Dirt Cheap

By Jarles Alberg

For Alex Johanson, this assignment sounds easy enough. The guy wears many hats: crop and hail adjuster, disaster adjuster, former general contractor, and investigator of pretty much everything he sees or hears—usually for his own personal edification. Although he generally works alone, he has an office in Omaha, run by his business partner Samantha. Sam always told Alex that his constant curiosity and investigating was going to bite him in the ass someday. Well, that day has come, and now both Alex and Sam are on the run. Problem is Alex doesn’t even know whom he’s managed to tick off. Why are they being chased, and why have NSA agents been sent to protect them? A simple assignment has turned Alex’s life upside-down, but he never meant for this to happen to Samantha.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Dec 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9781483493657

Book preview

hero.

1

Chapter

IT’S BEEN A WINDY, dusty day in Trinidad, Colorado, looking at hail-damaged cars, houses, and commercial buildings. This area beyond God’s country is desolate and doesn’t cater to travelers. Bone weary, I can’t wait to get back to the civilization of Amarillo, Texas to find a decent place to eat and sleep. As I drive along one of the few paved roads in the multi-state panhandle area, a sheriff’s car pulls out behind me, accelerates, brakes suddenly, and turns sharply left. A police car accelerates past me and I get an automatic "am I going to be arrested?" feeling. He gets my attention and my curiosity.

What the hell is he doing all the way out here? And why the hurry? I wonder.

The panhandles of Nebraska and Texas, the southeastern parts of Colorado and the northeastern New Mexico, are far from being God’s country. There is no water, little vegetation, and hardly any reason to live there. The weather is either bone-dry windy and hot, or bone-dry windy and cold. Still, people live here, people who manage to scratch out a living. Human activity is rare. A speeding sheriff’s car seems out of place. I make a U-turn and drive to a rise overlooking the road the sheriff took and stop. I am in the high plains and can see several hundred miles around. I keep my eyes on the sheriff from a long way off.

A storm is on the horizon. He’s spotting tornadoes.

As a high plains insurance adjuster, I’ve seen more than enough tornado damage. Tornadoes can completely wipe things away. You know buildings of some kind once stood there. You can’t even recognize what was there before. I always feel a sadness for what was lost. Only desolation remains.

From my vantage point, I watch the sheriff’s car without having to move. The air is strangely still. I can’t see the car, just a long stream of dust trailing behind. He stops at a faraway gate, connected to a chain-link-fence with a concertina barbed wire top. A man stands outside the fence gate. He leans in through the passenger window of the sheriff’s car for a second, then stands up and walks back to the compound gate. He locks it, slides into his pickup, makes a U-turn, and drives away from the gate. The sheriff’s car then makes a racing, spinning turn and heads back to the main highway.

Why is a sheriff’s car making a stop in the middle of nowhere? Is it clandestine? Delivering or receiving something illegal? Does his dad own the land? Is he looking for a crook? Responding to a call? Up to no good?

My mind races, but it ends nowhere close to an answer.

I turn around and head back to the main road and continue to Amarillo. A few minutes later, the sheriff’s car zooms by me at a high rate of speed. I know that, because I am already going fast myself. Speed is a relative term in the wastelands of the Western Plains.

My name is Alex Johanson and I generally work alone. I have an office in Omaha which is run by my business partner, Samantha – Sam for short.

I wear many hats - crop and hail adjuster, disaster adjuster, former general contractor, and investigator of everything I see or hear as I live my life - usually for my own personal improvement. When I worked for the police fourteen years ago, I was a uniformed civilian, working for the city jail in Omaha, Nebraska. That’s where I learned to both trust and mistrust peace officers. A civilian in law enforcement usually gets the worst jobs, but I was able to stand around, watch, and listen to all the real police. Most police officers think the civilian helpers report to them. Even though they think we can’t understand a word they’re saying, I listened, understood, and acquired a few reasoning skills I use in my current job. Today, watching the sheriff, feelings of mistrust come back to me.

I’m in the plains because of a friend of a friend. That’s how the story always seems to go. My friend and two of his friends, who love stormy weather, went out West the previous spring to chase tornados. They were looking for a fourth chase partner to join them this coming year, so my friend called me. It was December and they were talking about chasing in the following May, so it was easy for me to say yes. It’s always easy for me to say yes to anything that’s months away. I was already thinking of excuses for backing out. I truly did not intend to go.

March came, and my ex-wife said Take a week, it could be a lot of fun. You would get to have a road trip and maybe even chase tornados. You’re between contracts - it’s a good time to go.

So, I discarded all the excuses I planned to use to back out and began planning for an adventure out West. By May, my preparations came together. Suddenly, I was picking up a van for not just one week, but two weeks on the plains. Once I arrived, I knew I had made the right decision. The oceans of space dotted by an occasional tree and visibility of two hundred miles in any direction gave me a sense of freedom.

The call of the open plains! As I drove through those miles of openness, the plains claimed my mind early on. The distant horizon captured and captivated me. I marveled at the vastness of the plains, felt its winds, and saw the forces of nature up close. As I looked, thunderstorms formed in front of me, out of thin air. The moment I saw a thunderstorm form from a few small clouds and become a raging super-cell monster, I began to understand how nature created storms and winds and rains. This was when I fell in love with the plains states and decided to make them my home.

The day is winding down as I take Highway 287 through Dumas, fifty miles north of Amarillo. Dumas is a poor western town with trees that look dead, branches have fallen every which way. Dirt covers everything - the dry-looking crabgrass and low-lying weeds.

The houses are slightly better than trailers, mostly small one-story structures with big yards. Dumas, like most little farm towns in the southwest, has concrete grain towers, abandoned fake adobe houses, a corner-store gas station and miles of empty landscape. Beauty left Dumas behind.

The hour is late, and I am famished. I am not in the mood for a sit-down meal. The gas station down the street from the motel where I plan to stay has a selection of tasty microwave meals. Tonight, this is fine by me.

I drive to the gas station, park, and go inside. I am pleasantly surprised to find they serve some wonderful-smelling local BBQ. I buy several sandwiches and some fresh-cooked fries, then head to the motel. It’s the local Best Western tonight.

Hi, Patti, I greet the night manager. Any suites available - for a discount?

I slip a ten from my wallet and hand it to her,

Patti rattles off acronyms, AAA, AARP … ah, here’s one. Military. I think we can make this work.

She uses my insurance license number for the Federal ID, and hands me the key for the owner’s suite.

You know how much I love you?

Yeah, I know. Enjoy your stay.

I carry my bag and personal pillow to the elevator and ride up to my room. The room is a suite with one and a half rooms. There are two TVs and office area with a fax machine. That makes it perfect for me.

I need to get in touch with Samantha, but first, dinner!

I kick off my shoes, pull a chair up to the table in the corner, flip on the TV, and settle in to enjoy my dinner with a short glass of rum and Diet Coke. I think about Sam as I dine. We are very compatible business partners and are close friends. Sam is a bright young lady with long flowing blond hair. Before joining forces with me, she dropped out of college and told her father, in a nice way, to take his insurance business and shove it. Sam has a great work ethic, much better and more organized than mine. Before partnering, we often bumped into each other during big disasters. When motel rooms were in extremely short supply during those crises, I spent the night with her. Her attractiveness and killer smile got her rooms reserved for the owners, handicapped, or closed for repairs. The times we spent on the road together gave us quality time to talk about our jobs and ourselves. We realized our thoughts were identical about how most policyholders were poorly treated by the insurance companies. We enjoy working together and joined forces to work on claims we can make come out fairly for both the insurance company and the policyholder.

The insurance companies pay us to work with policyholders to compensate them for their casualty and property loss. If we come in too far over their stats, we quickly become persona non-grata. A portion of our commissions comes from the money we save the insurance company. We approach our work trying to create a win-win for everyone involved.

We settled on Omaha as our base. This was an easy choice, since Samantha owned a house there and I was a renter. We established Nicholas Insurance Adjusters and bought a nice small worn out gas station for our office and scraped up money for some needed renovations. We both continued conducting insurance adjustments. I did most of the renovation, just to keep ahead of the bills. We soon realized it was more efficient for one of us to travel to do the adjustments while the other stayed home to manage the office and complete all the paperwork. Since I love to drive, can sleep in sleazy places, and I am not likely to be assaulted by some drunk guy, I became the road warrior and Samantha managed the business.

We have prospered and are known for our expertise to process all types of hail damage claims. Most of our income comes from hail and crop insurance adjustments. These are the bread and butter of our business. Crop insurance takes more of our time and payments are often slow. Thank God for the thunderstorms on the Great Plains! Our business wouldn’t have worked anywhere else in the country.

Thinking about Samantha makes me realize I need to talk to her. Even though it is late, I call her to see if there is any chance I can pick up work in this area before I head back to Omaha.

When I reach her she says, I have a special request from Star Air. They have a plane that flipped over in a storm. Might have been hit by lightning. They were vague. They towed it to a hangar and had a mechanic look at it for repairs and then alerted the FAA. Now they need the insurance coverage clarified. Since you’re close, why don’t we take the job? We might make four or five thousand bucks on this one. The only thing is, you have to drive to Lubbock.

Ugh, Lubbock. It’s about two hours south. Okay, sign me up and fax me all the info I need about the plane. Also, find out who owns it and if it has any liens on it. If it does, I want cash up front to adjust this thing. I have a fax machine in my room, so send me the specs - 806-555-4025. Thanks, Sam. Sweet dreams.

Sweet dreams to you, too.

With that we sign off and I go back to watching The Weather Channel and Headline News while chowing down on BBQ and French fries. They taste as good as they smell.

2

Chapter

I SING AS I drive the two hours to the Lubbock airport. Blue skies shining so bright … nothing but blue skies … da da da. Private planes have always been a mystery to me. I wonder how one person can afford the upkeep and gas for one. I hope to find that out with this investigation.

I pull through the metal signposts and stop at the trailer-office-shack. I walk in and ask the bored young kid sitting behind the counter, Where’s the damaged plane that was towed in yesterday?

In one of the open hangars at the far end of those buildings, he replies as he points out the window.

I find the hangar, get out of my car, and walk through the opening. A mechanic is looking at the damaged plane. It looks a mess to me - both wings crumpled, propeller broken, top of the plane caved in.

The mechanic queries, Are you with Blackwell Insurance?

Never heard of them, but what does it matter? I have a contract with Star Air to do an adjustment of this airplane.

Not at this airport you don’t, he says. Mr. Blackwell has this airport locked up for insurance.

But I have a contract with the owner.

Don’t know about that. I do know your contract doesn’t mean anything here.

I drove out of my way and wasted a lot of money for this job. But, I’m not much for trying to muscle in and steal someone else’s client. Mind if I take a few pictures for my collection of crashed planes? I’m sort of a photography nut.

Knock yourself out.

I take a bunch of pics, especially things that interest me like serial numbers, metal and non-metal parts, and close-ups of instruments. I’ve never been this close to a crashed plane before. When I finish shooting, I head back to the car, check my phone and see a text from Sam.

TXT: I’m sorry. Just had a fax from Star Air. Another company is in charge of adjusting this plane. Our adjustment contract has been cancelled.

I walk back to the airport office thinking we might get expenses. The young kid looks up from his computer screen as I walk in and gives me a blank stare.

Do you mind if I use your computer to look up the weather patterns for the next day or so?

No prob, he utters as he turns the screen toward me and sets the keyboard on the counter.

I pull up my favorite weather site and look at the radar, wind direction, satellite, and dew point maps.

Might be some weather coming into the High Plains. Good. We can use the work.

I thank the kid and leave. I contemplate, thirteen straight hours of driving to get home to Omaha tonight and sleeping all day tomorrow. Or I could go to Dodge City, only 7 hours away, and look for a great country fried steak dinner.

I choose Dodge City.

In Omaha, Samantha heads into her small downstairs home office and logs into the office computer system. She checks the weather for the plains and the high plains. Things are looking a bit dicey out there. And the forecast is calling for potential tornadoes. Hmm … Storms often equal damage and damage often equals adjustment fees for Alex and me. Too late to call Alex, now. This can wait till morning.

Shutting down the computer, Sam heads into the kitchen to find something she can turn into a late-night snack.

I arrive in Dodge City just in time to devour that country fried steak dinner and turn in for the night. The ringing of my phone rises me from a blissful sleep. Sam’s number is displayed on my phone. I hit the talk button and hear, I did some weather research last night. I think there might be storms forming in the high plains of western Kansas. There’s a high potential for supercells. You might as well stay out there since more severe weather is coming tonight. Perhaps you’ll be able to pick up some damage adjustments from the storms, not to mention chasing a storm or two.

Agreed,’’ I reply. Why don’t you give Roger at Garden City Mutual a call. Let him know I’ll be in Garden City."

Will do.

And with that, we both hang up.

After checking the weather again and sending the forecast to Alex, Sam alerts Roger, the owner of Garden City Mutual in Garden City, Kansas, that Alex is available and in the area.

Then, out of curiosity, Sam decides to search the Internet for Blackwell.

None found… Hmmm … Searching for … hmmm … ‘US insurance companies.’ Ugh, I hate searching for anything anymore. You’d think looking up an insurance company would be a piece of cake. But no … No government listing? That’s odd. Wait … what’s this? An ad for a re-insurance group? Okay, I’ll bite … Wow - these are big guys! They reinsure some very large insurance companies. I’ve heard of most of them, but they are way out of my league - Alex’s too.

36812.png

In the morning I make myself a cup of coffee, take out my laptop, and pull up the pictures of the plane I didn’t get paid to look at.

That plane is a total mess. Looks like it tumbled over and over - must have been powerful straight-line wind gusts … I don’t see any serious damage to the airport facilities. Wonder where the plane got damaged? How much does a new one of those planes cost?

Searching Google, I find my answer … $300,000.

Okay, I wonder what the totaled value would be? And what does it take to be qualified to adjust airplane damages? I’ll ask Sam to check with the FAA. If I had to guess, it’s just like any other niche industry. You practically must be born into the niche, or work your way up slaving for years …

Scrolling through my email I see one from Sam.

Weather report from Sam - excellent. Some storms might be getting ready to go severe; it could mean damage to some houses and crops, which means possible work for me. The Yin and the Yang of insurance. You need something bad to happen to do something good. I may get stuck down here for a couple of weeks if we end up having any extensive crop damage.

I shut down my laptop and decide to shower and hit the road. The day ahead of me has all kinds of potential, starting with a visit to the Liberal, Kansas airport.

3

Chapter

AFTER AN EASY TWO-HOUR drive, I arrive at Liberal airport about 11 a.m. Entering the office, I ask the girl behind the counter if I can see the general manager.

He’s in a meeting, she replies.

"Do you think he’ll be in there all day, or is there a chance I might get a few minutes with him? I’m Alex Johanson representing Nicholas Insurance Adjusters. We do a lot of adjustments in this part of the country