The Dryline. Jack Grubbs
hope I didn’t get you up.” Fred Barrister, sitting in a booth at Skeeter’s Eatery, looked absentmindedly out of the diner window. “I’m Fred Barrister. I practice patent law and am a close professional friend of your attorney, Herman Soboda. He mentioned some medical problems have caused him to retire and asked if I would consider working with a few of his more important clients. He said you were his most important.”
Elam was not in the mood for second-grade discourse. “Yeah, most important. Whaddya want?”
Elam’s acrid response surprised Barrister. He regrouped quickly. “Er, well, based on what he has told me, you have a very interesting product that needs to be patented.” He waited for a response. It was a long time in coming.
“Tell you what. You meet me at City Market in Luling tomorrow for lunch at twelve thirty. We’ll talk some, and if I think you’re any good and won’t raise the rates, we’ll sign a deal on the spot. If I don’t think you’re so hot, you’ll be the second to know.”
Fred took his free hand from his head, switched hands with the phone, and grabbed a pencil. He smiled into the phone. Sort of like landing a fish. He doodled a note about time and location. “Great. I’ll see you at noon.”
“Twelve thirty.”
“Right. See you at twelve thirty.”
Fourteen
Wednesday Noon,
January 13
New York City
Raw, sleet-pocked rain sliced into Bart’s face from scudding gray clouds into which building facades disappeared along East Twentieth Street. He pulled the collar of his overcoat as tight around his neck as possible, but not tight enough to keep cold droplets of water from seeping down his back. His attention drifted among the unrelenting chill, the squeegee sound of leather shoes in contact with ice water, and the ultimate finish line—the entrance to the Gramercy Tavern, still fifty feet away. City politicians call it the Big Apple, the financial center of the world, and every other title that might be bestowed upon New York City; they forget to call it cold and miserable in the winter. January through March is absolutely awful.
He entered through two sets of double doors, unbuttoned his coat for the waiting check girl, and smoothed back the unkempt hair straddling the sides of his head. He needed a drink. The warmth of the wood-burning oven buoyed his spirits. He glanced around, quite impressed with the arched entrances to individual rooms, gentle-yet-impressive pastel murals, brown draperies, and the soft lighting of candles and copper sconces.
“Well, hello, stranger. Looks like you could use a drink.” Elizabeth Harker approached Bart with both hands outstretched. The perfectly symmetrical face. Her soft, dark brown hair fell perfectly onto her shoulders. A stunningly beautiful woman, Liz stood an inch taller than Bart. She leaned forward, turning her head to accept his perfunctory kiss.
Bart Miles kissed her on the cheek and quickly asked, “Liz, my dear, how can you stand this weather? Give me Texas or give me death.”
En route to the maître d’ Liz flicked her hair playfully. “Weather’s bad at times, but what a city. Come with me, I have a favorite spot.”
Light music played in the background while Liz and Bart traversed from catch-up pleasantries to the real business at hand. A Catena Zapata Malbec wine for Liz and Belvedere on the rocks for Bart. Liz ordered the portobello tart with goat cheese and Bart decided on the leg of lamb sandwich. By the time the second round of drinks arrived, the pleasantries had ended and Bart and Liz were locked into Don Seiler and an oil extraction device.
“How has it played out so far?” Liz asked as she took a bite of her mushroom and chased it with the wine.
Bart held up a finger and continued chewing. He swallowed, ran his tongue over his teeth, and then answered. “The first thing we did was to get one of our people on the inside. That project turned out to be rough around the edges, but he has their confidence now. He’s already running the crew. It was a good choice.” He reached for his drink.
“What do you mean ‘rough around the edges’?”
Bart set the glass down and looked at Liz matter-of-factly. He needed to protect himself and parsed his words deliberately. “Someone was taken out. All the way out. Our insider took it upon himself to go to extreme measures. Could have been dicey, but the situation is over. No problem. Let me continue.”
Neither Bart nor Liz showed concern for the dead.
Over the next several minutes Bart described what had taken place: they removed a worker and replaced him with the inside contact; they forced the Donelam lawyer to retire and replaced him with a lawyer of Bart’s choosing; and preparations to take full ownership of the extraction system were on schedule. All topics were addressed with enough specificity to ease any of Liz’s concerns. The service at the Gramercy Tavern was superb to the point of distraction. Bart had to stop talking on several occasions as the well-dressed waitress saw to their every need. The water glasses, barely a sip taken, were removed and replaced with new ones. A second waiter cleared the china and silverware, and then scraped off virtually non-existent breadcrumbs. A new set of dessert silverware was placed in front of each diner with just-in-time perfection. Each round of drinks calmed their souls and whetted their appetites just enough for each to select the pumpkin-spice upside-down cake with cranberries and quince. Bart had a little extra dessert of his own to share with Liz.
He sliced into the cake, plucking a morsel from the plate and plopping it in his mouth. “This is superb. Now, where was I?” He looked down at the plate to find his next bite.
“You were starting to tell me about your return on investment.” One should not talk with one’s mouth full, but there are important exceptions to every rule.
“Yeah, right.” He wiped his mouth, looked around to see who might be listening, then told her, “Liz.” A short pause. “This could be billions.”
Her eyes opened wide. “Billions? You’ve got to be kidding. Billions?”
“Billions. We just need the patent. We can lease individual units by the thousands for a flat fee, plus a percentage of revenues from each barrel of crude.” He finished off his current drink. “Every time the price of oil is raised, more people will jump at this thing.” He leaned forward as far as possible, his eyes twinkling like a kid in love. “We’ll let Texaco, Shell, BP, and the others make their fortunes, but their per-capita payoff will pale to ours. The higher speculators and the fuckers in OPEC raise the price, the happier I’ll be.” He started to lean back, then recovered. “And, as you already know, I don’t forget friends. Especially the one who laid this in my lap. We’ll go offshore with the money and there will be a bank account for you. Liz, we’ve seen oil go from thirty dollars a barrel to one hundred and fifty. It’s back down some right now, but over the long haul it will keep going up.” Bart smiled at the cake. It smiled back.
Liz looked flush. She had no idea what a small touch of revenge could bring her. She pictured Tom Seiler. Suck it down, you son of a bitch.
She took a large, controlled breath. “Have you had any contact with either of the Seiler brothers?”
“No, none. I deal with the front guy. He’s an overbearing loudmouth who’s pretty smart in some ways and dumb as a board in others. His problem is that his bluster clouds his common sense. That’s good for us. As for Seiler, he’s strictly on the design side of their enterprise.”
Bart changed the subject, more out of curiosity than anything else. “That guy Seiler has stuck in your craw since the Barry Colter incident. This is more personal than anything else, isn’t it?”
Liz hardened like steel, carefully measuring her words. “You’re damn right. He stuck his nose into Barry’s lawsuit and drove