Poisoned Soil: A Supernatural Thriller Page 15

  Jesus! What the hell does he want? Blake thought about pulling over at a gas station, a tourist stop...any place. Instead he continued, concentrating on the road. He took one hand off the wheel, wiped the sweat from his palm on his pants, and then repeated with the other. Blake glanced down at his pants to see the momentary stain left by the sweat and looked back in the mirror. There was nothing there. No sheriff, no cars.

  What the—

  Blake couldn’t see where anyone had gone. The rapid curves and hills offered no more than a view of a hundred yards or so at many points without the fog. In the fog Blake was lost, alone. He just wanted out, to see that he was safe. He wanted Angelica, to be by her side. He admonished himself again for letting his life come to this. That’s it...I’ve had it! Blake pounded the wheel furiously. I’m telling Nick that it’s over. I’m done with all this! This Sunday, I’m going to church with Angelica and getting some peace back in my life.

  As he crested the last hill of Tallulah Falls, Blake accelerated out of the fog as 441 straightened. He drove the speed limit straight to Athens.

  ***

  Vans and other vehicles crowded the parking lot of The Federal when Blake arrived at 11:02 a.m. Far more than usual, but then again this wasn’t a normal Friday morning for Nick Vegas. This was the day before his opening series of the 50-Forks dinners that would be held simultaneously the following day in ten cities. Nick would be the host chef in Athens at a private residence, since that was where the Food Channel camera crew would be. The dinner would be the first installment of a new Food Channel series called Underground Chefs and would air weeks later.

  Blake backed his truck up to the kitchen entrance and walked inside. He knew his way around The Federal’s kitchen but always felt uncomfortable there. He passed the pastry prep area where dough was being rolled out and bread was being made, and continued walking into a sea of stainless steel. An orchestra of cooks...chefs! Chefs, sous chefs, assistants, line cooks, servers, and others without titles each attended to a task under the occasional direction of the conductor, the head chef. Pork bellies were being cured, fresh picked arugula was being sampled and inspected.

  A local cheese maker had just come in with her assortment of cheeses for the Saturday dinner and the ensemble gathered for a team tasting. Yellow paste oozed from the white mold, raw-milk Camembert when the sous chef sliced into them, each cast member oohing and ahhing at the flavor, using descriptive phrases like “I can really taste the farm” and “it has the slightest essence of chocolate and lemongrass.” The cheese maker, chasing fame in her own right, Blake reckoned, explained it was due to her farm’s unique terroir. The chefs all nodded knowingly, as did the servers who would no doubt pass on that vague expression to diners so that they could feel better about parting with so much of their hard-earned money. Or inherited money, perhaps. Blake snorted to himself and continued walking. He saw two young busboys that weren’t too busy and asked them for help. He watched them hoist several large coolers from the back of his truck and pack the contents into the walk-in coolers before returning the collection of coolers to Blake’s truck. With the delivery unloaded, Blake strolled through the kitchen he knew so well to look for Nick.

  “Can you tell me where Nick is?” Blake asked one of the sous chefs.

  “Last I saw he was sitting at the bar.”

  Blake walked through the double doors and into the rear of the dining room. Past the plastic palm tree, he could see someone sitting at the bar talking on his phone. It was Nick. Blake walked around the perimeter of the room to approach. Nick saw Blake approaching. He buried his smile and ended the call.

  “Blake,” Nick said, looking at his Rolex. “What’s up?”

  Clearly, Nick had either no time or no interest for small talk, for an unscheduled visit.

  “I need to talk to you for a minute,” Blake said.

  “Look, it’s a bad time—”

  “It won’t take long,” Blake interrupted.

  Nick stood and crossed his arms in front of him.

  “What is it?”

  Blake drew a deep breath and prepared to go down the list he had practiced on the ride down the way a pilot might check items off a pre-flight checklist.

  “I just dropped off your centerpiece for tomorrow night’s dinner,” Blake began. “I delivered the cured hams you needed on Wednesday and FedExed the others to the other nine restaurants on the same day.”

  “Yes, I know,” Nick said. “I’ve spoken to the chefs.”

  Blake took another breath. “Nick...” Blake paused. What do I want to say? What am I trying to say?

  “Blake, let’s talk some other time. I have a ton to do before tomorrow.”

  “No!” Blake said, surprising both himself and Nick with his assertion of authority. “I mean...Nick, I’m done. Finished. I need to deliver everything to you as soon as I can. Everything. I’m done with all this.”

  Nick surveyed Blake, trying to detect what might be the problem so that he could choose the best response from his arsenal. He cast a line into the water. “What’s wrong, Blake?”

  “I’m just done, Nick. I can’t do it anymore. My own wife doesn’t even know what I’m doing!”

  Nick saw his opportunity to take control and began to assert himself. “And why is that, Blake?”

  “BECAUSE, Nick,” Blake began and then quieted his voice. “You know why. It’s illegal. Everything I’m doing up there. The animals weren’t taken legally and the meat you had me cure for you hasn’t been inspected. And, it’s not even my land! You know that! I didn’t want Angelica to have anything to do with that!”

  As he stopped talking Blake realized he had blurted all of that naïvely, as if talking to himself alone in the car, something that had become habit. Nick said nothing. He kept his arms crossed and stared Blake down. Blake dropped his eyes and continued.

  “It’s over. Half of the hams are ready. I’m sure the others are good to go too,” Blake said, “since they’ve been curing for a little over a year now.”

  “That’s no good, Blake. They have to go through that second cool autumn and winter to fully develop, that’s crucial. I’ll take the hams when they are two years old, just as we agreed,” Nick said. “And not a moment before.”

  Blake stood tall and prepared to call Nick’s bluff. “Fine. Like I said Nick, I’m done. Take them now or...I’ll offer them to someone else.”

  Blake hadn’t meant for the demand to sound as threatening as it did, but it was too late now. Nick grinned slightly, slyly. He sat down on a barstool and appeared so relaxed, so completely at ease. He reached his arms forward, interlocked his fingers and cracked his knuckles as they pushed out toward Blake.

  “You know, Blake,” Nick began, “now that I listen to you describe what you’ve been doing, wouldn’t that be considered a violation of the Federal Meat Inspection Act? It’s just like that farmer in New York that got caught selling meat last year that wasn’t inspected, isn’t it?”

  “Nick, you know what we agreed to! I’m selling you live animals, not processed meat. You don’t need a permit or inspection to sell live animals. We agreed that I would cure the meat for you as a friendly service, but you bought the live animal and that’s not a violation,” Blake said, but not as confidently as he would have liked. The truth was he didn’t know how the laws would be interpreted, and didn’t want to find out.

  “Hmm...maybe you’re right, Blake. Except...I’m not sure the USDA would agree with you on that if they were to come in and ask us who we got the meat from. Oh sure, we’d probably tell them what you just said, but then again we as the restaurant wouldn’t have any culpability. The responsibility for knowing and following the law is on the one who sells the meat. That’s you, Blake. And that’s what happened to that farmer in New York who sold meat that wasn’t inspected. Let’s see he’s doing, what is it...eight years behind bars now, on top of the quarter million dollar fine they laid on him. Lost his house and his wife.”

  Blake listened an
d thought of how to respond to Nick’s thinly veiled threat, but Nick continued.

  “All I do is just write the check to you, Blake. Never checks larger than $5,000 at a time, just as you requested.”

  Blake clenched his jaw.

  “Of course, the authorities don’t come in and ask questions too often,” Nick said, “but you never know when someone may make an anonymous call and a health inspector will show up here or a USDA investigator will show up at your place. By the way, if the inspectors ever do visit you, where’d you get those pigs from anyway? I suspect they’d want to know about that too.”

  Nick knew full well where he got those pigs, but, as if it had never dawned on him before, Blake realized that Nick had nothing to do with it other than planting the seed to germinate in the fertile soil of Blake’s greedy mind. It was Blake who had found Savannah locals to trap the descendants of Spanish pigs for him for next to nothing. They were all too happy to make some money doing it.

  “Island’s overrun with them little black suckers,” they had said. Hunts were held on the island every year just to eradicate as many wild pigs as they could, most of the carcasses just lying there and going to waste. After they were captured, it was Blake himself who had hauled them to the mountains. It was Blake who had built the curing sheds. Nick had told him how, sure, but otherwise he had nothing to do with it. Most important though, Nick was right; the meat wasn’t inspected. Blake had talked to the USDA folks in Atlanta early on about getting licensed, but they said it had to be in a climate-controlled, stainless steel facility.

  “That is bullshit!” Nick had said at the time. “Look Blake, if you follow all the rules then you’re playing someone else’s game and not your own. You won’t accomplish anything that way.”

  “Look at this,” Nick had said, pointing to his gold watch. “This watch cost me thirty grand. I have four of them. Pocket change. You think I’ve achieved everything I have by doing what others told me to do? Friggin’ USDA! What the hell do they know about gourmet food? About tradition?”

  Blake recalled how intoxicated he was at the idea of Nick’s wealth. At the idea that he, Blake, could achieve...well, if not all of it, at least some of that wealth. In Blake’s eyes, Nick could do no wrong.

  “I want those hams to be from wild, black-hoofed pigs that range on acorns and are cured in the open mountain air. Just like we did it in Spain. None of these heavily salted country hams the USDA loves. I wouldn’t feed that garbage to my bulldog. Otherwise Blake, no deal.” Blake had hesitated for an instant, before Nick gave him his closing pitch. “But, if you do raise these for me,” Nick had said, “you’ll not only be richly rewarded, you’ll be a legend, Blake. It’ll be me and you together, doing something that no one else has done.”

  So Blake built the sheds and hid them in the woods the way the mountain moonshiners had done successfully during prohibition. Now, Nick was squeaky clean, Blake concluded as he stood there and thought it through, and Nick had no intention of letting him stop, of letting this be a one-time deal. Blake realized that he’d have to find another way out.

  Hell, I’ll just close up shop and not even tell Nick, Blake thought. Get rid of everything to the highest bidder. Ain’t a damn thing Nick can do then once I’ve shut it down. To hell with him!

  “You know,” Nick continued, “come to think of it I can’t remember if we ever asked for your tax identification number or your social security number to issue you a 1099. I’ll have to check with my accountant to find out for sure. What did we pay you last year, Blake? At least a hundred grand I’d say for the fresh meat, wouldn’t you?”

  Blake stared and listened, hating what he was hearing, hating how much Nick knew about him, how much he controlled him. Most of all, hating what he had been doing. Nick was right. Blake had not walked the straight and narrow. He was nowhere close to the center of the road. He had veered off, deep into the woods, and now found himself perched on the edge of a ravine with a strong wind at his back.

  “And I figure we’ll owe you, what, another twenty-five, thirty grand for the shipments and deliveries this week. Broken up into checks for five grand each per usual, right Blake?”

  Blake exhaled, looked at his feet.

  “I wouldn’t worry about anything, though,” Nick continued, “I know you just added all the money I paid you to your tax return as the IRS requires, and that you will again this year. Besides, the IRS would have noticed if you didn’t anyway, unless...well, unless you didn’t actually deposit the checks in a bank account, but just cashed them instead. Of course you wouldn’t have done that, and even if you did I suppose the only record would be the cleared checks that I have with your signature from when you cashed them.”

  Nick stopped talking and simply stared at Blake as his words hung in the air with the resonance of a jury’s verdict.

  Blake had driven to The Federal full of hope. Hope for a fresh start, hope to get back on the straight and narrow and renew his vows to Angelica. Hope for the simple life that he had once scoffed at and couldn’t wait to get away from. Now it was all he wanted. Nick had just sucked that hope right out of Blake.

  “Nick,” Blake whispered softly, “p-l-e-a-s-e!”

  Blake composed himself.

  “Please let me stop. Let me have my life back. Please Nick.”

  Nick smiled, partly to calm Blake, but mainly because he knew his tactics had succeeded. He liked controlling things, owning things. Now it was clear to him that he owned Blake. He placed his hand on Blake’s shoulder.

  “My friend, it will all be fine. And you’ll be handsomely rewarded, just as you wanted. Just deliver to me what you promised, when you promised. What we agreed to. We’re both men of our word, Blake. You do what’s right and I’ll do what’s right, my friend.”

  Blake knew he was not Nick’s friend. And he knew there was nothing that he could do. He turned and walked away from Nick without saying another word. He continued walking through the kitchen, out the delivery door and to his truck, utterly dejected. He couldn’t imagine how his life could get any worse.

  Chapter 18

  “Hold up, Tammy!” Ozzie called ahead to Tammy as she walked furiously beside the stream away from Angelica’s secret garden. He raced ahead to get in front of her, his wounds finally healed enough to allow him to run freely. Ozzie turned and stopped, staring at Tammy.

  “What’s wrong?” Ozzie asked.

  “Nothing. Just leave me alone. I wanna go back to Hal’s.” She moved to her right and lunged forward to pass Ozzie. Ozzie moved left and leaned into Tammy, blocking her momentum with great force. The impact angered Tammy.

  “Get out of my way, runt!”

  The hair on the back of Ozzie’s neck stood up. “Who are you calling a runt?” Ozzie demanded. “What is wrong with you?”

  Tammy lunged, this time right into Ozzie rather than around him. She wanted him to see her maturity, her determination. “I go where I want, when I want,” she exclaimed. “I’m free and I’m sure not gonna have you telling me where I can and can’t go!” She lunged into Ozzie with more force than before and hit him squarely in the chest, but despite being the one in motion, the impact knocked Tammy to the side. Ozzie barely budged. Instead he looked at her, puzzled, trying to figure out why his friend was so incensed. Tammy stepped back for a moment. She turned right and walked away from the stream, into the woods. The understory was thick, mostly a leafy patch of purple ferns and wild anise, but she liked the cool cover it provided. Ozzie followed her in and walked behind her for a few minutes with neither speaking.

  “Tammy, what’s wrong?” Ozzie was as much concerned as he was curious.

  Tammy stopped and sat down, crushing the leaves of the sweet anise plant. “I don’t know. Just something about that woman I didn’t like, that’s all.” Tammy said.

  “She seemed pretty friendly to me,” Ozzie replied. “I like the way she sings.”

  “Yeah, I noticed. Couldn’t keep your eyes off her!”

  “What’s t
hat supposed to mean?” Ozzie asked.

  Tammy didn’t know why she was so upset. She knew she had no reason to be. But she was flushed; her face was on fire. “I just don’t trust people in this neck of the woods,” she said.

  “What about Hal?”

  Tammy thought for a moment. “He’s all right,” Tammy said. “I guess. But I don’t need anyone else.”

  Ozzie said nothing, just stood and listened. Tammy lay on the ground looking up at Ozzie, at the trees swaying gently and freely above him, their leaves painted in October red, orange and gold. At the beautiful, impossibly blue sky. The movement of the trees inspired Tammy to move. She rose, allowing her body to rock back and forth to the motion of the treetops as she inhaled the intoxicating aroma of licorice from the crushed anise leaves. She looked at Ozzie and walked slowly in front of him. Tammy moved whisper-close to share the anise fragrance with him and nuzzle his neck.

  Ozzie watched Tammy and tried to stand quietly, but his heart began to pound loudly. A warm flush overcame him as she brushed close to him, his body tingling and burning from deep within, so much that it scared him. It was a burning sensation he had never felt before. He wanted to run, to move, to somehow get rid of that feeling, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  Tammy moved around him, leaning against Ozzie’s back as she did, her warm breath falling softly on his neck. She walked right before him, stood there and presented herself to him. Ozzie felt the strongest need to move, as if an earthquake would erupt from within if he didn’t. He stared at Tammy’s body, her eyes drawing him closer in an inevitable embrace. Ozzie stepped forward and dropped his head on her shoulder, his lips on Tammy’s neck. Tammy uttered a deep moan as they closed their eyes at the same time, surrendering themselves to nature’s will.

  ***

  Rose slipped the DVD into the player in Angelica’s living room and pressed play. Within seconds, Ariel entranced the girls as The Little Mermaid sealed them in an isolation bubble that was impenetrable to the kitchen conversation. Angelica poured coffee into Rose’s cup and poured herself a glass of lemongrass tea, into which she stirred some honey and two droppers of echinacea tincture. She sat next to Rose at the kitchen bar.