PJ sidestepped down the hedge, his breath coming in shallow gulps, his chest tightening. With the bench creaking under his nervous shifting, Jim mumbled and cursed as the other party spoke.
“Well, he’s missing, so it makes me wonder.”
More heavy breathing and impatient blather. PJ kept moving, the wet grass muffling his footsteps as he worked his way to the stairs, peering through gaps in the hedge. Jim’s cheek was awash in a green, electronic glow.
“Well, then I suggest you find out what happened. Otherwise, Tim-Oil is back on. And I’m done being your bitch. Find someone else.”
The light was snuffed, followed by disjointed murmuring and creaking of the bench. PJ emerged from behind the hedge and stood at the foot of the stairs, his senses funneled into the noisy darkness above. As if by flipping a switch, Jim’s fit of restless nerves ceased. The faint whistle of heavy breathing drifted down the steps.
“Somebody there?” Jim asked. PJ clenched his fists as a beam of light struck him in the chest. He ran up the stairs. “Wait, stop! Who—?”
Jim shuffled to his feet, dropping the flashlight as he twisted aside in a feeble attempt to escape, its beam bouncing and sliding over the porch walls as it clattered down the steps into the grass. PJ lowered his shoulder and struck him in the side, hurling their combined weight against the house, buckling the cedar siding with a crunch and rattling the door in its frame. Tenacious in his resistance, Jim dragged PJ into a tumble over the bench and onto the floor, where PJ—landing on top in a grunt—made short work of pinning him. His body shaking with rage, PJ held Jim’s right arm behind his back with one hand, his face to the floor with the other.
“Who’s your buddy?”
Jim coughed and gasped, trying to recapture the air knocked from his lungs as PJ ground his knee into his back. He replied in a menacing growl.
“Aaahhh! Fuck you, asshole!”
Clutching a handful of hair, PJ wrenched Jim’s head back and leaned forward, speaking directly into his ear.
“What the fuck did you do, Jim?”
“Jesus. Is that you, PJ? Just—okay. Let me explain.” PJ released Jim’s hair, letting him lay his head on the floor, his blind panic reduced to a soft whimper. “Shit, I’m so sorry, PJ. What am I gonna do?”
PJ released Jim’s wrist and got to his feet.
“Inside. If you try anything, I’ll knock you through the fucking wall.”
Jim rose slowly to his feet and shuffled inside and collapsed on the couch, the single table lamp casting deep shadows across his face. PJ sat on the arm of the couch, hovering.
“That was your PR guy? Carl?”
Jim looked up.
“Yeah. How—?”
“And he doesn’t know anything, right?”
As Jim shook his head, PJ stood and began to pace the room.
“What’s this deal you made with him?” Jim didn’t answer. He rocked forward on the couch, his eyes darting over the floor at his feet. PJ turned on him, his fist cocked, making him recoil in fear. “God damn it, Jim!”
“I—he knew about your dad,” Jim said, fidgeting with the corner of the cushion. “Tim-Oil too. I don’t know how, but he knew. Called me a couple weeks ago, askin’ questions. But…I never told him anything, I swear.”
PJ lowered his fist, his disbelieving gaze sweeping over Jim’s body. His clothes, torn and wet from his drunken stumble in the woods, revealed bloody scrapes on his legs and arms.
“You two seem pretty tight,” PJ said. “Maybe you just don’t remember. Maybe talk a little shop together over drinks? Is that what happened, Jim? Because I’ve heard you enjoy a cocktail now and then.”
Jim’s expression hardened. Again raising his fist, PJ stepped forward, melting Jim’s indignation.
“No, I wouldn’t—I couldn’t do that, PJ. He’s my friend. I—”
PJ delivered a right cross to Jim’s face that resonated with the dull thump of bone on bone. Jim crumpled to his side on the couch, clutching his jaw and writhing in pain as PJ bent over him, screaming.
“You’re not his fucking friend, you lying piece of shit!” PJ stood back, his hand tingling as he relaxed his fist. “I’m losing my fucking patience, Jim! How did he know?”
Slowly rising to a sit, Jim covered his face with his hands, muffling his intense, shaking sobs. PJ spoke in a low, haunting growl.
“Or I swear…you’ll regret it.”
Panting and shivering with grief, Jim dropped his hands and looked up at PJ with a distant stare, his face and beard smeared with a sickening grime.
“I didn’t tell you about the second harvester,” he said. He looked away, staring at the floor through a protracted silence, his hands shaking in his lap. “We were on…such a high that night on Bald. So I…talked the guys into hitting the one over on Brewer the next night.”
Again pacing the room, PJ worked the feeling back into his fingers.
“Brilliant.”
“Yeah, I know. I know. We just…I don’t know, figured they’d never expect that. So we waited again. Like we did before. We held off longer in case anyone doubled back or something.”
Jim’s speech cleared and grew faster as he recounted the story.
“We didn’t have the key this time, so we busted the gas cap and siphoned off a few gallons. Doused the whole works and lit her up. We stopped to glass the scene from the ridge.”
He dragged his sleeve over his eyes and nose, sniffing.
“After a while, this truck rolls up. This guy—security guard—gets out and hightails it over to the harvester, carryin’ a fire extinguisher. We could see his face plain as day in the fire light—he’s scared as shit. He’s runnin’ up and down, sprayin’ that powdery shit everywhere, makin’ a god-awful mess. But he wouldn’t quit, even scared as he was, he wouldn’t quit, and we were, you know, laughin’, crackin’ jokes over the whole thing. Then—”
Jim’s expression collapsed and he sat forward, dropping his face into his hands, shaking. With sudden clarity, he leaned forward and reached under the couch, searching the floor. PJ dropped to his knees and pulled Jim’s arm behind his back and secured him in a headlock. Choking and gasping for breath, Jim offered only weak resistance.
“I just need a drink, PJ!”
With a sweep of his foot, PJ kicked an empty whiskey bottle into the open. He dropped Jim onto the couch.
“You’re fine.”
Jim stared at the bottle, crestfallen. His voice came to him slowly.
“We—nobody saw it happen, we were gettin’ ready to head out, and it just…blew. It wasn’t a big explosion ‘cause there wasn’t much gas left in her, but…the guy just dropped. We glassed him out, and he was—”
Jim glanced at the bottle on the floor, pursing his lips.
“He was on his back. The fire extinguisher’s still discharging, dancin’ around on the gravel. He’s got it in a death grip or somethin’. There’s a—he’s got a chunk of metal stickin’ out of his face and he’s not movin’. I don’t know what we thought we were gonna do, but we went down there anyway. We decided to let things cool off for a while. Figured it was the least we could do, standin’ over this guy’s dead body and all. So we deserted our camp and walked all night down to the car. Barely said two words.”
PJ—still standing over the couch and listening in rapt silence—sat on the edge of the coffee table, watching Jim with a grim, defeated glare.
“A few nights later,” Jim went on, motioning to his face. “This happens. Guy jumps me as I’m gettin’ in my truck, messes me up pretty good. Ties me up, trashes the house lookin’ for Tim-Oil stuff, and tells me I got a choice to make.”
“Who’s the guy?”
“No clue. Never saw his face.”
“And your choice?”
“Give Hansen the heads up on any tree huggers tryin’ to screw ‘em over, or get gutted like a fish.”
“You think this guy works for Hansen?”
“I don’t know. Could be, I guess. If he do
es, the Old Man’s steppin’ up his game.”
PJ rubbed his eyes, groaning in frustration.
“All right,” he said. “So now you’re ratting out your friends—including my dad—to Carl the douchebag.”
“No, PJ…I told you, it wasn’t me. Hand to God. That’s why I hightailed it out. Figured this guy, whoever he is, would come gunnin’ for me. No, Carl, he…he just knew. I don’t know how.”
“Well, I can tell you how,” PJ said, rising to his feet. “The same way Tim-Oil became such a colossal clusterfuck. With the help of a chickenshit drunk and his band of merry sidekick fuckups.”
Jim jumped to his feet, stabbing an accusing finger at PJ.
“Hey! If you—”
His body tight with channeled rage, PJ doubled Jim over with a blow to the stomach, making him vomit a vile mixture of alcohol and bar food onto the carpet. Jim fell to his hands and knees, his back arching with a wave of dry heaves as he crawled towards the door, howling curses at the floor. PJ shoved him onto his stomach with his foot, sending him into a fit of sucking coughs as he slipped the phone from Jim’s shirt pocket. He found his last call and redialed the number, bending Jim’s arm behind his back and drawing an angry hiss as Carl Mason answered.
“Christ, what now?”
Grinding his knee into Jim’s spine, PJ pulled on the already contorted arm, bringing it near to breaking. Jim roared in agony.
“Where’s Butch?” PJ asked.
“What? Who is this?”
“Where’s Butch?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
PJ pressed harder with his knee and Jim thrashed and pulled against his stressed shoulder.
“I don’t want to do this, Carl. Just tell me where he is. Then your friend’s free to go.”
“Look, I don’t know what anyone’s told you, but I don’t know anyone named Butch. Whoever you are, don’t call me again.”
PJ sighed.
“I don’t know what anyone’s told you, Carl, but Jim’s not in charge here anymore.”
“I don’t know any Jim.”
“I see.”
PJ set the phone on the floor and picked up the whiskey bottle, smashing it against the couch leg. He held the broken neck in Jim’s face before slowly pressing it into his cheek. Jim’s thrashing ceased, and he began pleading in a frantic whimper.
“PJ…oh my god, w-what are you doing?”
“Pick up the phone,” PJ said. Jim struggled to lift the phone to his ear with his trembling, grime coated hand. “Ask him again.”
“Carl, where is he?” A muffled response hummed over Jim’s erratic breathing. “Carl, please! I—”
Releasing Jim’s arm, PJ took him by the hair and knocked him cold against the floor. More humming from the phone in Jim’s hand, and then silence. Tossing the broken bottle aside, PJ picked up the phone.
“Wrong answer, Carl. Angela’s next.”
He hung up, his hands dropping to his sides as he stared down at Jim’s lifeless form.
Jesus, PJ.
He checked Jim’s pulse and sat on the floor against the couch as Jim’s phone began to vibrate. He answered on the fourth ring.
“I know the guy you’re looking for,” Carl said. “But I swear, I don’t know where he is.”
PJ was silent.
“Some guy from Bighorn called asking about him. You know, Bighorn Oil? Didn’t give me his name. He just said if I heard anything about this Butch guy trying to fuck with their Cheyenne site to call Digger. He’s the foreman there.”
“Did you?”
“No. Shit, no. The whole thing was just wrong. The guy really creeped me out. Told me he sent somebody to have a talk with Jim about…some problems we were having.”
“Your harvesters?”
Carl sighed.
“Yeah.”
“And your dead security guard?”
“Right. Guess they worked him over pretty good. Wanted us to return the favor. His exact words. Said we needed to stick together and keep an eye out for tree hugger pussies, he called ‘em. I told him not to do us any more favors.”
“When was this?”
“I don’t know, a week ago maybe. Look, that’s all I know, so please, leave me out of this now.”
“That depends on you, Carl. If you’re lying to me, I can’t help you.”
“I’m not, I swear. If Jim says anything else—”
PJ hung up and dropped the phone on the floor and went to the desk. He scribbled a note, leaving it in Jim’s outstretched hand.
‘Take care of Joan’.
PJ shut the door behind him and walked across the neighboring lawns to his car, glancing through Mrs. Harrison’s porch window as he dialed his phone. Anna answered, groggy.
“Hi. PJ.”
“I’m leaving Jim’s for Cheyenne. I need you to check on the foreman there. His—”
“Whoa…wait. Hold on, you wake me up at what…one thirty in the morning? And start barking orders at me? I don’t think so.”
As if he’d been holding his breath for days, PJ exhaled.
“Okay. Could you please do me a favor?”
“Better. What’s going on?”
“I’ll tell you on the way. You have to stay up and talk to me. Keep me awake.”
“Oh, come on. What do you want from me? I said I’d check on—”
“Could you please stay up with me? I’m so tired.”
A pause.
“Better.”
chapter fifteen
PJ
PJ slowed the car as he rolled past the gate securing Bighorn’s Cheyenne oil field. Closing the gap in miles of chain link running the site’s border, its reflective finish blazed in the mid-day sun. The contractor installing the entry keypad watched with muted interest as PJ passed, lifting his tool box into the back of his truck, his face shiny with sweat. PJ tossed him a quick wave, and with a tired nod, the man turned back to the gate.
“They’re hiding something, PJ.”
“You think?” PJ asked, turning to inspect the tavern across the road. A faded beer sign—hung from the lamp post at the edge of the parking lot—was swinging in the hot wind, the word ‘Roughneck’ painted freehand along its top edge. The sign cast a trivial block of shade onto a lone pickup truck pulled up to the bar’s front steps. PJ accelerated, checking his watch.
“What’s the plan, PJ?”
“I don’t know. You think that Carson guy knows what’s going on here?”
“Probably,” Anna said. “But I’m sure Digger answers to someone lower down the food chain. And from the looks of it, Bighorn’s lousy with middle management.”
“So we need to talk to Digger.”
“If we can. Could be tough if they’re spooked.”
“I could—wait, hang on.”
PJ slammed the brakes and turned onto an access road, cringing as the car rattled and shook across the cattle guard and through the open gate. The gravel road climbed a steep knoll, leveling at a plateau near the midpoint. He pulled to the side and killed the engine.
“Sorry. I just stopped to get my bearings.”
“What do you see?”
“I’ll call you back.”
“Okay.”
PJ grabbed his camera from the passenger seat and walked a narrow ledge to the far side of the hill, pausing in the shade of a boulder clinging to the slope. The view encompassed the bulk of Bighorn’s operation, and PJ panned the site with his telephoto lens. The basin was littered with pumpjacks in assorted states of repair, all bobbing tirelessly to feed a web of pipes connected to a line of enormous tanks. In trucks and on foot, men scurried among the sprawling infrastructure, shuttling tools and supplies like ants tending to their queen. The top of a drilling derrick peeked over the back side of a distant rock outcropping.
A semi-tanker leaving the site was halfway through the gate, its driver engaged in a good humored discussion with the gate worker, who was now in his pickup, pulled alongside. The truck driver
was laughing and pointing back to the gate, with the equally amused contractor just visible through the pickup’s passenger window. They parted with a wave, and the semi rolled clear of the gate, which rolled shut under the contractor’s watchful eye. At an invitation from the semi driver, the contractor swung around and pulled onto the highway towards Cheyenne, the semi laboring behind.
In the distance, a second tanker approached the site, misshapen and fluid as it pierced the afternoon heat, a ribbon of exhaust dissolving in its wake. PJ went back to the car and called Anna.
“I see lots of money,” he said.
“In other words, motive.”
“Yeah. I’ve got an idea. You got a read on my location?”
“You mean this big blank spot in Wyoming? Yeah, I’ve got you.”
“Okay, good. Call you later.”
“Be careful, PJ.”
PJ opened the trunk and shouldered his pack, leaving behind his camera and phone. He struck off into a dry wash cut into the face of the hill, the crunch of his boot steps echoing from the walls on either side. Despite the temporary shade, PJ broke a heavy sweat as the surrounding rock radiated its stored heat into the stagnant air, and as he emerged onto the highway across from the Roughneck Tavern’s front door, he gasped, welcoming the return of the hot wind. He collected a handful of dust as he crossed the parking lot, rubbing it into the sweat on his face and neck.
Yeah, that’ll fool ‘em.
Pulling the screen door wide, PJ stumbled inside, his pack catching on the door as it closed behind him. An old man was seated at the end of the bar, his gaze momentarily diverted from the television above. PJ shook his head as he crossed the room, acknowledging his awkward entrance. The bartender set his newspaper on a stack of boxes, nodding as they met across the bar.
“Help you?”
PJ took off his pack, propping it against the stool as he sat.
“Could use a drink.”
The bartender took a glass from underneath the bar.
“Beer?”
“Yeah.”
PJ turned on his stool and looked out the front window, squinting at two derricks now rising above the horizon, their vast skeletons of wood and steel shrouded in a thin haze. On a rise in the middle distance, the steady roll of a pumpjack against the cloudless sky.
The Ascent of PJ Marshall Page 20