House Rivals Read online

  About fifteen years ago, near the end of Big Jim’s life, Curtis found himself in a bad situation, the kind of situation where he could go to jail, and the only one he felt he could go to for advice was his father-in-law. What Curtis had done had been done by many men before him: he was short of cash but had the opportunity for an incredible investment—one which would provide the funding to launch his own company—and he stole from the men who were his partners at the time. Actually, the way he looked at it, he didn’t really embezzle from the company, he just borrowed some money for a short period then paid it back.

  The problem was an accountant/auditor discovered what he’d done and instead of telling the police or Curtis’s partners, he decided to blackmail Curtis. And that’s when Big Jim told him about Murdock and how to contact him. He had no idea how Big Jim knew Murdock.

  Curtis called his pilot and told him to be ready to fly to Denver in half an hour. As he walked out of the office he told his secretary where he was headed and she said, “Don’t forget it’s your wife’s birthday today, and there’s a party for her at seven. Your children are coming for the party.”

  “Doggone it,” Curtis muttered. He’d forgotten all about the party. “Did I buy her a birthday present?”

  “Yes, sir. You bought her a nice pearl necklace.”

  Meaning his secretary had bought the necklace.

  “I hope it wasn’t too expensive,” Curtis said.

  “I’m sure you can afford it, sir.”

  It always pissed him off the way people assumed that just because he was rich he should squander his money.

  Curtis hated meeting Murdock in the damn steam room. Although he appreciated the man taking precautions to make sure there was no record of their conversation, being naked made him feel vulnerable and less powerful. He knew he looked like a scrawny chicken with its feathers plucked off.

  Murdock hadn’t changed much since the last time Curtis had seen him. His hair was thinner and he had the muscle tone of a man who didn’t do a lot of manual labor, but he hadn’t gotten fat. The most surprising thing was that he was still working and not dead or in jail, which was a testament to his competence. Or his luck.

  “I want you to keep tabs on a man named Logan up in Bismarck. You met with him recently. He had you deal with a young woman in Bismarck. But now I want him watched. I want to know if he’s talking to the FBI.”

  “So hire a detective,” Murdock said. “That’s not what I do.”

  “I know that,” Curtis said, “but the thing is, I want you on the ground up there, ready to move at a moment’s notice in case I need you to take care of Logan. And Logan has a partner. You may have to deal with her, too.”

  They settled on how they would communicate and Murdock’s compensation. He’d be given a lump sum for watching Logan plus a per diem rate depending on how long he was required to stay in Bismarck. If he had to do more than watch Logan, the lump sum would double. If he had to take care of Dawkins, it would double again. Curtis thought the amount Murdock asked was pretty doggone steep—and another example of people gouging him just because he was rich.

  As they were about to leave the steam room, Curtis said, “I’m curious as to how you got into this business.”

  Murdock smiled slightly. “I guess you’d say that the U.S. government gave me a certain skill set and this is a line of work where those skills are useful.”

  Well, aren’t you the cryptic SOB.

  25

  While Marjorie Dawkins was meeting with Leonard Curtis in Houston, DeMarco drove to Montana. As he was driving, he checked his tail continuously. He wasn’t being followed.

  When he arrived at Thorpe’s cabin, he saw Thorpe’s pickup in the driveway and the old dog, Daisy, sleeping on the front porch, but Thorpe didn’t answer the door. DeMarco knew Sarah’s funeral had been yesterday and he wondered if Thorpe was inside, sitting in the dark, drinking. That’s what DeMarco would have been doing if his granddaughter had been killed.

  He walked down to the river, trying to decide how long he should wait for Thorpe when he saw a man fly fishing a few hundred yards away. It looked like Thorpe: tall, gray-haired. DeMarco walked along the bank, glad he’d worn jeans and tennis shoes, until he was close enough to call out to Thorpe—but he didn’t. Watching the man cast was a thing of beauty: a green-colored line looping out about thirty yards and then dropping softer than a butterfly on the water. Thorpe would let the fly drift downstream a ways, then with an effortless motion, he’d bring it back, the line curling behind him, and he’d cast the fly out again. Each time, the fly appeared to land in exactly the same spot. On the fifth cast, Thorpe pulled back hard and the rod bent practically in half, and a trout that must have been two feet long came out of the water, its tail twisting as it tried to shake the hook. Thorpe fought the fish calmly, taking his time, and when it was close enough to touch, he reached down and flipped it off the hook.

  “That was a hell of a trout,” DeMarco said.

  Thorpe turned around to face him. There were tears streaming down his cheeks. He’d probably been thinking about his granddaughter who he’d said could cast even better than him.

  “What are you doing here, DeMarco?” Thorpe said.

  “I need something.”

  DeMarco told Thorpe where things stood with Logan and what he wanted as they walked back to Thorpe’s cabin.

  “This better work,” Thorpe said. “If it doesn’t, I’m going to solve this in my own way.”

  After DeMarco had what he’d come for, he began the five-hour trip back to Bismarck.

  While DeMarco was driving to Montana to see Thorpe, and while Marjorie was meeting with Curtis in Houston, Bill Logan was still sleeping; he didn’t wake up until ten a.m. He was anxious to talk to Marjorie to see how her meeting with Curtis had gone but figured she wouldn’t be back until late in the afternoon or early evening. Overall, though, he was feeling pretty good. Marjorie had been right: the assault charge could be made to disappear and the cops would never connect him to Johnson’s death.

  He smiled thinking about his golf game with DeMarco. He was glad he’d done that—shown DeMarco that he wasn’t worried at all. He just wished that he’d won the game, and knew the only reason he didn’t was that DeMarco got lucky on his last putt. He hoped DeMarco’s luck didn’t extend beyond the golf course.

  He shaved and took a shower, dressed in a gray sport jacket, black slacks, a black polo shirt, and black loafers. He didn’t have any meetings today; he just liked to look good. The first thing he was going to do was go see Tim Sloan and put that problem back in the box.

  On the way to Sloan’s place he stopped at his bank and it was a little after eleven when he rapped on his ex-brother-in-law’s door. A couple minutes later a sleepy voice said, “Who is it?”

  “Tim, it’s Bill. Let me in. I need to talk to you.”

  This remark was greeted with silence.

  “Come on, Tim. Open the door. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not mad at you. Really. Now open up. “

  Finally Tim opened the door, then stood in the doorway looking leery, as if he was ready to spin on his heels and run if Bill showed the slightest sign of aggression. He was dressed in a once-white T-shirt that was now almost gray and red boxer shorts with small white dots. Bill wondered where Tim’s skanky girlfriend was, but didn’t ask.

  “Why don’t you get dressed and we’ll go get some breakfast,” Bill said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

  When Tim just looked at him suspiciously, Bill clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Timmy, I’m not mad at you. Honest. That goddamn DeMarco had you by the balls and you did the only thing you could do. Now go put on some pants, and let’s head over to Denny’s and get one of their giant breakfasts.”

  While they were having coffee, waiting for their food to arrive, Bill chatted about everything under the sun: the weather, sp
orts, a movie he’d seen, and the local economy. The economy in North Dakota was booming thanks to oil and gas; unemployment was at an all-time low.

  Tim responded by saying that the economy wasn’t so good as far as he was concerned, and Bill could understand why. A guy like Tim was too lazy to get a real job, and because of the natural gas boom, merchants were raising their prices and rents were skyrocketing. This meant that Tim had to pay more for food and booze and probably drugs, and Tim was on a fixed income—like a retired guy—since his Social Security disability check was his only steady source of income. Bill sympathized with Tim and by the time their meal arrived, Tim was relaxed and not worried that Bill might beat him to a pulp for telling the cops who had paid him to assault Sarah Johnson.

  “Now about this legal thing,” Bill said as Tim was stuffing steak, eggs, and hash browns into his unshaven face. “This could actually be a good thing for you. I mean, considering how you always need money.”

  “What?” Tim said.

  “I’m thinking twenty thousand,” Bill said. “Ten today and the rest when they drop the charges against me.”

  “What?” Tim said again.

  Bill explained to Tim that he was going to get a good lawyer, which Bill would pay for, and when Tim was subpoenaed to testify against Bill at Bill’s trial, he’d recant everything he’d told DeMarco. He would say that DeMarco had confused and threatened him, and that was why he’d said that Bill had paid him to scare Johnson. He would say that harassing Johnson—and that’s all he did—he just harassed her—he didn’t assault her—he didn’t hurt her—had been his own idea. He’d say that Johnson’s blog just pissed him off, telling lies about politicians, writing things that could cost his friends their jobs.

  “But that means I’ll go to jail,” Tim said.

  “Nah, you won’t go to jail,” Bill said. “You just yelled at the girl, who, by the way, isn’t around to contradict whatever you say. And right now, not only is business booming but so is crime. The jails are full of real criminals. They’ll give you a suspended sentence—the lawyer will make sure of that if you agree to plead guilty and save them the expense of a trial. And hell, even if you did go to jail, you wouldn’t serve more than a couple of months. I’d say that twenty grand isn’t a bad paycheck for sitting on your butt for two months.”

  Bill pulled an envelope out of his pocket and opened it so Tim could see the cash in the envelope. “There’s ten grand. You’ll get the other ten when the case is settled and provided the charges against me are dropped.” Tim just stared at the envelope; Bill doubted that Tim had ever seen ten thousand dollars all in one place before.

  It took a while, but by the time Bill was finished, Tim agreed to do what Bill wanted. Bill had spent his entire career convincing folks a lot brighter than Tim to do things he wanted.

  Bill dropped Tim off at his apartment after breakfast—he was guessing that Tim and the skank would go out to celebrate tonight—then he called Marjorie. He was desperate to know how things had gone with Curtis and he wanted to tell Marjorie about Tim. But the call went to voice mail, and he figured she might be on a plane coming back to Bismarck. He also figured she’d probably go straight home after she landed, so he’d give her a call later this evening.

  Bill headed toward the office and it started to rain as he drove. In fact, it started to come down hard. The rain was okay, though, as far as Bill was concerned; he wasn’t planning on doing anything outside. His plan was to stay in the office and work his ass off for the rest of the day and long into the night if necessary.

  Curtis wanted to purchase a small parcel of land in McKenzie County near Watford City, North Dakota (population 1,744). Watford City was about an hour south of Williston and in the Bakken oil field. Bill’s first problem was that Curtis didn’t want anyone to know he was buying the property. Curtis had learned that whenever folks discovered he was buying land, a whole lot of hoopla usually followed with the anti-gas crackpots leading the pack. Bill wasn’t too worried about buying the land, however. He had done this sort of thing before, and a couple of Curtis’s lawyers would be assisting him, and by the time he was finished it wouldn’t be impossible to find out that Curtis owned the property but it would take some hard digging.

  The other problem Bill had was that the property was currently zoned for agricultural use but Curtis planned to store a few chemicals used for fracking on the site. As near as Bill could figure, a structure for storing chemicals on agricultural land wasn’t specifically prohibited by the town’s zoning regulations. Farmers, after all, stored fertilizers and pesticides and God knows what else. But it wasn’t clear that storing fracking chemicals was permitted—and no way in hell did Curtis want to ask for permission because some of the chemicals . . . Well, the energy companies’ scientists would tell you they weren’t toxic but the nuts at the EPA, who would classify sunshine as toxic, were inclined to say otherwise. What Bill needed to do was get this one guy on the city’s planning commission to sign off on the building permits that storing a few thousand barrels of chemicals didn’t violate any zoning ordnances. The fact that the guy on the planning commission was a young guy who had political ambitions—and who would one day need some help financing his campaign for the state legislature—gave Bill some leverage.

  Normally, making this all happen—acquiring the land and dealing with the zoning issue—would be a tough but doable problem, but this time, because of the whole Sarah Johnson mess, Bill needed to be especially careful. He just couldn’t risk getting caught doing anything that some small-minded nitpickers might consider illegal.

  So Bill needed to roll up his sleeves and get to work. He wanted to impress Curtis. He knew—no matter what Marjorie might have told Curtis—that Curtis would be having some doubts about his effectiveness at this point, and he wanted to make sure Curtis understood that he was still at the top of his game.

  At five p.m., while Bill was still toiling away, Marjorie called him. She was at the airport waiting for her husband to pick her up. She said things had gone well with Curtis and Bill told her that things had gone well with Tim Sloan, too. Bill concluded by saying, “It’s going to cost twenty grand and whatever the lawyer charges, but Tim will play ball and keep me out of it.”

  “Uh, Bill, I hate to tell you this, but Curtis said taking care of Sloan is going to come out of your pocket, not his.”

  “What! That motherfucker!” Bill hesitated, then said, “You know, Marge, it seems only fair we split the cost. Like you said before, we’re in this together.”

  “I don’t think so, Bill. Hiring Sloan was your bright idea and I’ve got mouths to feed.”

  After he hung up with Marjorie, he kicked a trash can across the ­office—then told himself it could be worse. He could afford the twenty grand and spending it was better than spending time in jail and losing his job. It pissed him off, though, that Marjorie wasn’t bearing some of the cost.

  After Marjorie finished talking to Bill—the nerve of the damn guy thinking she should spilt the cost with him!—she made another phone call.

  While on the plane from Houston she’d come up with an idea for dealing with DeMarco. It wouldn’t take him off the board completely but it would complicate his life and give him less time to screw with her and Bill. And if she was really successful, she might even be able to land his ass in jail.

  What gave her the idea was a woman sitting across the aisle from her on the plane: the woman had these incredible long legs, and on her feet were sexy black stilettos. She wasn’t really any better-looking than Marjorie, and she wasn’t as stacked as Marjorie, but she had fantastic legs and with the high heels, she’d be about six feet tall. Marjorie had always wanted to be tall; short women—even when they were cute and busty like Marjorie—just don’t turn heads the way tall girls do.

  Thinking about the woman across the aisle got her to thinking about Bill and all the women he’d gone to bed with, which then made
her mind ricochet to DeMarco, thinking about how he’d gone to bed with the same woman Bill had: the slutty schoolteacher.

  And that’s when the idea came to her.

  The woman she phoned was a gal she’d gone to high school with. Her name was Christine, but everyone called her Christie. Like the woman across the aisle, Christie was tall. In high school she’d been a cheerleader of easy virtue; she got laid a lot. She ended up marrying a guy who looked good on their wedding day but eventually lost his hair, gained fifty pounds, and drank himself out of a job. Christie had divorced him three years ago.

  Marjorie had run into Christie a few weeks ago. The woman still looked good; she was practically broke but she had a membership at a gym. She was now a cashier at Walmart, made less than minimum wage, and complained that she didn’t know how she was going to pay her rent that month. Her only ambition in life was to find a rich guy to marry her—which was why she spent her salary on clothes and a gym membership instead of paying her rent.

  Marjorie asked Christie if she could stop by her place this evening. When Christie asked why, Marjorie said she had a job for her and would pay five grand. Come on over, Christie said.

  Dick finally showed up at the airport, the boys with him in the car, fighting in the backseat. Since it was raining outside, he’d been trapped with them in the house ever since they got home from school. She told Dick she had an errand to run before they went home, and naturally Dick wasn’t happy to hear this as the boys were driving him nuts.

  Christie let Marjorie into her apartment, which was small, cluttered, and shabby. Her TV set was a big, boxy, older model and had rabbit ears. Marjorie couldn’t remember the last time she saw a television with an antenna, but then Christie probably couldn’t afford cable on the generous salary the Walton family paid.

  Nor did Christie look particularly ravishing tonight: she wasn’t wearing makeup, her hair wasn’t combed, and she was dressed in sweatpants and a too-big T-shirt that made her look flat-chested. But Marjorie knew that with hot-red lipstick, a short, tight cocktail dress, and a push-up bra . . . There was no doubt she’d turn DeMarco’s head.