Moratorium

by Chuck Sampson

  A man, wearing blue overalls and white hardhat walked up beside the H frame and poured liquid from a python girthed hose into a smaller tube that ran alongside the larger one.

  “Hey buddy,” he called out to Cyrus, “you want to get fired! You are not supposed to be on the floor without a hardhat. Go over to the break room around back and get one. In fact you can use one of mine; it’s sitting on top of my locker. Look for the one with the name Lewis on it; it’ll be the first locker on the third row when you walk into the break room.”

  Cyrus nodded his head and then walked back around behind the large iron platform and through the door to the room he assumed was the break room. He emerged wearing a hardhat with the name LEWIS written on the front. Cyrus waved to the tool pusher and he waved back,

  “That’s better!”

  Workers carrying various boxes of tools, parts, and cables, walked past him, oblivious to his presence. Cyrus got out his cell phone camera, turned it on, and started filming the men at the platform, holding it as though he were talking. As he was filming, three men approached him. Roughnecks, they call them, Cyrus said to himself. They carried a large metal apparatus up a ramp that led to the platform. Afraid of being detected, he closed the phone and clicked on the record audio button. When they passed him he grabbed part of the round, plug-like, metal object the men were carrying and followed them up the ramp. He wanted to find out what Tanner was hiding.

  The platform had two large bore holes positioned about twenty feet apart. Standing around the bore hole on the left, Cyrus saw several men lower a new drill head down its opening. The man in charge, the tool pusher, crouched over the large hole, helping to guide the drill head downward.

  “Lewis, bring over that casement packer!” he shouted and then once more. Cyrus noticed all the men on the ramp turn and stare at him. Then the man in charge stood up and pointing to Cyrus he squinted his eyes and then said, “You men over there, are you deaf? Bring that packer over here, now!”

  Cyrus, together with the other men, brought the metal fitting over to the foreman, or driller. The driller motioned to Cyrus to place the end of the packer in line with the end of the cylinder. Cyrus figured the driller assumed he was in charge because he was the oldest. The funny thing was all the other men with him acted as if he were in charge as well.

  “Hold it steady right there, that’s it.” He ordered and started attaching it to a large section of metal tube. Cyrus could feel his arms burning from holding up his small part of the heavy apparatus. When driller finished attaching the packer, he patted Cyrus on the back and motioned to the next crew of men to bring the metal apparatus they were holding over to him.

  Cyrus separated from his three coworkers and walked over to the far side of the platform where another group of workers had congregated over another bore hole. Above it, a boom held up one end of a twenty foot section of casement pipe.

  Cyrus did not like the way the pipe was hanging loosely at the end of a cable, swaying back and forth. It was then he realized the casement pipe was probably the source of the loud noise he and Max had heard previously. The next moment he spotted confirmation of his conjecture lying a few feet from the borehole, pushed up against the wall, twisted and bent.

  The three men he saw loitering around this bore-hole were dressed in designer jeans and polo shirts. They each had a lab notebook. Their faces and hands were clean and they were drinking coffee. One of the men was much larger than the other two, tall and blonde. He had a prominent Roman nose and large, blue, eyes. Cyrus guessed his age to be mid-forties. His relaxed attitude around his two companions gave Cyrus the impression he was the senior engineer. Cyrus could read the name on his lab book written in large black letters: Peter Grigoryan.

  The other two men were shorter and very young, probably just out of college only a couple of years. Cyrus assumed they were engineers or geophysicists since they weren’t actually doing anything. He photographed them and the extra bore hole with his cell phone camera. He checked to make sure he had the audio on. He walked a few feet away, over to the rear of the platform next to two vending machines, one with coffee and one with sandwiches. Cyrus stood by them and acted as if he were trying to make up his mind which sandwich he was going to buy.

  “It’s too bad about Tanner’s kid” he heard the youngest looking one say. Cyrus read his badge: Herb Pokorny.

  “Didn’t happen soon enough if you ask me,” Grigoryan replied.

  The other engineers widened their eyes. Herb shook his head. “Don’t let Tanner hear you say things like that, he wouldn’t like it.”

  “I am not worried. Tanner can’t run this drill without me. Don’t get me wrong, he is a good oilman, but he doesn’t know the first thing about lateral drilling. My father forgot more about this kind of operation than Tanner will ever know.

  “Yeah, this is a special kind of drilling,” Herb said, “Kent and I never learned anything about this method when we were in school. We learned about multi-lateral drilling, but we’ve never seen it done this way. I didn’t know you could drill for oil in a horizontal direction for more than a third of a mile without drilling vertically again somewhere else down the line.”

  Grigoryan smiled, and then he said, “That’s because Alexander Grigoryan, my father, was inventing the new technique while you were still in school.”

  The engineers nodded their heads in unison. Herb looked at the senior engineer with a frown and then said, “So why did you say that about Tanner’s kid anyway, Grigoryan? He was always nice to us. I don’t get it.”

  Grigoryan lowered the lab notebook he had been reading and pointed his pen at his subordinate. “To our face he’s nice! But when writes about us in his paper he stabs us in the back.”

  “Yeah, we thought those articles were a hoot, actually.”

  The two engineers snickered. Grigoryan was not amused. He curled up his notebook and glared down at the two younger engineers.

  “A hoot? He said we were ‘greedy little Eichmanns’ and he said we didn’t care if the environment was destroyed by burning oil, just as long we got paid. I hate ingrates. I wonder how he would like living with no oil to power his Daddy’s big jet or his big truck.”

  “You take this stuff too serious, Grigoryan,” Kent said, “I agree with Herb. None of that politics makes him deserving of getting killed, does it? I mean, so what he was a little nutty about the environment and all, that’s not reason enough to be glad the poor guy was dead.”

  Grigoryan uncurled and curled his notebook several times and then spoke. “He did more than write libelous articles about his father and TANOCO. He tried to bring this company down with those articles he wrote.”

  Cyrus heard a commotion going on at the other bore hole and turned his attention away from the engineer’s conversation. The driller was in one of the roustabouts face. “He can’t get in here without a badge!” He waved his arms wildly as he spoke. “No exceptions, everybody has to swipe a card. That’s how we keep track. He has to apply for a replacement.”

  The three engineers stopped talking and looked over to the driller. Herb called over to him, “Something wrong, driller man?”

  Cyrus surmised they were going to find out real soon he was there, especially if and when they found his shoes. He looked for a way out. He knew he wasn’t going to be able to get back through those metal doors, so he walked down the platform ramp and over to what looked like a warehouse area on the eastern most end of the building. It was where large crates, probably filled with tools and parts were stored. When he made his way around a corner, he found a door that led to a long hallway. He walked down the length of it, uncertain what he was going to find. He could hear the constant hum of idling diesel engines. If those are vehicles they must have another way out, he said to himself.

  At the end of the hallway was another doorway and through it, to his relief, he could see open night sky, stars and all. Two large tanker trucks sat in the open driveways of the large garage-like structure. Hoses ran from
fittings sunk in the concrete floor to the back of the tankers. They looked like large, brown pythons, bouncing up and down rhythmically. The noise from the pumps pushing out the crude deafened him. Bright flood lights lit up the spaces where the tankers were parked, but on Cyrus’s side of the garage everything was pitch black. He could hear men’s voices reverberating throughout the room. After a moment of searching, he spotted them sitting on a bench watching the crude filling up the tanks. There were three of them. One of the men wore oil stained overalls and a hard hat, and Cyrus surmised he was almost certainly part of the oil crew. The other man, clean shaven and stout, wore clean jeans and held a clipboard. He must be the driver, Cyrus said to himself. He studied the appearance of the third man and after several minutes realized he was the same homeless man he saw at Rincon Beach when he arrested Dana.

  Cyrus stayed close to the wall, out of the light, and made his way to the edge of the opening and then checking to see that no one was looking, he darted out. He followed the road back to the front of the mansion. He was just about to round the corner when he heard the sound of several sirens. At the same time he heard the buzz from his cell phone. It was a text message from Max, it read the following: Tanner O.K., called ambulance to distract him. Get back.

  Cyrus watched Max come outside on the porch. He watched Max meet with the EMT’s and it appeared to him that Max was giving them some instructions. Then he saw him bring his hand to his forehead and turned his head from side to side. Probably wondering where I am, Cyrus thought to himself. Cyrus jogged over to the front porch, discarded his overalls, and waved to Max as he headed for the squad car.

  They reached their destination at the same time. He and Max opened the car doors and got in. Cyrus started up the engine, wheeled the car around the ambulance, and sped off down the long Tanner mansion driveway.

  Once they were on the freeway Cyrus spoke, “There is no skeet range. The noise was coming from a warehouse sized room that I think is an oil rig, maybe two, on the east side of his mansion. The noise we heard was casement pipe falling from about fifty feet and hitting the concrete.”

  “I guess old man Tanner was telling the truth. There are a lot of people around here. But it doesn’t matter, right? Jack Tanner is the only one who could’ve known the bat belonged to Dana and then had Mike killed with it so Dana would be framed.”

  “Not true,” Cyrus replied.

  “How’s that?”

  “Peter Grigoryan, that’s how. He’s the head honcho on the oil rig. I overheard him talking to a couple of subordinates about how much he hated Mike Tanner and wished he had been killed sooner.”

  “How’d he know about the bat?”

  “Let’s ask him. Call Bailey and find out what kind of car he drives.”

  “There’s a rest center a few miles up ahead; we can wait there for him. But I am not sitting in this car with you any longer unless you do one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Throw those work boots in the trash can; you’re stinking up the new car.”

  “Oh I forgot. Damn! I threw my good shoes in a trash bin and those were brand new hundred dollar Rockports, too.”

  Chapter 13

  The thirty minutes Kelsey had remaining on her visit sped by way too quickly. Right on time, the Ombudsman picked her up and took her home. When they arrived at Kelsey’s apartment, she walked over to driver’s side of the car to say good-bye and thanked the Ombudsman, but as she spoke her voice trembled and she began to shake.

  “Hey, Miss Tanner,” said the Ombudsman, who was as old as her own father and Irish as well, “don’t be afraid and don’t worry. We all love Dana, the guards, even most of the prisoners. He’s a hero. If he killed-” The Ombudsman stopped himself. Kelsey surmised that he was probably going to say that “if he killed Mike Tanner, he deserved it” or something like that, but held back once he remembered that Mike was her brother. The Ombudsman’s face turned red. After a moment of awkward silence, he nodded and finally said, “I will keep a special watch on him.”

  “Thank-you,” she said and walked off to her apartment as the Ombudsman drove away.

  Even if Dana doesn’t get out for six years or sixty years, I am still going to marry him and my father better get used to the idea, Kelsey thought to herself. She called work to let them know that she hadn’t quit her job and promised she would report tomorrow morning. One more day of an unexplained absence and she would have been automatically fired. She decided to drive down to the beach to Java Joes on the corner of Main and C Street and get a coffee. The fog had set in and the onshore winds chilled her as she drove her Volkswagen down Main St. She turned left onto C Street and pulled into the coffee shop. She got her usual, French Vanilla bean. On her way back her cell rang. It was Kwan,

  “Hello, Kwan, how are you?”

  “I need to speak with you right away Kelsey, it is very important. I am at my office on the corner of Channel Islands and Saviers. ”

  “I was just going to call you myself. I am driving right now. Let me get home and I’ll call you back.”

  “No, come right now.”

  Before Kelsey could protest, Kwan hung up. Kelsey continued east down C Street toward Main Street and her apartment. She didn’t like being told what to do, especially by Kwan. Sometimes Kwan acted like she was her boss as well as Dana’s; it annoyed her. Nevertheless, Kwan had been a good friend to her over the years and she was never one to exaggerate. In fact, she was just the opposite, always choosing the understatement over the boast to make her point. It was then that it occurred to her that Kwan might be in real trouble.

  She stopped, made a three point turn, which stopped traffic in both lanes, precipitating more than a few angry responses from the drivers with which she nearly collided. Then she pointed her Volkswagen west and sped down C Street. She turned left onto Channel Islands and headed south toward Saviers. After five minutes of high speed lane hopping down Channel Islands Boulevard, she reached the entrance of the Chevron Main Office for Ventura Operations parking lot. She spotted Kwan pacing nervously back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the office, holding a large manila notebook in her hand.

  As Kelsey steered her car between the parked cars on either side of her to pick Kwan up, a rattling, clanking noise, from metal striking metal, startled her and she stopped. She was about fifty feet from the front of the office, when she observed a black, Ford Pickup drive up onto the curb of the sidewalk and screech to halt a little more than a foot from where Kwan was standing, frozen. The chain link fence that ran along Saviers had been flattened. A man wearing a black hood and a mask emerged from the driver’s side window. The manila notebook Kwan had been clutching was now gone. He moved the gun he was pointing at her as if he wanted her to get into the truck. Shaking her head back and forth, Kwan backed away from her assailant and then cried out, “Kelsey! Help me!”

  Transfixed by the strange events transpiring before her, Kelsey couldn’t decide what to do. Then she pushed down on the horn of her car. Startled by the noise, the man in the mask pointed his gun at her. In a panic, she stomped the gas pedal of her Volkswagen to the floor and aimed it at the truck. The squealing tires of the Volkswagen frightened the masked man out of his pickup. Running over to Kwan, he grabbed her by the arm. A second later, Kelsey’s car broadsided the truck and sent glass and plastic flying across the concrete.

  Fortunately, Kelsey’s car had not been able to gather much speed accelerating toward the pickup truck over the short distance between them. The windshield was broken and the side door was only slightly damaged. It had not been her intent to harm anyone anyway. Mainly, she had hoped that the noise from the collision would be heard by someone who could help them. Stunned from the impact, Kelsey stumbled out of her car as the masked man pointed his gun at Kwan’s head. Before the man squeezed the trigger, two security guards came running out of the building with their guns drawn.

  The masked man put his gun away and then Kelsey heard him shout angrily at Kwan in a f
oreign language. The instant her assailant released his grip on her, Kwan dropped to the concrete and landed on her face. He jumped back into his badly dented, but still operable truck. The man put the black Ford in gear and backed it out over the curb and over the flattened portion of the fence where he had first entered. The security guards fired several shots, all of which missed. Once he reached Saviers, the masked man straightened out the truck and sped away.

  Kelsey ran over to where Kwan lay on the concrete. There was a large shard of glass protruding from her thin, frail, neck and a small rivulet of blood streamed on to the sidewalk and pooled up beside her head. Any deeper, Kelsey observed, and Kwan would have already bled to death. It must have just missed an artery, she said to herself. She placed her hand on the wound and tried as best she could to pinch it closed against the glass. The bleeding slowed down considerably. Before she could tell him, the security guard was on the phone calling the EMTs. Then they called the Ventura City Police.

  Kwan looked up and smiled at Kelsey. Raising her hand slowly, she pointed to the wheel of the car parked along the front of the walkway.

  Chapter 14

  Peter Grigoryan drove his pristine, teal green, Chevy Camaro past the rest stop doing over a hundred miles an hour. Cyrus and Max where waiting for him.

  “Finally!” Max shouted as he stomped on the gas pedal and simultaneously put the portable bubble gum machine lights on the car top.

  Cyrus could see the license plates getting bigger as they approached Grigoryan’s car. “Slow down, Max! You’re going to rear end him,” he said.

  Max let off the accelerator and let the Camaro get a little further ahead. Cyrus took his hands off the dash. He turned to Max and said, “Remember what Rudy said, we can’t arrest anyone or shoot anyone until we get back to Santa Barbara County. We just pull him over and have a talk.”