“It’s already fixed. They’ll answer any questions you have.” He turned to Kaiser. “You might want to take a gun. Rough stuff happens out on the patch. There could be a lot of money sticking to the wrong fingers.”
They talked foranother half an hour, and Letty noted the names of Wright-Hughes employees in Midland. “You going down today?” Wright asked.
“Might as well,” Letty said. “Get an early start tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow.” Wright moaned. “I’m going to Phoenix tomorrow, down to the Mayo to get my knees replaced. Both of them. I’ll be out of it for a while, but I will leave strict instructions with Midland: what you want from us, you get.”
Letty nodded: “Thank you.”
Wright spent another fifteen minutes outlining problems andpersonnel, speculating on which other companies might have gotten hit—“I talked to the boss over at Lost Land; he thinks they’re down between eight and ten thousand”—along with background on Boxie Blackburn.
When they finished talking, Wright picked up his cane and walked with them to the elevators and wished them luck. “Get these guys. I know you have different concerns, but if you can get me names, I have some security people who’d like to talk to them privately.”
“What do you want to do?” Kaiser asked, as they took the elevator down. The smell of oil was still with them, and outside, the sun poured down like melted butter.
“Get something decent to eat—I couldn’t eat that crap on the plane,” Letty said. She put on her sunglasses. “Then get outta town.”
“Maybe find a rib joint,” Kaiser suggested. “Towns like this got good rib joints.”
“Fine with me, if I can get a salad.”
They wound up at Front Door Barbecue, where Kaiser ingested a year’s worth of cholesterol and Letty had an oversized salad with turkey. Satisfied, they walked back to the car, took it out to I-44, and turned south. As they crossed the Canadian River, leaving the city behind, Kaiser said with patent insincerity, “I’ll drive if you want.”
“I’m good.”
“Think I’m gonna kick back then, take a nap,” Kaiser said. “Save my energy for the big show.”
“You mind some quiet music?”
“That’d be great.”
Kaiser had the soldier’s knack of going to sleep almost instantly; he did that, and was a silent sleeper, arms crossed, chin on his chest, the bill of his baseball cap resting on his nose.
Letty dialed up a jazz channel, loud enough to mute the road noise, and set the cruise control ten miles an hour over the speed limit. For the trip, she’d dressed in blue jeans and a pale blue, long-sleeved blouse with pearl snap buttons. She wore a Twins ballcap and had the straw cowboy hat, now sitting on the backseat, as recommended by Colles, if she had to go out in the sun.
Interstate 44 was four lanesof pale concrete laid though an agricultural landscape that wasn’t exactly rolling—Iowa was rolling—but more likenotchedby creeks and twisting rivers, marked by scrubby trees, Love’s truck stops, and weather-beaten small towns.
Letty checked off the towns as they rolled by, but spent much of the trip thinking about the people she’d be talking to. When they got to Midland, she had to get on top of the Hughes-Wright people immediately.
Wright had told them that Dick Grimes, a company vice president who ran the Midland office, was touchy about his territory. Grimes, he’d said, was an oil field veteran who didn’t care for anyone’s opinions, if that person hadn’t spent time as a chainhand. That automatically eliminated women, and especially young women, and especially young women with college degrees who might be considered snotty.
She decided that she couldn’t adopt any particular attitude until she actually met with Grimes: she’d get in his face if she had to, but she’d prefer not to do that. Grimes was a trifle old-fashioned, Wright had said, but he knew everything about oil and where it might be going.
And in the monotonyof the drive, she spent a while thinking about a thirtyish legislative aide who, she’d been told, was planning to head back to Ohio and run for Congress, and who should win if hecould make it through the primary. He’d been coming around to chat with her, once a day at first, twice a day lately. He had brown eyes and an easy smile; one reason she’d kept going with her birth control pills. On the other hand, she thought, behind those gentle brown eyes, a politician lurked. Not that an appropriate brown-eyed politician couldn’t help you through some lonely Washington nights...
Letty’d had college romances during her six years at Stanford, sexual with two guys at long intervals, and a couple of flirtations that hadn’t gotten to sex.
She’d enjoyed the two sexual adventures—it had been the men who’d called them off. The second one had told her, during their final dinner together, “My biggest problem is that you’re going to do what you’re going to do. I’m not really a factor in that, am I?”
She’d argued that he was being unfair, that she was always open to compromises.
“Sure. About whether to have salmon or steak, or pizza or enchiladas. About serious stuff? Not so much. It’s your way or the highway, and, well... I’m sorry.”
She thought it but didn’t say it: “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass.”
For the last year, she hadn’t gotten near a bed except to sleep. Something, she thought, would have to be done about that.
They crossed the Red Riverinto Texas, the river about as damp as a kitchen sponge, and twenty minutes later rolled into Wichita Falls, a little short of two hours after they left OKC. She woke Kaiser, who’d been sleeping contentedly, and they got strawberry shakes and a restroom stop at a McDonald’s in downtown Wichita Falls.
