Thin Gray Lines

by Mark Hazard

  Corus knelt, still keeping his eye on the horizon, then examined the corpse closer. On his rear half, the only visible wound was an ugly gash behind the ear, but it had a fresh bandage.

  “Where’s the blood?”

  There was no blood pool beneath him nor in the spot from which he’d been dragged. No blood on his neck either, when a wound like that should’ve bled a river. He spotted blood on the collar, though, and pulled it down to expose blood-smeared flesh.

  So, the man had bled. Then he’d cleaned up somehow. Perhaps he’d expired suddenly from deeper unseen damage, like a brain hemorrhage. Corus checked his pockets. By the ID and currency in his wallet, he was Canadian and most likely the pilot of the plane.

  Corus could still make out the single engine aircraft behind the gentle rise of the furrowed field.

  “The drop went wrong.”

  The farm truck Jorge drove was parked not far away. Corus ran to it. A large duffel lay in the bed, packed with something that gave it a firm rectangular shape. Corus pulled the zipper open and found bundles encased in light blue, heat-shrink plastic. Some had no markings, but others held neat stacks of hundred-dollar bills.

  “Crikey.”

  Corus looked about again, certain he’d find someone charging at him, armed and angry, but the scene was empty and oddly quiet.

  Now with an angle to peer inside the tractor barn, he spotted Randall’s truck.

  Where was he, then?

  Where was Olive?

  The air sizzled. His nostrils flared. His eyes scanned for what he knew must be.

  “What am I not seeing?”

  Jorge, for one. The cargo drop ending up in his truck indicated he had something to do with the theft and the dead pilot. Chito, too.

  Corus spotted the open side door of the Distribution Center. It was not the sort of door that ought to be hanging open at an odd hour of the morning.

  He crossed the packed earth and pulled it open.

  “Hello?”

  He was greeted by darkness and silence. Stepping inside, he called again. “Hello?”

  “Hrm.”

  His ears struggled to pick out the sound.

  “Hello?”

  “Hrm!”

  He stepped forward in a defensive crouch.

  “Hrm!”

  But no one attacked him. The red light finally filled his eyes enough to form outlines of obstacles.

  “Keep making noise. I’ll find you.”

  Arms outstretched like a mummy, he fended off steel uprights as he passed through the warehouse.

  He heard the groaning grow closer and registered the slapping of naked skin on concrete.

  “Olive?”

  He knelt and pulled tape off her mouth.

  “Who are you?”

  “Diego. I’m a new worker. Who tied you up?”

  “My mother.”

  “Then you won’t mind that I accidentally hit her.”

  “I won’t mind, Diego. I won’t mind at all.”

  Olive got up and hugged Corus in the dark.

  Nothing he’d seen that day shocked him more. He hugged her back, amazed at the humanity of the gesture, gratitude enfolding him in the haunting reddish darkness.

  She pulled him by the hand through the dark, eyes well-adjusted to the eerie light.

  “The exit is the other way,” he said.

  “Diego, you’ve saved all of us, and I’d like to reward you with money.”

  “Us? Money?”

  “Yes, a great deal of money.”

  He shook his head in the dark, not understanding. “Miss, it’s no trouble.”

  “It will be. That’s what the money’s really for.”

  She let go of his hand, pulled open a door, and a different scent hit his nostrils, hot plastic and the ionized air near great amounts of electric current.

  A light came on inside a control room, illuminating a number of panels and boxes. Olive too.

  “Jesus,” Corus gasped. “Are you okay?”

  She touched a hand to her face. “Oh, right.”

  He tilted her chin up in the light, ignoring the pallet jack sitting at an angle in the electrical room. “Your mother did this?”

  “She’s no mother.” Tears welled up in her big, defiant eyes. “She’s nothing to me anymore.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  She sniffed. “It’s worth it, even if I end up looking like Freddy Kruger.”

  Corus laughed. “I’ve seen worse wounds heal.”

  “Help me move this.” She set to shifting the big pallet jack.

  He lowered the handle and pulled the trigger, releasing the pressure in the jack. Then only a small tug was needed to pop the heel end loose from the door jamb and the toe end out from under a control box. It slid through the doorway and clattered down onto its wheels.

  “Olive…” Corus began.

  But she’d already bent and opened a panel in the floor. Corus expected to see more wires, but instead he saw a head pop out. Randall’s head.

  Instead of acting surprised, Olive dove at him, lips first.

  Corus scratched behind his ear and looked away as the two engaged in a passionate and relieved embrace.

  FORTY

  After Randall climbed out of the hatchway, next came Jorge and Chito, both injured and with a gleam of sweat on their brow. Corus had to back out of the electrical room to make space.

  A clanking to his left alerted him, and a bay door rolled upward in the front of the distribution center, but whoever was opening it was blocked from view by factory equipment.

  Corus checked the time. The regular DC workers were arriving for their shift.

  He pulled Randall out of the control room and pointed.

  “Ag, man.” He turned to Olive. “We need to move. Workers are arriving. I’ll keep them outside.” Randall ran off toward the slowly opening door.

  “Where is the cash?” Chito stepped out of the room and searched the warehouse floor.

  “What cash?” Olive said.

  “The big cash we bring up already. It’s in blue plastic.”

  “You got some out before she found you?” she asked.

  “Maybe half,” Chito said. “You’re cool with this?”

  “Yes! Go down and get the rest!” But Olive finally noticed Chito’s badly swollen arm in its sloppy sling. She turned on Corus. “Do you want to be rich?”

  Corus shrugged.

  “Then go down there and bring up the money.”

  “Please help,” Chito said. “Just throw it.”

  “And then you lock me down there,” Corus said in Spanish. “And flee.”

  “No,” Jorge shot in. “You saved Oswaldo’s life, and I think you just saved our lives. I swear on my mother.” He rested a hand on Corus’ shoulder, sniffed hard and gave a wide-eyed nod.

  In Corus’ short experience, Jorge’s personality erred more often in honesty than lies.

  “I will go down with you.” Jorge inclined his head. “Please forgive me for earlier.”

  “I don’t blame you for that. But I need to know. Did you kill the pilot?”

  Jorge blanched. “He was coming at us with a crowbar, so I knocked him out.”

  “It was my mother,” Olive said. “After I tended his wound, he tried to break up our fight. She hit him with the shotgun. She’s strong for her size.”

  Corus could attest to that. He was more concerned with a mounting dilemma, again seeing moral gray areas where others might see absolutes.

  A small voice told him it was a crime to steal, no matter the victim, but he didn’t really believe that.

  Corus had long since given up his recon objective and begun an attempt to destabilize the enemy, possibly halting a major flow of narcotics. Policing the situation ran counter to fulfilling his objective, but that objective also ran counter to orders. Then again, the fundamental context of those “no-rocking-the-boat” orders had massively changed, and not all of it was Corus’ doing.

  On top of it all,
Joller was bearing down on the farm.

  “Think of the good you can do,” Olive pleaded.

  “He’s in!” Jorge saw something in Corus’ eyes. “Let’s go get rich!” He led the way down the shaft, hopping on one leg down the ladder, and showed Corus to the stack of plastic-wrapped cash bricks.

  Corus threw millions of dollars up to Jorge on the ladder and watched it fly out of the bunker, Chito batting it away from the hatch as it crested.

  Chito ought to be in horrible pain, but he was smiling wider with each new salvo of cash. Corus was pondering the analgesic effects of money when Jorge paused work to dip a crowbar into a brick of cocaine and snort off the claw.

  That explained a lot.

  “Take it easy, amigo,” Corus said. “Too much of a good thing…”

  Jorge offered out the crowbar. “You need some? It could speed up the work.”

  Corus ignored him and tried to throw a brick all the way up to Chito. It bounced off the side of the hatch and tumbled into the control room without Chito’s help. He threw up a dozen more bricks for a total of twenty.

  When he emerged at the top of the ladder, Corus asked, “The old lady took the other half?”

  “I guess so.” Chito said. “She tried to shoot me with a shotgun. You think the daughter is really fine with us taking this?”

  “Appears so.”

  Olive had stacked the bricks into two piles, one larger than the other. She pointed at the three of them then to the larger pile.

  “Are you happy with that?”

  Jorge and Chito cackled, picking up as many as they could carry. Corus helped.

  “Come on. To the truck.”

  They ran bricks out and tossed them into the bed, then went back for more.

  “How can you get across the border with this?” Corus asked Jorge.

  Jorge looked at Chito, then back at Corus, expression blank at first, then he laughed hard. “Saying shit like that is how I knew you’re not a real Mexican.”

  Corus smiled. “And I’m the poorer for it.”

  “Come with us,” Jorge said. “With this kind of money, they’ll make you president.”

  “Thanks, but I can’t. I have to wait here for an assassin.”

  “An assassin?” Chito frowned. “Like a guy who kills people?”

  “It’s a long story. Take my cut. Do some good with it.”

  Chito protested. “We can’t! You can’t give up this money! What about Conchita and her leg?”

  “Shut up, Chito,” Jorge barked, then smiled at Corus. “Well, friend, I hope your assassin arrives.” Jorge limped around to the driver’s side and hopped in.

  Corus backed away, feeling a pit of nausea growing in his stomach. But he’d made his decision.

  Jorge got out of the truck and slammed the door in anger. He popped the hood and cursed. “That bitch!”

  Chito got out too. “What is it?”

  “That crafty old lady ripped my spark plugs out! She’s a smart old bitch!”

  “What will we do?” Chito asked.

  Jorge pursed his mouth, rivulets of sweat pouring off his face in the cool morning air. “I’ll tell you what we are going to do, Chito. We are going to actualize!” He paced back and forth, hobbling. “There is no such thing as impossibility. If the truck is disabled, then the universe is telling us there is a better option.”

  Suddenly Jorge’s shoulders slumped, and his chin dipped, eyes locked in a thousand yard stare. For a moment, Corus thought Jorge was having a stroke.

  “Cousin,” Jorge said. “The plane.”

  Corus looked over his shoulder at the object of Jorge’s gaze.

  “Do you know how to fly a plane?” Chito asked.

  “The universe will tell me.” Jorge sniffed. “Will you help us, Diego?”

  “To the plane?” Corus asked. “Which you plan to fly?”

  “Of course.”

  Jorge was not easily dissuaded. If the plane was leaving, Corus wanted a look inside first.

  “Where is that crowbar?”

  After acquiring the tool, Corus helped them ferry the bricks out over the field. As the cousins loaded them in the back, Corus located the flight data recorder and pried it from the fuselage.

  They looked over at the racket he made.

  “You won’t want this,” he said. “Now you’re untraceable.”

  “Good thinking.” Jorge tossed in the last bundle they’d carried and limped back to the truck, Chito beside him.

  Corus gathered up every other scrap of intel he could find and stuffed it into his shirt, then double-timed it to catch up.

  When they arrived at the truck to load up for their next trip, Randall stood at the tailgate. “What’s going on? I expected you lot to be in Oregon by now.”

  “The truck doesn’t work,” Chito said. “Señora Tanner.”

  Olive ran up and clutched at Randall’s arm. “My mom is passed out in the living room. I can’t find the money she re-hid.”

  “How much did you give them?”

  “There’s five of us, so three fifths?”

  “Three fifths?” Randall’s voice raised an octave. “Of your family’s money? More than half?”

  Randall looked at Jorge. “We need some money too, amigo.”

  “You still have the half Señora Tanner took. You will find it.”

  Chito translated.

  “He’s right.” Olive tugged Randall’s sleeve. “Besides, I think he’ll kill you.”

  Muscles flared in Randall’s jaw.

  “We will find where my mom put it,” she said. “We will.”

  Jorge and Chito gathered the rest of the bricks into the huge duffel, leaving the drugs in the truck bed. They each took one handle, the bag appearing much lighter than with its original contents.

  “Best of luck,” Chito said. “We will make life better for many people.”

  “Last chance, Diego.” Jorge waved. “Come on.”

  Corus raised a hand in farewell.

  Jorge and Chito trudged off.

  “You aren’t going?” Randall sounded a little frantic. “You’re letting them take your share? You know you can’t work here anymore.”

  “Thank you, Randall. I know. But I still have work to do.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Corus didn’t answer, and they watched in silence as the cousins made their way toward the plane.

  “How much do you think it is?” Randall asked. “How much do they have?”

  Corus had seen the bank straps and done a rough tally. “Three or four million. You two kept two or three.”

  Randall sat down in the dirt. “That’s a lot of pesos. That’s a lot of rand.”

  “That means there’s six or seven million hidden somewhere,” Olive said. “Randall, we could have ten million dollars.”

  Randall scrambled to his feet as if changing his mind about letting the cousins go, but spun the opposite direction, kicking up dust on the way to his truck. He checked under the hood and called out, “She’s done me in as well.”

  He slammed the hood shut and leaned on it, head hanging between his arms.

  “The blue hatchback by the older barns,” Corus said to Olive. “Is that your car?”

  “Randall hid it from my mother.”

  “Then it still has its parts. Find what you can, quickly, then drive the hell out of here.”

  Olive nodded, thanked him again, then trotted off to tell Randall.

  FORTY-ONE

  The workers grew agitated standing in front of the distribution center in small clusters, about eight or nine people in total. Randall periodically checked in with them, pacifying them, in between his attempts to find where Iris had stashed the other half of the cash.

  Back in the kitchen, it looked like she’d been about to make pancakes before getting the call about Rodger’s injury. The woman was still snoring softly in the den, and there was nothing for Corus to do but wait for Joller. He had a feeling these might be the last pan
cakes he or Iris would ever eat, so he did his very best at following the instructions on the label.

  For a man who saw living to the end of the day as a fifty-fifty proposition, Corus wasn’t at all morose. He was scared, livid at being hunted by Joller, but ever since someone had tried to kill him with a Buick in a dark alley, he’d felt like he was in a combat zone, and those emotions nestled neatly therein. He’d eaten many a hot meal before heading out on orders, wondering if it would be his last. Like all those times, he’d try to be thankful and eat his fill.

  While the pancakes were cooking, Corus sent Chu a short, cryptic text message, asking him to look after Karen, indefinitely so, if anything should happen to him. He didn’t think Joller would harass her if he succeeded in killing Corus, but he didn’t know to what lengths the psycho would go.

  Corus flipped the pancakes in turn. “We aren’t going to find out.”

  He ate his food at the railing of the wide rear deck, watching the single engine plane sputter to life. It sat at idle for a long time, the soft vibrations of the prop humming through the soft breeze.

  A gust licked up a patch of loose soil and carried it across the field to the east where it swirled and dissipated.

  The plane lurched forward and taxied along the dirt road nearer to the tractor barn. Jorge, who Corus assumed was at the controls, managed to turn the craft about ninety degrees before getting stuck. Chito jumped out and pushed the wing strut, helping the wheel pop over a furrow and complete the turn. He jumped back in.

  Jorge now had hundreds of feet of half-decent runway. The plane rolled forward, gathering speed, and the wheels briefly left the ground, only to bounce back into the dirt road. Jorge turned the craft in old man Phillip’s back yard, this time unimpeded, and throttled up even faster. He raced along the road at fifty to sixty miles an hour, Corus guessed, then coasted and bobbed to a stop near the tractor barn again.

  Chito once again got out to help turn the plane, but this time stayed out after it was aimed properly.

  The plane stayed still. Corus squinted in the distance to see if something was wrong. He set down his plate and walked out into the field, shielding his eyes from the sun.