Free A Cold Day for Murder by Dana Stabenow Page A

the few who did on full alert.
    “Well, Kate,” Mac said, “I’ll tell you what I’m doing here, and maybe you’ll put in a good word for me with Ekaterina. I want to lease the old Nabesna Mine off the association and put it into year-round production.”
    She raised her eyebrows. “You think you can make money year-round?”
    Bernie set a Bud and a glass down in front of Mac and retired to the other end of the bar. Mac ignored the glass and lifted the bottle to his lips to chug half the liquid down. Some of it ran out of the sides of his mouth, and he smacked the bottle down on the bar and wiped his face on the sleeve of his shirt. “By damn, now that’s what a thirsty man needs after a hard day in the mines! Bernie!” he hollered.
    Bernie made his leisurely way back to where they were sitting, checking to see that the drawer to the cash register was closed, taking an occasional swipe with the bar towel at any available surface. Kate watched his slow progress with a hidden smile. Mac fidgeted impatiently. “Yeah, Mac?”
    “Whyn’t you get some draft in here, son? Some draft Bud, maybe. They support the America’s Cup now, don’t they?”
    “I wouldn’t know. I don’t play tennis,” Bernie said blandly. “And I’ve told you a hundred times, Mac, draft beer is too expensive to airfreight in.”
    Mac laughed heartily. “Can’t be too awful goddam more expensive than what you’re charging for this bottled crap, of which,” he said, noisily finishing off the remainder of the bottle in front of him, “I’ll have another and pronto.”
    Bernie served him and then drifted back down to the end of the bar to resume his interrupted conversation with Marvin Dementieff, just as Marvin gracefully abandoned the vertical for the horizontal and spent the rest of the evening curled up beneath the bar, a peaceful smile on his face, a gentle snore on his lips. Bernie searched Marvin’s pockets for his keys and hung them on a board in back of the bar.
    “So you want to open the mine year-round, Mac,” Kate prodded. “You figure on making a profit at it?”
    Mac drank beer. “Gold’s up to almost four-fifty an ounce,” he said, burping. “On my claims I could make money with a leaky pan and a broken pickax.”
    “You can’t run a dredge with a frozen water supply, though,” Kate said. “In fact, didn’t I hear something about you not running the mine at all after you got yourself slapped with an injunction prohibiting further mining because you were messing up Carmack Creek?”
    The burly man’s brow darkened. “Ah, that little prick ranger. Yeah, he slowed me up some.”
    “Ranger?” Kate said. She found her glass motionless halfway to her lips, and raised it for another sip. “What ranger?” Mac’s history passed in quick mental review, and she looked over at the man sitting next to her with new eyes.
    Everyone in the Park knew where Mac Devlin came from and where he was going. Mac made sure of it. He was a mining engineer, had wanted to be a mining engineer, he said whenever he got the chance, since growing up in Butte, Montana, son of another mining engineer, who had put him through school and then kicked him out of the house. “Go find your own pay dirt and make your own money,” his father said, “because I’m planning on spending all of mine before I die.” That suited Mac, he reassured everyone. He didn’t understand why all parents didn’t kick their kids out early on. When he had his, he certainly would. On more than one occasion Kate had refrained from pointing out that with Mac as a father, in all probability when the time came, his kids would already be long gone.
    Eventually Mac had hooked up with British Petroleum, who put him to work in oil fields all over the world and finally in Alaska, where he helped define the Prudhoe Bay super-giant oil field after the discovery well came in November 1968. The next year he was plotting a right-of-way for the pipeline haul road when his