Midnight Haul

by Max Allan Collins

“What happens when these people get caught?”

  “The haulers? Sometimes nothing. You want to know how to make a million dollars? Rent some land. Don’t buy it, rent it. Get a permit to pick up and store drums of waste on your land. Let the drums pile up. Wait till you have twenty or thirty thousand drums sitting there, full of Christ knows what. And then go bankrupt and go away. Let the state worry about cleaning up after you. Just lean back in your cabana chair and sip your Piña Colada and enjoy the Bahamas breeze.”

  “Is that the game Chemical Disposal Works is playing?”

  “Probably. They haven’t gone bankrupt yet, but give ’em time.”

  “That’s scary.”

  “You’re goddamn right it’s scary. But the way I figure it, you just write the haulers off. Forget about them. They’re just lowlife fucking criminals, and there will always be lowlife fucking criminals around to do the shitwork for the likes of Kemco. It’s Kemco and the other corporations like it that have to be stopped. That have to be made to clean up their acts or else.”

  “Or else what?”

  “Criminal penalties. Civil penalties. People are going to jail, Crane.”

  “That’s it, then, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “This is what Mary Beth and the others were onto. The midnight hauling. It is something that could’ve got them killed.”

  “Of course. Of course! What do you think I’ve been talking about for the last three days?”

  “But what do you have on them, Boone, really? Just some photos. A truck coming out of the Kemco plant. A truck being unloaded at a landfill. Photos that could’ve been taken any time.”

  “No, Crane. We have pictures of a truck leaving Kemco at night, driving to an out-of-state landfill at night, where fifty or sixty drums were dumped. All very suspicious. And I have a feeling that the license plates on that truck will lead to some independent hauler with a less-than-spotless reputation. No, we have quite a lot for the Hazardous Waste boys to go on.”

  “It still strikes me as…”

  “Let me guess. Thin? It strikes you as thin? Pearl Harbor would strike you as thin, Crane. Understand this much: New Jersey has a manifest system, and what that means is paperwork; every drum of hazardous waste that exits a plant like Kemco’s is supposed to be recorded, from ‘cradle to grave,’ which is to say from Kemco, to the hauler, to the landfill. Do you suppose all the correct paperwork was filed for last night’s moonlight dumping? Of course not.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Starting to dawn on you, is it Crane? Just what it is we’re into? Still want me to leave the gun at home?”

  Crane managed an embarrassed smile as he reached under the bed, pulled the gun out and handed it to her. “Maybe you ought to start wearing this in your belt,” he told her.

  She returned his smile, put the gun on the nightstand, with a clunk. “There’s nothing to worry about,” she said. “Kemco doesn’t know we’re alive.”

  “They knew Mary Beth was alive. And now she isn’t.”

  “Well at least you seem to be accepting it.”

  “What? That Mary Beth’s dead? Or that ‘Kemco killed her.’ People killed her, Boone. Corporations don’t kill people. People kill people.”

  “You sound like a bumper sticker.”

  “Fuck you,” he said, good-naturedly.

  “I thought you’d never ask,” she said.

  Fifteen minutes later, as they were dressing, Boone said, “I don’t hear you apologizing, this time around.”

  “What’s to apologize for? I was terrific.”

  “You weren’t bad. Where’s the camera?”

  “Why? What did you have in mind?”

  “No, seriously.”

  “Didn’t you bring it in with you?”

  “I was so tired last night all I could think about was flopping into bed. I must’ve left it in the car. Anyway, I want to get that film developed this afternoon. Do you want to come to Princeton with me?”

  “No. I still have some people in Greenwood to talk to. I think you can handle the ‘Hazardous Waste Strike Force’ by yourself… though the notion of seeing you trying to work with some Jack Webb type tempts me to go along.”

  “You can stay home and baby-sit with Billy.”

  “Ouch.”

  They were ready to leave.

  Crane opened the door for her. “There’s a coffee shop down by the motel office. You want some breakfast?”

  “Sure. Walk down or drive?”

  “Drive. Why not be lazy?”

  They got in the car.

  The camera was gone.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Shit!” Boone said.

  They had searched the car thoroughly, looked all around it, underneath it, checked with the motel manager, everything. The camera was gone. Now they stood next to the car, one on either side of it, its doors standing open. Stood and stared at the car as if it might speak to them. It didn’t.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” she said.

  “Boone,” Crane said.

  “Cocksuckers. The cocksuckers!”

  A man a few doors down from their room was coming out of his; he looked at them with wide eyes, having heard what Boone just said, then walked quickly past them toward the coffee shop, looking at the ground as he did.

  “Boone,” Crane said. “Please settle down.”

  “Settle down my ass!”

  He closed the car doors.

  She was pacing. Then she stopped and pointed a finger at him.

  “Now what do you think, skeptic? Now what do you think?”

  “I think we ought to have some breakfast.”

  “You think we ought to have some breakfast. You’re unbelievable.”

  “Let’s have some breakfast and talk about this before we head back.”

  She paced some more.

  Then she said, “Okay. All right.”

  She walked ahead of him. She walked fast, propelled by anger. He followed her into the small coffee shop and they took a booth by a window overlooking the highway. Trucks were rolling by, normally an innocuous enough sight; not today.

  He ordered coffee and some biscuits; she asked for tea, in a tone of voice that scared the waitress.

  “Take it easy, Boone.”

  “Jesus you’re a wimp.”

  “Boone. Just settle down.”

  “Aren’t you mad, Crane? Aren’t you the slightest bit pissed off?”

  “Of course I am. It’s just at the moment, you seem to have the hysteria market cornered.”

  She let go a wry little smile at that; couldn’t help herself.

  “You’ve made your point,” she conceded. “But do you realize what this means?”

  “What does it mean.”

  “Somebody knows what we’re up to. It means somebody’s trying to stop us.”

  He took one of her hands in two of his. He smiled at her in such a way as to remind her, he hoped, that they’d been in bed together not too long ago.

  “Boone,” he said, “I admit it’s possible we were seen by those truckers last night. That they followed us and stole the camera.”

  She pulled her hand away. “Possible? What else could it have been?”

  “Maybe your ex is on to your Kemco investigation. Maybe we were seen in your Datsun staking out the place.”

  She thought about that.

  “You think it might have been somebody from Patrick’s end of it who took the camera? Not the truckers.”

  “Possibly,” he shrugged. “We were following the truck. Maybe somebody was following us.”

  She thought about that, too.

  The coffee and biscuits came; the tea, too.

  “And,” Crane said, quietly, carefully, “there’s another possibility.”

  “Which is?”

  “Somebody walked by and saw a camera in the car and stole it.”

  “What?”

  “Back in Iowa, when you leave a camera in an unlocked car overnight, you aren’t shoc
ked when it’s gone the next morning. Is it different in New Jersey?”

  “Pennsylvania.”

  “Well, that makes all the difference.”

  “Somebody happened along and just stole it, you mean. Just coincidentally stole it.”

  “Boone, there’s nothing coincidental about a hundred-and-fifty-buck camera getting stolen out of an unlocked car.”

  She slammed a small but china-rattling fist against the tabletop between them. People were looking at them.

  “You just won’t believe it, will you, Crane? You just aren’t capable of accepting what’s really happening here.”

  He sipped his coffee. Waited for some of the eyes to stop staring. Then he smiled at her. Calmly. “It’s not that. I’m frightened, if that’s what you want to hear. I personally agree with you that somebody, those truckers or your ex-husband or somebody related to Mary Beth’s ‘suicide,’ took that camera out of your Datsun while we slept a few feet away, and it further frightens me, it frightens fuck out of me in fact, to think that we might never’ve stopped sleeping, if whoever it was had come those few feet closer.”

  “I’m glad you’re finally looking at this rationally.”

  “Rationally? I’m telling you my emotional reaction, Boone. Gut feelings. My mind tells me, rationally tells me, that the camera was probably stolen by some doper looking for something to hock.”

  “Shit!” she said.

  People were looking at them again. Crane glared at them and they stopped looking.

  She was leaning against the tabletop, her hands on her forehead.

  “You know I’m right, don’t you?” he said.

  “You’re not right. Somebody wanted that film destroyed. That’s why the camera was stolen.”

  “Maybe. I’ll go as far as probably. But we can’t prove it. That’s the point I’m trying to make. We have nothing, Boone. Not a goddamn thing.”

  They sat in silence for a while. He finished his coffee and biscuits. She drank two cups of tea. Then without a word she rose, picking up the check and paying for it, and walked out to her car. He followed her. She acted as if he weren’t there.

  They were well into New Jersey before she acknowledged his presence again.

  “I’m still going to Princeton this afternoon,” she said, driving.

  “I don’t know that it’ll do any good.”

  “I want to tell the Strike Force what happened. What we saw. That we took pictures and our camera was stolen.”

  “Okay.”

  “It might be enough to make them go out and check the landfill. See what sort of shit is in those drums.”

  “Boone, if the truckers did see us leaving the site, and followed us, don’t you think they’d have gone back and dug the drums up and hauled them away?”

  “Maybe. But I have to try, Crane. Do you understand that?”

  “Of course. I’m on your side, you know.”

  She smiled over at him. Reached over and touched his face. “I know. I don’t mean to treat you like the enemy.”

  “Assuming there is an enemy,” Crane said.

  “Are you starting up again?”

  “No. I’m not going to Princeton with you, though.”

  “I know. You’re going to look after Billy for me, and talk to a few people.”

  “Right.”

  “I should be back by midnight.”

  “Good. Uh, Boone.”

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing.”

  He took the gun out of his jacket pocket and put it back in her glove compartment.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Mrs. Paul Meyer lived in a pale yellow house in the same housing development as Mary Beth’s family. Just a block down, in fact. The major difference between the two houses, other than color, was the For Sale sign in the Meyer lawn.

  Mrs. Meyer had told Crane on the phone that he was free to drop by any time after lunch and before her children got home from school. It was now two in the afternoon.

  He knocked on the door.

  She opened the door slowly and looked at Crane the same way. She was slender, about thirty, with short dark hair and piercing, pretty eyes as dark as her hair; her lips were a thin red line as she appraised him, tilting her head back a bit so she could look down on him, a hand poised at the base of her neck, around which hung a thin gold chain, which settled comfortably in the soft folds of silk of her cream-colored blouse.

  The glass of the storm door still separating them, she said, “Yes?” and he told her who he was and she gave him a small twitch of a smile and let him in.

  This split-level house was built from the same plans as Mary Beth’s family’s home, and it was disturbing to be in a living room so much like the one he sat in with Mary Beth’s mother a few days ago. Even the furniture was similarly arranged—the couch was opposite the front door as you came in—but on a closer look it began to look quite different. The furniture, here, was antique: walnut, mostly. Expensive. Tasteful.

  Like Mrs. Meyer, who stood in front of him with a glacially polite smile, one hand on a trim hip (she wore rather clingy black slacks), the other gesturing toward the brocade couch.

  He sat. So did she. Across from him, in a love seat.

  “I’m sorry about your fiancée, Mr. Crane,” she said.

  You couldn’t tell it by her voice.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I appreciate your willingness to see me.”

  “I don’t understand why you want to talk to me, actually. I do understand that we have something in common.” She got up and walked to the coffee table between them, where she took a cigarette from a silver box and lit it. Pulled smoke into her lungs, let it out, sat down again. “My Paul killed himself. Your Mary Beth killed herself. Tragic. But not uncommon.”

  Not in Greenwood, anyway, he thought.

  “Could I ask you a few questions, Mrs. Meyer?”

  “If you like.”

  “When did your husband die?”

  “Six months ago. He shot himself in the temple.” She smiled. “That’s a punch line you know.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Punch line of an old ‘sick’ joke. One man says to the other man, did you hear about Jones? The other man says, no I didn’t. The first man says, killed himself. The second man says, no!, how did it happen? The first man says, shot himself in the temple. And the second man says, that’s funny—he didn’t look Jewish.” She smiled again. A forced smile. Her eyes were a little wet.

  “I shouldn’t be intruding. I can go…”

  “You can go if you like. That little story is as close to coming unglued as I’m going to get. So you don’t have to worry, Mr. Crane.”

  “Mrs. Meyer, you and I have more in common than just having someone we loved commit suicide.”

  “You presume quite a bit.”

  “Pardon?”

  “You presume I loved Paul.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “Yes. But what does that have to do with you?”

  “I better go.”

  “If you like. I don’t mean to be rude. Really. I’ve invited you into my home. I’ve agreed to talk with you. It’s just that I want to make clear that I’m not a person to turn to in your hour of grief. I have no free advice for you on how to handle this situation. Just because I happen to be somebody else whose… loved one died of self-inflicted wounds, doesn’t mean…” She stopped herself. Her eyes were getting wet again. She waved some smoke from her cigarette away from her face.

  “Mrs. Meyer. I’m not here for that. I’m not here for… group therapy, or something.”

  She looked surprised for a moment. “Why are you here, then?”

  “As I started to say, we have more in common than just the suicides of Mary Beth and your husband. Or rather I should say that they had more in common than suicide.”

  “What do you mean?” The words were clipped.

  “They both worked at Kemco.”

  “So?”

  “Are you aware that there have b
een five suicides in Greenwood, in not much more than a year? And that all five victims worked for Kemco?”

  “A lot of people around here work for Kemco.”

  “Five suicides, Mrs. Meyer. Ten times the national average.”

  She thought about that a moment. “That’s an interesting random statistic. But I don’t see your point.”

  “It just seems suspicious to me, is all. My fiancée was not the type of person who would commit suicide. I doubt she did commit suicide. I think it was something else.”

  “Such as what?”

  “Something else.”

  She got up, put her cigarette out in an ashtray on the coffee table. She sat back down. She and the empty side of the love seat stared at him. “What do you want from me?” she asked.

  “I want to ask you a few questions.”

  “Ask, then.”

  “Did your husband know Mary Beth?”

  “I really don’t know.”

  “He never mentioned her? She was working out of the secretarial pool.”

  “I never heard him mention her. I never heard of her at all, until a friend told me a young woman down the street killed herself. Where is this heading?”

  “Do you have any suspicions about your husband’s suicide? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  “No, I haven’t any suspicions, and yes I mind.”

  “Mrs. Meyer, I have reason to believe Kemco is and has been involved in some illegal practices. I think it’s possible that Mary Beth and possibly your husband and others among those ‘suicides’ may have been well aware of those practices, and… well, now you should be able to see where I’m headed.”

  She stood. “There,” she said. She was pointing at the front door. “That’s where you’re headed.”

  He got up. “I’ll be glad to leave. I know I’m intruding. Please excuse me and I’ll go.”

  “You’ll go, but not till I’ve had my say. My husband killed himself. There’s no doubt in my mind that he did. He had emotional problems, which I’d rather not discuss with a stranger. They were problems that ran deep. He had them before he met me. We tried to work them out together. We failed, or I failed, or maybe he failed. But one night he went in his study, where he sometimes slept, and in the morning I found him dead. By his own hand. By his own hand, Mr. Crane!”