Ride the Lightning

by Dietrich Kalteis

  “You pay any attention to what I been saying?”

  “Heard every word, Merle, still I’m asking.”

  “Let me tell you boys something, more weed comes from right here than the other Colombia, and I’m hooked up pretty good. So, you two get your heads on right, and we’ll do some kickass business. You got any idea how many grow houses we got on the North Shore alone?”

  “What happens if Poppa gets wind who broke into his?” Mitch asked, pulling the clip from the Walther.

  “Already told you, we’ll be dropping a clue, make it look like Bumpy Rosco did it.”

  “More Dancin’ Bare matches?” Wally asked, scoffing.

  “Leave that to me.”

  “Who’s this Bumpy guy anyway?” Wally thinking he sounded like a Muppet.

  “Nicaraguan, big into meth labs, but branching into bud lately, got some tug with the Nam gangs.”

  Wally fished out his papers, looking to Mitch, asking what he thought.

  “Shit sounds deep, like up to here.” Mitch put his hand to his throat.

  “Figured it took cajones to break into places, but if I got you two wrong . . .”

  “You said about pumping in the gas,” Wally said. “How about you spell out the rest, how we do this?”

  Miro took a Newport from his pack and lit up. “The AC unit’s out back of the place. All we got to do is shut it off, tap into the coolant lines, hook up a couple of nitrous oxide cylinders and crank the valves full open. Hit the power back on, and the blower sends enough gas through the vents so anybody inside gets a cabbage for a brain.”

  “Already said that part,” Wally said.

  “Then me and you go in with respirators,” Miro said to Mitch. “Stuff the weed into Hefty bags. Wally here backs the van to the door, and we’re on the four o’clock ferry heading home, up twenty-five grand.”

  “Thought you said thirty?” Wally said.

  “Already told you about expenses. Look, twenty-five worst case, thirty best case.”

  “Hold on, I’m not sitting in no van. Mitch here’s in the van, him with his fucked-up stomach.”

  Mitch said it was okay with him.

  “Okay, hotshot,” Miro said to Wally, “’cause when we come out with the Hefty bags, the guy by the van takes aim with the RPG and turns the house to toothpicks.”

  Wally finished rolling the joint. “You didn’t say that part, about the RPG.”

  “It’s how Artie’ll think it was Bumpy. The guy had problems with a competitor in Surrey one time. Sent a rocket to straighten things out.”

  “Okay, so after we blow the place up . . .”

  “We’re back on the ferry, taking the weed to Stax.”

  “Suppose gassing doesn’t do the trick?” Mitch said.

  Miro looked at the Walther in Mitch’s hand. “Then you point that and pull the trigger.” He looked at Wally and said, “And when you jack a van, get one without holes in the floor this time.”

  “Ja wohl, Merle,” Wally said, grinning, checking out Bruna as she came back in, liking that cougar look, her cheeks barely hidden by Miro’s shirt tails, the tat showing on her inner thigh.

  “Where you going?” Miro asked.

  “I need permission to go to the can now?” She looked at Wally looking at her, liking that Miro was watching this jerk do it.

  “Said stay out of sight while I’m conducting business,” Miro told her.

  “Then your gum-chewing buddy here can’t stare at my tetas.”

  “Getting sensitive for a chick that works topless,” Miro said. “Don’t like him looking, put some clothes on.”

  “You peel, huh?” Wally asked.

  She looked at him with the do-rag on his head and hooked her hands on her hips, the shirt riding higher, showing the paw print.

  “How long ago was that?”

  She smiled at him, getting close, cupping his chin. “Saying it like you think I can’t do it no more.”

  “Definitely think you can,” Wally said it and meant it.

  “Work the shoeshine place downstairs.” She let go of his chin, straightened and looked down at his new high-tops. “Pop in if you can spare the seven-fifty.”

  Wally said he just might do that, adding he never carried anything smaller than a twenty.

  “That gets you a spit polish. Your twenty got a friend, you get to see if the drapes match the rug.” She winked at him and went into the washroom, shutting the door behind her.

  Mitch sat there, sticking the clip back into the pistol, pulling it out and sticking it in again, his mind about eight hundred miles away, thinking of Ginny McNamara, wondering if she’d put on any weight since he left.

  down on the docks

  The reek of dead baitfish rose over the smell of the chicken wafting from the buckets. Stax looked past the terminal area; a container ship showing a high waterline was being loaded, some foreign flag flying from its bridge, the big orange Syncrolift crane swinging overhead, the open warehouses hiding the steel-forming shop beyond.

  Walking by the loading area, he looked around until he got in sight of the shop. Its double row of windows was dark like it had been abandoned, some of the panes broken out and boarded.

  Beyond the warehouses and the line of containers, waves were capping out in the inlet, the wind bringing a blue sky behind the grey, the rain just starting. An opsrey flying low over the water in search of a meal.

  Stax tried the door, knocking on it with his boot. Thinking he should have got original instead of extra crispy, he looked back where his Mustang was parked, nearly hidden by a troller in dry dock. Two guys were working on its bow stem, both of them wearing welder’s masks. A six-man crew in yellow hardhats was working in the open warehouse closest to him, a tow motor driving by. Walking to the door at the other end, Stax missed stepping in one patch of seagull shit only to step in another. The stuff all over the place, looking like egg-mess, the ground slick under his boots. Who could eat in a place like this?

  The door at the far end opened, and there was JayMan Healey. His overalls looked like he’d been rolling in soot. Giving a straighten to his Whitecaps’ cap, he came halfway, offering his hand, Stax finding it awkward to shake hands while holding two eighteen-piece buckets. JayMan asked how he was doing. As wide as Stax, but a half a head taller, JayMan moved with a slight limp from a bike accident.

  A herring gull lifted off from a friction winch. JayMan glanced along the warehouses, looking ill at ease. Most of the guys down here were shitting themselves these days, everybody guessing the Drug Unit and Gang Task Force had every place along the Inlet under the microscope.

  Stax told him he got a different heads-up; the cops were poking around Western Stevedoring, not looking at the shipyards.

  “Then how come the full-patch guys are keeping away, getting hangarounds to take care of business?” JayMan being the low man on the totem pole from one of the puppet gangs, picked to stick handle the shipments.

  JayMan gave a wave to DeJesus Sanchez, the skipper of the ocean tug moored at dock, its rubber tires scraping, Knot So Fast painted across the bridge and again along the bow over the tire bumpers. Canadian and American flags flapped from the halyard, the flags used as signals between ship and shore. DeJesus busied himself about his wheelhouse, throwing anxious looks at them, eager to cast his lines off, get what was under the floor out to the yacht Sun Sea.

  “Good and hungry, bro?” Stax said, holding out the buckets.

  “That shit’ll kill you,” JayMan said. “Fuck up your arteries.”

  “Wanted to spring for burgers at the Apache, remember?”

  “And I told you that place is bugged. Don’t believe me, ask DeJesus,” Jayman said, looking at the tug.

  “Relax a bit, dude; you’ll like this chicken.”

  It took JayMan a second to catch on—the hash oil was under th
e chicken. “Don’t fucking tell me . . .” He stopped and turned on Stax, glancing over at the welders, then at the guy driving the tow motor.

  “Cost you fifty Gs to find out,” Stax said, liking how easy it was to trip this asshole up.

  “For fifty, you better have bread and slaw in there,” JayMan smiled a bit, still looking at the welders.

  Stax shoved the buckets at him. “Be glad I don’t tack on a shoeshine for all the dump-duck shit I stepped in.”

  “We don’t do it out here.” JayMan pushed the buckets back. “Case you didn’t hear about the shit went down at Sea-Tac this morning.” JayMan pointed to a trailer with blue barrels stacked along its water side. “Pull your ride around the far side, come through the back door of the shop, and leave your fucking cell in the car.”

  Stax narrowed his eyes.

  “Case it’s bugged,” JayMan said, holding his hands wide, like he was saying, “What are you gonna do about it?”

  Stax had heard about the bust at Sea-Tac, twenty keys of coke and some weapons, half a dozen Asian guys nailed, no bikers even mentioned. “That shit came from Steveston, and one those guys was an undercover cop.”

  “I’ll tell you one more time.” JayMan leaned close, saying, “Half the fucking faces down here belong to strangers. So, we do this the way I say, or we don’t do it at all. Your choice.” Their eyes locked, then JayMan turned and walked back to the open door, saying over his shoulder, “And all I could scratch up was forty-five.”

  It wasn’t his first impulse, but Stax tucked the buckets under his arms and turned for the Mustang, not liking the way JayMan spoke to him, thinking he’d make that plain enough when he pulled around the other side of the shop, get their working relationship back on the right foot, the one he was going to kick up JayMan’s ass. Forty-five grand. Even the full-patch guys didn’t talk to him like that.

  The Mustang bottomed, the undercarriage scraping as Stax drove off the pavement over toward the trailer. Throwing a fuck this and fuck that to every pothole that ripped his undercarriage like a Croatian mine field, Stax shut off the engine, grabbed the buckets and got out, slamming the door. Glad he left Ike at home, wondering if Loop and Pinkie stopped by to top up his water and kibble like he told them, thinking he should call, make sure. Hearing what he thought was a generator inside the shop, he headed for the door, catching sight of Air One, the blue tail with the three stripes coming this way, flying low, its rotors stirring the inlet’s water.

  Moving, he threw himself against the trailer, rivets sticking out from the corrugated steel catching his jacket. Four marine units raced from the direction of the Second Narrows, cutting in, bobbing over the waves. Two cops in each unit with flak jackets and automatic weapons poised.

  A line of black-and-whites followed a couple of unmarked cars, coming like a parade through the shipyard gates, the Combined Forces hitting their lights and wailers, eight or nine cars heading straight for the warehouses, fanning out to cut off escape. Some of the workmen stopped, others put up their hands. A few ran.

  JayMan stepped from the steel-forming shop, shoving shells into a twelve gauge, yelling for DeJesus to cast off. Officers with high-powered rifles at their shoulders crouched by their units, ordering him to stop and throw it down. Surrounded, he tossed the shotgun down, cops running forward, forcing him to the ground.

  DeJesus was screaming in Spanish, the mate throwing off the lines, jumping onboard, DeJesus chucking a box over the side, trying to get his diesels cranked. A shot rang across the water, the bullet buried in the woodwork. A voice piped through a bullhorn ordered everyone onboard the floating towtruck to throw their hands up.

  Stax got as low as he could against the siding, his feet slipping on the slick ground. Crawling along the back of the trailer, pushing the buckets ahead of him, chicken pieces falling out. Snatching them, he got behind the row of metal barrels, inching his way, ducking behind a stack of crates. He hoped to hell JayMan left the back door of the shop open. Maybe he could duck in there. Setting the buckets down, he got out his Sig, telling himself they couldn’t do jack if he wasn’t in possession. Chicken, what chicken? Just a guy coming to take a buddy to the Apache for lunch; no fucking law against that.

  Poking his head around the side to the shouts and running feet, he saw more cars coming through the gates, gumballs and screamers going. Helicopter rotors roared overhead as Air One circled. Cops searching through the warehouses on foot. Guys with flak jackets and machine pistols coming this way. More yelling.

  Leaving the buckets, crawling on all fours, Stax scrambled to the dilapidated shed by the water. The foot-high thistles and weeds did little to hide him. Pulling himself up on a sign reading hazardous waste, he looked back at the buckets. The thought of losing fifty grand had him running back, Sig in hand, ready to shoot the first cop sticking his head around the corner. He dumped out the chicken and crushed the paper buckets down around the vials in the bottom.

  He made it back to the shed in time to see the first cop coming round the back of the trailer, an MP5 rifle to his shoulder, looking at the extra crispy on the ground, a black baseball cap backward on his head, making hand signals to the ERT cops behind him, moving for the back door of the shop, the other cops covering him, all in black, all looking serious.

  Rivets were missing from a corrugated sheet on the back of the shed. Setting down the crushed buckets, he tried prying the metal away, but couldn’t squeeze through, slicing his fingers. Blood dripping, he picked up the buckets and stepped onto the algae and shit-covered dock, the timbers old and rotting. Nowhere to run. Gun up, Stax not going down without a fight.

  Snap.

  A rotted board gave, both his feet shot out from under him. Arms whirling, the whole scene like slow motion, the Sig and the crushed buckets flipping in the air. Down into the black with a splash. The cold shock, the underwater sound of air bubbles. He came up, sputtering sea water, grabbing for a piling, reaching for the buckets. The first one tipped, part of the Colonel’s smiling face on the crushed side, the bucket taking on water, Stax stretching his bleeding fingers, watching the bucket fade into the murk. Then the second one bobbed and tipped. Hearing the cops nearby, he didn’t dare to swim for them.

  The marine units had pulled their Zodiacs alongside the tug, cops jumping onboard, drawing a bead on the mate, yelling for him to lie down, going after DeJesus in the wheelhouse. By some miracle, nobody saw Stax fall into the water, an ERT cop moving above him on the dock, stepping over the broken board, checking the back of the shed, shouting all clear to the cops on the tug.

  The pilot and tactical officer looked down from the chopper flying overhead, drowning out JayMan yelling quotes from the Charter of Rights and Freedoms at the top of his lungs, a Mountie butting him with his rifle, suggesting he shut up.

  Stax was still weighing his chances of diving for the buckets without being spotted—fifty grand sinking right under him, and nothing he could do about it.

  With a bleeding hand, he got a handhold on a rusted spike in the piling, wedged the toe of his boot against the barnacles and tipped his head back, keeping his nose and mouth above water, pulling back as far as he could. Something bumped and circled his leg, making him cry out, rain starting to patter on the inky water.

  the g button

  Miro’s address put Karl in a neighborhood local realtors liked to call gentrifying. Truth be told, Strathcona was the kind of place best visited in daylight unless your thing was getting high or getting off. Junkies, hookers and the homeless.

  The side street was Princess; just before the Park’N Go garage, he swung the Roadster into a vacant spot at the curb behind a RiseUp bread van stifling in its own funk. Getting out and looking around, he got a whiff of piss as he pressed the passenger door lock. No point tempting fate around here. Gentrifying, my ass, he said.

  The four-story rathole had Chinese characters running vertical up the brick, multi-colored gra
ffiti all over the door, on the windows, on the walls. A gargoyle looked down from the roof, its grey eye turned toward the Savoy Pub, ignoring the hip hop braying from the Rise & Shine, the topless shoeshine place two doors up. Karl guessed living in a dump like this was Miro’s idea of keeping a low profile.

  A guy with wild dreads walked his turf, his sandwich board making known it was seven-fifty a shine—today’s special. Bruna James, wearing an over-sized T-shirt with the words “Magic Fingers,” came out in thigh boots, carrying a Thermos. She said something to the guy with the board, walking past the piss-stained wall and into Miro’s building, not looking over at Karl.

  Guessing she did the shining, not knowing a damp cloth from a bristle brush, Karl couldn’t see the point—a topless shoeshine chick down there buffing a guy’s shoes, blocking the view of what he was paying to see. A case of not thinking things through.

  Karl slipped the FedEx shirt overtop his T, the blue and orange logo showing on the chest. Snugging on the matching ball cap, he clipped the envelope with the photocopy of the U.S. bench warrant Marty sent him to the clipboard. Reaching under his seat, he tucked a small metal bar under his arm. Locking up, he stepped by the guy with the sandwich board, saying “no thanks,” searching for that Lady Luck feeling, the rush he had always felt during seventeen years of fugitive retrieval, dragging badasses off the streets, going into places that made Strathcona look uptown. Back when he and Marty went after the guys wanted on warrants for unlawful flight, transportation of stolen goods, Class C felonies, theft, kidnapping, assault with deadly weapons, armed robbery, fraud, statutory rape, drug trafficking, and conspiracy to distribute controlled substances. All the lovelies.

  He missed the life, thinking about it now as he looked up at the building. The thrill of the chase. A little payback. Maybe even the danger.

  The Global Trace office was where they tossed balled paper into trash cans and cracked wise, but on Seattle streets it was all business. The one time he let his guard down was the night his partner Marty stayed holding his wife’s hand, Janet expecting their second baby girl at Northwest Hospital, labor that lasted twenty hours. Acting on a tip, Karl went after an easy one, a bail-jumper on a DUI charge named Benny Bean, catching up with the Bean at a corner dive down in the meatpacking district, a neon light flashing BBQ. Giving the Bean the option of coming in easy, Karl sat on a stool, looking down the bar, late seeing the pipe the Bean pulled from his boot, putting Karl down with a single blow, letting him have a few more, taking it personal that this guy was here to drag his ass to jail. It took a concussion and a few bruised and cracked ribs, but the lesson sunk in.