Dave Ferman Author

CHAPTER 1
The Rest Of The Story
Continued

Parity in one venue has been known to open the gateway to parity in another. R.C. Sugarman, Junior, was nothing if not an ambitious young man. After many failed attempts, he was finally in the catbird seat and enjoying every moment of it. He knew that he was on his way to promotion and pay.

"Just how fast will that thing go, Amigo?" Uncle Bud asked, mimicking R.C.'s speech pattern and doggerel verse.

"How fast do you want it to go, Daddio? The new-found smugness in R.C.'s voice was clearly evident even through the crackly C.B. radio. Delighted, R.C. settled back in plush leather comfort, grinning like a drunken sailor on long-overdue shore leave. Had he been a puppy dog, he would have thrust his head out the driver's window and let his ears flap in the breezes.

Notice had been given: R.C. Sugarman, Junior, was no longer just a second-rate, wet-behind-the-ears disciple in that which he had already excelled. From that point onward, R.C. knew that he would be a major force to be reckoned with. Suddenly, the sky was the limit, and that was just for openers. After all, he knew that he had repeatedly been the critical element in the success they had enjoyed in an extremely dicey, often dangerous business. Not only that, R.C. assured himself, but he was the front man on the streets and in the party hardy bistros and upscale condos of Alpine and Gunnison. It was he, not Uncle Bud, who made all of the face-to-face contacts in this last transaction in Gunnison. Aside from a few setup phone calls and his admittedly reliable shotgun backup when the hairs occasionally got a bit short over a dicey deal gone askew, Uncle Bud had become, in R.C.'s estimation, little more than the mysterious, always anonymous bankroller.

However, Uncle Bud had always taken the lion's share of the profits. From the depths of his exponentially expanding ego, R.C. was convinced that he deserved a bigger slice of the corporate pie. He was also convinced that winning that high-altitude road race would send that message so loud and so clear that even a one-way old tightwad like Uncle Bud would clearly understand that R.C. Sugarman's star had finally arrived at its apogee.

"Eat my dust, if you must," R.C. transmitted exuberantly as he waved his left arm out his open window in a tight circle, then swung it forward as if pointing a saber for a cavalry charge. "Taylor Pass..."

"Blow it out yer ass," Uncle Bud interrupted, substituting his own doggerel for whatever shallow rhyme R.C. had intended to spout.

Deliberately holding back until they entered the next switchback, Uncle Bud experimented with his carburetion advantage and the lower gear ratios of his custom-made, off-road racing machine to surge forward again. Effortlessly, he closed the three-car-length gap to barely half a car length in less time than it takes to tell about it. Trying the same insidethe-curve cutoff maneuver as before, he met with the same results, exactly as he had expected.

"Aa-men! Try, try again," the C.B. blared gleefully as R.C. pumped his closed fist straight up and down in the "hurry up" signal that Uncle Bud had taught him months earlier as well as prior to their first business trip over the pass. When unable to talk to one another, military-style hand signals had proven to be a highly reliable backup after all else had failed.

Uncle Bud smiled. "Tricky," he admitted. "Very damned tricky!" he said as he settled-in close behind to keep the most intense pressure possible on the lead vehicle. "Yer mama didn't raise any fools, did she?" he transmitted. It was an almost too-obvious stroke, and certainly not a question. He had to keep R.C. committed to the unusually fast pace. So far, Uncle Bud believed that he was just about right on course for the ultimate last act of this well-rehearsed play. "Too bad there won't be any curtain call," he said quietly to himself.

Finally, Uncle Bud had the key data points as well as a far better feel for R.C.'s modus operandi with his latest plaything. These translated to more raw power than before, but less high winding torque on a new aluminum engine not yet fully broken in, and a bit less pizzazz that would limit four-wheel stability when picking his way through the tighter curves. "Hell for stout," Uncle Bud had admitted minutes earlier as they had transferred the spoils of their latest enterprise from R.C.'s Range Rover to Uncle Bud's Jeep near the top of Taylor Pass. "This limey locker box," Uncle Bud admitted, "damn well packs the gear." R.C. had literally beamed with pride for his latest, and by far his greatest purchase. Then Uncle Bud added with feigned concern: "But will she corner?"

R.C. could not wait to meet and beat what he had rightly perceived as the usually thinly veiled challenge. He had easily won the foot race to the impromptu starting line, and fully intended to drive away with the long-coveted bragging rights to their previously lopsided downhill competition. He believed that victory could very well change his life. That happy prospect beckoned from just beyond the not-so-distant finish line at the timberline.

In the fullness of time, the combination of man and new machine would undoubtedly become more comfortably meshed, and the vehicle's performance envelope would be gradually honed to its full potential. But that was somewhere down the pike, next week or maybe several weeks after that. But on this brisk fall evening, Uncle Bud was interested only in the immediate performance characteristics of the here and now.

Extraordinarily agile over rough terrain, Range Rovers have never been known for their superior cornering. However, the smooth-talking Range Rover salesman may have forgotten to mention that dirty little secret.

Nowhere on this stretch of tortured, untended road could equally matched drivers in even marginally comparable vehicles ever hope to pass one another, but both reveled in the competition: the mano-a-mano exhilaration of pushing the other to the upper limits of skills and equipment. Their elation was further compounded by the perverse thrill of the ever-present threat from various unprotected drop-offs and menacing rock formations lurking like a surrealistic, other-worldly landscape shrouded in the murky depths of the cotton-candy-like clouds just below them.

As always, their fierce competition eventually would boil down to a basic gut check. Who would chicken-out and back-off first? From that day forward, R.C. vowed that he would never again be satisfied with second place. In this fast-moving world of great returns from relatively small investments, the "hog's hind teat" was the natural feedbag of the financially challenged. That group of also-rans, he assured himself, no longer included R.C. Sugarman, Junior. "Not after today, no damned way," he vowed to himself in doggerel rhyme.

"You still back there, daddy bear?" R.C. chided his challenger, even though Uncle Bud was only a scant couple of feet behind his back bumper.

"Is a frog's ass watertight?" Uncle Bud answered in a flat, laconic monotone as if talking to an aircraft control tower.

"When I get back to town, I'll tell 'em that sooner or later, you'll be comin' on down."

In the heat of virtually synchronized gear shifting while nearly red-lining their high-revving engines, Uncle Bud's delayed response took added emphasis. "Like a great man once said: 'It ain't over 'til it's over, boy'."

"Boy!" R.C. exclaimed, but without keying his microphone. "I'll show that damned tight-wad sonova'bitch who'se a friggin' 'boy'."

Considering the altered equation, Uncle Bud had to admit to himself that R.C. was driving extremely well. A promising amateur sports-car jockey at the Continental Divide Raceway near Castle Rock just south of Denver, R.C. was an accomplished heel-and-toe virtuoso of the simultaneous downshift/brake/accelerate school of gearbox crunching. No one ever saw much red brake light when chasing R.C. Sugarman, Junior, through an "S" turn whether on the racetrack or a rugged back road above timberline. Furthermore, he was inordinately proud that he had always taken his foot off the brake pedal as soon as anyone, and a lot sooner than most gear heads when powering through sliding tight turns while relying primarily on gear ratios and engine back pressure to establish that fine line between winning impressively or seriously scuffing expensive auto body parts.

That which Uncle Bud lacked in formal road-racing experience, he gained back through his keen insights into human nature. He knew people. He had made it his business to evaluate, test, and understand before defeating his competition. He was good at that game, and he took pride in his long string of successes.

"Pretty darned good truckin', Amigo," Uncle Bud admitted, then stopped transmitting before adding: "But damned-sure not good enough, you sorry slop-jar sonova' bitch!"

Through several minor switchbacks amid serpentine clouds of trail dust, Uncle Bud was able to finesse his somewhat less substantial, but slightly more versatile vehicle to stay barely a split second behind R.C.'s lead. His heavy duty, yet all-purpose tire tread allowed him to follow R.C.'s radius tracking through each turn almost precisely, but with significantly less traction-robbing wheel drift. Satisfied, he finally knew for sure that his more responsive torque, better traction, and slightly lower center of gravity could power him just a little faster through most turns than the road-racing nutcase still holding onto the lead as his testosterone quotient spiraled upward and off the charts.

As they descended into the upper layer of bunched but still distinctly cotton ball-like clouds formed by hundreds of baby cumulous cloud cells floating eastward within a very narrow altitude band, their previously unlimited visibility was reduced to a few dozen yards at the worst case to occasional strobe-like peeks through the intermittent haze to the heavily forested valleys still far below.

As R.C. held off his hard-charging competitor at the next switchback, Uncle Bud momentarily glimpsed R.C.'s wild-eyed, exhilarated expression in the Range Rover's huge elephant-ear rearview mirror. Grinning ever so slightly despite tight-jawed, unblinking intensity, Uncle Bud was fairly confident that he finally had R.C. exactly where he wanted him, both tactivly and mentally. "Heads up," he transmitted as he once again accelerated through the swirling, damp mass of barely transparent fog as if attempting to pass on the inside. "Think fast," he yelled sharply as if to warn R.C. of an upcoming threat to his safety. By constantly toying with R.C.'s mind, Uncle Bud intentionally baited the younger man closer and closer to the ragged edge of already tattered nerves in a constantly re-tuned scheme to set him up for the planned finale.

Smoothly, but with clearly evident abandon, R.C. downshifted again, barely keeping his whining engine's revolutions below the tachometer red line as he setup engine and gearbox for the short straightaway he had yet to see through the thickening curtain of mists, although he knew from long experience that it was there. Laid down along the crest of an ancient terminal moraine from the last glacial age more than 10,000 years before, this comparatively civilized section of road would either make or break the ultimate outcome of his most-important competition ever. After repeated failures, R.C. finally had Uncle Bud right where he wanted him. One more familiar switchback and a long straightaway through the formations of occasionally dense clouds with no place to pass, and he was the winner in more ways than one might imagine.

The poster that had hung over R.C.'s stereo for several months had proven prophetic: "Every Dog Will Have His Day! You damn betcha'," he said aloud, but only to himself. Then he keyed the C.B. microphone and shouted his own counter-challenge: "C'mon, c'mon. Let's get it onnnn!"

"Don't let yer alligator mouth overload yer tadpole ass, ya' hear," Uncle Bud said. The usually flat, unemotional monotone of Uncle Bud's voice had a sharp, unusually sinister edge to it: an edge that passed unnoticed in the headlong race through the murky shadows and mists of the thickening cloud formations.

Carefully positioning himself to force R.C. to enter the center rather than the inside of the upcoming decreasing-radius turn, Uncle Bud subtly pushed the pace to yet a higher speed than R.C. would normally prefer for this dangerous switchback; particularly in such restricted visibility. Reaching down one gear lower than R.C. could hope for at high r.p.m., Uncle Bud took full advantage of his wider gearbox and engine ranges, as well as his superior tire traction that he had been testing and retesting for the past half-dozen tight curves. Seeing his opportunity unfold almost exactly as he had planned it in his mind, he gently eased against R.C.'s rear bumper with only a slight clicking kiss as his closing speed zeroed with R.C.'s, and then meshed smoothly as the younger man slightly reduced the drag of his engine's back-pressure. Satisfied with his positioning, tracking far more precisely from slightly inside the other's intended driving line through the unprotected switchback, Uncle Bud had R.C. precisely setup to lose.

"Tally ho," Uncle Bud yelled over the C.B. radio. That exuberant warning was meaningless without the slightest inkling of Uncle Bud's murderous intent.

The more-dense lower third of the next cumulous cloud cell could not have been situated any better if Uncle Bud had placed it there himself. With visibility once again less than 20 yards, their momentum pulled them ever closer to the outside of the curve. As if flying in tight formation, both vehicles slowed down in tandem just enough so that Uncle Bud could slam his wider-ranging gears down one more notch to pick up a sudden surge of added torque. Then, jamming his gas pedal hard against the floorboards, he accelerated his supercharged engine to almost its red-lined r.p.m. limit in a sudden, violent burst of power.

Almost casually, as if playing bumper tag as a hot-rodding teenager, Uncle Bud shoved R.C. Sugarman, Junior, and his shiny new play toy hurtling over the edge of the sheer drop-off into the murky mists of everlasting eternity. It was a done deal, done with skill and malice aforethought.

"Fly, you sorry sonova' bitch!" Uncle Bud bellowed over the C.B. radio. Impulsively, although he had his hands full as he fought to keep his fishtailing four-wheeler from breaking through the ragged edge to his own premature demise, he could not resist the urge to shift the microphone in his hand so that he could flip the doomed man his glove-encased middle finger with double thrusting finality. "Rhyme that, you big-mouthed sonova' bitch!"

Not realizing what was happening to him until too late, R.C. tried to slam on his brakes simultaneously as he desperately downshifted to the next lower gear. But the combination of his momentum and the relentless battering ram from behind gave him all the traction of a pig on ice. With all four wheels suddenly grabbing nothing but moisture-saturated air, white-knuckled fists frantically twisted the leather-wrapped steering wheel to the full left-hand stop as his right foot jammed with panic-stricken strength against the useless brake pedal, R.C. jerked his whole upper body nearly all the way around in his custom-made six-way adjustable leather seat to gape across the misty, widening chasm at his business partner, his benefactor, his murderer, who continued to thrust the one-finger indignity as R.C.'s airborne Range Rover slowly swapped ends, then began a looping nose-down rotation toward the crystal clear air below. Horror and disbelief ravaged his boyish face as unthinkable reality fully sunk in.

This could not be happening to him.

As Uncle Bud slowed to watch the mist-shrouded, rapidly fading silhouette of the hurtling Range Rover rotate through a lazy half-gainer as if in slow motion, an eerie, other-worldly shriek bellowed through his C.B.: "God... damn... you... to..." The Range Rover slammed upside down into a massive boulder several hundred yards down the mountain side, then cartwheeled crazily end-over-end into the dry creek bed far, far below. Over the howl of his downshifted engine and the chatter of chunky tires biting into loose gravel, Uncle Bud heard the "Whoommff" of the explosion announcing the termination of R.C.'s second bounce.

There would be no survivor, nor any evidence of foul play. No one could have seen anything in the thick cloudy fog and twilight encompassing darkness from the shadow of 14,265-foot Castle Peak to the west.

Emerging between puffy cloud cells within seconds after the explosive impact, Uncle Bud peered into his rear-view mirror at the last of the hellish fireball with its boiling blacker than black smoke column that shot upward through the tree line as if to mingle with the rising moon. Stunned, he felt a sickening lump swelling in the depths of his gut; and expanding rapidly until he had momentary difficulty sucking in enough air to fill his lungs. "My God!" he whispered. The enormity of R.C.'s single-minded compulsion to damn him to hell, especially with his very last breath before meeting his Maker, shook even a hardened cynic like Uncle Bud to the core of his being. Despite his meticulous planning, he was not prepared for that unearthly howl from the gates of Gahanna.

Had their situations been reversed, he knew without a shadow of a doubt, that he would have been screaming everlasting contrition until the final nanosecond of his life on God's green earth. But that heathen slop jar, that ungodly scum bucket, even at the last moment of his worthless existence... "Good riddance to bad rubbish," he quoted a long-unforgotten adage from his dear old mother; an adage that was suddenly more meaningful than ever before.

R.C.'s mama had indeed raised a fool; a totally unacceptable liability, a loose cannon in his too-frequent chemical highs, a too-conspicuous consumer of expensive baubles despite repeated warnings. No, the cure, although extremely radical, had fit the affliction. "The right medicine for the right reason at the right time," Uncle Bud assured himself. "I'm not about to fall on my own damned sword, not for a self-centered damned showoff like that dip shit."

Mentally rearranging his planned but characteristically flexible, ever-changing timetable, Uncle Bud could not afford to waste a moment of precious time. He had to hurry unseen to a detour onto an even more rugged backwoods trail that led north by northeasterly to a familiar dry stream bed that would eventually empty near the road to Leadville at the western approach to Independence Pass. A favorite alternate route, generally unknown to most outside his precarious profession, it would be extremely tricky in the gathering darkness with no vehicle headlights to be seen and remembered.

But the risk was worth the effort as that circuitous route eliminated the unacceptable threat of being seen returning to Alpine through the circuitous northern entrance to Taylor Pass at a former ghost town west of Independence Pass. After R.C.'s remains would be found, that kind of sloppy indiscretion could lead to sticky questions best left unasked by curious local scuttlebutt hounds.

With luck, no one involved in the accident investigation would ever know that Uncle Bud had been anywhere near Taylor Pass that evening. With a little more luck, he would be back in Alpine at the Red Onion Cafe enjoying a favorite seasonal treat-deep-dish choke cherry pie with French vanilla ice cream and a steaming mug of hot, black coffee-long before anyone could climb down to the burned-out wreckage and report on Mrs. Dee Sugarman's wayward son, R.C., and his tragic "accident."

More tired than he would previously have imagined, more shook-up than he would care to admit even to himself, Uncle Bud knew that he had to replace R.C. before he could once again move the product with acceptable safety while turning the kind of profit that made the considerable risks even more profitable than before.

He had plenty of time. Soon the slopes would be crowded with self-indulgent but quick-witted young ski bums searching for the perfect mogul all day long, as well as some way, any way to continue to satisfy their obsessions where the deep, powder snow falls softly on Alpine's storied bare-as-you-dare outdoors hot tubs.

From experience, Uncle Bud was confident that more than a few latter-day disciples of Timothy O'Leary would gladly stoop to almost anything imaginable for the rare privilege of living large in Alpine for the rest of their natural lives. As in the local real estate bubble, Uncle Bud's three best-selling points were location, location, and location.

Uncle Bud had only to cull the herd until he had unequivocal leverage on the pick of the litter. He had done that before. He was certain that he could do it again.