The Investigator (Letty Davenport, #1) (15)
While the oil thefts weren’t important in the overall scheme of things—they didn’t threaten national energy security in any way—they had kicked off a lot of cash, by normal standards, and there were indications that the thefts were continuing.
“The oil companies want to stop the thefts. We, DHS, want to know where the money is going, and if the rumor is true, what Low and his friends are buying with it,” Greet said. “This is a heck of a lot more than living expenses—they’re probably taking in something between a half-million and a million dollars a year, and maybe a lot more. If we can figure out how the oil is being stolen, we can probably identify at least some of the thieves. Then we can turn them over to the Texas Rangers and let the Rangers hold branding irons on their naked feet and get some answers.” Pause. “Not really. I didn’t actually say that.”
“Sounded like you said that,” Kaiser said.
“Sitting in an air-conditioned room, fully hydrated, and the poor man is hallucinating,” Greet said to Letty.
Letty nodded. “Or it could be simple dementia.”
* * *
At the end of the day, Letty and Kaiser were ushered into the office of a DHS assistant inspector general, who gave Letty two government identification cards. The first said that she was a congressional employee with an endorsement granting access to the Department of Homeland Security; the second was a DHS sidearm permit.
“We’re not too happy about this, frankly, the gun thing, but Senator Colles knows how to twist an arm,” the assistant IG said. “You do not have arrest powers. You’re not a law enforcement officer. The gun permit will allow you to carry a firearm for personal protection only. Do you understand that?”
She did. “Will it allow me to carry it everywhere?”
“Well, no foreign countries, but anywhere in the U.S. and territories, with the exception of certain high-security facilities where you would have to check it. And you can’t fly with it on your person; you’ll have to check it to take it on an airplane,” the assistant IG said.
Letty didn’t say so, but she was pleased. When they left the office, walking down the hall, Kaiser gave her a cell phone–sized package covered with Christmas wrap: “A gift,” he said.
Puzzled, she opened it, and found a black alligator leather ID case, sized for her new cards.
She said, “I just . . . I mean . . . John!”
She tipped her head back and laughed: she could carry a gun.
Anywhere.
* * *
Oklahoma City was the home of Hughes-Wright Petroleum, run by a billionaire named Vermilion Wright, his business housed in the thirty-seven-story Hughes-Wright Petroleum Center.
During the trip out from Washington, Letty and Kaiser had been talking about the range of employment opportunities she might be interested in, if the DHS well came up dry. On the way into town from the airport, in a rented Ford Explorer, Kaiser said, “The thing you’d hate about the military is the sheer fuckin’ boredom and the paperwork. Orders. Every time you go outside . . .”
Letty was driving, Kaiser was picking his teeth with a peppermint-flavored toothpick. “Even if you got picked up by Special Ops, you’d spend ninety percent of your time either sitting around or training. While you’re doing that you’ve got some Ivy League asshole who’s never left D.C. yapping in your ear about combat ethics . . .”
He was about to go on when Letty asked, “Is that where we’re going?” She pointed up through the windshield. “The second building behind the first one? The gold-glass one?”
“They told us the second-tallest building in town and that one is, so it must be it,” Kaiser said.
And it was. They found an open space in the underground parking garage and took the elevator to the lobby level, where a security guard checked their appointment status, gave them adhesive paper name tags to stick on their shirts, and sent them to the top floor.
Letty had checked a directory behind the reception desk and noticed that while Hughes-Wright occupied the top four floors of the building and apparently had naming rights, the rest of the place was occupied by a variety of investment and real estate firms, and smaller oil-and gas-related companies. Nevertheless, the place smelled of oil—not crude, which stank, but like the odor of hot motor oil on a car’s dipstick.
That struck her as odd, since so little of the building seemed to have anything to do with oil. Maybe some kind of aerosol spray, an oil-industry version of Febreze?
As they rode up in the elevator, Kaiser said, “While I’m a much better shot than you are, or can ever hope to be, I’ll let you do the talking here.”
“I let my guns do the talking on the range, but I do think it’d be wise to let me talk here,” Letty agreed. “Do you smell oil?”
“Yeah, I do. I was thinking something was wrong with my nose. Maybe they oiled the elevator this morning?”
After the shooting contests at the Virginia range and the DHS briefings, it seemed to Letty that she and Kaiser might fall into a prickly friendship, which was about right, since they were both distinctly prickly. During the briefings, and afterward, and on the trip to OKC, Kaiser had begun playing the part of a surrogate uncle, giving her advice that she didn’t need, though he never missed a chance to check her ass.