Dark and Bloody Ground (29 page)

The engine stopped. Spencer saw that Hodge was cradling a machine gun in his arms. The fellow working the backhoe jumped to the ground. The other hired man was already running. They jack-rabbitted into the woods. Spencer stayed put, leaning against the bulldozer, sending a stream of tobacco juice splatting against a heap of coal. Epperson and his buddies approached.

Roger, unarmed from what Spencer could see, was smiling.

“Thought you’d need some help,” he said. “Show you how it’s done. I am one mean son of a bitch with a dozer.”

He climbed behind the wheel and brought the engine to life and began working levers like a pro. The great caterpillar treads moved into the pit. Roger rocked the machine back and forth, dropping the blade to send it smashing and splintering the blossom of coal.

“Damn good, ain’t he?” Bartley shouted. “Fucking-A he is.” Roger kept at it for what must have been ten or fifteen minutes.

All at once Benny, yawping like some fanatic Arab, pointed the Mini Mac at the clouds and sent a full twenty-round clip streaming into the air. He jammed a fresh clip in and filled the air again with fire and lead. With a third clip he sprayed the woods, the big slugs thwacking trees, splintering off chunks of bark. Birds wheeled, disappearing into the mist. Donnie, down on one knee now, fired one shot at a time at birds and trees with his Ruger .44 mag semiautomatic carbine, one-two-three-four-five, reloading, firing again. The bulldozer, the machine gun, the rifle—then a pistol’s reports as Donnie fired his .357 Magnum and sent chips of coal skipping along the lip of the pit—it was louder and crazier than a hundred thousand Baptists at an Elvis concert. Sonny Spencer threw up his hands and screamed: “Hey! What the hell! I got neighbors! What the fuck do you guys want?”

Roger switched off the engine of the bulldozer and climbed down. Benny and Donnie held their fire.

“We just want to reason with you,” Roger said, sidling over and throwing an arm around Spencer. “We want to show you how much
we care about you, and we want to do you a favor. Hey, man, what you so goddamned worried about, huh? We ain’t about to leave no kind of witnesses.”

Spencer did not budge. He did not want in on any deal. No job was worth it to him now, not for any amount of money. He wished they would leave. They were fucking him up. He was in violation of parole merely being around people with weapons. And this was no place to take target practice. There were neighbors. Somebody would hear the shots and call the police, and then where would they all be?

“Sonny,” Roger asked, “what do you plan to do with the rest of your life? Break your ass on a gob pile? I bet you never even seen the ocean.”

“I can live without it. I reckon I’ll work for the rest of my life. Seems good to me.”

“You could be sitting on a beach stoned out of your mind.”

“Working for a living sure does beat the penitentiary. Hell, you all can nail my nuts to that tree if you has a mind to. I ain’t afraid to die, no way. Ain’t no job worth no jail time, no way.”

“I wouldn’t never hurt you,” Roger said, getting into his face. “Sonny, you my old buddy. I just feel sorry for you, is all. Looks like you’ll be loading coal till they drop you into the grave.”

They left Sonny and went to score some dope from a man living up a hollow near Leatherwood and checked into a motel near there. On Wednesday they cased the doctor’s house once more, drove around to visit and score cocaine and pot. On Highway 15 near Hazard a dark blue, almost purple Porsche tore past them going in the other direction, and Roger said he recognized it. The car belonged to one of the doctor’s two daughters, who both drove Porsches, or so he had been told. The younger one was supposed to be in college, but she might still be home for the summer. If she was, it could be a problem.

There were other potential difficulties, but if they were going to hit the doc, they agreed, it would have to be tomorrow, or they would have to head back to Florida having gained nothing. They were out of money, with barely enough left for a motel and the gas to get home. They worried about the getaway. They had decided that the best route was through Whitesburg because it was the quickest way to the main highways from Fleming-Neon. Once they reached the Daniel Boone Parkway, there were two tollbooths between Hazard and London that
might be tricky; but if they made it to 1-75 they ought to be home free.

Among them, only Bartley remained hesitant. He could not imagine that a doctor would be so stupid as to keep a lot of cash in his house. Trust him, Roger said. The money was there. Benny added that tomorrow had to be the day for the job, because the day after was his birthday, and he had promised Sherry he’d be back for it.

At a motel in Whitesburg that evening they spread out all their equipment on the floor, exactly as if they were planning a military operation. Roger gave everyone a rank: he was the general, Benny the captain, and Donnie the sergeant. When Donnie objected to his low rank, Roger told him that anybody who stood only five-feet-seven didn’t deserve to be an officer, and besides, he was the youngest. If he didn’t shut up and follow orders, Roger said, he would bust him to private. His assignment as of now was to take inventory.

Donnie called out their gear item by item: guns and ammo; suits, shirts, and plain ties for Bartley and Hodge; badges and IDs the general had fashioned from cards FBI agents had left with him when they had interviewed him at the Rome jail; thin brown gloves they planned to don after gaining entrance; a piece of plain white paper with “Federal Bureau of Investigation” photocopied across the top; two-way Motorola portable radios and battery testers; a black attaché case that looked official and would be used to carry the money.

“Dr. Roscoe J. Acker,” Roger said. “That’s his name. Make sure you got it straight. You better write it down.”

They were up early on Thursday morning, the 8th. With time to kill, they drove around Whitesburg as it came to life on a day that promised to be warm and humid; at nine o’clock it was already eighty degrees. Benny and Donnie decided it had been a mistake to have put on their suits, since they would not be heading for Fleming-Neon until late that afternoon. They would have to find somewhere to stay cool and relax until then.

For no particular reason they pulled into a small shopping center, the Whitesburg Plaza, and got out to look around, to kill time. The Rite Aid drugstore was just opening up, and they strolled in and began to browse. The pharmacist was reading a newspaper, his elbows on the counter. A young woman was unlocking the cash register. Benny asked her where the film was kept, she pointed down an
aisle, and he pretended to examine some rolls. Donnie purchased a package of breath mints, and they left.

They spent the day at Sonny Spencer’s house, Benny and Donnie switching into casual clothes to stay cool in the air conditioning. At around half past six, after having failed once again to persuade Sonny to join them, they headed out.

Donnie drove to Fleming-Neon, following Roger’s directions because, as often as they had driven there, it remained an elusive place. As they entered Neon, Roger, who was wearing jeans and a polo shirt and had not shaved in three or four days, squeezed down onto the floor in the back. It was now close to seven o’clock.

Donnie pulled into Dr. Acker’s driveway. The garage door was closed, so there was no way of telling who, if anyone, was at home. Donnie and Benny got out, leaving Roger on the floor clutching a two-way radio; the other transmitter-receiver was in the attaché case, which Donnie carried. Benny took the lead and pushed the doorbell, using a ballpoint pen so as not to leave prints.

From a speaker built into the wall beside the alarm siren, a woman’s voice asked who was there.

“This is Agent Shanker of the FBI,” Benny said. “I’m here with my partner Agent Todd. We’re looking for a Dr. Roscoe J. Acker, ma’am, if you please. We’d like to ask him a few questions. It’s a matter regarding someone else.”

“My father’s still at his office,” the woman’s voice said. “He’s at his clinic. I don’t know when he’ll be home. You can talk to him there, if you like.”

“Oh, no, ma’am,” Benny said. “We wouldn’t want to disturb him at work. We’ve been driving up from Georgia and we’re pretty tired. We’ll just find a motel and wash up and come back later.”

“That will be fine,” the voice said. “He should be back by seven.”

In the car they determined that the woman had to be one of Dr. Acker’s daughters. Donnie worried that she would call her father at his clinic and that he would check with the FBI to verify their identities, but Roger said that was unlikely. People always said they were going to be that cautious, but they rarely were. If the girl did call Acker, he would probably be too nervous to do anything, especially if, as Roger suspected, the doc was hiding money from the government. He would probably be thinking he was glad it was the FBI and not the IRS.

Donnie turned around up at MeRoberts and headed back toward Fleming, past shack after ramshackle shack, past the clinic again. On his knees, Roger peeked over the front seat. As they approached the doctor’s house he instructed Donnie to turn left onto a narrow dirt track that climbed the hill opposite. Two hundred feet or so up, he told Donnie to get as close to the edge as he could and to stop under a tree.

It was the perfect place from which to monitor the house while they waited for Dr. Acker to show up. Their position was at an angle to the front door, which was across the two-lane highway some fifty feet beneath them. They were perched on the side of what the locals called Haymond Hill, on a road that had been cut to an abandoned strip-mining operation and was now a shortcut to the tiny settlement of Haymond a couple of miles away. The hill was so thick with trees and brush and the ubiquitous kudzu vine that no one was likely to notice them up there. Benny removed a pair of binoculars from the glove compartment; they took turns at keeping watch or, as Roger termed it, aerial surveillance.

After half an hour there was still no sign of the doctor. Donnie announced that he absolutely had to take a pee and, removing his jacket, got out of the car to relieve himself. Benny also stood up to stretch. Just as Donnie was finishing, they heard a car coming from below. Donnie and Benny climbed back in and shut the door as the car slowly passed with inches to spare. There were two men in it, the passenger slumped to one side holding a beer can.

By eight o’clock they were feeling thirsty. They backed down through the fading light, entering the highway behind a police car that slowed as it passed the doctor’s house, then veered left across the road into a parking space at the Edge of Town Market, a small store. Donnie followed. As the driver got out, they noted that he was wearing chinos with his shirttail hanging out, obviously off duty. Donnie went into the market to buy pop.

They resumed their perch, slightly lower down this time. At about ten minutes before nine a car’s headlights approached from above through the near-dark. Only a driver’s head was visible through the rear window.

It was just after nine when Roger spotted a solitary figure on foot passing under a streetlamp at the bridge that spanned the creek between the doctor’s house and the clinic beyond. As headlights
swept along the highway, Roger made out an old man, slightly stooped, dark-suited, a small creature who turned into the Acker driveway and approached the front door to insert a key.

“Zero hour,” Roger said.

Roger and Benny had been snorting coke off and on all day; Benny had done a line during the vigil. Now all three took one final jolt. Donnie let the car roll back down, switched on the lights, and crossed over to the driveway.

Again it was the woman’s voice on the intercom. Benny apologized for the late hour, identified himself and his partner once more, and asked if by chance Dr. Acker had returned as yet; otherwise they would come back at a more convenient time. It was all right, the woman said, her father would be out in a minute.

Dr. Acker opened the door halfway and came out to shake hands when Benny and Donnie displayed their badges. He said he was happy to cooperate with the FBI, any time—but he did not invite them in. Closing the door behind him, he gestured toward garden furniture on the porch and suggested that the men make themselves comfortable in the warm evening air. Benny sat on a recliner, Donnie and the doctor in straight chairs.

They were investigating a man named Roe Adkins, Benny said. Did the doctor know him? He did, the doctor said, but he had not had any dealings with him for several years. He had once been in the coal business with Roe Adkins, it must have been back in the seventies, when it seemed as if everybody was in coal. Adkins had dropped out, but there were no hard feelings. He had nothing against him.

Stalling for time to try to figure out how to coax Dr. Acker into letting them into the house, Benny, pretending to be cautious about revealing confidential information, suggested that the Bureau had gathered quite a bit of incriminating material on Adkins and would soon be moving to have him indicted for fraud, illegal coal mining, and various other interstate offenses. It was important to verify who was and who was not involved in these crimes because the Bureau was in the process of lining up witnesses.

Benny spoke with clarity and precision, as he was capable of doing when the occasion demanded. Donnie chimed in from time to time but for the most part let Benny carry the ball. Meanwhile, huddled on the floor of the Olds, Roger heard the rise and fall of voices through the air.

Would Dr. Acker be prepared to sign a statement to the effect that he had no present dealings with Roe Adkins and had not done any business with him for several years? Of course he would, Dr. Acker said. He would make out a statement right then and there.

“The light’s pretty dim,” Benny said. “Is there somewhere we could go that has better light?”

“We can go over to my office. I can sit at my desk.”

“We don’t need to waste that much of your time.”

“All right. Come into the kitchen.”

They followed Dr. Acker into the house. From somewhere down the hall they could hear the strains of a piano, some light, romantic melody, unaccompanied. Donnie closed the door behind them. In the kitchen, which was to the right of the front hall, Donnie removed from the briefcase the official-looking sheet of paper and placed it on the table. Dr. Acker sat down and began to write.