Deadline(121)
“If you’re found floating in the river, I’ll return to my comfortable middle-class home in St. Paul, barricade myself in the TV room, and let somebody else investigate. You take it easy down there.”
TriPoint Fuel was named after the river landmark used by the old steamboats, when Trippton had been a refueling stop. Four well-used tank trucks were parked in the dirt lot when Virgil arrived, and another was just leaving. The place looked like an environmental nightmare, Virgil thought: it was backed against the levee and the ground was soaked with oil drippings.
Rusty Ross—his name was on a slightly rusty plaque above the only office door in the building—looked like a golfer, wearing tan slacks and a red golf shirt, with a pencil pushed behind one ear. He wore aviator glasses of the kind that changed shades in sunlight, and that gave his brown eyes a vaguely overcast look.
“What can I do you for?” he asked Virgil, when Virgil stuck his head in the office.
Virgil said, “I’m an investigator for the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, out of St. Paul. I was wondering if you’ve been kicking money back to Dick Brown, for buying the school’s fuel from you.”
Ross’s Adam’s apple bobbed once before he said, “Well . . . no.”
Virgil tried to stay cheerful: “I hope you’re telling the truth there, Mr. Ross, because this has become a rather serious matter, involving murder.”
Ross pointed at one of the two orange-plastic chairs that faced his desk, and Virgil nodded and took one.
“I have never kicked anything back to Dick Brown—aside from a bottle of Jim Beam I pass out to my customers at Christmas—because I don’t have to. As far as the schools are concerned, I’m the only game in town.”
“I don’t know much about your business,” Virgil confessed, “but I know that there are other fuel places around. Up in Winona, over in La Crosse . . .”
“And sayin’ that proves you don’t know anything about my business,” Ross said. “You know what the number one, two, and three costs in this business are?”
“No, I don’t,” Virgil said.
“It’s trucks, drivers, and fuel.” Ross leaned forward, over his desk, his face interested and intent. “The stuff we sell, the diesel, is the same price for every wholesaler. That’s why the business is so good, if you’ve already got it—and why nobody else can get into it. To compete with me, somebody would have to buy at least a million dollars’ worth of trucks, and then hire a bunch of drivers who are making thirty thousand a year, and then . . . they couldn’t sell the fuel for a penny a gallon more than I do. Or say a guy already runs a business up in Winona, and he wants to compete with me. He has to drive the diesel down here, and put that mileage and wear and tear on his trucks to do it, and pay the drivers for their time, and keep a salesman down here. That pushes the cost of every gallon he sells. He can’t underbid me, because we pay exactly the same amount for the wholesale diesel. So you see, I’m the only game in town. And that won’t change. That means that I don’t have to kickback to anyone—they take my diesel, or they find some other fuel. And I already supply the gas to the cut-rate stations in town.”
Virgil said, “That sounded like a prepared speech.”
“I think about it a lot. I once thought about buying a golf course, but a guy said, ‘Rusty, you don’t know shit about golf courses. Stick to what you know.’ He was right. But: I gotta say, I’ve heard you were sniffing around that whole school bus situation. I don’t want to know what’s going on there, because the schools are my biggest single customer, other than the three gas stations I service. I do suspect something’s going on. I’ve heard that their reported costs seemed to be a little out of line.”