Sean Dexter
The Patriot
"You want to run that by me again." The man sitting across from me was well-dressed in a small town Oklahoma way — jeans and a heavy-duty blue work shirt fresh out of the package and buttoned up tight at the collar, factory creases sharp enough to slice bread. His heavy Okie twang almost required an interpreter, and on top of that, he wasn't making a lot of sense. His name was Wayne Magee and he worked at the stockyards east of town. He couldn't have been more than twenty. Morris was a small town but not so small that I knew everyone well. I'd seen him around town, but I didn't know much about his personal life."Some of what you said went by a little fast for me to get hold of."
"I want to hire you," he said.
"I got that part," I said. "It was the rest that sort of slipped past."
He sighed heavily as if burdened by my stupidity. I get that a lot. "I operate a short wave radio from my garage."
"Yeah," I said, "that I got." I sat up a little straighter and scooted the old, oak swivel chair a little closer to my desk. The wheels hadn't seen any oil since FDR took office — the first time.
"I picked up some people talking. One of them sounded like a Ruskie… the other one sounded normal."
"Normal?"
"Yeah, you know, like one of us." The young man squirmed like a ten-year-old sitting in the principal's office. He kept running his hand gently across the top of his head like he was checking to make sure the pomade was still holding his flat-top high and tight. It was. Should have been a dipstick stuck back behind one of his ears.
"Can you tell where these folks are located?" I said.
"Hard to tell. It's weird what you can pick up. I've even picked up telephone calls a time or two. I think maybe these two fellas was on the telephone, but I'm not for sure. A couple Eye-talian brothers with a rig a lot like mine swears to the almighty they heard some Russian lady astronaut screamin' for help up there in space somewhere like she was burnin' up."
I nodded. I'd heard the same rumor and knew it to be true. "And this worries you because…?"
More squirming, but his face was serious. "Well, you know, them Commie sons-of-bitches, pardon my French, just about dropped an atom bomb on us over that Cuba thing."
Wayne was referring, of course, to the Cuban Missile Crisis a few years back that had most of us peering up at the sky for a few days waiting for the BIG ONE to come barreling down on our fair little community. I wasn't quite sure what Wayne expected of me, but he did have my attention. "Did they say something that worried you?"
He nodded. "Them boys was sorta talking in circles, almost like a code."
"What did they say?"
"It was a weak signal, kept cutting in and out. But twice I heard them say something about a man in place. I also heard something about the Dow chemical plant."
Now he really had my attention. There were a few things about me the locals didn't know, and it was best for everyone that they stay in the dark. If someone was interested in the chemical plant, that could be trouble.
Dow Chemical manufactured a multitude of chemicals for plastics and agricultural products, but rumor had it that they also had a government contract to produce napalm and defoliant for the war effort in Vietnam. Theory was, you kill the jungles, the Commies wouldn't have anywhere to hide. I figured it probably wouldn't work… Communists are good at hiding in plain sight.
"Did they say anything else?"
"Yes, sir, they did. I think they said the guy was right here in Morris. I think they might be Commie spies."
I sat up straight. This was definitely bad news. "Why come to me and not the sheriff?"
I saw sweat break out on Wayne's forehead. He was not the kind of man who sweated easily unless he was tossing bales of hay around.
"Well," he said, his voice breaking an octave higher than usual, "that American boy… "
"Yeah?"
"That American sure sounded a lot like my wife's big brother, Sheriff Boyd."
Morris is a bug-smear of a town burrowed into northeastern Oklahoma like a badger in its hole, mean and suspicious. The population hovers around 5,000, maybe a little bit less after tornado season. Red brick buildings, circa 1900, line Main Street. The drug store has a soda fountain in the back that serves up the best ice-cream sodas in the state — or so their sign says. Almost everyone in town is a Christian. Oddly enough, Christian behavior is sometimes a scarce commodity in these parts. Overall, though, it's not a bad place. I'd been in far worse.
My name is Alex Taylor. For the last five years, I've made a paltry living as a private eye here in Morris. Before that I'd been a government employee. The main part of my business now was taking pictures of cheating husbands and, occasionally, cheating wives. I did a modest trade with the local bank tracking down loan skips and digging up hidden assets. My trade was not highly respected, but the good citizens of Morris treated me fairly well mostly because they were afraid of what I might know about them. And I knew quite a bit.
I had accepted a week's advance of $150 from the frightened wrangler to look into the possibility that Sheriff Lucas Boyd was a Russian spy. It had been tough to keep the smile off my face. But I was a professional.
After Wayne left, I sat with my feet up on my desk and contemplated what he had told me. Wayne's intentions were good and he was a true patriot. But like a lot of patriots, he didn't want to get personally involved. I was also a patriot, but after what the boy had told, I had no choice but to get involved. I opened my file cabinet drawer and poured a few fingers of vodka into a mug. I tossed it back and could still taste the dregs of that morning's coffee at the back of my throat. I was a class act.
My feet clopped to the heel-scarred linoleum floor. I reached into the middle drawer of my desk and pulled out my piece, a snub nosed .38 Colt. It wasn't much a of distance gun, but if I was close enough to smell a man's breath, I could do some serious damage. I was not a violent man and hoped that violence would not be necessary. I also knew that the enemy played pretty dirty sometimes and I needed to be prepared just in case. I planned to carry it regularly until this thing was resolved.
Someone told me long ago, back when I was training for my government job, that the best way to find out if someone's dirty was to follow the money. That's what I intended to do. If Sheriff Boyd was not who appeared to be, someone was probably paying him something beyond his county salary. Most amateurs were not savvy enough to hide extra income.
It was hard to imagine the sheriff working in espionage in any capacity. But I also knew that very few spies — if any — fell into the James Bond category. Most were petty little men doing petty little jobs passing on seemingly harmless pieces of information just so they could make their boat payment or buy braces for their kids. But if the enemy put enough of these meaningless tidbits together, they just might come up with something useful. Both sides did it, and both sides knew that both sides did it. It was just the way of the world.
My first stop was the Morris Mercantile Bank and Trust. It was a short trip since my office was on the second floor of the bank building. The rent was cheap because I'd agreed to act as a deterrent to bank robberies… but only if I happened to be there when it went down. I tried to be gone as much as possible.
Generally speaking, bankers are a suspicious lot. Often the officious little clerks who work behind the glass seem to begrudge you information even about your own account. But I had a secret… or rather Mrs. Betty Jean Stapleton had a secret. I waited behind the town jeweler as he made a deposit.