Night Road

by Brendan DuBois

  Duncan said, “Good round-up. But your gut, Cameron. I know you trust it, and I trust it, too. What’s it saying?”

  Cameron turned around, started going back down the overgrown road. Duncan stayed in step with him. “Too much of a coincidence. You got the shipment coming in, you’re talking about needing extra skilled hands, and boom, here he is. With a perfect record. Maybe too perfect.”

  They walked along for a minute or two, and as they came to Duncan’s Chevy Colorado, he said, “My gut sort of sounds the same. Last night … a bear was sniffing in our yard. Got me up, I got out with weapon in hand, waiting … and last night, I told Karen to take the kids and bail out of town for a couple of days. Besides the bikers … I still think we’re being looked at. That’s one hell of a coincidence.”

  “So what to do with Zach?”

  Duncan shoved his hands farther into his coat pockets. “I’m going to meet him in about thirty minutes. I’m thinking of taking him up to the butcher shop, near our gun store. Maybe have a serious one-on-one discussion.”

  “Want some help?”

  “No, I think I’ll be good. But thanks anyway. I’m not going to get too physical. Maybe just put the fear of God into him. If he passes, fine. If not, well, there’s always the quarry.”

  Cameron nodded. “Yeah, there’s always the quarry.”

  About mid-morning, Louis Fontaine was recalling his marching orders, about going on this zap mission, and he was about five minutes away from dumping the mission and zapping the stupid shit next to him. Last night they had gotten into Turner, and all he wanted to do was to conduct a little pre-op surveillance, just a bit of intelligence work, and that went down in a disaster like the goddamn Hindenburg. Near midnight last night Jean-Paul had held up his BlackBerry and giggled, and said, “Shit, Louis, I’m sorry, but my handheld is dead.”

  “What the fuck you mean, it’s dead?” Louis had asked.

  Another set of giggles. “Guess I forgot to charge it up.”

  “So charge it up already,” he had said.

  “Guess I forgot the charger, too.”

  Oh, fuck me, he had thought. The directions, the photos, all the stuff that they had gotten back up at the clubhouse, gone. They had nothing on paper. So Jean-Paul had driven around Turner, looking to ask someone for directions to either the Flight Deck Bar & Grill, or to Duncan Crowley’s house, but at that hour of the night, the place looked like it was inhabited by the living dead. The businesses were all dark and only a few homes had lights on.

  Jean-Paul had wanted to rent a hotel room for the night, but Louis had quickly shot that down. “Christ, how stupid can you be? We zap this fucker and his family, and you want some motel owner to tell the cops about two guys from Quebec who spent the night before?”

  So they had parked the van down a deserted road, spent a lousy night on the upholstered floor—with one blanket to fight over during the long smelly hours—and now they were randomly driving around.

  “We could go to the town hall, look up his tax records. Or voting records. Or something.”

  Louis felt like hitting his hand against his head, over and over again, just to get this droning voice out of his skull. “Jean-Paul, we got to a public official, what do you think will happen after the Crowley family disappears? Hunh? Why not send up a fucking flare while you’re at it?”

  Jean-Paul said, “Well, what do you want to do? Jesus Christ, all you’re doing is bitching and moaning. I’m not hearing any constructive suggestions.”

  “Here’s a goddamn constructive suggestion,” Louis said. “Next time, you stay the fuck home in Quebec, I’ll go by myself. With paper intelligence, not a goddamn smartphone without a goddamn charger. Then maybe the goddamn thing will be slick as shit.”

  Tom Leighton was working his shift at the Irving service station in southern Turner when he saw a familiar-looking Volkswagen Golf pull into the lot. The inside was empty so he could give Gus Spooner his full attention when he came in, but Christ, Gus looked like shit, and there was a bandage on his left hand.

  “Sweet Christ, what the hell happened to you?” Tom asked. Gus looked behind the counter, to see if anybody else was around. When he saw Tom was by himself, he held up the injured hand.

  “Ran into the fucking Crowley brothers,” he said crossly. “Look what they did to me.”

  The bandage was big and lumpy looking and covered the whole hand. “Shit, pal, what did they do?”

  “Goddamn Duncan Crowley, he was pissed at something I was doing. He and his shit-ass brother ambushed me, beat me up some, and then put a fucking nail through my hand, nailed it to the seat of a picnic table.”

  Tom felt light-headed, hearing and seeing what had happened to his friend. “Holy sweet Jesus. What did you do to tick him off?”

  Gus went to the coffee stand, filled up a cup with his right hand, and came back to the counter. “What did it matter to him, hunh? Christ, all I was doing, with Barry and Freddo, was trying to cook up some meth. What’s the problem with that? I mean, it wasn’t like I was doing it in his yard or something. But the goddamn freak and his brother, look what they did.”

  Tom whistled. “Must have hurt like hell.”

  Gus said, “Wouldn’t give the fuckers the satisfaction. Kept my mouth shut and took it like a man, that’s what I did. Goddamn Crowley brothers … you’ve had some run-ins with them, haven’t you?”

  Tom remembered the other night, being inches away from falling into the quarry, all because his uncle was doing kiss-ass with the Crowley brothers and wouldn’t go against them. His own uncle, threatening to kill him!

  “Yeah,” Tom said. “I have … and didn’t like it. Who would? Goddamn Crowleys.”

  Jean-Paul slowed the van down, said, “Look. There’s a gas station. We go in, buy a cup of coffee, grab a cruller, say we’re making a delivery to Duncan Crowley, ask for directions. All these small towns, the people know each other. Hell, they fucking marry each other’s cousins and shit.”

  Louis was hungry, exhausted, and tired of trying to put some sense into this fool. “I don’t know …”

  “Shit, what else can we do, hunh? Call Michael Grondin, tell him we don’t have the directions and information?”

  “Your fault.”

  “Yeah, but he’ll say we’re a team. And we both fucked up.”

  Louis put a hand to his forehead. “Fine. Pull up to the gas station. Maybe we’ll luck out.”

  Tom looked up as the two guys from a parked dark blue van strolled in, and for no reason whatsoever, he felt uneasy. They had a bearing about them, like they knew their way around with fists or weapons. Both had on jeans, dark gray fleece coats, and the one on the left had a thin moustache, while the other had a full beard. They went up to the coffee counter and talked French among themselves while Gus stood by, sipping from his own coffee.

  When they came over to pay, the beefier of the two, the one with the beard, said, “Hey, was wondering if you could help us out.”

  “Will give it a try,” Tom said.

  “Looking for a fella, lives here in town. Name of Duncan Crowley. We’re s’pose to drop something off for him. You know where he lives, eh?”

  Tom knew exactly where Duncan Crowley lived, but these guys … their eyes were kinda dead. He also didn’t like the way they were anxiously looking at him, like if he didn’t give them the proper reply, they’d knock the shit out of him.

  So he didn’t know what to say, but Gus spoke up. “Duncan Crowley? Sure, I know where he lives. You guys want the address? Directions?”

  The other guy, the one with the scraggly moustache said, his French accent heavier, “That would be fine, sir, thank you.”

  Louis walked out of the Irving service station, a cup of coffee in one hand, a glazed doughnut in the other, feeling a bit better than when they had gotten to Turner. Jean-Paul gently nudged him.

 
; “See? See? We got just what we needed … and that kid, he looked pretty skanky. Not the kind of kid who’ll go to the cops. Am I right?”

  Louis said, “Let’s just eat up and get over there, okay?”

  Jean-Paul said, “Oh, this is going to be great.”

  Tom stared at his friend Gus, who was smirking, watching the two guys get into a van with Quebec license plates—“Je Me Souviens” the license plate said, and his uncle Dickie once told him that was French for “I Am A Souvenir”—and Tom said, “Are you fucking stone cold dumb? You just gave those two guys directions to Duncan Crowley’s house? What the hell were you thinking?”

  Gus picked up his coffee cup with his good hand. “I’m thinking those two guys are going to tune up Duncan Crowley. If you and me are lucky, he’ll get a taste of the shit he and his dick brother have been shoveling out over the years.”

  Tom’s guts churned, looking at the bandage on Gus’s hand. “You nutcase, look at what he did to your fucking hand for cooking meth. What do you think he’s gonna do to you if he finds out that you gave directions to those two guys?”

  His friend took a self-satisfied sip from his coffee. “Don’t be such a pussy. What do you think, those guys are going to Duncan’s place and the first thing they’re gonna say is how they got there? Christ, relax already.”

  Tom said, “No offense, but I’m going to start relaxing the second you head out.”

  Zach Morrow was waiting outside of Rogers’ Bed & Breakfast when Duncan Crowley pulled up in his maroon Chevy pickup truck. Zach got in, shook the offered hand, and settled back in the comfortable seat. He had on jeans, a Coast Guard Academy sweatshirt, a jean jacket, and underneath the sweatshirt, in a small leather holster against his right hip, was his .32 semiautomatic Browning pistol.

  “They treat you all right there?” Duncan asked.

  “Did just fine,” he said.

  “Glad to hear it. Hey, want to take a ride, talk old times?”

  Zach buckled his seatbelt. “Sure. Why not?”

  Jean-Paul called out, excitement in his voice, “There it is, there it is!”

  Louis wanted to tell him to shut up, but yeah, there it was, just like the kid with the bandaged hand had said. Dark-stained house on Old Mill Road, on the left side, and shit, luck was with them.

  He said, “Don’t slow down, just keep on driving. But look there. The guy said Duncan drove a truck, his wife drove a Toyota. Look what’s there in the driveway.”

  “Yeah, a goddamn Toyota. How far we going?”

  “Far enough to turn around, or find a place to park.”

  The road rose up and after a couple of minutes, there was an old cemetery on the left with narrow lanes leading into it.

  “There,” Louis said. “Take a drive down there, see if we can hide the van.”

  Jean-Paul backed into the cemetery, slowly going back, until the lane disappeared in a low grove of bushes and pines. Louis’s heart was thumping, his hands warm and tingly. He got out and Jean-Paul met him at the taillights. Jean-Paul opened the rear door, and with a few movements of his hands under the bumper, unsnapped a release bolt. The floor was now loose, and Louis lifted it up, exposing a small, padded interior housing the two Chinese-made SKS semiautomatic rifles.

  He picked one up, handed it to Jean-Paul. He took his own, checked the magazine, worked the action.

  “All right, close it up,” he said. “Leave the keys in the ignition.”

  “What, suppose somebody comes by, steals it?”

  Louis said, “Look the hell around. Who the hell’s gonna steal this? The Prince of Fucking Darkness? No, leave the keys in the ignition. We need to leave in a hurry, I don’t want you telling me you can’t find the keys, or the keys were left behind.”

  “Shit, okay, then.”

  In a few minutes, they were moving down through the woods, heading to the house.

  Duncan took in Zach Morrow as he drove up to the butcher shop. Zach was his age, of course, but he was wider in the shoulders and there was something in his eyes, like he was constantly looking, observing, evaluating. His brown hair was thin, shot through with gray, and was cut short. There were fine wrinkles about his eyes, like he had spent a lot of time outside, squinting in the sun.

  Duncan said, “So what are you hoping to find out here?”

  “Crap, I don’t know,” Zach said. “A long shot, I know, but I didn’t have any other place to go. My bad paper from the Coast Guard means most employers won’t even look at me, and with my place burning down … it was like God was giving me a swift kick in the butt to go someplace else. So to Turner I came. Hell, even if it means somebody who knew my dad takes pity on me … shit, bills need to get paid, pity or no pity.”

  Duncan said, “Things are tight all around, bud. If you want, I could poke around, ask a few questions.”

  Zach looked over, eyes filled with gratitude. “Really? Not shitting me, are you?”

  “Not a bit.”

  “Man, I’d owe you big time if anything came from that. Christ, ever since I got kicked out, it’s like I can’t get a break. Like everything’s stacked up against you. If I was a goddamn Wall Street banker or Detroit carmaker or a union, you’d bet there’d be money and government aid for the asking. But put nearly twenty years in the service of the nation, screw up once, and then it’s fuck you very much.”

  Duncan took the turn on Gilman Road, leading up the gun store and the butcher shop. This time of the year, the gun shop was only open on weekends, until the weather got warmer and the flatlanders started rolling in.

  “Yeah, that’s tough all right,” Duncan said. “Seems to be a lot of that going around. You know the golden rule, hunh? Those who have the gold, make the rules.”

  “Quite true.”

  “So. Mind telling me what you did that got you dishonorably discharged?”

  Zach looked out the window. “Someday, maybe. But not today.”

  Louis led the way, holding the SKS close to his side. Thing was, people driving around really didn’t expect to see men out and about carrying semiautomatic assault rifles, so the best way to move around was to keep it lowered and parallel to your body. That way, there was nothing sticking out to get anyone’s attention.

  Jean-Paul said, “What do we do when we get there? Polite or blitz?”

  Louis said, “She’s a housewife. Probably home alone, maybe with a kid or two. Forget polite. We’ll go straight for blitz.”

  Jean-Paul smiled. “That sounds great. And remember … I don’t want to lose any chance for playtime.”

  Louis said, “How the hell can I forget something like that?”

  Zach felt something cool waft up against his skin as Duncan pulled into a dirt lot. In front was a log building for what was called Washington County Weapons & Surplus. Near the building was a shed that had a sign announcing Seasonal Deer Butchering: Best Prices Guaranteed. There were no other cars in the lot. The woods were nearby and in the distance, the peaks of the White Mountains.

  Duncan switched off the engine. “Couple of my businesses. I’ve been lucky since my accident back then. Got a bit of an insurance pay-out, bought a little gas station and convenience store, worked my ass off, got married, and Karen, she started a hairdressing salon. Boy and girl later, bunch of other businesses as well, we’re holding our own. In better shape than a lot of poor families in this county.”

  “Good on you,” Zach said, easing his breathing, keeping his eyes on Duncan’s hands. The man’s voice was calm and soothing, but Zach remembered the story of the mob-types who came up here and never returned. So if those hands moved suddenly, he’d bail out on this side of the truck, grab his Browning, keep the truck between them. If things went to the shits, okay, at least he was on top of things. If he overreacted, well, he could blame it on PTSD or not having been breastfed or something like that.

  Duncan
said, “Like what you said earlier, about being boned even when other people were getting taken care of. A hell of a thing, isn’t it? Don’t have to tell you, people up here, they’re poor but proud. They’re not looking for a hand-out, but just a fair goddamn chance. Like the paper mill down in Berlin. Hundreds of blue-collar jobs at good wages, that place was about to be closed ’cause the Canadian firm that owned the place was shipping everything back home. So these Iranian brothers came up here, made all these promises to the right people, got Federal funding, and they took the place over.”

  Zach nodded at all the right places, kept sight on the man’s hands. Maybe he was being paranoid, but he remembered a training session once, with an ex-Aussie SAS guy, who said not to worry, paranoia was just another definition of heightened awareness.

  Duncan went on. “People started getting suspicious, you know, when they started selling off some of the assets, especially when the Iranians kept on promising the proceeds were going to be used to update the equipment. Then one Monday morning, the place is padlocked, the boilers are dead, and the Iranians have skipped town, living on some island in Caribbean.”

  “Remember reading about that,” Zach said. “Thought the word was, they couldn’t be extradited because of some treaty or something.”

  Duncan tapped the steering wheel. “Official story, of course. But we ignorant mountain folk—just like you, Zach—some of us think up here that the government doesn’t want to bring those brothers to justice because of all the embarrassing info they might reveal about how and where they got their Federal funding. Payoffs to certain Congressmen and committee members. That sort of thing.”

  “Like Whitey Bulger,” Zach said.

  “The South Boston gangster?”

  “Yeah,” Zach said. “Mean son-of-bitch, ran drugs and other shit down in Boston, responsible for killing lots of people. Government could never prove anything to put him away. Reason being, of course, that he was a confidential informant for the FBI’s Boston office. Once that little fiasco blew up, he went on the lam and the FBI—shocked that their CI was a serial killer—put him on the Top Ten fugitive list. Took ’em nearly sixteen years to find him and lots of people think—me included—that the FBI didn’t want to find him, because of all the juicy details he had hidden away about the corrupt FBI office in Boston and the nonsense they were up to.”