House of Smoke (53 page)

Now the shuffling behind him becomes louder, less subtle: people bracing for a storm that they have vowed, for almost thirty years, to resist: to fight fiercely and to prevail against.

“The time has come,” Hopkins states, “to find a way for your commitment and my company’s needs, the needs of all the oil companies drilling in your channel, to strike a new path. One we’re both comfortable walking on. That allows you to maintain the great quality of life that you have worked to preserve—and let me say, in the short amount of time I’ve spent here I can state, without exaggerating, life here really is nice, about as good as anywhere in the world that I’ve seen—and at the same time allows us in the oil business to do what we have to do, which is to provide quality petroleum products around the world, including here in Santa Barbara.”

He pauses for a moment, taking a sip of water.

“I’m here today to make a radical proposal. Rainier Oil, the largest petroleum corporation that is currently extracting product from the Santa Barbara channel, wishes to initiate the removal of its drilling platforms from the channel. All of its platforms—every last one,” he adds for emphasis.

“We plan to do this as quickly and efficiently as possible, with a timetable for complete removal in five years. It’s what those of you who are anti-oil have been fighting us for for years.” He pauses a moment, to let this bombshell sink in. Then he goes on: “Today, I’m here to tell you—you’ve won.”

Everyone is frozen in the moment; hearing, but not yet comprehending the awesome scope of Hopkins’s proposal.

Sean Redbuck finally leans forward in his chair. “This is a shock, to put it mildly,” he says. “Why are you people making this proposal?”

“Because we have to,” Hopkins answers. “The times, they are a-changing. When a conservative, pro-business governor like Pete Wilson signs a bill banning future offshore oil development up and down the entire coast, we have to adjust, because that’s how we survive, even though that development has thrown off millions of dollars a year to the state, and to localities like yours.”

“Please continue, Mr. Hopkins,” Redbuck says. “Is there more to your proposal?” he asks. “Besides just pulling all your oil rigs in the next five years?”

“Yes.”

The rancher talking: “I figured as much. You gonna tell us what it is?”

Hopkins nods.

“In exchange for abandoning all of our offshore operations, Rainier wants your permission to drill a series of extended-reach wells that will be based on a small section of property onshore. I repeat, onshore. This will allow us to increase our extraction capacity, will completely get rid of further drilling in the channel, and will create new revenues to the State of California and Santa Barbara County of more than two billion dollars over a twenty-year period. That figure is conservative, by the way—the final income could be double that amount.”

The chamber is deathly quiet.

Redbuck looks at the other four supervisors. “We’ve heard similar proposals before.”

Hopkins shakes his head emphatically. “Different technology,” he answers. “Different results. Can I explain?”

“We’d like you to. Everybody in this room would very much like you to,” Redbuck says dryly.

“The other companies wanted to take out one or two rigs that were on their last legs,” Hopkins says. “Rigs that were economically draining for them; bleeding them in the pocketbook, where it counts. We’re much bigger out in the channel—we dwarf everyone else, and our rigs have plenty of staying power, a dozen years or more, maybe a couple decades. We can stay with what we’ve got and still make a decent profit.”

“Then what’s your incentive?”

“Like I said—more production. More product. More money. Look, we’re not proposing this because we’re altruistic, I’m not going to insult your intelligence. Multi-billion-dollar corporations don’t work out of altruism. We’re doing this to make money—we’re not going to beat around the bush about that. But—it’s a much safer technology, which should be what’s important to you. Even people who hate the petroleum industry know that slant drilling is immeasurably safer and cleaner than channel drilling. That’s a given. A painful example: the
Exxon Valdez
incident has already cost Exxon billions of dollars, and there’s more losses to come. Rainier doesn’t want to have to pay out billions of dollars someday because one of our tankers ran aground in the channel, or a rig blew, like has happened in the North Sea.

“We get more oil with extended-reach drilling, and it is safer. That is the point: it is safer. We will make more money, yes, but your environment will be safer.”

Hopkins concludes: “The world needs petroleum. It can’t run without it. We want to take it anywhere we can find it, but especially in this country, because we use more oil than anyone else does, and we should supply ourselves as much as we can. It makes economic sense, it makes political sense, it takes the pressure off being held hostage by OPEC, and it’s the right thing to do morally.”

Jeers and catcalls come forth from the environmentalists’ side of the chamber. Redbuck bangs down his gavel.

“I know talking about the morality of oil drilling isn’t what you people are used to hearing,” Hopkins says stoutly, defending himself, “but it happens to be true.”

“What about pollution around the drilling site?” Marge Cantley, another supervisor, asks from her perch next to Redbuck’s.

“Like one of our competitors’ slant-drilling proposal?”

“Yes.”

“Site selection is a major problem,” Hopkins replies. “They had no choice but to situate their onshore operation cheek to jowl with a residential community and dangerously close by fragile wetlands. The ecology of the area might have been damaged, and it would have been unpleasant for the people who lived nearby, the university professors and so forth. Noise, oil fumes, the unfortunate but necessary by-products of what we do.”

“Won’t you create those same by-products?” she presses. “Which, quite frankly, this community is not willing to tolerate.”

Hopkins shakes his head. “They had no choice. That was the only land they could access. But our situation is different. We’re going to drill our wells on a piece of land where no one will see oil, hear oil, or smell oil. To the naked eye, ear, or nose, no one will know we exist.”

Redbuck leans forward, intrigued. “That’ll be the day, partner,” he drawls a la John Wayne. “So where is this mystery location?” he asks. “This perfect combination, where commerce marries ecology?”

One last glance towards Miranda. Her smile is relaxed, perfectly set in her face. Dorothy’s face, in contrast, is rigid as a board; but her hands are shaking in her lap.

“The Sparks ranch,” Hopkins announces. “Which this board rezoned for commercial use a few months ago, so the Sparks family could establish a world-class oceanography school. Which,” he reminds the assemblage, “my company is funding.”

Every face in the room turns towards Miranda, whose benign countenance is inscrutable, while all around her the chamber begins exploding in a clusterfuck of chaos.

Sitting above the melee, sensing the potential for an immediate and potentially physically threatening catastrophe, Redbuck gavels for a week’s recess.

Kate drives south, listening to Tracy Chapman on her car’s funky sound system, the song a metaphor for the story of her life, she’s never been able to hold a man, she’s forced to admit to herself; not a real man, a good one. What’ll happen with Cecil, how will she fuck that up?

Anything is better. Is it?

Self-pity fills all the crannies in the car like a killer fog. What was she thinking about up north, proposing that ludicrous, pathetic pipe dream to bring her kids down to Santa Barbara? In the middle of the school year, Wanda’s senior year, no less. With a court order denying her custody still in place (she’s never formally requested custody, she thinks with a heavy hit of guilt), which her sister, and her girls as well, she suspects, would fight.

She can feel the pain like a vise around her heart, squeezing her bone-dry, squeezing out whatever hope she has left, which right now is precious damn little. A life of being alone, of loneliness, stretching to the horizon of her hopes.

Abruptly pulling off I-605 at Rosecrans Blvd., she drives to the nearest park, where she gets out of her car and sits down on a park bench and cries, tears flowing unchecked down her cheeks, as she had wanted to but couldn’t when she watched her daughters disappear into their school and out of her life again.

Crying isn’t a cure, but it helps. Cranking up the Rooster, she gets back on the 605 and continues south, into Orange County.

One person knows where she’s going. She didn’t want to tell anyone, but she thought somebody had better know, in case something ugly happens to her. Again.

“This isn’t a good idea,” he told her. “You were putting this behind you.” He sounded mad—and worried.

She knew that, she responded, but she had to do it, it couldn’t be helped. Something about her nature.

“Be careful,” he warned her then. “Don’t do anything rash.”

“I won’t,” she promised him.

Finally: “Do you want me to come with you?”

“No,” she replied. “I have to do this on my own.”

So that’s where she is now—on her own.

Wes Gillroy isn’t living at the address listed on his bail record. There’s three weeks’ worth of junk mail in his box, and a cobweb woven over a corner of the door is intact.

“He moved out a month ago,” the next-door neighbor in his small two-story apartment complex, a young woman sporting purple hair, five earrings in her left ear, plus a nose earring and yet another in her bared navel, tells Kate. She didn’t flinch a bit, looking at the battered face protected by the sun shield.

That’s interesting, Kate thinks. The court especially would find it so, since Gillroy is obliged to let them know where he’s living. She knows this address is considered current by the Santa Barbara County Superior Court, because she’d looked it up in the county records before heading out this morning. If—make that “when”—she locates Gillroy, she’ll pass on the advice that he’d better clean up his act in that regard, or he’ll find his negligent ass back in the Santa Barbara County jail.

She
will
find him—she isn’t going back to Santa Barbara until she does—unless he’s skipped the state, which will open a whole other kettle of fish that’s out of her league.

“Is that two-timing bastard in trouble again?” the woman asks.

“Not from me.”

“You the law?” the girl asks suspiciously. It’s midday and she’s barely dressed; a thin kimono, open, bra and panties underneath. The smell of incense wafts out of her apartment. She’s probably just smoked her first joint of the day, Kate guesses. And she was balling Wes and isn’t happy that he cut out on her.

“No. I’m working for his lawyer,” Kate lies. “I need to talk to him about his upcoming court date. Did he leave a forwarding address?”

The woman’s expression tells Kate she isn’t buying that line. “I don’t know, I ain’t the post office,” she replies. “He’s an old surfer. Old surfers never die, they only blow out their knees. Try The Wedge,” she says curtly before slamming her door in Kate’s face.

Gillroy’s moving and not informing the court is par for the course—no big deal, really. As long as he shows up when he’s supposed to, no one will give a shit. She can track him down, she’s confident of that.

She wants to find Gillroy because she wants a victory, right fucking now. Locate him and put the fear of God into him, so he’ll help her discover who Frank Bascomb’s silent partner was: who put the money up to hire Rusty, charter the boat, buy the marijuana, and then pay Wes’s bail. She knows that when she finds out who that person is she’ll know who had Frank murdered, and tried to have her killed as well.

She cruises up Pacific Coast Highway, the sun burning high in her window, turning off at Newport Blvd., which segues into Balboa Blvd. Off to her right the ocean burns in the sun. She parks in West Jetty Park and walks down towards the water. The sand is hot under her bare feet and she starts picking up energy, feeling it radiating through her body, healing all her cares and woes. If it wasn’t for this stupid face guard and the broken cheek, she’d plunge in, catch some good waves, be reinvigorated, ready to take on the world again.

In her dreams.

The waves funnel through the slot, crash into the jetty, rise up, and break again, thundering onto the shore. She stands on the beach, transfixed, watching. She isn’t ready for this, wouldn’t be even if her cheek and everything else was completely healed. This ocean is the real thing, a living beast, just huge waves, the biggest she’s ever seen by far, and the ferocity of how they break is scary. She’s seen movies of big waves—Sunset Beach on the north shore of Oahu, places in the South Pacific—but she’s never actually laid eyes on waves this size before.

She could never go in here—she isn’t strong enough. These waves would lift her up and break her like a twig, a toothpick.

She walks to about thirty feet from the water’s edge and sits on the hard sand, watching the pattern of the break. A big wave crests and two surfers catch it, stretching their bodies out on their body boards and whipping along the top, riding the curl, then plunging under as it breaks against the wall, kicking and paddling furiously to keep from being picked up in the backwash and being slammed into the sandy floor.

No fucking way.

Down the beach about a hundred yards a lone surfer paddles out on his board, waiting and catching the break between waves. He obviously knows what he’s doing—in a few minutes he’s out past the breakers, lying on his board, waiting for a big one.

Something about him draws her attention. She stands up so she can watch him better.

The surfer doesn’t have to wait long for his wave.

The curl starts way to his left, building and building, coming with a rush and a roar, bearing down on him like a fast-moving freight train. The wave crests and he catches it right at the top of the curl, pushing forward with such speed and force she can see, even from shore, that it almost tears the board right out of his hands. She watches as the force of the wave begins sucking him in. The surfer is fighting against gravity, his whole body contorting on the small board, twisted and bent, the wave is breaking fiercely against the jetty up ahead of him, he’s diving down at the last minute but he’s sucked under anyway—he’s trapped, she realizes, he can’t escape the force of the rushing water, the second, rebounding wave is going to catch him and slam him into the sand, the sand hard-packed as concrete, it’s going to shred him, break him into smithereens. They’ll put what body parts they can find in a small basket and there will be room left over.