Two Bits Four Bits (25 page)

“No problem. This biker
boy tries something I’m gonna be holding you responsible
anyway.”

“And you can give me some
help with Russell Chilton in exchange for the tape?”

He nodded. “I’ll have
something for you as soon as I get the tape back and have a chance
to look at it.”

We agreed that Sandy would
call me the next day with the details of when and where the meet
would take place, and I would pass them along to Jimmy. I still had
my doubts about whether Sandy would hold up his end of our bargain
and give me the goods on Russell Chilton’s murder, but I had no
doubt that he knew what had happened.

If G. Travis Kirkland was
sending people to track down the tape, as Sandy had speculated I
wondered if those same people might not have had a hand in the
shooting in the Chilton’s backyard. Angie had told me there was
serious money invested in Kirkland’s political future, and more
often than not, where there was money there was willingness to
stand behind it, no matter what it took.

* * * *

CHAPTER FIFTY

“Aren’t you worried about
what Sandy Doyle might do once he has that tape back?” Angie asked.
“I mean what if he decides he doesn’t want anybody else around who
even knows about the tape? Wouldn’t it be in his best interest to
bury the two of you out in the desert somewhere?”

We were sitting in lawn
chairs out behind the house, taking a break from painting the
living room walls and watching the cats coming out to sample the
dry cat food we’d just dumped in the outdoor feline dining area.
Angie was wearing a worn pair of cutoff jeans and an old t-shirt
with a picture of a brightly colored skull and the name of the band
Calexico underneath. She looked amazing no matter what she
wore.

“Guys like Sandy don’t
kill people unless it’s absolutely necessary,” I said. “He might
have somebody hit over a turf war or in retribution for another
killing, but not usually for something like this.”

“Not usually,” she said.
“That’s a comforting reassurance.”

“Sandy’s old school,” I
said. “Guys like him actually have a kind of code of honor. They
don’t purposely go after anybody who hasn’t crossed over into their
world and decided to play by their rules.”

“And, you don’t think that
being involved with that tape puts you squarely in his
world?”

“Hey, I’m helping the guy
out, but he still sees an ex-cop when he looks at me. And no way is
he going to draw attention to himself by doing anything to me. All
he wants is for this tape business to go away.”

“If you say
so.”

She was quiet a few
minutes, but I could tell she still didn’t like the idea of the
meeting with Sandy and Jimmy Do-Rag.

“Okay,” she said. “Tell me
the names one more time. I swear I’m going to learn them
all.”

“The gray one over by the
well house is Hubbard, and that’s Neko next to him. The black and
white one is Lucinda and the three kittens over there are left to
right Waco, Earl and Lauderdale.”

“All named after whoever
was playing at the time,” she said. “Cute. I’m just glad you
weren’t listening to the Butthole Surfers.”

* * * *

CHAPTER
FIFTY-ONE

Sandy set the meeting up
to take place in an empty oilfield parts warehouse that he owned on
the outskirts of Odessa. There weren’t any active businesses nearby
and the vacant grassland surrounding the building meant it would be
easy to see anyone approaching. The building itself sat back from
the highway several hundred yards and a chain-link fence topped
with razor wire encircled the empty pipe yard that made up the rest
of the property.

I arrived early, pulled my
pickup off the highway and rolled to the gate. Parked near the gate
was a dusty wine-colored Suburban. Two men got out of the Suburban
and gestured for me to step out of my pickup. One of the men was
large and muscular, the other small and wiry.

The larger of the two
frisked me while the smaller guy took my keys and drove my pickup
through the gate, where he parked it a dozen yards to the side of
the entrance.

“Where’s the other guy?”
the big one asked.

“He’s coming on his own,”
I said. “He’ll be on a motorcycle.”

“Okay. He’ll give you a
ride up to the building,” he said, nodding towards his
partner.

I got in the Suburban with
the smaller guy, who drove across the dirt lot and stopped beside
Sandy’s Escalade outside the building. There were two large
unopened garage doors, and to the right of them a small concrete
porch with a door to what I presumed was an office.

“Through that door,” he
said, pointing. “Be sure to knock first.”

After knocking, another of
Sandy’s men ushered me into a small office and frisked me again in
case the guys on the gate had missed something. Then, he led me
into the adjoining shop building where Sandy Doyle sat at a large
conference table surrounded by leather chairs arranged in one of
the drive-in bays where one might normally expect to find an
oilfield truck. The table and chairs belonged in a boardroom
somewhere instead of a mostly-empty shop building, and couldn’t
have looked more out of place.

Sandy was talking on his
cell again, I wouldn’t want to trade phone bills with him, but he
gestured for me to take a seat at the table.

“Okay, I gotta go,” he
said into the phone, flipping it shut and dropping it on the
table.

“Where’s the biker?” he
asked.

“He should be here soon.
He’s on his bike.”

“Sure, sure. Rebel with a
cause, and all that.”

“Nice digs you got here,”
I said.

“Started to unload this
place the last time the oilfield boomed, but I found out I like
having it. Lots of storage space. Gotta boat I keep out here
sometimes. Picked this table up real cheap back in the mid-eighties
when they shut down PetroBasin Bank.”

“Nice,” I said.

He shrugged.

“You wait around long
enough, and everything goes on sale.”

“Even a United States
Senator.”

He chuckled. “I told you,
G. Travis is a friend of mine. Hell, we used to go waterskiing on
Lake Buchanan together when we were younger.”

“I’ll bet the wine and
women flowed in those days,” I said.

“Oh they did, that’s for
sure. But I’m talking about vacations with the family. We spent a
whole week down there together one summer. G. Travis has a daughter
a few years younger than my own daughter Jenny was. Jenny liked
being a big sister to G. Travis’ girl and both girls learned to
water ski that summer. My wife Maggie got to be real good friends
with his wife. Those were some good times back then.”

He was lost in thought for
a few seconds, looking down at the cell phone lying on the table,
as he used a finger to push it in slow rotations.

“That was Jenny’s last
summer. We lost her that fall.”

“I’m sorry,” I
said.

Sandy’s phone began to
vibrate and skitter across the table. He picked it up and opened
it.

“Yeah? What? Sure, send
them both.”

He closed the phone and
put it back on the table.

“Your biker friend didn’t
come by himself after all.”

My level of apprehension
went up a couple of clicks. If Jimmy brought somebody else with him
it might mean he intended to do more than give Sandy Doyle a
threatening look when he handed over the videotape. I was pretty
sure no weapons would get past Doyle’s people and their
double-frisking routine, but Jimmy might be looking for an
old-fashioned barroom style fistfight. If he tried to start
something like that, I knew it would end with guns drawn on Jimmy,
and possibly used.

A minute or so later, the
door from the office opened and Jimmy and Eva stepped into the
shop. Jimmy’s face was set with an expression that he probably
thought would strike fear into the heart of Sandy Doyle, but Eva
looked like a teenager afraid to show her father a crumpled fender
on the family car. Jimmy was carrying a rectangular shaped bundle
wrapped in a plastic Wal-Mart bag.

“Hi, Sandy,” Eva
said.

Sandy looked at her for a
few seconds before his expression softened.

“Hey, kid.”

“Sandy, I swear to God I
didn’t know,” she said. “You’ve got to believe me.”

He stood up from the table
and stepped over to her.

“I believe you,” he said,
placing a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry about it.”

Then, he turned his
attention to Jimmy.

“That it?”

Jimmy nodded, handing it
over. Sandy looked down at the tape without unwrapping it. On the
table, Sandy’s cell phone vibrated loudly against the surface of
the walnut table.

Sandy picked it up and
opened it and listened.

“Alright. No, that’s
okay,” he said, and then closed the phone.

“We got some more
visitors. I guess I shoulda had this thing catered. Let’s everybody
have a seat at the table.”

Sandy sat back down at the
head of the table while Eva, Jimmy and I sat along one side. A few
seconds later, the office door opened and three men came into the
shop. Leading the way was a neatly-groomed older man in an
expensive-looking suit, followed by two younger men who probably
bought their suits at the Big & Tall Shoppe. Directly off the
rack obviously, since their jackets did little to hide the fact
that they were wearing side arms.

“Good to see you again,
Hank. Please, have a seat,” Sandy said, gesturing to the empty
chairs on the opposite side of the table. The older man sat down,
while the muscle took up positions on either side of the
door.

“I think you know why
we’re here, Sandy,” the older man said. “We need to get this
cleared up before it goes any further.”

“I understand your concern
Hank,” Sandy answered. “But, I’ve already taken care of
it.”

He slid the blue package
across the table to the older man, who picked it up, opened the
sack and looked inside.

“This looks like any other
videotape cartridge. How do I know this is the one the banker said
he had?”

“I guess you’ll have to
trust me on that,” Sandy answered, looking over at Jimmy. “I
haven’t looked at it yet, I just got it. But, I hope our friend
here wouldn’t be stupid enough to try to make a switch.”

“And, why should I believe
that there aren’t more copies out there somewhere waiting to pop up
when we leave town?” Hank asked.

“Again, you’ll just have
to trust me,” Sandy said.

“No, you see the problem
is you’ve been trusted too much already. It was a mistake to let
things go on this long. It’s not me, you understand.”

He looked from Sandy to
Jimmy, Eva and me, as if he were explaining why he had to give us
failing grades on a chemistry exam.

“It’s the people I work
for. They can’t take a chance on this becoming a problem again.
That’s why they hired me. Because I know how to take care of
problems before they even become problems.”

“Now, just wait a second,
Hank,” Sandy started.

“What the hell’s this all
about?” Jimmy asked, with a look of confusion.

“Shut up, Jimmy,” Eva
said.

“Well, God damn, all I
want to know is why—“

Before he could finish the
door from the office swung open and all three of Sandy’s men
stumbled through the doorway into the shop, their hands bound
behind them with zip ties. Four men dressed in oilfield coveralls
followed them with pistols drawn, their faces covered with
translucent Halloween masks. The sudden appearance of the men
caught Hank’s bodybuilders off-guard and they were disarmed before
they could reach for their weapons.

“What the fuck?” Sandy
yelled.

“Sorry, boss,” the man who
had frisked me at the gate mumbled.

I didn’t recognize which
one of the four was Sheriff Norris Jackson until he stepped forward
and spoke.

“Line those guys up along
that wall!” he barked at the other three men in
coveralls.

I turned to Jimmy and
Eva.

“You two can leave now.
I’ll be in touch.”

They both quickly scooted
their chairs back and exited the room hastily. Norris joined the
other masked men while Sandy and Hank sat looking at me. Outside, I
could hear the sound of Jimmy’s motorcycle firing up and roaring
off into the distance.

“What the hell is this?”
Sandy asked. “Some kind of bust?”

“Not at all. I just wanted
both of you to understand the terms of the arrangement.”

“What arrangement?” Hank
sneered.

“The arrangement that
calls for this to end here and now, but on my terms.”

“Which are?” Sandy
asked.