It wasn’t a bad little pad, for being sterile as a hospital. I’ve bunked in worse. It did have a couple of things going for it. It was second floor, and the stairs were a fair distance away down an outside walk that rang like a drum, pretty much an alarm system of sorts. I had the only apartment with a view of the entrance from the road. From the table in the kitchen the comings and goings were visible. Beyond that, a steel door with a good deadbolt and a queen size bed that felt like a slab stolen from the undertaker. Ten minutes and I was ready to lock the door and never go back.
The answer was obvious. Figure out who did the boy in, why, hang a few scalps on my belt, collect the coins and go somewhere else. Step the first, what did uncle and company know, and what were they guessing at? I loaded the closet with clothes, and spread the manila envelopes out on the table to study.
The why all the excitement part got pretty obvious pretty quick. My guess had been right on the money, uncle was very interested in waste streams from the plant. Very interested to the pound level. The boy had to have been on our side, way to much of the information had to have come from his spot in the company, or awfully close to it. He’d been murdered, and yes, the people who did it wanted to know something all right, they wanted to know who he was working for. More than just common sense said he’d talked before the end. The fact uncle was recruiting people like Dee and myself said our bunch was afraid of several possible things. Like he’d known to much in the first place. Or they still had men in the field who were pinned solid, not knowing who’d taken him down. So bring in some hired guns to stir the mix, draw some fire and hope the enemy got careless and revealed himself. That would be me and Jim Smith. It always makes you feel good when you realize your name is in the column marked expendable. I brewed coffee, they’d been nice and left plenty of that, changed chairs and changed perspectives.
Ok, the bad guys had scored, the good guys knew they were blown to some degree, by now they’d probably figured for being blown pretty badly. Assassins a state away said the bad guys were either large or connected or both. They’d tried for Dee, and missed. I was hoping they were connected, the word out the target was alert and shot back might raise the price out of reach. My mission was who, which if I made it would mean uncle would have a good working idea of what and why. Again, unless it dead ended in a professional hit, but that would mean whatever the boy knew would be known to outsiders. No, odds said his killers were from near the middle of whatever it was.
Methyl groups, if they all had one thing in common it was methyl groups. This fact was in the paperwork. Tied to every nasty thing in the book, but they were there. Was this just one humongous bunch of speed freaks not wanting to loose a grocery store for their kitchen? That would make them plenty mean enough, plenty of cash flow for a justification, plenty of jail time if they got caught. Reasons enough, I would think. On the other hand there were a couple that had some interesting things tied to nitrogen. I’m no chemist, far from it, but things like that have a tendency to go bang very loudly if provoked in the proper manner. Great, a bunch of hopped up speed freaks with a custom explosive not on any of the common charts and an attitude to put it to work. And all this just with what could be cooked out of what was in the barrels. Add a little of this, a dash of that, and who knows. What Zanchem shits really doesn’t belong anywhere on earth, not until some bright boy figures out a fusion torch to turn it back elemental.
I put the paperwork back in the packets, and sealed them with marked tape. The old fashioned kind you can’t pull loose without splitting the ink. Next order of business, the rifle. I wanted it close, like behind the seat of the truck, but an M16 in a cowboy gun rack is a bit much. I needed a case. Tommy guns fit a viola case nicely, but what will hide a ’16? A canvas tool pouch to hang behind the seat, that’s what. I went shopping, hit two parts stores and found what I was looking for at the local cowboy supply shop among the lariats and tractor parts, picked up a burger on the way home. The folks who made the truck left a package shelf behind the seat, and the clips for just that kind of pouch. An hours work and the rifle was riding under a canvas flap behind the seat, wrench pockets cut open to hold a clip or stuffed full of foam rubber. Nothing rattled, and I could long arm it out driving. Next.
Next, right. A good question. My tactical called for me to show up at the plant on Tuesday morning. This was Friday, leaving a three day weekend to fill in a strange and very unfriendly town. Bars are out, to many people in a bar can shoot you in the back of the head and get away with going oops, he just looked like the guy I saw going out the window. No bars, but this was redneck country. What’s left? Well, churches for one thing. Cordlin was a ghost town on Sunday morning, had to be. Population of twenty five thousand max, and sixty three churches in the phone book. So, if I were a cranked up bomb building crazy who wanted to stay right with God, where would I go? Scratch that thought, if I were a political player with connections to a cranked up bomb building crazy where would I go to keep it hidden? Well, everyone in the photo had been white, so knock off the churches with names to sound like they worship by making a joyful noise unto God. The kind I actually like, believe it or not. That cut the number in half. Sometimes, sometimes you get lucky. I got lucky.
The apartment building was set up with wireless. The login was the number on your lease, I got into the office machine, by accident. A bigger virus trap than a whore in a shanghai brothel, but what the hell. I carry the drive backed up on ghost discs, only takes an hour to reload and I wasn’t in a hurry anyway. I dialed the firewall up to max, and went looking. The constitution says separation of church and state, so it looked a little gray to me, having the city website linked to twenty seven church registers, most complete with addresses and phone numbers. I captured them all, kicked them into a workbook in the big ugly spreadsheet program and set about sifting and sorting. Who was where, on a Sunday morning? I was looking for patterns, and good lord, spirograph would have been proud of what emerged.
I can’t tell you the denomination. I had, the publisher put dents in the ceiling, so no, but anyway. They all shared one name in common, they were all large, protestant, very white, and within a mile of downtown. You get the picture. Between the three they had the entire city government, and Mr. second from the left was on all three registers. Marked active on all three registers. If he’d been the only one in that picture to be on all three registers and marked active I wouldn’t have worried near so much about it. Half of them were. The city manager was the only one not in the pulpit pressure cooker, he was Mormon and went to church out of town. This didn’t please me at all. I loaded up, and went to the library. Good place to think, and they have the old papers on microfiche.
You’ve heard of shadow governments? If you ever feel like reading about what one can do the recent history of Cordlin would make a good start. Twenty years ago two newspapers were in the region, one out of Cordlin, and one from a neighboring town up the road. Both were gone, McPaper was what you read over coffee. Fifteen years ago there were three local radio stations. Now there was one, run by a couple of kids who paid the electric bill out of their own pockets as often as not, starving to death to play a funky alt blend. Plenty on the airwaves, and all of it satellite downlink. In short, the church bulletins were the closest thing to local news to be had. It was over a hundred miles to a city. The same fellow had been sheriff for thirty years, no one had run against him the last time, the time before an accident had claimed the other candidate two weeks before the election. At that point I was convinced. The problem was as much in the town as in the plant. The plant was the first thing big enough to rattle the power structure in that place in decades. I was smelling civil war.
It didn’t make sense, in one sense. The town was an absolute scum trap. Nothing there. Nothing. Why had Zanchem decided to build a plant there? They had fifty, sixty million in the facility, why stick it out in the god forsaken boonies of Kansas where the red necks ran all the way down to the crack of their ass? I left the library and drove a bit, watching to see if anyone was taking the time to tail me yet. Nope, not yet. I’d found the county road combo that looped the town three miles off the limits, and caught sight of the reason going by at the crossroads. Three tanker trucks in a row with placard numbers all over the map, and all headed in the same direction. I followed them.
Wasn’t hard to tell where they were going, the pavement ended half a mile after the gate. I got the name off the sign, it wasn’t large, drove right on by without slowing. I took a ten mile loop back to town on dusty farm roads, I didn’t want to be seen going by that spot again, not with a sheriffs car in the lot with the tankers. That answered a lot, and made three questions out of one. Those were interstate tankers, and that was a disposal well.
Back at the pad it took about an hour to get the lowdown. I lied my ass off on a job application, got into the where might you be living if you work for us part of the website, and the third listing was Cordlin, making it sound like it was a bedroom suburb of Wichita. Right. If you kept a Ferrari in the garage and owned the highway patrol.
According to Uncle the well had been there for twenty years, some coincidence that. It was listed as deep, into the salt layers five miles down, and it served a ten state area. That’s why Zanchem built the plant there, they could run two tankers ten miles and cut three middle men out of a rather expensive loop. Ok, great, good for them. So what about an honest outsider would upset the apple cart enough to have assassins on the prowl?
I’d just gotten started thinking on that when the phone rang. “Is Tyrone there?” the voice all but screamed.
“Ma’am, I’m afraid you have the wrong number,” I said, being polite, and hung up. Twenty seconds later it range back. It was Tina’s voice, and it was gaining volume.
“Don’t give me that wrong number crap, you tell Tyrone I’m looking for him and if he wants to keep his ass in one pair of pants he’d better haul it out to Jelly’s, and I do mean pronto!”
“Look, lady,” I said, getting a grin and playing in, “I don’t know anyone named Tyrone, if I meet someone by that name I’m gonna tell the poor bastard to run like hell for Canada. Now fuck off!” I hung up, and laughed. Where had she said, someplace called Jelly’s? Five minutes with the phone book and yes, Jelly’s Country Club and Grill, eighteen miles north of town on the little cross highway. Not like they’d be hard to find, Miss M is just a little distinctive. So, where was I? Oh, yeah. Nasty things getting put in deep holes. What the hell. You can think on the road just as well, and Jelly’s is a fair ways out of town. Suppertime was arriving by the minute, and it wouldn’t hurt to touch base since the girls were on no ones radar, only Dee and I knew they were on our side. I loaded up and headed out.
The pointy question wasn’t what was going down that hole. The very pointy question was what wasn’t. By the time I had Miss M in sight I was convinced I needed ears and eyes in particular places, on the docks at both ends of the tankers, to be specific. Hell, third thoughts on the obvious, it didn’t have to be just things Zanchem was shipping, it could be anything going in that hole. Or should have been going in that hole. The potentials were getting damn near as deep as it was.
Jelly’s is the kind of place you see in movies about small town bad asses, and there were more than a few of them in there, backwater ignorant and plenty mean. Not a nice place, not at all. Whatever happened to friendly country folk full of jovial good cheer? Not in that part of Kansas, not anymore. I got to the bar, ordered a burger and a beer. Before it got served I heard a chorus of catcalls behind me. Sure enough when I glanced around Tina and Shelly had just made an entrance, dressed painted-on country queen and towering over the crowd. If I'd wanted to rob the joint I'd have had a good thirty seconds to liberate the cash, nobody would have noticed.
Forty five minutes later someone did rob the joint, which was a good thing because when the sheriff showed up he was more interested in who took the cash than who started the Saturday night fight a day early. I'd been hanging on to my empties and watching it build. I knew it was coming, I just wasn't sure when. You can't drop a pair like Tina and Shelly into a place like that without the local honchos going hormone crazy and beating on each other. I guess they figure who ever is left on their feet will have a better chance or something. Not like that was going to impress those girls in the least. About ten seconds after the first table hit the floor it was plenty obvious they'd been in, and out, of more than one good brawl.
When the ruckus started I had two empty longnecks, and two or three more within reach, I swiveled around on the stool and started looking for the girls, and looking for targets. It didn't take long to quit worrying about the girls, they were back to back side stepping out of melee in my general direction, wearing leather gloves and dropping a redneck with about every forth jab. The girls were forty feet into the mob, the back door the same behind me. I wasn't planning to let anyone block the way out. One of the barkeeps was wading in swinging a broom handle, I let him get within five feet of the girls before bouncing an empty off the side of his head. He forgot about the broom handle long enough for the girls to get safely around him. The whole mob started migrating their way for the back door, just one of those Brownian motion type things. Kind of ruined my attitude, I was hoping to get out without bruising a knuckle. By the time the girls pulled even with me I had no choice in the matter.
He wasn't all that big, but he wasn't looking at what he hit, he was just swinging. When someone threw him out of the crowd in my direction it was pretty clear he was planning to punch my face by way of turning around, so I stepped inside and popped him in the side of the neck, got lucky, he dropped at my feet like a sack of cement. The guy who was after him went airborne about the time his knees buckled, what he was planning on landing on just wasn't there when he arrived. I helped him out a bit, turning him around in mid-air and adding a little so he slid over the bar feet first on his back instead of ramming square in. Wasn't my fault he banged the back of his head on the rail.
When I went active the girls counter-attacked a bit, bought six feet of clear floor. It could have come right out of a John Wayne movie, the way Tina grinned at me and said "howdy!" as we retreated for the back door. About half way the mob started pressing pretty hard, we had to stand our ground for a bit. When we had six or seven on the floor the tide turned, the fight started moving away and we made it out the door into the parking lot. Somewhere in the middle of all of this someone had the presence of mind to empty both tills, but I swear I don't have a clue who it was.
We weren't the first to make it out the door, there were two dozen guys in the lot headed for their trucks, and more spilling out all the time. I wasn't going to advertise anything, I just nodded at the girls and said "ladies, it's been a pleasure, but I think I'm gonna' get the hell out of here before the law shows up."
I started to turn away, but Shelly put a hand on my shoulder and said "Baby, you're bleeding. You won't make it past the roadblocks. You might as well come over to the rig and let us clean you up." Girl has a grip like iron.
Tina parked herself on the other side of me. "Warrior man, she's right, the deputies will be across the road before the first turn. We saw you hanging back to make sure we got out. Do appreciate it. Sweetheart, let us return the favor, ok? The only reason you're bleeding is cause you hung around to help us. What's your name?"
"Go by CJ, like the jeep," I said, and winced. Something was starting to sting pretty good. I hadn't noticed until then.
Shelly stepped around in front, pulling her gloves off before she turned my head to survey the damage. "He just clipped you, but it's a nasty scratch. C'mon, CJ. First aid kit's over there." They weren't taking no for an answer. It didn't really matter at that point, everyone looking knew how we'd met, which is probably why they fired off the fight in the first place. We started off for where Miss M was keeping company with a couple of other heavy haulers along the back fence.
One fellow was staring at us, shaking his head. He'd been closer to the door than me, when the fight broke out he'd had the good sense to pick up his beer and walk out. "Sheeit, that's just about right," he said with a chuckle as we walked past. He didn't sound all that mad, he was being a good sport about the whole affair. Anyhow, by the time the cavalry arrived I was sitting on Miss M's passenger running board getting patched.
Since we weren't looking in any hurry to leave the deputies weren't in any hurry to get to us. By the time one of the younger ones made it to us his notebook was near full, and he was tired of asking questions. When he asked for my ID I gave him two, my drivers license and the one from the army that has my picture in uniform. He saw the bars on my collar and said I was a long way from home again, to which I agreed. When he asked why I was in Kansas I told the absolute truth, that I had a job interview at the plant. I didn't have to say which plant, he didn't ask. In that part of the world there's only one. He was really pretty nice, all things allowed for. He gave me the name of another scoot a boot club forty miles in the other direction, said the crowd there was generally a lot better folk to party with, and turned around to talk to the girls.
It was hard to keep a straight face. He asked the girls why they were in Kansas, and got back the most creative run of obscenities I've ever heard, and all of it aimed at their dispatcher. They told him they'd arrived in Cordlin totally by accident, showing him a fax and pointing to where it said Cordlin Kansas where it should have read Carson City Nevada, and then ripped off another round to make a mule blush before telling him they were now hoping for enough of a load somewhere in Kansas sometime in the next month to make fuel money to Texas.
The girls are good, I'd have bought their story. When he walked away we were known to the local law as people of no interest, which suited me just fine. Soon as the deputy was around the corner Shelly opened the door on Miss M, nodded me up and in.
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