Drago #3. Art Spinella
was tiny. About the size of 10p nail head and virtually the same color white as the fan enclosure. It would have been missed if we hadn’t been looking for it.
I picked it off and dropped it into the sink; turned on the hot water and watched it flush down the drain.
Within a dozen minutes we had found three more in various locations in the kitchen and one under the coffee table in the living room.
“That it?”
Sal shrugged. “Probably. They’re so damn small and almost invisible. But he didn’t have enough time to put many more around. I think we’re clear.”
We retook our seats.
“What was that all about? Just to plant bugs?”
Sal’s beard twitched as he thought about the questions. Then, “Not so sure. He wouldn’t have come just for that. He has more than enough resources to do grunt work. He’d never have to leave his D.C. office. There’s more.”
“Personalize the warning? Thinking it would carry more weight if he said it face to face rather than over the phone?”
“More likely.”
The sound of crunching gravel in the drive, the slamming of a car door and 10 seconds later Cookie walked into the living room.
“Hi guys!” she said, dropping her overnight bag in the hallway. “Whatcha doing?”
“Hey babe. How was Chicago?”
“Cold, snowy and cold. And snowy.” She crossed the room, planted a wet kiss on me and fell into my lap. “Hi Sal,” giving him a toothy smile.
“Glad you’re home,” he said. “I’m getting tired of fixing breakfast for this goon.”
“Who you calling a goon? And when did you become a cook at Eatin’ Station?”
Cookie looked around the room, inspecting walls and ceiling.
“No bullet holes, so I guess you’ve been behaving?”
“Wait til you see the lawn ornament Tatiana got Sal. We have to get one just like it.”
“Really?”
“Hand crafted in Germany,” I said. “A magnificent piece of work.”
Sal laughed. “And wait til you hear what we saw on the river.”
Cookie’s eyes went narrow. “What’s going on?”
“Let’s go to McFarlin's, have a burger,” I suggested. “We can fill you in over a Long Island Iced Tea.”
“Long Island Iced Tea,” she said, eyes getting even narrower. “Since when do you drink…”
“Or a cherry martini,” Sal interjected.
“Now I know something’s up.”
“Gin fizz,” I added.
Sal responded, “Cranberry Margarita.”
“Lemon schnapps with a Fire Ball chaser?”
Sal groaned in mock ecstasy, “Oh, so tempting.”
CHAPTER FOUR
9:30 p.m. Coquille River. Calm water ebbing to the ocean. Cookie, in Miss QT, waited near shore about a mile upstream of Sal who sat in the Smokercraft docked at Rocky Point. I was aboard Dragonfly in the Bandon harbor, two-way radio clicked on, a pot of coffee on the galley stove, mug filled to the brim in my lap.
The night glistened as only a smog-free rural ocean-front sky can. Most businesses in Old Town were long closed and no one was aboard the few boats in the marina. Night-lights were clicked on in a couple of the moored fish boats, but they gave off a dim glow, adding warmth to the cool breeze.
There’s something magical and dangerous about the Coquille River. Much of its history is tangentially known to residents. Well, except those under the voting age who think history started the day they were born.
With the slow rocking of Dragonfly on calm swells, I pulled up some info from the deep dark recesses of my memory. Between sips of coffee and flashes of images of the ghost paddle wheeler, dingerberries of those historic facts.
From the early 1870s through the mid-1940s, the Coquille was recognized as a beneficial project by the federal government, with the political assistance of long-time resident George Bennett.
Politics wasn’t that different back then. With veiled threats of votes hanging in the balance, Bennett offered advice to political candidates: Whoever provides the greatest assistance to improving the Bandon bar and river would be elected to Congress.
The threat was taken seriously and Senator John Whitaker quickly introduced a bill in 1880 to grant $10,000 to Bandon for harbor improvements. With much more to come.
He was easily re-elected.
Additional funds poured in over the coming 20 years, extending the jetties, removing rock from the Rocky Point location where Sal was moored this night and extensive dredging to 10 feet from Bandon harbor to Riverton – about 18 miles upriver – and nine-feet from that town to Coquille, another six miles upstream.
The town became a mini-powerhouse in shipbuilding. By 1888, nearly a dozen sea-going ships were constructed, the first being the schooner Ralph J. Long. On its maiden voyage to San Francisco, it carried 120,000 board feet of lumber, a ton of bark, a ton of wool and five tons of oats.
But it wasn’t the first ship to use the Bandon harbor.
Before Bennett’s threat, coastal-trade schooners were frequent visitors to Bandon as early as the 1860s.
Development, though, stimulated construction of river boats – mostly sternwheelers -- to connect the city of Coquille with Bandon, transporting goods and passengers who were slated for passage to San Francisco and as far north as Alaska.
“Hey, Nick,” came the voice from the dock. Stan Moorly grinned at me and began to board. “Saw the light on in the cabin. Could smell the coffee cookin’.”
“Want a cup? It’s on the stove.”
He wandered into the cabin and returned a minute later with a chipped old mug, steam billowing.
Pulling up a chair and settling in, “Waitin’ for something important or just hangin’ out reminiscing about your single days on Dragonfly?”
“Just thinking about this harbor and its history, is all.”
Moorly took a long sip of brew.
“My granddad was one of the riverboat people in the day. Told some stories about the paddle-wheeler wars back then. Early 1900s.”
“Yeah?”
Moorly pulled out an old pipe, as gnarled as a fisherman’s hands, dipped the bowl into a leather pouch for some tobacco and with all the care of a man on the deck of a ship in a roiling sea, carefully cupped his hand over the bowl and lit the tobacco. Drawing on the stem, a cloud of smoke with the sweet odor of cherry hung in the air.
“Old west, Oregon style,” he said. “Worked for the Myrtle Point Transportation Company back then. Deckhand on the Telegraph. Company owned eight sternwheelers, racing up and down the river carrying milk and passengers and crates of whatever.”
He leaned close to me, “And opium. Think the marijuana growers were the first druggies in the state? Think again. Opium was big business back then.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Look it up.”
Another cloud of cherry smoke and a long sigh as he tilted his head back and spoke with a voice sounding like gravel in a drain pipe. “In fact, because the British had a trade deficit with China back in the 1800s, they encouraged opium use there so they could sell it to the Chinese and balance their trade books.