by George Wier
Better than the protection afforded by any firearm would have been bringing Hank along. The guy had been in more close scrapes than any man I’d ever known, with the possible exception of my retired Texas Ranger friend, Walter Cannon. But Walt was down in Mexico, taking in the cool evenings and sipping tequila. I was never sure which of the two men had the most scars, but they seemed to have the lives of the luckiest of cats, and like cats, they typically landed on their feet. Instead of either Hank or Walt, there was simply little old me and two women, each of whom bore watching.
At Tanya’s direction, I drove past the storage facility—all sodium arc lights and lit up like a high school football stadium—and turned off down the next dirt lane, half a mile down.
“There’s a little road coming up,” Tanya said. “It’s not much more than a cow path, but take it. It goes behind the place.”
I slowed but missed it and had to back up. I turned the headlights that direction, but it was overgrown with weeds.
“There’s no road here,” I said.
“Yes,” Tanya said. “There is. It’s nice and level right here, and there’s no gate, nor fence. Just push the weeds over and you’ll see what I mean.”
“Okay,” I said. “But if we get stuck in there, I’m making you both push me back out.”
“Stated like a gentleman,” Loraine said.
“I think he means it,” Tanya said.
I gave the old Mercedes a tap on the gas pedal and we rolled over the six-foot tall weeds and onto a rambling, double-rutted path that wasn’t evident from the county road. Okay, so I’d been wrong. There was a road there. Then again, I would’ve loved to have seen either of these women try to negotiate their way around Austin at rush hour.
We rolled on until we were approximately opposite the center of the lights from the storage lot.
“This ought to be good enough. Kill the lights. We don’t want to be seen.”
“Are there any guards?” I asked.
“Why would there be guards?” Tanya said. “Nothing going on here, right?”
“Okay. Whatever you say.”
We climbed out into the night. The air was heady with the scent of freshly-mown hay, with a hint of both cedar and pine. We were, after all, in East Texas. I popped open my trunk and extracted my bolt cutters—the kind used to break open big locks. I hadn’t used them in a long time, but they appeared to be as dangerous as ever.
“What are you doing with those?” Loraine asked.
“Isn’t there a fence around this thing?” I asked.
“Of course there is,” Tanya said. “But you won’t need those for that. I know where to get in.”
“There will be a lock somewhere we’ll have to get through, won’t there?” I asked.
“Well, yeah.”
I held up the bolt cutters. “That’s where these come in. By the way, why didn’t we come in the front way?” I asked.
“A gate code is required,” Loraine said, “and I’m willing to bet Tanya doesn’t have a code for it.”
“I used to,” Tanya said. “But that was a while back.”
Tanya pushed down the tall weeds that had grown up around the chain-linked fence to the rear of the property. The fence was topped with two strands of regular barbed wire. I didn’t think it was electrified, but wanted to find out before touching it. Usually, there are warning signs, but not always. The question quickly became moot as Tanya reached down to the ground by one of the upright poles, grabbed the wire mesh and pulled it back and upward. It neatly separated from the rest of the fence.
“After you,” she said, and gestured.
“Fine.” I went through on my hands and knees, followed by Loraine, who still had her shotgun with her.
I pushed the fence back and Tanya came through, pushing the shotgun across the grass in front of her as she came. Somewhere along the line, Loraine had handed it to her.
On the inside it was all kalechi rock patched with grass and weeds, and I felt like we stuck out like sore thumbs in the bright glow of the lights, but thus far no alarm had been raised. I was mildly surprised not to hear barking dogs. I’d hate to have to shoot one for defending its turf, but if it was between him—or possibly her—and me, I would win that one hands down. The asphalt area began halfway between the fence and the buildings.
The storage lot was a set of ten long buildings in rows, with the far ends toward the highway and the back ends facing us. There was really no area that was not well lit, except for where we stood along the fence at the rear of the property. It was the length of a football field from where we stood to the buildings, as if the vast open area before us had once been earmarked for more such buildings, but that funding had fallen short. The remainder was likely invested in the light poles, of which I counted twenty, each approximately seventy feet tall. There in the night I found myself studying the ground around us and the bases of the distant buildings in order to save the retinas of my eyes, it was so blindingly bright up there.
“Which way?” I asked.
“Right in the damn middle,” Tanya said. “We have to watch out for the guard.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, “I thought you said there wasn’t a guard.”
“Are you some kind of stupid, Bill?” she asked. “You don’t leave that kind of hardware unwatched. Of course there’s a guard.”
“Oh. Okay, lead on.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
W e moved from light to shadow and to light again as we made our way across the asphalt rear parking lot. Up closer to the buildings there were a number of vehicles parked, not a few with dry-rotted tires, sun-cracked vinyl dashboards, and expired tags and inspection stickers. Weeds poked their way up through the cracks, as weeds are prone to do, and I got the feeling that despite Loraine’s testimony to the contrary, the place was not what you’d call a ‘going concern’.
We entered the shadow between the central set of buildings, and I waited for the bark of a dog, or the shout of a guard, but none was forthcoming.
“What are we doing here?” I asked Loraine, not bothering to whisper. There was no one around to hear, I was almost certain.
“This is where they kept the military stuff. There was some kind of air motorcycle that could take off and fly. It didn’t have wheels—it had jets. They had crates with all kinds of stuff.”
“Crates,” I said. “Okay. Where were these jet cycles and these crates?”
She pointed to the middle, where a set of large, double-wide doors stood, closed and utterly silent.
“Well, let’s see.” I walked twenty paces on and the two women followed me.
“Huh,” I said. “There’s a lock here. Looks kind of new. Whatever operation this place once was, I don’t think it’s being used for that now.” I fitted the bolt cutter over the padlock and exerted some effort on the steel handles. The bolt cutters bit, but didn’t bite all the way through. I relaxed, cinched it up tighter over the cut I’d already made, and tore into it again. This time the steel lock snapped. I twisted it around and removed it and let it fall to the ground.
“Don’t you have to have a warrant or something to do this?” Loraine asked.
“It’s a little late for that now,” I replied. I set down the bolt cutters, fished my flashlight out of my pocket and reached down, grasped the handle and pulled it upwards. It slid open with little effort, as if the door was properly counter-balanced on the inside.
I shined the flashlight around.
The place was empty, but for a large double-bagged paper sack in the center of the floor.
I walked over to it and shined my light down inside.
I swore.
“Those can’t be real,” Tanya stated.
“I think they are,” I said. “You don’t see these outside of banking systems. Otherwise, they’re almost impossible to use as tender. I mean, who’s going to break just one of them, much less...”
“A brick?” Tanya said.
I squatted down, ran my fingertips over the
m. I pulled one free and held it up in the light.
“Yeah,” I said. “Real enough.”
It was a crisp, almost brand new one-thousand dollar bill. Having seen large sums of money before, and not being balked by such, I hurriedly estimated the haul.
“How much do you think it is?” Tanya asked.
“About five million dollars, if all of these are thousands. And they appear to be. The federal reserve stopped issuing these back in the 60s. But these are practically new.
I looked at the date. Sure enough, it read ‘1967'.
“Someone is supposed to come back for this,” Loraine stated.
“Yeah. And they’re going to be upset when it’s gone,” I replied.
“We’re taking it?”
“I’m taking it,” I said. “This was found while searching for a fleeing felon.”
“You mean Abner,” Loraine said. “If that little shit is mixed up in this, he’s going to be in deep trouble.”
“Oh, he’s in deep already. I hope you don’t have a great deal of love for him, because if he survives this, he’s going to be put away for a very long time.”
*****
I don’t always know when something isn’t right, but sometimes a situation can have a slippery feel to it. A certain quality to it that makes the little hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention. It’s a ‘something missing’ sort of thing—the sense that a camouflaged hole is waiting somewhere on the path ahead.
Before leaving the storage building, I stopped.
Tanya was already outside. Loraine was three paces ahead of me and about to step outside. She must have detected the absence of my footfalls behind her because she turned to face me. I still had the flashlight pointed at the floor with my right hand and my left wrapped around the sack of money, holding it to my chest. It wasn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, light in weight.
“What?” Loraine asked.
I clicked the light off, hoping that I was in total darkness from their perspective. The outside light spilling into the place from the tall light poles scattered around the grounds stopped no more than a foot in front of me.
“I just realized something,” I said.
“And what, pray tell, is that?” Tanya asked from outside, no more than twenty feet away.
I carefully set the sack of money down in the darkness beside me, and traded the flashlight for the .44 pistol. “Not much. It’s just that Loraine is the sheriff’s wife. That Abner is also related to her. That you two are best friends. And also that I’m trespassing in a storage facility based upon a whole load of speculation. Speculation, that is, coming from both of you.”
“What don’t you believe about what we’ve said?” Loraine asked. “And why did you turn your light off?”
“I believe everything and nothing,” I said. “I also note that my partner isn’t here with me. He’s a whole hell of a lot smarter than me. He can smell a bad situation from miles away.” And then, just to telegraph the gravity of my suspicion, I cocked the pistol.
The cocking of a large pistol is productive of a series of extremely audible clicks. The sound is unmistakable. It’s the equivalent of a rattlesnake’s rattle starting up from beneath the baby’s blanket.
“Shit,” Tanya said. “He knows.”
“Shut up!” Loraine said. She quickly stepped backwards and outside.
“You wouldn’t shoot an unarmed woman.” Tanya said.
“Unarmed?” I said. “Where’s the shotgun, Tanya? You had it when we came through the fence. I don’t see it on you now.”
“I set it against the outside of the door. I don’t think it would be healthy for me to get it at the moment, seeing as you’ve gone all suspicious on me.”
“You may be right about that. Tell me who’s waiting out there for me, besides you two.”
“Her husband.” Tanya said, gesturing to Loraine, who stood half a dozen feet to her right, closer to the center of the outsized overhead door. “A couple of deputies. Probably Abner is with them.”
“Shut up, Tanya,” Loraine said. “I swear, if you get anybody killed...”
“You know what I think?” Tanya said. “I think we made a wrong decision here somewhere. I think maybe we’ve been on the wrong side all along.”
“They’re going to come any minute, Tanya. You know what that means.”
“I know it what it means.”
I moved three paces to my right, quiet as a Methodist minister in a brothel.
Tanya moved to the side of the doorway, slow and easy.
“What are you doing?” Loraine said. “He’ll kill you. He might even kill me.”
“Just keep talking to us, Bill,” Tanya said. “By now they’re at both ends of the building, and there’s no other way out. They won’t do anything unless they think something has gone wrong.”
Tanya slowly hefted the shotgun.
“Don’t do this.” Loraine said.
“Just walk slowly down there, Loraine.” Tanya said. “Because if you don’t, I think I might shoot you myself.”
I could see the look on Loraine’s face even in the half-light. A full measure of shock, leavened with growing fear.
“Yeah,” I said, and noted that both of them turned their heads to follow my voice. “I think you’d better listen to her, Loraine. Tell them I sent you back to my car to get a better sack for the money. Tell them the sack broke.”
“I won’t.”
“I would do it,” Tanya said. “That way, when you get to his car, you can just keep going. I have a feeling this may go badly.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m getting the same feeling. But I promise you, it won’t go badly for me.”
“I was right about you from the start,” Tanya said. “I have some explaining to do, it seems.”
“You do,” I said. “After we get out of this. And please, tell your friend that I have a .44 magnum pointed at her. If she doesn’t start back down the ally at the count of, say, two, then I might be abliged to pull the trigger. One.”
Loraine turned and ran.
“Okay,” Tanya said after a few seconds. “She’s nearing the end of the ally. I never knew she could run so fast.”
“Tell me everything that happens.”
“She’s slowing down. Okay, so something’s got her attention. She’s stopped.”
“I’m making a phone call,” I said.
“Making peace with your family?” she asked.
“Calling my partner.”
I took my phone out and turned it on, mindful of the fact that I was extremely visible to Tanya. If she wanted to shoot me, it would be the perfect time. I wouldn’t be turning my back on her anytime soon.
“Bill,” Hank answered.
“Good reception here,” I said. “Who would’ve thought it? How is Gray?”
“They think he’ll live, but I’m willing to bet he’ll be in here for a day or two.”
“Okay. Say, can you get Bee to come down there and watch over him?”
“She’s already here. What do you need?”
“Well, it’s like this. I’m about two miles down the highway going out of town. If you turn left onto the highway coming out of the hotel, it’s that highway.”
“Okay.”
“It’s a storage lot, like the one you own up in Killeen. It’s got enough lights scattered around it to light up a football stadium.”
“Are you in a bad spot?” he asked.
“Well, I believe the Sheriff and maybe a couple of deputies—and just maybe Abner is with them—and they’re at both ends of the central ally. They’re waiting for me and Loraine to come out. I think they want to shoot me.”
“I’m coming now,” he said, and I heard a door slam, even through the phone.
“Seriously,” I said, “it may all be over by the time you get here.”
“Don’t do anything!” Hank said.
“Okay, I just decided something,” I said.
“What’s that?” he asked, and
I heard something metallic spill. Something, by the sound of it, that had managed the unlucky happenstance of getting in Hank’s way.
“Just that I’m about to fulfill a promise, and not let you get shot.”
“Shit. What are you going to do?” Hank asked.
“I’ll talk to you soon, partner,” I said, and clicked off the phone.
“What are you going to do, Bill?” Tanya whispered to me. The whole world had gone silent. It was as if I’d lost my hearing, because I couldn’t even hear my own breathing.
“You’re staying in here with the money,” I said. “I’m taking the fight to them.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
T he greatest thing about coming to a decision about something is the quiet that follows. All the questions are answered, all the doubts fade away, and the whole world waits for the storm that is to follow.
As I left the confines of the storage building, I felt a lightness of being I have seldom felt. I’d had this nagging pain in my right knee for days. I’d not told Julie about it, nor Penny, or anyone else. It had simply been there, a quiet reminder that I was getting older, that maybe I should start going a little easier on the basketball court, that quite possibly I could afford to let up a bit on the body. I noted, as I stepped from darkness into the light, an utter absence of any twinge.
“Let me borrow your shotgun,” I whispered to Tanya.
She handed it to me. “It’s loaded. I just took the safety off. It’s ready to fire.”
“Okay. Good. Get in there. Take the sack with you and get into a corner.”
Tanya ducked inside and was swallowed by the blackness.
I turned in the direction that Loraine had run—the same direction from which we’d entered the place—and started walking, twelve gauge shotgun in my left hand, .44 in my right.
They were there, no more than fifty yards ahead. No doubt there were just as many at the end of the ally behind me, but I didn’t care. It was the ones ahead of me—maybe the Sheriff, possibly the home town wrecking crew—that were about to get it.
“Hey fellahs,” I shouted.
A head poked out from behind the left-hand building. I raised the shotgun and fired in its general direction. The gun bucked upward and I let it ride up a bit before bringing it back down.
