A long silence. “Asking price? You mean for all the stuff down here? The whole lot?”
“Every last swinging tailpipe.”
Another pause. Then, with a trace of caution, “Make an offer.”
Mike was ready to make an offer. A high offer. He didn’t want to haggle. It was the best way to go.
“Forty thousand dollars.”
A gasp on the other end of the line. The voice turned cunning. “Forty thousand bucks?” Clyde wheezed excitedly. “Hoo-ee! Forty... forty... going once, going twice... do I hear fifty?”
Mike’s own breath was coming in short puffs, but his course was set. “Okay, you hear it. Fifty thousand dollars. But you’ll have to clear out the whole lot of it by next week. Clean up the whole mess. And don’t bring in any more.”
“I... I’ll—”
Wrighthouse hung up.
The next morning, a little after ten, the scrap-iron owner of the Ayrshire Dairy Farm, wearing baggy khakis, a T-shirt, and a jaunty air of triumph, wrestled a long aluminum extension ladder into place on the side of the barn that faced O’Shea’s. He scooted up the ladder like a monkey in rut, carrying a bucket of black paint and a wide brush. In bold letters on the side of the spotless white barn, he wrote “EX.” That was the beginning. When the message was finished, it stated, in huge and sloppy capitals, “EXPENSIVE PROPERTY FOR SALE — BEST OFFER.”
The lunch-hour diners got quite a belt out of it. Buzzing and pointing, they stood three deep at the windows. They chortled. As Wrighthouse fashioned his message, they cheered him on, merry as babes.
Mike trembled with rage. He dialed Wrighthouse again that afternoon.
“Okay. How much?”
“For the junk? Or for the whole spread?”
“The farm. Name your price.”
“You name it. Best offer. You saw the sign.”
“You’re in the driver’s seat, Wrighthouse. How much?”
“Well, let’s see now. How much did that fancy hog trough of yours up there gross last year? Three million? Four?”
“That’s my business.”
“Ay-yuh. It sure is. And a pretty good business, too. Could be ailing now, though. Not such a red-hot view anymore, eh?” He cackled and added, “But we can take care of that.”
“Just tell me what you want.”
“Seven figures. That’s what I want, Mr. O’Shea. Count ’em: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Seven figures. That’s what I’m after.”
“Seven figures?” Mike howled. “Seven figures would buy the whole valley.”
“Not anymore, it wouldn’t.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Nope,” Wrighthouse set him straight. “Sane as a free-agent outfielder with a three-fifty batting average. Seven figures and you’re in the ballpark.”
“No way!” Mike screamed. “No!”
It was Wrighthouse who heard the click.
Weeks passed. Summer lapsed into autumn. Mike’s hired college kid, the one he paid by the week to paddle a canoe picturesquely down the Tionega between eleven and two each day, returned to St. Bonaventure. It was just as well. There was no point in paying a kid to complement the valley scene like that while Wrighthouse went on fouling the farm with an ever-increasing collection of junk. Not just cars and trucks now, but discarded bathtubs, sinks, water heaters, air conditioners, electric fans, room radiators.
During this period, while the nation was deciding whether to put its fate in the hands of the star of Bedtime for Bonzo, Mike met Clyde for the first time. It happened in downtown Finleysburg. The junkyard farmer, tall, lantern-jawed, and pipestem thin, was as ugly as his acreage, with vicious little gray eyes and angry pockmarks cratering his face. Mike recognized him as the painter on the ladder, whom he had seen clearly through his pay-for-view telescope on the restaurant’s lookout platform.
The business section of Finleysburg, with its single main street and false-fronted stores, had the look of a fading cowtown. Wrighthouse staggered from a saloon. The kingpin of scrap, flushed crimson, clearly had been swilling something stronger than sarsaparilla.
Clyde and Mike spotted each other at twenty paces. Swaying in the light breeze, Wrighthouse stopped, squinted, gathered his thoughts, and put them into a slurred offer: “Mr. Michael O’Shea, ain’t it? The big man on the mountain. Tell you what, Mr. O’Shea. I’ll give you half a million bucks for that hog trough of yours up yonder. Cash on the barrelhead. Call me anytime.”
He tipped around on his heel and lurched away.
That did it.
At that precise moment, Mike O’Shea decided he’d had enough. Clyde Wrighthouse, like Carthage of old, must be destroyed. According to Medworthy, it couldn’t be done within the law. All right, he’d do it outside the law.
Mike knew a man outside the law — Lennie (the Loon) Garofalo of Reedsboro. On Friday nights, after a hard week of breaking legs or whatever he did, Lennie would gun his ’vette south to The Vista O’Shea, usually with a sumptuous blonde aboard, and seldom the same blonde. According to J. D. Medworthy, the loud-talking but impeccably dressed Lennie Garofalo was a top lieutenant of Joe (Mr. Big) Biggadario, a dapper weasel who ran the upstate rackets from Erie County east to the Catskills. Lennie, so said J. D., oversaw Mr. Big’s interests in the Tionega Valley.
At eight o’clock on Friday evening, Garofalo arrived, and O’Shea seated him personally, leading him and his undulating blond knockout, Gina, to the Loon’s regular table by the window.
“Could I speak with you later, Mr. Garofalo?” O’Shea asked quietly when the couple had been seated.
“Right now,” Lennie said, motioning to Gina to vacate her chair. “Check out the ladies’ room, sugar.”
Gina left, and O’Shea, marveling that anyone since the great Bogey could get away with a line like that, sat down self-consciously.
“Well?”
“Well,” Mike began, “I guess you’ve noticed what’s happened to the scenery in the valley.”
Lennie glanced toward the darkening landscape. “Terrible,” he said without emotion. “But funny, too. The farm belongs to Clyde Wrighthouse. ‘Steel Jaws,’ we call him. Ever see that James Bond flick with the huge guy and his metal teeth?”
“The Spy Who Loved Me. Richard Kiel. Seven foot two. You know Wrighthouse?”
“Not personally, but I hear the boys talk about him.”
“He’s a junk dealer.”
“He makes a buck.”
“I’ve got nothing against junk dealers, Mr. Garofalo. They’re fine in their place. I just don’t think their place is down below the dining room with the best view in America.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I’d like to eliminate him and his junkyard from that farm down there.”
“Kill him?”
“No, no, no, no. Nothing like that.”
Lennie smoothed his blow-dried hair and studied the earnest face of his host. “I hope you don’t think I’m a violent guy, Mike, just because I work for Joe Biggadario. I’m in business. I’m legit. Pizza.”
“I know. I’m sure you are. Let me tell you what I’ve been thinking about. It’s a practical joke, you might say. A kind of hoax.”
Garofalo arched his eyebrows doubtfully.
Mike went on. “Suppose Clyde Wrighthouse wasn’t just dealing in auto parts. Suppose he was using his junkyards — using those wrecked cars — to dispose of bodies. Mob bodies.”
Lennie looked startled, then snapped, “He ain’t.” His abrupt, unfeigned surprise passed in an instant. “Who the hell told you that?”
“Nobody.”
“So what are you talking about?”
“Look, I know Wrighthouse doesn’t dispose of bodies for the mob. But suppose the cops think he does. Suppose somebody has tipped them off about it. And then suppose a dead body shows up in the trunk of one of his wrecked cars down on the flat. That might give Mr. Wrighthouse some problems, don’t you think? They’d close his junkyard, wouldn’t they?”