Rumrunners

by Eric Beetner

  Lonny’s eyes wouldn’t have been any more hungry than if it had been those Russian hookers.

  “Okay, looks good. Shut it now.” Webb tried to hustle it along. All three of the men in his company made him nervous.

  Skinny boy jumped up and grabbed hold of the strap then leapt off the tailgate and used his slight body weight to draw down the roll door. It slammed shut like a prison cell.

  “You’ll be contacted with payment. Keys?”

  The tall one tossed out a single key on a ring. Webb raised a hand to catch it but Lonny intercepted the missile instead.

  Webb caught his eye. “We good?”

  “Oh yeah, real good.”

  Webb saw him spending that five grand already behind his eyes. More belt buckles, probably.

  “What about your car?” the tall one said. “Someone coming to collect that too?”

  “Keep it,” Webb said. “It’s stolen.”

  The rig started right up and after an awkward left turn to make it out of the storage lot they were headed back toward Iowa and Lonny already found a country station on the radio.

  The driver’s side window had been left open and the cab had a chill, but the heater worked fine and Lonny seemed to be enjoying the nearly-new condition of the Peterbilt. He rolled the window up and noticed a smear as he did. Something on the weather stripping around the window that streaked as he cranked it back into place. Something red. He cranked the gearbox up as they gained speed toward the highway then Lonny reached out and touched the smear. He checked his fingers.

  Blood.

  He showed the stain to Webb who shrugged his shoulders. He sure didn’t figure it was those two kids who drove the big-rig out there in the first place. Some poor sucker on his night shift drew the short straw and ended up hauling the wrong cargo.

  The after midnight traffic on the interstate moved a steady five miles over the limit. There wasn’t much to be said so Webb and Lonny let the country crooners do all the talking.

  Webb breathed a little easier once they were back across the river and into Iowa. Illinois never quite felt right to him. Something about that state felt like a kid who’d been dropped on his head as a baby. There was something…off about it.

  When his body relaxed Webb realized how badly he had to piss.

  “Hey, pull off the next stop. I gotta take a leak.”

  “Yeah, I don’t see any trucker’s friends in here.”

  “A what?”

  “Empty bottle you can pee in.”

  “Jesus Christ, you do that?”

  “You get real good at taking out your prick at highway speeds.”

  Webb shook his head.

  Lonny piloted the rig into a space along a row of other trucks parked and idling.

  “Hey, grab me a Mountain Dew in there,” Lonny said.

  “You don’t need to piss?”

  “Nah. Got a bladder of steel.”

  “Okay.” Webb hopped down out of the cab. He dodged oil stains as he walked across the lot to the brightly lit mini-mart and fast food combo.

  Easiest twenty grand I ever made, he thought. I don’t even have to do the driving.

  More country music assaulted his ears inside, but he could tolerate some whiny twang for the next hour it would take for the truck to be delivered.

  After an epically long piss he bought two Mountain Dews and wove between more oil slicks on his way back to the truck.

  Looking at the long line of sleeping cabs, yellow running lights on and heaters, TVs and DVDs of porn starring chubby girls playing inside, he felt a wave of nausea. The fumes didn’t help, but it was the realization that he left Lonny unsupervised with the stash.

  His brain made a logical justification out of the illogical idea that Lonny couldn’t take off with the load because he didn’t have the address where it was being delivered. Only now did Webb see that if Lonny was going to make off with the rig he would go anywhere but the meeting place.

  He gripped a can of Mountain Dew in each hand and began running. The backs of all the trailers looked the same. One truck was a moving van with a bright green logo on the trailer so that wasn’t it. His truck had almost no markings at all. It was generic. Easily lost. Easily hidden.

  Webb hadn’t run in quite a while and thoughts of a heart attack now flooded his brain with the influx of fast moving blood. Pressure was building inside the cans of soda as he pumped his arms and ignored the spots of oily ground, his eyes skimming from one trailer to another, all of them blending into one anonymous truck barreling past on the highway.

  A lifetime in service to the Stanleys and this was how it ended. Webb would finally be the one to bring disgrace to the McGraws. Losing a few cases of liquor for his dad would have been a hanging offense. Losing an entire big rig full of unprocessed meth? Webb’s mind didn’t even know of a punishment to suit the crime.

  A sound penetrated the pounding thoughts. A high lonesome wail. Country music. Webb stopped. He turned to his right, looking at the tractor trailer he stood behind. It had no markings. Plain. He followed the sound.

  Inside the cab the tunes were cranked and a tin-eared trucker sang along. Sounded like he was celebrating something.

  Webb hoisted himself up on the running board of the cab and saw Lonny belting out a tune, big ol’ smile on his face.

  Webb exhaled, felt his blood pressure drop fifty points. Better than leaving a hundred Illinois times. He opened the cab door and slid in, trying to catch his breath.

  Lonny didn’t turn down the music or stop singing. He took the can of Mountain Dew. “Thanks!” he shouted over the song. Webb wasn’t sure, maybe Willie Nelson?

  Before Webb had his answer he was falling backward out of the cab. The tire iron hit him square between the eyes. That smile never dropped off Lonny’s face.

  He tumbled down and hit the cool asphalt, hard. He already tasted blood from the split in his skin across the bridge of his nose. The can of Dew split and sprayed like champagne mocking him.

  The sound of the engine coming to life was a T. Rex, King Kong and a Terminator all rolled into one. Webb slid back away from the tire as the gears clawed into reverse like teeth gnashing at meat. The truck began to move and Webb reached out a hand but it only brushed against the front tire as the eighteen-wheeler rolled away.

  3

  There was a war inside Webb McGraw. Fess up or fuck off were the two sides. The battle had been fierce.

  After hitching a ride with a friendly trucker who wanted neither cash nor a blow job for his trouble, Webb arrived back at home base with a choice to make. Tell the Stanleys they weren’t getting their truck or split town and do what he did best—drive. And keep on driving.

  There was always the nuclear option—the elaborate lie. Webb never was much for lying. Always too worried he’d get caught to commit to a tall tale. He’d seen too many people over the years get caught out in a lie and pay the price in more ways than he could count. From cash money to digits of the finger and toe kind—to life itself.

  No, better leave the lying to the pros. He was a grease monkey, Richard Petty wannabe, leadfoot McGraw like his dad and granddad before him. It wasn’t like them to run, but in his experience it wasn’t like the Stanleys to do a whole lot of sympathetic understanding either.

  He landed home about four-thirty in the morning, made a pot of coffee and sat in his empty house to think. No wife. She was cooling in the ground about five miles away under a tombstone built for two waiting for Webb to come home. His only child, his son Tucker, hadn’t been to visit in over a year.

  No, Webb faced this dilemma alone. On his second cup of coffee he noticed he hadn’t been spiking it with bourbon. A subtle sign, but a sign nonetheless. He never drank on driving nights. Somehow his body knew he wasn’t done driving for the evening.

  In his car—his favorite car, the 1970 Plymouth Barracuda—on his way to see Hugh Stanley he almost banged a U-turn at every intersection he drove through. Integrity got the best of him. The closer he got
, though, the harder it was to keep the wheel on the straight and narrow. It didn’t help his nerves any to be parking out front of the Stanley compound at six a.m.

  It was six-thirty by the time he stepped out of the car. His finger hovered over the call button at the gate. His name would gain him entry at any hour, but anyone arriving unannounced and this early would get an armed escort to the door. After that, Webb had no idea what could be in store. All his ideas gave him a headache. All Hugh Stanley’s ideas, or one of his shitbag sons, were sure to give him a headache of a very different kind. The 9mm kind. The chainsaw kind. The back tire of his own Barracuda backing up over his melon kind.

  Last chance, Webb, he thought. Nothing holding you here except steady employment that had grown not so steady lately. Tucker wouldn’t give a shit if you up and left town. Maybe head out to Omaha and see Dad. Calvin, the old bastard still kicking ass and taking names.

  That finger hovered like a mosquito waiting for a fat vein.

  4

  Tucker burned the pizza. Always going for the extra brown on the cheese like the picture on the box. Dinner was served. The freezer offered little else in the way of second prize so blackened pepperoni pizza it was.

  While the dark brown disk cooled in the kitchen, Tucker set up a tray in front of the TV. He’d bought the set of four when he and Jenny were still married. He saw the gesture as an attempt at family togetherness, she saw it as the opposite. An admission of defeat.

  “We can’t even sit at a goddamn dinner table anymore?”

  “Well, I don’t know. Milo just watches TV over our shoulders anyhow. I figure we could all sit together and watch some programs for families like that Survivor or something.”

  “Don’t give me any ideas about running off to a desert island.”

  “It’s not like it’s a vacation for those people. It’s hard you know.”

  Jenny bore down on him with one of her stares. Her eyes, pretty as they were, burned like twin soldering irons sometimes.

  The knock at the door caught Tucker before he could retrieve his charred pizza.

  The man at the door did not immediately intimidate. He came alone, wore a tie and button-down shirt under his tasteful leather jacket. He held no weapon and made no move to enter Tucker’s home and yet Tucker was still scared right away.

  “Mr. McGraw?” the stranger began.

  “Yes.” Tucker held firm to the edge of the door in a pudding-tough attempt at keeping the man out.

  “I’m Kenny Stanley. You father works for us from time to time.”

  He knew the name. “Yes?”

  “May we have a word?”

  Tucker thought they were having a word, but what the young Stanley meant was could he come inside and dump a truckload of shit all over his house that would take maybe the rest of his life to clean up. But Tucker knew the name and what the name meant so what else could he do?

  “Come in.”

  He stepped aside and Kenny walked in with the confidence of a boss over an employee.

  “What’s this about?” Tucker asked, declining to offer his guest any pizza.

  “I was wondering if you’d heard from your father at all.”

  “We talk from time to time.”

  “In the last forty-eight hours?” Kenny surveyed the living room with the meager light provided by the single bulb floor lamp and the glow of the muted TV playing Jeopardy.

  “Not in about six weeks. Why?”

  “We can’t seem to raise him either and he has something of ours. One of his jobs for us. He never made his delivery.”

  “I don’t know anything about it.” This was just the sort of visit that kept Tucker far away from the family business all his life.

  Kenny grinned with an insincere reptile curl of the lip. “Your family and my family have been in business together for a long time.” Kenny let the statement of fact hang in the air to mix with the charcoal smell of the burnt pizza. “No McGraw has ever missed a delivery. Especially not one of this size.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know anything about my dad’s business. I don’t have anything to do with it.”

  “But, you are a McGraw, right?”

  “Yeah. Just not that kind of McGraw.”

  “Well, as the next of kin—”

  “What? Is my dad…dead?” The meeting had quickly turned into the other sort of visit that kept Tucker out of the business.

  “We don’t know. He’s gone is all we do know. No one at his house. His car gone and, more importantly, our cargo gone.”

  More importantly? Than a man’s life? Tucker had every reason in the world to hate the Stanleys. Add one more.

  “What was your cargo?”

  “That’s not important. It was large and very valuable. Those are the key items.” Kenny sounded like he either had one year of law school before he dropped out or he watched a lot of TV.

  Tucker had a thought. “He did call the other day.” Kenny perked up. “Only for five seconds which is why I forgot. He asked if I knew any truck drivers.”

  “Truck drivers?”

  “I don’t.”

  “I see.”

  “That was it, though. I never heard what he wanted someone like that for.”

  “To drive a truck, I assume.” The cold-blooded smile came back to Kenny’s lips.

  “Anyway, that was the last time I talked with him.”

  “Uh-huh.” Kenny spread his legs shoulders wide like a soldier at ease. “Like I was saying, as the next of kin and me acting as my daddy’s representative, I have to ask you now for your father’s debt to us.”

  All three contestants on Jeopardy got the final answer wrong. Some guy won the whole shebang with a hundred bucks in the bank. Tucker was faring no better in coming up with an answer to why this jackass was in his house.

  “Excuse me?”

  “To put it simply, the debt transfers down. Your father has fucked us for a large sum of money. Money you now owe.” The even keel of his tone stretched even more even, giving it a threatening tautness.

  “I can’t…I mean, why should I owe you any money?”

  “Because your father owes us money and we can’t find him.”

  “So go look for him. I can’t help you.”

  “We can find ways for you to help us.”

  Tucker sat back onto the couch. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I’m a Stanley. We’re always serious.”

  Silence enveloped the room thicker than a bad first date. Tucker kept waiting for Webb to jump out of the shadows and announce his big practical joke. When no one did any jumping Tucker began to get angry at Webb for bringing him into a life he’d told his dad he wanted no part of. Tucker knew the infectious nature of a life of crime and wanted to keep himself fully stocked in penicillin against his own dad and anyone like him.

  “How much?”

  Kenny displayed some of that famous Stanley seriousness. “Ten million.”

  “What?” This had to be a joke now.

  “And that’s being generous. Years of service have to be worth something.”

  “You expect me to come up with ten million dollars?”

  “Yes, we do. Unless you can return our merchandise. Then we’ll call it even.”

  “Oh, call it even. How nice. Do you have any idea who you’re talking to? Look around you. I sell insurance. My ex-wife takes half my paycheck. I’m about to eat my fifth frozen pizza in as many days because they were on sale last week at the store so I bought a week’s worth. How the hell am I gonna get you ten million dollars?”

  “I have no idea. But, I’ll be back to collect it.”

  “It won’t be here.”

  “Then you’d better find your father.”

  There it was. He didn’t really expect Tucker to come up with that amount of money. The Stanleys were using it as leverage to make Tucker dig up his dad. The cash may have been easier to find.

  “Let me tell you something,” Tucker said. “He’s much more likely
to take your call.”

  Kenny moved toward the door, never having made himself comfortable in Tucker’s house, if that was even possible.

  “Like I said before, we’re being generous because of your family name. We don’t want to think the worst of a McGraw. Maybe there’s a simple explanation for all this.”

  Tucker stood. “I’m sure there is.”

  “Until we find out what that is, ten million. Good night. Enjoy your pizza.”

  Kenny opened the door and let himself out. Tucker stood in the gloom of his living room trying to get the joke.

  Final Jeopardy answer: a lot. Question: How fucked am I?

  5

  “Tucker who?”

  “Your grandson. Your only grandson.” Granted, Calvin hadn’t spoken with Tucker in at least three years, but to not even recognize his only grandchild’s name?

  “Oh, shit, yeah. How the hell are you, boy?” Calvin came across the line from Omaha clear as lake ice. The gravel in his voice only faked his age. That rough road of a voice box had been that way for decades.

  “Dad’s gone missing.”

  “Who’s dad?”

  “My dad. Your son. Webb.”

  “You don’t say?”

  Tucker slapped an open palm to his forehead. “I do say, Granddad, and the Stanleys say too. They came around here asking me to pay for something he stole on his way out of town.”

  “Stanleys, you say?”

  “Yeah. The Stanleys.”

  “Sons a bitches. Been using us McGraw men like slaves for eighty years. Never once looked on us as any more than chauffeurs and errand boys. Fuck ’em.”

  “Well, Granddad, I can’t exactly eff them. They want money from me. And I don’t know where Dad is. Have you heard from him?”

  “Not in a few weeks. Stole something you said?”

  “Yes. A delivery he was making.”

  “Bullshit. No McGraw would ever steal cargo. Hold tight. I’ll be right there.”