“That was the implication, although I told him that, pretty predictably, more people are blaming the TPL for that than the resort, which makes the whole point of the exercise a little weird. Still, after you and I are done, I’m going to call Lester and have him compare notes with Snuffy’s office. They’ve been building files on the protesters since this started. Could be they have a candidate we should look at more carefully.”
Sammie suddenly shivered and then checked the time. “Why did you want to meet? Lester made it sound important.”
“We think your Richie Lane might be Marty’s contact man. His real name’s Robert Lanier, and he has a king-size rap sheet.”
“Shit,” she spat out. “I knew it. Slimy bastard.”
“Maybe, but that’s all we know. We could pull him in and sweat him, but I’m betting he knows the rules enough to just sit us out and then vanish. I’d prefer to keep an eye on him instead, nail him for something crooked if we’re lucky, and then use that to open him up, or maybe follow him till he leads us to the ever elusive Marty Gagnon.”
“Shouldn’t be hard to catch him dirty. He aspires to do something criminal every night. It’s in his blood.”
You know where he is?”
“Right now? No idea, but I bet he started out at the nightclub, ‘cruisin’ for a lonely lady,’ as he puts it. That’s his daily routine-brags about it every morning. Some of the other instructors told me he might as well be a wall fixture over there.”
“Tomorrow morning, we’ll put a twenty-four-hour tail on him. I’ll have Spinney figure out a schedule. If you’re right about his habits, we should have something on him pretty quick.”
“Great,” she said, “it won’t be too soon.”
Chapter 10
I smelled him before I recognized who it was-that all-enveloping body odor.
“Max, wake up.”
Fred’s face was hovering over mine. “Max, wake up. They want everybody on the mountain-fast.”
I swung my legs out of bed. “Why?”
“Something about water pumps. We’re supposed to meet outside Mountain Ops dressed for weather… and it’s snowing like crazy.”
The scene was out of some Russian movie: a huge, mingling, nighttime crowd of heavily clothed people standing before a tall, dour building, bracketed by bright lights that made the endless swirl of wild falling snow shimmer like a phosphorescent dust storm. Facing them from the deck of a Bombardier, using a bullhorn like a commissar, Linda Bettina was barking out orders.
“People, we’ve had a power outage in the pump room and a water main break,” she announced. “Everyone has to get on the mountain to contain the spill and drain the pipes before they freeze. Report to your department managers and do what they tell you, on the double. Remember, if this mountain goes down, we’re all out of work.”
She then listed the managers and their locations as they stood in various spots around the equipment yard.
As best I could in my insulated coveralls and heavy boots, I jogged to where I was supposed to be and found my boss directing teams toward a large gathering of grooming machines, four-wheelers with chains, and snowmobiles. I ended up in a group of five men on the open back deck of a groomer, speeding up the mountain in the pitch darkness, our assignment to be dropped off, one by one, at a series of snowmaking hydrants and to open up the drain cocks.
We held on for our lives. The decking was slippery steel diamond plate, the side rails only a foot high and hard to grasp, and the groomer’s broad, thrashing caterpillar treads-completely exposed and flashing by with the speed of commercial meat grinders-were as mesmerizing as two cobras, especially whenever the driver hit a mogul or a dip and sent us scrambling to keep our balance.
It was a long night. The storm was unrelenting, the snow cutting off all vision, muffling communications, covering familiar landmarks, and reducing the world in which we worked-mostly soaked in freezing, spraying water-to tiny, frigid capsules of frantic energy. But slowly, pipeline by pipeline, hydrant by hydrant, often using propane torches to thaw what we had to, we all covered the mountain in roaming squads, carried back and forth by screaming, whining, or deep-throated machines driven by people who seemed to know where they were going by feel alone.
By the time the snow-clotted gray veil around us began to take on the dull glow of early dawn, we were told the worst of the crisis had passed and that those of us not specifically assigned to mountain maintenance could leave the line.
We convened in the large room of the base lodge, ironically around the scale model of a perfect, pristine resort of the future, to be fed hot coffee and breakfast by a haggard-looking kitchen crew before the first customers showed up for a day’s recreation. It was there I noticed Linda Bettina ducking into a small side office, and I followed her in before she could close the door.
She seemed remarkably chipper for someone who’d just orchestrated a near-military campaign, waving me cheerfully to a seat and slamming the door.
“God,” she said, collapsing into a chair, still dressed for the outside and still encrusted with melting ice and snow. “What a night.”
She had a large mug of coffee cradled between her hands. “Thanks for your help.”
I smiled quizzically. “I’m not complaining, but I didn’t know we had a choice.”
She laughed. “Yeah, well… We try to make that part of the contract a little hard to figure out.” She suddenly leaned forward, her eyes bright. “But be straight-didn’t you have a ball tonight? Christ, it must be like being in combat.”
I thought back to my very real knowledge of that experience and nodded. “It’s very close.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Oh, no shit. Glad I didn’t put my foot in it. Didn’t know you were a vet.”
“Long time ago.”
She slouched back into her chair and rested her head against its cushion. “Jesus. I am glad it’s over, though.”
“You want to be alone?” I asked, hesitating.
“No, no. Park yourself. I gotta admit, while I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy, it’s times like this that make me think there’s hope left for the ski business.”
“Ain’t what it used to be?”
She turned somber then, closing her eyes briefly and letting her face relax into a mask of exhaustion. “Not even close. It’s all about money now, and taking care of number one. The employees just want a job, the managers just want to survive, the corporate heads and stockholders just want a profit, and the guests just want everything now, in perfect order and for cheap-or else. Nobody remembers that it used to be about skiing.” She shook her head and revived somewhat. “And then you get a night like this, when everyone clicks, and it tells me that just maybe I’ll stick it out for another year.”
“What happened tonight, anyway?”
“Power went out,” she said vaguely. “Happens once in a blue moon, but when it does, watch out.”
“You don’t have backup generators?”
“Yeah… well. I guess Murphy was lurking this time. They went out, too. That was a first for me.”
“A little unlikely, isn’t it? On top of a blown water main? That’s a pile-on.”
She took a slow, thoughtful sip of coffee, watching me over the mug’s rim. “It’s a bad piece of timing. True enough,” she cautiously admitted.
“You find out why the pipe broke?”
“Yeah. I did.” This time her voice was flat and her eyes very steady.
“But you’re not at liberty to discuss it?”
She put the mug down and studied me for a moment. “I heard someone’s been asking a lot of questions around here lately. Would that be you, Max?”
“Linda,” I countered, “I’m a mechanically minded man, and a carpenter because I like the freedom, not because I’m an idiot. Something unusual and disastrous happens like it did today, right after a chair lets go for no reason; it seems like a no-brainer to wonder why. I had my nose right up against that chair mechanism, remember? There was nothing wrong with it an accident could explain.”