Where Echoes Live (3 page)

“And what's wrong with that?”

“Nothing, really. I'm not against marriage.”

“For other people.”

“No, even for myself, if conditions were right. But … here's the real problem: I'm pretty sure he would want to have a child, sort of to make up for the daughter he lost.”

“Uh-oh.” Anne-Marie leaned back heavily in her chair. Her dislike of children is second only to her dislike of cats, and she assumes all other childless adults share in it.

“You see?” I said. “I've grown too old and selfish to have a child. I enjoy my freedom and my work too much. What would I do with a baby? Drag it to All Souls and plunk it down in a corner of my office? Take it along in the car on stakeouts?”

“There's always day care. Or George.”

“Don't tell me he could take the primary responsibility; his career is going into high gear now that his book is being published.”

“Day care,” she repeated.

“Oh, all right, so I'm making excuses! Dammit, it's not as if I don't like children. I've got eleven nieces and nephews, and I love them all, even though they make that extremely difficult at times. Every year I write twenty-two checks for birthdays and Christmas. Periodically they show up and eat me out of house and home and make me take them to Marine World. They call—collect—for advice on problems with their parents, their teachers, their boyfriends and girlfriends. I'm already doing my duty to the next generation!”

Anne-Marie smiled tolerantly. “I'm with you a hundred percent on this. You don't have to justify your feelings to
me.”

“I know,” I said. “And I know exactly who I
am
trying to justify them to.”

Over dinner—panfried golden trout—Anne-Marie explained the situation that had brought her, and now me, to Tufa Lake. The California Coalition for Environmental Preservation, as I knew, was a troubleshooting organization funded by some twenty-five advocacy groups. One of their goals was to present a unified front to legislators by formulating a statewide policy on the environment. Anne-Marie had been engaged in research for the proposed policy up until the previous week, when a call requesting assistance had come from the Friends of Tufa Lake. Since it looked as if a legal problem might be involved, she had been sent to Vernon along with Ned Sanderman, one of the Coalition's crack troubleshooters.

“I take it the problem concerns the foreign gold-mining company that's got hold of the mineral rights in Stone Valley,” I said.

She raised her eyebrows. “That's very good, for someone who's been in town only a few hours.”

I smiled modestly, unwilling to admit that I'd found out about the mining by pure accident.

“Well,” she went on, “that
is
the problem. The mesa above Promiseville hasn't been mined since the twenties, but modern methods of extracting gold have made mining profitable again. And it's not only the mineral rights that Transpacific Corporation controls; they own the land itself.”

“I thought most of the land around here was federal,” I said, recalling signs I'd spotted for the Toiyabe National Forest.

“Most is. But Transpacific—they're a U.S. corporation, but backed by big-money interests in Hong Kong—bought up some three thousand privately held acres from a descendant of the family who owned the original Promiseville mine. The other seven hundred acres were also under private ownership, but they were bought from the federal government only a year ago.”

“How can someone buy federal land?”

“It's a complicated process, having to do with patenting mining claims with the Bureau of Land Management. I won't bore you with the details now; there's a file on the technicalities back at the cabin. Suffice it to say it's completely legal.”

“Then what can you do to stop them?”

“My job is to go over the land deal with a fine-tooth comb to see if there's any legal loophole. Or any unethical transaction that might cast a long enough shadow to make Mono County refuse to issue the final mine permits.”

“From the way Mrs. Wittington at the lodge spoke, I guess people in the area are pretty much opposed to the mining operation.”

“Oh, there're plenty who see it as a boost to the economy, but they're being shortsighted. It would only be a temporary boost and cause more problems than it would solve. Most of the intelligent people here simply don't want large-scale open-pit mining in Stone Valley.” Anne-Marie set down her fork, her face flushed, eyes bright; she was on a crusade, all right.

“Not only is open-pit mining noisy and disfiguring to the landscape,” she went on, “but the cyanide leaching process they use poisons the air and ground water. In addition, there're a number of historic buildings where Promiseville once was that the Friends of Tufa Lake are trying to get approved for landmark status. The blasting from the mine would weaken and eventually destroy them.”

I nodded, pushing a sprig of parsley around on my plate. “Okay,” I said, “but you didn't get me up here to help you research legal issues. What else is going on?”

Anne-Marie glanced around as if she were afraid we would be overheard, then leaned forward, lowering her voice. “In the week I've been here, I've found out some things that just don't compute. Other things have happened that seem downright suspicious. I need someone with a good investigative head to make sense of them.”

“All right, fill me in.”

She proceeded to tick items off on her fingers.

Item one: When queried by the Coalition, the Bureau of Land Management in Sacramento reported that the 700-acre tract had been purchased from them by a man named Franklin Tarbeaux. Tarbeaux had staked a claim to the mineral rights, then filed the appropriate mineral-survey documents and completed the patenting requirements—paying a mere $10 an acre.

Item two: Mono County records showed that Tarbeaux almost immediately sold the land to Transpacific Corporation for $700,000—or $1,000 an acre. Although his profit margin was significant, the per-acre price was less than a tenth of what similar tracts were currently going for.

Item three: The additional 3,000 acres, which encompassed the original Promiseville mine, had been purchased from Earl Hopwood, a descendant of the family who once owned it. Transpacific had paid Hopwood only $10 an acre—what the BLM charged for federal land and much less than it should have brought on the open market.

Item four: When Anne-Marie and Ned Sanderman queried people in the area about Franklin Tarbeaux, no one admitted to knowing him. The desert rats who lived in Stone Valley claimed they weren't aware that anyone had been mining the 700 acres on the eastern side of the mesa above Promiseville, where the old mine was located.

Item five: Earl Hopwood was something of a hermit; he lived in a cabin at the far end of Stone Valley and prospected up and down the stream that ran through it. When Hy Ripinsky, who had known Hopwood since childhood, went looking for him, he found the old man hadn't been seen for two weeks or more.

“That was after Transpacific moved in with their survey crew, fenced the land, and began taking core samples,” Anne-Marie added.

“And that's it?”

“No. This is the really strange stuff: a couple of days after Ned and I arrived, both Hy's home and the Friends of Tufa Lake trailer—it's next to the one we're using—were broken into. And the next day Ned and I noticed signs of forced entry at our cabins at the lodge.”

“What was taken?”

“Nothing, as far as we could tell.”

“Lots of crime in this area?”

“Very little—mostly drunk driving or fishing without a license, or so they tell me.”

I set down my fork and waited while the waitress cleared our plates. As she bustled around serving coffee, I thought of the person who had been watching me in the tufa forest. More “really strange stuff” ?

After the waitress had gone I said, “I suppose in a place like this everybody knows everybody else's business.”

“You got it.”

I sipped coffee, thought a bit more. “What, if anything, does Lily Nickles have to do with this?”

Anne-Marie looked surprised. “The Tiger Lily? So far as I know, nothing, except that she prospects out in Stone Valley. Where did you run into her?”

“She was having an argument with Hy when I went to the trailer. He didn't seem angry or upset; she did.”

“Hy's slow to anger. But when he does, watch out.”

“Tell me about him. He kept injecting quasi-military terms into our conversation. And where for God's sake did he get that dreadful name?”

She smiled faintly. “From his parents, as is customary. His mother was German, hence the ‘Heino.' His father was a descendant of Russians who emigrated to Alaska via the Aleutians generations ago. Hy was born in the Central Valley but raised here in Vernon after his mother divorced and remarried. He left for a number of years in the seventies. Some claim he was CIA, and from the way he speaks and thinks, I believe it.”

“No one asks him?”

“He's not a man you question about the past.”

“From CIA operative to environmentalist is a long step. How did that happen?”

“What little I know comes from Rose Wittington. When Hy returned here he was reclusive at first, stayed out on the little sheep ranch on the road to Stone Valley that he inherited from his stepfather. He seemed to have plenty of money: added on to the house, drove an expensive car, owned an airplane. But he didn't socialize, even with old friends, and was rarely seen in town.”

“What changed that?”

“He met Julie Spaulding, an environmentalist who'd moved here a few years earlier and founded the Friends. She gradually coaxed him out of his isolation and involved him in the cause. After a year or so they married. Julie died of multiple sclerosis about three years ago. In her will—she'd inherited from her father, a big Kern County grower—she set up a foundation to fund environmental organizations, particularly the Friends, and she named Hy director of it.” Anne-Marie paused, looking thoughtful. “Rose Wittington said what you did: that it was quite a transformation from CIA—if that's what he was—to environmentalist. But she hasn't observed Hy the way I have. Underneath that laid-back exterior, he's still dangerous.”

“In what way?”

“Well, consider how he operates, even within the framework of environmentalism. He's … how can I describe it? Are you familiar with Earth First!?”

I nodded. Earth First! was an organization that relied on direct confrontational tactics—some called them “eco-terrorism”—to get their point across. While those on the radical end of the spectrum saw little wrong with removing survey markers from construction sites or sabotaging oil-drilling equipment, few condoned such practices as spiking trees—inserting hidden nails into forest trees so that chain saws would be shattered and the flying steel would injure or even kill loggers. I'd seen a news item around the time of Earth Day reporting that Earth First! had renounced the tactic, but with my usual cynicism I had wondered what they'd renounced it in favor of. And later reports of an explosion that injured two of their leaders and was suspected of being triggered by a device of their own manufacture had led me to assume my cynical suspicions were justified.

“Is Hy involved with them?” I asked.

“No, he's too much of a maverick to ally himself with any group. The only reason he's on the board of the Friends and cooperating with the Coalition is because of the connection with the Spaulding Foundation. And I doubt he'd have anything to do with the foundation if he didn't feel obligated because of Julie's will. But Hy's like the Earth Firsters in a way: a genuine crazy man who'll go up against anybody in any way in order to make them listen.”

“A crusader like you, huh?”

“Much worse; Hy doesn't give a hoot for the law. And he's not afraid of anything—including cops and sheriffs' deputies with clubs and riot guns. When the campaign to save Tufa Lake was at its hottest, he did plenty of time in various jails. As soon as he served one sentence, he'd get into trouble and end up behind bars again. He claims he was influenced by Martin Luther King and Gandhi; I'd add the kamikaze pilots and Genghis Khan to the list.”

“Was his wife still alive while this was going on?”

“Some of it, but he got much worse after she died. I think she was a steadying influence on him. Rose Wittington says Julie was confined to a wheelchair most of her life, but that didn't stop her from doing what she wanted. She traveled around the state helping out different groups with both personal efforts and monetary donations; when she came to Tufa Lake she decided it was where she wanted to settle. She was a fighter, like Hy: when the Friends picketed the water department in L.A. she was there. The same for the sit-ins in Sacramento. But Julie was always in control. For a long time after she died, Hy wasn't.”

“And now?”

She shrugged. “He's better, but sometimes I think it's only his responsibilities to the foundation that keep him from going off and … well, doing God knows what.”

“So Julie Spaulding made him director of her foundation for a very good reason.”

“I guess she did.”

“Has he had any confrontations with Transpacific?”

“No, he went to the mine site only once, on a public relations tour the corporation gave for concerned individuals. Otherwise Transpacific has kept a very low profile and refused to enter into a dialogue with the environmentalists. Until they do, there's nothing
to
confront.”

“And then?”

“That's a question I don't want to find out the answer to.”

“I wonder what Hy and the Nickles woman were arguing about this afternoon.”

Anne-Marie looked at her watch, then pushed back her chair. “We're supposed to meet him and Ned at the trailer right about now. Why don't you ask him?”