"Rogie," she said, scrambling up to get a wet towel from the bathroom, "what happened, honey?" She returned and carefully washed his hind quarters, then examined the wound. She could see that there was a large, deep crease cut into his right flank. As she leaned down to clean it, he stopped whimpering, then unexpectedly licked her face.
They came out of the houseboat and moved along the rickety dock. Jimmy Freeze had his hand on Beano, Wade Summerland was holding Duffy, and Tommy Rina was bringing up the rear. He had found some first-aid supplies aboard and had bandaged up his neck. He was moving with a long stride to keep up with the two larger men. They approached the limousine and waited for Tommy, then got in.
When Beano saw Dakota, his stomach dropped. She had been brutally beaten; she sat in the back seat, her head back, her eyes barely open. He got in with Duffy; the last in was Tommy. Jimmy and Wade sat in the front with Keith.
"Little mutt came runnin' up here," Keith said, "piece of his ass missing."
"Good, maybe he'll bleed to death. Get rollin'," Tommy barked. Keith put the car in motion and they drove out of the parking lot.
"Are you okay?" Beano asked Dakota.
She nodded, but didn't say anything. She seemed completely drained of energy.
Tommy handed a slip of paper to Jimmy Freeze. "Jimmy, go to this address. It's a service company called ... what?"
"West Coast Platform Drilling," Beano said, and he looked out the window for Roger. He knew if the little terrier hadn't attacked Tommy, he would be dead. He saw blood on the pavement where Roger had fallen and prayed Roger-the-Dodger was alive. Then Beano looked back at Dakota and took stock of where they were. He knew it was up to him to keep them alive. He had to stay focused.
The plan had worked. Tommy seemed hooked, but in a good scam, the sharpers weren't supposed to get hurt. He looked again at Dakota. He didn't like the color of her complexion.
In the motor home, Victoria had tried to perform first aid on Roger. She found an Ace bandage in the bathroom. She put a clean washcloth on the wound and then tried to wrap the bandage as tight as she could to stem the bleeding. Then she carried Roger over to the sofa and carefully laid him there. "I'll take you to the vet as soon as I can," she told him, but she knew she also had to stay close to Duffy and Beano. She didn't know if the other shot had hit one of them. She couldn't lose Dakota. Victoria had been distressed by the sound of her voice.
Then she had seen Tommy and the two huge bodyguards leading Duffy and Beano up the ramp. She grabbed the camera and focused on them as they walked up under the overhead light in the marina parking lot. She got three good shots of Beano and Duffy with Tommy by the car before they got in. In one shot Beano turned toward the lens, smiled, and put his arm around Tommy. She snapped the shot before the little mobster knocked Beano's arm off.
As the limo pulled out of the parking lot, Victoria put the big motor home in gear and followed with the headlights out. She wasn't sure what she was going to do. This was not going exactly the way Beano had described. She looked back at Roger, who was lying on the sofa, his chin on his paws, looking up at her. He seemed to be asking, "What now?" A question she couldn't answer.
Then the limo turned onto the freeway and headed northwest, toward Modesto.
Victoria Hart, who had once been voted the "most organized"' in her senior class, who since law school had never made an important move without planning it and mapping it out meticulously, now blindly followed the black stretch limo up onto the freeway. She knew she had no chance to plan anything. With her heart beating frantically, she gripped the steering wheel in desperation and decided this time, she would just have to go with the flow.
Chapter Twenty-Three.
W.C.P.D.
THE WEST COAST PLATFORM DRILLING COMPANY WAS in a warehouse district in the small town of Livingston, twenty miles southeast of Modesto. The sign on the corrugated tin building was freshly painted and showed a derrick with oil shooting out of the top. In the fenced yard were rolls of cable and used parts. A roof light threw its glare across the enclosed parking lot. The limo pulled in and stopped. It was 10:15 P.M.
Beano looked over at Dakota, who had her eyes closed now and was breathing with difficulty. Her head was tilted back, resting on the back seat; her skin color was pasty.
"You gotta take her to a hospital," Beano said.
Tommy looked over at Dakota for a long, speculative moment. "Why?" he finally said.
"She looks horrible. Something's wrong with her."
"Are we talkin' about the same cunt who put something in my drink so I'd pass out, so you two fucks could run the table on me at my own club and get my brother so pissed he starts cussing?"
"She needs to be looked at," Beano insisted.
"Hey, Dr. Dipshit, or whatever your fuckin' name is--"
"It's Douglas," Beano said stubbornly.
"You called the tune, Douglas, this is the fucking music. Now let's go see this asshole." He grabbed Beano and pushed him out of the limo. As Beano passed in front of Dakota, she opened her eyes and they exchanged looks. Beano didn't like what he saw there.
They were all out of the limo. Only Keith was left behind with Dakota. They moved to a side door of the corrugated metal warehouse. Beano knocked; Duffy was standing right behind him.
"Donovan, it's me. It's Dr. Clark and Dr. Sutton," Beano yelled, and in a minute, the side door was unbolted and Steven Bates was standing there, wearing old coveralls with W.C.P.D. stitched on the pocket. He was wiping his hands with an old rag and looking warily out the slit in the door at Beano and Duffy.
"Dr. Clark, Dr. Sutton." He nodded; then his eyes shifted to Tommy and the two wide-bodies behind him. "Who are they?" Steve asked.
Tommy moved in front of Beano and stuck the automatic in Steve's face. "I'm your new drilling partner."
Steve looked down at the barrel of the 9mm SIG-Sauer and swallowed hard, dismay on his sun-reddened features.
"Inside. We ain't havin' this stockholders' meeting in the street. Let's go." And Tommy pushed Beano and Duffy into the warehouse. Jimmy Freeze and Wade Summerland came in last and closed the door.
The inside of the warehouse had been carefully dressed by Steven. He had leased the building and rented everything. Two large portable water pumps with metal derricks that were used for agricultural field irrigation were on rolling pallets in the center of the warehouse floor. Even though they were water pumps, they looked enough like oil derricks to fool the uninitiated layman. Steve had helped the deception by labeling one OIL PUMPING UNIT C, the other OIL PUMPING UNIT J. He had rolls of cable strewn around and a forklift parked in plain view. A small safe was conspicuous in the corner. Everything was on a two-week rental from a farm supply company just two blocks away. The hand props he had rented from a dive shop in Modesto.
"What the heck's this?" Steve Bates said, as he looked down at the gun in Tommy's hand.
"You ain't askin' the questions, Joe Bob, you're answerin' 'em. I wanna hear about this od field you found in Oak Crest."
Steve Bates looked warily at Beano, then at Tommy. "There's no field," he stammered. "That's just a buncha dry holes. Wish t'heck we'd a'hit something, by God."
"Forget it, Donovan," Beano said. "He's seen all the graphs, the seismic shots. We told him everything."
"You told him?" The betrayal in Steven Bates's voice was nothing short of Shakespearean.
"Let's try and get past that, Donovan. The fact is we need more money anyway. We can't control this thing with just a hundred thousand shares. We're outta dme." Beano pushed his glasses up on his nose.
Steven Bates looked at Beano and then his eyes slid back to Tommy. "I don't know what he's talking about," he said, but his voice was hesitant now.
"Then lemme put it in line for you," Tommy said. "I wanna see this field in Oak Crest and you buncha pricks is gonna take me there tonight. How far away is that?"
"'Bout an hour," Beano said.
"Dr. Clark," Steve said, "this was a tight hole.
How could ya tell 'em?"
"I didn't have a choice. He followed us back from Sabre Bay. He found everything. He's got the stock certificates. Besides, I think we should take him as a partner. We're better off letting him in on this. Believe me, we can't control it ourselves anyway."
Tommy glared at Beano. "I'm not in on anything yet, asshole. I'm on a fact-finding mission, and I'm tryin' t'get my million dollars back. So far, all you got from me is some mild interest. If I don't get a lot more info in the next few hours, I'm gonna cash in these stock certificates, get my money back, and you guys are all deader than junkie luck." He thumbed the hammer back and pointed it at Steve. "Are we straight?" Steve nodded. "Then keep talkin'."
"The Fentress County Petroleum and Gas Company stock is falling," Steve Bates said. "We bought it at ten, it's already at eight. The rumor is out that Fentress County can't make their bank payments. Their cash flow is too low. Buncha big stockholders are already calling for a meeting in San Francisco at the main office. They wanna liquidate the company. It's hit the street already that they're in trouble. Even if you cash in those hundred thousand shares, you're not gonna get back much more than seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars."
Tommy's eyes were roaming the warehouse. "You use this shit to drill them elimination wells?" he asked, motioning at the equipment, his mind already racing ahead.
"Delineation wells," Steve Bates corrected him. "Yeah, them small rigs only drill a six-eighths-of-an-inch hole that we side-cement with sleeveless piping. These units are good for slant drilling or directional drilling. Once we hit oil or natural gas, we put on one a'these," Steve said, picking up a small gauge attached to rubber hosing that had been rented from the Modesto Dive Shack. The gauge was actually part of an air-flow regulator.
Tommy took the piece of equipment out of Steve Bates's hand and looked at it. "What the hell is it?" he said.
"It's a flow meter," Steve said. "We use it to determine velocity of fluid. We use all kinds a'different ones. That one yer holdin' is a positive displacement unit, but we got turbine units and electromagnetic flow meters ... depending on what we're tryin' to determine." As he spoke he was looking at the gun in Tommy's hand.
"I don't give a shit about any of that. How much oil is down there?"
"Hard to say," Steve said. "Dr. Clark thinks we got a major pay zone. I like t'keep my estimates on the conservative side."
"Like what?"
"We hooked up the PD meter, that's yer Positive Displacement meter, to the flow meter. We can estimate gross volume, using a flow rate formula. According to that test, seems like we got a pretty big pool down there. Could be half-a-billion barrels or more ... maybe much more."
"The size of that stratigraphic trap is huge," Beano interrupted. "Covers almost six hundred acres. Only reason we missed it ten months ago is that our original seismics misidentified the site. We were off by half a mile. The field we were looking for is actually a little south of where we were doing the seismic shots, but by slant drilling, we got into the main trap." Beano was so excited when he spoke about it, his eyes were flashing. He was believing his con and selling it.
"You say you need more money to control the company? How much?" Tommy asked, nibbling at the bait.
"Used to be we needed maybe ten million, but I think, with the price fall on the stock, we could control it with five or six," Beano said, "providing the S.E.C. doesn't freeze the stock on us because of erratic fluctuations."
"Five million plus my million you already invested?" Tommy asked.
"That oughta do 'er," Steve Bates said, and took the diving air-flow meter out of Tommy's hand. The rule was you never let the mark hold a prop too long.
"How do I know this is all on the level?" Tommy asked, his eyes narrowing.
Beano looked at Steve hopefully. Steve finally exhaled and moved over to the small safe, kneeled, and dialed a combination. He pulled open the door and grabbed several long metal canisters that were stored inside on racks. Each canister had a glass window. Steve held each one up to the light, reading the label before finding the one he wanted.
"The fuck is all this?" Tommy said.
"Side core samples," Beano explained. "This is how we finally hit the pool. Take a look at this." He took one of the cylinders from Steve and handed it to Tommy, pointing at the window in its glass side. "This core sample was from sixteen hundred feet down. You can see from the brown color that we're already getting discoloration from the oil shale. That means the porosity of the top soil has absorbed the oil at the roof of the trap. That's why I think this is a full trap with a lot more than half-a-billion barrels," Beano insisted.
Tommy took the sample tube and stuck it in his pocket.
"You must leave that here," Beano said, alarmed. "It's part of the drilling record, eventually it will have to go to the F.E.R.C."
"Hey, asshole, ain't you figured out yet who's in charge? I'm gettin' my own geologist. I'm gettin' this checked. You're not dealin' with some chucklehead here."
Beano and Steve exchanged nervous looks.
"Okay. Let's say for now, I'm interested," Tommy went on, "so let's go take a look at this field."
Victoria had followed them to the warehouse in Livingston and watched as everybody got out and went inside, leaving Dakota and the bodyguard in the limo. She had parked the Winnebago up the street, then checked on Roger, who whimpered when she touched his hind end. "Sorry, honey, but it's not bleeding, so that's good." Then she moved to the back of the motor home and got the spandex dress that she had worn at the jewelry store out of the small wardrobe closet. She grabbed the plastic heels and started to change.
She knew she would have to find a way to disable the gorilla standing guard if she intended to rescue Dakota. The man was huge, and she was afraid that unless she distracted him, she could never control the situation. She decided that the sexy dress might give her some added advantage. She had been remembering a Trenton street villain she'd prosecuted several years ago. He was a 120-pound creep who was actually a collection agent for a loan shark. He had put hundreds of slow-pays in the hospital using a simple trick. He would wear leather gloves, and inside the palm of his right glove, he would hide a flat, curved, heavy metal sap. He would disable his victims with one slap to the side of the head. Her E.N.T./M.D. expert witness had testified that a sharp hard blow to the ear, even by a 120-pound man, could easily explode the capillaries in the inner ear, causing the victim to lose all of his equilibrium.
Victoria searched the motor home and finally found a white golfing glove in one of the drawers. She slipped it on her right hand. It was loose but it sort of fit. She kept looking in the drawers for some tool Beano might use for roofing scams or to make the wheelchair dice brackets. She found a toolbox in the outside storage compartment. Inside was a small metal rasp for filing wood. It was about four inches long and one inch wide, and it weighed almost two pounds. She shoved it down into the glove. The metal file stuck out too far, but maybe, with the purse over her arm, the huge bodyguard wouldn't notice. She hoped he wouldn't be near the car, and that she wouldn't have to use it. She'd been a state junior tennis champion and her forehand was awesome, but she'd never actually hit anybody before. Her Prosecutor's brain instructed her that this would be a felonious assault and battery. Then she remembered the troubling sound of Dakota's voice and pushed all those thoughts away, grabbed her purse, and moved out of the Winnebago. She hurried up the street until she got to the fence that bordered the warehouse. She could see that the bodyguard had left the front door of the limo open for air and that his big leg was dangling out, his foot tapping on the pavement as he listened to country music radio. Tanya Tucker was singing about a lost love.
"Hey!" she called out to him.
In a second Keith stuck his head out and saw Victoria standing there, looking through the gate. "Hi," he said, getting out of the car and moving over to her, smiling.
"My car broke down. I need a phone. ... Can I use the one in your limo?" she asked. "I'll p
ay for the call."
Keith eyed her platform heels, the micro-mini exposing her sexy legs. He grinned and moved closer.
"You're too cute to be out here walkin' around alone," he leered, turning on his NFL groupie-catcher smile. Keith was feeling horny; just being close to Dakota had got his juices flowing, but he knew if he touched her before Tommy said okay, he would end up dead. This girl was a whole other story.
"Gate's over here, come on, I'll let you in," he said.
She followed him along the fence until they got to the gate, and he let her in. "'Course, I can't really let you use the phone in the limo," he leered, "but that wasn't what you had in mind anyway, was it?"
"Yes," she insisted, "my car broke down." She was sizing him up. He was huge, six-four at least, and over 250. She wondered if the little Trenton street villain had ever used his glove sap on a mountain of gristle like the one towering over her.
"How 'bout we have some fun?" he said, grabbing her and holding her shoulders with both hands.
"Slow down, honey," she said as he pawed at her. She was within striking distance now, as he fumbled to open the front of her dress. Almost without thinking, she swung her right hand, a powerful forehand winner. The two-pound rasp caught Keith Summerland smack on the left ear. He let out a howl, went backwards, and dropped to his knees. She stepped back in horror and for a brief moment watched as he held his head, moaning. Then she stepped around him and ran across the asphalt toward the limo, pausing on the way to kick off the damn platform shoes. Victoria reached out and opened the back door and peered in at Dakota. She looked horrible: A light film of sweat covered her swollen bruised face.
"Oh, my God," Victoria whispered, "what did they do to you? Can you walk?"
"Don't know," Dakota said. "Pull me out."
Victoria reached in, took Dakota's hand, and pulled her out of the car, then walked with an arm around her, steadying her as they left the lot. Dakota glanced over at Keith. He was struggling to get to his feet, dizzy and totally out of it. He didn't see them leave.
"Let's go," Victoria said, hurrying Dakota away and up the street to the Winnebago. "I never hit anybody before," Victoria added.
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