by L. J. Martin
Why the camper? Because even the old folks’ home has been converted to rooms for rent by the week, six hundred a week. The old folks were sent packing. Get in your wheelchair and hit the road, gramps, it's boomtown time. Camp spots are almost as expensive, but I'm parking my new abode for free, thanks to Owens-McKittrick Oil Well Service Company, from whom I've accepted a contract to do a little search and destroy work. That's a trade for which I've been well trained, thanks to the United States Government and the Marine Corps.
Like all my 'contracts' this one is verbal. My kind of work is not the kind where you leave paper trails.
I've been driving for fifteen hours, starting this morning with the sun not yet over the Wasatch Range, from Salt Lake City where I spent the night after driving from Las Vegas, where I occasionally hang my hat.
Having spent most of the last eight years in cheap motel rooms or worse, I'm beginning to like my new camper, a place where I know where a few things are stowed. Some of the rest of my belongings that are spread out in mini-storage facilities in Ventura, Las Vegas, and Sheridan, Wyoming, have been consolidated into a ten-foot enclosed Wells Cargo trailer that tows nicely behind my camper and new F250 diesel. A good portion of the trailer is taken up with a Harley Sportster, which may be a little crazy; icy North Dakota roads don't lend themselves to two-wheel transportation.
It's 9:00 p.m., colder than the proverbial well digger's ass—a metaphor that works well in Williston—and scheduled to get a lot colder tonight if you can believe WDAY TV. I'm hungry and need some fuel for my personal internal fire. I haven't eaten since I grabbed a dog in a mini-mart where I fueled up in Billings, Montana, where I also took an hour to wander Cabela’s and pick up some cold weather gear. I passed this roadhouse on the way in, Big Rosie's, which sports a simulated oilfield pumping unit with her neon sign going up and down, along with a skimpily-dressed mannequin—bikini and cowboy hat—riding it like it was a bucking bull machine. How could the food not be good in a classy joint like that?
In the morning, I'm due to meet with my former CO from Desert Storm days, who's now my employer. I've been hired to freelance and get rid of the drug trade—my employer thinks the locals are in a little over their heads—which has been well. Drug use is costing Owens-McKittrick a lot of money in injuries—Workers’ Comp for the oil well service trade is already among the highest of any trade—lost work time, busted up equipment, and liability. Where better to begin work than in a roadhouse that looks like you'd have to be high on something to frequent the joint?
The joint is jam-packed, ten men or more to each lady, and that includes the girls working the tables. Willy is blaring out Good Hearted Woman loud enough that most guys have to shout to be heard. Most the men look like they wish they were back home in Kansas with their good-hearted woman.
The place reeks of petroleum as it's hard to work in the patch without getting occasionally doused in crude, or fuel oil, or grease from the plethora of equipment. A truck stop I passed out on Highway 2 on the way in told the tale: mud-pumping trucks, oil well service tool trucks, trailers loaded with drill pipe, cranes, and on and on. Out of five dozen rigs, only one was a hay truck.
There's not a vacant table in the place, but there is room to stand at the bar, so I do, and luckily, the guy to my right gets up and leaves. I grab his stool, order a bottle of Trout Slayer, a decent beer and look for a menu.
The bartender is a rough-edged old girl with thinning red hair, probably dyed, who looks to be past her prime as a hooker. She eyes me up and down; my leather coat is way too light for this weather, and she notices.
"If you hung your real coat by the door, keep an eye on it. Things get wings 'round here." She gives me a wink, and I'm a little surprised she can, with the amount of eye shadow she has caked over the wrinkles.
"Locked in the truck, thanks. What's good?"
"Besides me?" she says, and I get another wink. Maybe she still is a working girl.
"No question in my mind you're the best, but I mean what's to eat."
"Besides me," she says again and guffaws before she continues. "The Fracker is a winner and if you eat it all, you don't have to pay the twenty-five bucks it costs."
"Sounds like a hell of a deal, but I'm watching my waistline. How about a club sandwich?"
"You ain't got much waistline compared to those shoulders," she says and gives me another wink, then turns as someone down the bar yells.
"Hey, Maggie, how about another fuckin' beer. Or are you done for the night?"
"Keep your pants on, peterhead. It's coming."
I have the beer half gone before the guy on my right spins on his stool and asks, "You new to town?"
I nod, eyeballing the pock-faced guy and noting the puckered scar from the left side of his nose to the edge of his mouth. I can see that he's had a bad laser job trying to remove a couple of prison tat tears from below his eye.
"Got work yet?" he asks. He's a hatchet-faced old boy, with an Elvis Presley do, ugly as an anteater, but upscale for this place in clean pressed jeans and a decent shirt under a buttoned brown leather vest. I note a bulge on the left side. It's a concealed-carry vest. He's sitting on a sheepskin coat, the kind with wool puffing out the sleeves and around the collar, and I note a little glimpse of blue steel in one of the coat pockets. This guy is loaded for bear.
"Not yet," I say—only a small lie as I meet with my ex-CO and conclude my deal tomorrow.
"You're big enough to eat hay and shit in the road. I can get you on a couple of places. Have you worked the patch before?"
I guess that's supposed to be a back-handed compliment. I'm heavier than he is, but about equally tall. "I'm gonna hang tight until I check things out." I give him a nod and turn back to my beer, but he continues.
"You looking to get some pussy?"
I smile at him and shrug. "Normally that'd be a big ol' yes, but I just came from Vegas. Got my ashes hauled from there to next month."
"How about a little tweak?"
Didn't take me long to get a line on the dope trade in Williston. My first time covering a bar stool, and I get offered a little crystal meth or crack, whichever he considers material for 'a little tweak.'
He eyes me up and down, then adds, "You're not the law, are you?"
"Fuck no," I snap. I do carry a bail enforcement badge, a bounty hunter's brass, but it's locked away in my trailer, along with my arsenal—the tools of my trade. He might be concerned about the .40 cal Glock in the small of my back, or the extendable baton in my inside jacket pocket, but I reply with indignation, "Do I look like the friggin' law to you?"
"Hard to tell these days. You like young pussy?" he asks, since I denied being the law.
Again, I snarl, "I ain't the law, and I ain't no fuckin' fag. Of course, I like young pussy. Do I look like a fucking fag to you?"
He shakes his head knowingly, then says, "You may have had your ashes hauled by that sloppy only-hit-one-edge-at-a-time, strap-a-board-on-your-ass-to-keep-from-falling-in gash in Vegas, but I'm talking primo prime fifteen-year-old pussy fresh from Russia, so tight it'll make you cry for mercy pussy. You want some of that?"
The barmaid sets my sandwich down, "Another beer, big boy?" she asks.
"Sure," I reply, and, although I can feel the adrenaline creep up my backbone, add, "and buy my buddy here one."
"Oh, yeah," he says but waits for her to move away before continuing. "How about it? Two hundred will get you fifteen minutes of prime grade A sweet-as-sage-honey poontang."
I take a bite of the club, chew, act as if I'm considering his offer, then swallow and turn to him. "Tempting as hell, but I'd better hang onto my dough until I get hooked up with work."
"I told you, I can get you forty bucks an hour—roustabout work—and have you on a payroll by 10:00 a.m. tomorrow."
I take a swig of beer as the barmaid places another in front of me and one in front of my new 'buddy.' Then, as she moves away, I ask, "Is there anything you can't do?"
"Not fucking
much," he says with a crooked grin.
I stick out my hand. "I'm John Meoff. Friends call me Jack."
He rears back a little. "You're fuckin' with me."
I laugh. "Yeah, I am. It's Dick…Dick Strong," I lie again, as it's actually Mike Reardon. This time he shakes hands. "You got a name?" I ask, since he doesn't offer.
"Yeah, but you don't need it." And I bought the asshole a six-buck beer.
"I hear a little Texas twang in there?" I ask.
He gets a little defensive. "George Bush has one too. Could be Louisiana or Alabama. Don't mean shit."
I shrug and go back to my sandwich as he turns to the guy on his right. He's obviously tight with the guy, who's as big as a hogshead barrel, looks twice as dumb, and is as bald as the proverbial bowling ball. But hatchet nose is leaning right in, talking low to the dude. It's obvious they're tight and don't want to be overheard.
I dig my iPhone out and act like I'm checking my e-mail, but turn the camera feature on and reverse it so it takes a pic from the front rather than the back. I turn my back to him a little and, over my shoulder, get a flash-less pic of him as he takes a swig of his beer, then I reverse the function, turn back facing the bar and get a pic of him in the mirror behind the bar—a profile as he talks to the guy on his right— then one of the big bald boy.
I finish my second beer and my sandwich, pay with cash, leave a generous tip and get up to go. Hatchet face turns back and suggests, "When you get that first fat paycheck and have a pocket full of hundreds, come on back. I'm usually here by ten or eleven, and if you hurry, that young twat won't be stretched out yet."
I notice that his teeth appear good, so it's a sure thing he's only selling, not using.
"Can't wait," I say. It's all I can do not to put a chop from the back hard-edge of my hand into his protruding Adam's apple, but it wouldn't do to be taken up on manslaughter charges before I solved my old CO's problems. I probably wouldn't quit until this asshole bought the farm, if the first cut didn't smash his larynx and kill him. Nothing I hate more than child molesters, and this fuck-face is one if he's peddling fifteen-year-olds. I'll keep him in mind. In fact, near the top of the list.
As I start away the old redhead yells after me, "Thanks, big boy. Y'all come on back and see me."
I wave over my shoulder. Elbowing my way through the crowd, I shove out the front door and only walk about twenty feet before I realize two of the three guys who were standing by the door when I came in are now three rows of cars away, standing at the rear of my trailer.
It's been a long day, but I guess it's not over.
I slip between a black Dodge van and a white crew cab F250 pickup truck, lean back against the van and watch. Sure as hell, the third guy, the biggest and ugliest one, saunters up with a pair of two-foot-long bolt cutters in one hand and a tire iron in the other. I smile as the trailer is not only locked with a hardened built-in door lock, but has a hardened chain and padlock securing it as well.
I have on crepe-soled high-top shoes and can move quietly for a big guy—a survival tactic well learned as Marine Recon moving around the streets of Iraq where a crunch of gravel might attract a spray from an AK 47. I approach the three of them as the big one tries the bolt cutters on the chain, and one of the Indians tries prying the door with the tire iron.
The one who's only watching is standing up straight, his back to me, so the extendable baton catches him at the base of the skull on vertebrae one, and he goes down like the sack of shit he is. The big boy looks up from his work on the chain in surprise, his eyes wide as I crack him across the bridge of the nose. The crunch of bone is palpable. He drops the bolt cutters and reels back, grasping his nose with both hands as it's doing a great imitation of a fire hose, spouting blood through his fingers.
The other one, the one with the tire iron, manages to back away enough to be facing me and readies for my attack. He raises the tire iron and, to his credit, charges forward, but his out-cold buddy is in his way. He stumbles over him and goes down on one hand. He's wearing a knit cap, but it's not nearly enough as I bring the baton down dead center on his pate. He's still coming forward, but his eyes have rolled up in his head. I step aside, and he makes three steps past me before he goes to his knees. The tire iron dropped. Just for the hell of it, as I know he's finished unless he has a cast-iron skull, I kick him between the shoulder blades. He goes to his face, unmoving.
I spin back, although I don't think the big boy will want much more, and take a step his way. He does the scalded-ass-ape and gravel is flying behind his heels as he heads for Canada, or wherever.
Doing a quick scan around, I see that two more guys have come out of the joint and are only a row away, but they're merely watching, arms folded, enjoying the spectacle.
One of them steps forward and I see it's the child molester, old hatchet face. He's with the beer-barrel-big bald boy who was next to him at the bar. A bodyguard, I'd guess from the way he keeps scanning his surroundings; either that or he's watching nervously for the cops.
"You sure you're not a cop?" hatchet face calls out.
"Sure, I'm a cop. My whole department is in this trailer, along with three squad cars."
He laughs. Then asks, "Hey, I'll give you a job. You ever bodyguard?"
"No thanks," I say, as I fold the baton and head for the door to my truck.
"If you change your mind, I'm here fuckin' near every night."
I wave over my shoulder. Yeah, you are, asshole, and I'll make sure I find you before I finish this job and leave town.
2
Lt. Col. Oscar Feuerstein still looks like an active-duty Marine, with close-cropped, formerly-blonde-now-gone-gray hair, a neck that flares from his ears to his shoulders like an upside-down martini glass, and a penchant to down ten of those—with more than a dash of Vermouth—at a sitting. I've seen him add an injured Marine's seventy-pound pack to his own seventy-pound pack, and finish a twenty-mile hump back to base.
A hell of a man.
And he's grinning from ear to ear as he strides out of his office, across the reception area of the double-wide trailer—one of a half dozen in the complex that serve as the offices of Owens-McKittrick Oil Well Service Company.
He extends a hand that looks like it might have been carved from stone and shakes mine with a grip like coiled steel.
"How are you, colonel?" I ask, and can't help but grin myself. He was one of the few who stood up for me at my court martial and was probably the reason I received a general rather than the full boat and a few years in Leavenworth. You're not supposed to frag Iraqi civilians much less an Iraqi Major General who was in the wrong place at the wrong time—even if they were all involved in the stoning of a couple of innocent young women.
But I'd do it all over again.
"It's Oscar now, Mike. Come on in, and I'll fill you in on the Bakken debacle."
I follow him into a rather sparse office and find a seat across the desk.
"I know, I know," he says, as he sits and notes me looking the place over. "It's not Madison Avenue, but trust me, it's throwing off plenty of dough. The Bakken is gonna save this country from having to kiss more Haji ass. I hear you've been leading an exciting life, at least that's what Skip reports." Skip, another jarhead in our unit, got me back in touch with my old CO and this job and was partnered up with me on my last job.
I shrug, as a girl enters with a pot and two cups.
The Colonel introduces us—"Mike, Amber." I stand and extend a hand. She's almost as tall as me, must be six feet. Of course, she has on at least three-inch heels. Her eyes aren't amber, but ice blue. Her hair leans to the copper side of blonde, and her bountiful bust line is straining at her sweater. She's no spring chicken, about my age—a couple of years one side or the other of forty. But lookin' good! The colonel must do his own hiring.
She shakes my hand with polite indifference, pours and asks "Cream or sugar?" I shake my head no, and she exits. Watching her exit is as pleasurable as watching her enter.
So, I ask, "You must do the hiring around here?"
He laughs and shakes his head no. "Just the luck of the draw. I'll tell you, for a little town, the local girls are flat out beautiful. Must be all that good Norwegian stock. However, they're way outnumbered now by the whores and female hustlers. Boomtowns have a way…."
So, I get serious. "So, what's worth a twenty-five thou retainer and a hundred-grand fee to Owens-McKittrick?"
I can see his jaw tighten before he answers. "Dope, like I said on the phone, is rampant here in North Dakota and in eastern Montana, and it's costing us big time. Accidents, downtime, Workers’ Comp, all of it. I want some of the scumbags who are cooking this meth crap, importing grass and God knows what else, to get run out of dodge. How far is up to you. The local cops are way over their heads. I just had one of our best tool pushers busted for statutory— even though he was paying for it; and the kid he was dipping got turned over to immigration."
I nod. "Yeah, I got offered a fifteen-year-old last night, and some dope. My ass hadn't hit the stool for a minute before the guy next to me was working me."
"Rosie's?"
"How'd you guess?"
"It's the worst place in town and just outside the city limits. I think the local PD is okay, but I worry about the sheriff's department."
"On the take?"
He shrugs. "Maybe you can find out. A good part of our operations is in this county, so it's important. We have three crew camps with over two hundred beds each, all in the county."
"So, when do I go to work?"
"The moment you step out that door, but I don't think it's wise if you step back in. Keep as far from Owens-McKittrick as possible. Sorry, but it has to be that way. We don't know you. You don't know us."
"I'm used to it. It's SOP in my line. You said I had a place to park a camper or trailer. I bought a truck and camper and am towing an equipment trailer."
He laughs. "You need a trailer full of equipment?"
"Colonel, you don't want to know."