Rumrunners

by Eric Beetner

  And not beat cops. Detectives in suits. Shit. He looked them up and down for signs of Minnesota. They looked more Ozark Mountains.

  Jenny stood under his nose as he kept eyes on the two men slowly turning in his direction. “You piece of shit. What did you do with him? You’re lucky I didn’t call the cops myself. This is fucking kidnapping is what it is.”

  “Jenny, calm down.”

  “I can’t find Milo. The cops can’t find you. I told them. I told them you have our son and that is a direct violation of our divorce agreement. You’ll never see him again, Tucker. Never.”

  The cop with the crew cut stepped up. His partner with the heavy brows and a tattoo peeking out from under his collar let his buddy do the talking.

  “Mr. McGraw, we’ve been looking for you. Is your grandfather with you? Waiting in the car, maybe?”

  “I’m alone.”

  “Fair enough. Maybe you can take us to him. We’d really like to talk to you both.”

  Jenny was emboldened by her new friends. “You better fucking tell me where Milo is before they take you away and lock you up. What the hell have you been doing with that old man anyhow? Did you get our son involved?”

  “Milo’s fine, Jen. Everything is fine.”

  “Mr. McGraw, you’ll have to come with us now.”

  Tucker looked into the eyes of the men who would change his life. He couldn’t argue. He’d been fighting himself for the things he’d done. He wasn’t about to start justifying the crimes he’d been a part of because he was trying to find his dad, and later his dad’s killer. Wrong was wrong.

  The man with the thick brows lowered them to an intimidating level. His hand remained at his side. No cuffs came out. No rights were read. Tucker had shown no signs of resisting, but the men’s actions, or inaction, gave him a moment’s pause.

  “Jenny, did you see these guys’ badges?”

  “What? No. They aren’t here to arrest me. They were looking for you, jackass.”

  “I know that,” Tucker inched a half step backward. Crew Cut matched him in the slow movements of hunters not wanting to disturb prey. “But, Jenny…these aren’t cops.”

  She turned to them, a betrayed but confused look on her face. “Huh?”

  Tucker reached out to a silver rolling rack empty of clothes but hung with two dozen wooden hangers. He clamped a hand around a hanger while Crew Cut shoved Jenny aside as he charged. Eyebrows reached into his pocket and pulled out a short black stick about the size of a thick chopstick. He flicked his wrist and it unfolded end over end like a magic trick until it became a stick of some danger.

  Tucker arced his arm out in a wide half-moon, the hanger clenched in his fist with the metal question mark jutting between his middle and ring finger like he was Captain Hook chasing after Peter Pan. The hook caught Crew Cut across the cheek like a wide-mouth bass and hooked him good.

  Tucker tugged the man’s head, setting the hook and ripping the hanger from Tucker’s hand. By sheer instinct, the base desire to get the hurt away from you as quickly as possible, Crew Cut reached up and yanked down on the hanger, tearing a perforation in his cheek before he even knew he’d done it.

  Eyebrow’s magic stick came across Tucker’s shoulder blades like a metal switch grandma used to use to cane your shins when you made her mad. She would have liked one of those compact metal jobs, though half the fun for her was making the kids get their own switch for her to beat them with.

  Tucker bent at the knees, but stayed off the ground. Jenny screamed and backed into a cork board tacked up with employee schedules, state safety rules, take-out menus and a few cut-out comic strips about customer complaints.

  As Eyebrows readied another blow, Tucker swung a child-size mannequin into his arms and spun, holding the toddler out in front of him to take the punishment. The cane came crashing down again and the blank-faced body form lost an arm.

  Tucker threw the rest of the body at Eyebrows. He turned to run, but slipped in a pool of blood Crew Cut had spit onto the floor. The injured man writhed around with both hands at his cheek, but the blood ran around his fingers and stained Jenny’s laminate wood flooring.

  “Jenny, let’s go,” Tucker called.

  “Who are they?”

  “Just come on.” Tucker extended a hand to her and she reached for it. Like God and Adam on the Sistine Chapel they were a fingerprint apart when the cane swung down again. The metal caught Jenny’s hand and she squealed as her arm was thrust down and out of Tucker’s grasp.

  Tucker reached behind him and plucked a thumbtack off the cork board, secretly wishing Jenny had opened a chainsaw, machete and crowbar emporium. Perhaps a nail gun test center or an indoor archery range.

  Tucker pushed forward, kicking away Crew Cut’s legs to get closer to Eyebrows and slap a left hand on the wrist above the cane. He jabbed the thumbtack straight out as if he had a very urgent child’s drawing of a lopsided fire truck to hang on the wall. The tiny point of the tack pierced Eyebrow’s cheek and he yelped like a kicked poodle.

  Keeping a grip on the wrist, Tucker poked and poked and poked the tack in a mosaic pattern all across the man’s face. Eyebrows would turn his head only to get a hot pinpoint of pain on one cheek, then swivel away to get a bee sting under his eye.

  Ten, twelve, fifteen, twenty pokes and the man’s face looked like an overripe strawberry leaking juice.

  Jenny, either to stop Tucker’s death by a thousand cuts or for some other inner bravery she’d found, swung a three-hole punch into Eyebrow’s face. His hand went slack and he dropped the magic stick.

  Tucker reached out to Jenny and this time they connected.

  “We have to call the police,” she said.

  “No cops.”

  He pulled her along toward the door, but found himself tilting toward the floor. Crew Cut had tangled his legs around Tucker’s and now they were both flat and flailing. Crew Cut pulled his hands away from his face and the crazed blood-stained carnival look of his face made Tucker recoil. The wounded man started crawling towards Tucker in an image that would haunt his dreams for years to come. A long line of blood and saliva sagged from the gash in his cheek. The cut was irregular, not knife-like clean, but torn like the edge of an old treasure map.

  Tucker rolled on his back and started kicking out with his feet like he’d learned to fight in a women’s self-defense workshop. Crew Cut’s blood-slick hands tried to latch on to Tucker’s Nikes, but his feet were moving too fast and more kicks than not were landing.

  Jenny brought the three-hole punch down on the top of the crew cut, but he kept on the attack. She whacked him once more and dropped the hole punch and leaped over the two men grappling on the ground and bolted out the back room into the store, leaving Tucker behind.

  She’d left him two against one. For the first time he wished her a tiny bit of harm. Maybe one jab with the thumbtack.

  Eyebrows was up. His face dripped beads of blood like he was sweating the stuff. Tucker kicked for his life but Crew Cut grabbed hold of his ankles. Can’t drive your way out of this one, Tucker thought.

  “Get out.” Her tone was firm and rehearsed. Somehow familiar. Tucker had heard those words from that voice before. Maybe not with quite as much anger, but close.

  “Get out both of you.”

  That was new.

  The kicking stopped. Crew Cut’s grip loosened. Eyebrow’s advance halted. Tucker looked over his shoulder and up to see Jenny standing in the doorway, legs shoulder width apart, arms out in front of her with elbows locked and a dull black .38 in her hand. The store security system.

  She looked like a recruiting poster for the local police.

  “Get the fuck out of my store or I start shooting off dicks.”

  Eyebrow started backing up. Crew Cut pushed up on formerly blood-slick, now blood-sticky hands. His breath sucked wet and uneven from the new ventilation in his face.

  Jenny stood firm and the nose of that gun didn’t shake one bit as she watched them all the wa
y out the back door.

  Tucker thought she’d have a lot more to say to the two men. She always was quick with an insult or a threat for him. Instead she waited until the back door clicked shut before exhaling loudly and letting her body fall like that breath of air was all that held it up.

  Tucker sat up. “You need to come with me and I’ll explain.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. Tucker stood. “I promise. Come with me. Milo’s there too.”

  He took the gun from her and she let herself be led from the store. She locked all the doors and set the alarm. She pulled down the metal roll door over the front of the store which she hadn’t done in years except for the odd tornado warning.

  Tucker opened the door to the Camaro and she got in. If she was even vaguely impressed by the car she didn’t show it.

  25

  Tucker explained as best he could which still left Jenny with more questions than she could organize in her brain so she sat silently while they all crowded the door between her frontal lobe and her tongue.

  Calvin sat on a chair he’d pulled into the living room from the kitchen. No way he was sitting on the same couch with that woman. Milo had been banished to the back bedroom to await the all clear from his dad.

  “Does it make a bit of sense?” Tucker asked.

  “Not a whole lot. Should I be scared?”

  Calvin spoke up for the first time since he grunted a hello when she arrived. “If they’re trying to kill us, and that was before we stole the money, you can be sure they don’t have the best of intentions with you.” He sipped on the beer he’d been nursing all through Tucker’s recounting of events. Thankfully the boy had left out any exact dollar amounts on the truck’s contents, calling it only “A lot of money.”

  Jenny regarded the old man as if he sat in the living room wearing full Klan robes holding a burning flag in his hands while kicking a dog and pissing on a picture of Ronald Reagan shaking hands with Jesus. “I might have known you were at the root of all this.”

  Calvin chuckled.

  “Oh, it’s funny, is it?” Jenny went into full attack mode. “My ex-husband you can keep, but you got my son involved in this, you piece of shit. Some century-old family argument and now my only child is in danger of being killed by some drug gang? Who do you think you are?”

  Calvin raised his beer can in a toast. “Calvin McGraw, ma’am. I’m an outlaw.” He tipped back and finished the can.

  Jenny let out a frustrated grunt and crossed her arms over her as she sat back into the couch.

  “Don’t blame him,” Tucker said. “You can blame me. I let my principles run a little loose when I thought I was going to find out where my dad was. I got a little, I don’t know what. Tunnel vision I guess. I think I started down the road when I was still in shock from the visit I got from Stanley’s men. I should have taken some time to step back and think it through. I never invited Milo into this, though. He kept showing up on his own.”

  “At which point you should have brought him straight back home.”

  “You’re right. I let my feelings about our situation put him in danger. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize to her,” Calvin said.

  “Granddad, why don’t you head off to bed. Jenny and I got a lot of talking yet to do.”

  “I’m not tired.”

  “Then take the rest of your beers and go watch TV or something. You’re not helping right now.”

  Calvin stood from his chair like an angry teenager and stomped out of the room.

  “Charming as ever,” Jenny said.

  “Give him a break. His son did die, y’know.”

  “And your dad.” Jenny softened now that Calvin had left the room. She turned to Tucker, laid a hand on his arm. “I am sorry about that. He was a good man.”

  “You called him a son of a bitch on our wedding day.” A grin tugged at the corner of his mouth.

  “He was both, if you can be that. Either way I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks.”

  Tucker couldn’t be sure, but he thought he felt a crack in the ice between them.

  Calvin stacked three empty beer cans into a tower then slowly pushed them over with a finger. That woman being in the house sent shivers up his spine. He knew now what is was to lose a son. Tucker’s boy hadn’t died, but that woman took him away from his father.

  The McGraw mens’ curious habit of having only children, all of them blessedly boys, made each child special—and vulnerable. Those damn Stanleys bred like rabbits.

  Even Jenny and Tucker talking over God knows what in the next room couldn’t distract his mind for long from the thought of what came next. No word yet from Hugh. They obviously were not going to give in easily. Going after the family, even the estranged family, showed their commitment to causing harm to anyone they felt slighted them.

  Those twelve boxes provided insurance and also a lure with the same pungent stench of catfish bait. They could wait it out at Webb’s place for a while, but sooner or later the fight was going to come to them, or they would have to bring it to the Stanleys.

  “So when we were married, I bet you didn’t think I was capable of all this.”

  “Inciting a gang of drug dealers to try to kill you? No. That was not at all on the radar.” She smiled. Actually smiled in the same room with Tucker. He tried not to let himself think it was just the wine.

  “How about this?” Tucker leaned over like a senior on prom night and pushed his lips onto hers. Jenny didn’t know what to do. She let the kiss happen. She didn’t exactly give it back, but she didn’t push him away.

  Tucker stayed there, his body covering hers on the couch. He could feel his armpits becoming moist as the stress of holding that kiss drained all the blood from his face. He broke away and took his seat again, watching her eyes for anger or desire and wondering if he was going to be able to tell the difference.

  Jenny slowly opened her eyes. She said nothing. She didn’t move. Memories of their marriage played in her mind.

  Tucker got tired of waiting and leaned forward again. If he was going to go so far as to steal twelve million dollars he might as well kiss a girl who once loved him.

  This time she kissed back.

  The wine on her tongue made him feel even more like a drunk teenager. Just like riding a bike he knew her movements, he knew when to pivot his head, when to pause and when to push his mouth harder onto hers.

  Jenny broke the clinch. She gently lifted Tucker off her, not shoving him away but letting him know the moment had passed.

  “I can’t.”

  “Roy?” He asked.

  “Ron,” she said. “This is too confusing right now.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No it’s…it’s okay. I can’t. Not right now.”

  “I understand. You’re right. Goodnight.”

  Tucker pulled the blanket down from the back of the couch before he left and covered her. She smiled at him but her heart wasn’t in it.

  Tucker went back to share a bed with Milo and dream of possibilities.

  Calvin lay awake in bed thinking over a few possibilities of his own.

  Possibility 1: Take the money and get the hell out of town. And not back to Omaha.

  Possibility 2: Drive the truck right up Hugh Stanley’s ass and go out in a blaze of glory.

  Possibility 3: Give Tucker the money and go see Hugh alone. If he got at least some McGraw blood maybe the old bastard would be satisfied enough not to search for Tucker.

  Possibility 4: A carload of Stanley men were on their way over at that very second to kill him and everything in the house that moved.

  Calvin thought that last possibility would be the one to stay on the table for the rest of his life if they didn’t sort this mess out. He still believed Hugh would want the money back bad enough to give up Webb’s killer. Stanley had sold a lot more for a lot less over the years.

  He spun the empty plastic rings from his six pack around a finger. He hadn’t ingested nearly enough beer t
o make sleep happen yet.

  Tucker woke up in the strange bed. He took a moment to remember he wasn’t in his own house. He looked to his left and saw Milo sleeping the sleep of the teenager—intense and coma-like. Light crept in around the edges of the curtains like the sun had crash-landed in the backyard overnight.

  Tucker eased out of bed without waking Milo. The clock read ten-thirteen.

  He walked down the hall, bare feet padding on the wood floors, creaking the same board that had creaked since the early eighties. He peered slowly over the top of the couch to see if Jenny was still asleep, but the couch was empty and the blanket folded over the back cushion.

  Tucker went to the kitchen and found Calvin eating a bowl of cereal at the round, chrome-legged table. Tucker listened for the sound of the shower running down the hall. There was only the sound of Calvin slurping milk between crunches of wheat flakes.

  “Where’s Jenny?”

  Calvin slurped in another mouthful. “Gone,” he said through the cereal.

  “Gone? What do you mean?”

  He swallowed. “I mean she’s gone. Gone for good. Left town by now I suspect. ’Least that’s what she said she was gonna do.”

  “Back up. What are you talking about?”

  Calvin stood and brought his bowl to the sink and placed it there with a ringing ceramic tone. “Just what I said. She’s gone for good.”

  “When?”

  “Last night.”

  “You saw her?”

  “Yep.”

  A raw hurt played over Tucker’s face, like he was holding fire but helpless to let it go.

  “Can you stop being so goddamn coy and explain what the hell happened?”

  “I got up to get more beer. She was laying there in the dark crying. I couldn’t just ignore it. I had to pass right by the couch to get in here. We talked a bit and she seemed real confused so I made it easy on her.”

  The hurt was coalescing into anger now. “How?”

  “I gave her some money and told her she could go.”

  “How much money?”