“I spilled some on my boots last night, out playing pool,” I lied.
Harry Ryan came a step closer. “Smells like you spilled it in your mouth first thing this morning,” he said.
“It helps me be tough,” I said.
Harry Ryan nodded.
“His wife divorced him,” Greg said.
Harry Ryan put his hands in his pockets. “I understand,” he said. He walked over to the picnic table and sat down. Greg and I followed and stood on the other side of the table. Harry Ryan looked up at us.
“Well,” he said, “I want you to find my son.” He held out an envelope. “He went up into the Panhandle to get a job and sent us some letters, like this one. But the letters stopped three weeks ago and I haven’t heard from him.” He handed the envelope to Greg and Greg opened it, taking the letter out. He held it over near me, so I could read it, too. It was written in a bad scrawl.
“Dad — here’s nine hundred dollars and more is coming. Everything is fine. I’m working up north, mining, working for the copper kings and the pay is good. I’m working hard and will see you and mom soon. Love Mike.”
“I want you to find him,” Harry Ryan said. “If you find him, I’ll give you five hundred dollars.” The older, white-haired woman slowly turned and walked up the porch steps, back into the farmhouse. The screen door closed with a smack against its wood casing. Harry Ryan went on, at a low volume. “Mike was in some kind of small trouble in Boise that I didn’t even know about. Some probation officer and a state cop stopped by here yesterday, but they wouldn’t tell me anything. Just said they were looking for Mike.” Harry Ryan put a photograph on the picnic table. “That’s Mike,” he said. The picture showed a smiling young man next to a brand-new pickup truck. In the back of the pickup truck was a Doberman. Greg picked up the picture.
“Is that his dog?” Greg asked.
“That’s Max,” Harry said. “Mike trained him and never went anywhere without him.”
“Was Max a vicious dog?” Greg asked.
Harry smiled. “He’d take your leg off. Max was better than a gun, as far as I was concerned.” He looked up into the giant blue sky and then out over the fields. He stood up and handed Greg some money. “That’s two hundred fifty. You get the rest when the job is done.” Harry Ryan started to walk slowly back toward his house.
“Fine,” Greg said. He nodded and I nodded, too. “That’s fine.” He handed me the picture and we both got back into the truck. Harry Ryan never turned around, just walked up the porch steps and into the farmhouse. I took a slug of whiskey and watched the same fields roll by as Greg drove back to town.
We drove through town and Greg pulled over at a phone booth outside a gas station. I watched him making call after call, laughing and shaking his head in the little booth. Then he came back to the truck.
“Who’d you call?” I asked.
Greg looked at me and narrowed his eyes. “It pays to cultivate reliable underworld contacts,” he said.
“Who’d you call?” I asked.
“Smitty and my ex-girlfriend,” he said. Smitty was an old biker friend of Greg’s who owned a bar just outside Bonner’s Ferry, way up north in the Panhandle. I didn’t know the ex-girlfriend. “Smitty says he knows a reopened copper mine in the hills, might be just what we want. He’s going to ask around and get us directions. But we need cover.”
“What?” I said.
“Cover,” Greg said. “A disguise, so we can get in the place.” Greg turned around in the gas station parking lot and doubled back into town. He pulled off onto a side street and stopped in front of a red house. “Just a minute,” he said. A woman came out onto the front porch and from the excited way she looked at Greg, she appeared ready to move off the ex-girlfriend list, back into the active rotation. She and Greg went inside and I had a couple shots of booze. I wished for a cup of coffee to kind of even me out, but all I had was the whiskey. So I took two more swallows, just to stay steady and tough.
The minute turned out to be three quarters of an hour and finally, Greg came back down the front steps. Walking next to him was the biggest dog I’ve ever seen on a leash. The dog was black and tan, about the size of a small pony. He let the dog in the back seat and the whole truck rocked. Greg got in and started to drive.
“What the hell’s that?” I asked.
“Mister Lucky,” Greg said. “He’s our cover. He’ll get us in.” Mister Lucky’s head slammed into, the Plexiglas barrier as we hit a pothole. He didn’t even seem to notice it. His head was bigger than a basketball.
“What breed is he?” I asked.
“Neapolitan mastiff,” Greg said. “Real killers.” Mister Lucky lay down across the back seat. He looked cramped and slightly mad.
“How much does he weigh?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Greg. “Maybe two thirty, two forty. A real killer.”
We drove north toward Bonner’s Ferry. I looked out the window the whole way, but I didn’t see anyone who looked like Mike Ryan. The Rockies were on our right and they seemed to grow as we headed north into them. I think the whiskey made me fall asleep for part of the ride.
We stopped at Smitty’s. There were two motorcycles and a pickup truck outside in the dirt parking lot. Greg and I both got out and I followed him inside. It was a dark bar, with a jukebox, a pool table, and not much else. Mounted over the bar was a full-sized log, split down the middle. Somebody had used a wood-burning set to carve the words IN GOD WE TRUST AND YOU AIN’T GOD. There were three or four regulars inside. They must have been regulars, because even the most simple-minded folk wouldn’t wander into Smitty’s. For all the country up the Idaho Panhandle, nobody wandered. It was all very deliberate. There were places you weren’t supposed to go, sort of a widely held secret. We were headed for one of those places. Smitty talked in low tones with Greg, gave me a half-wave, and we walked back out to the truck. It was mid-afternoon at this point. We got back in the truck. Mister Lucky didn’t move.
“Did Smitty help out?” I asked.
“Sure,” Greg said. “Here’s where you earn the money.” He took another pistol, a .45 Colt Combat Commander, out of the glove compartment and slid it under his left leg. “Just in case,” he said. I reached into my jacket pocket and clicked the safety off the Beretta. I took my last slug of booze and put the bottle on the floor. We were ready.
Greg drove up into the mountains for forty minutes, following winding roads and occasionally cutting off one onto another. My ears popped as we went up. Eventually, we drove up about a mile of dirt road.
“I think this is it,” Greg said.
Ahead of us, there was an iron gate and a small shack. A man was sitting on the gate. A rifle was propped up against the shack. We pulled up to the gate. There was a small sign that read COPPER KINGS MINING on the shack. The man got off the gate and walked over to the shack. He called to us as he picked up the rifle.
“Mine’s closed for the day, boys,” he said. He walked toward us, cradling the rifle in his arms. “Mine’s closed and we aren’t hiring.” He looked into the truck at Mister Lucky, who stood up and looked back. “Nice pup,” he said.
Greg leaned out his truck window and held up two twenties. “Look at that,” he said. “These are some of those new twenties.” He looked closely at the bills. “Much bigger picture of Jackson,” he said.
The man who was pretending to be a legitimate guard came over. He took the two twenties out of Greg’s hand.
Greg nodded. “Aren’t those new bills?” Greg asked.
“It’s hard to tell in this light,” the man who was a guard said.
“Well, you keep them for me and find out,” Greg said. “I understand you might have to spend them to do it, but you be sure to find out.” He gave the man who was a guard but didn’t want us to think he was a guard a friendly fake smile. The man gave the same smile back to him. The man walked over to the shack and the gate went up. Greg pulled up.