same paragraph over and over and never understood it.

Finally, I got stoned and sat down to watch television. I discovered that being high was wonderful for watching hockey because I could see the puck moving in slow motion from stick to stick, whereas when I was straight, I could hardly see it at all. However, I also discovered that I was laughing and laughing at the wonderful wit in sitcoms that I normally thought were boring beyond comprehension.

My conclusion was that however much grass improved hockey and made me happy, it kept me from reading and it made me think television comedy was clever. Ergo, it was apparently turning my brain into mush.

So I stopped smoking it. I had no moral objections to other people smoking, but it wasn't for me.

Later, I'd given up nicotine as well, although even to this day when a pipe smoker passes me on the sidewalk, my nose almost pulls me around so I can follow the fragrance of the smoke.

I gave this long answer to Clay in response to his short comment.

He nodded. “Well, you still have alcohol and caffeine, the socially acceptable drugs in American culture.”

I nodded back. “I like them both and I think I know enough to use them instead of having them use me.”

“I imagine some AA people might doubt that.”

I thought he was right, but I also thought that AA people were in a minority on the Vineyard, where drugs of all kinds were popular. We'd come a long way from the time when marijuana first became a hit with middle-class kids and many a user deemed it a plant of peace and a local island guy had proclaimed himself Johnny Potseed and had driven all around the Vineyard scattering and planting seeds from his personal plants in hopes of improving life on earth for one and all.

“Are Blume and Monroe reps for somebody in the business?” I asked.

Clay nodded. “They are.”

“They don't seem to be the peaceful types we used to think of as pot smokers.”

“We're not talking about smokers. We're talking about businessmen running the biggest cash-crop industry in the United States. They're not running it to lose money, and because they're outside the law, they make their own laws. They're their own judges and juries and enforcers. Blume and Monroe are two of the enforcers.”

I thought of Balzac's famous adage that behind every great fortune was a great crime. “I don't know much about the business,” I said.

Clay nodded. “It may work differently in different places, but I can tell you how I got involved. Remember me telling you that I plowed snow on a ranch in Montana? Well, it's a huge ranch, most of it well off the main road, and it had its own little runway and its own very nice Beechcraft. My second ex had gotten my plane in the divorce settlement, and I'd left the state one jump ahead of the posse—remember me telling you about that? I knew a guy in Alaska who knew Mark Briggs, the guy who owned the ranch. Mark's pilot had gotten married and had moved down to San Antonio, and Mark needed a new pilot and my friend recommended me for the job. I needed a job, and Mark and I hit it off and I went to work as a sort of combination ranch hand and pilot. I fixed fences and plowed snow and even played cowboy at branding time. It was a real ranch with cattle, horses, even a few sheep. Evenings, Mark and I and the other guys who worked there would eat together at the big house. Great food, good wine, beer, and some really great dope. Weekends we'd watch the Seattle and Denver games on TV.

“It wasn't long before I realized that the ranch was really headquarters for Mark's marijuana business. Cars and trucks came and went bringing in the local harvest from growers in the area and shipping it out again to other wholesalers. The growers were mostly farming high-powered female plants in labs under grow lights. My flying job was to take people, usually a guy named Larry Jelcoe, and luggage to or from L.A. or Spokane or other places. I never asked questions and kept my mouth shut, and one day Mark called me up to his office and asked me if I'd make a delivery on my own. I said yes and he took me into a back room and showed me suitcases full of money. Hundred-dollar bills in packets, just like you see in the movies. There must have been two or three million dollars there. He wanted me to take it to L.A. and get it to a friend of his who worked at a bank. Something had come up that kept Larry from going with me and doing that part of the job.

“I said, ‘That's a lot of money. What if I just keep going, plane and all?'

“He just laughed and slapped me on the back and said he trusted me, so I delivered the suitcases. The MO was for me to leave them in a storage locker, go to the bank and meet my man, give him the key, and leave. No receipt or anything like that.

“So I did that and after that I made that kind of flight alone every two or three weeks, going to one bank or another in one city or another or sometimes picking up satchels from people and bringing them back to the ranch. I don't know what happened to Larry, but after he left the ranch, it was my job. Mark must have had several fortunes stashed away in a lot of banks. He had so much money that he didn't attach much significance to it.”

I could understand that. When you don't have much money, it means a lot; when you have a lot, it doesn't mean much at all.

Clay went on. “I worked there for several months and it was a good job. I was making good money, I was flying a lot, and I liked the guys I was working with. Then things changed. Mark decided to get out of the business. More and more DEA people were coming into the area and he figured that it was only a matter of time before they raided some grower and pressured the grower into naming the people he dealt with. None of the growers knew Mark's name, but they could name the guys who picked up their harvest and those guys could name their bosses and some of those bosses could name Mark, so it was a good time to move out. He sold the ranch, Beechcraft and all, for big bucks to a guy named Lewis Farquahar who wasn't afraid of the DEA, and he moved to Palm Springs. Jack Blume and Mickey Monroe are Lewis's muscle.

“Lewis offered me a job, but I figured that if Mark was getting nervous, maybe I should move on, too. My last job was to fly Lewis's payment for the ranch down to San Diego, to deposit in one of Mark's bank accounts. It was a couple of suitcases of bills. I was to bring the Beechcraft back to the ranch afterwards, then be on my way. I was honest with Farquahar. Told him my plan to leave. Told him I knew a guy in Sausalito who was building a boat and who had offered me work. I landed in San Francisco and dropped my tools off with him on my way down to San Diego.

“So far, so good. When I landed in San Diego, I put the suitcases in a storage locker like I always did, but the guy I usually met at the bank wasn't there. A new guy was, but I wasn't sure I should be dealing with him so I kept the key and left. Two guys followed me but I shook them and called Mark in Palm Springs. He said he didn't know anything about the new guy at the bank so I should just bring the key to him in Palm Springs. I said okay but when I got back to the airport, the Beechcraft was gone. I called Mark again but all I got was an answering machine. I kept trying but there was no answer.