Con Law Part 41

'A lawyer. The best possible inside man. Privy to his client's secrets.'

'Did you know you were putting his life in danger?'

'Fracking is a dangerous business, Professor.'

'Fighting fracking can be dangerous as well. How'd you get into that business?'

'My dad was a roughneck. I followed him into the industry. Got an environmental engineering degree at Rice, worked at a major in Houston, thought I'd make the industry greener. But the only green they care about is the kind that folds nicely in a wallet. So I quit and went to the other side, joined an environmental group in Santa Fe. Been fighting the industry ever since. When fracking came on line, I knew it had to be stopped.'

'Did you know Nathan was gay?'

The sudden change of subjects didn't throw her.

'I figured.'

'Why?'

'He was friends with Kenni. Gays and straights don't pal around together in West Texas.'

'Did you know Billy Bob is a c.o.kehead?'

'Heard rumors to that effect. Who'd you hear it from?'

'Big Rick.'

'He's a disgusting p.r.i.c.k, all those young girls. But he hates Billy Bob almost as much as I do, and he donates to the cause.' Her eyes went to the rearview mirror. 'Aw, f.u.c.k.'

Carla had picked Book up at six in an old dark blue Ford pickup with b.u.mper stickers that read No Fracking Way and We Can't Drink Natural Gas. A shotgun was mounted in a window rack. Book looked in the side mirror. A Border Patrol SUV had pulled them over. Carla braked and steered the pickup truck to the shoulder of the highway.

'Billy Bob said you had a roughneck's vocabulary.'

'Hang around squirrels long enough, you'll start hiding nuts. h.e.l.l, I've been around roughnecks since I was a kid.'

She glanced in the rearview again and gestured back.

'They hara.s.s me every time, make me get out while they search the entire truck. I think Billy Bob puts them up to it.'

'Maybe that shotgun got their attention.'

'In West Texas?'

Two agents walked up to their windows, one on either side.

'What do you a.s.sholes want?' Carla said.

'Nice to see you too, Carla,' the agent said.

Book looked up to a familiar face.

'Whoops,' the agent named Wesley Crum said.

'We meet again,' Book said.

'Hey, Professor.' Agent Angel Acosta leaned down and rested his arms on the driver's side window frame. 'I finished your book. It was brilliant.'

'Thanks.'

Agent Crum was examining the short radio antenna on Book's side.

'Carla, why do you have this big ol' potato stuck on your antenna?'

'Antenna broke off,' she said. 'Potato gives the radio better reception. Don't ask me why.'

'I won't.'

'Well, you folks have a nice day,' Agent Acosta said.

They returned to their SUV and drove off. Carla watched them away then turned to Book.

'You must be really famous.'

Nadine Honeywell sat in her hospital bed running high on caffeine and working on the Welch brief on the laptop when the door opened and the professor and the woman named Carla entered the room. She tried not to look surprised. The professor held an open hand out to her. In his palm was her Purell bottle.

'Where'd you find it?'

'In the desert. You must've dropped it when you went flying off the Harley last night.'

'I was trying to block out that memory.'

She took the Purell. Ooh, there was still some gel left. She squirted it into her palm and rubbed. She loved the smell of ethyl alcohol.

'So, Professor-what did we learn today?'

'A, Nathan Jones was gay.'

'Told you.'

'B, he had a relationship with Kenni.'

'With an "i"?'

The professor nodded. 'C, Nathan told Kenni about the contamination but never showed him any proof.'

'The lost proof.'

'And D, Billy Bob Barnett is a c.o.kehead. Allegedly.'

Nadine felt her mouth fall open.

'Shut the frack up.'

It took her a moment to recover. She looked from the professor to Carla and back.

'So, what, you two are working together now?'

'Looks that way.'

'You think what you're both looking for will lead you to Billy Bob Barnett?'

'I think so.'

'So what are you going to do?'

'Get some proof.'

'Can you get me some food first? I'm starving.'

'Let's get some grub, Jimmy John, before we frack this hole.'

Sonny slapped him on the back. It was after midnight but lunchtime on the well site on the graveyard shift. They both wore red insulated jumpsuits, red Barnett Oil and Gas caps, and boots. They walked across the dirt pad toward the mess hall, stepping over pipes and hoses running from the tanker trucks. The pay on the rigs was good; the food not so much. It was like eating at McDonald's three times a day, every day. Jimmy John had had a blood test a few years back, when they had to run him up to the hospital in Alpine after a length of casing had got loose and hit him in the head. Knocked him out cold. Nurse said his cholesterol was high enough to cause two heart attacks. That's what eating rig food would do, hamburgers and hot dogs and sausage and eggs. Roughnecks didn't eat salads.

's.h.i.t,' Jimmy John said. 'I forgot to write down my last pressure reading. I'll catch up. Save some food for me.'

He turned back and headed to the control center. But not to write down readings. He felt the nosebleed coming on, and he didn't want Sonny seeing him bleeding like a stuck pig. Word got back to the boss, Jimmy John Dale might find himself unemployed. And that was a place he didn't want to go. A man without a job ain't no better than a Mexican. He pulled out the handkerchief and ducked behind a tanker truck carrying the frack fluid.

'They're fixin' to frack.'

After taking a cheeseburger and fries back to Nadine, they had driven out to a Barnett Oil and Gas Company well site that she had been staking out. Book and Carla sat above a low valley in the foothills northeast of Alpine. The five-acre pad down below where the prairie gra.s.s had been taken down to the dirt was lit up like Main Street. They were waiting for the crew to take a meal break.

'In the middle of the night?'

'Twenty-four/seven operation.'

'All I see is a lot of trucks and pipes and hoses.'

'The rig's down, and the tanker trucks are here. They're carrying the frack fluid.' She pointed. 'The green tanks surrounding the site, those are the storage tanks. The hoses run to the blender where the proppant is added-those dump trucks carry the sand-then over to the treator manifold and into the pumper trucks-see the red ones?-backed up to the well hole. That equipment next to the trucks, those are compressors to create the pressure they need to crack the rock.'

'What's in those tanks?'

'Diesel fuel to power the equipment. During the day, you can see the black exhaust fumes from the engines, creates ground-level ozone.' She pointed to the sky. 'Way up there, ozone is good. Down here, it's very bad for humans and animals.'

'Smog in West Texas.'

'That trailer, that's the control center.'

'What are those trailers?'

'The man camp. The out-of-town workers live onsite, work twelve hours a day, two-week shifts. They rotate off for a week then back on. It's a hard life.'

'What's that shack over there? Where all the men are heading.'

'Mess hall. They're going to eat first then frack. Odd. Most men like to frack first then eat.'

Carla smiled then dug in her knapsack and came out with beef jerky. She handed him a strip.

'High in protein.'

'You do this often?' Book asked her.

'Actually, I do.'

'Are you afraid?'

'My dad taught me not to be afraid ... or at least not to show my fear.'

'Good advice. Where is he now?'

'Dead. Well blowout. He went to work one day and didn't come home.'

'When?'

'Six years ago.'

She dug in her knapsack again, but almost as if she were angry this time, and came out with rubber gloves.

'Put these on. This s.h.i.t is toxic.'

They ran down the rise and to the drill site. They ducked behind the tanker trucks and dodged roughnecks walking past. Male voices came from all around them; the foul smell of the well site was suffocating.

'Well hole gases,' Carla said.

They worked their way to the control center and went inside. She went directly to a large notebook on the desk. She ran her finger down the open page.

'Yep, they're fracking tonight.'

They exited and again ducked behind the tanker trucks, but Carla stopped at one. She pulled out a small plastic container and placed the mouth under a valve at the back of the tank. She turned a k.n.o.b and filled the container with brown fluid.

'I'm gonna find out what's in Billy Bob's recipe. They claim the recipes are proprietary information, trade secrets, like the formula for Coca-Cola, so they can keep them secret from the Feds. Difference is, you can drink Coca-Cola and not die.'

'You think Billy Bob's using something bad?'

'It's all bad. But legal. Frackers use carcinogens like naphthalene, formaldehyde, sulfuric acid, thiourea, benzyl chloride, benzene, ethylene oxide, even lead. But they don't have to tell us what they're using.'

'The Halliburton Loophole.'

'Yep.'