Nothing Ventured

by Roderick Price

  “Where’s my damn money?” Hilton and Martin were both completely out of breath. Both clutching the gun. Martin still lying on top of Hilton on the floor.

  “Guess what, piece of shit! I’m giving you your money back. It’s in those bags by the wall.” Hilton turned his head slightly and saw the grocery bags. “It’s all there,” said Martin. “You can have your stinking money. I don’t know what happened to the oil,” Martin lied, “but I don’t want to have anything to do with you or your sidekick Larry Walker.”

  “Well that was stupid, showing me the money.” Hilton half croaked, “Anyway you won’t have to worry about Larry.” They were both out of breath, still grappling for control of the gun.

  “What’s up with Larry?” said Martin.

  “Bastard double-crossed me,” said Hilton. “Let’s just say he isn’t ever going to do that again. To anybody.”

  “You killed Larry?”

  “He had it coming,” Hilton snarled. “Actually, you got it coming, too, but I’m willing to overlook that. I just want the money. Let me up or I will kill you.”

  Martin felt the anger. Hilton was never going to stop. Hilton really was a predator. Ruthless. Can’t trust him.

  “You think it’s smart threatening me right now, you scumbag?” said Martin. Martin got his hand on the barrel of the gun and vainly tried to rip it from Hilton’s grip.

  “Yeah, that’s not going to work.” Hilton hung on doggedly. “I’m used to dealing with pussies like you.” Hilton violently rolled sideways, trying to get Martin off his back. “You ain’t got the balls to deal with men like me. I’m just better than you.”

  “Your bullshit doesn’t work with me, Hilton,” said Martin. They continued their battle for the gun. “I’m better than you. I’m stronger than you. Smarter than you. And I’m tougher than you.” Martin knew when he first made his plan, when he first met Hilton, that it might come to this. Hilton was a murderer. If he let Hilton go, Hilton would kill him. Or he would hire somebody to kill Martin. Hilton had no conscience.

  Hilton tried to shake free again. They both were tiring. “Just so you know, I’m not stopping until I kill your ass. I don’t know how you did it, but it wasn’t just Larry. You double-crossed me, too. For a while, I was starting to like you.” Hilton was still fiercely gripping the gun. “At least we got the same taste in women.”

  Martin felt a cold, steely rage well up within him. He thought of Liz and Hilton together. Smashing Hilton’s head into the floor with his elbow, Martin grabbed the long silencer of the gun with both hands. Hilton rose to all fours and they were both now on their knees fighting for the gun. Hilton pulled the trigger and a bullet tore into the sofa. With both hands, Martin now had control of the barrel and he suddenly twisted it unexpectedly into Hilton’s chest. Hilton’s finger was still on the trigger and the gun went off. Hilton’s body went limp. They were still kneeling face to face. Hilton’s head dropped oddly to one side. His eyes rolled back. Martin pulled the gun from Hilton’s hands and Hilton toppled to the floor. Shot through the heart. Martin lay on the floor staring at the ceiling. Gasping for breath. His heart still pounding. The gun felt cold in his hands. His breathing slowly returned to normal.

  Martin rose slowly to his feet and retrieved a bottle of tequila from the cabinet over the refrigerator. He put ice in a glass and filled it to the brim with straight tequila. Standing in the kitchen, he downed the tequila and stared at Hilton. He filled the glass again and walked over to Hilton’s motionless body. He pushed on it with his foot. Hilton was gone. “Hilton,” said Martin coldly to the lifeless form, “if you’ll wait here for a minute, I’ll bring your car up to the door.” Martin retrieved Hilton’s car keys and wallet from Hilton’s slacks. Then Martin went back to his closet and rummaged through his deer hunting gear until he found his wool gloves and an old baseball cap. He wasn’t leaving prints on anything. He put on the gloves, picked up the gun and spent a good five minutes wiping away fingerprints. He even poured some tequila over the gun thinking it might wash away any DNA. He kept the gloves on, pulled the cap low over his face and eased out the back door. He walked into the dark parking lot and clicked the remote key and heard the beep from Hilton’s car. He walked through the shadows over to the car and got behind the wheel. He pulled the car around to the parking area by the back of his apartment. He was glad he had unscrewed the light bulbs earlier. He rolled down the driver’s side window and shut off the engine. Martin sat quietly for several minutes. It was another humid evening in Houston. Quiet. He could hear the cars driving down Memorial Drive. With the silencer, nobody had heard the gun. Martin cracked open the driver’s side door and reached up to click off the dome light. Then from inside the car he threw open the passenger door and slowly walked back into his apartment. Hilton was a big guy. Hard to move. Martin removed Hilton’s belt and looped it around Hilton’s chest and under his arms to get a handle on Hilton. Then he rolled the body up in a blanket. He half-carried and half-dragged Hilton out to the car and pushed him headfirst into the passenger seat. He walked back into the apartment. There was blood all over the small rug where Hilton had fallen. Martin rolled up the rug and carried it out and tossed it in the trunk of the car. He returned and carried the three shopping bags of money out to the trunk and closed the lid. He moved quickly and silently back to the apartment and looked around for any of Hilton’s things. He grabbed the tequila bottle, locked the apartment, and then walked slowly back out to the darkened car. He slid into the driver’s seat and drove off. As he was driving, Martin took a hit off the bottle of tequila and poured the remainder of the bottle over Hilton’s body. He stopped on a dead-end street that sided Buffalo Bayou. He smashed Hilton’s phone on the pavement. Then he dumped the rug, the blanket, the tequila bottle, the wallet and Hilton’s phone into the dark water.

  CHAPTER 60

  When the call came into the Houston Police Department, it wasn’t domestic violence or robbery. Turned out it wasn’t on the Southeast side either. The car was found in a damn parking lot in some big office building off Post Oak. The caller had simply said, “The man who killed Larry Walker in Wisconsin is in a car in the parking garage at 460 Richmond Avenue. White Mercedes.” It was such an odd call in such a nice neighborhood. A patrol car was there in less than five minutes. The keys were in the ignition and a guy in the front passenger seat appeared to be passed out and wreaked of tequila. Turned out the guy was dead. A quick check showed he owned the car. He had been in some kind of fight or something, had a fractured right forearm. Took one in the chest. Three grocery bags full of cash in the trunk. Did the killers not even look in the trunk? His wallet was gone. Robbery? When they counted the money down at the station, it was just under a half-million. Then dispatch radioed back. In fact, a man named Larry Walker had been found dead somewhere up in Wisconsin a few days ago. They were contacting the Wisconsin police. Homicide division showed up. Like a lot of Houstonians, it turned out the guy had a gun stashed in the front seat console and any cop could tell just by smelling the barrel, that the gun had very definitely been fired recently. Was it the murder weapon? Who leaves the murder weapon at the scene? It turned out the guy was from Houston; name was Hilton Sinclair. They locked down the crime scene.

  After two days, things became pretty obvious to the police. Hilton had killed Larry Walker. Hilton’s DNA matched prints found on the murder weapon, an old iron fireplace poker in some Wisconsin cabin. They performed ballistics on the handgun. Sure enough, it had recently been fired. Wisconsin detectives had previously noticed that Melvin Baker had signed one of these oil leases and then suffered an accidental death. Seemed odd. After some digging it was determined that the slug found in Mel Baker’s body came from the gun in Hilton’s car. They couldn’t determine if it was Larry or Hilton who killed Melvin. Couldn’t tell if the gun was the Hilton murder weapon because the bullet had gone straight through and exited. It didn’t really matter.

  Turned out Hilton had stolen six hundred thousand d
ollars from Prolea using a guy named Gannon who had an office near the Montrose neighborhood. Gannon admitted accepting a fraudulent wire request. Gannon had passed the cash on to Hilton. Gannon had honored the wire request that Hilton had signed for as president of Prolea. But Gannon swore he didn’t know what the money was for. Hilton had told Gannon that he was going to settle his account within the week. Initially, Gannon “forgot” to tell the detectives that he kept a hundred thousand for himself, but when the cops started snooping around in Gannon’s bank and business records, he suddenly remembered. He handed his hundred thousand over to the authorities. The cops discovered that Larry and Hilton had worked a few times together over the years—mostly oil- type jobs in Texas. Clearly, they were working together on the big Wisconsin oil discovery. They were signing up a bunch of leases from old farmers and landowners up around Iron River. They found Hilton’s plane ticket to Minneapolis which was dated the day before Larry was murdered. Turned out that in Hilton’s old office at Prolea, Hilton had left several aluminum canisters hidden in his desk. After some research, and some calls to detectives in Wisconsin, it was determined that these canisters were apparently old seismic data from Wisconsin. These were just like the canisters and tapes that were found in Wisconsin. These were the originals. Hilton must have planted the fakes. They never could determine who actually killed Hilton. Maybe Hilton had screwed someone on that Wisconsin oil deal. Maybe one of Larry Walker’s buddies took care of Hilton. Larry had run with a tough crowd. Maybe the big oil companies had hired somebody to knock off Hilton. Perhaps they thought Hilton was behind the big fake oil discovery. The cops had interviewed Dick Jansen. They interviewed Sheldon Mack a number of times. They interviewed Governor Conlan and the lieutenant governor and the head of the DNR in Wisconsin. Everyone characterized the entire ordeal, the fake oil, the murders, as tragic. But nobody had any answers.

  The police continued their due diligence. Hilton was clearly a bad guy. He clearly killed Larry Walker. Hilton had the gun that killed Mel Baker. They had recovered the Prolea money. Six-hundred thousand dollars that Hilton had stolen from Prolea. Houston had five thousand cops. They did some digging. Frankly, nobody in the police department really cared who knocked off Hilton. Nobody in Houston really cared about a fake oil discovery in Wisconsin. Or the murder of Larry Walker in Wisconsin. After a week they really weren’t finding any new information. They kept the case open another week. After a few meetings downtown to review findings and discuss options, the case was closed.

  EPILOGUE

  By now, the so-called “Wisconsin Oil Discovery” was old news. No “elephant” oil fields. Hilton’s death had made headlines in the Chronicle, for sure. But the case had been wrapped up. Hilton wasn’t the first guy to doctor some oil reserves data. He had embezzled six hundred thousand dollars from Prolea. Apparently, Hilton killed two men up in Wisconsin: Larry Walker, one of his longtime business associates, and an old farmer named Melvin Baker. It wasn’t a big mystery why somebody wanted Hilton dead. Hilton had lots of enemies. In Wisconsin, Governor Conlan was still running in the primary. Other than looking stupid, it didn’t appear that Conlan had done anything wrong. He had owned his Aspen condo for two years. Even though the oil companies had set him up with it, nobody knew about it or even asked about it. Jansen and Mack, the oil company representatives, were obviously as surprised as anyone by the “fake” oil discovery. Jansen had been offered “early retirement” over the deal. With Taylor gone, the Superior Refinery expansion was rapidly approved by the state, but that wasn’t illegal. The bad news for Conlan was simple: Taylor Thompson had barely started her campaign, and Taylor was already the easy favorite to be the state’s next governor.

  Martin had not wasted any time. He rented a small office on the fifty-sixth floor of Williams Tower. It had breath-taking views of downtown. Martin had set up a company and named it Venture Oil Limited. He put ten thousand dollars in start-up money into Venture. He re-opened his retirement account and re-deposited the exact same eighty-seven thousand dollars into the account. Martin apologized to the banker; told him it was probably better to “just leave things the way they were,” given the separation that Martin and Liz were going through. Martin was going out on his own as an independent oil explorationist. Martin knew a ton of people in the business and he had a reputation as a top-notch geologist. His office was already packed with new maps and old maps, a white board and all of his personal and office stuff from Basin. As a present for himself, Martin had bought a fancy new desk chair. Up in his office, it was six in the evening. The sunset’s golden rays were reflecting off the office towers downtown. Martin was packing up his briefcase. He was done for the day.

  Martin got to Cody’s ten minutes early for his seven o’clock reservation. The hostess informed him that his guest had already arrived. She had already been seated. Goodness knows Martin had spent enough nights at Cody’s to know the exact table that he had reserved for tonight. Nevertheless, he let the hostess ceremoniously lead him to their table, through the bar, through the dining room, and out to the terrace overlooking downtown. As he walked up to the table, she pushed back her chair and practically jumped into his arms.

  “Oh Martin,” said Taylor. “I am so glad to see you.”

  “Best table in the house,” said Martin, smiling broadly. “Hope you like this place.”

  It had been Taylor’s idea to pay him a visit. The Wisconsin oil thing was over. Her campaign had barely begun. She was perfectly positioned for governor. She knew Martin had made a ton of money; no idea how much. She wasn’t exactly sure how he had made the money. “Oil trading,” was all that Martin had said. She said it was time for them to celebrate. She looked amazing; better than ever. And rested. Black cocktail dress with spaghetti straps. She looked over Martin. Nice-looking designer jeans. White linen shirt. His arms well-defined, as he rested his elbows on the table, and leaned toward her. The wine steward arrived.

  “Excuse me, the waitress informed me you wished to order wine?” The steward asked.

  “Yes,” said Martin. “I believe you have Petrus, correct?”

  “Very, very good sir. Yes, sir. We have the 2002,” said the wine steward.

  “That would be fine,” said Martin.

  “I will bring it immediately, sir,” said the wine steward.

  “Well, we’re not really in a hurry,” responded Martin. “Not with her.”

  “Yes, sir.” The steward said as he backed away from the table.

  “You know,” said Taylor, “I’m just a small-town girl from Iron River, Wisconsin, but if I’m not mistaken, that stuff’s fifteen hundred dollars a bottle.”

  “Yeah, I know. Actually the 2002 is going to be more than that,” said Martin, smiling. “But you will be glad to know, that other than buying myself a three-hundred-dollar office chair, I’ve hardly spent a nickel. I rented a small office. I’m living in an apartment with my life packed into three suitcases. I’m still driving my eight-year old 325 Beemer.” The wine was poured.

  She lifted the glass, “Okay, Big Spender, here’s to a new beginning.”

  They clinked glasses. “To new beginnings,” he said.

  She gently placed her glass on the table and turned her head slightly, the slightest smile on her face. “So, Martin, where do we go from here?”

  “You remember, I told you that I loved you, right?” said Martin. It was not so much a question as a statement.

  “I think I told you the same thing.” She smiled. Then seriously, she almost whispered to him, “Martin, I really do love you. I’ve missed you, for so, so long. For twenty years, I guess.”

  Martin nodded silently, looking into her eyes, “You think we made a mistake back then?”

  “You know what I think?” asked Taylor. “I think we all just do what we’ve got to do. At the time, nothing would’ve kept me from finishing law school. Nothing would have stopped you from getting a good job and using your geology degree. Then you just came back into my lif
e like a dream.”

  “Here’s to dreams, you amazing woman,” said Martin. “Here’s to us.”

  “Here’s to dreams, my love,” said Taylor. Then once again they clinked glasses as the golden rays of sunset slowly settled over the winding bayous of the Magnolia City.

  The End