Gray's Ghosts

by Carey Lewis

THEY DIDN’T SAY MUCH UNTIL Martina asked where the fuck they were.

  “That’s the Waccamaw Wildlife Refuge over there,” Huey said. This way was longer but it was the way Jeff told him to take. Told Huey to make sure to point out any parts that would make them look good.

  “The fuck am I supposed to care about a refuge for?” she asked. She was looking down at her phone, probably seeing they weren’t taking the shortest route to Rounders Bend.

  “You know I watch your show sometimes,” Huey said, looking into the rear-view. “You guys fake that shit don’t you?”

  “We present what we find,” the girl host said, Huey couldn’t remember her name.

  “Yeah, but you present it in a way don’t you? Got all your editing tricks.”

  They didn’t say anything after that, content to look at the scenery passing by the Lincoln. They were all about talking when they first got in, talking about someone named Dave - Martina would talk to him later to see what he had to say about whatever it was. The black one, Martina, telling them they had a week off after they wrapped up here, they could go enjoy the beach then. She was in a hurry to be done with the hick towns - she stopped herself before saying it, but Huey knew that’s what she wanted to say.

  Huey brought the car along the 544 and met up with the 501, trying to spot Jeff in his rear-view, drove up to Conway where they stopped at a roadside diner and the three of them went inside while Huey stayed with the car. He tried to phone Cesar but wasn’t getting an answer. He didn’t want to phone Hector. Hector scared him. He was staring at his phone thinking of who else to call when it rang. Jeff.

  “You show them the wildlife refuge?”

  Huey hung up.

  He almost put it out of his mind but now he was thinking it over, thinking how embarrassing it was, the hick showing off wildlife and trees. Fuck Jeff. Huey pulled a joint out of his breast pocket and lit it, hoping to numb himself, maybe stop him from thinking how hot it was in this damn black suit.

  Then the guy came out, Deacon. Huey knew his name. Came out of the diner holding a sandwich wrapped in paper. Huey dropped the joint and put it out under his boot. He was taller than Huey, probably about six foot and some change. Had that naturally wavy hair made him look like he just crawled out of bed.

  He leaned against the fender of the Lincoln beside Huey, both of them staring at the diner for a couple moments before Deacon asked if Huey had any more weed, then smiled at him.

  Huey took another joint out of his pocket and lit it, passed it to the TV host. “We got time?”

  “They still can’t decide if they want to go to the washroom here or wait for a better spot. Then they got to decide if they’ll eat here. Then they got to decide what to order.”

  “Because they’re women?” Huey asked.

  “That and other things.” Deacon passed the joint back to Huey, holding the air in his lungs. “Oh, got this for you.” He handed the sandwich to Huey.

  Huey put the joint between his lips and shoved the sandwich in his pocket. He took a drag as they watched the women in the run down diner through the window, both of them staring at the menu hanging above the counter like they were statues.

  “The amount of time we get people asking us if we fake shit,” Deacon said. “I’d say half want us to say we do, the other half don’t. What they don’t know is asking the question already gives you the answer.”

  “Does it?” Huey handed the joint back.

  “If you’re asking if it’s real or not, you already believe it is.”

  Huey nodded, looking at the TV host smiling, not condescending him at all, just sharing something he learned.

  “That’s some good shit,” Deacon said, handing the joint back.

  “Got a friend that grows it.”

  “He does good work.”

  “He’s Mexican.”

  “That explains it,” Deacon said, another joking smile on his lips. Huey liked this guy, seemed down to Earth for someone on TV. “So what’s there to do around here?”

  “Besides get out if you can?” Huey passed the joint back to Deacon, but he refused it. Said that was enough for him. Huey took another haul, said, “There’s a bar all the locals hang out, got some pool tables there.”

  “Good music?”

  “If it’s what you like.”

  “Where they got us staying?”

  “Ma Bell’s Bed and Breakfast. Was told you guys rented the whole place.”

  “They don’t tell us anything. Just put us in front of the camera, that’s as much as they trust us.”

  “I didn’t know anything was haunted up this way.”

  “Guess we’ll find out,” Deacon said, smiling again, getting along with Huey. “Some farm where this guy built a bunker, died in it.”

  “Sounds like old man Dwight. Heard about him when I was a kid, no one ever saw him. I didn’t know he died.”

  “Sounds like he doesn’t know it either. Here they come.”

  They all climbed back into the car, quiet again, as Huey took them further up the 501 North, not much of anything to see. He brought them off the highway, down some rural streets, farms and silos in the distance of the fields, pulled into the drive of an old farmhouse with a wraparound porch and an old woman sitting on a swing, Ma Bell herself.

  Huey turned off the car and climbed out to open the door but they were already letting themselves out, looking at the old house, at the old woman with white hair in a bun, plump around the middle, walking down the steps to greet them.

  “Y’all should be investigating this,” Martina said, looking at the old farmhouse Ma Bell tried to maintain through the decades. Then she turned to Huey, asked where their car was. Huey shrugged.

  Martina didn’t like it, turned her attention to Ma Bell with Brooke. Deacon stayed behind.

  “You got a card or anything?” Deacon asked Huey.

  Huey ducked back into the car, rifled through the glove-box and came out with a card for Rounders Rides. Deacon looked at it, asked Huey if he wouldn’t mind showing him around.

  “Jeff says he’ll be the one taking care of you. You call for something, he says he’ll be the one coming by.”

  Deacon flipped the card against his fingers, looking back at the house, then to the card, waiting. Huey wanted him to go inside so he could find out what was going on with Cesar, if Randy was able to pick up the load and get it back here. See if he could start making some real money with the Mexicans.

  “But you want to get high, you can call me,” Huey said. Seemed to be what the man was waiting for.

  CHAPTER THREE

  CESAR GOT THE CALL AT 3:13 in the morning, waking his dogs after the phone dropped to the floor when he tried to answer it.

  “They got me,” Randy said over the phone.

  “Who got you?”

  “Fucking police man. They’re saying shit. Keep telling me ten years.”

  “You won’t do ten years.”

  “That’s not what they’re saying. Saying I came over state lines, I’m looking at real time. They’re telling me it’s Federal,” Randy said, his voice holding back tears.

  Randy told Cesar where they had him and Cesar said he’d take care of it. He scrolled through his list of contacts, telling the dogs to shut up as they scratched at the door, wanting outside. He phoned Randy’s grandmother, apologizing profusely for waking her up, then told her Randy was in trouble again and needed her help. He gave her the number to set up the bond then let the dogs out.

  He stood in the doorway in his boxers, smoking a cigarette, watching his Rottweiler and German Shepherd run around in the dark, looking for a place to piss. The Rotty, Roxie his ex-girlfriend named her, stared at him while she took a shit. She stood up and wandered off before Sheri, also named by his ex-girlfriend, came over to smell it, then pissed on it, staring at him like Roxie did. Dogs man.

  Cesar was wrapping his head around it, Randy getting pinched, crossing state lines. He wondered if Randy hid the weed in the car in separate places lik
e Cesar told him to. It was mid-level weed, going for two thousand a pound. Cesar spent forty grand that wasn’t his for it, giving him twenty pounds. Twenty individual wrapped vacuum sealed bags to hide in twenty separate places.

  The forty grand he didn’t have came from the Cubans in Florida. The ones that offered to protect him and the operation, just taking a small cut, wanting to get into the weed game here in South Carolina. “We’ll give you the scratch, you move the shit, prove you can run, we’ll be in business,” they told him.

  The dogs were barking at something out there in the dark. Cesar yelled if they got sprayed by a skunk, they’d be spending the next week outside.

  He tried doing the math, thinking he could divide a pound into about 350 ten dollar bags, each pound giving him roughly thirty-five hundred. He’d need twelve one pound bags to get forty-two thousand dollars, enough to pay back the guys in Florida but would only get him a two thousand dollar profit, which they might want for interest on the loan. That would mean the cops would have to have missed approximately half the shipment.

  The phone rang in his hand. He answered it, Randy’s grandmother telling him the bond’s been set, getting more and more expensive to bail him out. Told Cesar they wanted to deny bail but she told them she needed her Randy, he took care of her. She asked Cesar if he would be a dear and get him. Cesar told her he’d be leaving right away. He hung up the phone and waited for the dogs.

  That wasn’t a good sign if he had to get Randy. Meant he couldn’t drive his car, meaning the cops had it, meaning they had the entire shipment. He wondered if he should tell the Cubans what happened, their money was gone. He had time, he thought. He was supposed to get the shipment later today, they’d assume he’d need time to sell it, make the money. That gave him, what, a month? They’d want installments against their investment though.

  He needed to talk to Randy, see what was going on. Ask him what he said and what the cops said. If he was looking at real time, Randy would be a problem. He’d roll up on Cesar and Hector. His whole life revolved around taking care of that old grandma of his.

  Trafficking weed would get you one to ten plus up to a ten thousand dollar fine for a first offense. But cops could throw whatever they wanted at you, adding charges until you were guilty of being spit out of your own mother’s cooch. They already started, throwing in that crossing state lines thing. Plus this wasn’t Randy’s first time getting pinched. If it was just a fine, shit, Cesar would be happy getting money together and pay it himself. If it was jail time, prison, Randy was going to be a problem.

  The dogs ran in, knocking against Cesar’s knees, both of them panting by their food bowls, staring at him again. Wanting to be rewarded for taking a shit. Cesar crossed the room, walking along the worn out path in the faded peach colored carpet to grab the giant bag of dog food against the wood paneling of the kitchen island. He poured the food out of the bag, the dogs not waiting until he was done, bits of kibble falling on their heads.

  He patted them, took a quick shower, got dressed, then grabbed the stainless steel Colt .45 ACP with a rosewood grip from his nightstand to go pick up Randy from the police station.

  “WHERE AM I GOING TO hide it? They start ripping up the panels on the doors, ripped up the spare tire, pulled the carpet back in there, start going through the sides,” Randy said. “Everywhere I put a bag, they ripped it out. I even had some taped up inside the hood there, they grabbed that too.”

  “Like they knew where to look?”

  Randy thought about it for a second. “Now you mention it.”

  The way Randy told it, there was no problem in Raleigh, the guys even helping him rip up the car to stash the packages, giving him pointers on hiding places. The whole deal went down no problem in a garage there looked like a chop-shop Randy said.

  He was heading south on I-95, coming through Dillon when the cops stopped him. Pulled him over saying he was swerving, Randy telling Cesar he didn’t drink or smoke shit even though they offered him some at the garage.

  “They pull you over then what happened?”

  “Said that shit about swerving. I tell them I ain’t even brush my teeth today, smell my breath they want. They ask me to get out of the car and walk a line. I’m figuring it’s no problem because I told you I didn’t drink or smoke nothing.”

  “The one giving you the test, the other found the grass right?”

  “Yeah. They sit me down, go through the car.”

  “Acting like they knew where it was.”

  “Yeah.”

  Cesar was thinking while he was driving, the sun showing red on the horizon now. It took awhile getting Randy out of the police station, filling in this form and that, having to call the grandmother to tell the cops she couldn’t get out of the house so she sent Cesar to pick up her grandson. Then they told him they couldn’t find him, had to fill out the papers again. The cops having a game with him.

  “So they get it all?”

  “All of it. We’re riding back to the cop shop, I tell them I ain’t give them permission to go through the car. He tells me they smelled smoke in there, gave them cause. But I told you Cesar, I’m clean. I do just what you tell me. I ain’t smoke or drink nothing today. The shit, they were giving it away. Free. I still ain’t touch nothing.”

  Cesar turned from the wheel to look at Randy, the kid looking like he was pleading the case to a judge, begging someone to believe him.

  “I believe you,” Cesar said. It took some of the weight off Randy’s shoulders.

  “I figure we use that, tell them I ain’t smoke at all today. That’s some illegal search right there.”

  “You think they’re going to give back twenty pounds of weed because you tell a judge you wasn’t high?”

  “At least the car. They letting me go I ask where my car key at? They tell me I can’t get it back, it’s evidence. Cesar I need that car to take my Nana to her appointments.”

  “You can borrow mine for your Nana. Don’t worry about your Toyota.”

  “Yeah?”

  Cesar looked at Randy again, saw another weight off his shoulders as he sat back in the seat.

  “So it’s like they knew where it was huh?” Cesar asked.

  “You remember Bobbi-Jo? They was like her going for cock, knows exactly where it is.”

  Cesar nodded at this, thinking. It’s what he was afraid of and it made the situation worse. He turned the Acura off the I-95 South onto the 38 East, heading toward the 501.

  “You hungry?” Cesar asked.

  “What time is it?”

  “Time for barbecue.” Cesar gave him a joint from the center console. “To catch your appetite.”

  Randy smoked the joint as Cesar pulled the car into the gravel lot of Bub’s BBQ Pit. They went inside, taking a booth by the window looking out to the lot and the street, silent looking at the plastic menus with round stains from coffees and sodas.

  They ordered and ate their food, the barbecue and weed loosening Randy up, telling jokes like he used to, telling Cesar what he should’ve done instead of what he did. Cesar listened, knowing Randy couldn’t have done anything differently. Knew the outcome would be the same.

  The folk in Raleigh set him up. Someone knew Cesar was looking to break free, become a player like the others in South Carolina, get himself some of that good medical grade shit coming over from Colorado. The folk in Raleigh called the cops, told them exactly where to find the pot and when to expect stupid Randy to come through, not bothering to take the longer route. More people with their boot on Cesar’s throat.

  He had his elbows on the table, resting his chin on his hands as he watched Randy eat, getting a good look at him, deciding Randy wouldn’t do one day in jail with his grandma in the shape she was in. That was a problem. Randy would talk sure as the sun would come up on a Tuesday. That was one problem.

  “They ask you about me?”

  “You know they did,” Randy said then went back to eating. Barbecue sauce covered his cheeks as he ripped the
meat off the ribs.

  The other problem was the people who set him up, the ones told those people in Raleigh he was coming. They’d know Randy was running for Cesar, would know he got picked up. Now they would be waiting to see how big Cesar’s balls were. As much as he liked Randy, he didn’t have much of a choice.

  Cesar paid the bill and they got back in the Acura, Randy patting his stomach, joking he should get picked up more often. It didn’t take long before he passed out. He woke up when Cesar guided the car through the bumps of the dirt lot to the Little Pee Dee River.

  “Why we at the river?”

  “Meeting a friend here,” Cesar said, turning off the ignition.

  “What for?”

  “You get pinched, got to get the dope somehow.” Cesar got out of the car. Randy followed him across the dirt, smelling the fish and algae, the smell of slow moving water.

  “Where’s he coming from?” Randy said.

  “Man, I got to piss, you mind watching out for him?” Cesar went off to the side toward the trees, looking over his shoulder, watching Randy walk over to the river’s edge.

  He was looking upstream, waiting for someone in a canoe to come along. “Going to be waiting here a long time. You ever go on this thing before.”

  “Heard there’s gators in there,” Cesar said, taking a couple steps behind Randy.

  “Shit yeah. Only way you getting through this is on canoe. How far’s your man paddling?”

  That’s when Cesar pressed the barrel of the Colt .45 ACP against the back of Randy’s neck and pulled the trigger. His throat sprayed out onto the water as Randy dropped to his knees, then fell face first into the water. Cesar grabbed his ankles and dragged Randy off the shore until he was floating, then came back to dry land and took out his cell phone, dialed Randy’s grandma, telling her they stopped for barbecue when Randy ran away out the back.

  He looked at Randy, floating face down in the water. And then he was dragged under, the gators getting to work already.

  CESAR SPENT THE REST OF the day talking to cops. He told them they stopped for barbecue and when he came back from the washroom, Randy was gone. He went outside looking for him but nothing.