Max Collins - Midnight Haul

Mrs. Price sat and looked at him with a quiet smile. She said, “Would you be embarrassed if I said I misjudged you?”

Embarrassed, Hart stood. “Where’s that room, anyway? I’m going to peek in. Rules be damned.”

Mrs. Price pointed down the hall to the right. “Room 417.”

“Thanks. See you in a few minutes.”

He passed several doctors and three or four nurses, but no one stopped him; and at room 417, he opened the door, went in and there was Boone, sitting up in her bed, an I. V. hooked up to her, looking thin, pale, beautiful.

Crane was sitting next to her. Holding her hand. He was in street clothes; he’d been released from the hospital, for treatment of minor but extensive burns, yesterday. They both looked very happy, if battle-scarred.

“Hello, you two,” Hart said. “I just wanted to welcome Ms. Boone back among the living.”

Boone said, in an amazingly strong voice, “It’s nice to be back.”

“I need to talk to both of you. I’m going to need to get a deposition from you, Ms. Boone. I already have Crane’s — and considering some of the things he pulled, he’s lucky no charges are being brought against him.”

Crane said, “Don’t do me any favors.”

“Why not? You’ve done us a few. Anyway, Ms. Boone, it can wait. What are your immediate plans, now that you’re uh... with us again?”

“Well,” she began.

Crane interrupted. “We have a book to write.”

“Yes,” Boone said. “I guess we do at that.”

Hart smiled, said, “Happy royalty checks,” and went out.

He walked down the hospital hall, thinking about how much he liked happy endings.

He wondered how this one would come out.

The events in this novel are not true, but they of course have parallels in reality — from Love Canal to the disaster in April 1980 at Chemical Control Corporation in New Jersey. Nonetheless, this novel should be viewed as an entertainment and not as nonfiction, and those seriously interested in the toxic-waste problem should seek out the numerous magazine and newspaper articles available, as well as Michael Brown’s definitive Laying Waste (Pantheon, 1980).

I was particularly aided by two television documentaries, the transcripts of which were kindly provided to me by their producers: NOVA, “A Plague on Our Children,” 1979, WGBH, written, produced and directed by Robert Richter; and ABC NEWS CLOSEUP: “The Killing Ground,” 1979 (and a later 1980 update), written by Brit Hume, Michael Connor and Steve Singer, directed by Tom Priestly, produced by Priestly and Singer. Also, various representatives of both federal and local environmental agencies provided much appreciated help.

I would like also to thank my agent, Dominick Abel; and my editor at Foul Play Press, Lou Kannenstine.

Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Barbara Collins, for convincing me to write this one and for staying at my side for what proved a long midnight haul.