company. He thought of Superior as a decidedly Christian outfit. And black people? Well, they just made his clients uncomfortable.
The applause faded all at once when his employees, like a swarm of starlings, picked up some subtle cue from one another and quit. He began: “They are as fundamental as fire. Forget the plough, ships, the internal combustion engine, electricity, refrigeration, trains, planes, and automobiles. All the hallmarks of civilization cannot compare.”
A suspenseful pause. “Pipes! That’s what I’m talking about. We take them for granted but you couldn’t live the way you do without them. You’d have no water in your home. Without pipes you’d be living in your own shit—pardon me.” Nervous laughter. “Do you think we are healthy today because of modern medicine? Well, what would your health be without pipes to bring you potable water and carry away your waste? The wires for all those appliances you have that make life convenient and entertaining run through pipes. The fuel that runs your car runs through pipes. The heat that makes your office and home warm—pipes!
“So next time some granola-crunching, self-righteous know-it-all tells you you’re in the wrong business, that you’re just salesmen and managers, you tell them that you’re what keeps civilization civilized. Tell them you make and lay the keystone in the architecture of our modern world. Our economy without pipes would be like a human body with no arteries or veins. Dead! So, say I’m proud because my business is pipes!”
The audience went wild. The old man was an inspiration, all right. No wonder he’d built Superior Pipes into such a successful enterprise, they told one another. He acknowledged their hysterical applause with a brief salute and then turned and left the room. Smiling and nodding, he made his way through a gaggle of wannabe winners vying for his attention, spinning in his wake and babbling to themselves. He had no time for them. He experienced an annoying moment of guilt. He’d read in an airline magazine about CEOs who make themselves available to their employees. He shrugged off the feeling of guilt quickly. Winning, he told himself, is not about playing Mr. Nice.
Orin Bender left the Regency and climbed into the back seat of his company SUV, a silver monster big enough to house a small bar, a laptop station, and a flat screen television. He reached into his valise for a cell phone he only used on special projects. He speed-dialed a number and shut the divider between him and his driver so he could speak in privacy.
“Nole, is that you? Orin here. I have an assignment for you.”
Chapter 5
Elias Buchman was surprised to see Otis Dooley at his door. The two were friends long ago when they were boatmen for a river-guiding outfit in Utah. River rats. Three seasons a year for three years they took tourists on week-long adventures down the Green and Colorado. Then Otis applied to vocational school to get his plumber’s license and Elias left for graduate school in journalism. Otis had worked with his dad who was a plumber and figured he was already halfway there. And you could move anywhere and find work because plumbing was ubiquitous and could be counted on to rust, clog, and leak. Elias took the academic route because he hoped that if he could explain a crazy world to others, he might understand it himself.
Otis moved to Stony Mesa twenty years before Elias arrived. They hadn’t seen or heard from each other longer than that. Although they had renewed their friendship after Elias and his wife Grace retired to Stony Mesa, they were not close. Otis thought Elias had changed and was not so easy to be around, but he thought highly of Grace, who had retired from a career as a nurse to become a massage therapist. Grace laughed easily and Otis felt calm in her presence. She could teach yoga, ride a horse, and was a gourmet cook. She was lean and looked much younger than her years. Otis thought Elias was the luckiest dog on the planet. He was even a bit jealous. Otis had almost married twice after long courtships that ended when both women decided that although Otis was both likeable and good, they could do better. When asked why he was still alone in his middle age he just shrugged and said he wasn’t the marrying kind.
Elias didn’t drink. It wasn’t a moral thing but a health thing. The wine he once loved now split his head, even one glass of red. Beer could give him dizzy spells the next day. He’d never had much of a taste for hard liquor but in the last few years it made him feel like he was poisoned. It was hard to conduct a social relationship with his old river-running buddy Otis if drinking wasn’t your thing, because drinking was Otis’s thing. Nevertheless he thought highly of Otis and admired him for stepping up and being the mayor.
Elias noticed that the mayor had lost weight and hair. His pallor was anemic. Although not formally charged with murder, everyone knew he was in the crosshairs of the law. The people who knew him best couldn’t believe he would actually kill anyone. Otis may growl like a bear but they knew his soft-hearted side, too. He wasn’t violent, but still, who else hated Bo Hineyman more? Otis had a temper and he drank too much.
“Otis, how are you? You don’t look well.”
“Damn right, I’m a wreck. You know why. I need your help.”
“My help? Why me?”
“Because you were a private eye.”
“No I wasn’t, I was an investigative journalist.”
“Same thing.”
“No it isn’t. Private investigators hide their identity and sneak around. Investigative journalists state plainly who they are and then say publicly what they find. We don’t solve crimes, we expose them.”
Otis grew pale. “But you have those skills, man. I don’t have an alibi and everyone knows I had a motive. The only way I can get out of this for sure is to find the one who did it. Find the guy who killed Hineyman and I’m free. You gotta help me. I’m begging you.”
Elias Buchman had left his career as an investigative journalist five years earlier. He’d exposed polluters, cheaters, scammers, hypocrites, and a wide range of greedy businessmen and corrupt politicians. His friends and family wondered how he had the intestinal fortitude to keep uncovering the sleazy underbelly of the American economy scandal after scandal, year after year.
“It doesn’t bother me, really. I detach,” he would tell them. “I just do my job and have faith that in the end the truth prevails and the bad guys can’t hide forever.”
But in his last story, the one he didn’t complete, he learned that sometimes it’s hard to distinguish the good guys from the bad and the bad guys do get away and the truth is suppressed. He’d investigated the shooting deaths by police of homeless men. Not just homeless. There were many people who are temporarily homeless while trying desperately to land on their feet, but the people who had been killed were chronically homeless. They are the ones we point to, the ones who live on the streets, sleep in parks and alleys, spend their days reading in public libraries, and sometimes rant on sidewalks, piss in the court-house shrubs, and scream in the subway when visited by their inner demons. They’re the ones who cry with joy in fast food lines when angels appear above the condiment bar.
America, Buchman realized, had kicked the mentally ill out into the streets and then punished them for expressing the symptoms of untreated illness. Often, way too often, the ranters and screamers who didn’t or couldn’t respond to the police when confronted were coldly executed. In case after case, an order was given once and given again. If the raging didn’t stop, a cop would calmly and deliberately take aim to kill and then fire. These incidents had a cold and calculated aspect and they were becoming almost routine, like removing pests from a garden, bullets instead of bug spray.
There was no outrage. Internal police investigations routinely favored the cops over the
