$200 and a Cadillac

II



The office job was killing him.

Twenty years of excitement had left Victor Jones unsuited for almost everything. More and more lately, he found himself staring from his office window out at the shipyard and the water beyond, daydreaming about stakeouts, spending nights in a van, stale coffee, straining to hear whispered conversations coming in through the headphones, bursting through doors, the rush of the chase—on foot, in cars, careening through the streets, adrenaline exploding—and the look in the target’s eyes at that final moment, when he knew the game was over, the jig was up: busted.

Three years and it seemed like ancient history now. Victor sitting at his desk, answering the phone, strolling beige hallways bathed in fluorescent light. Victor wearing a brown tie and eating a sandwich at his desk. Victor surfing the Internet. Victor staring out his window, scratching his ear on occasion. Victor going home at five-thirty, fighting traffic all the way to the subdivision and the three bedroom tract home his FBI retirement was buying. Victor with his two kids, Daniel, six, and Jennie, four. Victor kissing his wife, who’d begged him to retire and take a normal job—for her, for the family, for his own health and safety. Victor Jones, Chief Security Officer for Southwest Petroleum in Long Beach, California. Victor Jones, forty-six, making $95,000 a year; living the good life. Victor, who didn’t even carry a gun anymore, felt naked and impotent most of the time.

“Radiation? You can do that?” Victor wasn’t really interested, but followed the conversation nonetheless. His head leaned all the way back and he stared at the ceiling, resisting the urge to spin his chair all the way around like a child.

“Well, that’s what they told me at the lab.” Tom Crossly, sitting straight in the chair opposite Victor, picked at his cuticles as he spoke. “I mean, I’m no scientist, but those guys sure as hell are. That’s what they said.”

Victor looked up and studied Tom for a moment—the tan skin, pressed shirt, the slight highlights in his sandy, beach-bleached hair. He’d always thought Tom was a little too well groomed to be taken seriously as a man. “I dunno,” he said. “Sounds weird to me. I’d have to get one of the heads of the lab to sign off on that. I’m not going to authorize something that’s going to taint a pipeline full of oil.” Victor smiled, amused by the idea. That would sure stir things up. Maybe he’d get fired. Maybe he’d have to go back into real law enforcement.

“I hear you, Chief. You can call over there and talk to them about it. I’m just telling you what they told me. They said you could dump some kind of radioactive something or other into the pipeline at one end, and then all you’ve got to do is follow the flow of the radiation.” Tom looked down as he spoke, picking at the index finger on his left hand. Then he looked back up and shook his head. “I can’t understand why we’re even involved. I mean, it’s a pipeline leak for crying out loud.”

Victor sighed and resumed his careful study of the ceiling tiles: white, textured, recessed, not very interesting to look at. “That’s just it, Tom. We’re not involved. They only let us know about what was happening in case we got reports about all the flights over the pipeline paths. You know, terrorism fears, that kind of shit.”

“Well, like I said, I don’t really care, I’m just relaying the information.” Tom rubbed his palms together and stood, taking a moment to straighten his pants before speaking. “I mean, they’ve been flying over the pipelines off and on for two weeks and haven’t found a leak yet. I thought this idea sounded interesting.”

“Well, I’ll think it over and maybe make a call to the lab to ask about it. But I’m not going to suggest something like that unless I’m damned sure it isn’t going to screw something up. Last thing I need is to look like an idiot, or worse.”

“I hear you, Chief.” Tom held his hands out at his side, shrugged, and stood. “Ask for Ted Ross if you call,” he turned to go and spoke over his shoulder, “that’s who I talked to.” And then Tom was through the door and disappeared down the hallway, back into the bureaucratic void.

Victor thought it over. It really wasn’t their area. There didn’t seem to be any kind of security issue other than the general paranoia that seemed to grip nearly everyone these days and led them to suspect that everything under the sun could somehow be related to terrorism. But Victor knew better, didn’t he? The real problem was that they put a certain amount of oil into a pipeline at one end and got slightly less out at the other end. Before the terror obsession no one would have called him because they would have called it what it was: a pipe leak. But it was a pipeline. It was an oil company. It was Southern California. There were Islamic crazies all over the place, and Los Angeles was an easy place to hide. It wouldn’t be insane to think there could be a security issue of some kind. Would it?

Victor turned to stare out his window. The executive offices on the tenth floor had fantastic ocean views, but his view, from the second story, was partially blocked by a low hill near the back of the refinery property. He could see a distant blue at the far right and left, but straight on was an ugly rise of earth, over which ran the massive above-ground pipeline that connected the Southwest Petroleum refinery to the terminal that sat out at the edge of the Long Beach harbor. The terminal transferred the finished petroleum products through an underwater line that ran to the tankers parked off shore. But Victor couldn’t see the terminal or the tankers from his office, just the hill, and the galvanized pipeline running over it.

In his rare moments of reflection, his obfuscated view struck him as symbolic: a perfect example of how his life had gone poorly. From his second floor window, Victor often felt as though he was looking out on his own mediocrity. It was a constant reminder that he’d settled, checked out, walked from a career that had been on a fast track, and for what? A shitty pension and an hour and a half commute?

Five years before he’d been Special Agent Victor Jones, a senior field agent with an expertise in organized crime. After a three year operation that ended in a series of landmark arrests in the tri-state area, he’d been singled out by the Director of the FBI for his perseverance, his skill, his judgment, his leadership. He was on his way. But not long after, a shootout in a warehouse in Newark left him with a minor flesh wound to the shoulder and a wife who demanded that he take retirement as soon as he hit his twenty years. Eighteen months later he was having his retirement dinner at an Outback Steakhouse off the New Jersey Turnpike, wondering what the hell had happened to him.

And so here he sat, mired in a corporate bureaucracy, a middle manager debating whether something fell inside or outside of his department, his job description. It was pathetic. He needed action. An excuse to get outside. Victor turned back to his desk, grumbling, head shaking, and picked up the phone. He dialed the lab and asked for Ted Ross.