Chapter Eleven A: Poker

After Aaron left Aunt Hattie it was later than usual and he headed directly for Jack’s house for the Friday night poker game. With luck some of the team would be reporting in with preliminary findings and Aaron didn’t want to miss anything. As it turned out he needn’t have worried because he was the first one there, but it gave him an opportunity to quickly brief Jack on his interview with Hattie.

“Well, I’d say you can’t trust anything that the old lady says, no matter how sweet she is,” Jack said as he sat shuffling the cards. “She may have convinced herself that it’s exactly how the events went, but face it, it is a pretty wild story. I grew up in the thirties and forties and I can’t imagine anyone making that trip while giving birth. It’s not like there were comfy upholstered seats and a nice safe car seat in that old Roadster.” Jack pulled out a picture and shoved it toward Aaron. “I found this on the internet,” he said. The picture showed a vehicle that looked almost like a pickup truck with an open backend and just one bench seat in the front. “Imagine a pregnant girl of sixteen or seventeen cranking that thing over to get it started, and driving on strange dirt roads, stopping to give birth, and then continuing the drive with a baby in one hand, the steering wheel in the other, and the gear shift in the other. I don’t think she could have done it.”

“People do super human things when they are desperate,” Aaron mused. “How did I get a chair from the front of the church sanctuary to the foyer, climb up on it and ring the bell when I was in so much pain I couldn’t see straight and was hallucinating?”

Jack’s response was cut off by other players arriving. Adele, even though she had no active part in the research, was the first to arrive saying she didn’t want to miss anything. Aaron was glad for her participation and analysis. They’d worked together for many years. Then Will arrived, followed soon after by Lonnie. They sat at the table and Lonnie blocked card play by tossing a folder in the middle of the table.

“This reeks,” he began. “I collected dead fish and water samples from as near to the harbor and steel mill as I could get without trespassing. Sent them down to West Lafayette and Eric got a friend in the Chem Lab to run tests. PCBs are way up and these fish are dying of mercury poisoning. That plant is dumping.”

“Jeez,” Aaron said looking at the reports. “This is an incredible level. Where’s EPA in all this?”

“They have to be colluding,” Lonnie said. “I checked the official reports and they are considerably lower. There’s no mention of fishkill at all and nothing in critical zone for PCBs. They do mark it as “Elevated” recommending caution in swimming or eating the fish. But these levels are poison. I mean, thank God we’re months away from swimming season. People going in on those beaches could be in serious health risk.”

“So it appears that the dredging is being done… why?” Aaron asked. “To cover up the fishkill?”

“That would be my guess,” Lonnie concluded.

“That puts the harbormaster in collusion as well,” Will said. “I’ve grabbed the financial records of both the harbor and the mill. The harbor handles traffic for a lot of industry along the lakeshore west, but only this mill on its east. It is the closest customer. It is also the harbor’s most profitable customer. They net more on shipments from Hoosier Steel than from any other customer. In that kind of situation it would be easy for the industry to put pressure on the harbormaster for anything they wanted.”

“But how do we handle releasing this kind of information without destroying the industry?” Aaron asked. “I don’t want to go in and shut down operations and put all those people out of work.”

“Hey, we’ve got to blow the whistle,” Lonnie said. “You can’t sit on this kind of information and endanger the lives of everyone who lives in the county. This stuff will ruin them a lot faster than having to learn a new occupation. Besides, if the books don’t show that the corporation itself is a fault, it will be easy to blame it all on a select few and limit the damages.”

“Why would they suddenly be leaking mercury?” Jack asked. “They don’t use mercury in refining steel, do they?”

Will was on top of the question at once. “A few years ago a coalition of industry along the lakeshore signed a voluntary agreement to eliminate mercury from their businesses. You don’t think of mercury being used in the manufacturing process, but it is used in a lot of the older instruments that keep the factory operating. Temperature gauges on the big furnaces, in the coke rendering plant, in lighting and a variety of other technical instruments. They all agreed that new technologies were available and they would upgrade their plants to eliminate mercury-based technologies. But disposing of the stuff is tricky. It has to be collected and stored securely, then shipped to a secure facility. It’s the storage until they get rid of it that would be the most likely place for leakage to occur.”

“How much mercury do they have to leak in order to get this kind of results?” Aaron asked.

“That’s the problem spot when it comes to clean-up,” Lonnie said. “It really doesn’t take much. A few pounds in a concentrated area would destroy a lot of wildlife. Mercury concentrates in bio forms which is what makes it such a problem.”

“This doesn’t add up,” Aaron said. “I want more details on how that Mercury got into the water before we go blowing a whistle. I’d like Susan’s report first. If we just go in throwing accusations around, we’ll create more problems than we cure.”

“You can wait if you want to,” Lonnie said, “but I won’t. “This is my county and I can’t be seen as someone who sat on hard evidence to protect the steel mills. From your Washington perspective, it might be a political tool, but this is our home.”

“Lonnie, can’t you give us a little time until we talk to the rest of the team?” Jack said. “You really don’t want to break this without knowing all the details.”

“The details are that there is Mercury in the water and it’s unsafe for people or fish. It’s putting the population at risk. I waited until tonight to tell you, but I’ve already released the story to the paper before they closed this evening. It will be on the front pages tomorrow,” Lonnie rose from the table. “I knew that once you saw this you’d try to turn it into a political football. This takes it out of that arena and the right authorities will have to take action.”

“Lonnie,” Jack started.

“There’s a copy of the story in the folder,” Lonnie said. “Don’t call me on questions you don’t want answers to.” He left the table and the room.

“Damn!” Aaron and Jack said almost at once. “What do we do now?”

“Calm down,” Adele said. “We still have to get Susan’s report. You don’t want to respond to a threat like this until you have all the details, no matter what it sounds like.”

“Always a level head,” Jack said. “If Susan’s not here tonight, there must be a reason. She hasn’t called in, so she must be working on something.”

“From a political perspective,” Will said, “this shouldn’t do your candidate any harm.” He tossed the article Lonnie released down on the table. “Lonnie’s not too subtle in his writing. He laid the credit at his own feet saying ‘Sources in the County Auditor’s office have discovered…’ Talk about political. He didn’t want your party to get credit for blowing the whistle. He may even be planning to suggest that your Congresswoman was trying to cover it up, now that I think about it. Whatever, the playing field is still level and you are in no worse condition than when you started.”

“Maybe,” Aaron said. “Lacking Susan’s input, I think I’ll head up to Michigan City on Monday and start doing a little poking around myself. I’d like to have a fresh view on the territory before I start writing my own version.”

“Let’s play poker,” Jack said. Everybody laughed and anted up.

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