He looked at her again. “No kidding?”
She wiped his eyes with a corner of the sheet, smiling, her chin crinkling. “No kidding.”
“I thought you hippie types slept around.”
“Don’t believe everything you hear. I was with two other boys, before Patrick. Nobody since. Until now.”
“I’ve never been with anybody but Mary Beth. Till now.”
“No wonder you’re feeling guilty.”
“I’m not feeling guilty. Exactly.”
“I know you loved her, Crane. And me, you don’t even like, exactly. But this was bound to happen, and I’d rather it happen here than at home where Billy might see us.”
“Now who’s sounding guilty?”
“I just want it clear that when we get back to the house, you’re to keep to your sleeping bag across the hall.”
“Fine. I like sleeping on the floor. It’s natural. Organic, even.”
“Smart-ass. I’m not saying it won’t happen between us again. Billy’s at school all day, you know.”
He leaned over and kissed her, briefly. They exchanged friendly smiles.
“Looks like we’re starting to get along,” he said.
“Why not? We’re quite the team. We’re about to bring a corporate giant to its knees.”
“Are we?”
“I think so. I think we really got something last night.”
“The ‘smoking gun’ you said you needed.”
“Exactly.”
“So where do we go from here?”
“I admit I’m tempted to sit on this, save it and use it in my book, not break it till then. But the right thing to do is contact the proper authorities.”
“Which are?”
“There’s a couple of possibilities. New Jersey’s a heavily industrialized state. It has more than its share of problems of this sort, but it’s also ahead of a lot of states in dealing with those problems.”
“So you’ll be taking your photographs and your suspicions to a state agency, as opposed to the feds.”
“The Environmental Protection Agency, you mean? They basically just provide guidelines to state agencies, though in a way they’re who I’ll be going to. I plan to go to the Hazardous Waste Strike Force, in Princeton.”
“That sounds like a cop show.”
“It is, sort of. It’s an investigative unit, a joint effort by the EPA and the state of New Jersey. They’re doing some good things.”
“But they’ve never nailed Kemco.”
“They never tried, as far as I know. And they’re relatively new. Which means they’re tackling the really blatant offenders. It’s a big problem, Crane. It’s been estimated something like 80 % of the waste shipped in New Jersey is illegally dumped. It’s a multimillion-dollar racket.”
“What we saw last night was just one truck. That’s no multimillion-dollar operation.”
“First, you got to think of what Kemco saves. They pay maybe fifty bucks a barrel to the hauler, which is sure cheaper than processing that foul fucking shit. And then the hauler takes it and dumps it in a landfill, like last night, or just on the ground someplace or even along a roadside. So last night they dumped, what? Fifty or sixty drums? That’s approaching $3000 for that one load. Let’s say that truck is picking up just one illegal load per week. That’s $150,000 in one year.”
“Jesus. This is starting to sound like organized crime.”
“Of course it is. It’s the goddamn Mafia, or anyway I wouldn’t be surprised if it was.”
“What happens when these people get caught?”
“The haulers? Sometimes nothing. You want to know how to make a million dollars? Rent some land. Don’t buy it, rent it. Get a permit to pick up and store drums of waste on your land. Let the drums pile up. Wait till you have twenty or thirty thousand drums sitting there, full of Christ knows what. And then go bankrupt and go away. Let the state worry about cleaning up after you. Just lean back in your cabana chair and sip your Piña Colada and enjoy the Bahamas breeze.”
“Is that the game Chemical Disposal Works is playing?”
“Probably. They haven’t gone bankrupt yet, but give ’em time.”
“That’s scary.”
“You’re goddamn right it’s scary. But the way I figure it, you just write the haulers off. Forget about them. They’re just lowlife fucking criminals, and there will always be lowlife fucking criminals around to do the shitwork for the likes of Kemco. It’s Kemco and the other corporations like it that have to be stopped. That have to be made to clean up their acts or else.”
“Or else what?”
“Criminal penalties. Civil penalties. People are going to jail, Crane.”
“That’s it, then, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“This is what Mary Beth and the others were onto. The midnight hauling. It is something that could’ve got them killed.”
“Of course. Of course! What do you think I’ve been talking about for the last three days?”
“But what do you have on them, Boone, really? Just some photos. A truck coming out of the Kemco plant. A truck being unloaded at a landfill. Photos that could’ve been taken any time.”
“No, Crane. We have pictures of a truck leaving Kemco at night, driving to an out-of-state landfill at night, where fifty or sixty drums were dumped. All very suspicious. And I have a feeling that the license plates on that truck will lead to some independent hauler with a less-than-spotless reputation. No, we have quite a lot for the Hazardous Waste boys to go on.”
“It still strikes me as...”
“Let me guess. Thin? It strikes you as thin? Pearl Harbor would strike you as thin, Crane. Understand this much: New Jersey has a manifest system, and what that means is paperwork; every drum of hazardous waste that exits a plant like Kemco’s is supposed to be recorded, from ‘cradle to grave,’ which is to say from Kemco, to the hauler, to the landfill. Do you suppose all the correct paperwork was filed for last night’s moonlight dumping? Of course not.”
“Jesus.”
“Starting to dawn on you, is it Crane? Just what it is we’re into? Still want me to leave the gun at home?”
Crane managed an embarrassed smile as he reached under the bed, pulled the gun out and handed it to her. “Maybe you ought to start wearing this in your belt,” he told her.
She returned his smile, put the gun on the nightstand, with a clunk. “There’s nothing to worry about,” she said. “Kemco doesn’t know we’re alive.”
“They knew Mary Beth was alive. And now she isn’t.”
“Well at least you seem to be accepting it.”
“What? That Mary Beth’s dead? Or that ‘Kemco killed her.’ People killed her, Boone. Corporations don’t kill people. People kill people.”
“You sound like a bumper sticker.”
“Fuck you,” he said, good-naturedly.
“I thought you’d never ask,” she said.
Fifteen minutes later, as they were dressing, Boone said, “I don’t hear you apologizing, this time around.”
“What’s to apologize for? I was terrific.”
“You weren’t bad. Where’s the camera?”
“Why? What did you have in mind?”
“No, seriously.”
“Didn’t you bring it in with you?”
“I was so tired last night all I could think about was flopping into bed. I must’ve left it in the car. Anyway, I want to get that film developed this afternoon. Do you want to come to Princeton with me?”
“No. I still have some people in Greenwood to talk to. I think you can handle the ‘Hazardous Waste Strike Force’ by yourself... though the notion of seeing you trying to work with some Jack Webb type tempts me to go along.”