To say Carl Greene’s new technology was disruptive would be an understatement.
The business of refining crude oil is a big and expensive business. The world is hungry for oil. But you can’t just use it out of the ground. It has to be transported to a huge plant where crude is processed and refined into usable products: petroleum naphtha, gasoline, diesel fuel, asphalt base, heating oil, kerosene, liquefied petroleum gas, and other products.
A typical plant can have from 1000 to 1500 employees and contractors on site on any day. Perhaps 20 percent hold degrees, but over half are highly skilled process and equipment operators and skilled tradespeople. The plant’s operation sends noxious material into the atmosphere, including benzene, mercury and other hazardous air pollutants. Some scientists contend the oil refining industry is one of the chief causes of greenhouse gas-induced climate change.
There are approximately twenty operating refineries of various sorts in California, with approximately half devoted to the production of gasoline. There are an estimated 140 operable petroleum refineries in the U.S., and another 18 projects on the drawing boards for locations across the Gulf Coast, the Midwest and the Rocky Mountain region. Plus international refineries, existing and planned, in Eastern Canada, Finland, Germany, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Middle East, and Asia
A new refining plant can cost from five to fifteen billion millions dollars to build. Stakeholders who provide the necessary capital include sovereign governments, international banks, investment bankers, equipment vendors and, of course, the stock market.
Suppose you woke up one day and suddenly didn’t need a refinery plant to process the crude oil? Suppose all the existing operating refineries were suddenly obsolete, the capital advanced by stakeholders to build and operate the plants lost, the new plant projects on the drawing boards abandoned? People would lose jobs, unions would lose membership, equipment vendors would lose orders, the capital stakeholders would lose a lot of money, the share price of oil companies with large refineries would drop though the floor.
But the air would be a lot cleaner.
That’s what Carl Greene’s new technology proposed to do.
Simple in design, it described the manufacture of a small and inexpensive unit for the wellhead, self-powered, to be placed on every well. The unit would do two things. First, it would convert the various grades of crude oil and gas coming from underground into their basic carbon components. Second, it would re-assemble those carbon components into specified finished products you dialed into the unit.
You put crude oil of all grades and gas from your well in one end. You got finished gasoline in any grade you wanted, aviation fuel, distillate fuel and residual fuel, out the other. The only byproduct of the unit was water vapor.
You practically eliminated the need for expensive refineries, with their enormous capital requirements to build and run. No more refineries polluting the ground and belching noxious fumes into the air. The effect on the refinery industry boggled the mind.
The concept was similar to the earlier technology Carl had patented. But the method was new, unique, and entirely different. Randall Hicks and his company had no right to drag Carl’s new technology into the arbitration under the discovery rules. It was an entirely different sort of technology.
The report certainly brought clarity to why so many people were interested in Carl’s technology. It explained why some people would be quite desperate to get their hands on it. The technology would be worth billions.
The Judge reviewed in his mind the events, step by step, from that night on the beach nine days ago.
Everywhere he turned, it seemed like someone was one step ahead. He’d gone to Carl’s condo. It had been tossed. He’d gone to Carl’s warehouse. Tossed and a trap had been set. He’d tried to hide out on the boat. Attacked with carbon monoxide. He’d met with Randall Hicks. Then Hicks was dead. He’d met with Gerald Jenkins. Then Jenkins was dead.
On a sudden hunch he got up and headed for the vacant office. The office where he knew a DVD recorder was still busily recording. The Judge entered the office, still unlocked, and opened the cabinet. The DVD player was there, lights winking at him, not recording now sound has stopped in his office.
He got down on his knees and stuck his head way back into the cabinet to take a closer look. On the ceiling of the cabinet in the back corner was a small lump stuck to its underside with veneer colored tape. It was hard to see. He pried at it with his fingers and it came off easily. It was a small black box, half the size of a cigarette pack, with a small antenna-like projection at one end and a very fine line running out the other.
The line ran in to the seams where the cabinet wood sides joined, down the back of the cabinet and under the DVD player. He pulled a small second piece of tape off the ceiling, revealing a winking light, this one blue. It looked like a transmitting device. The kind that might pick up the video signal recorded on the DVD player and transmit it over the air to someplace else. Perhaps another DVD player. Or a video monitor.
Damn. A spy spying on a spy.
The Judge carefully stuck the device back up on the ceiling where it had been and left.
CHAPTER 49
10:00 AM Thursday
The Judge returned to his Venice office the next morning and settled into his chair. The case had floated around in his subconscious all night while he slept.
There had been something out of place from the beginning. When he’d crawled up on the beach in the shadow of the great Ferris wheel. He still couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
He glanced at the 3x5 cards stacked behind him on the bureau. He reached for them and began to mark them up. It was old fashioned. But it was so much easier to shuffle cards around on your desk than notes on a computer. Besides, he liked the textual feel of the cards in his hands. And the way he could lay them out, overlap them, point them in different directions, and slide them around on his desk. They were somehow more real.
First he listed the deaths, and attempts. He assumed they were all homicides. First there was a 3x5 card for Carl Greene’s murder, in the alley in Santa Monica. Stabbed. Then there was the assault on him on the beach in Santa Monica. He counted it as an attempted homicide. Another card. Next was poor Frankie, shot in his bathtub behind a locked door in Playa Vista. Then poor Wheezy, the rapid dog, set up like a spring trap to nail the Judge.
Then the carbon monoxide attack on him and Katy in Marina Del Rey. Next was Randal Hicks, drowned on the Judge’s dock, again in Marina Del Rey. Finally there was Gerald Jenkins, Carl’s old attorney, airborne from an office balcony in Santa Monica. Fell, jumped or pushed? The Judge wasn’t sure. He counted it a homicide.
The Judge now had a stack of seven cards.
He moved on to the people he’d talked to in the case, starting with a card for Carl Greene, even though they’d only met three times. He added one for Carl’s attorney, Bruce Williams. One for Randal Hicks and a card for Dick Harper, Hicks’ attorney. He made a card for himself, and one for Frankie. He made a card for Barbara, and for Carl’s ex-wife, Yana Greene. One for Allan Clark, and another for Cindy Kwan. He added a card for Shadow, the Grotto Mistress Dominatrix. He made a card for George Roberts, the poker playing dentist who financed Carl’s technology. He made cards for Frank’s girlfriend, Cathy Logan, and Frank’s mother, Jasmine Wolin. He added a card for the couple who were on the beach when he dragged himself ashore, Tony and Claire.
He made a single card for Arty and Juno and their two nameless pals in the Santa Monica gang. And one for Marty, the homeless kid who was no doubt still out there on the Boardwalk, shirking school. Who else had touched the case somehow? There was Kaminsky, the Santa Monica police detective. The L.A. Sheriff’s officer who’d helped him on the beach, Officer Saunders. The pinched face nurse at the hospital. Ugh. And that damn reporter at the hospital, Lou Garo, the little asshole who’d had so much fun photographing him without his pants.
This gave him another stack of 21 cards, a total of
28.
He next considered the interests who wanted to buy the technology. There were the Russians, represented by Cindy Kwan, with assistance from Yana Greene and Allan Clark. He made a Russian Card. And there were the Chinese, represented by Jeffery Wang in Hong Kong, working through Dick Harper and Randall Hicks. He added a Chinese Card. And there was DEFRR, the high bidder for the technology. He added a DEFRR card.
The Judge made one last card, marking around its edges with a red marker, and labeled it “The Report”. Now he had 32 cards.
He arranged the cards in various ways, letting his subconscious suggest how they might be connected. After a while, he decided to put card for the report in the middle and see who had touched it. He piled the cards around it:
Carl Greene, dead.
Carl’s old attorney, Gerald Jenkins, dead.
The Judge himself. Two attacks on his life, three if you count Wheezy.
Frankie, dead.
Randall Hicks, dead.
Whoever looked at the report was dead. Except for the Judge.
Suddenly the relationships came into focus. The pattern was there. He even knew what he’d missed by pier that night on the beach. Foolish of him. Either God does truly take care of fools or he’d been damn lucky.
He picked up his cell phone and dialed Cindy Kwan. She wasn’t in but he left a message.
“This is the Judge, Cindy. I have a copy of the Greene Report sitting here on my desk in front of me. I’m willing to share it. But I’ll need a 100,000 dollar payment to recoup for my time and legal fees in this matter. Call me soon if you’re interested. There are other buyers.”
He hung up.
Three minutes later his cell rang. It was Cindy Kwan. All business now.
“I’m glad you called me first, Judge. You did right. There’ll be no quibbling about the price for your legal work. I’ll have the cash tonight. Where shall we meet?”
“This needs to be a very quiet and discreet transaction, Cindy,” the Judge said. Carefully enunciating his words. “Let’s meet at midnight tonight, under the Ferris wheel on the Santa Monica Pier.”
“Done, Judge. Don’t be late.” She hung up.
The Judge fished the business card out of his pocket for Officer Saunders and dialed his number. He was in luck. Saunders picked the phone up on the second ring. The Judge explained he had a copy of a missing report that he believed was the reason for the murders of Carl Greene, Frank Wolin, Randall Hicks, and maybe Gerald Jenkins. He was going to meet one of the principles who had been desperately trying to obtain the report. On the Santa Monica Pier at midnight tonight. The Judge believed the killer would be there. He needed backup ready to make the collar and close this case for good.
He could hear Saunders’ intake of breath in anticipation.
“Good work, Judge. I knew you’d ferret this thing out. I’ll be there with bells on, with four officers I trust. We’ll wrap it up tight for you. Call me at once if anything changes.”
The Judge stood up, stretched, than headed for the door. He stopped at the public phone in the building lobby and made one more phone call.
CHAPTER 50
11:35 PM Thursday
The Judge approached the Santa Monica Pier, walking down the Colorado Ramp from Ocean Avenue, proceeding carefully. There was an almost full moon spreading a soft light here and there over the dark and empty Pier. The big Ferris wheel, still now, hung like some giant bird at the outer end of the boardwalk, looming black against the sky. Its lights and sounds silenced. Its core still tacked to the same spot it’d been two weeks before, even though it’d made thousands of revolutions since the Judge washed up at its feet. The image of the great wheel and its sparkling lights reflecting in the surging surf would remain etched in his mind forever.
It had all started here. In sight of the Ferris wheel. It would end here tonight.
The Judge passed the Looff Hippodrome, now silent and closed, its operators gone. Built in 1916 by Charles I. D. Looff to hold a Looff Carousel, it was Santa Monica’s first National Historic Landmark. Like the Sphinx it stood astride the beginnings of the pier, looking out over shifting sea and sands, echoing the laughter of many generations of children who’d ridden the wild horses under its colorful canopy.
He carefully picked his way out onto the pier proper, wondering if Arty and his friends would be out tonight, looking to spring out and finish their work. He knew he was a soft target. Exposed. His anxiety gave life to every shadow. He could almost feel eyes watching, biding their time. He caught brief movement to his right. Was it a glimpse of dirty khaki pants disappearing farther back into the dark, or just his imagination? He didn’t know.
He reached the base of the Ferris wheel. No one was there. Would Cindy Kwan show? Or would this be just another game of tease and move the cheese. He supposed it was he who was the cheese. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat. Suddenly chilled.
Where was Cindy? He brought his wrist out of his pocket and looked at his watch. 11:55 pm. He was early. He’d try to think about something else.
Images of Katy came to mind. She was truly beautiful. And going for her first ultrasound in a couple of weeks. Perhaps a chance to see if the small peanut growing in her belly was a girl or a boy. He secretly hoped for a girl. He was officially neutral of course in discussing it with Katy. "Just so it has all its arms and legs", he would say. But he was fearful it might be a boy. His responsibility would be much greater. He doubted he'd be much of a father. He knew nothing about soccer and basketball. Or computer games. Or building model airplanes. Or surfing. Or even what little boys liked to do. Too old, too tired, too set in his ways.
A girl would be better. He could charm her like he did Katy. It’d be another soft soul in his life. He’d be surrounded by three females. Katy, the new little thing, and Annie the dog, but that’d be okay. And it would be Katy's job to school her in the ways of the world. Teach her about establishing a career so she was independent. Able to compete in the professional world with males, subtly using her sex as an advantage. Teach her the facts of life. About feminine wiles and how to attract and hold a male.
He’d have very little to contribute in the education of a girl. He would be the role model for what a suitable mate should look like, he supposed. Many girls ended up marrying their fathers, or so he was told. He'd be available for hugs and kisses, to write checks, provide wheels and chaperone duties. Until she grew to the age where it was no longer cool to have your dad around. God forbid she was athletic. He knew nothing about women’s sports. He’d have to go to all her games of course and applaud loudly. Shriek until he was horse when there was goal made. Softly console when there was defeat.
He could do all that.
Suddenly there was movement on the other side of the Wheel.
Cindy Kwan stepped around in front of the Judge. She was dressed all in black leather. Jacket, pants, a jade green scarf wrapped around her neck. Bright red lipstick. Dark pools for eyes. He wondered if she’d come on a motorcycle. She looked the part.
“So you actually came, Judge.” She smiled slightly. It wasn't a smile of relief. More like a smile of victory. "Did you bring the report?"
“Did you bring my cash, Cindy?”
"Let’s see the report first,” she said.
The Judge reached inside his jacket and brought out a large folded brown envelop, like the original one he’d found in Frankie’s apartment so very long ago.
She reached into her leather jacket then. But what she pulled out wasn’t an envelope of cash. It was a small revolver with a short nasty barrel, pointed at him. The Judge had forgotten how much bigger a barrel looks when you’re staring down the muzzle.
“You occidentals are so trusting and so forthright,” she said. “We're always amazed by your naiveté. Hand the report over slowly.”
Her eyes had an intensity so stark the Judge thought of a shark and its desire to feed.
“Are you going to shoot me?” asked the Judge.
“
Only if I have to, lover. You’re hardly going to go to the police about how you delivered a copy of Greene’s report to representatives of a foreign power. In this case Russia. Just hand the report over and we can both be on our way. No muss, no fuss.”
“Perhaps it’s not all here,” said the Judge.
Stringing it out. Wondering where the hell Officer Saunders and his four trusty lads were.
“Is there something missing?” It was a hissed question, Cindy’s gun hand wobbling a little with the tension.
The Judge spread his hands, almost dropping the envelope from his right hand. "Who knows?”
“You know. This isn't a game Judge. Tell me now and tell me true. Is it all there?”
"And if I don't know anymore?"
"You stand well on two legs, Judge. But a smashed knee cap can make a lifetime of difference."
The muzzle of the small revolver shifted lower, toward his right knee.
“If you know something, tell me now, and it better be good. If you don't know anything, then you shouldn’t have opened your mouth. 'I don't know' doesn't cut it now.… Not unless you're still saying it after losing both knees."
Her eyes were alive now at the prospect of blood.
"I think it'll be quicker than that." The deep voice came from the shadows behind her.
She started to whirl, but froze mid turn at the unmistakable ratchet of a shotgun being cocked.
Two men were there. Vague shapes at the edge of the shadows. One stepped out into the soft moonlight. It was Officer Saunders, his service shotgun braced against his hip. Leveled at her mid-section.
"Just drop the gun, Ms. Kwan. Then put your hands up."
Cindy dropped the pistol.
"God, am I glad to see you, officer," whispered the Judge, hoarse now from the tension.
“She was going to shoot me."
“Yes, I see that. But it’s a bit more complex, Judge,” said Saunders. “I’m afraid I’m not here to rescue you. I represent my friend here. He has a different agenda.”
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