Black Oil, Red Blood

Chapter 11



Joe Bob Delmont sat alone in his study, clipping his toe nails, drinking whiskey, and puffing on one last cigar before bed. He could hear Anna clunking around in the living room as she cleaned up the mess and put things away for the night. What a fiasco. All that paraphernalia for one lousy poker game. How embarrassing. He felt like she’d emasculated him with all the girly décor.

And on top of that, it had sure been hard to get any work done with Anna nosing around. They’d had to be extra careful letting the money exchange hands. The city was low on funds, so Mayor Fillion had levied a minimal pollution fine against PetroPlex. This always meant Fitz would pay the fine, and then during poker games he’d “lose” hands to the Mayor and to Delmont. In exchange, Delmont and the Mayor would look the other way when it came to actually enforcing the regulatory codes.

And when election time came around, the two of them always had PetroPlex in their campaign funding corner.

Only tonight, Delmont hadn’t expected Dick’s big win. There was something funny about that guy. Delmont had only invited him to the poker games on the theory that it was best to keep your friends close and your enemies closer. What baffled him was that the bigwigs at PetroPlex didn’t seem to regard him as the enemy at all.

Fitz was forever cutting settlement deals with Dick. Dick could make PetroPlex bleed money, and it was like Fitz didn’t even care. Delmont figured when you ran a company that made millions of dollars an hour, dropping settlement checks of several hundred thousand here and there wouldn’t really make a dent in the budget. And maybe it was better that way. The fact that Dick was actually settling cases allowed Delmont to stay under the radar in his dealings with PetroPlex. The more Dick settled, the less Delmont had to worry about handing down obviously biased rulings. It just looked better all around.

The real problem was Chloe Taylor. She could never seem to come to settlement terms with Fitz. They were all going to have to figure out what to do about that. Delmont never would have thought she had blackmail in her, but sure enough. And now here she was breaking into people’s homes. If she couldn’t be handled, she’d have to be eliminated. She was already way too close to finding out what Schaeffer knew, and if that happened, they were all sunk.

They’d all been forced to end the poker game after Dick took all of Fitz’s money. If that alone hadn’t killed the night, Judge Hooper’s phone call to Nash and Chloe sure had.

It was sheer rotten luck that Chloe had been able to recover the bulk of Schaeffer’s files before he’d been able to get to them first. Schaeffer had required a lot of unofficial persuasion before he had given up the location of that secret room, and even then, it was so full they couldn’t cart all the stuff out before Nash and the crime scene techs had arrived on the scene. Nash was a problem—one they’d really have to consider how to address as they moved forward.

The only bright spot in the situation was that Dick and Mayor Fillion’s maneuvering meant the files would be a lot easier to deal with at Chloe’s house than they would be in an evidence locker. Now there were many more options, but time was of the essence. The files had to be recovered or destroyed before Chloe and Nash learned anything damaging.

Even though Delmont had been expecting the phone call, the actual ring startled him so that he jumped, spilling his drink and cutting his toe with the clippers. He just felt on edge. It had been that kind of night.

He pitched the clippers across the room and jerked the phone to his ear.

“What?”

“You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“If you’re thinking about Chloe and Nash reading all those files, yeah, I’m thinking what you’re thinking.”

“This information leak is getting a little out of control. We’ve got to nip it in the bud. Can you handle Taylor?”

“I’m sick of handling things for you people,” Delmont said. “Why can’t you put your guys on it?”

“They’re pursuing other avenues right now.”

“What other avenues?”

“We have an ex-employee who could also be a problem. We believe he was working with Schaeffer. He’s got a computer virus he’s threatening to release that would wreak havoc on our system.”

“What? How come this is the first I’ve heard of this?”

“Do I really have to give you the speech about a “need to know” basis and all that?”

Delmont swore. “Look, I told you, I don’t want any more surprises.”

“Don’t worry about it. If you can’t get on it tonight, I’ll find someone else. But I’m just gonna warn you, I’m gonna tell them to do whatever they need to do to stop the leak on your side and end this thing right now. Whatever they need to do. Do I make myself clear?

Delmont didn’t like the sound of that, but he didn’t know what else he could do at the moment. He couldn’t leave the house himself under Anna’s watchful eye, and Chief Scott was so drunk he’d had to walk home. “Fine,” Delmont said. “You’re clear.”

Delmont hung up the phone, wondering if he should be worried. These folks were capable of anything and getting a little too cocky. There were sure to be problems if they weren’t careful.