Run

by Douglas E. Winter

  Let me get you another beer.

  That’s the last time I played pool with Renny.

  Talk to me, she says. And it’s now, not then.

  I manage to shut the leather case before she comes back down the hall and to the door of our bedroom. I scan the dresser. Nothing on top but my prescription bottle. The top left-hand drawer is closed but not locked.

  I am talking to you, I tell her. Though I’d rather say, Let me get you another beer. She smiled when I said that. Her smile.

  No, you’re not, she says. You’re talking to me like you’re talking to your mother. You’re talking to some goddamn picture. You’re talking to something that can’t talk back.

  One time I saw this guy on Oprah who did this funny thing with his hands. Said he could talk to chimpanzees with hand signals, like that sign language stuff for the deaf. Wish I could do that.

  Goddamn it, Burdon, Fiona says. Talk to me.

  I’m trying, baby, I really am trying. But I’ve got about five minutes before Renny shows, and about twenty minutes of stuff I’ve got to do.

  Can I take some money out of the bank?

  Use the ATM? Sure.

  Hundred okay?

  Take two hundred. Buy yourself something nice.

  She slinks into the bedroom, pulling her T-shirt down taut over her boobs. No bra. Only day of the week she doesn’t wear a bra.

  Got any ideas?

  Yeah, I say. You could use some new pruning shears.

  Ummm, she says. Then she purrs. What a guy.

  Her fingers are twisting at the back of my hair, she knows I love that, and I flub the knot on my tie. She notices and she seems almost overjoyed.

  So hey, Birdman. Where are you going this time?

  Business, baby. It’s business.

  Yeah, Burdon, I know that. You and Renny. You and Renny. Maybe you two guys ought to get married.

  She looks over at the mirror again, checking the tangle of my tie and then her lipstick.

  Let’s see, she says, and she scrunches up her nose, which means she’s thinking. After that she smiles, and it’s a melter, the one that makes you want to give her everything, and she starts tap-tapping her fingernails against the top of the dresser.

  You’re going on the road, she says.

  Yeah, I say. After all, here’s my leather case and the duffel bag is right out there in the hall.

  But not for long, she says.

  Yeah yeah, I say. No suitcase, no suit bag, so it can’t be for long.

  You’re gonna be back by Sunday, she says.

  Yeah, I say, and that one takes a second. Maybe it’s a good guess, the luggage is light, but then I remember the wedding. Meredith Berenger’s wedding. On Sunday night. And that I promised Fiona she could buy a new dress.

  You’re going north, she says.

  Which is a tough one, which is why I don’t say yeah quite as quickly, because it could be just a really good guess, I mean, one out of three is not exactly the stuff of lotteries, and it’s north, south, or west because east means the Atlantic Ocean, and after I finally get the knot together on my tie I decide to say:

  North?

  Yeah, she says. North. North to Alaska, hurry up, the rush is on. Which is some kind of song from some John Wayne movie, and she just laughs and looks at me and says, You know something, Birdman?

  And I say: I know lots of things, babe.

  To which she says: I’ve been thinking about what you said to me last week, you know? About doing some different things? Things just for me? And I was thinking that maybe, well, maybe all work and no play makes Jack—well, Jill—a dull girl and maybe there’s like some of those things, those different things, that maybe I should do?

  She blows out a breath and that might be the longest run of words I’ve ever heard Fiona say. To which she adds:

  So like Melody, she’s the stylist in the third chair from the back? With the lizard tattoo, remember? On her shoulder? Well, Melody was telling me about this like huge exhibit thing with all these mummies and lots of gold and this other stuff. Like from Egypt? So I’m thinking maybe I should go see like all this Pharaoh stuff because it’s on loan and maybe I might never get the chance again? You know what I mean?

  I do know what you mean, hon.

  Anyway, she says, so I’ve been thinking like maybe I should go to the museum this weekend.

  Maybe you should, I tell her.

  Well, the museum’s in New York City, she says.

  That’s a long trip, I tell her, not missing a beat. Not one fucking beat.

  Well, she says, I thought maybe if you were going—

  Honey, I say, and I can’t even look at her face because it’s when she’s asking that she’s the most beautiful. Honey, I’m going away this weekend. I’m going away on business. Wherever I’m going, whether it’s Wheeling or Philly or Virginia Beach or Raleigh or even New York City—I just say the names of cities because I cannot lie to her—wherever I’m going, wherever that place may be, I’m going there on business. With Renny. On business.

  Yeah, she says. And that’s all she says. She’s gone. I hear her bare feet padding back down the hall and into the kitchen and I hear the sounds of cabinets opening, closing, and I hear the water pouring from the faucet into a glass, and then I hear her drinking the water, and by that time I’ve opened the top left-hand drawer of the dresser and I’ve slipped two reload magazines of ball ammo into the pocket of my raincoat and another magazine, the Teflon-coated KTW rounds, into the left-hand side pocket of my suit coat and then I’m ready. No, I’m not. I pull the cellular phone from my belt and bury it in the drawer. I take the new one, whistle clean, out of the drawer and hook it on my belt. I lock the drawer, grab my leather case, and then I’m in the hallway, with the words:

  Got to go.

  She comes back toward me and we meet halfway, right at the landing, and before I can pick up the duffel bag, her arms are around me and she’s pressing into me so tight I can feel both her body and the Glock in my armpit cutting into me, and then she’s away from me, eyes hot but with a look that’s filled with graveside sadness. From outside comes the sound of an automobile turning into the driveway. She cuts those eyes away from me to the vague haze of light pouring through the window and then she looks back with a sigh:

  You got to go.

  the iron highway

  Used to be that when you wanted to run north, you rented a U-Haul and you drove. These days, we use Federal Express. This is an expensive proposition, since you have to buy off a few guys to borrow a van and some uniforms, but it’s one that cannot lose. You see these FedEx vans all the time, they’re blue, they’re white, they’re so fucking everywhere that they’re invisible, another part of the background. They’re also street legal, and you can do about anything you want with them and nobody’s going to care. Double park, take a handicapped space, block some traffic, who cares? It’s fucking Federal Express. Plus you can’t really speed in those vans, and if you could, the cops would cut you a break because you’re doing something other than just cruising down the New Jersey Turnpike with your halfwit wife and children. You got a job, just like them, and you’re doing it.

  Inside the van you’ve got a guy, two guys on a highway run, and they’re in uniform. Instant authority, instant respect, not just working guys but working guys in uniform. And in the back of the van you’ve got these neatly ordered stacks of shipping crates, signed, sealed, and set for delivery to Saudi Arabia, with more paperwork than an Act of Congress.

  Anyone can stop this shipment. That’s a dare. Stop the van. If you can make a legal search—a big if, about as big as King Kong—what will you find? A FedEx van with the right plates and the right registration and the right emissions inspection, and in the back of the van: Weapons. New weapons. Legal weapons. Maybe they’re not legal for the streets of our cities, but they are good to go, thank you very much, for our friends and allies overseas. With an inch of paper to prove it. No matter who you gonna call—FBI, ATF, state
troopers, local yokels, even the Ghostbusters—you got jack nothing. Just a squeaky clean shipment from UniArms to the Port of Boston, and th-th-that’s all, folks.

  Then: Our FedEx van vanishes somewhere into the mighty bowels of NYC while those papers take another ride, this time farther north, where they will cover another truckload, tucked safely in some suburb of Beantown with the proper contents, ready to hit the docks, start clearing Customs and make sail for sun and sand and a shooting surfari in Saudiland.

  You want to look hard, really hard, you find some problems. But who’s looking? We’re working for truth, justice, the American way, right? I mean, the Saudis need this iron so they can powder whoever we need them to powder this time or next time. So:

  The law is no problem. Not on the run. It’s the jackers, maybe, if some fools find the cojones to try, but the real problem is the clients. Meaning that you go to all this trouble to bring home the bacon for some folks, and then they decide they don’t want to pay. What a wonderful world. That’s why we play carefully, and even then we run north in a funky motorcade, with a Dodge minivan somewhere up ahead with CK’s guys and then the FedEx van and then our Oldsmobile and then another car, something hot, a speedster, with two more of CK’s guys, that sort of buzzes around the caravan like an angry bumblebee, looking for trouble.

  North is where we’re headed, north on Interstate 95, the concrete spine of the eastern seaboard, way too many miles of highway weaseling up from Miami and checking out somewhere high above Derry, Maine. North from Dirty City to Manhattan, I-95 to the New Jersey Turnpike and then the tunnel or the bridge. That two hundred and fifty miles, D.C. to NYC, is called the Iron Highway. Not for the hard road or for the cars and trucks it carries, but for what’s inside the vehicles: the guns.

  Because New York, in its grim and grimy let’s-get-ahead-or-let’s-get-dead glory, needs those guns, wants those guns, it’s got the jones for those guns. It’s the city with the most guns in the world, and maybe the most stringent gun laws in the world. There’s a word for that, and it’s called irony. The irony of iron.

  Once upon a time, those guns came from South Carolina, and then things toughened up, so now the guns come from Virginia, and when things toughen up there, well, maybe we’ll move on to Georgia or Indiana. But for now, if you live in New York and you want a gun, you go to that distant suburb called Virginia. The FBI says that more than half the guns used in violent crimes in Manhattan are bought in Virginia. No shit. That’s my state. My turf. Those are my guns, CK’s guns. Sure, there are a lot of free agents out there, a lot of gang stuff—you know, let’s take a ride to Richmond and pull a few straw men—but with UniArms, business is business.

  And we never close.

  These days we run shipments to New York, no more spot deals, no more going north to find a buyer. The buyers find us. Establish their bona fides. Make their down payments. Then, and only then, we run. Just like any other distributor: Menswear, melons, machine guns.

  The U Street Crew is riding this out on their own. We brush shoulders here and there along the way, but there’s nothing to connect the dots, us to them. Just a couple cars, a couple guys on the Metroliner, the shuttle to LaGuardia. CK’s idea. And you know something? It’s a good one. About the only thing that’s going to draw more suspicion than a car with four black guys is a car with two black guys and two white guys.

  Still, I worry. That’s my job, to worry. Right now I worry about three things. The Yellow Nigger is dangerous. And he’s got a posse of cold kids who have nothing to lose. He’s also fearless, and since he’s armed, sooner or later he’s going to use his piece. It’s my job to see that this happens later, meaning after this job is done and he’s back doing drive-bys or drug dusts or contract kills or whatever he does for Doctor D.

  And Doctor D’s half brother, this Juan E guy, seems kind of long on brotherhood and short on sense. Thinks this is a game, nice way to spend the weekend, go raise a little hell in the Apple, drink some Red Bull and get buck wild and, oh yeah, go shake some hands with the 9 Bravos. But that’s the way it works; these are the guys, the young fame, they get their money and their pagers and their Porsches and sooner or later, usually sooner, they get their guns. Streetwise is not the word for these guys. They own the street. And if somebody has a different idea, they just pull on the ski masks and get even.

  Mackie the Lackey is driving, which is fine. I check out the scenery again and keep the rest of the conversation to myself as the miles move on by, losing my thoughts to Fiona and, after a while, to sleep.

  When CK wakes me, stiff-arm to my shoulder, we’re at the Vince Lombardi Rest Stop and he’s holding a half-eaten hamburger.

  Hey, sleeping beauty. He calls over his shoulder to Mackie and Renny Two Hand: Look who’s awake. His head shakes, and he leans in and whispers:

  Shit, man, how do you stay so loose? You take something?

  No, I say, shrugging out the ache at the bottom of my neck. I don’t take nothing. Especially your shit.

  Across the parking lot, the FedEx van huddles with a herd of RVs. Closer, one of America’s favorite minivans, a Dodge Caravan, slips into a space next to a Jeep Grand Cherokee with handicap license plates. It’s almost too easy.

  I nod toward the rest stop. Got to go check the plumbing, I tell CK.

  Plumbing’s fine, he says. But do check it out.

  Inside, tourists are wrestling with kids and road maps and boxes of fried chicken. The two black guys at the yogurt stand don’t think I notice them, but they have U Street spray-painted all over them. Then there’s the plain-clothes security guard at the newsstand, pretending his way through an Esquire magazine, and the pickpocket who’s cruising the men’s room. All these people acting like nobody’s noticing them, when they ought to be acting like me. Acting like everybody and their brother, maybe their half brother, too, is noticing them.

  After I pee, I wash my hands and ask this guy I don’t know who is suddenly standing next to me, combing his hair, if he has the time. He does.

  Quarter to three, this guy I don’t know says.

  Except I do know him and his name’s Rudy Martinez and he’s part of CK’s crew.

  The meet is still on.

  one last run

  Ain’t it a bitch? Mackie the Lackey says. We’re gonna be rich.

  We’re past Exit 15A of the New Jersey Turnpike and making good time. Ahead is the grey pincushion of the Manhattan skyline. I was nearly back in dreamland but this Mackie guy can’t stop talking.

  How much we gonna do on this deal, CK?

  That’s the way it works. The way it always works.

  We’re gonna be rich.

  You hear this talk, now and again, about how we’re gonna be rich, how at last we’re gonna get paid. The big one. The quick score. The last run.

  Then you look around and you see the same old guys sitting there, riding the routes, playing the game. About the only ones who get out are the ones who make mistakes. For every Abednego Jones with a condo down in some sunny somewhere, there’s five in jail, another five dead, and then there’s us. Still riding, still running.

  So Mackie’s still at the wheel, still gonna get rich. If there’s one good thing I can say for him, it’s that he can drive. Now if he could only keep his mouth shut.

  CK twists the dial on the stereo, cranking up the volume on the Led Zeppelin tape. The same Led Zeppelin tape. The only Led Zeppelin tape. The one we’ve listened to all the way to New York and the one we’ve listened to on every other ride with this guy.

  Renny Two Hand sits in the back seat, crossways to me, picking through the pages of the USA Today he bought at the rest stop. I know this routine. First he checks the Orioles and whether it’s win or lose, rain-outs, even the days off, he bitches. No one but Cal Ripken is exempt. Then it’s on to the weather. Scattered showers today, sunny and clear tomorrow. That’s D.C. Then it’s on to New York. Then Denver. Then Los Angeles. Then Honolulu. He’ll tell you what it’s doing in Helsinki if you ask. Soon
er or later, usually later, he gets to the news. So it’s ten or maybe fifteen minutes before you know whether nuclear war has been declared.

  Renny’s different. That’s one way of putting it. Different. He’s not even thirty, just a kid, really, in this business. Like me when I was coming up. So I put up with his shit, and anyway the guy puts up with mine.

  They call him Two Hand because of that time, out on the range, he tried to shoot off two pistols at the same time. Saw the damn thing in some movie. As if shooting one pistol wasn’t tough enough—if you wanted to knock something down, anyway. So he’s blasting away with a pair of .45s that are just kicking his hands up into the air: I surrender. Finally he gets wise and shoots them one at a time. Right. Left. Right. Left. Damn if he doesn’t perf up the target dead center. K-5. So he’s the legendary Renny Two Hand.

  Burdon, he says, folding over the front page with its headline about some civil rights sit-down led by who else but the Reverend Gideon Parks and fumbling out the Entertainment section. He shows me a little color picture of this Dana Delany girl, the actress from that M.A.S.H. rip-off, and the boldface beneath the picture pimps some TV movie, Alzheimer’s disease and orphans taken hostage or something.

  Renny’s looking at the picture of Dana Delany like she’s here in the car, in the back seat, with us. Girls could go for Renny, they could like him, it’s in their eyes when they look at him, dead giveaway. Problem is that Renny doesn’t know how to like girls. He hasn’t figured out the mystery, which is to know that it’s a mystery and just give up worrying about finding an answer because there isn’t one.

  Look at that face, Two Hand says. She looks so sweet. Not in some movie way, you know, but—

  He doesn’t finish, because CK, who cuts down the volume on the tape player and turns back on us like an exasperated parent, finishes for him.

  Cute, ain’t she? Real cute. Button cute.

  He smirks and it’s a smirk pulled from way down inside his bag of tricks.