Winner’s Curse: A New Novel by L.A. Starks

Editor’s Note: A Weekend Arts article in The New York Times caught my attention with its title, “Blending Poetry, Ritual and Data on Oil Drilling.” It’s about an installation created by Imami Jacqueline Brown she calls “research art” and in which says she wants to “demystify oil and gas production.” It was the last thing I ever thought I’d see pursued in art, but then again reading Winner’s Curse was a revelation of its own: a novel set in that same business, which its practitioners used to refer to in the Texas drawl, as “th’ awl an’ gaas bidness.”

The notion of a “winner’s curse” is explained on the first page of L.A. Starks’ engaging new novel, the fourth Lynn Dayton thriller. It stems from the fact that drilling for oil was (and may still be) a real crap shoot with high overhead and little promise of financial return. It also serve as a metaphor for the many interesting complications in the novel.

I eagerly agreed to review this novel, since I more or less earned a Master’s degree in oilfield economics from a ghostwriting assignment. My author-client once confided that he’d chosen me because I was a “treehugger.” Writing his book changed my perspective on oil and gas considerably, and it might change yours after reading Winner’s Curse. As the novel subtly brings out, we have a love-hate relationship with the earth’s primary source of energy, a relationship which is not likely to change significantly in our lifetimes, no matter how promising many of the green energy alternatives seem.

We hope you enjoy this excerpt and the accompanying interview with the author, and will read the book. It’s a well wrought thriller with an unusual cast of characters and story line.

~ Jack

Chapter 1

Midland, Texas

November Morning    

She was glad to be the only passenger boarding a company plane for Midland, Texas in chilly pre-dawn darkness. Lynn Dayton was tall and Texas-blond with gravitas matching her position in charge of hundreds of engineers. She had just accepted a new, senior position at TriCoast after her predecessor had been murdered by a jealous ex-lover.

Last week, her boss’s instructions had been both sympathetic and blunt. “I understand your transition to David’s job is difficult. You’ve been on another side of the business. It’s hard to feel close to a new group of people,” Mike Emerson said.

“Just remember, when you talk to the boy wonder at Bradshaw Energy—no matter what he says the terms were before, with David—don’t get deal fever. We can always walk away.”

“No winner’s curse. Got it,” Lynn replied. The phrase winner’s curse traced to a study of Gulf of Mexico lease sales. The winning bid often was too high—a geologist or engineer was too optimistic about invisible reserves under thousands of feet of water and rock. The company was stuck with paying for a lease that would never make money.

But that was last week, before Mike was stricken with a heart attack. The board tapped the CEO of a small private oilfield service company. In a surprise, Rowan Daine was recommended as the temporary fill-in for Mike both by the board’s most ardent environmentalist as well as its most conservative member, another oilfield service CEO, Burl Travis. Despite the board’s approval of a six-month contract for Daine, Lynn was uncertain about the man. Other women she asked described him as hard to read or else as a typical man-about-town.

At Lynn’s first meeting with Rowan Daine, she found it startling to see his angular figure in place of fireplug-sized Mike Emerson. Daine noticed and was soothing. “Yes, a shock for all of us. But Mike has told me about you. He thinks highly of you. Clearly champions you with the board. You can count on the same from me.”

“That’s good to hear.” Lynn relaxed.

“Mike and Burl told me you’ve led the refining division to billions in profits.”

“And I expect to do the same as EVP of the drilling division. Which reminds me, will you have the regular weekly executive meeting?” Lynn asked. She almost said, Like Mike did.

 “No. I prefer informal conversations. Less confining than a schedule.” Then Daine’s tone cooled slightly. “Now what about this acquisition of Bradshaw Energy? That was one of David’s pet projects. You still pursuing it?”

“Yes, if Joost Bradshaw and I can agree on a price.”

“I’m the new guy here, so you’ll have to convince me that’s a good idea.”

 As he ushered her to the door, Rowan Daine smiled broadly. Despite how little she knew him, Lynn was charmed.

Mike had reliably had her back. Lynn felt reassured Rowan Daine would, too.

 Soon, the private jet jolted to a stop in a line of other private jets and spun down. Fast Gulfstreams were the preferred mode of transport for companies whose drilling sites could be hundreds of miles remote from any big airport.

Beau Decatur, a bodyguard who worked for several TriCoast executives, met her in the private plane terminal and guided her to a white truck. Lynn climbed into the F-350, one of many the company owned. Beau was as square as a tight end and still hard-muscled from his prior military service. Unlike other urban locations, Lynn was not expecting Molotov-throwing cocktails from environmental protesters in Midland. But there’s always a first time here, too, she thought.

The dry, flat landscape was more Phoenix desert than east Texas verdure. Mesquite and four-wing saltbush ringed countless drill sites that shaped West Texas into an unending factory floor of oil and gas production. Midland and neighboring Odessa exuded neither southern charm nor western cool, but instead the endless anxiety of fierce competition from companies next door and countries across the ocean. Outsiders who traveled to Midland in Southwest airplanes—packed with men in the seats and hardhats in the overhead—missed the hardboiled natives’ shrewdness until their egos were smeared into the dirt.

Soon, Beau parked at the TriCoast headquarters. They went inside and were directed to the office of short, chipper Roy Bastrop, the Midland district head. 

Lynn steeled herself. Her predecessor, David Jenkins, had been a classically warm, friendly, and uber-competent engineer and executive. But that didn’t stop him from making bad choices, Lynn reminded herself. One of those bad choices had been a secret affair with Dena Tarleton, a TriCoast cyber whiz. When David ended the affair, Dena killed him. As part of her revenge against David, Dena had also become involved with a shadowy international conspiracy group led from China trying to take down TriCoast and other companies from the inside.

Sure enough, it didn’t take long for Bastrop to ask the inevitable question. After a few pleasantries, he leaned in. “What was it like to find Jenkins?”

She shuddered. Lynn and Beau had been the ones to discover David’s bloody, cooling body in the kitchen of a closed restaurant. Dena Tarleton, the woman who had murdered David, had tried to kill them, too.

“Somehow everyone in Midland has heard both the official and real versions of the story.” She shook her head. “Beau and I were the only ones in that room who survived. We’ve kept our mouths shut. It’s one of the few things we can do for David’s family.”

“I hear you adopted David’s pet project—talking to Vandervoost’s kid about buying his little company. Stupid idea.”

Makes sense he would feel threatened, although it’s more obvious why, compared to Daine’s objections. “Sound him out when you and I talk to him this afternoon. Beau will drive us since the truck he rented doesn’t have the TriCoast name splashed all over it.”

“Fair enough,” Roy said. His next words were chilling. “And since you and Beau aren’t from around here, be careful driving. Traffic’s always terrible in Midland, especially in the dark. Those dirt haulers can get awfully up close and personal.”

“We’ll keep it in mind tonight. But right now, let’s go see ‘Vandervoost’s kid,’ as you call Joost.”

“We’re meeting him at lunch?” Roy asked.

Every steak house, barbeque joint, and taco stand in Midland was a familiar hunting ground. Executives ate the same scrambled eggs and told the same secrets as truck drivers, field operators, and technicians. In other cases, no one talked because everyone was listening and observing. Who are you with? What are they selling?

She shook her head. “After lunch. People will identify us at any diner or restaurant.”

Lynn and Beau’s next and final destination was a long-stay hotel on the northwest side of town at which Lynn’s company kept a small block of rooms at a fixed price. It was cheaper and easier than trying to book rooms whose price could escalate three hundred percent from one night to the next, depending on how many tool pushers and vendors were in town.

The cluster of hotels and the giant HEB grocery store with its multi-pump gas station catered to tractor-trailer drivers and workers heading to Andrews, Pecos, or scrubby outposts further west. In a nod to the fieldworker clientele staying at the hotel to which they were headed, a hard-bristled brush was mounted about a foot off the ground near each entrance—a reminder to scrape off anything caked onto shoes or boots.

Midland was a microcosm of Texas—big, aggressive, fast, riding the boom, banking for the bust sure to follow. Natives were alert to events in South America, Saudi Arabia, and Russia. It was like, Lynn reflected, dry parts of Oklahoma where she’d grown up, but without cement curbs and neatly trimmed lawns.

Beau drove them past streets named for companies past and present: Sinclair, Shell, Gulf, Stanolink. They went by the boneyards of dropped rigs, now spares. Once onto Highway 250, he steered their truck carefully among the other ubiquitous white four-door heavy-duty trucks hurtling along the bypass. Despite the dimming light, everyone drove fast, with a loose aggressiveness.

Exits onto two-way access roads were especially precarious. Lynn hoped the oncoming trucks—many at least twice their size—would stop, as they were supposed to do.

Truckers worked 100-hour weeks with the support of cocaine and meth but then sought to break their expensive habits. Many drove for thirty-six or forty-eight hours at a stretch, caravanning their 35-ton vehicles in single file, blowing their horns to keep one another awake.

To be successful here, she thought, you had to know how to assess risks and which ones to take. And to drive here you have to know where the hell you’re going because road signs and highway exits don’t exist. Mergers of two lanes into one were sudden and unmarked. Every vehicle was a big, or bigger, truck. The Scylla and Charybdis of giant trucks could cut off the rare exit or worse, an escape from the accident occurring in front of you.

Even with the windows up in their F-350, Lynn could smell sulfur from the wells. She’d looked forward to this visit to what was really her open-air factory, a factory manufacturing barrels of oil from underground—ancient carbon capture—instead of widgets above ground.

The landscape around them faded into dusty camouflage: brown and green, yellow-brown sand. Sandy shoulders, scrub, and cacti-lined asphalt roads. The sun was setting, but streetlights were not yet illuminated. Beau kept to the middle lane of the road, but trucks whizzed by on both sides.

She looked at her phone to disguise her tension. “You didn’t ask but it’s called Midland because it’s the midpoint between Fort Worth and El Paso—” 

Suddenly, from Lynn’s right, a massive sand hauler swerved toward them. She had just a moment to see the driver pull a gun and aim it toward her. “He’s got a gun! Watch out!”

But a dump truck on their left boxed them in.

“Jesus!” Beau slammed the brakes. “No place to go!”

Lynn braced herself against the dashboard as she pitched forward. Pain slammed up both arms.She held her breath, waited for a crash from behind that didn’t occur. Other drivers had seen what was happening and slowed, too.

Angry and shocked, Lynn shouted through her window at the sand hauler’s driver as he shot ahead into the space Beau had been forced to leave open.

She could see the driver of the sand hauler waving his gun in his rearview mirror. Lynn pulled out a phone to get a picture of the license plate, but the truck had no plates. It disappeared ahead of them within seconds.

“Damn. Too close,” Beau said. His knuckles were white.

“Thank God for your reflexes.” Lynn tightened her seat belt. “He could have killed us with his truck. Or his gun.”

Chapter 2

London

 Henry Vandervoost stared at the encrypted email he’d just decoded. The sender appeared to be a bogus account, but the message was real. News articles about poisonings of Russian ex-pats in London. The message was unmistakable. He was next unless he paid what he owed.

He was in a foul mood, as always. Too much . . . something. Stress. Too many people wanting too much money from him. He didn’t have enough on hand nor the power to get more. Using the venom of his pen and voice when he’d worked at TriCoast in Rotterdam had been a satisfying outlet but now, in this new job and with the more precise language of the English, merely earned him the weak sobriquet of snarky.

 He fumed. He felt as if his head would explode with unfairness. Well, something might explode. He had contacts who could make that happen.

Life had been simpler in Rotterdam before Lynn Dayton, once his rival, then his bitch boss, had sidelined him—kicked him upstairs temporarily, they called it at TriCoast. The quietly smug Bart Colby had taken over every iota of Henry’s European refining authority. Colby was just another arriviste if a Houston engineer could even be called an arriviste.

He rubbed knuckles against his forehead. One drink had followed another and more beautiful women than he could count added up during several weekends in Las Vegas and Macau. He had been treated like the whale he was. But then he’d lost over two million pounds gambling. Now I’m a beached whale. They’ll cut me open for blubber.

 When a private equity firm had been quick to hire him after he’d been kicked up to the nice-sounding job with no authority at TriCoast, his situation became worse, not better. Now he was expected to travel to see Asian investors, eat their weird food, endure their endless stalling, gamble with them, and keep up la flatterie, all to raise money for the current fund. He knew plenty of people who would be happy to take the title and the money and work half-days, but he was dogged by the need, even still, to prove to his son he had la majie, the mojo.

 When he hadn’t brought in his share of the fund, his partners’ expressions had become less pleasant. They told him he either needed to raise the money from investors—private investors and the big multinationals like those headquartered here in London—or kick in the pounds himself. He could afford to invest in the fund, couldn’t he?

He had taken his own money and tried to double it at a couldn’t-lose resort about which one of his investors told him. Apparently, he was the first to lose.

A knock sounded just before the solid oak door was thrown open so hard Henry feared its hinges would be stripped. A red-headed giant with round shoulders leaned onto the antique desk. Any more pressure and the giant would snap the equally antique desk’s legs.

“Yer Henry are ya?”

Henry suspected the oaf’s identity but pretended otherwise. “And you are?”

Ya know who I am. Or what my name is today, anyway.” The man laughed, as if shaking down rich guys for money rocked his world. It does, Henry realized.

“I hear ya got a bit o’ difficulty.”

“I need time.”

 “No. That’s why the casinos and the bankers where ya exhausted your lines told me where to find ya. Now remind me, Henry, how much ya owe?”

“150,000. Pounds.”

Instantly the big man grabbed Henry by the shirt and pulled him close, nose to nose. “Don’t act the maggot. Ever. I’m not one of the honeys they were usin’ to get the credit out of ya.”

Henry felt the man tighten his grip. “Don’t tear my shirt.”

 “I’ll tear ya a new asshole if ya don’t stop lying. How much ya owe? Tell me the truth.”

“A million two pounds.”

The man’s hands clamped around Henry’s neck and began to squeeze. “A secret. I get paid whether or not you live. Try again.”

Henry gasped for breath. “Two million one hundred thousand pounds.”

The man gave him one final shove and backed away. “Better.”

Henry stumbled, then pulled himself up straight.

“I need more time.”

“Ya don’t have time. What ya need now is an idea about how to make that money.”

“It’s in the bank,” Henry said.

The man’s hand caressed Henry’s jaw, then grabbed his ear and pinched it. “What’d I tell ya about lyin’? If the cash was in the bank or bitcoin, you’d a paid and I wouldn’t hae ta be here. You have two hundred thousand in the bank. Plus a house in Mayfair whose price you goosed for the casino records.”

Henry felt sick. “If I could just get back in—anywhere—I’d win it back. My run of bad luck run is over.”

“Yeah. And I believe in Santa Claus. Try harder.” The man stepped away from him, frowned. As if he were thinking of the idea for the first time, he nodded. “Ya do have one asset ya keep forgettin’.”

Henry looked at him, puzzled.

 “Yer son,” the man said triumphantly.

“What? You want my son? He’s thirty-one. He doesn’t owe me anything.”

“The son could even buy ya some time.”

   “I don’t understand.”

“I’ll talk so ya understand. What does yer son do?”

“He owns an oil company in Texas. I don’t see how that helps you.”

  \“Takin’ it slow, here. Yer son just called you a few hours ago. Remember, don’t lie to me.”

“Yes, he did call.”

“Ya don’t think we overlooked that do ya?”

“He talked about research. Pie-in-the-sky stuff.”

 “But pie-in-the-sky turns out to be worth a lot—even enough to take care of yer two-point-one-million-pound debt—to the banks who hired me.”

“When does a bank ever care about oilfield research?”

“Ya should have been listenin’ more closely on the call. We were.”

 Henry shivered. Of course they were listening. “I was thinking about what I owed.”

“All ya need to do, Henry, is get the special water cleanup technology and turn it over to me. We’re not even askin’ for the wells, or the oil, though that’d help ya get back into yer casinos for a while. Just the tech.”

“My son hates me. He’ll never tell me. Besides, it’s not him, it’s someone who works for him…”

The red-headed man held up a big paw, palm-forward, as if to stop Henry’s stream of words. Which it did.

 “Ya got the email, right?”

Henry thought about the vicious poisonings described in the message and nodded.

“Ya should have spent more time checkin’ out the casino backers. Russians. They want a piece of ya, but they’d rather have the technology. My guess, they’re plannin’ to sell it to the Chinese. Who’ll probably sell it back to the Americans.”

“I’ll talk to my son. They’re still testing it. I don’t think he knows if it works.”

The red-headed man nodded. “Yer smart. You’ll figure it. The 2.1 is collectin’ interest at ten percent. A week. So, if I were ya, I’d try to have the water cleanup device or info really soon.”

Henry shook his head. “He won’t tell me.”

Despite his size, the man appeared to glide to the door he’d almost destroyed on his way in. “I’ll be lettin’ myself out now. I’ll tell my bosses your answer is yes.”

Maybe I should feel relieved, Henry thought, when the door closed. But Joost sure as hell isn’t going to hand over a multi-million-dollar secret water-cleaning technology. Not to me.

**

Henry began to think through how he could get the technology from his son’s company. He’d kept in touch with Burl Travis, TriCoast board member, who’d told him TriCoast was negotiating to buy Bradshaw Energy. That couldn’t be allowed to happen. Particularly since the woman he hated more than any other was leading the negotiation for TriCoast.

His face flamed as he thought of the many times Lynn Dayton had coolly dismissed his ideas, until finally one day, she coolly dismissed him altogether, telling him he no longer had his senior job at TriCoast. I’m not a violent man, truly I’m not. But if there’s anyone I could kill, it’s Lynn Dayton.

 Then he recalled another nugget of information from Burl. Burl and another board member had recommended Rowan Daine to fill in for Mike Emerson as TriCoast CEO while Mike recovered from his heart attack. Henry knew Daine from his earliest days working for Bradshaw Energy, those sweet, old days when he’d married the founder’s daughter and had been on track to own the company. Rowan Daine ran an oilfield wastewater disposal business. And since water was produced in at least the same volume as oil if not more, Daine’s business had grown as West Texas oil production had grown.

Henry found Daine’s number and called it. He expected to leave a message but was pleased when Rowan Daine answered.

“Henry, what brings you to my world? I’m driving on I-45 so make it simple for me.”

“I’d think the CEO of TriCoast would get chauffeured everywhere. Congratulations, by the way.”

“The company doesn’t pay to have me driven to the Houston titty bars. I have to drive myself. You remember those, don’t you?”

“I do. I miss them.”

“So, what can I do you for. You never call, you never write.”

“TriCoast is looking at buying my son’s company. Don’t.”

“Now Henry. Whyever not?”

 Henry had prepared his answer. “I remember the company’s wells from when I was there.”

“Long time ago. Those wells played out by now. Your son, if he’s smart, has drilled a bunch of new wells.”

 “I’ll tell you a secret. What nobody but me will explain is, old or new wells, they turn from valuable oil to worthless gas quickly. In months, sometimes weeks. And even if you can gather the gas and process it, it’s expensive to process. Has too much nitrogen and hydrogen sulfide.”

“Really? As much as I’ve been around West Texas, I haven’t heard about those problems.”

Despite the cool London temperature, Henry wiped sweat from his forehead.

“So, the Bradshaw wells aren’t worth as much as your son and his people say they are. Or whatever crazy-ass Lynn Dayton decides to make up. She and the freaking CFO, Sara Levin. Are they both always such cool bitches?”

Henry smiled to himself. Somebody else understood the threat posed by Lynn Dayton and other women at TriCoast. “I’d say you have them both bloody pegged.”

“Yes, you always were the bloody European. I might think about doing you this favor, Henry. But what’s in it for me? And don’t just tell me TriCoast stockholder value. Something I can put in the bank when my six-month contract at TriCoast runs out.”

Vandervoost had remembered Daine’s predilections. Daine was usually the one taking potential wastewater disposal clients out for whatever they wanted. He liked being treated the same way: boobs, bars, and big-game hunting. “I have prepaid reservations for two—you and your favorite companion–to hunt stags in Scotland, zebras in Namibia, or black bears in Alaska. What’s your pick?”

 “I’ll take all three, Henry. Send me the dates. Get one of the girls in your office to make the flight arrangements for me and Liddy.”

 “Liddy’s your Midland gal?”

“The same. She’s always up for adventure.”

Daine had answered exactly as Vandervoost had expected. Vandervoost had no such reservations yet—he had several Russians to pay off first. But Daine had just made it worth his while by removing the only obstacle—TriCoast—standing between him and the water recycling technology the Russians and the Chinese wanted so much they’d forgive his gambling debts.

***

The Fictional Cafe Interview with L.A. Starks

FC: What’s the most surprising thing you learned while writing it?

LAS: My jumped-from-my-unconscious fictional character Teos Mustafa, the Egyptian engineer in charge of a liquefaction facility, turns out to have graduated from École Polytechnique (the primo French science and engineering school, a bit like the MIT or Stanford of France), just as did French antagonist Robert Guillard from my first book, 13 Days: The Pythagoras Conspiracy! This was a totally crazy, completely unplanned coincidence.

FC: In what way is the book you wrote different from the book you set out to write?

LAS: Maybe not what but who. In response to advice from my excellent fiction editor, I added a handful of new characters who had certain “jobs” in the plot. Activating these characters allowed me to tighten, personify, and heighten the tension in several scenes.

FC: Who is a creative person (not a writer) who has influenced you and your work?

LAS: A person I find inspirational for first, building big new, concrete things, and second, for his attitude of “yes, you can successfully start and run multiple companies” (I have two companies myself) is Elon Musk. Like many people I admire, he combines intelligence, courage, and plain old hard work.

FC: Persuade someone to read Winner’s Curse in fifty words or less.

LAS: Winner’s Curse is a pulse-pounding new thriller hurling you through the eye-opening, dramatic world of oil and gas.  While taking you from the west Texas plains to Hungarian salons, Starks expertly infuses insider knowledge of this trillion-dollar industry into a stand-alone technothriller to keep you on the edge of your seat.

***