“I don’t know. I’ll have to call you again when it’s over.”
“Please, be careful, won’t you?”
“You bet, Ma.”
Sam hung up the phone and walked back into the bar. Hearing his mother’s voice made him feel better. Somebody new was racking the balls, and Johnny Gee was chalking his stick. The same guys were hunched over the bar. A black-and-white movie flickered on the TV hanging from a set of tire chains screwed into the ceiling.
“Hey, man. You got another buck? Buy me another beer, will ya? I’m on a roll here.” Johnny Gee flashed him a wide grin and a wink. His ridiculous shiny suit made a certain kind of sense in the light of the pool table. It made him look trim, and efficient, stripped clean of extraneous detail, ready to do only one thing: stroke a pool cue. The skinny arms of the suit extended into the stick through the grip of his long, slender fingers. If he were a machine, Sam thought, Johnny Gee would be a racing bike, all spindly and bristling with gears and spokes and neat, tight little molded-in welds. Narrow and fast. That’s what he was, standing with a pool cue at the table in the dimness. Narrow and fast.
Sam ordered two more beers and leaned against the bar. Johnny Gee broke the rack with one quick jab of the cue. The balls scattered randomly from one end of the table to the other. Two balls went down.
“I’ll take lows,” said Johnny Gee, placing his cigarette on the edge of the table. He took aim at one of the solid-colored balls and shot. The ball hit the side cushion and banked into a corner pocket. He walked around the table, studying the lay of the balls, although this wasn’t particularly necessary. He was lined up to shoot another ball in the side pocket and from there, to roll a third ball down the side rail into the corner. He did this. The man he was playing looked dejected. Johnny Gee missed his next shot, a long one into the corner at the opposite end of the table. He sipped his beer and chalked his cue absentmindedly. The other man made two easy shots and missed. Somebody on the television late movie said, “I wonder …” A phone rang.
“Anybody here called Butterfield?” the bartender yelled.
“Yeah, me,” said Sam.
“For you.”
“What are you doing in town, kid?” said a voice.
“Spicer? Is that you?”
“None other. Been a while. What you been doing with yourself?”
“I’m in a spot of trouble, Spicer, and I wonder …”
“Stay where you are, kid. I’ll be there in five.”
“I’ll wait for you in the parking lot, Spicer. I’m driving a Caddy.”
“I’ll find you.” The phone went dead.
Sam handed the phone to the bartender and leaned heavily against the bar.
“I’ll have another beer, please,” he half-whispered. He was surprised at how tired he was. The bartender delivered the beer and Sam pushed a couple of dollars across the bar.
“You know Spicer, huh?” asked the bartender.
“How’d … how’d you know?” Sam stammered.
“Ain’t a big town, man. He calls here once, twice a day.”
“Of course.”
“I said, you know Spicer, huh?”
“We used to race together at the fairgrounds.”
“Musta been a while ago. Spicer ain’t raced in, I don’t know how long.”
“Back in the seventies,” said Sam, pulling hard on his beer.
“Hey! I remember you! You’re that kid from upstate. Yeah, I remember now. You won a few down here, didn’t you?”
“A few.”
“Old Spicer, he was a demon behind the wheel, hisself, as I recall.”
“He beat me about as many times as I beat him. He was something.” Sam finished his beer. He felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Hey, man, what was that call all about?” It was Johnny Gee.
“Come on. We’ve got to go,” said Sam. He turned around and brushed past Johnny Gee and pushed open the door at the end of the hallway. It opened onto the parking lot. Johnny Gee followed him.
“Where you goin’? What was that call all about, man?”
“Just come on,” said Sam.
The door closed behind them with a soft whoosh. Sam climbed into the front seat of the Caddy and rested his head on the steering wheel. Somehow, there had to be a way… .
THE CADILLAC STARTED on the first crank. Sam sat behind the wheel staring at the cinderblock wall of the bar.
“You got to tell me what’s goin’ on, man,” said Johnny Gee.
“Spicer’s coming here to meet us,” said Sam. “Sit tight.”
“Pull out and take the first right, Butter,” said a voice from the back seat. Sam’s head jerked around, coming face to face with the smiling countenance of his friend Spicer.
“Spicer. You scared the shit out of me. How’d you find us?”
“You said you was in a Caddy, Butter, and this one’s the only Caddy in the lot. Besides, I seen you guys comin’ out the back of the bar, I just jumped in.”
“What is this ‘Butter’ shit?” asked Johnny Gee.
“That’s what they used to call me around the dirt tracks,” said Sam.
“So tell me about the back window here. I’ve seen ’em lookin’ better.”
“In a minute. Where are we going, Spicer?”
“Take this turn. Stay goin’ straight down this road for about ten miles, and you’ll see a big white farmhouse on your right. Take the drive next to it.”
“Where are you taking us?” Sam stole a glance at his friend Spicer. He was wearing an orange International Harvester cap and a plaid-lined blue jean jacket. His face was red and weathered from years of working outdoors. The smile on his face revealed several missing teeth.
“My place,” said Spicer. “You got any ideas about fixin’ that front end, you may as well forget ’em. Once a Caddy’s front end is as far gone as this one, there’s no hope.”
“I guess you’re right about the front end, Spicer,” said Sam.
“You seen we got a couple of problems,” said Johnny Gee.
“Victor said …”
“Who’s Victor?”
“Guy you talked to back at the station. He’s uh, what you might call my executive assistant.” A deep smoker’s cough gurgled up from inside Spicer’s throat, trailing off in a laugh.
“I still love to say ridiculous shit and laugh myself sick, huh, Butter? You remember how we used to sit around between heats down at the track cracking weak jokes and laughin’ our heads off?”
“Yeah. We had some good times, Spicer.”
“And we drove some good races, huh, Butter?”
“You ought to know, Spicer. You watched me drive from just off my rear bumper enough.”
“Shit.”
“Speaking of shit, we’re about neck deep in some,” said Johnny Gee, interrupting.
“Yeah, I figured you wasn’t down here on no social visit,” said Spicer. “Old Victor said he heard some shit on the scanner about you guys a few minutes ago. That’s why I got him to take me over to the bar, lookin’ for you. I figured you’d want to know you was featured as tonight’s entertainment on the police bands.”
“Scanner?” Sam took his foot off the gas as the front end began to shimmy.
“Police band radio scanner. One of the little things with the blinkin’ red lights, picks up all the local cop talk. We got one in the station. Handy little fucker.”
“What’d he hear?” asked Johnny Gee.
“Just a description of two white males driving a Caddy that fits this description. I figured it had to be you, from what Victor told me.”
“An’ this went out over all the police radios around here?” Johnny Gee stuck a cigarette in his mouth and asked for a light. Spicer lit a match. Johnny Gee took a long drag and thanked him.
“That description of you two went out over the sheriff’s radio, but all the local law around here monitors each other’s frequencies, so they all got it by now.”
“What kinda other trouble you got, ’sides the front en
d and the rear end and the holes in the doors? You got some wonderful alignment there, Butter. This thing feels like it’s runnin’ on three wheels. So who popped the back window for you?”
Sam took a deep breath and launched into a recitation of everything that had happened since the parking lot at the diner. When he was finished, he stole a quick glance at Spicer, and just as fast, wished he hadn’t.
The man in the back seat started coughing and laughing, coughing and laughing, finally sticking his head out the window to get his wind back.
“What’s so damn funny?” asked Johnny Gee when the red-faced man returned to normal.
“You’re gonna love the operation I got out at the farm, Butter,” he said. “When that old station of mine stopped payin’ its way, and when the dirt tracks closed, I looked around for somethin’ that would get me by, and I found it. Lord almighty, I found it.”
“What are you up to, Spicer?” asked Sam.
“Well, the economy done passed up the boonies out here, I guess you seen,” said Spicer. “Things are different since you was around, kid. No racing to speak of, ’less you’re willin’ to travel over to Terre Haute, maybe further, and I’m getting too sore in the joints for that. So first the tracks closed, and then the interstate went through, and they put a mess of them self-serve stations out on the interchange, and I pretty much went bust. I had to come up with somethin’ pretty quick, so I looked around for a while, and I come up with somethin’ all right. You’re gonna love it.”
“I’m going to love what?”
“Just wait till you see,” he said, starting to laugh again.
“Funny guy,” said Johnny Gee with a shrug.
“Is this the farmhouse you were talking about?” asked Sam, pointing to a large white Victorian surrounded by a grove of oaks and tall pines.
“That’s it. There’s your turn.”
Sam pointed the big Caddy down a dirt road not much wider than the car. The front bumper scraped underbrush and crashed through a ridge of tall grass growing down the middle of the road.
“This ain’t a road, it’s a path,” said Johnny Gee. “Where you takin’ us?”
“‘Nother coupla miles. Where we’re goin’ is, uh, off the beaten track, you might say.” Spicer collapsed into another gale of laughs and coughs.
“You’re not makin’ book, and you couldn’t grow marijuana if you wanted to,” said Johnny Gee. “What you got back here? The most far-out whorehouse in the state?”
Spicer stopped laughing long enough to point across a small field. A beat-up trailer could be seen against the trees at the edge of the field, and next to it sat the biggest satellite dish Johnny Gee had ever seen.
“What the hell …”
“You heard of home video rentals?” asked Spicer, directing the question at Johnny Gee. He pointed to a spot next to the trailer, and Sam eased the Caddy to a halt. The three men got out of the car and walked over to the dish, which stood ten feet over their heads.
“We’re kinda supplementin’ the market back here in the woods. Undercuttin’ the competition, you might say.”
“That’s some dish,” said Johnny Gee.
“That’s forty-two grand worth of some dish,” said Spicer. “And you said somethin’ about gettin’ a look at them tapes you found?” Spicer unlocked the door to the trailer and opened it. He flipped on the light switch. Industrial shelving covered every wall of the trailer, even the windows, and more shelving stuck into the room like stacks in a library. Every inch of the shelving was taken up with racks of video recorders. Boxes of blank tapes lined the hall to the rear of the trailer.
“I’m a big fan of HBO,” said Spicer, breaking into another spasm of laughter.
“You’re bootlegging videos right off the dish outside,” said Johnny Gee. “That’s some clever shit, man.”
“We can make two hundred tapes at a time,” said Spicer with a sweep of his hand. “All you got to do is load them up, punch the buttons, and throw this switch over here when the movie starts to run.” He pointed to a master console at the end of the trailer. Next to it, a state-of-the-art Sony monitor sat on a pedestal between two stereo speakers.
“When I seen them video stores sproutin’ around here like weeds, I seen my chance. I told you I found somethin’ that would pay the bills. It’s clean, it’s easy, there’s an ever-growin’ market, and there’s a steady flow of product. They just keep showin’ them movies on HBO and Cinemax and Showtime, and we just keep tapin’ ’em. Hollywood sells their videos for thirty, forty, hell, seventy dollars. We sell ours for nine ninety-five. All you got to do is push buttons and unwrap tapes. Damnedest thing you ever saw. A fuckin’ torrent of money. More’n I ever won at the dirt tracks, that’s for damn sure.”
“Where did you get all this stuff, Spicer?” asked Sam, taking a seat at the console.
“I had me some phony business cards printed up and flew out to one of them electronics industry conventions in Las Vegas. I hung around there for a couple days, finally made a deal with a guy outa L.A. for these recorders. He had a warehouse full of ’em, models from a coupla years ago, no infrared remote, nonprogrammable. All they do is record and play back. Perfect. That’s all I need ’em for anyway. I got the dish from some company near Salt Lake City that was goin’ outa business, picked it up for less than half of what it was worth, and they trucked it out here and set it up. I’ve had this piece of land since the fifties. Never did anything with it, too hilly to farm, even if it was cleared, which it isn’t. So I just dragged this old trailer out here and set things up. Victor’s the one knew how to do everything, all the wirin’ and stuff. He did a nickel ’bout twelve years ago on a larceny beef. They knocked over a good-size savings and loan, and Victor was the one canceled the alarm. He specialized in debugging alarms for years, finally got busted, did his time, and went straight. He was working for me down at the station on automobile electrical systems. A fuckin’ wizard, that guy.”
“You could have used him when you were driving modifieds, Spicer,” Sam said.
“You couldn’t be more right about that, Butter. Guys like Victor don’t come down the pike every day. Quiet. Don’t drink. Keeps to himself. Loves the tube. This setup is perfect for him. All it takes is the two of us. That way I ain’t got five guys runnin’ around Saturday nights gettin’ drunk blabbin’ to bimbos about all the free videotaped movies they can get. Keep things small and keep ’em simple is what I always say.”
“Hey, man,” said Johnny Gee. “I’m gonna run out to the car and get them tapes. Let’s have us another look.” When he returned with the tapes, he handed them to Spicer and sat on an old wooden milk crate in the corner. Spicer walked into a room at the back of the trailer and returned with a six-pack of cold beer and handed them around.
“This is the one we already looked at?” asked Johnny Gee, indicating a tape with RAMADA INN typed on the label alongside a list of dates.
Sam examined the tape and nodded his head, yes. He felt like he was at the bottom of a well standing waist deep in mud and looking up. The only way he was going to get out was by understanding what had put him down there to begin with. He cracked open his beer and took a swig. Nothing had ever tasted better. Be thankful for the little things. He remembered that from Ranger school. He was on patrol one night and had come to the edge of the woods, and there before him was a neon sign that read U-NEEDA-REST BAR. Indeed they did. The ten guys on the patrol pitched in and bought four cases of beer and forty cheeseburgers and stumbled under the load back into the woods where they promptly sat down on a couple of logs and finished the entire mess in under an hour, resuming the patrol considerably refreshed and thankful for the little things in life.
“Which one of these tapes should we see first, Major?” asked Johnny Gee.
“What’s on the other labels?”
Johnny Gee opened the boxes examined each tape in turn.
“You got the one that says ‘Ramada Inn.’ This one says ‘Mobile Van.’ This one says ‘She
raton Springfield.’ This one here just says ‘The Company’ on it, and this one says … Jesus! ‘Corrine’s’!”
“That’s the whorehouse up in Springfield, isn’t it?” asked Spicer.
“You damn right it is. Let’s take a look at it first.”
“No.” Sam sounded more sure of himself than he was. “I want to know what’s going on. Let’s watch the one that says ‘Mobile Van.’ Maybe we’ll learn something we don’t know.” Johnny Gee puffed his cigarette. He handed the “Mobile Van” tape to Spicer.
Spicer stuck the tape in a machine mounted above the console, pressed a couple of buttons on the console, flipped on the Sony, and sat down in a wicker rocker. The screen flickered on, gray and white like snow, then went black. Again time and date signature appeared in the lower left corner of the screen. August 3, 10 A.M. A man’s face appeared.
“Saturday, three August. Rock County, Route Seven,” he said.
The camera cut away from the face and pointed out a windshield of a van. A black limousine pulled away from the curb several car-lengths ahead of the van.
“It’s a rental limo. See the plate?” Johnny Gee pointed at the license plate.
Spicer chuckled and said, “Wonder who’s in that fucker.”
The screen went blank for an instant, then the picture returned, this time showing the limo at a greater distance down a two-lane road.
“You recognize anything?” asked Johnny Gee.
“The voice on the tape said Rock County. I haven’t spent much time over in Rock County. That could have been any one of a dozen towns there. I don’t know which one,” said Sam.
“Kinda reminded me of Wilson, but I’m not sure either. You recognized it, Spicer?”
“I raced at the Rock County speedway a couple of times. It’s just outside of Wilson, between there and Florence. I’m not sure. Could be Wilson. Didn’t the voice say Route Seven?”
“Yeah, he did,” said Johnny Gee.
“Wilson’s right on Seven. I wonder what they’re doing out there.”
The screen goes blank again then the picture returned, the limo is in wild terrain, and no farms can be seen.
“Looks like that state forest down there, to me,” said Johnny Gee. “Wait a minute. The limo’s turning.”
Rules of the Road Page 10
