Free Tortoise Soup by Jessica Speart Page A

you one of the good guys or bad guys?” he asked.
    I looked at him and cracked a grin, sure that he had to be joking. But he stared back at me with all the warmth of Godzilla.
    “Fed or state?” he impatiently asked, his fingers twitching along the stock of his rifle.
    “I’m with Fish and Wildlife,” I replied, wondering whether that made me friend or foe.
    He pointed to the office dead ahead. “Pull in there. Someone inside will help you.”
    I checked my rearview mirror as I drove away. My unfriendly guard was busy conversing into a walkie-talkie.
    I walked into the main office, where a receptionist sat in wait.
    “State your business, please,” she said, barely bothering to look up.
    I had the feeling she already knew, but I went along with the game.
    “I’m with Fish and Wildlife. This is my first visit to the mine and I’d like to take a look around,” I replied.
    “You’d think we were running guided tours out here,” she mumbled, picking up her phone and punching in some numbers. “Fish and Wildlife is here,” she announced to the person on the other end. Hanging up, she glanced briefly in my direction. “You’ll have to wait for the foreman.”
    I had no problem with that. At least it was cool inside the small room. I sat down on a gold vinyl couch and viewed the reading material on the table in front of me.
Mining Today
and
The Gold Review
. I passed up the magazines and studied the wall, where framed photos portrayed the wonders of gold mining technology at work.
    Mines dot the landscape of Nevada, holding as much allure and promise as the main strip of Vegas does to a gambler on a roll. But few people realize what mining entails. One of the aerial photos showed a maze of roads and drilling activity on denuded land. The next photo zeroed in on a mountain that had been ground up into heaps of fine powder. Next to it was an explanation of the magic of cyanide, which is sprayed over these hills of dust. Cyanide percolates through the low-grade ore and then slowly trickles out, carrying with it specks of gold into fifty-acre collection ponds.
    What was left out of the caption is cyanide’s lurid history. Best known as the main ingredient in Jonestown’s deadly Kool-Aid with a kick, cyanide was also the chemical of choice in the rash of Tylenol poisonings a few years back. More recently, it had been responsible for the deaths of thousands of migratory birds that stopped to drink from cyanide-laced pools as they passed by. Sam liked to refer to these chemical water holes as “hotter than a pistol—a bird flies in, it don’t fly out.”
    With nothing else to look at I turned my attention to the receptionist, who was digging her hand into a can of peanut brittle.
    “That’ll kill your teeth,” I advised.
    “Yeah, like nothing else won’t,” she answered as she shoved a piece of brittle into her mouth.
    Her nameplate said Dee Salvano. I had a feeling that was the only introduction I’d get.
    “Have you worked here long?” I asked.
    “Too long,” she blurted. A small shower of peanut pieces flew out of her mouth, landing on her desk.
    “Does that mean you’d rather be doing something else?” I inquired.
    Dee fixed me with an evil eye. “In Nevada, if you don’t work for mining, you’re punching the register at a 7-Eleven, shimmying on a pole for a bunch of drunks with your boobs bobbing up and down, or kissing the government’s ass as one of their toadies. Take your pick.”
    I decided it was best to end the conversation. I passed the long wait daydreaming about Santou’s hands caressing my long-neglected body. A slow, sultry kiss was abruptly interrupted when the foreman of the mine planted his feet in front of me.
    “Feds don’t usually come here. What is it you want?” he demanded.
    I glanced up at the man dressed in work boots, jeans, and a khaki shirt with a Playboy insignia sewn on the pocket. He didn’t appear to be big on introductions, so I skipped over