The Secret of Recapture Creek

The Secret of Recapture Creek

By Darrell Egbert

SMASHWORDS EDITION

Publisher’s Place

Copyright 2011 Darrell Egbert

Cover Art by Wallace Brazzeal

This digital edition May 2011 © Publisher’s Place

Smashwords Edition

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Introduction

The Secret of Recapture Creek is Darrell Egbert's fifth novel. In his usual style, it is absorbing and contains twists and unexpected turns that defy prediction. As usual Darrell has a prodigious command of the locale of his stories. His grasp of detail regarding the landscape and its history is phenomenal. I have found all his tales to be page-turners. In a way there is more than just the unexpected mystery and intrigue that always awaits innocently on the next page or the page after that. There is also the hint that some of this just has to be true and that Darrell knows something that neither we the reader, nor anyone else knows.

I come from Southern Colorado and am familiar with some of the landscape that is the setting of this mystery. His knowledge of the area far exceeds even the most devoted of us natives. The theme of this story revolves around gold, Spanish gold – maybe! Are there rustlers on the loose, maybe ghosts. Who knows?

It is a must read and when the reader has finished this one they will be looking to the other three, The Escape of Edward St Ives, Zachary’s Gold, and The Ravensbruck Legacy. Common themes run through Egbert’s tales, though each story is entirely fresh and unique, Aviation and Money. Egbert knows how mines are excavated, how aircraft are flown and navigated, how a person can love another unreservedly, how evil actually looks face to face, how the secret parts of ours and other governments operate. Darrell as a retired Air Force Lt. Col. seems to know more than he should. Darrell writes rapidly. I can hardly wait for his next effort.

John M Hood, Jr. PhD

Hood held the position of Adjunct Professor of Astronomy at San Diego State University; President of the Board of the Friends of the SDSU Library; held a senior research position in Optics in the Navy Laboratory System; taught Physics and Natural Science; and has authored a novel, a novelette, and several short stories. His most recent, Dark Matter, has recently been published. He received advanced degrees in Physics from the University of Colorado, Imperial College London, and Reading University, England.

The Secret of Recapture Creek, like Darrell Egbert’s other novels, is a ripping good tale with plenty of adventure. Jim Fields is an engaging protagonist, very human and fallible yet possessed of real courage when the going gets rough. There are plenty of turns and twists in the plot, which kept me guessing right up to the finish. Egbert has a lively interest in the way things work, and his technical expertise in many areas adds to the credibility of his characters. I recommend a trip to Recapture Creek – you never know what you might find.

Marilyn Green Faulkner, B.A., M.A.

Faulkner likes to read and talk about books. She holds a B.A in Humanities and an M.A. in Literature and lives in Rancho Santa Fe, California with her husband Craig. Together they founded Emerald Publications, a leading provider of marketing literature to the financial industry. She is also founder of Meridian Magazine’s Best books Club and editor of a new literary website, jade Falcon Press. The Best Books club includes over eight hundred members who read classic literature together and discuss the books via the Internet. Her recent writings have been published in Ensign Magazine.

CHAPTER 1

FIVE-CARD STUD IS NOT MY GAME. And neither is draw when you come right down to it. But I often find myself involved with one or the other. And when I do I usually lose my money faster at draw than I do at stud. Either way, I eventually tap out, then I’m forced to take any job I can find, because I don’t have a trade or anything like one. Washing dishes is about all that’s readily available. I have washed a few. I don’t like it, though, and I don’t stay with it any longer than it takes me to put together another stake – and then the cycle starts all over again.

Maybe I grew up with the wrong role models? I don’t know. Mine were never captains of industry, or professors, or anybody of the sort. I always looked up to the likes of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. And of course, I would never have thrown rocks at F. Scott Fitzgerald, either.

It was a big mistake trusting most of my G I Bill money to a school promising to teach me to write. All they did was teach me a little grammar, after which I spent the next two years trying to write another of the great American novels.

It was about this time that I found myself talking to an endless number of bartenders in an endless number of cities, and they all seemed to be located a million miles from nowhere.

The trouble with writing, most people don’t want to read your stuff. Actually, most people won’t. And there are even fewer publishers who will. Non-readers include your friends and some relatives, too, believe me. An insult you say? It’s much more than that when you think about it.

The truth is most people are illiterate. I suppose they can read, all right. But they don’t. Reading for them is hard work. Then there’s the group who claims they don’t read fiction. They go to the movies and they watch a lot of television. I wonder if they realize where the stories come from. But as I was saying, when it comes to reading much of anything, they just don’t. And isn’t that the same as not being able to read. If you don’t, isn’t it the same as you can’t?

The whooshing sound of the air brakes partially awakened me. Then the Trailways bus driver finished the job by yelling out that we were going to be at the station in Lawrence in ten minutes. I didn’t want to get off there.

Not this time, anyway.

Bus stations always seem to be in the seediest parts of town. But it’s where I always get off. I usually check my gear in a locker and then I cross the street. And before I’ve walked very far I find a cool bar or a pool hall. The next thing I do is order a beer and then strike up a conversation with the bartender. It always happens this way. I suppose it’s why so many of the cities and towns around the country look so much alike to me. Of course I always give the bartender a healthy tip if I want the answer I’m looking for, like does he know where I can find some action. After we turn to the same page and he understands I’m talking about gambling and not that other thing, we’re in business. But even as I ask, I’m hoping there isn’t one. But whether the town is large or small there always seems to be a game close by.

This time I break the pattern. I asked him to let me off before the station and I catch a taxi. The cab takes me to an inexpensive rooming house, although this go around I’m fat, and I can afford to hole up about any place I fancy. But I’m mostly used to cheap rooming houses. And flush or not it’s where I end up from force of habit.

I come from the west. But I’ve spent most of my life since I was discharged from the Army Air Corps in the cultured east. If you believe there is much culture there, you’ll believe most anything. Anyway, the places I hung out were far and away from any of that.

Yeah, the Air Corps. I’m a gambler not a sadist. That’s why I enlisted in this branch of the Army, which morphed into the Air Force a couple a years after the War was over. One or two overnight hikes with a field pack in the Boy Scouts cured me of any ideas I might have had about joining the ground troops.

Did I tell you I was a pilot? No, not yet? Well, I was, although I never fired a gun in anger. I tell you about the Army because I want to discuss this business of gambling. Also, none of the story I’m about to tell you could have happened if I had been, say, in the Infantry or the Navy. You see that’s where I learned to gamble, sitting on a footlocker playing black jack and five-card draw. I wasn’t much better at draw then than I am today. And I was always broke in those days, too. But the important thing is that’s where I met a guy named Frank Foster.

I don’t like the east particularly. But it’s where I’ve been for the past several years, in New York mostly. I don’t drive anymore, because I don’t have a car. That’s one of New York’s saving graces; you can get around without a car. Can you see me in Los Angeles without a car? The next thing you’re going to ask me is how come I don’t have one? Well, for one thing, in New York they’re an expensive liability. Then, too, whenever I got enough money saved to buy one, I always managed to blow it in a card game. That’s also why I don’t have a girl friend or a wife or a home or much of anything else, either. I have a mistress though, and she is very expensive. Her name is gambling. And when I win big, once in a while, she is a delight and a comfort like nothing else in the world. No woman can compare with her then. But the rest of the time she is a chore.

She’s a millstone around my neck, is what she is. She is even worse than that; she is the worst kind of a nightmare. A nightmare you say? Isn’t that a little strong? But I’ll bet if you had been with me a few nights ago you wouldn’t have thought so.

I was on the subway headed toward the Lower East Side. There was a high stakes game laid on, and being known pretty much as a consistent loser, I was invited by a local wise guy, who was banking the game, to sit in. I had a couple of blocks to walk after I got off the train. The address I had been given was even more rundown than where I lived. The places down there are all walk-up rooming houses – you know where they leave the garbage cans out in the streets most of the time. And there are hulks of cars parked around, a strong testament for the inadvisability of parking and leaving it unattended. You come out after a couple of hours, and the thing is stripped and not worth the expense of hauling it away, which is another reason for not owning one.

I walked up the steps and into a hall. Graffiti littered what was left of the peeling plaster on the walls. There was a strong stench of urine, which is not unusual in places like this. The staircase was rickety and falling apart, and the paint had long worn off. And the banister was loose; worse yet, if a drunk came along some dark night he might take a header and maybe tear it right off the wall.

I knocked on the door of a number on the second floor, which I had fished from my pocket. The room reeked of stale cigarette smoke and it was hot. Even before I sat down, I began to wonder what I was really doing there. But it was action, big time action, and like any other kind of addict, I was helpless to walk away.

Four guys were sitting at a round table waiting for me to show. There was another one I guessed was the banker. I also suspected he was carrying and, unfortunately, it would turn out I was right.

I had a gut feeling about this, and the feeling was all bad. And addicted or not, I should have just turned around and walked away. The room and the whole scene smacked of Dashiell Hammitt. It resembled a scene from the worst film noir you ever saw. There was even a cheap shaded bulb hanging about two feet above the table, and somebody had removed a light blanket from the bed to make it easier to handle the cards. Four guys sitting with hats on and cigarettes dangling from their lips completed the set. The whole thing looked a little staged. I wondered whether some screenwriter, bent on copying Chandler and Hammett, was somehow involved.

They all looked to me to be professionals. Some of them might be pretty good, too, by the looks of their silk ties and expensive suits. The game of course was dealer’s choice. When it came my turn, I was going to opt for stud. Maybe that way I would have some kind of a chance. But maybe in this company I was being optimistic.

The usual procedure when you walk into a game this size is to declare you have no piece. You do this before the guy who is running the game pats you down. If he chooses to do so, and you do have one, then things can get dicey very quickly.

This game is table stakes, and it takes a minimum of five thousand to get in. It’s high, because nobody wants to sit in with a low chip player who just might get lucky before he taps out.

If you’re wondering why we’re playing in a dive like this, it might be explained by telling you that gambling is illegal. And unless the wise guy is paying off, there’s always a danger of it being raided. Getting busted is not as big a problem as the cops are themselves. They’ll always find a way to keep the money. And speaking of money, the banker carries it around in a gym bag he keeps close by his side. And the size of the stakes gives you an idea of how much he has. My guess is about twenty or thirty grand. And that should also explain why he has a piece. We hadn’t played more than a dozen hands when the expensive coats came off and the silk ties were loosened. There was no air-conditioning, and I was beginning to sweat. Not only because it was hot, as I just said, but I had stayed in for three or four pretty good hands, and already I was down several weeks’ wages.

This one guy across from me, whom I noticed was kind of cozy with the banker, had won two of the last three large pots. He was not letting his chips accumulate into large obscene piles, though. He had scooped them up and given them to the banker. But the banker kept the money. He didn’t pay him off, and that meant one thing to me – the banker and the winner were partners. I won a few small pots over the next two hours. But the guy next to me, whom I suspected was a professional for sure, was losing consistently like I was, and he was getting angry.

Then all of a sudden it happened. The word nobody ever wants to hear spoken in a poker game was actually said. The guy next to me accused the winner guy of cheating. That’s right, cheating. No if ands or buts about it, he called him a cheater. And before winner could say a word, this guy also yelled out something about him dealing seconds. That’s what I remember hearing, anyway.

I didn’t know what to think, or more importantly, what to do. Then I saw him pull a switchblade from under his pants leg. And while we all sat there stunned, he lunged at the cheater. The table overturned and the guy who was cheating got the blade right in the gut. But before he could also stab the banker, he was shot. The banker seemed to be shooting at random. He shot the guy on the other side of me, who was trying to get out the door, before the guy next to him hit him in the head with a chair.

When I first saw things were out of control, I dove to the floor. Did you ever see anybody get shot in a movie that was on the floor when a gunfight started? Moreover, have you ever seen a shooting outside of a movie? I’ll bet if you have you have never forgotten it, because it’s the most violent and gross thing you can possibly imagine. For what it's worth, it’s about as unlike the movies as anything you ever saw. Nothing in the world will prepare you for the sight, and there are no words taught in any writing school, either, that will convey the feeling of revulsion you experience.

Right now you want to ask me how many other shootings I’ve seen? Well, I confess I haven’t seen many. But I did see one when I was a young man just out of high school. You only have to see one to become an expert on the subject of how long the blood and the image of the dead remains in your head. The answer is forever. It remains with you for the rest of your life.

I believe it was Gertrude Stein who said, The dead are so dead when they’re dead. Well, let me tell you something, the gunshot are so shot when they're shot. The blood not withstanding, it’s the violence that goes along with it for which you’re not prepared. I have seen a few killed people. But shot and killed is a whole different story I can assure you.

As I said, I was just out of high school. I was working at a construction site out in the desert west of Salt Lake City. We were building a bomb storage depot, which is still in use today. Anyway, it was on a Monday morning just after dawn. I was riding to work with some other men when it happened. Just as we came around a bend on the other side of the lake, we saw a parked flat bed-truck with the name of a local transfer company painted on the door. There was a woman sitting inside. She had her head bent over, and she was sobbing to beat the band. And well she should have been, because two guys who were with her were running for their lives down the middle of the highway. And another guy with a pistol was shooting at them. As we came on the scene, he killed the one closest to him. And then he began shooting at the other one running several yards away. One or more of the slugs hit him, too. And as he staggered in front of us, a car coming the other way struck him.

This construction job was a big wartime production. The Depression was still going on and people from all over the country had come out there to get work. The driver of our vehicle had come from somewhere in the east. He was a worldly fellow who stopped long enough to look out the window and pronounce them both dead. He did this after he saw the badge and the uniform of the shooter, who was now just standing there in shock.

Our driver rolled up the window and told us all to calm down. He said it was none of our business. The next morning the paper carried the story. What had happened was the three of them were stepping out. That’s what they called it in those days. The recently deceased were both drivers for this transfer company and were probably pretty tough guys. The one who shot them both had been hired to guard a wooden water pipeline that carried water to an ore smelter a few miles down the road. The pipe ran parallel with the highway and was located far enough away so it couldn’t be easily seen from where they were parked. The guard had surprised them. He ordered them to move along, which they figured he had no right to do. They had been drinking, and when words were exchanged, the two of them got out of the truck to confront the guard. But their big mistake was in not realizing he was a guard and that he carried a pistol. A fight started and the guard got himself roughed up a bit. That’s when he got mad and pulled his pistol. This was one of those things that started and then got quickly out of hand.

He pleaded self-defense. There were no grounds for any such thing, if you ask me. They were both running away when he started shooting. But there was a war on, and the smelter had been designated essential to the War Effort. You have to take into consideration that he had been hired to do a job. And you could not very well put him in jail for doing his job. So the law looked the other way and nothing more was ever said. But I guess he paid for it dearly. His younger brother said he did, anyway. His brother told the press years later how he remembered it all his life. He never forgot it, he said. I certainly didn’t, that’s for sure.

I never went to the airport after I left the rooming house. That’s exactly what the wise guy would have expected me to do. No, I went to the bus depot as quickly as I could. I didn’t even go back to my room. I didn’t have much of anything worth keeping, anyway. I was scared to death I might be accused of belting his banker. I didn’t, but what I did do, which was much worse, I ran off with all his money. So not only was the Mafia looking for me, but so were the other players; those who got out of the game with their lives were, anyway. And so were the police, because I was alive and missing. And somebody in the game was surely going to blame me for the whole thing, because I had taken everybody’s money.

Now, if any of this were going to be made into a movie, this would be the place for the big car chase. They would chase me through the city and after a while I would get away. And then while they were watching the railroad station and the airport, I would slip away quietly on a bus. There was no car chase. But that doesn’t mean they’re not looking for me, because they are.

When I left New York it was with the intention of going home. Maybe not home exactly but west, somewhere like California. I had one of those vague, spur of the moment thoughts about trying to get my latest novel published, or maybe made into a screenplay. Deep down I knew the idea bordered on preposterous. But I had to have some reason for going there and that seemed as good as any.

I never wanted to admit I was a compulsive gambler. At the instant I saw those people killed, though, I came to grips with a lot of things. I realized for the hundredth time that I really was a loser. But this time it was different. I vowed on the spot there would be no more rationalizing, not after I looked into those dead faces. There would be no more masquerading; and the dodge I had been using for years to impress people, the one about being a novelist with a work on the verge of being published, was no longer going to get it, either.