by Stash (v5)
“Hundred.”
“Try fifty.”
“Try fuck you.”
“Let’s remember we’re both businessmen. That’s why we’re doing this deal together. We trust each other, we believe in being fair. I’ll give you seventy.”
“Eighty.”
“Eighty off, for your inconvenience, pain, and suffering. One seventy due at pickup. But don’t be presenting me your gas receipts as expenses when you get here.”
Sweet laughed, and the tension between them broke.
“I don’t need no snow tires, do I?”
How does this idiot operate a chain of fitness clubs?
“It’s early September. The leaves are on the trees.”
He shouldn’t have gone for the big payday with Sweet. It was out of his comfort zone, he’d reached too far. He didn’t need a new client at this point, especially a big mean motherfucker with city gangbanger roots and stinking with ambition, and he didn’t like moving large quantities of product. He had conducted what due diligence he could, but in the end Sweet remained an unknown, and unknown meant risk.
He’d missed a call while on the phone with Sweet and when he checked there was a message from Dana. Her knee hadn’t improved and she wouldn’t be running in the meet tomorrow so he shouldn’t bother coming to Plattsburgh. He felt for her, knowing how important the race was to her. He’d drive to St. Lawrence in the morning and surprise her. Take her out for a nice breakfast, boost her spirits with a pep talk.
It was now after midnight, Daryl Sweet hours late. Maybe he had changed his mind and wouldn’t show, which might end up the better turn of events. Jude would be cash-strapped for a long time while slowly selling off the inventory, but he could leave the bulk of it up here and have Aaron shuttle product down to him as needed.
While waiting for Sweet, Jude used the time to plan the next phase of his life: retirement from this business. After this deal with Sweet, he’d stick with the nest egg already collected—there was enough to launch his daughter, but maybe not to keep the place in Florida. That’s okay. He’d stay with Gull for a while, and Andrew had been talking about opening a second place. No need to look beyond that.
Then there was Gwen: her grip on him he couldn’t explain. For years he had not thought of her, and then one winter day he saw her in his restaurant and it didn’t matter that she was with her husband and children, it didn’t matter their own relationship had been both intense and meandering, it didn’t matter that she rejected his suggestions of getting together. None of it mattered except that he wanted to see her again, experience her again, and he would find a way to do so. There was a reason he wanted her that he probably could uncover if he dug deep and looked at it from every angle. But that would ruin the mystery of it for him, perhaps destroy his desire.
He believed she had no choice except to give his name to the police, and he forgave her for that. He also believed Gwen would be back to see him. She had her own style of saying yes to him. He remembered it from the days at the Patriot. Like the time she tried to distance herself from that cook she had dated a few times who then became obsessed with her and started harassing her. Jude asked Gwen if she wanted him to intervene and she answered by telling him the cook had tried to break into her house. That was a yes. Or that night when Gwen babysat for Dana and Jude came home to find Gwen asleep on the couch—after he shared wine and a few lines of coke with her, he asked if she’d prefer not to drive home and she answered by closing her eyes and leaning her head against the pillow. That was also a yes. And there were other times, after that night, when he mentioned he might come by after work and the only answer he got was an unlocked door when he showed up at her apartment. And more recently, this past winter, when she’d come to see him about getting a bag of weed and he invited her to return sometime for lunch with him, and she answered by showing up weeks later when downtown for jury duty. Gwen had a way of saying yes without saying yes, which is why he was sure she’d be back to see him again. It made him confident—not just about Gwen, but about this deal he had to close with Sweet, about everything.
The bell sounded on the kitchen wall and a moment later Sweet’s Navigator appeared around the bend in the driveway, bobbing through the puddles, beams and fog lights turning night into day.
He parked next to Jude’s van and shut down. The doors stayed closed.
Jude came out to the porch. Sweet and his passenger opened their doors together and approached the house, stopping at the bottom of the porch steps. The other guy looked like a white version of Sweet: a mountain boy with an iron neck. He carried a backpack over one shoulder, the straps not long enough to let him wear it the regular way.
“Have any trouble finding the place?”
“You know how to hide, I’ll give you that,” Sweet said. He stared into the forested blackness surrounding the cabin. “There any bears around here?”
“Never seen one, although this is their habitat.”
“Mario, here, he’s seen a bear.”
Mario smiled. Horse teeth and jaw.
“He’s wrestled a bear,” Sweet said.
“What was it like?”
“Not too bad because this one had a manicure,” Mario said. “Otherwise them claws would have got me pretty good. As it is, a bear’s got big teeth.”
“Is it kind of like dog fighting? With betting and all?”
“No, just for fun. I happen to know somebody with a circus bear and one thing led to another.”
“You going to ask him who won?” Sweet said.
“Yeah, sure.”
“It was a tie,” Mario said. “I can bite, too.”
Looked like he could bite Jude’s hand off. “What do you say we conduct business,” Jude suggested.
Sweet nodded, and Mario pushed the backpack to Jude.
He leaned from the weight of it. He’d been concerned about a tense “you first” “no, you first” game of showing the money and showing the goods, but Sweet hadn’t hesitated to make the first gesture.
“You want to count it?”
“Do I need to?”
Sweet snorted. “Always.”
Jude set the pack on the ground and opened it, clawed through wrappers of hundred-dollar bills. He opened one of the packets and folded half the bills into his pocket.
“Yours is in the van,” Jude said.
Mario went to the van and opened the back. He stuck his head in and then back out, saying, “Ain’t shit in here.”
Jude left the knapsack on the porch step and came over and switched an overhead light in the back of the van. Sweet and Mario looked on.
Jude disassembled the false walls and floor to reveal the packed cargo bed.
“Whoa, that’s tits,” Sweet said. “You do all that custom work yourself?”
Mario started transferring the packages from the van to the back of the Navigator, covering the pile with a blanket when he finished.
“Looks like you could use a better transport system,” Jude said. “A blanket for camouflage?”
“We weren’t counting on arranging our own transportation. Remember, the deal was you deliver.”
“And I told you, it wasn’t safe for me to be on the road with the cargo. It put the whole thing at risk.”
“I think you’re in over your head. Is that the case? Why the fuck couldn’t you deliver?”
“The police could be looking for me. That’s why I wanted to stay off the roads. You wouldn’t want me exposing you?”
“Motherfucker, did you say the police are watching you?”
“They don’t know about this location.”
“They don’t know about this location?” Sweet repeated. “This location right here where I’m standing in the middle of bear country?”
“It’s safe here. That’s the reason why I wanted you to come here and not have me traveling to you.”
“So the police are watching and you want me to drive out of here with a fucking blanket as my armor?”
“You c
an buy the van,” Jude said. “I don’t need it anymore. Even dogs can’t sniff it out.”
Sweet laughed, a low baritone chuckle. “Hey, Mario, Judas here wants to get out of this business. He’s looking for an early retirement.”
Mario looked up from his blanket work at the back of the Navigator and smiled.
Sweet said, “I knew you were too much a pussy. You ain’t got what it takes.”
“Probably not,” Jude agreed.
“Now what happens when I need a refill?”
“I can get you in touch with some people. I even know someone who can drive for you.”
“You can tell them where to find me, right?”
“I’ll give you a phone number.” To show he meant it, Jude unclipped the phone from his belt. “It’s right here.”
“Mario, we got any extra plates with us?”
“I got some.”
“Commercial?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Move it all back to the van. And switch the plates.” Then to Jude, “How much?”
“Add thirty back on.”
“I don’t have the extra with me.”
“I’m sure you’re good for it. I’ll come by and pick it up.”
Sweet nodded, and shivered. “Fucking cold up here. I hate outdoors. I played a game in Chicago once with the wind chill twenty below. Every time you hit someone it felt like a bone was going to break. The ball was a rock.”
Mario finished moving the packages back into the hold of the van. Jude showed him how to zip the scent fabric and put the sides and floor back in.
When the van was packed and secure, Sweet turned to Mario. “You drive the van.”
“Let me get a couple CDs to listen to,” Mario said. He fished in the front seat of the Navigator. Then he stood up with something in his hand.
That’s when Jude knew. He thought he knew from the beginning when they talked about bear wrestling, something ironic in Sweet’s voice, and maybe that’s why he tried to sell the van to Sweet, a plan that came from nowhere but one that might put distance between him and Sweet, finish their deal and relationship all in one. Although he thought he knew, he pushed the idea down and aside because who can face such a realization, even when you’ve been moving in that direction for months now, taking wrong turns that head farther into a dark, dead-end alley. You can’t go there, even though you are going there.
He thought of Gwen, how he wouldn’t be there when she came to see him again. Then Dana. Suddenly he realized he wouldn’t be able to visit in the morning and take her out for breakfast, and right now that was the most important thing in the world. Sitting in a diner with his daughter, eating fried eggs and disparaging the weak coffee. What would he say to encourage and comfort her? Quick—what words?
He expected it to come from Mario, the bear wrestler he had pegged as the ax man. But Mario was only holding CDs in his hand. It was Sweet who reached into his jacket and pulled out the gun. Jude stumbled backward against the stairs before righting himself against the railing.
“Here’s your early retirement,” Sweet said, the steel barrel rising up level with Jude’s forehead. Jude leaned back, as if the few inches of space could make any difference in the world.
She Outran Him
Dana opened her eyes to see a single massive cloud, billowed at the edges, gray middle, drifting across a crisp blue background far above her. She lay faceup in a wet ditch, her body embedded in mud. She tried to move and the mud sucked to keep hold of her. A car whooshed past on the road above, a gleam of steel and tires.
She sat up, using her hands for support. Vomit laced the front of her jacket. Her head throbbed. Her ripped tights sagged like soiled rags around her knees. Her knees. She bent one, then the other. She had run, even with her bad knee, she’d run hard and fast and he couldn’t catch her. That much she remembered: a sweeter victory than crossing any finish line. She outran him.
But how had she ended up in the ditch? She must have tripped and fallen or rolled and then blacked out. Did she hear him driving up behind her and scamper off the road? Did he pass back and forth slowly along the road searching for her, the engine growling like a hungry animal? Or was that a dream. It was dark then, and now it was light. That was all she knew of time. He had drugged her somehow, she also knew that. No way a half glass of beer rocked her that way. There had been a unit in her health class senior year that covered date rape, and the drug that made it easy. She couldn’t remember its name, but she could describe the effects—she’d just experienced them all.
She crawled out of the cold ooze and worked her way up to the cindery shoulder. The road extended long and straight in both directions, with open fields and rolling meadows on either side, the profile of mountains in the distance. She could see a black-and-white road sign ahead with the number eleven on it. She was somewhere between Potsdam and Canton.
Her purse was gone, her wallet and phone. She had nothing. She had herself. She’d gotten away.
She stood and pulled off what remained of her tights. One of her shoes was missing. She looked down into the ditch but didn’t see it. She started walking. She kicked the other shoe away and continued barefoot, no idea how far she needed to go, no other cars in sight.
She wished she could call her daddy to come get her. It was crazy, he was hours away in Morrissey, and she was grown up now and in such a hurry to go to college and no longer dependent on him, but he would drop anything he was doing for her and she would stop and sit right where she was and wait for him. If she could.
A car approached from behind her and she turned to look at it but made no motion to flag it down. The driver crossed to the far lane and sped past. Another car came from in front. No, it was a pickup truck. She stopped walking and stared at it. The driver slowed to a stop, shifted into reverse and backed up, stopping alongside her. A man wearing a camouflage hunting cap rolled down his window and asked if she needed a ride.
“No thank you.”
“Are you okay?”
She started to run, one foot in front of the other, barefooted on the stones and cinder, stepping on a crushed beer can, splashing in a puddle, stubbing her toe on a rock.
The truck drove off.
She slowed again to a walk. The sun slid out from behind another cloud. It lay low in the sky, early morning, but already warmer than yesterday and though her ripped clothing hung from her like wet laundry, she was not cold. Would her team be on the bus? Would they think she’d blown them off because she wasn’t running? Says who she wasn’t running.
She started out again, walking a steady pace. She focused on getting back to the dorm, taking a hot shower, sleeping for six days. She would write about what happened to her, she would fill an entire notebook, someday.
Another ten minutes of trudging and she reached the crest of a long, gentle rise in the road, then started down the other side. She felt strong enough to keep on, for as long as necessary.
She didn’t hear the car until it was upon her. It came from behind; the crest of the hill blocked the noise from reaching her. She turned at the sound of tires skidding against the asphalt and saw the back end of the car whip around as it came to a stop and three doors opened at once.
Out of the car jumped Steve and Jen and Mark. Steve reached her first, putting out his arms and hugging her and Jen saying we’ve been driving around all night looking for you and calling you, thank God we found you. All three of them had hold of her, no one wanted to let go.
part 4
Deal
Seeking Approval
Not until driving back to Morrissey with his family did Brian begin to think about work and remember to check his voice mail: the usual fire drills, new demands, why haven’t you called me. He returned one call he hadn’t expected, from Dr. Marta Everson, and agreed to fly out to Chicago the next day and meet her at the airport for what Everson called a confidential meeting and potentially career-changing proposal. You would think Everson had done enough to his career already, but
Brian decided to explore all possibilities, keep all options open.
They met in the Admiral Club in view of the busy runway. Brian watched jets take off and land and wheel along the taxiway while he listened to Marta explain her idea.
Dr. Everson remained convinced that Zuprone posed a danger when prescribed at high doses for weight loss. Yet its popularity continued to grow due to Caladon’s aggressive and stealth marketing of it for such off-label use. The seminars she had participated in on Caladon’s behalf could be justified because the presentation included discussion about other drug therapies. But the entire Zuprone sales and marketing strategy, when the programs were examined in the aggregate—now, wouldn’t that tell a story of unethical and illegal practices?
No, it was not a rhetorical question. Yes, she wanted Brian to answer.
Does she think she’s the first one to pose such a question? Why should he answer her?
Because Everson needed an insider at Caladon willing to blow the whistle, and did Brian know that under the legal concept of qui tam, he would be entitled to a percentage of the fines levied by the federal government against Caladon. The amount would likely be in the millions.
Did he know about qui tam?
Of course he knew it. Being awarded a slice of the settlement pie motivated many whistle-blowers, who were shunned and pressured by management, often lost their jobs, and were blackballed from their industries.
“You would know whether a case could be made against Caladon,” Marta said. “You’re the one who implemented the marketing programs for Zuprone.”
“And what’s in it for you?” Brian asked. “Why do you want to go through all of this?”
“If you could see the condition of some of my patients, you would agree it’s the right thing to do. Two of them are quite ill; anorexia can be a life-threatening condition. Other patients could be experiencing similar bad outcomes—someone needs to protect consumers.”
The right thing to do, plus the express line to media exposure for a publicity junkie like Everson.
