Con Law

by Mark Gimenez

  ‘About Billy Bob.’

  ‘He’s worth a hundred million dollars.’

  ‘Lot of money.’

  ‘He was worth five. His entire net worth is in company stock. Took the company public in oh-four, he got ten million shares. Stock opened at twenty, peaked at fifty in oh-eight, now it’s down to ten.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Gas prices plunged, from a high of eleven dollars per thousand cubic feet in oh-eight to under two dollars today.’

  ‘Quite a drop.’

  ‘Glut of gas on the market. His company’s all in on shale gas, so the stock price rises and falls with the natural gas futures market.’

  ‘So if the government shut the company down because its fracking was contaminating the groundwater—’

  ‘Billy Bob Barnett wouldn’t have a pot to piss in, to use the West Texas vernacular,’ Carla said.

  ‘Might be a motive for murder.’

  ‘Actually, it’s worse,’ Nadine said. ‘Billy Bob pledged his stock for a one-hundred-million-dollar personal loan when the stock price was worth twenty. If it drops below ten, the bank can foreclose on its collateral—his stock. He’ll lose everything.’

  ‘Big loan.’

  ‘He likes the good life—private jet out at the Marfa airport, homes in River Oaks and Santa Barbara, three ex-wives and five kids to support. So he’s heavily in debt personally and his company’s revenues are down and fracking expenses are up. He’s being squeezed from both ends. And his board deferred his bonus—ten million dollars.’

  ‘That would put a dent in my cash flow,’ Carla said.

  ‘He can’t raise the price of gas, the market sets that. So his only course of action would be to cut expenses.’

  ‘By cutting corners,’ Carla said.

  ‘And his shareholders are putting a lot of pressure on him to boost the stock price.’

  ‘He’s a desperate man.’

  ‘That’s good work, Nadine. How’d you find all that information on the Internet?’

  ‘Professor, I’m twenty-three. My generation might not know current events, but we know our way around the Internet.’

  ‘Call Henry. Professor Lawson. Explain the situation to him, ask him what Billy Bob might do to cut corners.’

  ‘Other than murder Nathan Jones?’

  Book nodded. ‘Other than that.’

  Book’s phone rang. He checked the caller ID. Joanie. He answered.

  ‘Book, Mom wandered off again. The police found her at a strip joint.’

  ‘They’re open on Sundays?’

  ‘Book, she walked all morning.’

  He blew out a breath. ‘We’ll talk when I get back.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Soon as we find the killer.’

  ‘Be careful, Book.’

  He hung up. Carla averted her eyes. It was an awkward moment until Nadine looked past him and said, ‘Daddy?’

  Nadine closed her eyes and shook her head to clear her vision. She thought she had seen her father standing in the doorway. Perhaps she had in fact suffered a closed-head injury causing blood to seep into her brain and resulting in hallucinations—oh, God. But when she opened her eyes, he was still there.

  ‘OMG—Daddy, what are you doing here?’

  ‘Well, young lady, I was about to ask you the same question. I’m here because my health insurance company called me, said a hospital in Alpine, Texas, submitted big bills for a patient named Nadine Honeywell. MRIs, X-rays, ER, OR … They wanted to make sure someone wasn’t engaged in fraud. Obviously, they weren’t. What the hell is going on?’

  ‘I’m fine, Daddy. Thanks for asking.’

  ‘Oh. Are you okay, honey?’

  ‘Just a broken arm and leg. Bruises. Minor contusions. Possible brain damage. I’m fine.’

  Her father wore his standard Sunday attire: a suit and tie. He was a lawyer from birth, destined to a life lived in suits and ties with a briefcase attached to his hand. Mother had left him because he loved the law more than he loved her. Harsh, but true. After her sister died, he found solace in his work; her mother never found any solace. Her father now turned his attention to the professor.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Professor John Bookman.’

  ‘He’s famous, Daddy.’

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘And this is Carla Kent.’

  ‘Are you famous?’

  ‘Infamous.’

  ‘I’m the professor’s intern,’ Nadine said.

  ‘His intern?’ He turned on the professor. ‘So, Professor, why is my daughter, who was in law school in Austin, Texas, the last time I talked to her, now lying in a hospital bed in Alpine, Texas, with a broken arm and leg?’

  ‘Well, Mr. Honeywell, that’s a really interesting story.’

  ‘I’m all ears.’

  ‘We’re solving a murder case, Daddy.’

  ‘A murder case?’ Back to the professor. ‘You got her involved in a murder case?’

  ‘Well, I—’

  ‘I sent her to UT to get a law degree, not to get herself killed. All right, let’s go. I’m going to check you out, get you back to Austin where you belong.’

  ‘No, Daddy.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said, no. I’m not leaving. We’re trying to find a murderer. The professor needs my help.’

  Her father frowned. He gave her that familiar suspicious squint then turned it on the professor. He gestured back and forth between her and the professor with his hand.

  ‘You two got one of those professor–student romances going on?’

  She laughed. ‘Me and the professor? He’s trying to get me killed, Daddy, not get in my thong.’

  Daddy rolled his eyes. ‘Why do you say stuff like that? Now listen, young lady—’

  ‘No, Daddy, you listen. For once, listen to me. What I want to do. I want to stay here and finish this. For once in my life, I am not going to run home scared of life.’

  Her father stared hard at her; then he exhaled and all the fight went out of him.

  ‘Have you talked to your mother recently?’

  Nadine’s father had kissed her on the forehead, secured a commitment from Book to ensure that his daughter got home to Austin safely, and then left to drive to El Paso and catch a flight back to San Francisco.

  ‘Nadine,’ Book said, ‘I’m sorry I—’

  ‘Don’t be. That was a breakthrough moment for Daddy and me. And I don’t really wear thongs, I just say that kind of stuff to get him worked up.’

  ‘You know he cares about you?’

  ‘I know. Oh, I finished the Welch brief and emailed it to the D.A., like you said.’

  ‘Reminds me, Scotty Raines called and left a message. Said the D.A. called him this morning, wasn’t real happy after he read the brief. Wanted me to call him. On Sunday.’

  Book stepped out into the hall and called the number Scotty Raines had left; it was the Travis County D.A.’s cell phone. He answered on the second ring.

  ‘Professor.’

  ‘Mr. Anderson.’

  ‘Don.’

  ‘Book.’

  ‘The hell you doing in Marfa?’

  ‘Murder.’

  ‘You’re killing people in Marfa?’

  ‘Trying to find a murderer.’

  ‘Lot more fun than teaching Con Law, isn’t it?’

  ‘It has its moments.’

  ‘Your secretary’s husband murder any more armadillos? I’m still not happy with that verdict.’

  ‘It’s been a year, Don.’

  ‘So, Professor, why are you working for a guy like Welch? He’s one of the Republicans ruining Texas.’

  ‘It’s not political for me.’

  ‘So what, you’re doing it for the money?’

  ‘He’s not paying me.’

  ‘Then why? Because he’s the chairman of the Board of Regents? What, you want to be president of the university?’

  ‘He promised to put the boy in rehab,
for six months.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘There’s more. But not money.’

  The D.A. exhaled. ‘You gonna file this brief?’

  ‘If I have to.’

  ‘I can beat you.’

  ‘It isn’t about me.’

  ‘Then why isn’t Scotty Raines arguing the con law issues? Why’d Welch hire you?’

  ‘He loves his son.’

  ‘Who’s a smart-ass punk.’

  ‘Maybe. But just because a college kid gets drunk—’

  ‘And stoned on coke.’

  ‘—and mouths off to a cop doesn’t give the police probable cause to search his vehicle, which he was not driving at the time, and to seize his blood without his consent. Thus, that evidence is inadmissible in court, which means you have no case.’

  ‘So you say.’

  ‘So the court will rule. And, Don, the Supreme Court will likely rule this term that the taking of blood without a warrant is an unconstitutional search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment. So even if you go forward with this case and obtain a conviction, it’ll be overturned once the Court rules.’

  ‘We’ll see. File your fucking brief, Professor. I’ll see you in court.’

  The D.A. hung up. Book sighed. Another less than cordial conversation. Perhaps it was him. He returned to the room and found Nadine and Carla giggling like girls on a sleepover.

  ‘Daddy wants me to be a lawyer,’ Nadine said.

  ‘My dad wanted me to be a boy,’ Carla said.

  ‘Okay, you’re right. That is worse.’

  They laughed again.

  ‘Female bonding?’ Book asked.

  ‘We’re BFFs,’ Nadine said.

  ‘You want some dinner, Carla?’

  ‘I’m game.’

  ‘Where are you guys going?’ Nadine asked.

  Book looked to Carla for an answer.

  ‘Reata,’ she said.

  Nadine typed on the laptop keyboard with one finger then stared at the screen.

  ‘OMG, what a menu. Okay, bring me back’—she looked up at Book—‘write this down in that little notebook.’

  He did.

  ‘The tenderloin tamales with pecan mash for an appetizer, the carne asada topped with cheese enchiladas for an entrée, a side of jalapeño and bacon macaroni and cheese, and for dessert a chocolate chunk bread pudding tamale served with dulce de leche. God, that sounds good.’

  ‘You know how to order,’ Carla said.

  ‘She knows how to eat,’ Book said.

  Nadine squirted Purell into her palms and began rubbing as if preparing to eat.

  ‘Oh, Professor, I need some new underwear.’

  ‘Underwear?’

  ‘The ones I had on, they’re gone. My others back at the hotel are dirty. And I wore my spare pair I carry in my bag.’

  ‘You carry a change of underwear in your purse?’

  ‘Doesn’t everyone?’

  Carla shook her head. Nadine grunted as if surprised.

  ‘Well, someone forgot to tell me to pack for a week. And I don’t like this commando thing.’

  ‘Over-share.’

  ‘I’ll take care of it,’ Carla said. ‘I know a store open on Sundays. What kind? Thongs?’

  ‘God, no. I don’t like a string up my … bikinis. All cotton. No lace. Any color.’

  ‘What size?’

  ‘Four.’

  ‘Four? You eat like that and wear a four? That’s not fair.’

  Nadine waved them away. ‘Hurry. I’m hungry, and I need those underwear. And before you leave, Professor, would you empty my bedpan? I really gotta pee.’

  Book eyed the bedpan. ‘Uh …’

  ‘I’ll get the nurse,’ Carla said.

  She went outside to find a nurse.

  ‘I like her,’ Nadine said.

  ‘I need you to research her dad. He was killed in an oil rig blowout six years ago. Find out what you can—on him and on her.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘That ain’t evidence of a murder,’ Sheriff Munn said.

  Book had called the sheriff with the information about Billy Bob’s shady past and his current financial problems.

  ‘Professor, before I can arrest the second-biggest employer in Presidio County after the Border Patrol and charge him with murder, I need a smoking gun.’

  Book did not tell the sheriff about his and Carla’s unauthorized entry upon Barnett Oil and Gas Company’s well site the night before.

  ‘That’s good work by your gal, but it’s not enough.’

  ‘I’ll talk to Carla at dinner, see what we can do.’

  ‘Carla? You working with her?’

  ‘We teamed up.’

  ‘I asked you to team up with me.’

  The sheriff grunted.

  ‘Now, don’t take it that way, Sheriff, it wasn’t personal—’

  Damn. Now he was answering the sheriff’s grunts.

  ‘Course, she is a mite better looking than me.’

  ‘Just a little.’

  ‘You figure her out yet?’

  ‘I’m working on her.’

  ‘I bet you are. Taking her to dinner, huh?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Reata.’

  ‘Good place.’

  ‘A smoking gun? Any advice, Sheriff?’

  ‘First, the most desperate creature on earth is a cornered bear or a man about to lose everything. Be careful, Professor. And second, order the pecan pie for dessert.’

  With six thousand residents, Alpine is like a major metropolitan area compared to Marfa. It has a doctor, a pharmacy, a hospital, a country club, and Reata on Fifth Street in downtown.

  ‘My favorite restaurant in the whole world,’ Carla said.

  They ate on the back patio, which featured a Giant mural painted on the exterior wall of the adjacent building and country-western music playing on the sound system. The clientele was not a hipster artist crowd; it was a cowboy crowd. Deputy Shirley sat at one table wearing her uniform and gun across from a strapping young cowboy. She gave Book a smile and a wink as they walked past. When they sat down, Carla glanced over at Deputy Shirley then back at Book.

  ‘You didn’t go for the snow cone, did you?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  She sighed. ‘Men.’

  Their waitress was an authentic cowgirl attending Sul Ross on a ranch horse team scholarship. She wore a belt buckle the size of Montana.

  ‘I won that at a cutting horse competition,’ she said.

  Carla ordered the jalapeño and cilantro soup and fried poblano chile rellenos stuffed with cream cheese, corn, and pepper served with a corn chowder; Book went for the tortilla soup and grilled salmon with Boursin cream sauce. Book took the sheriff’s advice and ordered the West Texas pecan pie for dessert; Carla had the Dutch Oven apple crisp with cajeta. And he placed Nadine’s to go order. They had already stopped and picked up her underwear.

  ‘So what brought you to Marfa?’ Book asked.

  ‘Fracking. That’s my mission in life, to stop fracking.’

  ‘Well, good to have something to do each day.’

  ‘Are you mocking me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Aren’t you passionate about your work?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Me, too. I’m a very passionate person.’ She gave him a coy look. ‘Who knows, if you play your cards right, you might find out how passionate.’

  ‘You want a beer? Or six?’

  She smiled. ‘It’ll take more than that, cowboy.’

  ‘Beers?’

  ‘Charm.’

  The waitress brought glasses of water and buttermilk biscuits with pecans and soft butter. Carla held up the water glass.

  ‘That water,’ she said, ‘it’s from the Igneous Aquifer. That’s the aquifer Billy Bob’s punching through to frack.’

  ‘The aquifer Nathan thought he was contaminating?’

  ‘Yep.’<
br />
  ‘How do we prove it? The samples came back clean.’

  ‘They came back legal. The shocking thing about fracking isn’t what the industry does—shit, they thought it was brilliant to put diesel fuel down a well hole—but what’s legal. Between the trillions of gallons of drinking water used to frack the wells and the billions of gallons of toxic chemicals put down into the earth, ten years from now we’ll end up with lots of natural gas but no drinking water. Lots of jobs, but more people with cancer. Lots of energy, but more global warming …’

  The waitress brought their dinners, but Carla was on a fracking roll.

  ‘Which is so stupid when the answer is staring at us: green energy. Solar, wind, hydro. Over time, green energy would create a lot of jobs, too, and no cancer, no carbon footprint, no global warming, no groundwater contamination, no earthquakes. If the people knew the truth about fracking, they’d rise up against it. But the industry hires New York PR firms to run disinformation campaigns to confuse the public, same thing they did with cigarettes. They say steel-and-cement casing prevents groundwater contamination, but they don’t mention that the failure rate for casing is six percent immediately upon construction and fifty percent over thirty years. They say gases released into the air like benzene are safe, but they don’t mention that breast cancer rates spike among women living above frack fields. They say fracking’s been around for sixty years, but they don’t mention that the amount of chemicals and pressure down hole for horizontal fracking is way more than for those vertical wells drilled back then. They learned from the tobacco companies: lying works. And the media says, “Well, there’s a big debate about fracking.” And the people hear that and believe it. And as long as there’s a debate, the fracking continues …’

  Which continued into dessert.

  ‘… And the industry touts the jobs. That’s the big sales pitch. Jobs. Jobs to keep the masses pacified. Politicians need to create jobs to get reelected, so they take the billion dollars a year the industry spends to lobby them and give the industry free rein to destroy the environment. Because politicians are inherently corrupt and evil. Like the goddamn oil and gas industry.’

  Book listened attentively and ate the pecan pie then sipped his coffee throughout her impassioned plea. He had sat through many such pleas from environmental groups in Austin trying to save the springs, the river, the wilderness … but no one had brought more passion to the table than Carla Kent. She finally paused to take a breath; he waited to see if the lull were temporary or permanent. Her eyes danced with passion, which made her even more attractive. She drank her beer and smiled.