by R. O. Barton
“When are you going to tell me where we’re going?” I asked.
“We’re going to Laredo, Texas,” he said, firing up a joint.
“Don’t you think we should curtail that until this is over?” I said.
“You can, but me, hell, I work the streets high most of the time. Gives me an edge when I need it, he said, then added sedately, “And calms me down when I need it, too.”
I looked at him. I believed him.
He said, “On this run we’re dealing with a new connection. One of the Mexicans from our last run, my last run that is, called and said he could get us a better deal through someone else.”
“You trust him?”
“Sure, why not? I’ve dealt with him before.”
“What’s the time line?”
“We need to be at the Holiday Inn in Laredo by 5 p.m. Wednesday. We’ve got plenty of time. We don’t speed, run stop signs, or do anything to call attention to ourselves.”
“Makes sense to me,” I said, thinking, Master Of The Obvious.
He reached under his seat and came out with a portable CB unit, the wires already attached up under the dash.
He keyed the mike and said, “Breaker . . . Breaker . . . good buddy . . . over,” in an exaggerated country trucker accent.
“Come back . . . Teddy Bear . . . over,” came out of the speaker.
He looked in the rear view mirror and said into the mike, “Just checkin’ the connection, good buddy . . . over.”
“Readin’ you loud and clear, Teddy Bear, got you in sight . . . over.”
“Check you later, good buddy . . . over.”
I never got into the CB thing. But I knew enough to know they were on a closed channel. There wasn’t any other chatter.
“Teddy Bear?” I said.
“Yeah, that’s me. Don’t I look all cuddly and shit.”
“And shit? Yeah,” I said, laughing. I must be getting a contact high.
“And who’s ‘good buddy’?” I asked.
“The guy you haven’t met.”
We only stopped for gas and food, making pit stops at the same time. It was at the third stop I noticed the same black Ford Bronco I’d seen at the second stop. I hadn’t seen Sunshine Phil at any of the stops.
We were inside eating burgers and fries when I saw the Bronco parked on the edge of the parking lot. It was in approximately the same position when I’d first noticed it at stop number two, a truck stop north of Houston. We had been in touch with them over the CB. Robby would give them a mile marker number to let them know our location.
“So, Phil and Good Buddy are in a late model Bronco, black with a blue pinstripe.” I said, then took a bite of my burger.
Robby’s burger stopped on it’s way to his mouth.
“That’s pretty good, Tucker. Phil bet me a hundred you wouldn’t spot them before Laredo.”
“I was a Boy Scout,” I said, with a mouth full of burger.
He stared at me and said, “Why doesn’t that surprise me.”
“When do they eat and make pit stops?”
“They have food in the Bronco and a gallon jug to pit in. They’re not supposed to take their eyes off the car.”
What he meant was the money.
“A jug might not accommodate a certain pit,” I said, laughing. Sometimes I just crack myself up.
“Yeah, well, they’ve taken care of that the when we’ve hung out in the parking lots after gassing up, stretching our legs or when I’ve looked at the map.”
There were a few times we had pulled to the far edge of the parking lots at large truck stops after refueling, eating or pitting, and Robby would suggest we stretch ourselves by walking around the car or actually stretching in front of the car. They had been communicating a lot in police code, like ‘What’s your 10-20’ and ‘we want an 8-80’. I hadn’t asked what they all meant because, one; I didn’t care, and two; I think they were making it up as they went along just to mess with me. I also thought that ‘Good Buddy,’ was a cop.
“How’d you make them?” he asked, mopping up a glob of ketchup with his burger.
“Same vehicle in two different truck stops isn’t that unusual, but the positioning was too coincidental. Both times they parked at the edge of the parking lot close to the road, when there were plenty of parking spots closer to the building. I guessed they got gas while we were stretching or when you’re doing redundant map reading?”
I wondered why Robby needed to look at a map. He should know the route.
He looked over his shoulder at the Bronco, and said, “Yeah, they’re not supposed to leave the Bronco at the same time, just in case the bad guys show up. You know, never lose site of us.”
I said, “I guess now you’ve won your C-note, you guys can start speaking English over the CB, and you can stop looking at the map all the time. The stretching is good, though.”
“Hey, we have to have some fun on these trips. Something to do besides drive and wait for a war to start.”
“I guess they’ve never been more than a minute or so behind us, right?” I asked.
He shook his head, “More like thirty seconds. We try to keep about that close using the mile markers.”
“Where were your buddies when they got hit?”
“About an hour out of Laredo, in the middle of nowhere.”
“Did you know them well?”
After a moment of silence, he said, “Not as well as Phil. But I think they were stupid. I bet if it would’ve been you and me on that run, no one would have gotten the drop on us.”
He was a cocky guy.
“I bet they were stoned,” I said around a mouthful of fries.
“They weren’t like you and me, Tucker.”
“How’s that?” I mumbled, chewing.
“Bad to the bone,” he said, grinning with his mouth full, churned mustard visible around the edges. “That’s why we’re carrying the money.”
That wasn’t effective. Maybe too subtle.
I was just reinforced in my conviction that manners only counted with women and family. Even my manners went to hell in a hand basket around a bunch of guys. It was like using good manners around the guys might make you less of a man or too refined. But I knew real men talked with their mouths full of quiche.
The waitress brought the check.
“I take it you made reservations at the Holiday Inn before we left,” I said, after I swallowed my food.
“Yeah, I made’m last week, adjoining rooms,” he said, reading the check, then laying down some bills.
“Let’s go outside and stretch,” he said, getting up.
We moved the car to the far edge of the parking lot. As I got out, I heard Robby say into the CB, “Phil, you owe me a hundred bucks, he made you, game over . . . over.”
I watched the Bronco move to the gas pumps. Two men got out. Phil started pumping gas, and the other one walked into the restaurant. He was on the other side of the Bronco and I couldn’t get a good look, but there was something vaguely familiar about him. Phil shot us the finger.
By 12:30 a. m. Wednesday and we were an hour out of Laredo. For the past hour we had scarcely talked. Our senses were on heightened alert and had been for a couple of hours. There had been no joking CB chatter or idle talk.
I turned around in my seat, and on my knees, reached over and pulled the shotgun from under the blanket, turned back around and, racking it, chambered a round.
Robby didn’t give me a second look. He was busy alternating his eyes from the road in front of him to the rear view mirror. I hadn’t seen him put the pistol in his lap, the barrel pointing into the seat between his legs, the grip within easy reach of his right hand.
We had been on Highway 59 since Houston. We had gone through Victoria and a little place called Beeville. Probably a sweet town.
The two-lane road was lonesome and dark, with only a few headlights coming towards us. But often enough to keep us on edge.
Inside the Impala, the light from the das
hboard gave the interior a greenish tint. The only sounds were the drone of the air conditioner and the whine of the tires interrupted by the little thumps the cracks in the road made as we ran them over. It was a desolate part of Texas and even the darkness couldn’t hide the great expanse and flatness of the countryside.
I changed position, so I could look into the right side rear view mirror. I saw a light so far behind us, it looked like the head of a pin.
“Is that Phil and Good Buddy behind us?” I said, my voice sounding dry and small in the moving car.
Robby cleared his throat and said, “It better be. Any further back, they wouldn’t do us much good if we needed them.”
We could have called them on the CB, but, it would’ve seemed invasive to break the quiet that was giving us our razor’s edge. Robby, Phil and Good Buddy must’ve had similar thoughts, the CB remained soundless.
Up until now, this trip was in some way nothing more than an adventure with a for-sure successful outcome. Now . . . well, it wasn’t that I was having second thoughts. It was a little late for that. But, like many things in life, the idea of doing something is never the same as doing it. There were a few butterflies fluttering around in my stomach. But, I knew that like the butterflies I used to get before a football game, or before the ringing of the first round bell, these butterflies were my buddies. They would help keep me sharp, keep me quick, and, in this case, maybe keep me alive. Go ahead and flutter, my little gossamer-winged friends.
“Coming up behind us, watch it,” Robby said evenly, looking in the rearview mirror. “They’re coming fast.”
His breath quickened.
“I’m getting in the back,” I said, climbing over the seat. There was a roaring in my ears. I shoved the bags out of my way and started rolling the window down on the driver’s side. When the window was almost halfway down, I had second thoughts about the bags and started piling them in front of my chest, between me and the window.
Just when I had everything situated and was ready to shoot, a Cadillac went flying by, honking as it passed.
There was no sound for a half a minute. I hadn’t moved. I was still holding the shotgun, full of double ought buck against my shoulder, the blowing hot dry wind, itching as it rippled the sweat streaming down my face.
We both jumped, as the quiet was assaulted by the loud squelching of the CB, and Good Buddy’s voice, “Bet that made your assholes pucker . . . over,” followed by raucous laughter.
He added, “We followed them after they passed us long enough to see it was just a couple out on a late date . . . over.”
Robby picked up the mike and said, “Naw, we thought it might be you guys coming up because we’re getting close to Laredo, then the Caddy was by us before we knew it . . . over.”
After a moment’s silence, a disappointed, “Oh.” There was no . . . ‘over’.
Robby turned on the interior light and turned his head to look at me. I still hadn’t moved from my ‘ready to rumble’ position.
“Motherfucker!,” he yelled, laughing maniacally and pounding the dash. “What a fuckin’ rush. What I’d tell ya. Look at you. No one’s gonna get the drop on us. What a fuckin’ trip.”
After rolling up the window, I moved the bags from in front of me, realizing that the gym bag full of ammo was one of the bags I was hiding behind. I set the shotgun over on the front seat and climbed over.
“Man, that was so fine,” Gray said. “You were like behind cover and everything. If those would have been hijackers, you would have blown the shit out of them. You were fast. Fast and smart. You’re my man!”
He was bouncing up and down like a hyper-active kid waiting for ice cream. He really loved this.
“Yeah, right,” I said, opting not to mention the bag of ammunition I was using for a bulletproof vest. I’d have to work on the smart part.
Fifteen minutes later we passed a sign that said Casa Blanca Lake, then a road to the north. I saw more light ahead, then a sign signifying the turn to the Laredo Airport. Almost directly across from the northbound turn to the airport, we turned south on Bartlett Avenue, went to the second red light and turned west on Guadalupe. It was one-way, and up ahead on the right was the sign for the motel.
We pulled into the parking lot of the Holiday Inn at 1:45 in the morning. We had a little over 13 hours to get rested before the deal was to go down.
Stopping under the overhang leading to the lobby, Robby said, “You stay here, I’ll check us all in. Keep your eyes open, I don’t see no fat lady.”
While I was still looking for a fat lady, he came back and started the car.
He mikes the CB and says, “We’re in rooms 156 and 158, in the very back, they’re down and out…over.”
“Roger that…over,” came the reply.
We pulled around to the rooms. There were only a few cars in the lot and none around the rooms. Laredo was a real center of activity. It was perfect.
After parking the car, Robby said, “We’ve rented four rooms, we have 154 and 160, too. We’ll leave them empty for a buffer while we rest and stuff.”
I liked it, showed planning, I was starting to feel better about this.
“And stuff?” I said.
“I’ll tell you later, after we’re all together.”
“So, I get to meet ‘Good Buddy’?” I said.
“Ohh yeah,” he exaggerated, then grinned an ‘I’ve got a secret’ grin.
He gave me the room keys and said, “Go open one. I’ll get the money.”
After putting my .45 behind my back, I got out and opened room 158. A minute later, he came in behind me. He closed the door, then threw a medium-size duffel bag on the first of the double beds. It was filled to a bulging rigidity.
“I won’t even ask how much that is,” I said.
“You know I trust you, Tucker. But this is your first trip and there are some rules we have to stick to.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m not.”
He smiled, opened the door and looked out for a few seconds then said, “I’ll be right back, watch the bread.”
He came back a minute later with our clothes, my shotgun wrapped in the blanket, a bottle of Jack Daniels tucked under his arm, and an unlit joint hanging out of his mouth.
“I don’t know about you, but I need to wind down before I can go to sleep.”
“Looks like you’ve got what it takes,” I said, as he handed me the shotgun. I unwrapped it and laid it on the bed with the money.
I’ve never been much of a whiskey drinker. Being only 22 I hadn’t had a chance to develop much of a taste for it. Also, the Tuckers had a history of becoming a little ornery while inebriated on whiskey, so I had mostly stuck to beer. But, tonight I might make an exception to the rule, the blood in my veins was amped with a few hundred volts.
Robby unscrewed the cap on the whiskey and took a long pull. He handed me the bottle. I didn’t hesitate. I took a swallow, just one.
“I’d rather have a beer,” I said, tears blurring my vision. I couldn’t understand how anyone enjoyed the taste of whiskey. My face must have said what I was thinking. Robby laughed.
He lit the joint with a Zippo, took a hit, and passed it to me. I started to take it but in the mirror saw the reflection of the money bag and shotgun on the bed.
I handed it back and said, “I’ll pass.”
“Cool, more for me,” he said, taking another toke.
I wanted to tell him to cool it, but, my instincts said not to. He was older and had done this before, and I had to trust he wouldn’t get so stoned as to endanger me. My sole focus was to get out of this in one piece, without getting busted, and with 10,000 dollars.
“I need to call Margie,” I said.
“No calls, until this is over,” he said.
I quietly said, “I’m going over to that telephone and call my wife collect and tell her I’m here safe. If you don’t like that, make a move.”
It became very still in the motel room. The only movement was the
marijuana smoke floating between us.
“I’m not going to let you make that call, Tucker.”
I walked to within a foot of him. I looked down and said, “I’ve seen you in action, Robby…but…”
“But what,…boyo?” he interrupted.
“So far, you and I have been friends, but don’t let your alligator mouth overload your mocking bird ass,” I said, smiling.
We locked eyes. I could see him thinking, weighing the probabilities. I let him.
“You must really love her.”
“You can’t imagine.”
“She is beautiful . . . and sexy,” he said.
“You can’t imagine.”
“I’d be afraid to,” he said, then ginned and took another toke.
“Just don’t let me know when you do,” I said. The tense moment had passed and now we were both smiling.
I picked the phone up to call.
“Don’t mess with the collect thing,” he said.
After going through the hotel long distance rigmarole, I heard her voice.
“Hello,” she said sleepily.
I wanted to curl up next to her.
“Hey Baby,” I said.
“I’ve been worried about you,” she said, more awake now.
“No need to do that, everything’s cool.”
“I miss you. When are you coming home?” Her husky sleepy-voice always excited me.
“A couple of days, and when I get there, you’re gonna need to find something to hold on to.”
“Come’re,” she said, breathlessly. It’s what we said to each other when we wanted to make love.
“Go back to sleep, Baby, I’ll be next to you before you know it. And after I’m through with you, we’ll go out and celebrate.”
“When I get through with you, you’re not going to be able to go anywhere,” she whispered.
“I love you,” I said. My heart was hurting.
“I love you more,” she replied.
“Bye-bye, Baby.”
“Bye, Tuck, be careful.”
“See ya soon,” I said and hung up.
I knew I wouldn’t survive if anything ever happened to her. I’ve loved her since the moment I met her. I was 13 years old. But, we both knew that if anything was going to happen to one of us, it would be me.
