He hangs up and Nick Minicozzi calls from his office upstairs. When things got tight at the bank, Ted let his bank manager go and moved down here, renting out his second floor office to the city attorney, who has become his bank lawyer as well. Sharp young guy. And Ted is glad to be back on the bank floor. Keeping an eye on things. Nick has been pursuing the question of camping permits. None of these people living in the fields are likely to have them, but again it’s a problem of jurisdiction, even if they are issued here in town by the county clerk at city hall. Ted, mulling this over, scribbles idly on his desk blotter. His straightline gridlike doodles have given way over recent months to rounder, softer, more complex and flowing shapes. More sensuous ones. He smiles inwardly at that, wheels round to steal another glance; can’t stop himself. She has been watching him. She looks away. Lovable, you’re so lovable…he’s a hummer now. “If the sheriff won’t cooperate,” Nick says, “about the only way to force the issue is if a property owner complains.” As the major non-absentee landlord in the neighborhood of the mine is John P. Suggs, that’s not likely. Nick is developing a brief on Suggs, hoping to find something they can use. There are rumors of past links to the Klan and various rightwing militias, though even if true, they might do him no harm. Unless a crime can be found. So far, only a few meaningless bar brawls when he was young. Ted asks Nick to have a talk with the priest to brace him for possible problems on the weekend. “And, Nick, you and the accountant might take a look at the Presbyterian church finances, make sure all the money from the sale of the camp is accounted for.” Nick says he’ll do that and reminds him of their foursome at three. His requested call from the governor comes through.
When Ted walks into Mick’s Bar & Grill for lunch, Earl Goforth, Burt Robbins, and Jim Elliott are at the back table, heehawing with the mayor and the fire chief, apparently at the expense of the scruffy character just making his exit, grinning but teeth clenched. Looks vaguely familiar. Might have been in the bank for a loan. Like everyone else. “That’s Georgie, our new fire inspector,” Maury Castle explains in his bellowing voice. “A coupla weeks ago, he took one of Lem’s old junkers out for a test drive and never brung it back, totaling it that night out on the whorehouse run. Lem keeps a loaded shotgun in his shop and he’s swore to kill Georgie if he ever shows his fucking face around there again. We just told Georgie his next fire inspection is Lem’s garage.” They all roar with laughter again, or at least the mayor roars; Robbins’ laugh is more like a mean snicker, Elliott’s a mulish snort, Mort Whimple’s a gasping wheeze, Mick’s a high-pitched hee-hee-hee, Earl’s a wet whistle out the hole in his war-scarred face.
Ted smiles faintly, orders up the usual, bowl of soup and a grilled ham and cheese, asking Mick not to burn the sandwich. About what’s edible in here, the soup not always. Where the elite meet to eat. “Why Lem’s?” he asks. “It’s not a public place.”
“Well, it is,” booms the mayor, still grinning. For Castle, the whole world is funny. Tragedy is funny. Death is funny. Power is. “We all take our cars there. There are oil spills everywhere, oily rags tossed about, welding torches going, sparks flying. And Lem’s a smoker. He can’t get insurance, or won’t. It’s almost sure to go up, sooner or later, and it’ll cost the city a ton to put the fucker out.”
“Lem’s struggling to make ends meet.”
“Ain’t we all?”
He knows there is something wrong about this, people have been complaining, but he cannot think about it just now. Other priorities pressing. The Chamber of Commerce problem, for example. Elliott stands, weaving unsteadily. “Gotta go practice my putts,” he says bleakly, swinging through on what looks more like an approach shot. “See you at three.” Useless.
“How’s Irene?” Robbins asks.
“The same.” But he’s not thinking about her. He’s thinking about the people he’s sharing a life with here. This is his town, he has devoted his life to it, and nothing’s perfect, but sometimes, like now, staring at their dumb grins, he has the urge just to pick up his ball and leave the field. When Justin Miller, who ran the newspaper here some years back, left town (good thing he’s not around now, hyping these nuts in his paper again; he sometimes misses the Chronicle, but closing it down and elbowing Miller out of here turns out to have been the smartest thing he could have done), one of the last things he said was, “Everything that happens, happens right here in West Condon. If it starts to look like nothing, then you’re beginning to get the picture.” Now Miller’s out chasing that nothing around the world for one of the television networks. Ted used to hate that kind of cynicism, but love, if it is love and not just some kind of late-middleaged confusion, is making him rethink everything. “What you see in a place like this,” Stacy has said in her soft plainspoken way, “is how sad everything is.” Which sums up his present feelings. Even the cheese tastes stale today, the soup lacks salt. Sad soup. But damn it — Castle, who’ll be running for reelection in a few months, is wheedling about the need for a new cop, especially with all this trailer trash rolling in — he’s still the captain. He got cast for the part and he can’t hand it off. And anyway, cheer up, it’s a Thursday. “Well, better start interviewing,” he says between bites. “And meanwhile let’s see if we can get some help from the towns around. I’ve asked Dee to send out an alert. At this point we’re expecting six or seven hundred cultists over the weekend. At least half that many are already here. Plus all the local sympathizers, at least another couple of hundred. Which means we could have a serious crowd control problem Sunday, especially if a lot of sightseers and hecklers turn up like last time.” He casts an accusing glance at Castle, who was one of the perpetrators of that infamous carnival. Grinning nastily around his cigar. “We’re getting zero help from the county, even though the hill is technically in their domain. We’d better be prepared to face this alone.”