A Hard Place

By F. R. Heil

In a world trying to rebuild after a pandemic killed billions, Bakersfield would be just another ghost town except for the large pool of oil lying beneath it. Jim Cross arrives to find a boom town with all the trouble money can buy—including murder. Frederick Sawyer controls the oil and the town, and he wants Cross to find who killed his son. If he doesn’t agree, Sawyer will turn him over to Los Angeles political boss Ed Carter who wants nothing more than to see Cross dead.

Cross is stuck between a rock and a hard place and the odds are against him making it out alive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: F. R. Heil
• Release date: Sep 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301938704

F. R. Heil

Author grew up in upstate New York and currently lives in the Northwest with his wife and cat.

Book preview

A HARD PLACE

A Jim Cross Novel

by F.R. Heil

Copyright © 2012 by F.R. Heil. All rights reserved.

First Smashwords Edition: September 2012

Cover and Formatting: Streetlight Graphics

All rights reserved. This eBook is licensed for the personal enjoyment of the original purchaser only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are a work of fiction or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Table of Contents

Paco Martinez

Jessica Hayes

Larry Sawyer

Frederick Sawyer

Paul Langford

Matty Thompson

Tom Foley

Frank Morgan

Paul Langford

Tom Foley

Paul Langford

Jane Taggart

George Berger

Matty Thompson

Jim Taggart

Frederick Sawyer

Frank Morgan

Claude Morgkan

Jeffrey Mitchell

About The Author

Acknowledgements

To L. R. R.—

For always being there.

PACO MARTINEZ

THE TRUCK TOPPED THE OPPOSITE ridge and began its descent into the hollow below. The bed had a cloth tarp stretched across it, and although Paco said the truck was dark blue, I couldn’t see much color beneath all the mud.

The truck continued down the dirt road too fast and took a few bad bounces before it slowed then came to a stop near the bottom. It idled there for a minute in a cloud of exhaust fumes before the passenger door opened. Paco had described the occupant as a large, scraggly-bearded man who smelled of whiskey. But instead, a girl with black braids showing beneath a wide brimmed hat and wearing a brown coat stepped out of the truck.

Walking around to the back, she untied the tarp flaps, pulled out a large duffel bag, dropped it on the ground, and then did the same with a backpack. After retying the tarp flaps, she went around to the driver’s side, and when she was done saying what she had to say, she backed up a couple of steps. The truck turned around, and headed back up the ridge and out of sight.

I put my binoculars down and took a swallow of cold coffee from the glass jar next to me. I’d been waiting since early morning when Paco woke me with the news that someone in town was asking about me. He said nothing about a girl. He mentioned only the large bearded man who may have been the unseen truck driver.

I picked up the binoculars again and watched as the girl looked at the surrounding hillsides. The view didn’t offer much, so she strapped on the backpack, picked up the duffel bag, and began walking up the road that would eventually bring her to my doorstep.

I got to my feet and stretched to work the kinks out of my muscles. Rain began falling as I folded up the blanket I’d been lying on and wrapped it around my rifle to keep it dry. Paco came running up to meet me as I headed back to the cabin.

Did you get a look at the driver? I asked him.

Paco nodded. The man with the beard.

He was in a hurry, I said.

Paco was fourteen years old and lived in town with his mother and sisters. He was the one who told me about this isolated cabin outside of town where I could lay low. Now I paid him to help with chores around the place and to keep an ear out for any strangers mentioning my name in town.

There’s something else about the girl, Paco said. I think she’s going to have a baby.

I stopped and looked at him.

Are you sure?

Paco shrugged his shoulders, but didn’t reply. She’d looked heavy from where I’d been, but Paco had been down by the road so he had gotten a closer look. Would Carter send a pregnant girl to kill me? He tended to favor more direct methods. I had dug two graves four months ago just a hundred yards from where we were standing. That was more his style.

When we reached the cabin, I made up another pot of coffee and placed it on the stove. Paco stood waiting in the doorway.

Well, I said, that bag of hers must be heavy. Why don’t you go down there and give her a hand.

Paco smiled, then turned and ran off, scattering the chickens pecking for food in the yard.

I left Los Angeles six months earlier after doing something that had cost Ed Carter a good deal of money and no small amount of embarrassment. I thought this hilltop outside Santa Barbara was far enough from LA to stop awhile to think things through, maybe far enough to start over again. Then the two men came looking for me. I didn’t get a chance to ask them any questions, but only Carter had a reason to send two killers after me. Now this girl showed up. It was time to think about moving on.

I reached in my pocket for a cigar before remembering I smoked my last one months ago. Old habits. When the coffee was hot, I poured a cup and sat in a chair facing the open doorway, listening to the rain fall on the roof. Five minutes later, the sound of Paco’s whistle broke through my thoughts, and he and the girl stepped into the clearing. I stood up and walked out onto the porch.

What’s your name? I asked.

She looked at me for a few moments before answering.

Jessica. Jessica Hayes.

Well, Jessica Hayes, are you sure you have the right place?

Are you Jim Cross?

I am.

Then I’m at the right place.

I nodded and eyed her while I took another sip of my coffee.

Before you and I talk, I said, I’m going to have to search your bags.

She slipped the backpack from her shoulders and dropped it into the mud at her feet.

Search away, she said.

Paco picked up the backpack and the duffel bag and brought them up onto the porch.

Do you have any firearms? I asked her.

Yes, she said, in my coat pocket.

I stepped off the porch and walked over to stand in front of her. Rain dripped from her hat brim. She was a good-looking girl, or would be when she got cleaned up.

Which pocket?

She raised her right arm and I took a handgun from the pocket.

Any others? I asked.

No, she said, but I have a knife in my other pocket

I removed a folding knife with a four-inch blade and put it into my own pocket.

I have another one in my right boot, she offered.

I looked her up and down. She was beginning to impress me.

You can keep it, I said. Anything else?

She shook her head.

Sorry about this, I said, then gave her bundled-up body a half-hearted pat down. Paco was right about her condition.

How far along are you? I asked.

Six months, she replied.

I returned to the porch and searched through her bags. They contained clothes, a bedroll, some cans of food, books, a notebook, and an old, tattered map of California. Apparently, the only weapons she carried were on her. I stood up.

What are you doing here? I asked her.

I came to see you.

The rain had increased into a steady downpour.

And why is that?

Blue told me about you, she said. He said you were his friend. This is Blue’s baby.

I’ve found that just when you think you’ve seen every dirty trick life can throw at you, something comes along to prove you wrong. Blue was dead because of me, because of my flawed sense of right and wrong, and what constitutes justice. Maybe some debts are never paid in full, only squeezed out of you in drips, like a Chinese water torture in reverse.

I looked at the drenched figure standing before me.

You’re getting wet, I said.

Paco ran over and stood next to her, ready to help her into the house, but she ignored him.

I don’t mind the rain, she said.

I didn’t know what to say to her.

The people I was with, she said, they’re all gone. Maggie McGuire gave me the money you left for me. I had no other place to go, so I thought I’d come talk to you. I heard you upset some important people and had to leave town. So I used the money to find out where you were, then I paid someone to bring me up here.

I rubbed my right temple. I was getting a headache.

Blue had mentioned her just a few days before he was killed. I met a girl, he said, and we laughed at the ridiculous thrill of sex and love and chance encounters. Now, here she was before me, in all her rain-soaked splendor. Blue would have had a good laugh at this scene.

What do you want from me? I asked her.

She thought on that for a moment. I’m not sure. You were the last person to see Blue. I thought— She looked around as though seeing for the first time where she’d come to. She spread her arms. I’m not sure what I thought.

It was the first thing she said that made any sense. That hilltop seemed to attract people who weren’t sure what they had been thinking.

Well, come on in out of the rain, I told her, and we’ll talk about it.

Paco took her arm and helped her onto the porch, although she looked perfectly capable of doing it on her own.

JESSICA HAYES

JESSICA GREW UP ON A farm with her parents and three older brothers outside of Bakersfield. They were part of a tight-knit group of farmers, and it was expected that Jessica, like her brothers, would marry, raise a family and become part of the community. But while her girlfriends were excited about the future awaiting them and were already pairing off with boys, something held Jessica back; if she’d been asked, she wouldn’t have been able to say what that something was.

In the summer of Jessica’s sixteenth year, an itinerant company of performers appeared in town. During the day, they toured the schools entertaining the children with magic tricks and short skits. In the evenings, they put on plays in a tent they set up. She and her family went into town to see them the first night, and while they were performing Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it was as if Jessica had woken from her own dream. Afterwards, the cast mingled with the audience, and Jessica met a boy only a few years older than her who would help with the plan already taking shape in her mind.

The troupe stayed in the area for two weeks, presenting different plays that her family and friends went to see. She would find a way to meet the boy after each performance, if only for a few minutes. They met again when she went along on deliveries to the farmers market in town and when she managed to get away by herself. After their last performance, the company packed up and left Bakersfield, taking Jessica with them.

She left a note for her parents explaining how happy she was and not to worry about her. Her father and oldest brother caught up with them a few days later, intending to take her back home. Jessica told them that if they did, she would only run away again. She must have been convincing, because the two men returned home empty-handed.

Jessica learned to juggle and build sets and fashion costumes for the dramatic performances. She helped with the props and even tried her hand at acting, but even she realized she had little talent for it. Her relationship with the boy ran its course and ended, but Jessica had others. The troupe was a close supportive community much like the one she had left behind, but what they created together was more exciting than anything she had known or