North of the Rock

by Ian Jones

  ‘I know, for sure, Smith was the other man at the plant today. For certain it was him, no question at all,’ he said quietly.

  ‘My guy didn’t recognise him, but we don’t know that for sure,’ Hunter replied.

  ‘We are all to blame for this, we were too confident, I see that now. And we should have been better prepared for trouble. If it wasn’t Smith, then who was it? Who the hell dares to stand against us? Gilbey made some noise once, sure. But we soon kept him quiet. Now he’s all fired up and running around like he’s Superman’s granddaddy. I know it was Smith.’

  ‘We don’t,’ Hunter repeated.

  ‘We do. We allowed this to happen. But it ends right now, hear me? Decision is made, tonight goes ahead, and we are either at the Country Club or the plant over the weekend. It should be reasonably straightforward to keep that secure, right? You can set up a perimeter Mr Hunter, or whatever you call it. Do some military shit. Just make sure nothing else goes wrong.’

  Hunter nodded.

  ‘Shall I find Cane?’ Abel asked.

  Barlow shrugged.

  ‘He wasn’t happy about the girl. He’s weak, we know that. He’s probably somewhere feeling sorry for himself. He seemed more together this morning. Most likely you’ll find him at the Country Club sitting at the bar.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Abel conceded. ‘I’ll be up there myself once our guests arrive, I’ll make sure he doesn’t embarrass himself. Or us.’

  Barlow leaned forward on the table and cupped his face in his hands.

  ‘Can I rely on you gentlemen?’ he asked.

  Both men nodded.

  ‘Then do whatever is needed.’

  Gilbey was waiting outside the plant in the pick-up. He drove through back to the security office as soon as he saw the helicopter landing. John walked over to his hire car, gave Adams the key and he whisked the pilot off somewhere to keep him out the way, no communication with anyone.

  John climbed into the pick-up cab and sat there. He had called Gilbey as he left San Antonio and let him know what had happened, and now he wasn’t sure what to do. The sun had broken through the thick grey clouds and it was hot inside, he found the switch and buzzed the window down then leant his elbow on the sill and breathed in deeply.

  ‘You ok?’ Gilbey asked.

  John nodded.

  ‘Yeah. It’s just, so much has happened. I feel really bad for Patrick, he’s my mate in the FBI and he is drowning. Literally. I mean, I never expected any of this. I really thought a night, maybe two in Gray Rock all based around me sitting in Howarth for half an hour or so being ignored by Collis.’

  ‘Yeah, well, blame me. I was the one started blabbing to you in the diner remember?’

  ‘No, I had already had some shit to deal with. I hadn’t even got in my motel room when it started.’

  ‘I’ve been sitting doing nothing waiting for something to happen. I’m serious. Sitting and waiting.’

  John breathed out, long and slow and then turned and looked at Gilbey, gave him a grin.

  ‘Right. Enough of me being precious. So, where and what is Brown’s?’

  Gilbey frowned.

  ‘I don’t know! I can’t think of anywhere called it. There’s three bars here in town, you know Lil’s, then there’s Pinto in the south, and the Grill Bar in the north. That’s it. Two restaurants; one in the south, one in the north and the diner. Nowhere called Brown’s. I rang Carrie, because she knows everywhere. She can’t think either, she says not in Carline, not Marathon, definitely not Fort Stockton. There’s a bunch of small poky places around, some roadhouses, but nothing called that.’

  ‘Shit. Cane just said it’s happening tonight; at Brown’s. Nothing else.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Maybe it’ll come to me. Cane might talk. Meantime, I got these.’

  He dug in his pocket and took out a keyring with a couple of keys on it.

  ‘What are those?’ John asked.

  ‘Key’s to Abel’s house. Carrie’s got a friend who is the housekeeper. Everybody here is real upset about Rita, and some people are starting to put two and two together. At last. I’ve asked Carrie a couple of times to see if I can borrow the keys and it seems this time she offered.’

  ‘Is Abel going to be there?’

  ‘Apparently all three of them practically live at the Country Club these days. She says Abel hasn’t been at the house properly for weeks, she has nothing to do these days. Run the vacuum and do a bit of dusting, no cooking, nothing.’

  ‘Ok. Be good to get Barlow’s keys, no doubt he is the one pulling all the strings.’

  ‘Yeah, well I couldn’t tell you if he’s even got a housekeeper, or whatever they call it. And if he does, I don’t know her.’

  ‘Or him.’

  Gilbey looked at him and grinned.

  ‘Or him. My mistake. But look Abel is the one does all the talking, maybe we can find something up there, you never know, it could be useful. Worth a look for sure. Hey, maybe Brown is a person, say ‘Meet at Brown’s’ could be relating to somebody’s name, meet at Brown’s house I guess.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s true. Good point. Common enough name, right?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Gilbey started the truck and rolled away, following the road down the hill past the motel and then the diner. John looked carefully, the woman, Mrs Walton was standing in the car park, which was bereft of any vehicles.

  ‘I’m staying at the Radisson,’ John said, confident he could trust Gilbey.

  ‘Oh yeah? I never been in that place, what’s it like?’

  ‘Fine. Same as every other Radisson in the world, and a lot nicer than the motel. That woman is well in with our friends, it was her tipped off the sheriff when I first got here, and she helped out with whoever and whatever got Rita in my motel room I know it.’

  ‘Definitely. I do not like her one bit, she’s on my list for sure.’

  ‘Restaurant ain’t called Brown’s at the Radission I suppose?’ Gilbey asked with a grin.

  ‘No. It was never going to be that easy.’

  Chapter Twenty

  John could feel a tightening in his stomach as the afternoon moved on. They drove past the rock, and then turned right at the junction which led to Collis’s house, then carried on following the road up.

  ‘Collis got a really bad kicking. He’s in intensive care,’ John said quietly.

  Gilbey tutted.

  ‘Shit. I thought your FBI buddy was pulling him out.’

  ‘Yeah, so did I, in fact so did he. But some internal FBI wires got crossed, and the local agent got involved. He set it up. Patrick already knew not to trust him, so that guy, whoever he is, is up to his neck in this too.’

  Gilbey reached the top and then turned into the road with all the big houses, and swung into the drive of the second one. It was a large, grey house, set back far from the road with high pillars on either side of double front doors. There was a triple garage on the left side.

  John whistled as they got out the truck.

  ‘Jesus, this place is huge! And he lives here on his own?’

  ‘Barlow’s is the one next door, it’s even bigger.’

  John looked around, Gilbey was right. Barlow’s place was colossal. Set even further back and ringed with a high stone wall; gates firmly closed. Jesus. He turned and looked in the other direction down the road.

  ‘That one is Cane’s I suppose?’

  Gilbey shook his head.

  ‘No, I don’t know where he lives now. He was in an apartment on the main street for a while apparently, but that was some time ago. If he’s got a house anyplace in this town I don’t know about it. Probably been at the Country Club since it opened, before that he was staying with Barlow. I think so. Anyways, it’s what people say.’

  They walked up the steps to the front doors, and Gilbey slid the key in and turned it, then pushed inside into a big hallway, with a grand sweeping staircase in the centre and shiny pine wood on the floor.

  ‘Have to be methodic
al,’ John said, taking in the enormity of the task.

  ‘Right, let’s start upstairs.’

  As they climbed up Gilbey bellowed ‘Anybody home’ at the top of his voice.

  No reply. Neither man was particularly concerned should Abel appear. It would be dealt with, one way or another.

  There were six bedrooms, four with en suite bathrooms. They were all basically fitted out the same; big bed, wardrobe, chest of drawers. It was like walking through a high-end furniture catalogue, everything matched and there was not a speck of dust or a crease anywhere.

  ‘I’d like to bet nobody ever slept in any one of these,’ Gilbey observed as they made their way through.

  Looking at everything John would not take that bet.

  Every wardrobe, every drawer, every cabinet was empty. The last room they checked was the master bedroom, which was obviously the one Abel used, or normally used before he moved to the Country Club. It stood in the centre with massive picture windows right above the front doors. Here, there were several suits and ironed shirts hanging in the wardrobe. Socks and underwear in the drawers. The bathroom had the usual; toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, some questionable medicines on a shelf. But nothing else, they checked carefully then went back downstairs and walked into the living room, which was vast. It covered the whole depth of the house, with massive triple folding glass doors at the back leading onto a garden which was in it’s infancy. Not much to see, two large sofas in tasteful dark red, a big TV on the wall. Glass coffee table with a couple of remote controls on it. Again, everything spotlessly clean.

  They walked through a dining room which had a table with ten chairs around it, a sideboard completely empty, then into a kitchen with a spectacular modern range cooker built into a wide island. They checked every cupboard. A few had plates and crockery in, some pans, and one cupboard had some pasta and other basic food, like the rest of the house it was immaculate but it looked forgotten, as if it had been only used just once. They wandered out at a bit of a loss, and the last room was a study, right at the front of the house looking out onto the drive. There was an old fashioned solid desk and matching filing cabinet. Which was practically empty, some domestic insurance paperwork, a couple of vehicle pink slips and not much else. No computers, not even a laptop. Big black and white shots, mostly of Abel and Barlow together; always smiling, a couple showed them standing in front of a half-finished building of some sort, one shaking hands outside the plant, another on the pitch at the stadium. But there was one picture, in colour, of Barlow and Abel standing in front of a jeep surrounded by desert. There was another man with them, on one knee in the front, holding a Winchester rifle, also smiling. Short shaved hair, and a green bomber jacket.

  John went over to the picture and tapped his finger on the glass.

  ‘I’ve seen this guy around. He was at the hotel this morning, I reckon he was there looking for me.’

  Gilbey looked and frowned.

  ‘That’s Paul Hunter. He’s their fixer. Makes a lot of people very nervous. Got a lot of big talk alright, he claims to be ex-military, a SEAL, but that’s bullshit for sure. Those guys never say nothing. He may have served, but he’s a nobody. I’ve asked around, but no one has ever heard of him. Believe me, if he was a somebody in the military then his name would be ringing bells with the guys I been asking. The word is he runs the Regulators, and that could well be true I suppose. He tried to strong arm me, but just once. In the diner, got heavy, said I was a bad influence, disturbing the peace of the town. That fat prick Carter was with him.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Gilbey laughed.

  ‘I explained to him it’s real simple. He’s fake, but I’m the real thing. What you see is what you get. And if he ever speaks to me again I’ll tear his arms off.’

  John laughed too.

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘What could he do? Diner full of people heard me say it. He had nowhere to go, and I would have hurt him bad, and he could see it, all too late I guess. I never had nothing to do with him again, but I keep my eyes open, and I see the reaction to him from other folks. He needs dealing with that’s for sure, and I won’t lose any sleep if it’s me that does it.’

  They went through the desk, like everywhere else pretty much empty but in a centre drawer they found a couple of keys on a paper tag and a printed email, which had a picture of John on it, and a basic career resume. John looked at it.

  ‘So, someone’s talking, helping them out,’ he said, noting the sender address which meant nothing to him.

  But Gilbey didn’t reply.

  John looked up.

  Gilbey was staring hard at something. There were two large maps on the wall. One was the state of Texas, with Gray Rock marked in bright green way down in the south west. The other was of the town itself, obviously a blow up of an original old map, but with all the new developments professionally marked in over the top. He saw that Gilbey was smiling and pointing.

  ‘Check this out,’ he said.

  John walked over.

  The map was effectively a checker board, the town itself in the centre, but tiny when it was originally drawn. The whole area surrounding it was covered in clear drawn shapes in various sizes, with names and initials marked in the centre; ‘Evans K’, ‘Garrison H’, ‘Bartholomew R’, the whole map was laid out in the same way. None of the shapes overlapped, some were adjacent, while others stood on their own. The new Gray Rock houses and buildings were boldly drawn in black over the top, with main roads shown. There was a bright red square drawn further south.

  ‘What is it?’ John asked, looking closely.

  ‘Must be the old zoning. These are all the old registered oil fields and workings, and the owner’s names. Got to be fifty-plus years old I would say. The oil run dry round here by the early eighties, they limped along for a few years after. But look down here, in the red square.’

  John looked. The large square was drawn over a bulbous teardrop shape, with the name ‘Brown J’ right in the middle.

  ‘Brown?’ he asked.

  ‘Look carefully, this square has been drawn on the glass. It was done afterward. Recently I’d say. This is Brown’s. Has to be.’

  ‘But what’s there?’

  ‘Nothing. I mean it’s been a good while since I was there. I did some training with the National Guard there about five or so years ago, in the summer, basically war games for Afghanistan. Worked quite well actually, but apart from some rusty old metal lying around from the original rig it’s just a big old empty space. Brown was Jay Brown, and he’s something of a local legend. I completely forgot about him, I should have thought of this before. People talk about that guy all the goddamn time. I never knew him but Carrie did, she remembers him. He’s supposed to be the meanest most miserable man ever drew breath. He didn’t live in the town, he had a ranch about another twenty or so miles further south, right close to the border. Died, what, nearly twenty years ago, I guess, but people still talk about him.’

  John looked closely at the map.

  ‘So if it’s empty maybe it’s not here. What about at the old man’s ranch? Twenty miles isn’t that far, in fact it’s nothing at all around here. That would be called Brown’s too wouldn’t it?

  Gilbey shook his head.

  ‘Nah. I can clear that up straight away. You see old man Brown had two sons. Wife left a long time before, but they stayed, worked on the rig by all accounts, least the older one did. Word is the two boys hated each other. Old Brown was a wealthy man, he made a shit load of cash in the boom and milked that spot dry. Now when he died, everything was left to the oldest boy, who was the worker. Brown had given up on the younger, who’d moved away, lived in Corpus Christi, got a bunch of priors, gambling, pimping, money laundering. Ends up in jail, no surprise there. Christ, he was thirty-two or three when he got out. Something like that. Anyways, first thing he does is gets his ass down to the ranch in the middle of the night and sets it on fire. Old wooden building, it went up i
n seconds. The older boy and his family asleep inside, all perished. Tragedy. Now this was only about six or seven years ago. But the ranch is gone, nothing left but a few burnt timbers and a big old black patch of soot and ashes.’

  ‘Jesus. That’s a story. What happened to the younger son?’

  ‘He got lifted. He ran straight over the border into Mexico, started living with some madam down there. Then decides he can be a big time coke dealer, and tries to do a deal with a couple of undercover DEA agents in Laredo. Walked right into it so I hear. No choice but to plead guilty to everything. He might even be in Howarth. No idea.’

  ‘Wow.’

  John looked at the map again. Brown J. It was all they had, and Gilbey was right, the square had been drawn later, right onto the glass.

  ‘Ok … But why there?’

  ‘No idea. Maybe they just want to meet out the way. I don’t understand what these fuckers do most of the time anyhow. But happening at Brown’s you said. And there it is. Got to be. It ain’t a bar or a restaurant it’s just the wilds. And it would be real private out there, I tell you there ain’t a soul for miles and miles around.

  John nodded.

  ‘Right, so what do we do?’

  ‘Let’s take a drive out there and have a look. This town changes real fast. I can’t keep up, and like I said, it’s been a few years. You never know, there might be a casino there now, maybe a brothel or one of them big ass shopping malls.’

  John smiled.

  ‘You never know.’

  He reached into the desk and picked up the keys, turning them around in his hand. The tag had faint writing, but he could read ‘Brown’.

  They looked at each other. John put them in his pocket.

  They checked the garage, just for completion’s sake. As with the house, it was near enough empty, just an old classic car; a pristine bright red Plymouth Fury, and a more modern Cadillac. No tools, or junk piled up, only the cars, which were both unlocked, and nothing remotely interesting in either one.

  There was nothing else to see, that big old house had been searched completely in under an hour. They locked up and left, both men glancing at Barlow’s house as they passed.