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Les Cannibales (*)
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The Place of Refuge
(*) Coming soon
Back to TOC
Here is a preview from Criminal Economics, a crime novel by Eric Beetner…
NEWS BULLETIN
August 23—A daring bank robbery took place last night at the Midland Savings and Loan when two assailants raided the bank after hours and made off with over a half million dollars. Two bank employees were shot, not fatally. The employees, and four others, were bound and gagged and left inside the vault overnight. It was not until morning when a new shift arrived that they were discovered.
Police are gathering evidence, but surveillance video proved an ineffective identification tool as the robbers were wearing full face masks.
NEWS BULLETIN
August 24—Barely twenty-four hours after the robbery of Midland Savings and Loan the suspects are in custody. Apparently the robbers’ own hubris and overconfidence did them in.
The two men allegedly stole a vehicle in the Southport area and were in the act of returning the vehicle to the owner’s address and then making an attempt to stage the car in order to frame the original owner of the vehicle. One of the robbers, one Bo Marcus, made an anonymous phone call to police to tell them about the vehicle, not knowing that two officers were on patrol a mere two blocks from where he stood. Marcus then placed two stolen fifty-dollar bills and a money wrapper from the stolen currency inside the back seat of the car, but before he could make his getaway the officers arrested him at the scene.
Marcus was quick to lead the arresting officers to his partner, Eddie “Slick” Himes, a criminal of some renown in the police files.
NEWS BULLETIN
September 21—In near-record time Judge Dearborn handed down a sentence of 25 years to Midland bank robbers Bo Marcus and Eddie Himes.
After much plea bargaining by the defense the charges were reduced to a point where a life sentence was not in the Judges’ power, but in his remarks Dearborn expressed regret at the rules that kept him from sending the boys up for good.
The money, $642,000 at final count, has yet to be recovered.
NEWS BULLETIN
September 22—Hurricane Esmeralda is slated to hit the county head-on overnight and well into tomorrow. The governor has expressed his intention to declare a state of emergency as soon as needed to deploy rescue and cleanup vehicles.
CHAPTER 1
Rain hit the roof of the van, filling it with the frantic sound of someone trapped in a coffin.
The two-lane country highway out to the penitentiary swirled with leaves and fallen branches dancing a dervish across the narrow strip of blacktop cutting through the woods.
Behind the wheel, Officer Nuñez inched ever closer to the windshield trying in vain to get a better look between the intervals of the wipers fighting a losing battle against the ass end of a hurricane. The inky tarmac reflected headlights and lightning flashes barely enough to keep the road in view. Beside Nuñez sat Holt, a three-year veteran still thought of as a rookie. He gripped the shotgun upright and white-knuckled it tight to his chest wishing to God it was a steering wheel and that Nuñez would slow the fuck down instead of trying to race the storm to make it there on time. Eight o’clock, eight-fifteen—midnight for that matter—what’s the difference? The two jerks in back sure weren’t in any rush to start their twenty-five year stay up at Wharton State pen.
Two prisoners in the holding area of the van glared at each other from opposite steel benches. Rain whipped the metal shell of the van like a dominatrix. Above the din Eddie “Slick” Himes’ ragged breathing still stood out. Slick sat with his head turned low, but his eyes angled up staring directly across from him into the face of Bo, his ex-partner in crime. Slick could stare down a rabid grizzly bear with a tack in its ass and still send the bear running. His face was long, like an exaggerated mask. His ears dangled low lobes with empty holes where the man took away his earrings, set aside in a manila envelope to be retrieved when his twenty-five years were up. His eyes were deep-set and ringed permanently in black giving him the look of someone who always recently woke up and wasn’t happy about it. The perpetual stubble on his face did little to hide the scar that ran from his right ear down to the point of his chin. How he got his scar was a long story, but he never saw a doctor, never got it stitched like he should have. Now it grew high like a speed bump on his face and it acted like a mood ring, darkening with blood the madder he got. Anyone on the wrong side of Slick watched that purple scar like a thermometer in July, waiting for it to blow. That was when to get out of his way. That and every other time you saw him coming.
Bo met Slick’s practiced stare, not bothering to brush away the wet strands of blond hair over his left eye. A leak had opened up in the thin roof above him, but to move would be to act like a pansy who couldn’t get his panties wet, so he stayed put. Bo was handsome in a surf bum kind of way. He hated to wear shoes, his hair hung down to his shoulders and looked good even when he didn’t shower for days. A come-and-go crystal meth habit had ruined his skin, but when he was younger all his friends told him to get the fuck out of town and go be a model somewhere. Bo knew that was a fast track to a few starring roles in gay porn to
pay the bills and then either a heroin habit or AIDS so he hung around in his backwoods, go-nowhere town for a few more years. Years that led to this.
“Stupid cunt couldn’t keep your head,” Slick muttered, all but “cunt” drowned out by the storm sounds.
“You talking to me?” Even at his most intimidating Bo tended to sound merely cordial.
Slick raised his voice to challenge the thunder. “Ain’t no one else back here, dumb fuck!”
“Keep it down back there!” called Holt through the tight metal grating separating them.
Slick dropped back down to a low growl. “You’re the reason I’m here, motherfucker.”
“It was your plan. I only followed orders. How is that my fault?”
“When shit goes down, you improvise. Improvise, man.”
“You didn’t say that before.”
Slick tugged at his shackles; feet bound by a length of chain looped through two eye hooks bolted to the steel floor and then up to handcuffs. The tin box of the van acted as an amplifier for metal on metal sounds and every time either man shifted his chains it sounded like angry dogs straining to get loose.
“You cost me six hundred grand.” A thick rope of angry spit clung to Slick’s stubbly chin. His hands would not reach high enough to wipe it away. “I told you before, man, we get to that yard and first chance I get you’re getting a shiv up your ass.”
Bo believed it, tried not to let it show. “I thought Emma was keeping it for you. You didn’t lose shit, you just can’t make a withdrawal for a while.”
“You want me to brush off twenty-five years like it’s no big thing?”
“No, I want you to eat shit and die.”
Slick pulled up on his shackles, the eye hooks held firm. Clanging chains rattled like Marley’s ghost inside the van.
“Seriously! Keep it down back there. The man’s trying to drive!” Holt didn’t want anything to distract Nuñez from paying attention to the road. From where he sat there was only six feet of visibility ahead of them and it gave the impression of endlessly driving off a cliff.
Wind gusts pushed the van sideways, bouncing it on the shocks like some good old teenage humping was going on. If the van is a-rockin’ don’t come a-knockin’.
Nuñez leaned so close to the steering wheel he set off the horn with his chest. Startled, he jumped back into his seat, Holt hopping up out of his for a moment.
Outside, a different sound. Higher pitched than the thunder rolls, it split through the drum roll of the rain battering the van. The sound made Holt turn. He never saw the tree.
A forty-foot pine hit the van right above the windshield. A branch speared down through the roof and Nuñez took the thick spike of wood to his chest and died at the wheel before he had time to shit his pants. Safety glass like freezing rain coated the inside cabin and pelted Holt’s eyes. He screamed, leaned forward putting his head straight in line with the dashboard when the van left the road.
In the back, the two prisoners were weightless for a second, held in place by the shackles, with their butts rising off the benches in a roller-coaster move. The tree rolled over the top of the van, front to back, tearing into it with branches and peeling back the roof like a giant opening a can of sardines. The front of the van tipped then stopped abruptly and all forward momentum stopped in an instant when it hit a tree more stable than the pine.
Slick and Bo’s bodies carried forward for another beat and then were clawed to a stop by the chains binding them to the van. Cuffs tore at their ankles and wrists, but held firm. If not for the quick stop they both would have done headers into the thick firewall between the prisoner compartment and the cabin of the van.
The rain no longer echoed in back. A steady cascade of rain now flowed in splashing Slick and Bo to awareness like a glass of water in the face when you’re drunk.
The wall between them and the cops had split open like a cut throat. Slick saw something in a flash of lightning. The shotgun had fallen from Holt’s grip and poked through the split, a toothpick in gap teeth. He kicked out a foot and reached the butt of the gun by an inch. He flipped his foot up and brought the gun closer. Bo figured out Slick’s plan and tried to back away, but only rattled his chains and rubbed his ankles more raw.
Slick hooked a prison issue boot under the gun stock and flipped it up into his cuffed hands. Bo braced himself for a blast.
Instead, Slick upended the gun, pointed the barrel straight down and shot the eye hook keeping him attached to the steel floor. The sound was incredible. Even with the torn open top of the van it was loud enough that both men reached to grab their ears only to have their wrists cruelly scraped again and held in place. Ringing deadened Bo’s hearing, but the gunpowder smell reeked in his nostrils as if a skunk had gotten into the van.
The chain connecting Slick’s feet had been split. He moved quickly, crouching by the open gash and reaching a hand around to Holt’s belt. Without being able to see, he felt around and sunk his hand in something warm and wet. He pulled back quickly, hand covered in blood from the entrails he’d accidentally fondled. Holt’s body split down the middle, his intestines hanging over his belt like a beer belly.
Choking back a gag Slick reached again, this time starting on Holt’s pant leg and feeling up until he reached the belt, a move he hadn’t used since high school in the back seat of Danielle Zeboli’s car. Slick snatched the key ring, found the cuff keys and undid his leg and hand cuffs.
Bo watched helplessly.
Straightening up to his full six-foot-two, Slick tilted back his head to the rain and let it wash over him. He let out a bellow to the skies like he was challenging the storm to a fight.
Slick lowered his head and his eyes met Bo’s again. He lifted the shotgun.
“Looks like I don’t have to wait for the yard.”
Bo strained at his cuffs, wanting at least to cover his face with his hands, but he ended up squirming like a little girl in a room full of spiders.
Slick squeezed the trigger. No sound. He pulled back on the stock and it spat out the used shell, but there were no others to reload.
Bo peeked open his eyes.
Slick got down to his knees and scanned the floor of the cabin for any spare shells. As he inched forward the steady stream of water flowing down the incline of the wrecked van ran through the opening and mixed with the blood of the two officers which coated the floor beneath their feet.
As Slick shifted his body forward, the front end of the van tilted to a steeper angle. Slick retreated.
He rose to his feet again, still gripping the shotgun.
“Guess I’ll let the storm take you. I got a gal to see and some money to spend.”
Slick hoisted himself up through the tear in the roof. Bo could hear him climb along the outside of the van and drop off.
Bo scanned around the carcass of the van for anything that could help him. He was alone.
Slick’s size fourteen boot slammed against the back of the van. It rocked forward. Another boot, another inch forward.
Bo tried to shift his weight to the back of the van for counterbalance, but one more boot to the bumper and he found himself sliding with the van down an incline. He had no idea how far down it went.
Slick stood on the two-lane highway in his state-issued Creamsicle-orange jumpsuit holding one state trooper issue shotgun with no shells. No one else knew the gun wasn’t loaded so he still had an effective bargaining tool.
Wet leaves stuck to his legs as he stood in the midst of the tempest. Fat drops of rain landed on every part of his already soaked body. Six hundred forty-two thousand dollars lay less than fifty miles away with Emma. She didn’t expect to see him for another twenty-five years.
Boy, would she be surprised.
CHAPTER 2
Emma stood naked in front of the mirror taking inventory of everything she hated about herself.
First: the hair. She tried bleaching it blonde, but it never looked right so she gave in to life as a mouse-brunette. The
re was the ten, okay fifteen, aw hell twenty pounds she had to lose. The four moles that lined up on her chin like some sort of miniature Mount Rushmore. Her teeth, oh her teeth. Crooked wasn’t even the word.
All of this artifice, these surface imperfections and she still had a killer ass, great fleshy round tits with tiny nipples that drove men nuts. Crooked teeth or not, she could suck the memory of all other women right out of a man’s dick. But what did all that get her when spackled over with her list of imperfections? Slick Eddie.
She learned to love him over time, but the part of her pushing tears out when he got sentenced was fighting a brawl inside with the part of her that was glad to see him go. If only she’d gotten a tumble with Bo before he was sent up. Now, him she could do a little time with.
Emma got dressed in the dank chill of her basement apartment. She rented the concrete-walled space from Sylvia, an older woman who wasn’t letting her house sit around and not earn. She rented out every room in the place, except the master suite and her son Delmer’s room, to college girls. The two-story-plus-loft Victorian made her an awfully nice return on a house that was paid off in 1986.
Carolina Crimes Page 22
