The Repairman- The Complete Box Set

by L. J. Martin

  And she shakes her head so hard I think she might dislocate a disk.

  I wave "thanks" and push my way inside a small waiting room without a reception desk and only six chairs, so I push my way into another room that’s all stainless steel except for the dropped ceiling. It's some expanded metal surrounding lots of fluorescent lights.

  Two stainless tables are centered in the room. The far wall is lined with a half-dozen doors, obviously with drawers and rolling shelves for bodies.

  I'm not surprised to see a draped body on one table, a man with a white apron covering most of him, and another man in suit and tie.

  "Why am I not surprised?" the suit asks as he eyes me.

  "Dang," I say, "if it's not my favorite detective."

  "Yeah," Tony DiAngelo says, "yours and half the world's. Did you know the deceased and are here for an I.D.? Otherwise, as usual, you're where you shouldn't be."

  "Let me take a look and I'll let you know if I know her."

  He waves me over and introduces me to the doc. "This is Doc Thompson."

  I nod, but don't offer my hand as he has a scalpel in one hand and the other looks a little sticky. Besides, he has on rubber gloves.

  He doesn't seem to mind, reaches up and pulls the sheet down a modest distance.

  "Jesus," I manage. Of course, her skullcap is loose as he's removed the brain, but even as horrendous as that is, the condition of her face is worse. She's been beaten far beyond someone doing so for a robbery. This is a beating either of pure rage, or to make a point with the living.

  "I do think I know her, but it's hard to tell. And I never did get her name. If she's who I think she is, she was working a street corner and was a surprisingly good-looking girl, Eurasian, I'd guess, but don't know." A good-looking girl...or she was."

  "I've got some mug shots on her, and you're right. What did she charge you?" DiAngelo asks and seems serious.

  "I haven't paid for a piece since the last time I was in London ten years ago and got the crabs from that mistake. No, I was just looking for a little info."

  "More info than I needed. Let's get out of here. Let's go to the cafeteria and get some coffee."

  We do.

  After we fill a couple of coffee cups and get a seat, he chides me, "I keep looking in my in box, in my e-mail, and on my carrier pigeon for that 'show me yours' you were gonna send."

  "I haven't found a copy machine yet."

  "Right. Drop by the department, and I'll have it copied for you."

  "Don't think I ought to be spending a lot of time eating donuts with you boys—not if I want to get next to the bad boys of North Dakota."

  "So, are you?"

  "Not doing bad. Partied it up with a few last night, followed one here."

  "Who?" he asks, suddenly interested.

  "Speck's his name. Drives a candy apple red Caddy."

  He nods knowingly. "He's upper mid-level, probably was checking on his girl."

  "You think he did her?" I ask.

  "Kill the goose that laid the golden egg? I doubt it. Not unless she went way off the reservation."

  We talk for the better part of an hour, some of it getting to know each other. Other than the fact he was an Air Force dick, he's a good guy. More and more, I think I can level with him, so I decide to actually send him most of what I know so far. Besides, it's the only way I'm going to get anything out of him. Show me yours.... I hold back the location of the barn and burned out farmhouse where I saw the girls and will continue to hold back on locations where I might be involved in activities law enforcement might not endorse.

  18

  After DiAngelo leaves the cafeteria, I text Pax, give him DiAngelo's cell phone number and e-mail address and ask him to e-mail him almost all the info I've collected, including the pics. Now we'll see if he shows me his. I also give him the code number on the GPS device I've put on Speck's Cad.

  By the time I reach my van, my phone vibrates. It's a text from Pax telling me some GPS coordinates and that Speck has driven over thirty miles to the northwest. As I have nothing else on my plate, I decide to wander out into the oil fields and see what he's up to.

  On the way out, I pass what seems to be a daily event in the Bakken. A mud tanker truck has jackknifed and slid off the road into the ditch, turning over. It reminds me of a turtle on its back, unable to right itself. Already a half dozen pickup trucks are parked nearby. I idle past and pick up my speed to a dangerous thirty miles an hour on the ice. It happens so often, the wrecks have their own Facebook page, Fail of the Day, one of the fastest growing pages on Facebook. I guess the whole world loves a good fuck-up.

  Finding the GPS quadrant that Pax has sent me—where Speck's car remained for a half hour before he headed back to town, as Pax has reported in another text—I'm not surprised to see it's one of Owens-McKittrick's crew camps. A dozen and a half doublewide trailers, each capable of housing a dozen cribs and a bathroom and shower room, are placed around a company store and café, of sorts. Between each of the trailers is enough room to park a dozen trucks.

  It's an off time and there are only a couple of trucks parked near the café, so I pull up and wander in to check the place out. It's fat, dumb, and happy time.

  A burly old boy with salt and pepper chin whiskers is behind the counter, sipping a cup of coffee and waiting for another shift change, which I'm sure will fill the joint. There's only one other customer in the place, and he's in a far corner in front of one of those electric fireplaces, also sipping coffee and coughing his head off between sips.

  I go to the counter and order my own cup.

  "How's business?" I ask.

  "Captured audience," he says. "Wish I owned the place."

  He pours me a cup in a thick-sided crockery mug, and asks, "Cream or sugar?"

  "Nope, but a little help maybe. I'm supposed to meet a guy here, driving a candy apple red Cadillac. Seen him around?"

  "Yeah, left here about a half hour ago."

  "Damn, I was supposed to meet him and another guy."

  "Nickleston, he's the superintendent of this field. He left too…probably back to town to his office. Dumb fucks sat out in Nickleston's truck in the cold and jawed for fifteen minutes. They musta burned up a gallon of gas so they could run the heater."

  "Yeah, that's him. Good coffee by the way."

  "Thanks."

  "So Nickleston and the guy in the Cadillac already met without me?"

  "That's it, partner. Looks like you missed out."

  "What's the guy's name…the Cadillac guy?"

  "I thought you were supposed to meet him…and you don't know his name?" He's getting suspicious.

  "Yeah, I met him in the bar last night, and, I'm embarrassed to say, forgot his name. And he said he had a job for me if I'd meet him here."

  "Johnson is all I know. I think Nickleston called him Jack."

  Speck is using an alias too. Why am I not surprised? I flip a five on the bar, say thanks and head for the door.

  "Man, you ain't too hungry for a job, if you can tip three bucks for a lousy cup of coffee."

  I stop and turn back, "If you're complaining, I'll take my change." He has no way of knowing I'm actually tipping for the info.

  He laughs. "No complaint from me, partner."

  "By the way," I ask, "where's Nickleston's office?"

  "BP owns the field. And I don't mean British Petroleum. It's Bakken Production. I don't know where they have an office in town."

  "And what's he drive?"

  "What the fuck is up with you? Is this twenty questions or what?"

  "It's you being a good guy, and me being a good tipper."

  "Yeah, right. Anyway, he drives a company truck when he's around here. It's a four-door, a crew cab, GMC pickup with a shell on the back."

  "Color?"

  "Tan, like all BP's equipment."

  I wave over my shoulder and head for the van. As soon as I get seated and out of the cold, I check my phone again. There's another message from Pax
and new coordinates where the red Caddy has again parked.

  And I'm off. Isn't it great to be able to follow somebody and never lay eyes on them or their vehicle?

  As I drive off, I'm wondering why Speck is meeting with a guy who's fairly high up in the Owens-McKittrick chain of command. Maybe I'm getting a little closer to the head of the snake. I text Pax and give him the name ‘Nickleston’ and the fact he's a superintendent for Owens-McKittrick. If the guy has a less than stellar background, Pax will find it.

  The new coordinates are ten miles closer to town, and I get close, but not quite there; a locked gate stops my progress. A car has recently driven in. The tracks are fresh. I circle what seems to be a section, a mile on each side, but there are no other roads into the place other than that locked gate. On the far side of the section, I come across a grove of box elders, and they give way to a long row of cottonwoods that line what is probably a creek in the spring. I carefully work the van off the road and into the box elders, just enough that I'm not blocking the little road that's only two lanes wide between some barbwire fences.

  Surviving in the winter, in the snow and ice, is a learned art, and I learned it well at MWTC, the Marine Winter Training Center near Bridgeport, California, high in the Sierras to the east of Yosemite National Park. The training is rigorous. The bad news about working in the snow? The cold can kill you and water is tough to come by, even though you're surrounded by the frozen version. The good news? If you're dressed in white and have time to pound the snow down, you're tough to spot and have a foxhole a damn sight easier to create than digging in tough terrain. The worst news? It's impossible not to leave a trail, and the trail stays until it snows like hell again.

  My Carhartt fleece-lined pants are tan, not the best, but my North Face coat is reversible, red on one side and white on the other. I reverse it. My hat is fur lined and the same tan as my pants. I want to travel light, so I leave the long arms in the van and take only my .40 cal Glock and binocs. Thank God, I'm wearing my one-thousand-gram Thinsulate boots. The snow is damn near eighteen inches deep. I work my way over a broken-down section of the barbwire fence and head out. Checking my phone, I see it's four forty-five. I've got a little over a half hour before sunset; then it really gets cold. The weatherman says twenty below is the low. As I trudge toward the GPS coordinates, I'm happy to note that they denote a location on my side of center in the section. I'd guess I've got a three-eighths of a mile hike, if I can get close to the target.

  I can normally walk a mile in an easy fifteen minutes if I can pick 'em up and put 'em down, but the country is low hills, like most of this part of North Dakota, and the snow is deep. It takes me fifteen minutes to cover a quarter of a mile, but the quarter mile mark seems to be the highest place in the section of land. I can see structures five hundred yards ahead—not houses, but two metal Quonset-hut-shaped barns. Smoke is coming from a stack on one of them. About the time I'm feeling sorry for myself out in the cold, I jump a pair of pronghorn antelope who have to leave their beds under a lonely cottonwood near the crown of the hill. I feel a little guilty as I'm sure it takes some time to warm a spot up. Then I feel envious. I wish I could run like that in eighteen inches of snow.

  There are two windows in the ends of each of the Quonset huts nearest me, and two trucks and the red Caddy are parked at the other end, so I presume the doors into the huts are there.

  I quarter to the side away from the windows and move to within a hundred yards, then stomp a flat spot in the snow, settle down and wait for darkness. Even if they were looking right at me, I could duck into my hidey-hole and not be seen.

  There have been times when I was more comfortable. I dig my phone out and play a little solitaire, then get a wild hair and call Jennifer in Vegas. If you've got to kill time, why not do so with a beautiful woman.

  "Hey, I figured you'd run for the hills," she answers.

  "Actually, I'm in the hills, so you're not far off."

  We talk for fifteen minutes and, as seems to be the daily norm—and thank God for it—the sun sinks and with it the temperature. I promise to call more often, then ease my eyes over the edge of my hole. I'm just in time to see the Caddy working its way around the small parking area, then head out. The two trucks are still there.

  In ten more minutes, it's dark enough not to be seen, as the moon is not up yet. One of the disadvantages of snow is that the moon can light the landscape enough that you can be spotted.

  But I don't have to get next to the buildings to figure out what's going on there.

  If a place is not properly insulated, and sometimes even if it is, you can smell a meth lab a mile away—which is a good reason for them to be this remote. I presume these are well insulated, unless built for dry storage only—but still they stink like Hell.

  I'd like to try and figure out how to light the place up and blow whoever occupies the trucks into the stratosphere, but the object is to cut the head off the snake, not a couple of inches off its tail.

  I'm about to haul ass before mine freezes off when I hear a door close. I drop down on my belly and watch as someone moves across the parking lot and climbs into a truck. I raise my binocs so I can get a good look at him as he's only seventy-five yards away and am sure he's missing the lobe of one ear. Luthor, as I recall. I wish I had gotten close enough to GPS-rig the two trucks, but I didn't. He hits the lights on the truck, and I have to hunker lower in the snow as they bathe me on a swing-by.

  I doubt if everyone inside will leave as a meth lab of this size can have millions in product inside. Somebody will stand guard. I could recon the place closer, but decide it's too big a risk and head out.

  Luckily, I can follow my own tracks back to the van, and as I do, I ask the good Lord to make it snow tonight so my tracks aren't made by the scumbags. I don't want the meth boys to have any suspicion that someone is on to them.

  You've got to love a warm van when it's already well below zero—well below. But it takes me ten minutes to warm mine up, and I'm thanking God it started after grinding away.

  The warmth is good, but knowing I'm getting close to the head of this particular snake is even better.

  I think it's time to clean up, go back to Big Rosie's as Mike Reardon and see what worms work their way out of the woodwork.

  Sometimes you've got to tease the snake to get him out of his hole.

  19

  As soon as I hit the camper, my phone buzzes with an unknown caller. I answer in my normal polite manner. "What?"

  "Toby?"

  "Who wants to know?"

  "Hey, pendejo, this is your main man, Big Al."

  "Yo, man. What's happening?"

  "You wanted to talk about a deal?"

  "I checked out okay?"

  He laughs lowly. "Yeah, man, you done fucked up plenty. We can do a little biz."

  Obviously, Pax did a good job building Toby's phony background. "Let's talk. Where?"

  "I got to get some chow, how 'bout that Rosie's joint."

  "Cool. I got some things going down. An hour, okay?"

  "I don't wait on nobody."

  "I'm always on time."

  "Be there," he says and hangs up. I check the time and see I need to be there by seven thirty, which means the place should be hopping.

  I was going to ditch the disguise and use some fingernail polish remover to get the friggin' beard off, but now I guess I'll need it for a while longer. Pax suggested I take this scumbag escapee from Atascadero State Mental Hospital out hard, so maybe that's exactly what I should do.

  It's time to dig into my Wells Cargo trailer and my bag of dirty tricks.

  A quarter pound of C4 and two phone-activated detonators should solve this little problem.

  The parking lot is already full when I arrive in my van. I look the lot over carefully until I find a black Expedition with the right license plate. The C4 and detonator are in a small metal box with a powerful magnet taped to it. I check the parking lot for observers and seeing none, place it under t
he vehicle, on the inside of a frame I-beam, directly under the driver's seat. Guarding against a wrong number that might injure or kill an innocent bystander, Pax has rigged the phone detonator to activate after the answer and only with the input of a four-number code by the caller.

  I note there's also a candy apple red Caddy in the lot, so I repeat the process. Now two assholes are riding eighth-of-a-pound C4 bombs. Before I reach the front door, my phone buzzes again, and I see I have a text: 'must be a party, all units converged on Rosie's.' Interesting. All the guys whose cars and trucks I've laid a GPS tracker unit on are in one place. The ball of slimy snakes is together. I wish I could just blow the whole joint to hell, but there're lots of innocent folks at hand. Oh, well.

  This time when I push through the doors, I'm greeted by Big and Rich with "…discount box wine burnin' like turpentine, anything to get a buzz," and the place is already rocking. I work my way back to the restaurant area and stop short.

  Looks as if there's a little conflict going on. People are moving away from tables as Speck, his baldheaded body guard, and five other guys including Maggie's son Emmitt, Broken Toes, Many Horses, a big dude who looks familiar to me as he has a little Dutch boy's black bangs are lined up facing—with about ten feet separating them—Big Al, Curly, Tamale, the guy with the missing ear lobe called Luthor, the two V boys, and the guy who must be The Bear, as he's at least four hundred pounds. They’re facing each other like Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington's forces at Waterloo.

  Between the two lines is a guy I have yet to get a line on, and he's talking like a Dutch uncle; looks as if he's trying to prevent a war.

  His head swivels back and forth like he's watching a tennis match, his jaw is flapping, then things seem to ease, and the lines start to break up and move away to opposite sides of the room. I hold tight a while, watching Big Al until he goes to a large booth in a back corner, and his boys surround him. The others are far away, so I approach. Guys who've left their tables begin to filter back and return to their suppers or drinks.

  The guy who seemed to be negotiating the peace joins neither group, but instead heads for the bar and takes a stool.