Blacktop Wasteland

by S. A. Cosby

  “You got it, sugar.”

  She came back with two lukewarm bottles of beer. Kelvin grabbed his and took a long swig.

  “You really think it will work?” Kelvin asked.

  “I ain’t got no choice,” Beauregard said. He took a sip of his beer.

  “Well, when we gotta be in North Carolina?” Kelvin asked.

  “I can’t ask you to do that, K,” Beauregard said. The waitress played a blues song on the jukebox. Danny’s sound system struggled to accommodate the deep bass coming through its speakers. There were only two other patrons in the bar sitting in the corner. He and Kelvin had just closed the shop for the day. Kelvin had suggested they get a beer. Once they got seated, Beauregard just let all the events of the last thirty-six hours spill out. He couldn’t tell Kia and he didn’t want to tell Boonie. Kelvin was the only person he could talk to. He hadn’t been asking for his help. He just needed to vent.

  “Nah, fuck that. If you think I’m gonna let you go on another job with low-rent Jesse James and his retarded brother, you done lost your mind. He the reason you in this mess,” Kelvin said.

  “It’s my mess and I gotta clean it up.”

  “Beauregard, don’t make me say it.”

  “Say what?”

  Kelvin dropped his voice.

  “I owe you. Not just for giving me a job. I owe you for Kaden. Let me help. I need to help you,” he said.

  “You don’t owe me shit for that,” Beauregard said.

  “That’s not how I feel. Let me do this,” Kelvin said.

  Beauregard finished his beer. He held two fingers up and the waitress winked at him from across the bar. A few more people trickled in just as a sugary doo-wop song filled the air.

  “We got six days to get ready.”

  “What kind of resistance we liable to get?” Kelvin asked.

  The waitress dropped off the beers. Beauregard waited until she walked away to continue.

  “A lot, I think. I asked around about this fella. Seems like him and Lazy been butting heads for a while. You remember Curt Macklin? Got a chop shop in Raleigh? He said that most of the OGs and crews in the Carolinas and Virginia done fell in line with this guy. Lazy the only one taking a stand, and it ain’t going so well for him. Curt told me Lazy sent some boys to a spot this fella was using to cook some meth. He sent them boys back to Lazy in a five-gallon bucket,” Beauregard said.

  Kelvin made a face. “What they call him?”

  “Curt said all he ever heard them call him was Shade. I asked Curt was he really that bad. Curt said he was worse,” Beauregard said.

  “Why we ain’t never heard of him before? Or this Lazy dude?” Kelvin asked.

  Beauregard shrugged. “I guess the kind of shit they into don’t really require wheelmen,” he said.

  “Like what?” Kelvin asked.

  “I talked to a doughboy from Newport News I know. Did a run for him to Atlanta. He told me Lazy basically runs everything west of the Roanoke Valley. He owns a bunch of smoke shops out there. Some payday loan places too,” Beauregard said.

  “Legal loan sharking,” Kelvin said. Beauregard nodded.

  “The boy I know told me his real money comes from running girls up the DC-Maryland corridor. Services a whole bunch of them government and military types up that way. Said he supposed to be a college boy. Got a degree in chemistry or some shit. Controls the meth, heroin and pills coming in from West Virginia. Said he runs moonshine too,” Beauregard said.

  Kelvin laughed. “He must do that for old times’ sake. Damn. So you caught between a wannabe Pablo Escobar chopping motherfuckers up and putting them in grease buckets and a redneck Walter White. When you fuck up you do it right.”

  Beauregard rolled his eyes. “If you don’t want to get in this…”

  “I didn’t say that. I’m down. Besides, both of my girlfriends are gonna be out of town this weekend so I ain’t got nothing to do,” Kelvin said. He took a long sip off his beer. “You really gonna try and play them against each other like a chess game, huh?”

  “It ain’t chess. It’s more like playing with a train set. We gonna put them on the same track and let them run into each other,” Beauregard said.

  “You think ol’ boy gonna go for it?”

  “I think this Shade is eating him alive. He wants to hurt him, but he also needs what’s in that truck. He already had his back against the wall before we came along and robbed his drop bank.”

  “And how you plan on not getting caught in the cross fire?”

  “I’m gonna get in touch with Shade and tell him when and where I plan on meeting Lazy with his truck. Then I’ll drop it off an hour earlier. They’ll both show up at the same time.”

  “Well, it sounds simple. That means something is gonna go to shit,” Kelvin said. “Wait, what if Lazy gets the drop on Mr. Shade?”

  “I got a rifle with a scope,” Beauregard said.

  “Well, damn. It’s like that, I guess,” Kelvin said.

  Beauregard took another sip of beer. “Yeah, it’s just like that. But first things first. We gotta get that truck.”

  “Yeah, that’s gonna be the fun part,” Kelvin said.

  * * *

  Ronnie sat on the couch with the door open. The AC had finally died a horrible death. Spitting out water and Freon like it had mechanical tuberculosis. Reggie was lying down in his room with his foot elevated. Ronnie could see the sun setting through the open door. Orange and red streaks sliced through the sky. Sunlight danced across the waxed surface of his Mustang. He hadn’t driven the car since he got back from seeing Quan get his face blown off. The car only had a quarter of a tank of gas left. It was enough to get down to Danny’s, but then what? He didn’t have enough to pay for a drink, let alone get back to the house.

  “Oh, how the mighty have fallen,” he said. He sipped the last beer from the fridge, which didn’t sound so healthy either. A week ago, he was snorting coke off some hipster chick’s titty, now he was rationing his beer. The vibrating of his cell phone interrupted his sad requiem for the life he had just lost. Ronnie pulled it out of his pocket and checked the display.

  “Hey, Bug.”

  “We on. Your brother okay to drive?”

  “Well, kinda. They shot him in his foot when they came and scooped me up. He patched it up with some gauze and duct tape. He hopping around here like Peg Leg Bates, but it should hold,” Ronnie said.

  There was a heavy silence on the line.

  “We’ll just have to work with it. We leave for North Carolina Friday night,” Beauregard said.

  “Bug, you still ain’t tell me what this plan of yours is. How we getting our money back?” Ronnie said.

  More silence.

  “Ronnie, there ain’t no getting your money back. If this goes the way I think, we are getting our lives. You should have put some of your money somewhere safe. Not cereal boxes,” Beauregard said.

  The line went dead.

  “Fuck you, Bug. That was a good idea,” Ronnie said to the mute line.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Beauregard adjusted the bandana around his nose and mouth. It had the image of a skull and crossbones printed on it. He’d seen the characters in some of the video games Darren and Javon played wearing a similar type of mask. He pulled the baseball cap down tight on his head. He’d adjusted his disguise at least a half a dozen times since Kelvin had texted him and told him he was in place.

  It dawned on him that he was actually nervous. The sensation was so foreign to him that the realization was jarring. Usually when he was about to do a job a sense of tranquility came over him. The knowledge that he had calculated all the possible outcomes and prepared for any eventuality gave him a sense of peace.

  He didn’t feel any of that peace tonight. Tonight, he felt like an amateur. A virgin fumbling and tumbling his way to either ecstasy or agony. Six days. Six goddamn days to plan, get the necessary pieces in place and get down to North Carolina to execute the goddamn job. Beauregard adjusted the knap
sack digging into his shoulders. He took a deep breath. A few mosquitoes buzzed around his face, apparently attracted to his warm breath and the promise of a big heaping gulp of his rich delicious blood. He waved them away and checked his watch. The hands glowed softly in the darkness. It was ten o’clock. Lazy’s man swore the caravan would be coming through Pine Tar Road between ten and ten thirty. Swore on a stack of Bibles they were coming that way to avoid the interstate and overzealous deputies manning obscure speed traps. Although Beauregard wasn’t sure how much anyone could trust the word of a hophead.

  Locusts bleated in the marshy woods behind him. A rivulet of sweat ran down from his forehead and dropped into his right eye. He rubbed his eye with the back of his gloved hand, then crab walked across the dry, shallow ditch and edged up closer to the road. The sun had set two hours before but heat still radiated from the asphalt. Beauregard checked his watch again.

  “Come on. Come on,” he whispered.

  Beauregard touched the butt of his .45. It was tucked into the small of his back. He knew it was there but touching it was reassuring. There hadn’t been time to get any pieces from Madness. Just another example of how far he had let his standards slip when it came to this particular pinch. But this wasn’t a normal score, was it? His desperation and Ronnie’s greed had landed them all in a hornet’s nest surrounded by vipers. Yet despite the startling lack of preparation and the sharp vicissitudes he had experienced in his fortunes since they’d knocked over the jewelry store he still planned on getting out of this alive. Lazy had made the same mistake a lot of people made about him. People like his own mother. Or the boys at Precision. The folks at the bank. Ariel’s mama’s people. Even sometimes his own wife. They all underestimated him.

  His Daddy used to say when Bug set his mind to something he was like a boulder rolling down the side of a mountain. And God help anyone who got in his way.

  The throwaway phone in his pocket vibrated.

  Beauregard pulled it out and checked the screen. It was a text from Kelvin.

  Here they come. Five minutes away.

  Beauregard stood up straight and slipped the knapsack off his shoulder. He unzipped it and pulled out a road flare. He ignited the flare and trotted over to a shabby, rust-flecked gray 1974 Lincoln Continental. Once he’d explained the situation to Boonie the old man had insisted on helping to get the vehicle Beauregard needed for his plan. This was after he’d unleashed a ten-minute profanity-laden diatribe about Ronnie Sessions and the circumstances of his birth. He’d tried to keep Boonie out of this, but like many things lately, that hadn’t worked out like he’d planned.

  The pungent scent of gasoline emanated from the Lincoln in nauseating waves. Beauregard tossed the flare through the Lincoln’s open driver-side window and jumped backwards. The car burst into flame with a loud WHOMP. Beauregard had diluted the gas just a bit so the car wouldn’t explode but instead burn with a nice and steady flame. He slipped back into the woods, pulled a pair of night vision binoculars out of his pack, and resumed his crouch. He’d parked the Lincoln horizontally across the narrow back road. A standard non-interstate dual-lane road varied between ten to twelve feet wide. A Lincoln from bow to stern was roughly nineteen feet long. Cars barreling down Pine Tar Road would not be able to maneuver around it in the best of conditions. Now that it was engulfed in flames and blocking the road they’d have to stop.

  At least that was what Beauregard hoped would happen. He texted Ronnie and Reggie.

  Get in place. Ten minutes.

  He put the phone back in his pocket. The light from the flames engulfing the Lincoln cast odd shadows across the blacktop. The burning leather and plastic sent black plumes of smoke up toward the quarter-full moon and the bluish black sky that served as its backdrop. Beauregard could see why they had picked this route. He hadn’t seen a car in over an hour. Pine Tar sliced through several counties whose total population was less than one borough in Manhattan. It was a route he would have picked.

  The sound of two vehicles approaching broke him out of his reverie. A pair of powerful LED headlights chased away the darkness. A white Econoline van crested the hill followed by a black four-door SUV. The driver in the van probably didn’t expect to see a car on fire in the middle of the road at ten o’clock on a Thursday night. Beauregard watched as he stood up on the brake pedal and the van started to fishtail. The weight of its payload was throwing off the handling. Beauregard filed that away for later. The black SUV slammed on the brakes as well. For a second Beauregard thought the SUV was going to rear-end the van but the driver of the SUV had the advantage of better brakes and superior handling and stopped the vehicle three inches shy of the van’s rear doors.

  That was the one thing Lazy’s man had definitely gotten wrong. It wasn’t a truck that was transporting contraband for Shade, it was a van. Burning Man had called them the day after they had watched him ventilate Quan with that little tidbit of information. Their inside man had called them in a panic. Beauregard wondered what he was more afraid of, Shade or a lost hookup. When Beauregard had asked for the make and model of the van Burning Man had been incredulous.

  “What difference does that make?” Burning Man had asked.

  “I need the license plate number too,” Bug had said, ignoring the scarred redneck’s question.

  “I kinda wish I could see what you planning, boy,” Burning Man said with a chuckle. Beauregard made himself not crush the cheap flip phone into a thousand pieces. Lazy’s inside man got them the info but it wasn’t until this precise moment that Beauregard truly believed he’d gotten it right. The van was just as he had described it. A 2005 Ford Econoline with only driver and passenger windows. The type of vehicle you saw on the road every day and hardly noticed because it was so ubiquitous.

  The driver of the SUV turned off his headlights but kept on his parking lights. Beauregard peered through the binoculars.

  Three men exited the vehicle. They walked around to the front of the van, which still had its headlights on full blast. Even though it was in the high 70s two of them were wearing light, loose-fitting hoodies. Between the illumination from the headlights and the glow of the fire Beauregard could clearly see the bulges in their waistbands under their hoodies. The third man, the driver, made no attempt to hide his weapon. He carried an AR-15 in his wide mahogany hands. The triumvirate stared at the immolating car, then glanced at each other, then turned back to the fiery mess of melting steel and shattering glass that blocked their way. Staring through the binoculars gave everything an emerald sheen. Even the flames from the car seemed to give off a chartreuse radiance.

  “Should we call somebody?” one of the hoodie-wearing brothers asked.

  “Who the fuck we gonna call? Smokey the goddamn Bear?” the driver asked. He was wearing a Washington Wizards jersey. He had long dreadlocks that fell down his back in serpentine coils. Before the first hoodie-wearing brother who had asked the pertinent-if-somewhat-naive question could respond, a pickup truck crested the hill and stopped behind the SUV. All three men spun around and faced the pickup. The driver held his AR-15 down by his side and stepped into the shadows. The driver of the pickup cut the ignition and killed his lights. The driver’s door of the truck creaked open and Kelvin hopped out. He was wearing one of his work shirts with the name patch removed.

  “Hey, what the hell is going on?” he asked as he walked toward the men and the car, which was now completely engulfed in flames. The driver, Mr. Dreadlocks, stepped from the shadows brandishing the AR-15. He didn’t point it at Kelvin but he wasn’t letting it dangle at his side either. He held it at an angle across his midsection. Beauregard took a deep breath. He’d told Kelvin he had to really sell it. Make sure he sounded irritated and confused. However, it was a precarious balancing act. If he came off too calm they might get suspicious. If he came on too strong they might just shoot him on general principles.

  “Who the fuck are you, man?” Dreadlocks asked. Kelvin made a show of noticing the gun. He backed up and raised hi
s hands.

  “Hey man, I don’t want no trouble. I’m just trying to get home,” Kelvin said. He let the bravado and annoyance slip from his voice and replaced it with wariness and fear. Beauregard thought he could earn an Oscar with this performance.

  “Turn around and go another way, cuz,” Dreadlocks said. Now he was pointing the gun at Kelvin.

  Fuck, Beauregard thought.

  He put his binoculars down and grabbed the .45. He aimed it at Dreadlocks. No one said a word. Beauregard could hear the crackling of the fire as it consumed the former luxury car, the hooting of a lonesome owl, the idling engines of the van and the SUV and the beating of his own fluttering heart. The locusts had lowered the pitch and volume of their serenade to nearly imperceptible levels.

  Beauregard felt his stomach tighten like a boa constrictor was in his guts. He had two extra clips in his backpack if things popped off. He put his left hand on his right wrist and steadied his gun hand. He should take out Dreadlocks right now. Then take out the Hoodie Brothers. The flames were giving off enough light that he thought he could nail Dreadlocks for sure. The Hoodie Brothers might be more problematic. They were standing in the shadows.

  The longer he waited the more likely it was that Kelvin was going to eat a bullet. He squinted but he couldn’t see how much pull Dreadlocks had on the trigger. He was pulling about three pounds of pressure on the five-pound trigger of the .45 himself.

  “Look, man, this is the only road that I can take. I don’t know what’s going on and I got no interest in finding out, but I got a fire extinguisher in my truck. If we can put the fire out we can push the car out of the way and we can all go on about our business. And my business got nothing to do with your business,” Kelvin said.

  Silence.

  “We gotta get down to Winston-Salem by two,” one of the Hoodie Brothers said. Kelvin shrugged his shoulders. The muscles in Dreadlock’s forearms rippled like rigging ropes.

  He ain’t going for it, Beauregard thought. He started to rise out of the milkweed and heather on the side of the road.