by David Putnam
Chapter Eight
Violence in its purest form will surge and ebb with a common rhythm, and if you’re familiar with it, you can predict when it will next surface. I’d been out of the business too long. Those last two weeks out in front of Mr. Cho’s, I missed the signs, the indicators.
Had I been on my game, I might’ve been able to stop the kid, been prepared for him the second he’d walked in. Maybe if I’d have thrown a forty-ounce bottle of Cobra beer, chunked him in the head with it. Instead of just watching, letting it all play out as if I were some kind of bumpkin sitting on a country fence.
Sleep in Chantal’s spare bedroom didn’t come easy. I tossed and turned and slept little in the four hours I allowed.
When I got up, Chantal was gone. On the kitchen table sat a note and a couple hundred dollars.
I’m not a total witch. I left you something. At least you can eat. You’re a survivor, Bruno. I know you’ll bounce back financially. I have to think of my own retirement. You understand. Please don’t hate me. Be out no later than five o’clock.
Love you, Babe.
Chan
She’d always talked about when her looks started to fade, how would she live in her old world after she’d become so accustomed to the “easy life,” how a nest egg was so important. I should’ve been mad about the money, but I wasn’t. I went over to the phone and dialed a number from memory.
The tin-hard voice of Crazy Ned Bressler said, “Yeah.”
“Let me speak to Jumbo.”
“You pissed in your Wheaties, pal. He doesn’t want nothin’ to do with yo sorry ass.”
I said nothing.
Bressler hesitated, then set the phone down with a clunk. Harsh rap music along with low murmurings in the background mixed and danced in my ear, then another voice on the phone. “What the hell’s this about? You said no more. Yesterday morning you said no more, that it was the last time. No if, ands, or buts, you said. Threw it right up in my face and laughed. You laughed at me. So, what am I hearing now, huh?”
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry, something’s come up.”
“You laughed at me, my man, when I asked you to do it one more time. Just one more.”
“I said I was sorry. What more do you want? A formal apology? You want me to say I was a fool that I wasn’t thinking clearly? Okay, I was a fool and I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“Fool? More like an asshole. Say that you’re an asshole, and I’ll think about it.”
I let the silence hang, then, “You know I don’t hold with your obstreperous language.”
He paused. I knew it would get to him. He gave it a little chuckle.
“Obstreperous? What kind of word is that? You some kind of sissy-pole smoking asshole?”
“You want me or not?”
“You know I do. I told you that yesterday.”
“Man, yes or no?”
“Meet at the usual. No, make it at the Bun Boy in two hours. You know where that is?”
“Yes, but it’s way to hell and gone out in the desert and that’s too early. It’s twice as far out. You said yesterday morning that the gig wasn’t until—”
“Not on the phone, asshole. Just tell me now. You in or out?”
“I have to—”
“You going to punk me or you going to show some sack and—”
“I’ll be there.” I slammed down the phone.
Bun Boy was in Baker, the home of the world’s largest thermometer. With a fast car and no cops it was the better part of three hours away. No chance could Jumbo make it there that fast. I called him at his home in Downey. He was leery about my sudden change of heart. He smelled cops and a setup. I couldn’t blame him. But all I was going to do was get there before him and sit around and wait while he scoped the area, made sure everything was cool, and I wasn’t bringing the cops down around his neck. He already had two strikes. One more and it was twenty-five to life.
“Shit.” I was going to miss the visit I promised my grandson Alonzo.
I picked up the phone to dial Jumbo back to reset the deal in four hours, not two, so I could keep my promise with Alonzo. I slammed the phone down. Went to the closet, took out a pair of Chantal’s sugar daddy’s chinos and a blue chambray shirt, pure white-man-yuppie. The pants were too large and the shirt too tight through the shoulders and arms, the guy was a pear. I cinched the belt up tight and hung the shirt out over it. I searched the sock drawer for something other than the thin stretch nylon jobs he had tons of. My hand came across something cold and hard. I knew the make by feel without looking. I took it out. An H&K .40 caliber. Too much gun for a pear to hold up, let alone shoot. I’d held a gun my entire career and it felt as natural as if part of my hand. For a brief second I thought about taking it along to keep Jumbo honest. Only a gun was a misdemeanor for Joe Citizen and a felony for an ex-con. And if I took it, there might arise an occasion where I’d have to use it. If I didn’t have it, I’d have to run. I wiped off any fingerprints and put it back.
I still had to boost a car, a calculated risk that it wouldn’t be reported before I was done with it. I had to get on the road now. The Sunday traffic, everyone would be coming back from Vegas, opposite direction than I would be going. At least that much fell squarely in my favor.
Chapter Nine
I sat in the parking lot across the street from Bun Boy and waited. Just the way I’d figured it, Jumbo was late, although I hadn’t made him or any of his boys driving around the area. Baker was nothing more than a gas and food oasis in the middle of the desert, a “wide spot in the road” as Dad would call it, and easy to pick out a car that made more than one pass.
Finding the right car and the ride out took three and half hours. Another two put it at about four thirty. It wouldn’t be absolutely dark until five fifteen. I’d give him another forty-five minutes, then call it a day. Dad’s words about not telling Alonzo unless I was absolutely sure, echoed in my brain and hurt just a little bit more each time I thought about it. Anger started to rise up unbidden and soon I’d need an outlet. I tried to focus it on that shovel-faced Deputy Mack. He was the true reason why I was going to miss the meeting with my grandson. Mack was the reason why I’d lost the money, not Chantal. She just did what she needed to do to survive. Without her, I’d have been a lot worse off.
I had about fifteen hours to get the job done, make the drive back, and be in court.
Off, down the road by the ramp that dumped folks from the freeway onto the frontage road that led to the restaurant, came a sleek, 700 series BMW, black with tinted windows. Jumbo had arrived. He drove by and slowed, then accelerated on past. He wanted me to follow. I started up, pulled onto the frontage road and fell in behind. We drove five miles, then turned off onto a dirt road, that had Jumbo not turned on it, I would have missed for sure. This had to be something big. Jumbo wouldn’t get his car dusty or bang his suspension like this for small potatoes. I was tired, but the thought of the job made my pulse beat in my temples and behind my eyes. The prospect of a big job always got my blood up.
We headed across the desert toward a clump of rocks to the east that now looked like an island as the sun set behind us and shadowed the ground around it. The rocks grew larger and at the same time slowly sank into the gloom of dusk.
The other jobs had been closer to civilization. All of a sudden I thought maybe he was taking me out to “bumfuck Egypt,” a place he described when taking someone no longer useful off the board. I was a witness to his criminal activity, all felonies, and unlike me with one strike, he had two. I’d made him a lot of money in the last four weeks. Maybe it was time to clear the boards. What better place to do it than in the desert? Now I wished I’d taken the pear’s gun.
Just before we started to pass the large rocks, Jumbo stopped, the red brake lights overly bright in the gathering gloom.
We waited. He finally rolled his window down, stuck his arm out, and waved me forward. He wanted me to walk up and get in his car. I stayed put. After a time,
he got out, a smile on his little ferret face. He stood six-foot tall and weighed a buck seventy. Thin, rail thin. John Ahern. They called him Jumbo because of his big floppy ears. The story goes that someone made the mistake of calling him Dumbo, a name he took exception to, not wise with a psychotic sociopath. The next time someone with any real balls called him Jumbo, he allowed it, and it stuck. He had on a black Tommy Bahama shirt, black slacks with a gold earring and matching bracelet, classy, unlike most thugs of his rank. He had little hands and held them open away from his body and said, “Hey?”
I checked the terrain one more time, got out, and walked up to him. “What’s with all the sand this time?”
“It’s the big one I told you about. It’s got to be a long ride. I got triple the crew catching for you.”
This time I held up my hands. “Where? I don’t see ’em.”
“They’re up ahead. I didn’t want them to see you. It’s better that way.”
I looked around again, not sure I believed him.
He cracked a small smile, “Why? You gettin’ sketchy on me?”
“Jumbo, if you haven’t noticed, we are out in the middle of nowhere.”
“Ease up on it, bad boy.”
“I told you not to call me that.”
He smiled broader. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“I’m going to need a hundred thousand this time.”
The smile disappeared. “I was going to be generous and double what I gave you the last time, give you fifty, out of the kindness of my heart. But a hunert, no, you can’t call the game like that, not after I already got this thing rolling. I could’ve got someone else for your part.”
“I don’t understand why you want me to begin with. But I’m here, and my price is a hundred. You said it was a big score.”
“I told ya before. It’s because no one else has the balls. They get up in the car, panic, and just start tossin’, breakin’ everything. You’re cool, take your time, treat the shit like it’s yours, and our recovery rate is higher. But this time there’s going to be a lot of loss no matter how gentle you are.”
“What’s the load?”
He squirmed a little, so I knew the next thing out of his mouth was going to be a lie. “Computer towers.”
“Bullshit.”
His eyes went hard. “Don’t push me, big man.”
“What’s the load?”
He hesitated, his mouth a straight line, “Computer chips.”
“Computer chips?”
Now, all the other times made sense. They were dry runs, training for this one. That nonsense about soft hands was just that, there was going to be heavy security. Heisting computer chips had become big business. They were small and valuable and easier to handle than gold bars. The computer companies had taken to delivering them in armored cars with escorts.
I smiled at him. “How much security?”
He nodded his head, smiled back, “Piece of cake, really. Four guards, two up front and two in the back. If you do it right, like you have in the past, they’ll never tumble to it.”
I tried to calculate the odds in my head. This changed the whole scenario. No one had hit them like this before. This was virgin territory for something of this magnitude. We were kicking over a hornet’s nest, and folks were going to be beyond pissed off. “What’s the take going to be?”
“None of your damn business. You in or you out?”
“Out.” I turned and headed to my car.
“Bruno! Bruno!”
The sand swished as he ran around me to be seen, a small gun in one small hand, the other up against my chest.
Chapter Ten
I looked down at the hand on my chest, “You better think twice about shooting me with that popgun. Sure, you’ll hit me with it. And I’ll probably eventually bleed out. But I’ll rip your head off first. And you know I’m telling it straight.”
He looked down at the gun in his hand, thought about it for a long second. “It’s too late to get someone else. You have to do it or you’re hanging my ass out here. I paid out the ass just for the information on this load and timetables for this gig.”
“What’s your end?”
He took the hand from my chest reached into his pocket. “Here.” He slapped the bundle of currency against my chest. I let it fall to the warm sand and ignored it.
He said, “Here’s seventy-five. I brought twenty-five extra just in case you tried to hold me up like this. Seventy-five, that’s even twenty-five more, that’s triple what you got before. Take it.”
“The deal’s changed. After the fence takes his cut, you’ll clear a couple million on this, won’t you? Even after you pay all your guys off, you get a cool couple of million. Fact is, your hooligans probably don’t even know what a computer chip is. They’re probably doing this for the same chicken-shit little price as last time.
“I’m taking all the risk. No. Now my price is two hundred thousand.”
His mouth dropped open.
I stooped and picked up the seventy-five. The money, cool to the touch, was compressed and bound tight. Still, it barely fit in Chantal’s sugar daddy’s pants pocket. “What’s two hundred to you when you’re looking at an easy two mil? And that’s two million tax free.” He didn’t say anything. I smiled, “It’s more than two mil, isn’t it?”
“Okay, okay then, two hundred K, that’s what you said. We got a deal. That seventy-five’s all I got on me, but you know I’m good for it.”
I moved right up close. I could smell his Doublemint breath. His teeth gnashed away a hundred miles per hour. “And you also know I’m good for coming for you if you try and gyp me out of it. I won’t be happy.”
He held out his hand. “You got Jumbo’s word.”
I took his hand and gave it a good squeeze, gave the bones a little grind. He maintained his smile. It looked like he’d just pulled one over on me. Like he knew it would go this way all along. Jumbo never played the dummy, never. He had something else lined up. I’d played right into him. I would have to keep my eyes open. “Where do I get on?”
“Gyp, and hooligans, what kind of words are those? You slay me, you know that, you really slay me.”
I waited.
His grin lost some its shine. “Okay, continue on down this road until it veers right. Stay on it another mile and three-tenths. There’s an orange cone in the road by some juniper trees at the base of the grade.”
“Where do I get off?”
“Same as before.”
“You got to be kidding me, that’s an extra sixty or seventy miles.”
“Eighty-eight, that’ll give you another hour and ten for the job. I’m paying you two hundred big ones. Don’t start your bellyaching now. You’re going to have to earn your money this time. Get going. You got,” he looked at his watch, “twenty-one minutes to get set up.”
I hesitated, again thinking something was wrong. I had somehow walked right in and got blindsided. It scared the hell out of me. He stood facing the west. The dying sunlight turned his face orange and contrasted greatly with his jet-black hair. He waited, comfortable, knowing no matter what, he had me. I would do it the way he wanted. I got in the car and headed out, going around his Beemer, spinning sand in a rooster tail. He scrambled out of the way. In the rearview, he brushed sand off his Tommy Bahama, mad enough to stomp his feet and kick at imaginary minions. I couldn’t put it from my mind. I couldn’t help thinking like a two-bit sneak thief. I imagined all the money before I even had it in my hand. Enough money to do it all the right way. I couldn’t wait to tell Marie, show her, and watch her eyes light up. Not from greed but from what the money could do for the children.
I passed the rock-strewn mountain and looked to the right. In a little rock alcove were fifteen or twenty four-wheel-drive vehicles, with three to four men each, a small army of thieves to support me in my endeavor to make Jumbo a kingpin thug. They all stood ready, overly animated in their anticipation. They stopped talking and watched as I kept going on
by, their faces too far away to distinguish features. Jumbo was right, I didn’t want them to see me.
I drove. Just as he’d said, I came upon an orange cone. I turned and followed the railroad tracks south. I came to a bunch of salt cedars as the sun switched off all the yellow, the ground turned red, then quickly into long shadow. In the head lights, on a branch among a clump of salt cedar, hung a canvas bag weighted down with heavy tools. I didn’t have to check my watch. The bright light from the train to the north heading south cut through the clear night air, through the vacant desert all the way to where I sat watching. I shut off the headlights and pulled in behind the salt cedar. I didn’t have time to contemplate the act. Jumbo planned it this way. I got out, pulled the bag of tools from the branch. I scrambled along the right-of-way a hundred yards to the base of the grade where the train would have to slow. I found a good place just off the right-of-way, and lay down among some sage. As the massive freight approached, the ground started a soft rumble and grew as the behemoth rose up larger. I should’ve been scared, but I’d done this before and knew how it would play out. I opened the canvas bag, took out the cotton work gloves, put them on, and then took out the small set of bolt cutters. I put the powerful flashlight in my back pocket and the pry bar in the back of my belt.
The long, black train engine roared by at fifty miles per hour as it tried to gain enough momentum to climb the grade. I watched the cars. This time Jumbo didn’t say anything about the markings. I assumed it would be obvious. The cars were all transport car carriers, sea containers, and tankers with chemicals, all with bright paints of local gangs from across the country. Mobile billboards tagged with graffiti as it came through their town. All the cars except one, a newer cargo car.
