The Many Change and Pass by R.P. Burnham
Ned Ridlon sat at the desk in his home office with last night’s paper opened before him and a briefcase full of documents on the side table that held his P.C. Downstairs he could hear Delores watching one of her sappy TV shows. He often relaxed with a few hours of TV in the evening, but even though it was Saturday night he had to attend to business. He looked around the room, recalling how its swankiness was usually a source of deep satisfaction. A picture window offered a magnificent view of the tree-lined Waska River near its mouth. Below the window was a leather couch framed by two expensive mahogany end tables, both of which had even more expensive table lamps with Tiffany shades. A leather easy chair and hassock sat at the corner of the opposite wall next to a shelf with a two-thousand-dollar sound system and a collection of CD’s below it, mostly of rock music from the Beatles through the Disco ’70’s. A giant flat-screened home movie TV proudly awaited service to his left. The large teak desk where he was sitting in a leather office chair faced the closed door. Pictures on the wall included framed oil paintings of the Maine coast, lobster boats, a fishing village and a white church in a small New England town, all four of which paintings Ridlon was immensely proud of. He had purchased them in Kennebunkport, a classy place where two presidents had a vacation retreat and where people were of a higher caliber than the Canucks from Montreal who swarmed all over Old Orchard Beach every summer. He often drew visitors’ attention to these paintings, telling them he paid $250 apiece for them and that another painting by the same artist hung at the Bush compound in Kennebunkport—the first part of which statement was true while the latter was an exaggeration of a possibility. Someone once had said the paintings were good enough to hang in the Bush house, and from that compliment Ridlon had taken the liberty of actually assigning a painting to that illustrious family.
But tonight pride was not the thought that filled his mind with self-satisfaction, and his glance around the room was more of an uneasy and nervous excuse to not think about what the newspaper article on his desk said. It described Chris Andrews, the man who claimed to have proof that Ridlon Recycling had illegally dumped toxic material into Pleasant Pond and thereby made a little boy deathly ill, as an environmental activist. He reread the line and looked up to a framed photo of his father sitting on the corner of his desk. He frowned.
“That fucking hippie commie puke doesn’t know who he’s dealing with,” he muttered to himself and to his father. “I’m going to crush that shithead.”
It was no idle boast. He had built a business empire with the head start he got from his father, and he knew how to crush people. His father had taught him to be ruthless. Money was power, he used to say, and he knew the difference between having it and not having it because he started out as a cop with ambition. His first move was to buy the tenement building he lived in with the help of a loan from a cousin. In eight years after the loan was paid off he bought a second tenement building, then later a third as well as a service station that also sold used cars. Despite being well-off he never left the flat in the first tenement building he’d bought—that’s because he was a product of the Great Depression, which in Maine lingered on well into the 1950’s. He hadn’t even retired from the Bedford police force until he was fifty-five. His father was the one person in the world whom Ridlon loved unconditionally. He was a tough, cynical bastard, and he knew how to take care of himself. He had passed that toughness—and that cynicism—on to his son. Yes, he said to his father, this time silently, he was going to crush that fucking eco-terrorist.
He liked to think that his father would be proud of him, but actually, if he had to say so himself, he had far surpassed his old man. Though his education was undistinguished—he got mostly C’s and D’s in high school with an occasional B in math and accounting, and he’d spent one year at a vocational college taking accounting and business courses—he regarded himself as a business genius. Always looking for an opportunity, he had not only increased his father’s real estate holdings tenfold and added a quick-oil-change franchise to his holdings, he had also started a very successful mail-order lobster business. His most recent venture was the recycling business. It was born one day five years ago when he was arranging to have hauled away the used oil from his service stations and oil-change franchise. That same day he’d read in the newspaper a story about new EPA guidelines for recycling hazardous materials. In a flash he saw the need for a middleman in southern Maine for hospitals, service stations and other businesses to handle PCB’s, mercury, radioactive stuff, and the like. Within a year Ridlon Recycling was in business. The only problem was that while it made a profit, it was a very modest one. Not liking modest profits, he had found a way to fatten his profit margin. Now the bad publicity and possibility of lawsuits threatened the recycling business and maybe even the rest of his empire. He was not going to sit back and let that happen. He had already made some phone calls today to some politicians in town and in the state government, had set up a meeting tomorrow with two officials, and was waiting now for a visitor who was doing some investigations for him. He was supposed to come at seven o’clock, which according to his Rolex watch was right now. He drummed his fingers and frowned. He didn’t like to wait.
After ten more minutes of finger drumming and a deepening frown, he heard the doorbell ring and Delores’s high-pitched voice. She and Mike Boulanger talked for a couple of minutes, she in long bursts of words and he in short guttural responses. Ridlon couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he had a pretty good idea. He struggled to control his temper. Finally they came up the stairs and with a quick knock entered the room.
Delores, with whom he had been living for the better part of the last year, came into the room first. She was about thirty, twenty years younger than him, with peroxided hair, a pretty face, dull eyes that betokened mental slowness, bright red lipstick, and wearing a miniskirt and sleeveless top. Most of her worth, and the reason she was his babe, was displayed quite nicely some distance in front of her.
She came up to his desk and with a look of deep concern said, “Neddie, why didn’t you tell me this recycling thing was serious.”
He’d told her last night about the mercury poisoning but had emphasized that he was not particularly concerned about it. He frowned savagely. She ought to know by now that he didn’t like to be treated as someone in need of sympathy. “It ain’t trouble. It’s a problem that I’ve got to solve. Don’t you get into a dither about it.”
“But I’m worried about you, Neddie.”
He stood and motioned Boulanger to come in. “And I’m telling you I’m taking care of it.” He was about to tell her to get the fuck out when he saw his visitor staring at her legs and the plunging neckline that displayed her voluptuousness. Quickly his mood changed. “I’ll tell ya something else, baby. Your tits look good in that top. Makes me want to grab ’em.”
She giggled and leaned down across the desk. “You know you can do that anytime, Neddie. They’re yours.”
Behind her he could see Boulanger staring at her ass pointing up in the air at him. “Don’t I know it, baby. But right now I’m talking business, so scram.”
Her faced dropped before she forced a smile. “You men,” she sighed, turning and with hips swaying left the room.
With satisfaction Ridlon saw Boulanger eying her lasciviously and almost drooling.
When the door closed, Boulanger said, “That’s a fine woman you got yourself there.”
“Yeah, but don’t let her hear you say that. That pussy is like a pussycat who wants to be petted and praised all the time, but I don’t want her spoiled.”
“Nothing can spoil that woman,” Boulanger said with undisguised admiration.
Ridlon regarded his visitor before sitting down. Mike Boulanger was a cop who often did favors for Ridlon and received for his troubles either money (for small favors) or free rent for a month at his flat in one of Ridlon’s tenement buildings. The favor that brought him here tonight was a very big one, and if the results were what he hoped would lead to t
wo months of free rent. He was middle-aged and had a paunch. His face was darkened from his heavy beard. Ridlon had heard some of the other cops saying that Boulanger’s five-o’clock shadow started showing up by late morning. Today being a shaveless Saturday he had a two-day’s growth, making him look decidedly derelict. His dark eyes tended to dart around, looking everywhere but in your eyes. The striped sports shirt he was wearing was too small for him. The sleeves stopped several inches before his hands, and because of his paunch it had pulled out from his belt in the front. Such was the clay Ridlon had to work with. His father had been Boulanger’s father’s partner on the force, so their association was of long duration. But his interest in the man was strictly and only his usefulness, so sitting down, he said, “Well, Mike, did you look into this Andrews puke?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Ridlon, I did.” He was fidgeting and looking very uncom-fortable. His hand kept going to his breast pocket where his cigarettes were, and his eyes darted around the room as if expecting an assassin to jump out at him.
Ridlon reached into his humidor and extracted a cigar. “Go ahead and smoke, Mike. I’ll join you.” Cutting his cigar as Boulanger hastily lit a cigarette, he said, “This fucking shit is really pissing me off. I hope you’ve got something for me.”
Boulanger looked at him, then hastily dropped his eyes. He took a deep drag from his cigarette, which seemed to calm him. “I don’t know, Mr. Ridlon. It appears this Chris Andrews is pretty clean. He seems to be one of those idealistic young fellas with a cause.”
Ridlon frowned, then paused to think as he lit his cigar with his gold Zippo lighter. The light from the flame reflected on the large diamond ring on his right middle finger and caused it to sparkle. Puffing several times to get the cigar going, he said, “Idealistic, my ass. My dad used to say everybody’s out for themselves, trying to get what they can. I remember one time my mother said, ‘But what about Rev. Howe? He’s a good man.’ Dad didn’t miss a beat. ‘I ain’t talking about losers. Those goody-two-shoes get the jobs they do because that’s all they can do.’ Teachers, social workers, it’s the same fucking thing. So you’re telling me this little creep’s got a clean record? I don’t fucking believe it. He don’t look like a goody-two-shoes to me. I’m betting you dig a little deeper and you’ll find the fuckhead does drugs like a kid eats candy. He’s a fucking hippy, ain’t he? I’m betting he’s been in trouble with the law. Who’d you call?”
“Portland, Bedford, Waska and Amherst, Massachusetts.”
“The police?”
“Yeah.”
Boulanger spoke in a rather surly way. He didn’t like being lectured to. Tough shit. “Why’d you contact Amherst? He use ta live there?”
“He went to college there.”
“Jesus, you mean to tell me they didn’t have anything on him?”
“I told you, no.”
“What college did he go to?”
“U. Mass.”
Ridlon laughed. “You asshole. You didn’t try the campus police, did you?”
When Boulanger looked dumbfounded, he said, “Jesus, Mike. You really are one dumb fuck of a frog. You look at his college record. I’m guessing you’ll find something. And what about that business of him in Oregon or wherever it was. Those guys are called fucking eco-terrorists.”
Instead of answering, Boulanger stared at him angrily.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Mike. Are you sensitive? I’ve been called a fucking swine of a WASP. It rolled off me like water on a duck’s back. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
He shrugged. “Okay, but I don’t think I can call California. The lieutenant would notice that.”
“Well, you call UMass on Monday.”
Boulanger rose to snuff out his cigarette. “Could I ask you sum’in’? How the hell did you get that shed way up in the sticks?”
Ridlon grinned. “My father got it. Some guy owed him money, some farmer. So he took the plot of land and put a shack on it, a shed. It was a couple hundred yards from the river, see? and he used it for a fishing camp.”
Boulanger nodded, but something was still bothering him. He looked as if he wanted to speak but didn’t dare to.
“You don’t seem too happy, Mike. A month’s free rent seems pretty generous for the favor I’m asking.”
“It ain’t that, Mr. Ridlon. To tell the truth, it kinda bothers me that little boy is sick. Is there any truth to these allegations Andrews is making?”
“Not that I know of. I’m looking into the matter to see if one of my boys did something he shouldna. But that ain’t certain either. So you can soothe your tender conscience.” His father used to tell him that if a lie was useful, it wasn’t a lie. He was giving Boulanger some useful information—that’s all.
Their business ended, Ridlon rose and started walking towards the door. Boulanger followed. Going downstairs, with Boulanger looking into the living room in hopes of catching another look at Delores, Ridlon said, “Remember, Mike, this is important. Get me this info ASAP.”
After he had seen his guest out the door and given him some last-minute instructions to also run a Google search on Andrews, he turned to find Delores watching him from the entrance to the living room. She looked troubled, but at the same time she hesitated to speak. He was about to go back upstairs, then stopped on the first step. “What’s wrong?” he asked gruffly, making no effort to hide his impatience.
She looked at him, then dropped her eyes. Folding her arms beneath her breasts, she said in a gratingly plaintive voice that he took to be an effort to elicit sympathy, “Neddie, honey, could I say something?”
He didn’t answer, but he didn’t say no either.
Her body swayed nervously, and she looked at the door, not him. “It’s just that earlier when you were talking with Mike you told me to scram.” Her eyes flicked up at him. He could read the fear behind them.
“Well, what of it? I was talking business.”
“It’s just that you hurt my feelings.”
He gave out a short, harsh snort. “You women are too sensitive. I didn’t mean anything except to say I was busy. If I’d told a man to scram, he’d scram. He’d understand it was nothing personal.”
“But the word ‘scram’ is disrespectful,” she lisped. “I’m not a man. It hurt me.”
She was being tiresome, but he had too much to think about now to waste time losing his temper. He looked at the expensive grandfather clock to her right, the thing that announced to anyone who came into the house that here was wealth, here was power, here was taste. He’d paid two thousand dollars for it, and the stupid cunt was complaining about her feelings. “Baby, don’t I treat you good? Didn’t I buy you that necklace for your birthday? You’re living in a swanky house, ain’t you?”
“I know,” she said, “and I appreciate it. It’s just that sometimes I’d like to feel appreciated in return.”
“Now, baby, let’s not see any tears. I’ve got a lot of work to do. I’ve got to go over my books for a meeting tomorrow morning. Just go to bed when you’re tired. I’m going to be working for several hours.”
She looked at him wide-eyed. Women didn’t understand these things and never would, but for future reference he tried to enlighten her. “You got to understand that business doesn’t wait, baby. A great deal of important business happens after hours.”
“I understand,” she said without conviction, then came over to him for a kiss.
He humored her but without feeling.
Upstairs in his office he went to the double-doored closet and opened it to reveal the wet bar. He poured himself a large whisky over ice, then sat down at his desk and relit the cigar he had started when Boulanger was smoking.
He was meeting tomorrow with a state representative and a regulatory commissioner, both of whom he had helped in the past and who always found ways to help him in return. He wanted to have all the facts and figures concerning the case at his fingertips when he talked to them; but having had a busy day Saturday, the only time h
e could do this work was at night.
His task was to compare his clients’ invoices with the packing slips sent to the company in New Jersey that processed the hazardous materials. He examined both paper documents and computer files. Most of the material Ridlon Recycling handled was entered by weight. Electrical equipment that contained PCB’s would have only a small amount of the poison. What he had done was make up for the stuff they dumped in Pleasant Pond with inert electrical equipment. These kinds of manipulations were the majority of cases and left no paper trail. As the hours went by, however, he found many documents of original invoices where the figures differed from the records sent to New Jersey. The first he noticed showed a glaring discrepancy. The hospital had 2.3 grams of radioactive iodine on its documentation while the invoice sent to New Jersey had 735 mg. He read these on paper and then checked the computer to find the same figures. Feeling uneasy now, he started looking for other discrepancies. Over the course of an hour he found over two dozen more.
After a while he saw a pattern and remembered where he had gone wrong. The easily hidden illegal dumpings were all from the first year or so; but as time went by and no one noticed any discrepancies, they—he and his secretary, Anna Rokoviak—had grown careless and even reckless. A point in the evening came—well after he heard Delores go to bed—when he realized that any court-ordered audit of his books would easily discover what he had done. The realization caused some bad moments verging on panic where the only way he could see to extricate himself from this mess was to hire an arsonist to torch the building where he had his office. Then for a long time he berated himself. How could he have been so stupid? he asked himself over and over before his frustration and anger found an outlet in a volcanic surge of hatred against that fucking shithead Chris Andrews. For a long time he daydreamed about ruining that fucking eco-terrorist. It made him feel better, but eventually he realized that it would do nothing to help him. He pulled himself together and tried to think lucidly.
His first idea had been to dump the excess stuff at sea, but that solution was rejected when he considered all the eyes that might observe such operations. Then he had thought of the pond, though pond was almost too generous a word for the dinky marshy body of water that went under the name of Pleasant Pond. He saw now that the idea of using the pond as a dump site was disastrous, but at the time he thought it was a rational decision. He didn’t know it connected to the Waska River because his father had told him that he always had to portage his canoe to get to the river. And he certainly didn’t think that there were any fish worth catching in that miserable pond or that there would be people who would eat them.
His panic returned when he thought about the reports he had read of that sick boy. He had a sudden vision of himself being arrested and brought to jail in chains and being such a figure of universal hatred that his fellow prisoners treated him like a leper. Only with an effort of will was he able to bring himself back to rationality. What’s done is done, he thought; the question is to decide what to do about it. He stood and paced, thinking hard. The meeting with his political connections that he had set up for tomorrow now appeared useless. The only good that could come from it was to solidify their indebtedness to him so that he could have friends in high places to defend him. But the federal EPA was now his principal danger, and his friends could do nothing for him on that score.
That settled, he next turned his mind to the potential court proceedings and lawsuits that might result. Only three people besides him knew about the dumping—Anna Rokoviak, his foreman Buck Brewster, and the worker Adrian Tardif. Anna he didn’t have to worry about. She had worked for him for over twenty-five years and was loyal. Even better, she was in on the scheme up to her elbows so that if he got prosecuted she would be too. Adrian Tardif was not much of a problem either. He hated any authority and was close-mouthed by nature. He would do what Buck told him to do. The key man, then, was Buck Brewster. He poured himself another whisky and while sipping it thought long and deep about Buck. When he saw his way clear, he checked his watch. It was 11:30, but Buck, who was an insomniac, would be up. He called him and told the foreman that he needed to talk to him tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. The time was very important because he wanted to have Buck lined up before he talked to the two officials over lunch. Buck said he would be there.
By now Ridlon felt like his old self—taking charge of events, not waiting for things to happen to him. He would like to talk with his son Clay as well, but though the twenty-three-year-old still lived at home with him, he was not likely to be in tonight until very late. He was a womanizer and a party animal. More likely he’d have to talk to the young scamp in the morning.
The final problem was the hicks with the sick kid. It was likely, he was sure, that any criminal proceedings would result in a fine, not—despite his recent panicky vision of being led away in chains—jail time. The fine would be hefty but nowhere near as expensive as a civil lawsuit if some smart-assed lawyer sniffed a killing and approached the hicks. The thing to do was to get to them before any sharks smelled blood in the water. After checking the newspaper to get their names, he went to the phone book only to find there was no listing for a Luke or Suzy Kimball. That was actually good news—it meant they were too poor to have a phone. At his office he had a city directory for Waska. He could check it tomorrow. If that offered nothing specific, it did not matter. He knew they had to live on the dirt road near the Tooley Road. He’d seen some hovels there on trips up to the shed. The thing to decide was how much to offer them. He would tell them that though he was completely innocent of the poisoning of the pond, he felt responsible and wanted to help them. He’d lay it on thick, of course, saying that he was deeply moved to hear about that sweet boy’s condition. Played right, done right with just the right tone, $25,000 should do that trick. It would be more money than they had ever seen in one place in their lives. All they would have to do was sign a little, teeny paper that would say in nice lawyerly gibberish that they agreed not to sue him.
He stood, his work for the night finished. Having a plan in place made him feel good, so good in fact that when he crawled into bed he took occasion to find some quick relief on Delores’s half-asleep but available body, then slept soundly until eight o’clock in the morning. When he awoke Delores was already up. He could hear her in the kitchen banging some pots and pans, and he could smell the coffee.
As a consequence of his recent physical examination that revealed high cholesterol and borderline hypertension, he was watching his diet. No more bacon and eggs or French toast for breakfast, less beef and more chicken or fish for dinner—this was his lot. For breakfast this morning he had a bowl of multi-grained cereal and half a cantaloupe while being fussed over by Delores, who argued him out of a second bowl of cereal by reminding him that the doctor had also mandated that he lose weight. From the same source of health wisdom came his next activity, which was to ride a stationary bike while he watched television for half an hour. Then he read the Sunday paper with a cup of coffee and a cigar and was pleased to see no articles on the mercury poisoning.
Before his shower he discussed with Delores what to serve the two dignitaries for lunch, mentioning ham sandwiches and accepting her suggestion of smoked salmon and pasta salad. These culinary concessions he made were actually a calculated ploy to control Delores in all important matters. When he had suggested ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch, it was done just so that she could overrule him. It was another trick his father had taught him. To rule absolutely was easiest when you allowed your underlings to think they had input into decisions. The only one this trick had not worked on was his wife, who divorced him six years ago, but Delores wasn’t as smart as his ex, and he controlled her like a puppeteer. Ultimately he had even beaten his wife. She had wanted half of his property, but by threats and lawyerly tricks he had gotten her to accept their house and $100,000 a year in alimony.
He contemplated his duplicity with satisfaction as he took his shower. In life there
were winners and losers. He was a winner. That fucking puke Chris Andrews was going to learn the truth of that fact, just as anyone else would who stood in his way.
But there was one person he could not control, and he felt apprehensive as he toweled himself off and heard Clay go downstairs. After dressing he spent some time in the kitchen discussing further the lunch with Delores as she put groceries away from her trip to the store. He told her to dress sexily, since that put men in a good frame of mind, and she suggested that if it was as warm as it promised to be she would wear a bikini top under an unbuttoned blouse. “That always brings a bulge to their eyes and elsewhere,” she giggled. He laughed with her, but even as he said, “Don’t I know it, baby,” he could see Clay through the sliding door and felt his uneasiness growing, not shrinking.
Clay was reading the paper with a cigarette in his mouth and a cup of coffee on the table beside him. He looked, as usual, as if the world was his oyster and everything that came before his eyes owed him homage. Blond and blue-eyed, square-jawed, tall and well tanned, he was incredibly handsome. His good looks and fair complexion came from his mother, for Ridlon was short, dark, balding and not very handsome, which was why, he knew, he tended to live vicariously through his son’s personal triumphs and social successes. Clay was everything he was not when young: popular, a good athlete, a lady-killer. But as proud as he was of his son’s social prowess, he was equally exasperated by Clay’s indifference to business. And it was his own fault. Because of the pleasure he derived from watching Clay conquer the world, he had spoiled the boy, given him everything he wanted, let him do anything he wanted, go anywhere he wanted to go. In contrast, his daughter Laurel had been kept tightly under control lest she be impregnated by some boy or—worse—meet some boy who wanted to marry her to become connected to the Ridlon wealth. To this day Laurel bore him a grudge and had sided with her mother during the divorce. Clay, knowing where his bread was buttered, sided with him.
But it wasn’t a deep commitment. At the country club where the business elite of Bedford and Waska congregated, whether or not they played golf (Ridlon didn’t), many of his friends had already added their sons to the company name—Fenton and Son, Lavalle and Son. Like kings and emperors of old their succession was assured. It was his dream that just as he had greatly enlarged his father’s legacy, Clay would continue the expansion and bring the Ridlon name down through the generations and that the company office would always feature a large portrait of him. Clay already worked for his father, but he did so unenthusiastically and without any real effort. That was his problem. He had never needed to make an effort since everything came to him easily. All his life he got by using his good looks and charm. At the same time he was a star athlete and Big Man on Campus, he was a lousy student with grades too poor for college. At eighteen he was bundled off to a special school to catch up, but it didn’t work. Getting accepted at a small college in New York whose only entrance requirement was the money for tuition, he still flunked out. It was the bane of Ridlon’s existence that anything serious that required effort Clay did half-assed. His school work was half-assed. His work at Ridlon Real Estate was half-assed. Any thought of the future and family was half-assed. Whenever Ridlon tried to have a serious talk with Clay, the twenty-three-year-old boy always wore a slightly bemused expression on his face. When he was a real boy the expression was a smirk, so perhaps a little progress had been made. More likely, Ridlon suspected, Clay had simply learned how to handle the old man and avoid open hostility. Ridlon would give him instructions; Clay would agree to follow them; then he never quite followed through. Half-assed! Just last week before the newspaper article changed everything, he told Clay to look into an electrical problem at one of the tenement buildings. Clay had gone so far as to call an electrician and leave a message on the man’s machine, but the last thing Ridlon heard late Friday afternoon before he left the office was that the tenant was still without power.
Ridlon did not plan to mention this latest shortcoming. With the illegal dumping his main priority, it was most urgent to impress upon Clay that now was the time to cease doing things half-assed. He needed a colonel he could trust in the coming battle and nurtured the hope that today was the beginning of Clay’s new manhood. Even while he thought about these hopes for the future, he knew that he would have to suppress them. He couldn’t show himself vulnerable.
With a deep breath, he slid open the door to the deck and confronted his son.
Clay looked up and barely nodded before returning to the sports section. Ridlon bristled but suppressed the retort that formed in his mind. Standing in front of his son, he said, “Clay, I need to talk to you about some very important matters. We’ve got a problem with the mercury poisoning business, and it’s going to take a lot of my attention this week. I need you to do some of the things I would normally do.”
Clay looked up from the sports section before returning to it. “Like what?”
“Like meet with the accountant to go over the tax revenues from the gas stations and oil-change business. I’ve got some documents you’ll need to go over.”
When he didn’t look up, pretending to be interested in the article he was reading, Ridlon’s temper rose. Speaking with exasperated calmness, he said, “Let me remind you that it is very important. Things have to be taken care of—just as they were,” he added sharply when he saw Clay still maintaining a bored and above-it-all attitude, “when I fixed that little matter of you driving under the influence. You’re twenty-three now. You’re old enough to take on more responsibility. If you think things take care of themselves, you’re dreaming. Someday you’ll be heading these businesses, but they won’t be worth a pisspot full of shit if you don’t attend to details.”
“Can’t we just hire someone to do that stuff?”
“No, we can’t. A hired man doesn’t really give a shit.”
“What about the accountant you want me to see? He’s a hired man, ain’t he?”
“No, he’s not. He’s a professional. If he doesn’t do his job he’ll go broke. He has to attend to details.”
“But that’s my point. Couldn’t we hire a professional to run the businesses?”
“And do what? Play golf all day? Diddle women all day? Clay, my father and I built this business from nothing. It’s like a…like a…” He wanted to say “child,” but the child he was speaking to was not much of a proof of what the businesses were like. “It’s like a piece of me, this business. It’s here”—he thumped his chest—“I want you to think of it the same way. I want you to pass it on to your son.”
Clay seemed embarrassed by his father’s show of emotion. “But I don’t feel that way about it.”
“I know you don’t,” he said, feeling his heart leap and with difficulty suppressing his emotions. “I wish you did.”
Clay frowned and looked away at something on the lawn. “Well, I will take care of the accountant. Don’t worry, Dad.”
They both looked over to where Delores called from the door. He was glad to see she was wearing the bikini top with an open blouse. “Neddie, Buck Brewster’s here. Do you want him to come out to the deck?”
“No, show him up to my office. Tell him I’ll be right up. Get him a coffee if he wants one, and tell him to have a smoke.” Then thinking it would be wise to make his foreman as comfortable as possible, he added, “Offer him a roll if he’s hungry.”
With her gone, he turned back to his son and spoke more lightly. “I’m glad to see you understand the importance of what I’m asking you to do. You do, don’t you?”
“Yes, Dad.” He spoke a bit too airily but followed his words with a slight smile, friendly and conciliatory.
“Good, I’m glad.” Then feeling he should make a personal remark to solidify their bond, he said, “Hey, where’s that blond you’ve been seeing? She ain’t been around for the last few weeks.”
“April? I dumped her. She was getting too serious.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being seriou
s.”
“Dad, some day I probably will be. But I’m young now. There’s plenty of time to be serious later. But don’t worry. I get the point. I’ll see that accountant. I’ll read those documents.”
“Good,” Ridlon said hopefully, “I’ll get you the papers after I see Brewster.”
“Just how serious is this mercury bit, Dad? Is it real bad?”
He shook his head. “Bad, maybe. Real bad? No. I’m taking care of it.”
Upstairs Brewster had contented himself with just a cigarette. He was snuffing it out as Ridlon came into the office and stood to face his boss. He was a tall, gangly man with sinewy arms, wearing a striped sports shirt and pressed slacks instead of his usual dungarees and chambray work shirt. Ridlon assumed these were his good clothes and inwardly smiled. He looked more himself at work, that was for sure. He had a large head, made larger by the pronounced bald dome above graying dark hair, and wore thick black-rimmed glasses. Unlike Boulanger, though, he was clean-shaven.
“Have a seat, Buck. How’s the wife and kids?”
“Busy. There’s a soccer game this afternoon, and she’s getting ’em ready for it right now. I’m going over to the field after, ah, after talking to you.”
Ridlon sat down and reached for a cigar. “Okay, then, I won’t keep you long and we’ll get right to the point. Have another smoke. I’ll join you.”
Cigar and cigarette lit, he said, “Of course you know that this is about the mercury business.”
Buck nodded.
“To tell the truth, it’s kinda sticky. I’m seeing some people from the government—people who owe me favors, you understand—and probably have everything under control. But you know what a good general does in battle, don’t you, Buck?”
Buck looked puzzled. “I’m not sure what you mean, Ned.”
He puffed at his cigar for a moment. “A good general has a backup plan in case something unexpected happens—that’s what I mean.”
Buck followed his example and smoked for a while, then looked sharply at his boss. “I’m figuring I’m the backup plan.”
Ridlon nodded. “That’s it. As I say, I’m pretty sure I can control things, but things could go bad, so bad we’d all be out of a job.” He looked at Buck to be sure he understood who could number among the jobless. He seemed to understand perfectly. “So here’s my plan. In case—note I say in case—something goes wrong, I want you to take the blame.”
Buck looked down at the floor nervously. He scratched his ear but didn’t say anything.
Ridlon took that as a green light. “You could plead dumbness. You didn’t know what you were doing. You’re lazy, something like that you could tell ’em. Odds are you’d be fined. I’ll pay it. If you do jail time—”
“Wait a minute, Ned. Jail time ain’t right. I was just following orders.”
“Jesus, Buck, you ain’t listening to what I’m saying. First of all I’m going to beat the rap. Nobody’s going to pay a fine or spend a few months in jail. I’ve got connections, don’t forget. What I’m talking about here is a fallback plan. You think I’d ask you to do this without making it worth your while?”
Buck thought for a minute. He scratched his chin. His eyes looked up into his head. Then he tilted his neck and leaned against the arm of his chair with his finger tapping his chin while he calculated. Finally he looked at Ridlon, then dropped his eyes almost immediately. “How much?” he asked, looking at the floor.
“You and Janet have been saving for a down payment on a house. How much do you need?”
That got his attention. His eyes swelled with greed, but he looked too scared to name a sum. To him it probably seemed like a fortune. “Well, how much?” Ridlon repeated.
“Twenty thousand.”
Ridlon whistled. “Okay, if you do time, that’s what you’ll get. If it’s a fine, I’ll contribute two thousand to your mortgage fund, plus pay the fine. You can’t lose. Do we have a deal?”
Buck stood and put out his hand. “We have a deal.”
They shook hands and turned to the door. At the top of the steps he thanked Buck for coming and then, belatedly, thought of one other item that needed tidying up. “Is there anything in the shed upcountry that shouldn’t be there?”
Buck looked at him knowingly. “You mean that gives evidence that pollutants were there?”
He nodded.
“No pollutants, but there might be a few containers that have residual traces. You know nowadays forensic science is damn good at finding things. You want me to…”
“Yeah, get that stuff out of there. Do it tomorrow—in daylight, mind you. We don’t wanna look like we’re hiding something. And, oh, one more thing. Tell Adrian I’ll take care of him too.”
“Okay, Ned. I understand. I’ll see myself out.”
He nodded, then before returning to his office watched Buck descend the stairs and pass through the front door.
In the office he stood looking first at the four paintings and then the photograph of his father while he puffed at his cigar contentedly. He expected a report from Boulanger in a few days, this one more satisfactory. He expected that the two officials who would soon arrive for lunch would use their influence to keep the state from thirsting for his blood. He had lined Buck up as his ace in the hole. Tomorrow with Anna’s help he would prepare a statement for the press that would express his shock and profound sadness that a little boy was sick and state that he was mystified how Ridlon Recycling could be involved. He would of course promise a thorough internal investigation. As soon as possible he would also pay a visit to the Kimballs to settle matters on that end. He had had a productive weekend that even included the possible turning point in his son’s life. He was going to enjoy the lunch of smoked salmon and pasta salad washed down with a good wine; then for the rest of the day he was going to relax. He had earned it.
Unwelcome Visitors
But tonight pride was not the thought that filled his mind with self-satisfaction, and his glance around the room was more of an uneasy and nervous excuse to not think about what the newspaper article on his desk said. It described Chris Andrews, the man who claimed to have proof that Ridlon Recycling had illegally dumped toxic material into Pleasant Pond and thereby made a little boy deathly ill, as an environmental activist. He reread the line and looked up to a framed photo of his father sitting on the corner of his desk. He frowned.
“That fucking hippie commie puke doesn’t know who he’s dealing with,” he muttered to himself and to his father. “I’m going to crush that shithead.”
It was no idle boast. He had built a business empire with the head start he got from his father, and he knew how to crush people. His father had taught him to be ruthless. Money was power, he used to say, and he knew the difference between having it and not having it because he started out as a cop with ambition. His first move was to buy the tenement building he lived in with the help of a loan from a cousin. In eight years after the loan was paid off he bought a second tenement building, then later a third as well as a service station that also sold used cars. Despite being well-off he never left the flat in the first tenement building he’d bought—that’s because he was a product of the Great Depression, which in Maine lingered on well into the 1950’s. He hadn’t even retired from the Bedford police force until he was fifty-five. His father was the one person in the world whom Ridlon loved unconditionally. He was a tough, cynical bastard, and he knew how to take care of himself. He had passed that toughness—and that cynicism—on to his son. Yes, he said to his father, this time silently, he was going to crush that fucking eco-terrorist.
He liked to think that his father would be proud of him, but actually, if he had to say so himself, he had far surpassed his old man. Though his education was undistinguished—he got mostly C’s and D’s in high school with an occasional B in math and accounting, and he’d spent one year at a vocational college taking accounting and business courses—he regarded himself as a business genius. Always looking for an opportunity, he had not only increased his father’s real estate holdings tenfold and added a quick-oil-change franchise to his holdings, he had also started a very successful mail-order lobster business. His most recent venture was the recycling business. It was born one day five years ago when he was arranging to have hauled away the used oil from his service stations and oil-change franchise. That same day he’d read in the newspaper a story about new EPA guidelines for recycling hazardous materials. In a flash he saw the need for a middleman in southern Maine for hospitals, service stations and other businesses to handle PCB’s, mercury, radioactive stuff, and the like. Within a year Ridlon Recycling was in business. The only problem was that while it made a profit, it was a very modest one. Not liking modest profits, he had found a way to fatten his profit margin. Now the bad publicity and possibility of lawsuits threatened the recycling business and maybe even the rest of his empire. He was not going to sit back and let that happen. He had already made some phone calls today to some politicians in town and in the state government, had set up a meeting tomorrow with two officials, and was waiting now for a visitor who was doing some investigations for him. He was supposed to come at seven o’clock, which according to his Rolex watch was right now. He drummed his fingers and frowned. He didn’t like to wait.
After ten more minutes of finger drumming and a deepening frown, he heard the doorbell ring and Delores’s high-pitched voice. She and Mike Boulanger talked for a couple of minutes, she in long bursts of words and he in short guttural responses. Ridlon couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he had a pretty good idea. He struggled to control his temper. Finally they came up the stairs and with a quick knock entered the room.
Delores, with whom he had been living for the better part of the last year, came into the room first. She was about thirty, twenty years younger than him, with peroxided hair, a pretty face, dull eyes that betokened mental slowness, bright red lipstick, and wearing a miniskirt and sleeveless top. Most of her worth, and the reason she was his babe, was displayed quite nicely some distance in front of her.
She came up to his desk and with a look of deep concern said, “Neddie, why didn’t you tell me this recycling thing was serious.”
He’d told her last night about the mercury poisoning but had emphasized that he was not particularly concerned about it. He frowned savagely. She ought to know by now that he didn’t like to be treated as someone in need of sympathy. “It ain’t trouble. It’s a problem that I’ve got to solve. Don’t you get into a dither about it.”
“But I’m worried about you, Neddie.”
He stood and motioned Boulanger to come in. “And I’m telling you I’m taking care of it.” He was about to tell her to get the fuck out when he saw his visitor staring at her legs and the plunging neckline that displayed her voluptuousness. Quickly his mood changed. “I’ll tell ya something else, baby. Your tits look good in that top. Makes me want to grab ’em.”
She giggled and leaned down across the desk. “You know you can do that anytime, Neddie. They’re yours.”
Behind her he could see Boulanger staring at her ass pointing up in the air at him. “Don’t I know it, baby. But right now I’m talking business, so scram.”
Her faced dropped before she forced a smile. “You men,” she sighed, turning and with hips swaying left the room.
With satisfaction Ridlon saw Boulanger eying her lasciviously and almost drooling.
When the door closed, Boulanger said, “That’s a fine woman you got yourself there.”
“Yeah, but don’t let her hear you say that. That pussy is like a pussycat who wants to be petted and praised all the time, but I don’t want her spoiled.”
“Nothing can spoil that woman,” Boulanger said with undisguised admiration.
Ridlon regarded his visitor before sitting down. Mike Boulanger was a cop who often did favors for Ridlon and received for his troubles either money (for small favors) or free rent for a month at his flat in one of Ridlon’s tenement buildings. The favor that brought him here tonight was a very big one, and if the results were what he hoped would lead to t
“Yes, sir, Mr. Ridlon, I did.” He was fidgeting and looking very uncom-fortable. His hand kept going to his breast pocket where his cigarettes were, and his eyes darted around the room as if expecting an assassin to jump out at him.
Ridlon reached into his humidor and extracted a cigar. “Go ahead and smoke, Mike. I’ll join you.” Cutting his cigar as Boulanger hastily lit a cigarette, he said, “This fucking shit is really pissing me off. I hope you’ve got something for me.”
Boulanger looked at him, then hastily dropped his eyes. He took a deep drag from his cigarette, which seemed to calm him. “I don’t know, Mr. Ridlon. It appears this Chris Andrews is pretty clean. He seems to be one of those idealistic young fellas with a cause.”
Ridlon frowned, then paused to think as he lit his cigar with his gold Zippo lighter. The light from the flame reflected on the large diamond ring on his right middle finger and caused it to sparkle. Puffing several times to get the cigar going, he said, “Idealistic, my ass. My dad used to say everybody’s out for themselves, trying to get what they can. I remember one time my mother said, ‘But what about Rev. Howe? He’s a good man.’ Dad didn’t miss a beat. ‘I ain’t talking about losers. Those goody-two-shoes get the jobs they do because that’s all they can do.’ Teachers, social workers, it’s the same fucking thing. So you’re telling me this little creep’s got a clean record? I don’t fucking believe it. He don’t look like a goody-two-shoes to me. I’m betting you dig a little deeper and you’ll find the fuckhead does drugs like a kid eats candy. He’s a fucking hippy, ain’t he? I’m betting he’s been in trouble with the law. Who’d you call?”
“Portland, Bedford, Waska and Amherst, Massachusetts.”
“The police?”
“Yeah.”
Boulanger spoke in a rather surly way. He didn’t like being lectured to. Tough shit. “Why’d you contact Amherst? He use ta live there?”
“He went to college there.”
“Jesus, you mean to tell me they didn’t have anything on him?”
“I told you, no.”
“What college did he go to?”
“U. Mass.”
Ridlon laughed. “You asshole. You didn’t try the campus police, did you?”
When Boulanger looked dumbfounded, he said, “Jesus, Mike. You really are one dumb fuck of a frog. You look at his college record. I’m guessing you’ll find something. And what about that business of him in Oregon or wherever it was. Those guys are called fucking eco-terrorists.”
Instead of answering, Boulanger stared at him angrily.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Mike. Are you sensitive? I’ve been called a fucking swine of a WASP. It rolled off me like water on a duck’s back. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
He shrugged. “Okay, but I don’t think I can call California. The lieutenant would notice that.”
“Well, you call UMass on Monday.”
Boulanger rose to snuff out his cigarette. “Could I ask you sum’in’? How the hell did you get that shed way up in the sticks?”
Ridlon grinned. “My father got it. Some guy owed him money, some farmer. So he took the plot of land and put a shack on it, a shed. It was a couple hundred yards from the river, see? and he used it for a fishing camp.”
Boulanger nodded, but something was still bothering him. He looked as if he wanted to speak but didn’t dare to.
“You don’t seem too happy, Mike. A month’s free rent seems pretty generous for the favor I’m asking.”
“It ain’t that, Mr. Ridlon. To tell the truth, it kinda bothers me that little boy is sick. Is there any truth to these allegations Andrews is making?”
“Not that I know of. I’m looking into the matter to see if one of my boys did something he shouldna. But that ain’t certain either. So you can soothe your tender conscience.” His father used to tell him that if a lie was useful, it wasn’t a lie. He was giving Boulanger some useful information—that’s all.
Their business ended, Ridlon rose and started walking towards the door. Boulanger followed. Going downstairs, with Boulanger looking into the living room in hopes of catching another look at Delores, Ridlon said, “Remember, Mike, this is important. Get me this info ASAP.”
After he had seen his guest out the door and given him some last-minute instructions to also run a Google search on Andrews, he turned to find Delores watching him from the entrance to the living room. She looked troubled, but at the same time she hesitated to speak. He was about to go back upstairs, then stopped on the first step. “What’s wrong?” he asked gruffly, making no effort to hide his impatience.
She looked at him, then dropped her eyes. Folding her arms beneath her breasts, she said in a gratingly plaintive voice that he took to be an effort to elicit sympathy, “Neddie, honey, could I say something?”
He didn’t answer, but he didn’t say no either.
Her body swayed nervously, and she looked at the door, not him. “It’s just that earlier when you were talking with Mike you told me to scram.” Her eyes flicked up at him. He could read the fear behind them.
“Well, what of it? I was talking business.”
“It’s just that you hurt my feelings.”
He gave out a short, harsh snort. “You women are too sensitive. I didn’t mean anything except to say I was busy. If I’d told a man to scram, he’d scram. He’d understand it was nothing personal.”
“But the word ‘scram’ is disrespectful,” she lisped. “I’m not a man. It hurt me.”
She was being tiresome, but he had too much to think about now to waste time losing his temper. He looked at the expensive grandfather clock to her right, the thing that announced to anyone who came into the house that here was wealth, here was power, here was taste. He’d paid two thousand dollars for it, and the stupid cunt was complaining about her feelings. “Baby, don’t I treat you good? Didn’t I buy you that necklace for your birthday? You’re living in a swanky house, ain’t you?”
“I know,” she said, “and I appreciate it. It’s just that sometimes I’d like to feel appreciated in return.”
“Now, baby, let’s not see any tears. I’ve got a lot of work to do. I’ve got to go over my books for a meeting tomorrow morning. Just go to bed when you’re tired. I’m going to be working for several hours.”
She looked at him wide-eyed. Women didn’t understand these things and never would, but for future reference he tried to enlighten her. “You got to understand that business doesn’t wait, baby. A great deal of important business happens after hours.”
“I understand,” she said without conviction, then came over to him for a kiss.
He humored her but without feeling.
Upstairs in his office he went to the double-doored closet and opened it to reveal the wet bar. He poured himself a large whisky over ice, then sat down at his desk and relit the cigar he had started when Boulanger was smoking.
He was meeting tomorrow with a state representative and a regulatory commissioner, both of whom he had helped in the past and who always found ways to help him in return. He wanted to have all the facts and figures concerning the case at his fingertips when he talked to them; but having had a busy day Saturday, the only time h
His task was to compare his clients’ invoices with the packing slips sent to the company in New Jersey that processed the hazardous materials. He examined both paper documents and computer files. Most of the material Ridlon Recycling handled was entered by weight. Electrical equipment that contained PCB’s would have only a small amount of the poison. What he had done was make up for the stuff they dumped in Pleasant Pond with inert electrical equipment. These kinds of manipulations were the majority of cases and left no paper trail. As the hours went by, however, he found many documents of original invoices where the figures differed from the records sent to New Jersey. The first he noticed showed a glaring discrepancy. The hospital had 2.3 grams of radioactive iodine on its documentation while the invoice sent to New Jersey had 735 mg. He read these on paper and then checked the computer to find the same figures. Feeling uneasy now, he started looking for other discrepancies. Over the course of an hour he found over two dozen more.
After a while he saw a pattern and remembered where he had gone wrong. The easily hidden illegal dumpings were all from the first year or so; but as time went by and no one noticed any discrepancies, they—he and his secretary, Anna Rokoviak—had grown careless and even reckless. A point in the evening came—well after he heard Delores go to bed—when he realized that any court-ordered audit of his books would easily discover what he had done. The realization caused some bad moments verging on panic where the only way he could see to extricate himself from this mess was to hire an arsonist to torch the building where he had his office. Then for a long time he berated himself. How could he have been so stupid? he asked himself over and over before his frustration and anger found an outlet in a volcanic surge of hatred against that fucking shithead Chris Andrews. For a long time he daydreamed about ruining that fucking eco-terrorist. It made him feel better, but eventually he realized that it would do nothing to help him. He pulled himself together and tried to think lucidly.
His first idea had been to dump the excess stuff at sea, but that solution was rejected when he considered all the eyes that might observe such operations. Then he had thought of the pond, though pond was almost too generous a word for the dinky marshy body of water that went under the name of Pleasant Pond. He saw now that the idea of using the pond as a dump site was disastrous, but at the time he thought it was a rational decision. He didn’t know it connected to the Waska River because his father had told him that he always had to portage his canoe to get to the river. And he certainly didn’t think that there were any fish worth catching in that miserable pond or that there would be people who would eat them.
His panic returned when he thought about the reports he had read of that sick boy. He had a sudden vision of himself being arrested and brought to jail in chains and being such a figure of universal hatred that his fellow prisoners treated him like a leper. Only with an effort of will was he able to bring himself back to rationality. What’s done is done, he thought; the question is to decide what to do about it. He stood and paced, thinking hard. The meeting with his political connections that he had set up for tomorrow now appeared useless. The only good that could come from it was to solidify their indebtedness to him so that he could have friends in high places to defend him. But the federal EPA was now his principal danger, and his friends could do nothing for him on that score.
That settled, he next turned his mind to the potential court proceedings and lawsuits that might result. Only three people besides him knew about the dumping—Anna Rokoviak, his foreman Buck Brewster, and the worker Adrian Tardif. Anna he didn’t have to worry about. She had worked for him for over twenty-five years and was loyal. Even better, she was in on the scheme up to her elbows so that if he got prosecuted she would be too. Adrian Tardif was not much of a problem either. He hated any authority and was close-mouthed by nature. He would do what Buck told him to do. The key man, then, was Buck Brewster. He poured himself another whisky and while sipping it thought long and deep about Buck. When he saw his way clear, he checked his watch. It was 11:30, but Buck, who was an insomniac, would be up. He called him and told the foreman that he needed to talk to him tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. The time was very important because he wanted to have Buck lined up before he talked to the two officials over lunch. Buck said he would be there.
By now Ridlon felt like his old self—taking charge of events, not waiting for things to happen to him. He would like to talk with his son Clay as well, but though the twenty-three-year-old still lived at home with him, he was not likely to be in tonight until very late. He was a womanizer and a party animal. More likely he’d have to talk to the young scamp in the morning.
The final problem was the hicks with the sick kid. It was likely, he was sure, that any criminal proceedings would result in a fine, not—despite his recent panicky vision of being led away in chains—jail time. The fine would be hefty but nowhere near as expensive as a civil lawsuit if some smart-assed lawyer sniffed a killing and approached the hicks. The thing to do was to get to them before any sharks smelled blood in the water. After checking the newspaper to get their names, he went to the phone book only to find there was no listing for a Luke or Suzy Kimball. That was actually good news—it meant they were too poor to have a phone. At his office he had a city directory for Waska. He could check it tomorrow. If that offered nothing specific, it did not matter. He knew they had to live on the dirt road near the Tooley Road. He’d seen some hovels there on trips up to the shed. The thing to decide was how much to offer them. He would tell them that though he was completely innocent of the poisoning of the pond, he felt responsible and wanted to help them. He’d lay it on thick, of course, saying that he was deeply moved to hear about that sweet boy’s condition. Played right, done right with just the right tone, $25,000 should do that trick. It would be more money than they had ever seen in one place in their lives. All they would have to do was sign a little, teeny paper that would say in nice lawyerly gibberish that they agreed not to sue him.
He stood, his work for the night finished. Having a plan in place made him feel good, so good in fact that when he crawled into bed he took occasion to find some quick relief on Delores’s half-asleep but available body, then slept soundly until eight o’clock in the morning. When he awoke Delores was already up. He could hear her in the kitchen banging some pots and pans, and he could smell the coffee.
As a consequence of his recent physical examination that revealed high cholesterol and borderline hypertension, he was watching his diet. No more bacon and eggs or French toast for breakfast, less beef and more chicken or fish for dinner—this was his lot. For breakfast this morning he had a bowl of multi-grained cereal and half a cantaloupe while being fussed over by Delores, who argued him out of a second bowl of cereal by reminding him that the doctor had also mandated that he lose weight. From the same source of health wisdom came his next activity, which was to ride a stationary bike while he watched television for half an hour. Then he read the Sunday paper with a cup of coffee and a cigar and was pleased to see no articles on the mercury poisoning.
Before his shower he discussed with Delores what to serve the two dignitaries for lunch, mentioning ham sandwiches and accepting her suggestion of smoked salmon and pasta salad. These culinary concessions he made were actually a calculated ploy to control Delores in all important matters. When he had suggested ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch, it was done just so that she could overrule him. It was another trick his father had taught him. To rule absolutely was easiest when you allowed your underlings to think they had input into decisions. The only one this trick had not worked on was his wife, who divorced him six years ago, but Delores wasn’t as smart as his ex, and he controlled her like a puppeteer. Ultimately he had even beaten his wife. She had wanted half of his property, but by threats and lawyerly tricks he had gotten her to accept their house and $100,000 a year in alimony.
He contemplated his duplicity with satisfaction as he took his shower. In life there
But there was one person he could not control, and he felt apprehensive as he toweled himself off and heard Clay go downstairs. After dressing he spent some time in the kitchen discussing further the lunch with Delores as she put groceries away from her trip to the store. He told her to dress sexily, since that put men in a good frame of mind, and she suggested that if it was as warm as it promised to be she would wear a bikini top under an unbuttoned blouse. “That always brings a bulge to their eyes and elsewhere,” she giggled. He laughed with her, but even as he said, “Don’t I know it, baby,” he could see Clay through the sliding door and felt his uneasiness growing, not shrinking.
Clay was reading the paper with a cigarette in his mouth and a cup of coffee on the table beside him. He looked, as usual, as if the world was his oyster and everything that came before his eyes owed him homage. Blond and blue-eyed, square-jawed, tall and well tanned, he was incredibly handsome. His good looks and fair complexion came from his mother, for Ridlon was short, dark, balding and not very handsome, which was why, he knew, he tended to live vicariously through his son’s personal triumphs and social successes. Clay was everything he was not when young: popular, a good athlete, a lady-killer. But as proud as he was of his son’s social prowess, he was equally exasperated by Clay’s indifference to business. And it was his own fault. Because of the pleasure he derived from watching Clay conquer the world, he had spoiled the boy, given him everything he wanted, let him do anything he wanted, go anywhere he wanted to go. In contrast, his daughter Laurel had been kept tightly under control lest she be impregnated by some boy or—worse—meet some boy who wanted to marry her to become connected to the Ridlon wealth. To this day Laurel bore him a grudge and had sided with her mother during the divorce. Clay, knowing where his bread was buttered, sided with him.
But it wasn’t a deep commitment. At the country club where the business elite of Bedford and Waska congregated, whether or not they played golf (Ridlon didn’t), many of his friends had already added their sons to the company name—Fenton and Son, Lavalle and Son. Like kings and emperors of old their succession was assured. It was his dream that just as he had greatly enlarged his father’s legacy, Clay would continue the expansion and bring the Ridlon name down through the generations and that the company office would always feature a large portrait of him. Clay already worked for his father, but he did so unenthusiastically and without any real effort. That was his problem. He had never needed to make an effort since everything came to him easily. All his life he got by using his good looks and charm. At the same time he was a star athlete and Big Man on Campus, he was a lousy student with grades too poor for college. At eighteen he was bundled off to a special school to catch up, but it didn’t work. Getting accepted at a small college in New York whose only entrance requirement was the money for tuition, he still flunked out. It was the bane of Ridlon’s existence that anything serious that required effort Clay did half-assed. His school work was half-assed. His work at Ridlon Real Estate was half-assed. Any thought of the future and family was half-assed. Whenever Ridlon tried to have a serious talk with Clay, the twenty-three-year-old boy always wore a slightly bemused expression on his face. When he was a real boy the expression was a smirk, so perhaps a little progress had been made. More likely, Ridlon suspected, Clay had simply learned how to handle the old man and avoid open hostility. Ridlon would give him instructions; Clay would agree to follow them; then he never quite followed through. Half-assed! Just last week before the newspaper article changed everything, he told Clay to look into an electrical problem at one of the tenement buildings. Clay had gone so far as to call an electrician and leave a message on the man’s machine, but the last thing Ridlon heard late Friday afternoon before he left the office was that the tenant was still without power.
Ridlon did not plan to mention this latest shortcoming. With the illegal dumping his main priority, it was most urgent to impress upon Clay that now was the time to cease doing things half-assed. He needed a colonel he could trust in the coming battle and nurtured the hope that today was the beginning of Clay’s new manhood. Even while he thought about these hopes for the future, he knew that he would have to suppress them. He couldn’t show himself vulnerable.
With a deep breath, he slid open the door to the deck and confronted his son.
Clay looked up and barely nodded before returning to the sports section. Ridlon bristled but suppressed the retort that formed in his mind. Standing in front of his son, he said, “Clay, I need to talk to you about some very important matters. We’ve got a problem with the mercury poisoning business, and it’s going to take a lot of my attention this week. I need you to do some of the things I would normally do.”
Clay looked up from the sports section before returning to it. “Like what?”
“Like meet with the accountant to go over the tax revenues from the gas stations and oil-change business. I’ve got some documents you’ll need to go over.”
When he didn’t look up, pretending to be interested in the article he was reading, Ridlon’s temper rose. Speaking with exasperated calmness, he said, “Let me remind you that it is very important. Things have to be taken care of—just as they were,” he added sharply when he saw Clay still maintaining a bored and above-it-all attitude, “when I fixed that little matter of you driving under the influence. You’re twenty-three now. You’re old enough to take on more responsibility. If you think things take care of themselves, you’re dreaming. Someday you’ll be heading these businesses, but they won’t be worth a pisspot full of shit if you don’t attend to details.”
“Can’t we just hire someone to do that stuff?”
“No, we can’t. A hired man doesn’t really give a shit.”
“What about the accountant you want me to see? He’s a hired man, ain’t he?”
“No, he’s not. He’s a professional. If he doesn’t do his job he’ll go broke. He has to attend to details.”
“But that’s my point. Couldn’t we hire a professional to run the businesses?”
“And do what? Play golf all day? Diddle women all day? Clay, my father and I built this business from nothing. It’s like a…like a…” He wanted to say “child,” but the child he was speaking to was not much of a proof of what the businesses were like. “It’s like a piece of me, this business. It’s here”—he thumped his chest—“I want you to think of it the same way. I want you to pass it on to your son.”
Clay seemed embarrassed by his father’s show of emotion. “But I don’t feel that way about it.”
“I know you don’t,” he said, feeling his heart leap and with difficulty suppressing his emotions. “I wish you did.”
Clay frowned and looked away at something on the lawn. “Well, I will take care of the accountant. Don’t worry, Dad.”
They both looked over to where Delores called from the door. He was glad to see she was wearing the bikini top with an open blouse. “Neddie, Buck Brewster’s here. Do you want him to come out to the deck?”
“No, show him up to my office. Tell him I’ll be right up. Get him a coffee if he wants one, and tell him to have a smoke.” Then thinking it would be wise to make his foreman as comfortable as possible, he added, “Offer him a roll if he’s hungry.”
With her gone, he turned back to his son and spoke more lightly. “I’m glad to see you understand the importance of what I’m asking you to do. You do, don’t you?”
“Yes, Dad.” He spoke a bit too airily but followed his words with a slight smile, friendly and conciliatory.
“Good, I’m glad.” Then feeling he should make a personal remark to solidify their bond, he said, “Hey, where’s that blond you’ve been seeing? She ain’t been around for the last few weeks.”
“April? I dumped her. She was getting too serious.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being seriou
“Dad, some day I probably will be. But I’m young now. There’s plenty of time to be serious later. But don’t worry. I get the point. I’ll see that accountant. I’ll read those documents.”
“Good,” Ridlon said hopefully, “I’ll get you the papers after I see Brewster.”
“Just how serious is this mercury bit, Dad? Is it real bad?”
He shook his head. “Bad, maybe. Real bad? No. I’m taking care of it.”
Upstairs Brewster had contented himself with just a cigarette. He was snuffing it out as Ridlon came into the office and stood to face his boss. He was a tall, gangly man with sinewy arms, wearing a striped sports shirt and pressed slacks instead of his usual dungarees and chambray work shirt. Ridlon assumed these were his good clothes and inwardly smiled. He looked more himself at work, that was for sure. He had a large head, made larger by the pronounced bald dome above graying dark hair, and wore thick black-rimmed glasses. Unlike Boulanger, though, he was clean-shaven.
“Have a seat, Buck. How’s the wife and kids?”
“Busy. There’s a soccer game this afternoon, and she’s getting ’em ready for it right now. I’m going over to the field after, ah, after talking to you.”
Ridlon sat down and reached for a cigar. “Okay, then, I won’t keep you long and we’ll get right to the point. Have another smoke. I’ll join you.”
Cigar and cigarette lit, he said, “Of course you know that this is about the mercury business.”
Buck nodded.
“To tell the truth, it’s kinda sticky. I’m seeing some people from the government—people who owe me favors, you understand—and probably have everything under control. But you know what a good general does in battle, don’t you, Buck?”
Buck looked puzzled. “I’m not sure what you mean, Ned.”
He puffed at his cigar for a moment. “A good general has a backup plan in case something unexpected happens—that’s what I mean.”
Buck followed his example and smoked for a while, then looked sharply at his boss. “I’m figuring I’m the backup plan.”
Ridlon nodded. “That’s it. As I say, I’m pretty sure I can control things, but things could go bad, so bad we’d all be out of a job.” He looked at Buck to be sure he understood who could number among the jobless. He seemed to understand perfectly. “So here’s my plan. In case—note I say in case—something goes wrong, I want you to take the blame.”
Buck looked down at the floor nervously. He scratched his ear but didn’t say anything.
Ridlon took that as a green light. “You could plead dumbness. You didn’t know what you were doing. You’re lazy, something like that you could tell ’em. Odds are you’d be fined. I’ll pay it. If you do jail time—”
“Wait a minute, Ned. Jail time ain’t right. I was just following orders.”
“Jesus, Buck, you ain’t listening to what I’m saying. First of all I’m going to beat the rap. Nobody’s going to pay a fine or spend a few months in jail. I’ve got connections, don’t forget. What I’m talking about here is a fallback plan. You think I’d ask you to do this without making it worth your while?”
Buck thought for a minute. He scratched his chin. His eyes looked up into his head. Then he tilted his neck and leaned against the arm of his chair with his finger tapping his chin while he calculated. Finally he looked at Ridlon, then dropped his eyes almost immediately. “How much?” he asked, looking at the floor.
“You and Janet have been saving for a down payment on a house. How much do you need?”
That got his attention. His eyes swelled with greed, but he looked too scared to name a sum. To him it probably seemed like a fortune. “Well, how much?” Ridlon repeated.
“Twenty thousand.”
Ridlon whistled. “Okay, if you do time, that’s what you’ll get. If it’s a fine, I’ll contribute two thousand to your mortgage fund, plus pay the fine. You can’t lose. Do we have a deal?”
Buck stood and put out his hand. “We have a deal.”
They shook hands and turned to the door. At the top of the steps he thanked Buck for coming and then, belatedly, thought of one other item that needed tidying up. “Is there anything in the shed upcountry that shouldn’t be there?”
Buck looked at him knowingly. “You mean that gives evidence that pollutants were there?”
He nodded.
“No pollutants, but there might be a few containers that have residual traces. You know nowadays forensic science is damn good at finding things. You want me to…”
“Yeah, get that stuff out of there. Do it tomorrow—in daylight, mind you. We don’t wanna look like we’re hiding something. And, oh, one more thing. Tell Adrian I’ll take care of him too.”
“Okay, Ned. I understand. I’ll see myself out.”
He nodded, then before returning to his office watched Buck descend the stairs and pass through the front door.
In the office he stood looking first at the four paintings and then the photograph of his father while he puffed at his cigar contentedly. He expected a report from Boulanger in a few days, this one more satisfactory. He expected that the two officials who would soon arrive for lunch would use their influence to keep the state from thirsting for his blood. He had lined Buck up as his ace in the hole. Tomorrow with Anna’s help he would prepare a statement for the press that would express his shock and profound sadness that a little boy was sick and state that he was mystified how Ridlon Recycling could be involved. He would of course promise a thorough internal investigation. As soon as possible he would also pay a visit to the Kimballs to settle matters on that end. He had had a productive weekend that even included the possible turning point in his son’s life. He was going to enjoy the lunch of smoked salmon and pasta salad washed down with a good wine; then for the rest of the day he was going to relax. He had earned it.
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