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Moratorium

Page 16

by Chuck Sampson


  On Jack Tanner lay the toughest challenge. Instead of having to fight prejudice, low oil prices, bandits, disease, and the onslaught of natural disasters, he had to deal with environmental extremism, excessive Government regulation, and unreasonable union demands. But the hardest thing Jack Tanner had had to overcome in recent years was the rebellion, and now the untimely death, of his own son Mike.

  Tanner opened the door carrying a long, double barreled, over and under shotgun with the muzzle pointed down. He reeked with the smell of whiskey and his eyes looked like red, cracked, egg shells. He had a large tumbler in his other hand, filled halfway with what looked like bourbon or scotch. His pale grey complexion, his broken, cragged lined face, and his distant, ghoul-like gaze, told Cyrus that he was a man exhausted from constant and unrelenting heartache. If he has murdered his own son to save his company, he’s paying the price for it now, Cyrus said to himself.

  Tanner walked out on his immense porch and closed the door behind him. He swayed unsteadily as he nodded toward the squad car. He scowled at Cyrus and Max, then he said in a loud voice, “Santa Barbara cops ride in style; you set the taxpayer back at least sixty-grand for that ride, probably more with all the extra police gear they put on it!”

  “Yes sir, it is a nice squad car.” Cyrus replied politely, he tried to continue but Tanner interrupted,

  “I guess wrecking a squad car you don’t like is one way to get a new one, kind of risky though.”

  “Sir?”

  “The squad car you wrecked yesterday, remember? It was on all the channels, too bad you had to do your duty and save that surf bum Dana Mathers.”

  “We’d just like to have a few words.” Cyrus said.

  “I already talked to a cop before. The jerk accused me of killing my own employees. What an idiot! If you’re here to do the same thing you can just turn around right now and go back Santa Barbara.”

  “No sir, we wanted to let you know personally that your daughter has been found and she is safe.”

  “God, I had given up on her ever being found,” he said, “Thank you, officer. I hope you’ll forgive me for being rude. It’s the booze. Where is she?”

  “She’s probably on her way to her apartment by now. She told me she’d call you as soon as she had rested.”

  Tanner raised up the shotgun and slung it across his shoulders. With a weary look, he stared at Cyrus for a moment and then he said, “Thanks, Detective, now if you’ll excuse me…”

  “There is one other thing, Mr. Tanner.”

  “What?”

  “We’d like to talk to you about your visit with Dana Mathers.”

  “My conversations are confidential, officer.”

  “Not if they involve a possibility of obstruction of justice.” Cyrus bit his tongue, regretting his remark as soon as he had spoken the words. He had hoped he wouldn’t have to pressure him. It was too late now.

  “What are you talking about? I think you need to leave now.”

  “Have it your way, Mr. Tanner,” Cyrus said as he turned to leave. “We’ll be back with an arrest warrant.”

  “You don’t scare me. First thing, you’re out of your jurisdiction. And secondly, I’ll be back home five minutes after make your charge.”

  Cyrus shrugged his shoulders, “I know Mr. Tanner. You’re a powerful man. I just thought you might want to spare your daughter-”

  “What’s my daughter go to do with this?”

  “She’s the one who told us about your conversation with Dana. She also said you kidnapped her. We just wanted to check with you and see if we could clear things up with you without formal charges.”

  Everyone was silent for a while as Tanner studied the porch. He raised his head and said quietly, “All right, come in.”

  The size of the Tanner’s mansion overwhelmed Cyrus. He could have placed his townhouse in the middle of the foyer and still had room to walk around its exterior. The cherry oak wall panels stretched upwards at least forty feet to a white, domed ceiling. A large chandelier hung from its center. The polished, hardwood floor inlay crackled like twigs in a bonfire as he walked to the center of the room and looked around. The bang of the door closing reverberated through the foyer as if it were echoing through a mountain valley. Straight ahead through a large open doorway Cyrus viewed the living room, filled with three clusters of long, white, leather couches, oversized reclining chairs, and several polished, cherry-red oak tables. There was a hallway to his right and his left. Next to the entrance of the hallway on the right was a large, plantation-style stairway. He estimated the stairs to be at least a hundred feet wide. The foyer walls were lined with tall, human sized, gold framed, portraits. One of the paintings contained the image of a smiling Mike Tanner.

  Jack Tanner stumbled by him as he put his shotgun up with the others on the gun rack beside the doorway. He staggered over to where Cyrus was standing looking at Mike’s portrait and stood alongside him. Tears poured from his eyes and down his face as he swallowed down a long draught from his tumbler of whiskey.

  The painting of a dark haired woman riding a large black stallion hung only a few feet away. Cyrus turned his attention towards it and said, “Is this-?”

  “Yes, that’s my wife, second wife, Mike’s mother,” Tanner replied.

  Cyrus examined the portrait a while longer noting how the rider had the same round, bright, wide-set, coal-black eyes, narrow jaws and small, pointed, chin as her son. Her black, loosely curled hair, just like Mike Tanner’s only much longer, trailed well below her shoulders. She sat on the stallion and appeared headed down a wide, dirt road lined with tall redwoods. She sat side saddle, and wore a long, white dress; her tan face was emotionless and regal; her long graceful arms and petite hands held the reins of the horse effortlessly.

  Jack leaned closer to him and opened his mouth as if he were about to speak. Instead he lost his balance. Before he fell to the floor, he caught himself on Cyrus’s chest. Their faces were so close that Tanner’s breath gagged him. Tanner blinked his eyes, righted himself and looking at Cyrus he declared in a loud voice, “Her name was Gabriela De La Montoya y Guzman, and she was not a Mexican. Mexican is a nationality, not a race. She was more of an American then you or me. Neither she, nor her father, nor her father’s father had ever been to Mexico. Her great great grandfather was from Spain.”

  He raised his hand and pointing his finger at the picture continued, “In 1847 her great-grandfather fought in the Siege of Los Angeles with the Californios. They lost eventually, but only because they were surrounded and cut off from their supplies. They had fought Gillespie’s Marines and chased them back to their ship. Unlike most of his compadres, he managed to hang on to his property rights after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The old man took a hundred and forty acres in what is still one of the largest orange orchards in Ventura-”

  Three piercing, ringing, blasts from down the hallway to their left interrupted Tanner’s surprisingly coherent speech. Cyrus and Max both turned toward the source of the jarring sound, crouched low, and drew their weapon. Tanner zigzagged in front of Max and Cyrus, blocking the hallway entrance. He set down his tumbler of whiskey on the floor gently, as though it were a baby. With a look of terror on his face, he waved both his arms up over his head; he began shouting, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! For God’s sake man put your guns away; it is just a couple of friends of mine.”

  “Friends? Your friends usually make that much noise?” Max asked as he stood up and holstered his three fifty seven.

  “Skeet range at the end of the hall- I forgot they were waiting for me. They must have gotten bored.” he said and then picking up his tumbler of whiskey he commanded, “Let’s go into my den, I need some ice for this drink.”

  Cyrus and Max followed Tanner as he marched brusquely down the hallway to the right. It was not really a hallway; it was more like an enclosed thoroughfare. The forty foot ceiling had large, crystal, chandeliers every twenty or so feet. Cyrus counted six before they stopped. Tanner op
ened the two double doors they were standing next to, veered to the right as soon as he entered the room, and headed straight for a well-stocked bar that emerged from the side of the wall. He opened a canister of ice. In the center of the room, two light tan, leather sofas pointed to an immense, cherry red, oak desk which sat at the other end. Windowed doors filled the back wall and led to a large garden patio.

  “You want a drink?” Tanner said to Cyrus and Max who were now sitting on the couch facing the bar. Tanner raised his hand abruptly, “Never mind, I know, I know, you are on duty. He staggered over to the couch opposite Cyrus and Max and fell down in the corner of it. Amazingly, he kept his drink balanced so that he didn’t spill a drop.

  “I didn’t kidnap my daughter, Detective Fleming,” he said. “She has a heart murmur the same as her poor mother. She died of heart failure, you know. I was frantic. I’ve already lost two wives and a son. I didn’t want to lose her too. She’s all I have left.”

  “You were frantic, I’m sure. But was it really over Kelsey? You sure it wasn’t to cover up something?”

  “I got nothing to cover up.”

  “According to Kelsey, Mike had the murder weapon and he drove up here with it about a week ago.”

  “Is there a question in there?”

  “Were you the only one here besides Mike that night?”

  “There are a lot of people, workers – I do a lot of business here since Gabriela died. This place is more like my office than my office. Good God man, you implying I killed Mike? Go back to Santa Barbara and get your arrest warrant. I am done.”

  “I wasn’t implying anything. I just wanted get an answer and I got one. Have you had any luck stopping the takeover of your company?”

  “How do you know about the take over?” he said.

  “You told Dana about it, remember. Do you know who’s behind it?” Cyrus said.

  “Somebody’s buying up the stock and putting pressure on the board to fire me. They are trying to take my own company from me.”

  “I thought TANOCO was a private company,” Cyrus said, marveling at the lucidity of the drunken man he was interrogating.

  “We went public two years ago. I needed more capital for the development of our new drilling technique and because of the union.”

  “What union?”

  “The union Maverick Duncan was trying to organize. I am too small a company to support a union. I need my profits for reinvestment and expansion.”

  “How would changing TANOCO from a private to a public company help?”

  “If I went public, I could get a lot of capital from a lot of big investors.”

  “How would that stop the union?”

  “I waited for them to show their hand. Once they told the roustabouts and drillers what they would get if they voted for a union, I made them a counter offer.”

  “Which you paid for with the extra capital from your new investors. Sounds like a shrewd deal. Did it work?”

  “At first, Maverick couldn’t convince anyone to vote in favor of a union after I offered them a share in the company. I set up an ESOP-employee owned stock option plan. They loved it. I loved it actually. I used to be a roustabout. I like paying my employees good wages. But then things got bad and they are getting worse by the day.”

  “What happened?”

  “My investors started selling off their stock and Mike got involved with that Professor nut.”

  “Bad publicity scared them off, right?”

  “I am sure it didn’t help that my son was the target of an FBI investigation involving acts of environmental terrorism. But I don’t think that was the problem really.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well, when I went public I hinted the news to people I trusted that TANOCO stock was about to hit the market. They knew of our new drilling technique and they snapped up all the available shares for twice the initial price.”

  “What do mean you trusted them?”

  “They were guys I knew from when I was a roustabout. They each had a several million to invest just to keep up their lifestyle. They liked to have the attention of young women, play golf every day, and talk about the old days. They didn’t care about running things anymore. I wasn’t afraid they’d try to leverage their shares for more say in the day to day operations of the company, they just wanted a check.”

  “What happened?”

  “They bought up the forty nine percent of the company I made available and then the next day every one of them sold off all their stock.”

  “To who?”

  “I don’t know. But whoever they were, they paid ten times the original price for the stock. And these investors are very much interested in TANOCO’s daily operations. They keep sending letters to the board expressing their great displeasure over my ability to run TANOCO. And more than once they’ve made threats against me.”

  “Threats, you mean physical threats?”

  “No, I get letters from some lawyer threatening to sue TANOCO for violating some state safety code, or failing to provide diversity training, or not having enough handicap facilities, you name it. But they always want to settle things by having me resign for the good of the company and promising me a very generous parachute for leaving.”

  “You told Dana you didn’t think he killed Mike. He said you thought it might be a message from the people who are taking over your company.”

  Jack pointed at Cyrus with his drink as he spoke, “That’s right. I don’t have any proof, of course. It just makes sense to me. These guys have dumped a lot of cash into my company and they probably don’t like having someone writing negative stories about it every week.”

  “And I guess they also figure you’ll go ahead and sell off your interest and retire, am I right?”

  “Could be. But if that’s what they’re thinking they’re dead wrong. I’ll find them, too, don’t worry about that.”

  Tanner set his drink down and put his head on the pillow at one end of the couch. In an instant he fell asleep and started snoring.

  “He’s the strangest drunk I’ve ever seen, Cyrus said, “Completely controlled, no slurred speech and just a little wobbly, then just like that he passes out. Really weird.”

  Max walked over to Tanner and picked up his limp hand.

  “His skin looks a little blue and he is not breathing so good.” Max knelt down and carefully pulled back one of his eyelids, “The pupils in his eyes are the size of quarters. I think he may be dying of alcohol poisoning.”

  Cyrus looked over toward the bar and saw two empty bottles of Chevas Regal scotch whiskey. “Call an ambulance.”

  “O.K., are you ready to go? I don’t think we are going to get any more answers from the sleeping leprechaun.”

  “Not just yet, I want you to stay here and babysit Tanner. Wait a few minutes and if you see that he is coming to, call the ambulance and make a big ruckus about everything. I am going check out what’s down that hallway on the left. I know what the discharge of a shotgun sounds like and those three blasts did not come from a shotgun or any kind of weapon I have ever heard before.”

  “Ditto, they sounded more like they came from some kind of metal banging around to me, what do I tell him if he wakes up?”

  “Tell him I went looking for a bathroom, call an ambulance, and then send me a text message.”

  “Right”

  Cyrus walked out of the room and down the hall at a near run. The hallway on the left was nothing like the ornate structure leading to Tanner’s den. It was much cooler, barren of any decorations and brightly lit, like a factory. There were two large metal doors at the end of the hallway. He looked through the window of one of them and saw another set of metal doors with no windows. He could hear men shouting. He had to know what was behind those doors.

  After he opened the first set of doors, he walked into the large lobby. The walls were lined with lockers and a coat rack with overalls on them. He tried the second door and it was locked. He could see through the door cr
ack where the deadbolt went through. There was a slot for a magnetic card swipe. Pretty good security for a skeet range, Cyrus observed. Try the work clothes, he said to himself, and then he reached up to the top of the rack and pulled down several pair of oil stained, dungaree overalls. He ran his hands through their pockets until he found the prize he was looking for, a magnetic swipe card. He put on the largest pair of overalls of the two he had found and then a pair of discarded work boots from a large waste can. He couldn’t believe his luck; they fit a little big, but he could still walk in them.

  He swiped the card. The metal dead bolt clicked sharply back and he pushed the door opened. He slipped into an immense room the size of an airplane hanger unnoticed. He choked for a moment from the pungent odor of burnt gunpowder mixed with petroleum. Bright lights from the halogen lamps the size of tractor trailer tires, placed all around the walls and suspended from the ceiling, lit the place up like it was daytime. The large metal door clanged shut behind him and the deadbolt slid back into place with a thud. He wasn’t yet sure what Tanner had going on here, but he knew for certain it was not a skeet range.

  A maze of red and yellow painted steel tubes and valves stood before him. They surrounded a patio-sized, square, iron platform. In the middle of it was a metal cylinder mounted on an immense, orange colored, H shaped frame that shot up as tall as a rocket. It rotated and moved downward at the same time. The tube was actually a series of tubes, approximately twenty feet in length and connected together. The drill extended skyward close to a hundred feet in the air, Cyrus estimated. There was at least another hundred feet above it to the ceiling. No wonder Tanner’s house looks like a hotel, Cyrus said to himself, he is housing an oil rig, a large, state-of-the-art, oil rig. This is no one man, pooh boy operation, that’s for sure.

 

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