by Brad Smith
Chino shook his head and then bent to his own line. ‘Oh baby,’ he said when he snorted it.
They sat back then, cool and cocky under the drug. Chino drank bourbon and listened while Bug told stories, about his love life, about his adventures with the judicial system, about anything that came to mind, it seemed.
They did more coke and lost track of time. Just when it seemed that Billy Taylor wasn’t going to show up, he was standing in the doorway. Chino wasn’t sure if he’d been there for two minutes or two hours. Bug offered him a line.
‘He can buy his own dope,’ Chino told Bug.
‘I’d just as soon get going,’ Billy said. ‘Long drive, and I don’t want to do it wasted.’
Chino got to his feet. ‘Let’s roll.’
‘Where’s the merchandise?’ Billy asked.
‘In the tire,’ Bug laughed. He pointed. ‘It’s in the fucking tire, Billy.’
The plan was to cross at Fort Erie. They reached town late in the afternoon and found a motel a few blocks from the bridge to the US, a low slung row of connected rooms that sat just yards away from the rushing Niagara River. Billy pulled the Pontiac up to the office and Chino went inside to register.
The room had two beds and smelled like cigarette smoke and cleaning fluids. They had picked up a bottle of bourbon and a bucket of fried chicken on the main drag coming in and now they carried everything inside, setting the chicken and the liquor on a chipped veneer bureau inside the door. Bug had been drinking beer in the car and he went into the bathroom for a leak. Chino took a drumstick from the bucket and flopped on the bed. Billy stood inside the doorway.
‘You gonna eat?’ Chino asked.
‘No.’
‘You want to get moving, don’t you?’
Billy nodded.
‘Christ, you’re a nervous nelly,’ Chino said. ‘I hope you’re up to this. You’d fucking better be.’
Billy stared at him, his eyes dark.
‘Go, then,’ Chino said, indicating the door. ‘Unless you need to go over it again.’
‘No.’
Chino put the chicken leg in his mouth and stripped it clean of meat. ‘Make fucking sure you count it,’ he said as he chewed.
‘He knows,’ Bug said, coming out of the john carrying two plastic drinking glasses.
‘Where you gonna be?’ Billy asked. ‘Here?’
‘Right here, son,’ Chino told him. He looked at his watch. ‘Supposed to be a three-hour drive. Say an hour for the deal, and whatever else crops up, that puts you back here around one in the morning. OK?’
‘Yeah.’
Chino tossed the chicken bone in the general direction of a waste basket in the corner, then reached beneath his shirt and pulled a thirty-eight caliber revolver from his belt. He laid the gun on the dingy bedspread. ‘Don’t you be thinking about getting lost with that cash now,’ he said idly to Billy.
Billy looked blankly at Chino, then turned and left, leaving the door open. Bug poured bourbon for himself and grabbed a couple of pieces of chicken from the bucket. Lifting the glass, he was aware that Chino was watching him, that shitty look he gave nearly everybody, always in judgment.
‘What?’ he finally asked.
‘That’s your buddy just left. And pretty soon he’s gonna be all by his lonesome, with sixty grand in the trunk and the border between us. You’re not worried he might get ambitious all of a sudden?’
‘Billy wouldn’t do that.’ Bug gnawed at the chicken in his hand while looking over toward the TV. ‘Billy and me go way back. We was kids together.’
‘Sixty grand is sixty grand,’ Chino said. ‘You’re the one brought him into this. You’re the one accountable.’
‘I don’t figure it that way,’ Bug said.
‘I do,’ Chino said, and turned on the TV.
SIX
The border was a snap. The line-up was long, due to the hour, but at the entry point itself things went smooth as silk. Pulling up to the gate, Billy showed his status card to the border guard, who barely glanced at it.
‘Where you heading today?’
‘Picking up my sister at the airport,’ Billy said.
The guard nodded and Billy drove off. He took the thruway east out of Buffalo and in twenty minutes was clear of the city. The cruise control worked on the Pontiac and he set it to the speed limit. No sense in risking getting pulled over, not with the merchandise in the trunk. The car had a bit of a shimmy at that speed but Billy knew it was a bad tire and nothing to worry about. He had a spare in the trunk. It wasn’t the spare he’d left home with but it was a spare. Traffic was light on the thruway. He cleared Rochester and then Syracuse. It was growing dark when he reached the exit for the town of Stoddard.
He kept punching up stations on the radio as he moved from market to market – country and classic rock and even some rap. Anything to keep his mind off the task at hand. Sometime during the previous night, lying nervously awake, he had decided to back out of the deal. When he woke up in the morning he had tried to call Bug on his cell to tell him, but the number was out of service. Then, while they were eating breakfast, Cheryl had told him that she was getting her hours cut back at the dollar store, and also that her car was making a grinding noise when she shifted gears. Billy was feeding the boy while she told him. He had been applying for work all around – both on and off the rez – and he knew it was only a matter of time before something came up. He was good with tools and he could build. He had once framed houses for a summer when he was still in high school. Something would come up soon.
But soon was just soon and now was now. And two thousand dollars wasn’t something he could turn down under the circumstances. Cheryl knew about his past, jacking trucks for the chop shops, and he had promised her that he wouldn’t go that way again. So he told her that he was headed across the border to see a buddy in Tonawanda about some construction work. He might stay over if it got late. So he was keeping his promise to quit stealing trucks but he was smuggling drugs across the border. He doubted that Cheryl would be all that happy with the trade-off. He told himself it was a one time thing. The money would tide them over until he found steady work. He was doing it for Cheryl and the kid. Surely she would understand that, if she knew what was happening. Not that Billy would ever tell her.
He could see Stoddard from the thruway, the lights spread out on a little rise a mile or so away. He went through the tolls and drove along the two lane blacktop into the center of town. It took less than five minutes to find the garage called Monty’s Gas & Lube. There was a gas bar out front with the lights on but the garage itself appeared to be closed. Billy pulled up to the doors and sat there for a moment, waiting to see if somebody was inside. He’d been told they’d be waiting for him. After a while he got out and walked around to the gas kiosk.
‘I have an alternator for Monty,’ he told the cashier, a redhead with graying temples and a boozer’s nose.
‘Monty ain’t here.’
Billy waited a moment. ‘Well, I got his alternator.’
‘Probably be here in the morning.’
‘I’m supposed to meet him tonight,’ Billy said.
‘He ain’t here.’
Billy turned and looked out at the street. It was an old industrial town, red brick buildings, once factories or mills, now housing stores and bars and restaurants. There was a town square a couple of blocks in, with a statue of a man wearing a broad-brimmed hat and carrying a rifle. Or it could have been an axe; Billy couldn’t be sure from where he stood. Down the block an old style movie theater could be seen. The place was dark and there was nothing on the marquee; presumably there had been nothing there for a while.
‘Can you call him?’
‘I don’t like to,’ the cashier said. ‘He gets irritable.’
‘What’s your name?’
The man sighed. Billy could smell the liquor on his breath. There was a bottle stashed somewhere behind the counter. ‘My name is Rainer.’
Billy nodded. ‘
When I talk to Monty I’ll tell him that Rainer wouldn’t call him cuz he’s irritable.’
‘Fucksakes,’ the cashier said and reached for the phone.
Twenty minutes later a black Cadillac Escalade pulled up. Billy was sitting in the Pontiac, listening to the radio. He watched as a round man with a shaved head got out of the driver’s side and approached. Billy rolled the window down.
‘You Monty?’
‘Pull inside,’ the man said.
The man went through the side entrance and a moment later the big overhead door ascended. As Billy drove the Pontiac into the garage, the passenger door to the Cadillac opened and another man got out. He was around forty and wore a golf shirt and creased navy slacks, a cap with a Nike logo across the front. When Billy got out of the car the man stood there, looking him over, as if Billy’s appearance might inform him of something.
‘You brought me what?’
‘Brought you an alternator,’ Billy said. ‘That is, if you’re Monty.’
‘I’m Monty.’ The man made an upward motion with his thumb, telling Billy to open the trunk. ‘I was told you’d be here tomorrow morning.’
Billy didn’t know anything about that and so he said nothing as he opened the trunk. The tire was secured under the carpet there, as the spare from the factory would have been. Billy pulled the mat aside and removed the wing nut that held the jack and wheel in place. When he lifted the tire from the trunk the round man took it from him and carried it across the shop to a tire machine. Billy watched as he let the air out of the tire. He could still feel the eyes of the man named Monty on him and now he returned the look.
Monty was lounging against a work bench. He was fit and tanned, somebody who spent time outside. Maybe he was a golfer, as his clothes suggested. Whatever he was, he didn’t look like a guy who ran a gas and lube joint. He didn’t look like a drug dealer either but then Billy wouldn’t know what a drug dealer might look like. He’d never done anything other than a bit of grass. He didn’t drink much either; he found that booze made him angry and then, afterward, remorseful.
‘What’s your tribe, son?’ Monty asked then.
‘Mohawk.’
‘I would assume that’s a good thing, with regards to the border. Tommy’s getting smart in his old age.’
‘Who’s Tommy?’ Billy asked.
Monty smiled. ‘Right.’
Within minutes the other man had the tire broken from the rim and was extracting the coke from inside the wheel. He laid the plastic bags all in a row on a table against the wall. Monty went over and opened the packets, one by one, testing each by wetting his finger and rubbing the dope on his gum. He then extracted a small amount on the blade of a pocket knife and made a line on the table. He gestured to the round man, who stepped forward to snort it. After doing so he stood straight up, motionless for maybe half a minute, before turning to give Monty a curt nod of affirmation.
‘All right,’ Monty said, turning to Billy. ‘What’s your name, son?’
‘Why do you need my name?’
‘I don’t. But you know mine. And you know my place of business. Not only that, but I’m about to give you a gym bag full of cash. It would be nice if there was a semblance of trust between us. Don’t you think?’
Billy did give it some thought. And then he told the man Monty his name. His first name anyway.
‘Nice to meet you, Billy.’ Monty walked to the Cadillac and opened the back door. He brought out a blue sports bag and hoisted it on to the table where the cocaine was. The money was in stacks, wrapped with elastic bands. The cash came out of the bag and the coke went in.
‘Count it,’ Monty said, stepping back.
There were a dozen stacks of hundred dollar bills, fifty in each. Billy counted the money while Monty and the round man watched. The bills were new and had a tendency to stick together. Twice Billy had a count come up short and both times he counted again, to find that the number was right after all. When he was finished he glanced at Monty.
‘OK.’
‘OK indeed,’ Monty said. ‘How do you intend to carry it?’
‘Back in the tire,’ Billy said.
Monty turned to the round man. The man’s tolerance to the coke he’d snorted was obviously high; he stepped forward and began to distribute the money inside the spare, still on the tire machine.
‘I assume the tire was Tommy’s idea?’ Monty asked.
‘I told you I don’t know any Tommy,’ Billy said.
Monty took a moment. ‘You’re not kidding. I thought you were playing dumb before.’ He paused. ‘So Tommy told me this was a test run. Which means he’s checking you out. It also means you’re working for an intermediary. Is that right?’
Billy shrugged. He was keeping a close watch on the man at work at the tire machine, making certain that all of the money went inside.
‘You don’t say a hell of a lot, do you?’ Monty said. ‘Is that an Indian thing? You’re like the wise old Indian in the movies, watching everything, not saying shit. Maybe you’re the wise young Indian. Is that it?’
‘I’m smuggling drugs across the border,’ Billy told him. ‘Not sure that’s wise.’
‘It is if you don’t get caught. I trust Tommy’s paying you well. What I can’t figure is why he’s not dealing with you directly. Who are you working for, if it isn’t Tommy?’
‘Like you said, intermediaries.’
‘What – they don’t have names?’
Billy glanced over. ‘I tell you their names, then I guess it’s OK for me to tell them yours.’
Monty laughed and looked at the round man, who had the tire back on the rim. ‘You hear that, Jason? I like this kid. I think I might just steal him from Tommy. Especially since Tommy doesn’t fucking know him anyway.’ He turned back to Billy. ‘Maybe you should come and work for me. We could be like the Lone Ranger and Tonto. Would you like that?’
‘That all depends,’ Billy said.
‘On what?’
‘Which one am I?’
SEVEN
Chino sat back on the bed, the pillows propped against the headboard, flipping through the channels on the TV. Bug was sprawled sleeping in a chair in the corner, his ass slid forward, boot heels dug into the rug as if to anchor himself. Before he’d nodded off he’d been telling wild tales about first one thing then another, his words slurred and mercifully unintelligible. Chino realized too late he shouldn’t have given him any coke. Bug was one of those guys who got drunk on a six pack of beer. Give him a few lines and wash it down with cheap bourbon and he turned into a two-year-old. It was a wonder he hadn’t shit himself. Chino had cut him off from the coke too late. He didn’t care how blasted Bug got but there was no point in wasting good dope on him. It was no different than throwing it out the window.
He was uneasy about the Indian even returning. Chino didn’t trust Indians in general. He’d known his fair share of them in the joint and they had all been moody and aloof, keeping to themselves. Try to talk to one of them and they wouldn’t say a word, like they were above everybody else, above incarceration even. Well, they’d fucking well done something to get themselves locked up.
This kid Billy had the same resentful way about him. Never saying shit, as if he was bigger than Chino on some level. Bigger than Bug. Well, he probably was bigger than Bug, who didn’t have the intelligence of a fence post.
What if resentful young Billy decided that sixty grand was a nice enough stake to start him on a new path in life? He wouldn’t be leaving much behind, a rundown rented house and a wife and kid that were probably, like most wives and kids, a pain in the ass. Chino kept putting himself in Billy’s shoes. What would he do if the same chance presented itself? Chino knew right fucking well what he would do.
The deal was that Tommy Jakes got fifty-five grand for the coke and Chino had the five that was left to distribute the way he was told. So Billy was getting two thousand for making the drop and Bug was getting a grand for setting Chino up with Billy. That left Chino
with two thousand, which was chump change when it came down to facts. He was doing all the work and putting up the risk. And Tommy Jakes was sitting in the Hard Ten looking down his nose at Chino and making snide jokes to that bitch of a bartender.
Chino went back to switching channels. He settled on a show where a big blonde-haired doofus, wearing suspenders and a carpenter’s apron, was demonstrating how to build a back deck. Chino wouldn’t hire the guy to build a fucking doghouse but the couple he was working for – standing there in their corduroy pants and matching sweaters – weren’t capable of tying their own shoes, let alone building a deck.
Chino smoked his last cigarette and so he did a line and then stashed the remaining coke in his jacket pocket before walking out to the street to find a corner store. There was a Mac’s a couple of blocks away. He bought cigarettes and lottery tickets. The cashier was a chubby girl, eighteen or so. Chino asked her when she got off work and he thought she was about to start screaming. He told her to fucking relax and left.
Before going back to the room he took a walk along the river, toward the bridge that led to the US. He smoked and watched the lights of Buffalo, wondering where Billy was right now. Heading this way, Chino hoped, chugging west on the thruway with a wad of cash in the trunk. He had better be heading this way.
Chino’s phone rang. He flicked the cigarette into the river and pulled the phone from his pocket.
‘Yeah?’
‘I hear you’re working for Tommy Jakes.’ It was Johnny K on the line. There was noise in the background, what sounded like a hockey game.
‘You sent me there,’ Chino said.
‘So I did,’ Johnny said. Chino heard him tell somebody to turn the volume down. ‘I expect I’ll be seeing you in a day or so.’
‘Yeah.’
‘We can get squared away.’
Chino hesitated. ‘Well, I was thinking I could make a sizable payment, keep the account current.’
