The Friendship of Criminals

by Robert Glinski

  24.

  MARCEK AND ANGIE had a few hours but no time to waste.

  Figuring they wouldn’t get another chance, they dashed from the pharmacy to a nearby Burger King for coffee, breakfast sandwiches, and a restroom. Next up was the Miami International Airport. Marcek dropped Angie at the busiest terminal to rent a car. Striving for shallow footprints, she drove her pregnancy-test-blue sedan straight to a low-rent apartment complex they’d scouted a few miles away.

  Before rendezvousing, Marcek had his own list of to-do’s.

  He dropped their car in short-term parking and grabbed a shuttle to the long-term lot. He needed two sets of Florida license plates—no vanity slogans, and tags had to be current. Stashing the plates in his backpack, he returned to the terminal for a second high-mileage rental under a fake identity.

  At the apartment complex they installed the stolen plates and discussed how to work the Boynton Beach pharmacy. The agreed plan was alternating thirty-minute shifts—staying close enough to observe the pharmacy’s loading dock without drawing undue suspicion. Keeping one on-site, the other was parked two blocks away, ready to join when the truck departed for its next destination.

  They leapfrogged for two hours until the truck arrived and completed its off-load. Given the early evening time frame, both agreed it was unlikely the truck had many more stops, and it was probably returning straight to its warehouse. When the truck merged south on I-95, each took a turn staying close for two or three miles before relinquishing the lead position.

  Navigating medium traffic, they tracked the truck fifteen miles through Fort Lauderdale to west on 595 and then north on the Sawgrass Parkway. The truck took the third exit, made a half-dozen turns, and ended inside a soulless industrial park with a dozen warehouse facilities. Watching it enter the security gates of Allegiance Corporation, Angie and Marcek backtracked a mile to a semiempty warehouse parking lot.

  Angie rolled her window down. “I’m tired.”

  “Me, too.”

  “What do you think?”

  Marcek studied the surrounding warehouses and truck bays. “We’re halfway there. The warehouse he went into—that has to be a distributor for all the manufactured drugs. The bulk drug shipments come here, and Allegiance creates individual delivery pallets for each pharmacy. You know, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. I’m feeling pretty good the bulk shipments of Viagra come here and get parsed up.”

  “And we have no idea where they manufacture Viagra?”

  “No. That’s why we had to start wide. Sonny says no one really knows.”

  She exhaled, catching herself short of a headshake. “If the goal is to find a tractor-trailer full of Viagra, you know how hard backtracking from here is going to be? How are we supposed to know which truck is from where? It’s like looking at a bunch of geese and guessing where in Canada each one is from. Different trucks from different pharmaceutical companies, all with different loads. It’s impossible.”

  Marcek tried sounding more optimistic. “It’s good work for the first day. Time to sleep, and maybe we’ll come up with something by morning. You hungry, or should we just head home? I think there’s cold pizza in the fridge.”

  Angie was too tired to make a decision. She told Marcek to follow her out and she’d probably just make another peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich at home. “There is some bread left, right?”

  Feeling punchy, Marcek laughed at left, right, sending Angie off in a huff. He called to apologize.

  25.

  SIX HOURS OF SLEEP and long, steamy showers brought renewed hope. Angie was into her second piece of toast before Marcek brushed the night from his mouth and joined her in the kitchen.

  Stirring two spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee, he felt her stare. Taking a sip, he nodded in appreciation and took another before looking at her sideways. “You going to keep me waiting or share the breakthrough?”

  Her hair was damp, and she wore a wrinkled button-down oxford shirt above bare legs. Morning light suited her fine. “It came to me about an hour ago. I was lying in bed, thinking about home, and the answer popped into my brain. Just like that. The answer’s the Italian Market.”

  Marcek responded with two blinks.

  “Last night,” she said, “we got discouraged because it seemed like the whole delivery thing was a closed loop. Trucks from some mysterious Pfizer manufacturing facility arrive at the distribution warehouse, and there’s no way to identify the right one or catch it in between.”

  “But you’ve figured something out?”

  “Delivery drivers are like anyone else when the boss isn’t looking. They steal time. All those drivers rolling into the Italian Market? They have off-the-book stops before and after. Everyone knows because the trucks are double-parked as the drivers scurry to their favorite spots for booze, gambling, a woman—whatever vice they can squeeze in. Why? Because they’re men and no one is watching. You think a driver hauling Viagra is any different? On the road, away from the wife and kids, in sunny Florida?”

  Marcek found himself nodding. She was on the right path, although he was apprehensive about the final answer.

  “Truck stops,” she said, volleying his nod. “They’re the break in the chain. They’re the one place we have any chance of finding the right load.”

  “Damn. I thought that’s what you were going to say. I hate truck stops.”

  Angie’s eyes widened. “Think about it. We’ve got a natural corridor coming into South Florida. With the warehouse on the back side of Fort Lauderdale, there’s a ninety percent chance all the tractor-trailers, at some point, are coming down I-95.”

  “Okay,” said Marcek, jumping in when she took a breath, “but you’re talking about a thousand miles of road.”

  “Let me finish. I put a lot of thought into this.”

  Marcek apologized with half a smile. “It’s brilliant, you know. Really damn good.”

  Angie ran into the living room and returned with an oversized map book. Peeling through the pages, she said, “Since we have less than a week, we have to make choices. Educated choices to maximize our odds. While there’s a chance we’re wrong, I think I’ve got it figured pretty good.”

  “Am I still keeping my mouth shut?”

  “That should have started with the coffee.”

  Marcek raised both hands. “The floor is yours.”

  “So two things. One, you said Pfizer imports the chemicals for making Viagra from overseas. That’s got to mean Europe. Can’t mean China, right? So unless they freight it west—which seems really extreme—Viagra is manufactured somewhere on or near the East Coast. Okay, assuming that’s right, the general starting point is the northern section of I-95 with one of the end-point destinations being the distribution facility off the Sawgrass Parkway. I bet that warehouse handles all the Viagra for South Florida. And with it just hitting the market, that’s got to mean a lot of supply trucks.”

  Marcek couldn’t help himself. “Like I said, that’s a long road. Eight or ten states’ worth. Lots of truck stops along the way.”

  She stared him down. “Now my second point. This is the educated guess part, because you’re right, there are too many truck stops to stake out. What we know is that these drivers are coming south after a long winter. They’re in Florida, looking at the map, trying to pick a spot to spend the night. They peruse names like St. Augustine, Brunswick, and St. Marys before their eyes fall on…”

  “Daytona Beach.”

  She hit him in the head with the map book. “You’re such an asshole.”

  Marcek stumbled back into his chair. “This works, I need some basis to claim credit.”

  Angie leaned against the counter, her hip flared out in a smooth silhouette. “Kids dream about Disney, truck drivers do the same with Daytona Beach. The racetrack, bike week, the women. It’s like catnip. They can’t resist.”

  “No argument from me,” said Marcek. “If Daytona Beach craps out, we’re screwed, but what else do we have? Let’s get dres
sed and pack a bag. We need to drop off the rentals, and I want to check out Sonny’s warehouse before heading north. He’s supposed to have the second tractor-trailer ready.”

  Before he could stand, Angie closed the distance and straddled him on the chair. Pressing her weight down, she could feel his spirited response between her legs. Kissing him hard on the lips, she whispered, “We have another stop to make.”

  “The bedroom?”

  “Well, yes, there’s that. But I need to go to Wal-Mart for my costume.”

  Marcek pulled his head back. “What?”

  “My costume. You’re cute, but no matter how horny those truckers are, none of them are going to mistake you for a lot lizard.”

  “Oh, Angie, come on. I don’t know about you doing that.”

  She bit his neck. “Shut up, Marcek. We don’t have time to argue.”

  26.

  MARCEK HATED ALL TRUCK STOPS since he’d been beaten six ways to Sunday outside one near Scranton, Pennsylvania.

  January a few years back—when the Pocono Highway slicked over—he and two hundred truckers ceded the road to the salt crews. Sitting in a diner, minding his own pie, he overheard four truckers in the next booth getting a game together. Nothing better to occupy his mind, he worked an invitation, even offering to supply the cards. Fast-forward a couple of hours, Marcek was bleeding in the parking lot, his pockets picked clean by eight hands. The truckers felt entitled to their original stakes plus an extra six hundred dollars because why not. Short of being gang raped, Marcek’s night couldn’t have ended worse. In his car, too embarrassed to seek help, he assessed the damage at two chipped teeth, no money, no wallet, and a punch line with fifty years of legs. Oh, and an icy road to Saratoga Springs still to be traveled.

  Now, parked with Angie at the truck lot’s farthest edge, Marcek had no reason to believe the Flying J Truck Stop south of Daytona Beach wasn’t the same hellish variety. A hundred lined-up eighteen-wheelers spewed diesel fumes while their denim-clad drivers slept or wandered inside the glorified minimart for soda and showers. The setting’s lone redeeming qualities were a cloudless sky and a stiff breeze clearing away the exhaust.

  “If we’re right,” he said, “it’s either this stop or the next one up the road.”

  “I’ve got a good feeling. Woman’s intuition maybe. This one’s closer to the beach and the racetrack.”

  Marcek scanned the testament to highway convenience as he ran a nervous hand through his hair. “What other options do we have? Can’t jack a delivery outside the distribution warehouse, so we’ve got to walk back up the line.”

  “I guess.”

  “You having second thoughts?”

  “No. Just want to be right.”

  “It’s how these truck deals go.”

  Angie nodded, unable to take her eyes off all the eighteen-wheelers entering the lot. Judging from their pace, the count could double in an hour.

  “Say the word and we’re out of here.”

  “And waste this outfit?” Angie was wearing acid-washed jeans and a T-shirt with soaring red, white, and blue eagles knotted tight around her waist. When she’d mentioned a costume, Marcek thought she meant high heels and fishnet stockings. Angie explained how she’d learned from a Lifetime Channel movie that truck-stop hookers were more trailer park than streetwalker.

  Rubbing her knees to soften the denim, Angie felt her first butterfly. A few more followed, though not enough to make a to-do with Marcek. She’d convinced herself that the parked truck rows were a giant flea market where she’d wander in search of the right product. “I’m not doing anything but shopping. We’ve got to start somewhere, and switching places isn’t going to work.”

  Marcek had no counterargument. From his Scranton experience, he’d learned truck stops were their own ecosystem, a unique collection of subtle communications that outsiders couldn’t quite hear or duplicate. Port Richmond was no different. Or a locker room or the VFW on a Friday night. In those circumstances, an unknown man asking questions could expect something between stone silence and a stiletto shoved in his kidney. Only a woman stood a chance.

  “Keep it simple,” he said, a protective hand massaging her left thigh. “You’re looking for anything that suggests Pfizer. The ideal scenario is Pfizer owns the truck or trailer and the driver is their employee. That would give us some kind of insignia or marking. Pfizer outsourcing the entire operation to a third-party hauler would be bad news. The driver might not even know what’s in the truck. All he has is an address and a schedule. If that’s the story, we’re dead. Thing is, we won’t know until you make a run.”

  “Relax.” The way his fingers moved, Angie could feel his tension. In the months since meeting, they’d become close. Not just the physical stuff, although that was sweet frosting each time. The two mattered to each other, perhaps more than anyone else at that moment in their lives. They didn’t talk long-range plans, but they had momentum. That was enough for now. Pointing to the football-field-sized parking lot, she said, “I’m just dipping a toe. No commitment. Anything I learn, I’ll either call or hustle back.”

  “I’m worried about you.”

  “Marcek, you think those truckers are any harder to handle than neighborhood boys? I’ve got game they’ve never seen before.”

  Her joking relaxed him enough to discuss next steps. “I’ve been thinking—we may end up stealing the trailer tonight.”

  “Why?”

  “Think about it. If we find the right truck, all we know is that it’s here now. We have no idea when another is due. Tomorrow? Later this week? While we know they’ve got to be ramping up the Viagra supply, who knows if that’s one truck a week or ten. If we find one, we hit it. And if it’s the wrong one, well, oh shit. At least we didn’t let our opportunity flush south.”

  Angie knew all along that had to be the routine. She was just waiting for Marcek to catch up. For her, the wild card was Sonny. Her understanding was they’d been charged with the plan. No one said anything about turning nouns into verbs. “You think we should call Sonny for a green light?”

  “No.”

  “Can I ask why, or is that on a need-to-know basis?”

  Marcek took a deep breath, needing to convince himself as much as Angie. “Guys like Sonny—and my dad—what they want most are results. If I screw up, there are consequences. But if I freeze or hesitate, I’ll never get a second chance. They won’t tolerate indecision.”

  Hearing the rationale, Angie couldn’t disagree. “It’s almost five o’clock. Tell me where you’ll be when I’m walking through there.”

  “Right here, holding my phone. If I don’t hear from you every twenty minutes, I’m coming in. No debate.”

  “What about the keys?”

  “What do you mean? The car keys?”

  “Yeah,” she answered. “The keys need to stay in the car. Like you said, at any moment we might be stealing the trailer. We can’t have you tooling down I-95 with the car keys in your pocket.”

  Marcek wished he’d had this type of evidence when Sonny scoffed at Angie’s involvement and potential. She was three levels better than any typical partner.

  They discussed best hiding spots for the keys, both stalling the inevitable opening of the car door and her walking away. She said the priority was fast access and wanted them under the floor mat. Marcek was more concerned with the car getting stolen. After five minutes, Angie won the point because she was driving and unwilling to compromise.

  Time to go, they hugged until the center console dug into their sides. Marcek repeated his warnings, and Angie answered she wasn’t looking to be a superstar, exiting with a wink. He watched her walk toward the trucks in her lot-lizard attire, thinking she was the finest piece of white trash ass he’d ever seen. He also tabbed her chances of coming back with anything decent at ten percent.

  Breeze in her face, Angie appreciated the parking lot’s wide expanse. The walk to the trucks was an opportunity to get her mind right. Smelling the diesel, she i
magined the desperation of selling one’s body and the self-loathing of counting the day’s receipts. The mental exercise dropped her mood, drew her elbows in, and curled her shoulders around a sinking chest.

  A hundred feet away, she began feeling the physical presence of the engines. Vibrations up through her shoes pulled sweat from her belly and lower back. Closing in on the first row, she saw how the trucks were purposefully parked and staggered, each angled with just enough space to pull forward. She wanted to share the observation with Marcek but knew they were too far apart for hand signals. Touching the outline of her phone in her front pocket, she wondered how long it would take for him to respond if there was trouble.

  Moving along the far back edge of the parked trucks—pavement to her right, taillights on her left—Angie passed six rows before encountering her first man. He emerged from the camouflaged truck side, hurried enough to make it feel like a game trail ambush, bumping shoulder-to-chest and almost knocking her over. As he stammered through an apology, she jab-stepped around his lean mountain-man build and hustled away, too terrified to even look back.

  Double-timing along another dozen rows, Angie screamed inside her head at the insanity and inaccuracy of what she was doing. Nothing meshed with what she’d envisioned. Her mind’s eye had pictured some kind of Florida bazaar with truckers hanging from their open windows, some staring, others making conversation. Dangerous but social. What she found peeking between the trucks was far more unsettling—empty, isolated cavernlike spaces where she’d be alone until she wasn’t.

  After two more chance encounters with men—resulting in all parties scuttling away—Angie decided to get real. She didn’t have it in her to start a conversation. She knew that now. If a trucker initiated, maybe she could respond, but no way was she capable of going door to door, playing the whore role to acquire information. That reality narrowed her focus to the only option left—visually inspecting the outside of each truck for a link to Pfizer or the distributor’s warehouse.

  Finishing her walk around the perimeter took another five minutes. Making the lap and observing the indifferent truckers settled her nerves enough that she was willing to begin exploring the individual rows. With the falling sun, enough light still filtered between to give her a good look at all the tractor doors and trailers. Each of the sixty rows—crosscut by three paths—took half a minute to walk. Midway through, she leaned against a bumper and called Marcek. “It’s all wrong,” she said. “The whole stupid plan, just wrong.” He asked how many rows she had left, and Angie said thirty with new trucks arriving every minute. He asked if she felt safe, and she said it was just like walking South Philly. Sun up, no problem. Come night, things might get weird.