The Three Dollar Phoenix by Walt Sautter (microsoft ebook reader .TXT) 📕

noticed Charlie looking intently in his direction, from his distant vantage point. Each time, he immediately resumed his skyward pose as soon as he saw Ed look towards him.
Suddenly, the intermittent cadence of the counter was interrupted by a burst of static. As he walked further, the bursts became ever louder and more frequent. Soon, the device shrieked with an incessant chatter of crackling and popping.
Ed eyed the meter as it rose higher and higher to the upper ranges of the scale. He walked back and forth over the area, carefully watching the needle as he moved, stopping periodically to record its readings. Several times, he reached down and scooped some soil into one of the small plastic bags. He worked in a robot-like trance, overwhelmed by the realization of his discovery.
His examination completed, he walked back to Charlie, who remained semi reclined, head back and eyes closed continuing to appear uninterested.
He lowered an adjacent seat and slumped into it.
Charlie struggled upright.
“Well, what did you find?” he asked, unable to effectively conceal the intense curiosity in his voice.
“Man, this is hard to believe” replied Ed in a stammer.
“What?” snapped Charlie.
“This place is hotter than hell.”
“The god damn needle was about jumping off this thing!” he added in a stunned monotone as he slapped the instrument soundly.
“That means - Radiation - Right?”
“From what?” queried Charlie.
“The ground. The ground’s loaded.”
They both sat there in silence for several minutes as the reality of the situation penetrated. Ed had prepared himself for this but suspicion and truth don’t bear the same intensity. He was finding that out now. It hit him like a solid blow to the midsection, momentarily paralyzing him, both physically and psychologically. As for Charlie, he was stunned mute by the utter magnitude of Ed’s disclosure. Finally, he gained the composure to speak.
“What the hell does this mean?”
“I don’ t know for sure but I’ve got. an idea” began Ed.
“The whole thing’s a land fill. When I was a kid. this was all a giant dump. You could dump anything you wanted here. I remember coming down here with my Uncle Carl. He ran a furniture moving business and a lot of times he had left over storage cartons or old cardboard or wrapping papers. He’d dump them here.”
“He always brought me along to help him pull all the shit out of the truck. There was a little shack at the end of this long dirt road and a guy would come out and Uncle Carl would give him three bucks and that was it. We’d go dump the stuff. The guy never looked in the truck. Nobody ever checked anything. All he wanted was three bucks.”
“You could have dumped your grandmother’s body here. Nobody cared. And my uncle, he wasn’t the only one dumping. I remember not being able to see out of the windows of the truck because of the dust in the air when all the trucks where going in and out of here. There were plenty of others.”
Ed paused and looked out over the stadium.
“I’ve read about missing nuclear wastes. They claim a lot of it was lost in the fifties and sixties. Organized crime was supposed to be involved in dumping it illegally. Maybe some of it has leached to the surface after all those years?”
He paused again.
“I wonder if we just found some of it?” he added.
“How in God’s name did you ever think of this?” asked Charlie.
“What made you come down here with this thing in the first place?” he said pointing to the Geiger Counter.
“You did.”
“Me? I don’t know shit about nuclear waste. All I know is football” Charlie protested.
“When you took me to see your friend, Al Druse, the groundskeeper here, that’s when it all started. You started it.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“When we first went to see him at St. Anne’s, something didn’t seem right to me. I’ve seen a lot of sick and dying people in my day and this time things just didn’t add up.”
“I couldn’t put my finger on it right away but then I realized what it was. He looked like a guy getting radiation treatments and yet he didn’t have cancer. I guess the hair loss was one of the first things I noticed but there were others too.”
“That made me wonder. Wonder a lot. Why would he look like that? I couldn’t figure it out.
After Al died, I went to his house to give his wife my condolences. I had taken her to see him in the hospital several times and I got to know her pretty well, so I thought it was the right thing to do.
When I was there, she happened to show me some old pictures of Al that she had. Pictures of Al and the guys he worked with at the stadium. I noticed that a lot of them were faded. Washed out looking.
Did you ever see a radiation dose badge? The kind workers in nuclear plants wear?”
“No” replied Charlie.
“All it is, is a piece of photographic film covered with paper. When the radiation hits it, the film gets exposed through the paper. The more exposure, the greater the dose of radioactivity you’ve received” Ed explained.
“So you figured that the film in the camera was like the badge” interjected Charlie.
“Well, it seemed logical and when I put it together with Al’s appearance, it all fit.”
“The whole idea was so far out though. I really had a hard time believing it myself but if there was a better explanation, I couldn’t think of it.”
“How come Al got sick and nobody else did?” asked Charlie.
“He must have had a lot more exposure. Besides some people are just naturally more effected than others. He might have been one of them.”
“He worked here longer than anybody else on the crew” said Charlie.
Then he thought for a minute.
“He must have been here since the place opened.
Al and Pete did most of the field work. They kinda specialized in taking care of the grass and making sure it was always just right. They worked on it a pretty good part of the year. They did other jobs too, but that was their main job” added Charlie.
“That sure would give them a high exposure” affirmed Ed.
“Far out or not, I guess you were right” said Charlie with a sigh.
“But, what I can’t figure out is why all the rough stuff with me started right away?” continued Ed.
“I mean like wrecking the clinic and the drug plant?”
“If that wouldn’t have happened, I probably wouldn’t have given the whole thing that much thought. I probably would have forgotten about it but after all that, I knew I was involved in something whether I wanted to be or not.”
“Whoever did it must have thought you showed too much interest and it must have scared them. They probably figured a little muscle would turn you off fast” answered Charlie.
“Preventive medicine, so to speak.”
“I wish they would have been right” sighed Ed.
“I still can’t quite figure who’s behind all the heavy action that’s being laid on me, though. And what’s this guy House got to do with it. Where does he tie in?”
The conversation paused for a moment.
“What are you going to do now?”
“I’m not sure” Ed replied solemnly.

Chapter XVIII

The elevator climbed slowly to the fifth floor. Ed thoughts spun around, over and over. He was sure now that Druse’s death had been coldly orchestrated, to conceal the true nature of his illness.
His treatment at Caramore, a hospital a hundred miles away and the vague, noncommittal diagnosis offered by House all pointed to it clearly. The death certificate, signed by the phantom Doctor Ainsworth made it all the more convincing. Finally, the subsequent attacks on his own life confirmed the veracity of his suspicions.
Al had been the unknowing victim of an intricate cover-up and his wife, Angie had been purposefully and cleverly manipulated into the role of a tacit accomplice by her unwitting cooperation with House. In spite of his certainty, he was unable to decide on the actual perpetrator. It was obvious that the scheme emanated from high places. His treatment by the police and his attempted murder both made that clear, but exactly who was responsible eluded him.
He rubbed the toes of his shoes against the backs of his pant legs, one at a time, straightened his tie and ran his fingers back through his hair, as the elevator came to a stop. The door opened and he walked to the double doors at the end of the hallway marked Herald-News Publishing.
“I’m here to see Mr. Charles, he announced to the receptionist.
“He’s expecting me. I spoke with him this morning.”
After a brief phone call she replied, “He’ll be right with you in a minute.”
Ed sat, fidgeting nervously and pretended to read a magazine as he waited. Within minutes, the door at the far side of the room opened and a short, broad, middle aged man emerged. He wore a wrinkled white shirt with a loosened tie dangling about his thick neck. His baggy pants almost completely covered his shoes, so that only the pointy tips peeked out like turtle heads, protruding from their shells. A thin ring of dark brown hair encircled his shiny, bald head.
“Mr. Bennett?” he rumbled in a low tone as he puffed on the short cigarette stub hanging from the left side of his mouth.
“You’re here to see me?
I’m Bill Charles.”
Ed rose, introduced himself and followed Charles to his small, cluttered office.
“What can I do for you?” he questioned as he fell into the old, wooden chair situated behind his desk.
After an initial hesitation, Ed began his long, adventurous story. Charles listened keenly, stopping him occasionally with probing questions or leading statements, in the manner of a gruff, cross-examining attorney.
Frequently, he jotted down a word or two on the long, yellow pad that was lying in front of him. The rest of the time, he spent rolling his pencil between his short, stubby fingers, displaying little emotion as Ed’s tale unfolded.
“So you’re telling me that if I go down to that stadium with a Geiger Counter, I’m gonna think I’m at Three Mile Island? And the whole thing’s being covered up by somebody that wants it all kept quiet, at any cost but you don’t know who that is?” summarized Charles succinctly, when Ed had finished.
“That’s about it.
That and the fact that one guy’s dead already as a result.”
Charles sat silently and continued to twiddle his pencil. Then, he stopped and looked up at Ed.
“Mike tells me you’re on the level. You’re not crazy or a bullshiter.”
“Everything you told me is probably true but I’ve got to do some checking on my own. I can’t just go and print a story like this without some confirmation. I’m sure you understand that.
Besides, I’ve got to talk to the boss before I do anything. This isn’t exactly a ‘local gas station robbed’ kinda story. You know what I mean” said Charles, looking him straight in the eye as if to detect any faint hint of waiver.
“Give me a