The Sure Thing (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  “Yeah, I know, Gippy. Friend of mine's an old wildcatter, still has interests in half a hundred wells or so, I guess."

  “Half a ... he must be rich."

  “He is."

  “Swell, you know all about the oil business, then, huh?"

  “Not all, not even much. But my friend's told me enough so I understand how syndicates, like the one you got into, are set up, the way production's divided, and so forth. He set up plenty of groups like yours himself when he wanted a shot at a new lease but didn't have the cash to handle it alone. Actually, it's a pretty good way to go, if a man's got cash to spare. Mainly because of the tax break, though."

  “Sure. That's what I was thinkin’ of when I cautiously invested my life's winnings. Crooks! It's the gawdamn croo—"

  I braked to a stop at the curb. “You should live along here somewhere, if I remember your directions."

  Gippy glanced to his right, toward a small, neat, white house with a patch of green lawn in front of it, the lawn bisected by a narrow path of flat stones.

  “Yeah, we're here already,” he said. “That's it, the one with a derrick hid in the rosebushes."

  And, suddenly, he was obviously nervous. He started squeezing his hands together, lacing and unlacing the fingers before his midsection, much as Audrey had done earlier in my office.

  After a few seconds of that I said, “Something the matter?"

  “Not exactly. It just come to me, I ... I don't want her to see me like this. You know. I'm all, well, not my usual magnetical.... Maybe you could ring the bell and tell her to wait in the closet or somewheres, while I shave and that.... This way, she might be underjoyed at my sudden—"

  “Oh, sure. Relax, I'll tell her you merely want to clean up a bit, or she'll be dead certain you're in the car gasping your last—be right back."

  I got out of the Cad, trotted over the flat stones, found the bell, and rang it. Rang it again. Again. Then back to the car, in next to Gippy.

  “Ohmigawd—” he said.

  “She is still playing bridge with the girls, or feeding squirrels in the park, or—very likely—looking for you in drawers at the morgue.” I shook my head. I am not usually so sharp-tongued, not with nice people, but there was something about both of the nice Willifers that gave me the willies or brought out a little nastiness somewhere in me that was generally not so visible, or audible.

  “I kn-knew it,” he moaned tragically. “Never should of left her last night. Of all nights. Well, she's probably good and dead by now, all right. Or she's run off with my worldy goods. If not, she'll merely kill me. If I'm lucky, I never should of—"

  “Gippy, get your butt out of the car. I refuse to listen to any more of this rambling imbecility. Maybe I'll give you a call later, just to say I told you so."

  “Yeah, I'd appreciate.... Hey, maybe you could come by here later? Just in case?"

  “In case of what? No—don't tell me."

  “Well, just ... look, if Audie's here, then both of us'll be here, and—you could speak up for me, you know. Explain.... I ... well, there must be something you could explain.” He shook his head. “She'll kill me. I'll bet she hits me with the ironing board. Or the ironing iron."

  “Gippy—"

  “No, really, Mr.—Sheldon. I'd like it better if you could come around, later. I got a feeling, something...."

  I sighed. “OK, see you later. Now get in the house, will you? You can be all shaved by the time Mrs. Willifer comes in with a bouquet for you. Bouquet of lilies —"

  “Maybe she got sick of me screwing everything up, and run off with my fourteen dollars, in that old Whippet.... Hey!"

  “Hey, what?"

  “If she run off in the Whippet—which she must of, as it ain't here, so she did or it's been stole—she's either got run over or she's sitlin’ in it crying. She cries when it stops on her sudden. And that's all the time. She don't know how to pump on the gas pedal just so, or it won't start up again. Maybe that's what ... no. No."

  “Yes. Yes. Good-bye. See you—both—later."

  “What time?"

  I glanced at my watch, figured how long it would take me to drive where I was going, and then talk for a while, estimated the hour of velvet dusk's arrival. “Around six p.m. OK?"

  “Sure, swell. I'll have a beer cold if you want it."

  “It will probably, by then, save my life."

  “Don't say that, Sheldon. Don't—”

  “You're telling me ...?"

  He smiled, for a moment looking almost handsome again, and got out of the car.

  “You worry too much,” he said in parting.

  Chapter Six

  Arnold Trappman rose from behind his big stained-walnut desk when I walked into his office, shook my hand. “Mr. Scott. My secretary did tell you I can't spare more than ten minutes, didn't she?"

  “Yes, sir. Might not take that long."

  “Sit down.” He nodded toward a well-worn but comfortable looking upholstered chair, saying, as I sat down, “I suppose this has something to do with Mr. Willifer?"

  “I just want to clear up a few questions about this oil well Mr. Willifer invested in last year. You drilled the thing, I understand?"

  “Yes, that was the Number One well on the Roman lease. My company owns three rigs, and our fees for drilling constitute nearly fifty percent of our gross business.” He paused, almost smiling, scratching his chin with two fingers of his left hand.

  He was seated once more, but Trappman was not one of these guys who are dwarfed by their desks, and his walnut job was a big one. But, then, so was he—almost too big, which means he was about an inch and a half taller than I am, or close to six-four, and call it a solid two-forty on the bathroom scales.

  I'd been impressed by his appearance as soon as I came into the office. About fifty-five, with a lined, but firm-fleshed face, very bright blue eyes and a direct glance, broad in the shoulders, a little thick in the waist. He was wearing a splendidly tailored gray suit made from some kind of softly woven gray cloth—beautiful complement to his full head of almost straight gray hair, combed straight back and full over the ears—and a white dress shirt open at the neck, without a tie.

  He was tanned, looked very fit, and his voice was strong, strong and deep, like rumbles coming up from the bottom of a well. “You ask the questions,” he said, “and I'll answer as concisely as I can."

  “Right. First thing, Mr. Willifer seems quite upset about the delay in getting this well on the line. Something about a man named Riddle?"

  “That son of a bitch.” Trappman's face seemed visibly to darken, gray-flecked brown eyes lowering like small thunderheads over the sky-blue eyes. “Ben Riddle, one more smart-ass finagler who thought he could hold me up, and discovered I get a little rambunctious under the gun."

  “I don't imagine there are many men who've thought that,” I said, looking at the bulk of him.

  He stared at me. “Plenty of them, Mr. Scott. The oil business isn't white French cuffs, and biscuits with your tea, never was. Besides, wherever there's a lot of money involved, and oil is big money, there you'll find the anglers and operators, the hot-ass lawyers, contract muggers, marauders, pirates—but we don't have time for all that."

  “I'm surprised you didn't have a contract, but only an oral agreement with Mr. Riddle—if it's true."

  “The right-of-way mess? It's true. I had a verbal agreement with Riddle, no reason to think he'd turn son of a bitch on me, thought he had more sense. When he refused to sign the papers, tried to hold me up, the bloody well was already completed, we'd reached oil—not much, but better than nothing. I had to shut the bastard down, and then ... endeavor to help Riddle see the light."

  “Tried to hold you up?"

  “I had already paid him what the right-of-way was worth, maybe five percent more than that.” The way he said it, I could almost see little wheels turning in his head as he weighed potential profit against possible loss, made a point here, shaved a half-percent there. “We'd agree
d—verbally, true—and I gave him my check, went ahead. It was a mistake, but how the hell ...?"

  He stopped, put both his elbows on the desk and leaned forward. “Mr. Scott, I don't mean this to sound as if I consider Mr. Willifer's investment—or that of anyone else—a small problem, or a picayune amount of money, something I can't be bothered with. But let's be realistic. I've got dozens of oil and gas wells in various stages of production, and for seventy-five percent of those wells royalty checks go out each month to participants in those ventures, or to, for each well, from two to ten or more individuals owning parts of the Working Interest, not including overriding royalties to landowners and leaseholders, and others. This Roman Number One well is simply part of a somewhat larger whole."

  He leaned back in his chair again. “I'm not saying I didn't make a mistake. I made a hell of a mistake. But I had assurances, that I accepted, believed, from Riddle before we moved in on the site, and for damn sure I checked with him again before we started drilling. In fact, the day we spudded the well I told him I'd been rushed, asked if he'd have the papers drawn up himself and sent over to my office, signed by him and ready for my signature. Sure, he said. Glad to. I'd already paid the son of a—he never got around to preparing those agreements. Mr. Scott, when a man nudges me once it's no sweat, but the second time I get ready to gouge him."

  “What was he after?"

  “Five thousand dollars. A miserable five. Hell, he knew the well was a producer, but he didn't know what a puny bastard we'd come up with."

  “He must have agreed, finally, because obviously you got your pipeline laid. Did you pay the five G's?"

  He looked surprised. “I did not,” he said, as though affronted. And the way he said it, I wondered how I could even have thought of the question.

  “It took some time,” Trappman went on, “but Ben Riddle was involved in other enterprises, owned mortgaged land, had borrowed quite heavily—was beholden, you might say. When he started feeling the pinch, one day he walked into my office, right here, and handed me the signed agreements. I signed one copy, gave it to him, and he went out. Neither of us even said hello, but both of us knew who'd lost his balls."

  After a moment, I said quietly, “A fine and noble victory for you, Mr. Trappman. But a bit of a pinch for the investors, too, wasn't it? Waiting more than ten months for Riddle to see the light you'd led him to? So they could see their first little checks?"

  He looked at me, silent, unmoving, like a big rock.

  After a while, I said, not so quietly, “Did you all of a sudden go deaf?"

  “You want me to bust your ass and throw you the hell out of here, Scott?"

  I smiled. “Whatever turns you on, Mr. Trappman. Of course, it may not be all biscuits and tea. I've got at least twenty years on you, and more balls than I know what to do with."

  He glared at me, almost started up out of his chair, but then relaxed and slowly grinned. “Maybe you do,” he said.

  He took a deep breath, let it out. “I don't owe you, or anybody else, any goddamn explanations. But I'll say this much, I drilled through rock and laid pipe in mud and busted my back working off the cathead for a solid month more than thirty years ago to get my first dry hole and go broke, not for the last time. Since then I've drilled hundreds more, some the kind your Gippy Willifer dreams about, most of them the kind Gippys always get. After the first dozen years, I did most of that drilling with other people's money, let investors in for a piece of the action. I learned in a hurry that most of these big-time operators with their profit from selling a thousand shares of Amalgamated Grommets don't know their ass from a bunion when it comes to oil—but every goddamn one of them knows more about my business than I do, and will not hesitate to tell me so. Now I do it my way—it's written into every contract or agreement I have anything to do with—I'm the boss."

  “I kind of guessed—"

  “I spud when I'm ready, stop drilling when I think it's time to stop, and if I say we acidize with twenty-eight percent acid instead of fifteen, then, baby, it's going to be twenty-eight.” He paused, thundercloud brows still lowered over the blue eyes. “That's one answer to your question about that miserable five. Another is, nobody's yet given me a good reason why I should use my own money when I don't have to. OK?"

  “I appreciate the explanation. If that's what it was. Moving on, could you tell me where to find Mr. Riddle?"

  He licked his lips, chewed on the bottom one. “I can give you his home address."

  “Fine. I'd like to say hello to Easy Banners, too. He set up this deal with Gippy and a couple of other investors, didn't he?"

  Trappman looked at the corner of his desk, scowling, shook his head. Pulled a drawer open, lifted out a stack of papers. “Yes. Easy made the arrangements, took care of the paperwork, saw that the investors’ cash was placed in escrow until proper expenditures were made of it, that sort of thing—Easy has worked with me, and others, in similar fashion for several years."

  Still holding the papers above his desk top in a large brown hand, he looked at me for a long moment. “I wasn't going to ask this, but now I can't resist it. Did Mr. Willifer actually hire you, a private detective, to find out if he's really right, has been right all along, and down there at the six-thousand-foot level of his Roman Number One, there is more high API gravity crude than there are snows in Siberia if only the oil crooks hadn't perforated pipe in the wrong section?"

  Finished with his somewhat oratorical question, he placed the papers before him. I had to smile at this guy; he was raw, and rough, but there was a certain flavor to him that I almost admired. “I wouldn't know about perforating pipe,” I said, “but I assume you've met Mr. Willifer, and I thus understand your question. The answer is no. Actually, his wife hired me, but to find her husband, not oil. Nothing to it, really, he's not the first spouse who has stayed out all night, but Audrey, well, she's the kind of gal who knows every silver lining has a tarnished cloud, so she probably feared hubby was perpetrating untellable depravities with”—I cast about for the right word, whatever Audrey might most have feared would ruin her—“a harem. Or something even worse, if there could be such a thing."

  Trappman nodded. “Yes, I've met her, met them both. It was dismaying. You mentioned something on the phone earlier....” He squinted. “Willifer wanted to see me, was that it? Last night?"

  “He changed his mind."

  “I wondered. About eight p.m. someone rang the bell at my home, but when I went to the door nobody was there. Perhaps it was Mrs. Willifer's depraved hubby."

  “No, the time's about right, but he told me he didn't ring or anything, just went back home—or, rather, to a bar. Where the wandering spouse got mildly soused. Not exactly the most important case of my career."

  He smiled, but not as if he thought that very amusing.

  I went on, “The impression I get is that what finally shook Mr. Willifer up totally, the last straw so to speak—after nearly a year's delay in getting the Roman well on the line, and then receipt of his first, and extremely meager, monthly royalty check—was your offer to buy him out for a mere sixteen cents on the dollar. I confess, I find this sequence somewhat odd, myself, including your eagerness to buy up the outstanding interest in the Roman well."

  “You wouldn't, if you had the least goddamned idea of what you're talking about. That first check wasn't a monthly royalty, but Willifer's slice for not quite ten days’ production."

  “Oh? Well, I.... He didn't mention that."

  “He probably doesn't know it. It merely says so very plainly on the check itself, but I assume he read only the numbers. Look, I personally advised against completing the Roman at all, because of its minuscule production, and did so only because that's what the investors desired. At least, Gippy Willifer desired, with such cretinous fervor that the little son of a bitch threatened to sue me if I did not complete it."

  Trappman shook his head, light moving on his straight gray hair. “That shrunken bastard is out of his mind. I don't t
hink he even knew that half the cost of completion was his money. Threatened to sue me. Probably just crap. But he is out of his mind. Well, to continue exploring your abysmal ignorance—"

  “Mr. Trappman, maybe you'd better start watching your mouth while you still have it on you,” I said sweetly.

  He wasn't listening. “The sixteen cents on the dollar you mentioned,” he continued, “is not ‘mere’ in this case, and your word ‘eagerness’ is also in error. The ‘eagerness’ was that of another investor in the Roman well, Mr. Donald Corey, who made the suggestion to me, almost pleaded in fact, that I purchase his seven thirty-seconds of the working interest for twenty-five hundred dollars, which is exactly one-sixth of the amount he invested. He'd suffered business reverses, needed money, and much preferred cash now to waiting nearly two years to receive the same amount in small monthly checks.” He paused. “Does this make sense to you?"

  “Some. You made the same offer, then, to Mr. Willifer and the one remaining investor?"

  “That's right. After being approached by Mr. Corey. Obviously the Roman well is a very marginal producer, may stop producing entirely within a few years, perhaps even months—I'm not usually this generous."

  “Generous? Sixteen cents on the dollar?"

  “How much he invested is not the consideration, but what that investment could produce for him. I'm not sure just how much the Willifers’ first royalty check amounted to—”

  “Around eighty bucks."

  “All right, call it two-fifty a month, or three thousand a year. He owns a seven-sixteenths share of the working interest in the Roman well, for which I offered him five thousand dollars. He can keep his interest in the well and receive that amount in twenty months to two years—or more—or he can accept my offer and get that amount immediately. I don't really give a damn what he does. I can afford to wait a few years for return on my investment, even though it would mean tying up capital I might get a better return from—after all, we know we've got production, even though it's miserably small—but I'm not sure Mr. Willifer can wait."