Rumrunners

by Eric Beetner

  “Same reason any man shoots another—they wanted to see him dead.”

  Webb felt little comfort in that answer. Calvin dragged a hand down his weary face.

  “Guess I’ll go break the news.”

  “I still don’t know why we didn’t pull over and phone it in.”

  Calvin looked at his son. “Because news like this you deliver in person, son. And this isn’t just about ol’ Bruce here. This is more than just one man dying. Could be we just witnessed the start of something bad. Real bad.” Calvin slid out, leaving Webb alone in the car with a corpse. “You stay here.”

  Webb got out and stood by the front of the car where the smell of hot oil and gasoline fumes overtook the scent of drying blood inside.

  Calvin pressed the tiny white button and heard the electronic chimes. The single story office complex had been bought for a song once the previous tenants were convinced it was time for them to move on and move out. The glue outlines of plastic letters left a ghost image of the name Saul Birnbaum, Ophthalmologist, the previous occupant of Hugh Stanley’s new office.

  The door buzzed and Calvin went in. He passed the outer offices and didn’t stop for Cheryl, the busty secretary outside Hugh’s suite.

  “He’s expecting me and he’s gonna want to hear this ASAP.”

  Cheryl waved him in with long red nails like bloody claws. Calvin knocked twice on the door and didn’t wait for a response before opening.

  “Well, that went to shit right quick.”

  Hugh Stanley, top man in the organization being the eldest brother of the man who started this mob back during prohibition, sat behind his massive oak desk. Hugh was tall, dark hair oiled back like Dean Martin. He wore a dark blue suit with contrast stitching in white. A deep red shirt, open at the collar and a brightly colored silk cravat where he used to wear a necktie. Calvin liked the old look.

  “What did?”

  The voice came from Victor Stanley, one of Hugh’s younger brothers and the second in command. He sat on a leather sofa facing Hugh’s massive desk. His feet were up, a pair of those tall heeled shoes on his feet. He sported a mustache, hair grown over his ears and a silk shirt in gaudy colors, open at the collar and no tie at all. He sniffed, the incessant habit of a cocaine addict.

  “Bruce is dead,” Calvin said.

  Hugh sat up straight in his chair. “He’s what?”

  “What the hell did you send me into?” Calvin walked to the bar and poured himself two fingers of bourbon on ice.

  “They killed him?”

  Cal drank half and let the liquor burn down his throat. “Shot him dead and ruined my backseat.” He set the rest of the drink down. “Don’t you have any beer?”

  Victor slammed a palm down on the glass topped coffee table, nearly cracked it. “Those sons of bitches.”

  “He mentioned the name Cantrell,” Calvin said.

  “Yes. This did involve them,” Hugh said.

  “I wasn’t aware you did any business with them.”

  “Not normally, no.” Hugh folded his hands across his belly, clear that he wasn’t going to offer any further details on the deal.

  “Not nearly enough, you mean,” Vic said. Hugh shot him a look with all the venom of a cobra. Calvin didn’t want to get in the middle of whatever spat they were having.

  Calvin waved it away. “It was supposed to be a drop-off, that’s it.”

  “That’s all it was.”

  “Well, it turned into Bruce’s funeral.” Calvin looked at the unfinished glass of bourbon but didn’t pick it up.

  Hugh thumbed the intercom on his desk. “Cheryl, get Oscar and two other boys out to Calvin’s car right away.” He leaned on his elbows and rested his square jaw on his fists. “Good thing we had you out there behind the wheel, McGraw.”

  “I wasn’t behind the wheel, my son was. I was in the shotgun seat and I did not care for it, let me tell you.”

  “Webb was driving?”

  “It was supposed to be a mailman run. Drop off and pick up. I tell you though, the kid did a bang-up job.”

  Victor sniffed again. Calvin knew the stress of this news made him crave a line of coke, but he didn’t dare drop his nose to his brother’s glass table and get high. Not around Hugh, the eldest, the responsible one.

  Vic fidgeted, bouncing on the couch cushions. “What the fuck are we gonna do, Hugh?”

  “We gotta get to the bottom of this.”

  “I told you something like this would happen.”

  “Not now, Vic. This thing with Cantrell could be something but I don’t want him calling the shots. We don’t want to send it off the rails right at the start.”

  “It looks like he’s calling shots already. Now if you’d listened to me and—”

  Hugh roared. “Enough, Vic.”

  Calvin studied the two brothers as he got tired of waiting for a beer and drained his glass, thankful to be above this kind of decision making. He just wanted to drive, not deal with this bullshit.

  Hugh tapped his front teeth with his fingernail, thinking. “We just have to think this out.”

  “Well, for God’s sake, don’t let Kirby know.”

  Kirby Stanley came around the corner and saw Webb leaning against the front of the Mercury. Kirby was the younger brother, the oddball. Kirby was quick with a fist, hot tempered and mean. He seemed to enjoy scaring people. He’d taken a near-obsessive interest in the Manson murders a couple of years back and loved to talk about it with anyone who’d let him. Most people in the family avoided him. He didn’t even have an office in the building so he was left to hang around the fringes of the business.

  Kirby always liked the McGraws. He liked the cars, the speed, the noise.

  Webb was as freaked out by Kirby as anyone, but right then he needed what Kirby always had.

  “Hey, Kirby, you got a joint?”

  “Sure.” He reached into the pocket of his fringed vest, the tassels hanging down over his red and orange striped pants. His shaggy hair and worn out hippie threads made him look like someone who’d auditioned, but hadn’t made it into The Monkees.

  Webb took the offered joint. Kirby held out a zippo and thumbed the wheel. Webb toked and got the joint rolling, relishing the warmth of the smoke hitting his lungs. He wanted to smoke it down to the roach, but he knew it would be rude not to offer a toke to the man who’d just hooked him up, so he held out the joint for Kirby who took it with a pinch of his fingers as he eyeballed the car.

  “She looks fast.” Kirby took a hit of the pot.

  Webb exhaled and rolled his neck, loosening his shoulders. “She sure saved my ass tonight.”

  “Hit some trouble?” Kirby passed the joint back to Webb.

  “You could say that. Made out better than Bruce though.” Webb toked and pointed a thumb over his shoulder toward the backseat. Kirby bent over and peered in. When he saw Bruce sprawled in the back, eyes still open and blood on his shirt—Kirby went black.

  He stood up straight as an arrow. “Who did it?”

  Webb felt he’d said something he shouldn’t have. “I don’t know.”

  “Who killed him?” He asked again.

  “He said the name Cantrell. That’s all I heard.”

  Kirby pushed past Webb and nearly took the door to the office off the hinges as he pushed through. Damn it, Webb thought. He kept the joint.

  “We’ll set up a meeting,” Hugh said.

  “Bruce had a meeting with them,” Victor said. “How’d that go?”

  The door kicked open. Calvin dropped his tumbler. The bourbon was gone, but ice spilled out like dice across the carpet. Kirby came in with heavy footsteps, the smoldering joint still pinched in his fingers.

  On the sofa, Victor recovered from the shock. “Jesus Christ, Kirby. What the hell?”

  “Cantrell did this?”

  Hugh shook his head in frustration. “Calm down, Kirby. We’re handling it.”

  “I’ll fucking kill him.” He flung the joint to the carpet.


  “No, you won’t.” Hugh stood, holding his palms out like he was talking a bear away from his picnic. “We’ve got this under control. Okay?”

  Kirby stood clenching and unclenching his fists, like two pumping hearts at the end of his arms. He breathed heavily through his nose.

  “We got it,” Hugh said in a quieter voice. “It’s fine. If we need you, we’ll call you.”

  Kirby ran his black eyes over his brother. “That’s what you always say.” He spun and stomped out, leaving the door open and deep indents from his feet in the shag. The room stayed silent after he left.

  Calvin finally broke the spell. “Well, I should get outta here.”

  “Me too,” Victor said and he stood with a long snort. Calvin would head back to the car, see if the men had gotten Bruce’s body out yet. Victor would go to his office, pull out his Peruvian hand-carved snuff box and dig out a spoonful. Hugh would stay behind and try to figure this shit out.

  3

  Calvin crossed the lobby, grateful to be leaving the mess behind with Hugh. Ahead of him, Victor slipped into his office and the door quickly shut. Everyone steeled themselves for battle in their own way, he supposed.

  He passed through the front doors and saw three men at work on his car. Bruce was long gone and the backseat would be shortly. The men tugged at bolts, pulled hard at the braces holding the seat in place. Calvin was disgusted. He thought these were the type of men who ripped a woman’s dress on a first date, tore open a neckline and said stuff like, “Show me them titties.” No grace. No caress. But he was too tired to correct them and show them the proper way to treat a vehicle.

  Instead, Calvin stepped off to the side of the building into a small courtyard with a fountain——a leftover from the days of this squat building being a medical plaza. Some place for people to sit out a bad diagnosis, though in this place nothing more serious than the need for bifocals or an impacted molar was ever the bad news of the day.

  Times like these, other men would have a smoke. Not Calvin. He’d picked up the habit for a few short years in the early fifties, but it didn’t stick. One time he was waiting for a pickup and sat behind the wheel smoking an unfiltered Lucky Strike. When the man sprinted to his door, tore it open and said, “Go, go, go.” Calvin needed a moment to toss the smoke. He pitched it, bouncing it off the glass of his window and back into his lap. He choked on the lungful of smoke and had to beat out the orange ash from his crotch. It cost him seconds. Precious seconds. They got out and everything was fine, but he didn’t like the feeling. No more smoking on the job. No way.

  Calvin thought he might find Webb in the courtyard, but he found another familiar voice.

  “Well, well, if it isn’t the man with the lead foot.”

  Nancy Stanley, Victor’s wife. She sat on a small bench overlooking the fountain, long dark European cigarette in her hand. Her raven hair was done up in a Jackie Kennedy style she’d adopted the day after the inauguration and hadn’t abandoned since. Her lips were deep red, as usual, and her heavily outlined eyes smoldered at Calvin.

  This was the way with Nancy. She’d been trying to get Cal in bed for more than a year.

  She did a French inhale and thought it looked sexy, like a girl from a black and white movie. Calvin thought it looked like she was trying to give herself smoke inhalation.

  “Nancy,” he said. Curt, professional.

  “You here to give me a ride?”

  She tried—and succeeded—in making her every word a sexual entendre.

  “Just wrapping up. Letting the boys do a little work on the car.”

  “So you have time to do a little work on me?”

  “Nancy…” Calvin sighed, tired of this game. Not only was she Victor’s wife, but Calvin loved his own wife. Way more than a roll in the hay with an admittedly attractive woman.

  “When are you going to lighten up, McGraw? Give a girl a chance.”

  “Why don’t you give your husband a chance?”

  “What Victor’s been giving me since the night we were married isn’t worth taking a chance on. He doesn’t know how to treat a woman. Especially when he’s got that nose candy running the show below the belt.” She pointed to her nose. “Up it goes.” Then down to her crotch. “And down it goes.”

  “That’s really none of my business, Nancy.”

  “I’m just saying, you’d be helping a girl out.”

  Calvin had no doubt there were plenty of younger studs on the payroll willing to help her out, and he was sure they did exactly that. He could see it in her eyes, beyond the makeup—she wanted him because he said no.

  “Look, it’s been a long night. Things are getting kinda heated in there.”

  “We could make things downright hot here.”

  She blew a plume of smoke. Calvin exhaled a tired breath of his own. “Have a good night, Nancy.” He turned and walked back toward his car.

  “I’ll get you someday, Leadfoot.”

  Calvin ignored her. When he got back to his car he couldn’t ignore it any more.

  “Boys, boys. Go easy on her, all right? This isn’t your high school prom under the bleachers. You gotta sweet talk her a little bit.” And he moved in to help.

  Calvin and Webb got home well past midnight. Dorothy, Calvin’s wife, waited up.

  The difference between Dorothy and most wives waiting up after twelve o’clock, was that she was there with hot coffee, a plate of brownies and a smile. She knew everything Calvin did, and had done. They bore no secrets. She knew she married an outlaw and she wore the McGraw name proudly.

  “Long one, huh?” she said as they came in the door.

  “Too long,” Webb said and he excused himself off to his apartment over the garage. At least this late at night they would probably avoid the ear crushing music coming from his stereo and his gnarled attempts to play the guitar like Jimi Hendrix.

  Cal sat down at the kitchen counter, let out a long sigh.

  “Rough day?”

  “Someone got killed, Dot. Died right in my backseat.”

  “Oh, Cal.” She put a hand over his.

  “Wasn’t anyone I knew real well, but my upholstery is a total loss.”

  “You really think that’s what you should be worrying about right now?”

  “It’s all I can worry about. There might well be bigger things brewing, but it’s my job to stay out of it and I’m happy as a clam to do it.”

  She patted his hand twice, turned to serve him a brownie off the tray. “I’ve never seen a clam I could say was any happier than any other creature. And I’d bet there hasn’t been a truly happy clam who ever found himself in the state of Iowa.”

  “You may be right about that.”

  Calvin kissed her on the cheek, begged off the coffee which she set back on the counter for morning.

  “How many more late nights and dead friends is it gonna be before we talk serious about you stepping out?”

  Calvin didn’t have the energy for this conversation so late after a hard day, but he figured that’s exactly what Dorothy counted on. Get him while his defenses were down.

  “It might not be a good time to bail on them right now.”

  “Is it ever going to be a good time?”

  “I s’pose not.” He went to the fridge and took out a can of beer.

  “The man from Empire Racing said he’d give you until end of summer, right?”

  Cal swallowed a mouthful of beer, fighting the foam from overflowing in his over-eager mouth. “That’s what he said.”

  “It’s coming up.”

  Calvin had gotten a job offer from a stock car racing company. His name got around in the world of gear heads, motor maniacs, gas huffers, tire burners, oil jockeys and pit crews. They wanted him to run the team. Train new drivers, teach the old ones some new tricks. They didn’t offer to have him drive, though. Too old. That didn’t sit well with Calvin.

  On the other hand, nobody would be shooting at him on a race track.

  “It’s not like i
t’s big time or nothing. I won’t be crew chief for Richard Petty or nothing.”

  “Steady work, though. You get to be around cars all day long.”

  “Yeah, around ’em. Not in ’em.”

  “Still.” Dorothy could remain calm in any situation. She refused to argue with Calvin. She knew he needed to come to a big decision like this on his own. She also knew she was tired of men shooting at her husband. And she for damn sure didn’t like the idea of them shooting at her son.

  “It means traveling a lot. And not to fun places like Daytona. This is Midwest Regional. State fairs, dirt tracks, small towns.”

  “I just want to know you’re thinking about it, Cal.”

  “Oh, I’m thinking. When those bullets were coming at us, I was thinking all right. Don’t you worry about that.”

  She set a hand on his. “I never worry, Cal.”

  “Mrs. McGraw, I work with liars on a daily basis, and you, my dear, are the best damn liar I ever met.” Calvin kissed her. “Let’s get some sleep.”

  Click here to learn more about Leadfoot by Eric Beetner.

  Back to TOC

  Here is a preview from the second Tommy & Shayna crime caper, Crossed Bones by S.W. Lauden…

  ADRIFT

  It was a rundown, two-story clapboard house several miles off the guidebook maps. Empty kegs were stacked three-high on either side of the screen door like dented tin soldiers. A mangy dog slept on a shabby couch under the cracked window out front. It definitely wasn’t the kind of place tourists would ever visit—unless they were lost or unlucky. Shayna Billups was feeling a little of both these days.

  She threw her red convertible into park and pushed the car door open, swinging her long legs out into the street. It felt good to stand up after so many hours on the road. She stretched and yawned, shifting the hem of her tight skirt back down with a practiced wiggle.

  The cracked wooden porch wobbled under her high heels, like an uneven pile of firewood. Zydeco music wafted out of the bar to greet her, along with the smell of fried shrimp and stale beer. The Keel Hall might pass for quaint if it didn’t look like it was about to collapse. She was reaching for the door when somebody racked the slide on a shotgun behind her.