Just as he was about to open the truck door, a guy in a sweaty cowboy hat knocked on the glass and cranked his hand around so he’d lower the window. When there was an inch of space, the man slipped a folded piece of paper through and walked away. It said, Follow the car in front of you. The cowboy gave one sharp whistle, and a beat-up, blue Skylark turned on and drove off. When Eric didn’t immediately follow, the cowboy came back to bang on the hood of the truck twice and yell at him. Eric followed.
His pulse rate shot up, and to calm himself he felt for the pistol his dad kept in a holster underneath the driver’s seat. It was there. He wasn’t sure what he’d do with it if something went down, but he was glad to have it.
Really, who’d be more paranoid than a bunch of meth cooks? Eric tried to think it through from their way of thinking. There’s probably cops everywhere, sniffing out their business. Probably other tweakers, too. Being safe in this game probably meant not letting your guard down, and that is exhausting. He was tired already after part of a morning in this line of work. They must be freaked out to eleven all day long. He’d have to keep that in mind while he was delivering.
He wished he could get Jaymee’s input, but if he told her one-tenth of what had gone down already, she would pull the plug on the whole deal.
The car threaded itself back and forth through the neighborhoods and headed out of town. In a few minutes, they broke over a small rise into open fields, and on the other side they came to a stop next to a telephone pole.
A short guy and a woman got out. The woman was driving. She had on red-and-blue cowboy boots, a shift dress with a black T-shirt over the top. The T-shirt design was an American flag with fake jewels for stars. The man was a full six inches shorter than the woman. He wore black jeans, black Velcro sneakers, and a camo-print shirt. His hair was slicked back and he wore a mustache and beard, pointy like General Custer’s. The little dude pointed two fingers at his eyes and then moved them to the ground. Eric figured this meant for him to pull forward. It didn’t. The man put his hands up, palms out, and yelled at him. The woman was smoking. He stopped the truck and threw his hands in the air to show he didn’t know what they were asking him to do. The man repeated the motion and then mimed carrying buckets in each hand. He looked like that cartoon of brooms carrying water. It made Eric laugh, until he realized how serious this was.
Eric got out and pulled two buckets out of the back. He hauled them up to the other car and set them down. “There’s six of these. You want to help.”
“We’re good,” the woman said.
From up close, Eric could tell that she’d been pretty once. She wore enough makeup for two people but still looked like a vampire had halfway finished her off.
“Step on it,” the little dude said.
Eric really wanted to punch him in the face. He also sort of wished that gun of his dad’s weren’t still in the truck. Then again, there was probably no way a gun would ratchet things down.
He brought the next two buckets and set them down. The couple had put the first two in the trunk and started right away on the next ones. When he got back with buckets five and six, he stood and waited for the money. The couple put the other two in the back seat, and Eric said, “Hey! Those aren’t free, you know.”
The little dude stopped and said, “Take a check?”
Eric was so flustered he didn’t answer and didn’t see him crack a smile.
The woman said, “Robert Earl don’t have to worry about his money.” She hauled an envelope out of the car and brought it up to him. Eric took it and thumbed through it.
The woman made some crack and then cursed. “Who the hell is that?” she said straining to look up the road from where they came. The little dude stood on his toes to see. When Eric finally turned around, all he saw was a flicker of yellow and some taillights drop behind the rise.
“Who the hell was that?” the woman said again.
“I don’t know,” Eric said.
“Cops?” the little dude asked.
“Not cops if they’re turning around. Maybe the handsome stranger here had some backup muscle in case of emergency.”
“Wasn’t me,” Eric said.
“You’d never say so if it was,” the little dude said.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Eric watched the car in front make a sloppy U-turn and whiz past him. He wasn’t sure what would happen if they wrecked with that stuff in the car. Wouldn’t be easy to clean up.
He thought the situation through for a minute, then decided he better call Robert Earl. He took out his phone and dialed.
“What?” he said.
“I think somebody’s following me.”
Robert Earl hung up immediately. Eric stared at the phone for a minute and then looked out at the field, which went back for a hundred yards to a line of trees. Above it storm clouds piled on top of each other until they reached a quarter of the way into the sky. While he was watching the clouds to keep from freaking out, his phone buzzed with a message from a number he didn’t recognize.
Use this number.
And then a second message: Who’s following you?
Eric replied: I can’t tell. Maybe a guy from the first house.
Not cops?
Like I said. I can’t tell. Should I skip the last delivery and come find you?
The dots in the next message bounced then went still. Then bounced again and went still. Eric became really worried. A truck came from the opposite direction, slowed, and rolled down its window. “Everything all right?” the driver asked.
“Yes, sir,” Eric said. “I’m just texting my lady. Don’t want to crash or nothing.”
“I wish everyone would think like you,” the man said, and he drove off. Eric waved and then his phone buzzed.
Don’t find me. Whatever else, make the last delivery.
Eric walked back and forth in the road, staring at his phone. He felt cold and a little sick to his stomach. When no more messages came, he considered sending one of his own, but thought better of it. The rest of the load for today was going to take him the farthest out. It was ten buckets for thirty-seven fifty. Robert Earl was going to take in over seven grand today. Eric’s cut was twenty percent. Fifteen hundred bucks to drive around. The people were freaks, but so was everyone. His total face-to-face freak time so far was under ten minutes. So, in the end it would work out fine. Why would anyone want to shoot him? Dead people bring the heat. So, maybe it was time to chill and get rid of the rest of these buckets, grab Jaymee, and get some tacos.
The next address was not an address at all but coordinates: 35.291400, -99.293860, not even any north or south. He typed it all into his phone, worried about messing up one of those sixteen numbers. The map spit back a crossroads near Canute, ninety minutes away. He hit “start route” and got in the car.
He could barely think at all on this part of the drive. He constantly checked the gun and the two envelopes of cash in the glove box. He kept one eye on the rearview for the yellow Ford, but he didn’t see it. One thing off his mind. With all this open road, he thought about calling Jaymee but didn’t. He wondered what his dad was going to think with three hundred more miles on the odometer. He listened to Led Zeppelin, Beastie Boys, and Kendrick Lamar until he got to the crossroads, which were in the middle of nowhere. He stopped and put the truck into park.
There was no time set for the delivery, and nobody was there. This time he reached under the seat for his dad’s gun. It was a silver .357 magnum with a two-and-a-half-inch barrel, not a movie gun but a plain old-fashioned killer. He flipped open the cylinder, which took eight rounds. Just as he snapped it shut, he heard a high-pitched whine and saw a drone drop from the sky into his field of view. He set the gun on the floor of the truck and watched the drone hover there. It dipped low in front of the truck and then swooped up quickly and hovered above the bed of the truck. There was a camera mounted in the belly of the thing and a speaker. After it gave Eric the once-over, a voice said, “Un
load the buckets onto the shoulder.”
Eric got out and set each bucket, one by one, in the red dirt. After the first couple of buckets, he stopped and watched the drone for a second and then he looked up and down the road.
“I sense your apprehension,” the drone said. “There is no one coming from any direction. You may proceed.”
The drone buzzed around as he unloaded the rest of the buckets.
“May I inquire about your tech?” the drone asked.
Eric stopped and looked at the drone. “What?”
“Your tech. The implants there. I apologize if this comes off as insensitive.”
“So you can hear me?”
“Of course. There is a mic and radio transmitter on the drone. It’s an encrypted channel.”
“Dude?”
“I have read about the procedure and the devices, but I have not had the chance to speak with anyone firsthand. Do the implants mimic sound or do they create a new phenomenon?”
“I don’t know what you’re asking me.”
The drone buzzed to one side and hovered. “Is there fidelity to the original sound, or do you hear some new approximation of true sounds?”
Eric put the last two buckets down and wiped the sweat off his forehead. “Do you mean do I hear what’s there or something else?”
“Yes,” the drone said.
“You know how crazy this is talking to a little helicopter.”
“In this business, one needs any advantage one can gain.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“So what do you hear?”
“It’s the same vibrations, but it doesn’t sound like sounds.”
“Say more.”
“It sounds like how a cherry Popsicle tastes like cherries.”
The drone raced around in a circle, and the man on the other end laughed. “Oh, well played, my friend.”
“I don’t want to be a jerk, but I’m feeling a little bit exposed here. Is the money going to pop out of that thing?”
The drone shot up straight into the air until Eric could barely see it, then it came right back down. “I will be there in six minutes.” Eric took out his phone and started a stopwatch.
In exactly five minutes and forty seconds a car appeared in a cloud of dust. It was a nondescript Chevy pickup with fake wood paneling on the side. The license plates were caked in mud. The man pulled in alongside Eric and rolled down the window. He was wearing a ski mask with glasses over it. He handed Eric the envelope.
“My apologies for the strangeness of my inquiries. I have a deep interest in the cybernetic human.”
Eric took the envelope and stared at the man.
“I meant no offense. Truly. You better go.”
Eric got in the truck and pulled out. He left the gun on the floor until he’d gone at least half a mile, then he put it back and kept driving. He threw Robert Earl’s instructions out the window and realized that he was starving.
FRANCIS HAD BEEN DREAMING THAT he was under a bridge and there were horses or something clopping across the top. He was down in the riverbed with water to his knees. It seemed like he’d been chased here, but he didn’t know for sure. He waited for the clopping to stop once whatever it was up there got to the other side of the bridge, but that didn’t happen. He felt himself rising out of sleep into the harsh afternoon light. When he realized the clopping was really the sound of someone knocking on his front door, he jumped out of bed, pulled a shirt from the hamper and walked into the front room.
His wife was standing in the kitchen pointing at the two police officers standing side by side at the door. “Make sure they have a warrant,” she said.
“Not now. Really. Not now.”
Francis opened the door and rubbed his hair with the other hand.
“Sorry to bother you, sir. Are you Francis Bugg?”
His first thought was to say “Who’s asking?” but it was obvious. His second thought was to start worrying. He knew this conversation wasn’t going to go in any good direction. He looked back at the kitchen, and his wife shrugged.
“Is there somebody else here?” the other officer asked.
Francis looked back at them. “No. Just me. I was taking a nap. I’m sorry. It takes me a while to come out of that.”
“We understand,” the first cop said. “Do you own a white Ford F-250, sir?”
“I do.”
“Is it somewhere on the property?” the officer asked, tracing a circle in the air with the tip of his pen. We didn’t notice it out front.”
“I loaned it to my son,” he said, and immediately regretted it. “He’s using it for work, for his new job. A guy named Robert Earl Cripps. They went to high school together.”
“Is that Cripps with two p’s?” one cop asked.
The other one said, “One p makes it ‘cripes.’”
The first cop silenced the second with a sharp stare, then he took a note on his pad.
“Is something wrong, officer? Was he in an accident? Is he okay?”
“Your son was not in an accident.”
“So far as we know,” the second cop said, which got him a second stare.
“When did you loan him the vehicle?”
“This morning. He said he needed it for work. He makes deliveries. Pool stuff. Chemicals. Skimmers.”
“People around here have a lot of swimming pools?” the cop asked. “Wouldn’t think so from the looks of it.”
Francis was sick to his stomach. “Plenty of people do. It’s hot as hell around here, but you know that.”
“You need to quit telling them stuff,” his wife said from the kitchen. He wanted to look back but didn’t. She kept talking. “They are opening you up like a can of soup.”
“You didn’t say what’s going on? I am his father.”
“How old is the boy?”
“Nineteen.”
“I’m afraid he’s of age, sir. We can’t say.”
The other cop added, “This is all part of an ongoing investigation, so we’ll ask the questions.”
Francis gestured to the second cop. “This must make you ‘good cop,’ right?” The first officer tilted his head and looked at him with a complete lack of amusement. “Can you at least tell me if he’s dead or not?”
“When was the last time you saw your son?” Francis did not answer the question, prompting the officer to change tactics. He held up a picture of Robert Earl. “Is this Mr. Cripps?”
“That’s Robert Earl, why?”
“No reason. He’s the boss. Correct?”
“Well, he owns the pool company. Pool Shark, I think it’s called.”
The first cop wrote something down on his notepad. He said the two words “Pool” and “Shark” aloud as he did. “Is your son armed?” the first cop asked.
“There’s a gun in the truck. I don’t know if he’s got into it or not. I’d say probably not.”
“But there is a weapon?”
“Yes.”
Francis’s wife whistled through her teeth. This time Francis had to look back. She lifted her eyebrows and shook her head.
“Mr. Bugg?” the second cop said. Francis dragged one finger across his throat to get her to be quiet. “Mr. Bugg,” the cop said again, louder. “Can we have you turn around, please. And keep your hands where we can see them?”
“I was just having a nap. I’m on medical leave,” Francis said. “Some guy in Connecticut stepped in front of my train. They give us time after that, you know, before we can go back on the line.”
“Are you currently in treatment or taking any medications?”
“They give me some Valium to help me sleep, but I don’t need it. Can you tell me what’s going on?”
“If your son comes home with your truck, we need to talk to him,” the first cop said, handing Francis a card.
“If he comes home at all, we need to talk to him,” the other cop said.
“I’ll tell him,” Francis said.
“Maybe you just call us, o
kay?” the first cop said. “We’ll come back out.”
After Francis agreed, the two officers left, and he watched them return to their car, looking at things and snapping pictures with their phones. When they finally drove off, his wife said, “You told them too much.”
“The hell I did,” he answered.
ERIC PULLED INTO A TACO Bell and locked the cash in the glove compartment of the truck. He made sure the pistol was back in its holster, safety on, the thumb break snapped in place. He sat in the truck for a minute, breathing, trying to keep his freak-out under control. He admitted to himself that everything that went down today was weird but probably not out of the ordinary for criminals. He told himself that television never really showed people that this was a business, like selling phones or furniture. When he felt calm, he got out and looked at the empty truck bed, thought about all the money, smiled, and went inside for something to eat. He hadn’t been this hungry in a long time, and he figured the stress of everything had been grinding him up on the inside.
He ordered more than he needed and sat there, wolfing down his food, with one eye on his phone. At this point, he figured, there would be nobody who knew what he’d been doing, no record. He was moving about on his own. He thought about texting Jaymee, but stopped himself. He wanted to make sure there was no trail, nothing to say he’d been out in the western part of the state. Except he’d bought gas with his credit card. But that was closer to home. He’d paid cash for this food, so he was okay. He’d have to throw out the receipt. He stood up and did that right away. He had the call from Robert Earl, and the texts, but those were also closer in. He closed his eyes and thought everything through. When he felt okay, he ate a seven-layer burrito from start to finish without stopping, like a chain-smoker, and washed it down with Mountain Dew Baja Blast.
When he was done with everything else, he crumpled all the papers up and threw them out. He went to the bathroom, washed his hands and face, and got back in the truck. He drove in silence back to Robert Earl’s shed, which took more than an hour. Robert Earl’s black Dodge was out front, but the door was locked. Eric got out the cash, went around back, and saw that the ham tin hiding the key was kicked over to the side. No key. And the key didn’t matter because the back door was open, but just barely. All the lights were on. He went back to the truck for the .357.
It Needs to Look Like We Tried Page 21