The Box

by Jeremy Brown

  Claud seemed ready to cross himself to ward off the blasphemy.

  Bruder stepped up into the trailer and stayed in the doorway, blocking everyone still behind him.

  The heaters were cooking inside and had replaced the moldy smell with the sharp tang of hot metal and an undercurrent of kerosene.

  Bruder looked over at Rison, who was still listening to the police scanner and fiddling with the antennas on the small TV. Apparently the signal kept moving.

  “Anything?”

  Rison grimaced.

  “Nothing. Not yet, anyway.”

  Bruder nodded.

  “Keep doing what you’re doing. But pull your mask up.”

  Rison tugged his balaclava up over his mouth and nose.

  “You got a guest with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You want me to relocate this stuff?”

  Bruder shook his head.

  He stepped forward and let Claud enter the trailer with Connelly trailing him.

  Bruder said, “We’re just talking right now.”

  Claud grinned at him and surveyed the living quarters.

  “So this is what it’s like on the inside.”

  Bruder said, “You’ve been here before?”

  Claud just gave him a patronizing look, which Bruder was already tired of. He pulled the three empty camp chairs over and put them in a small circle in what used to be the kitchen area of the trailer, judging by the severed pipes jutting out of the walls and open drain in the floor.

  Claud sat in one of the chairs and put his hands in his sweatshirt pockets.

  Bruder and Connelly took the other two.

  Rison said, “You want me over there?”

  “Not yet,” Bruder said.

  Then, to Claud: “Why have you been here before?”

  Claud gave a sly grin, his eyes sliding back and forth between Bruder and Connelly.

  “If you knew enough to rob the delivery truck, I assume you already know what we do around here.”

  “Don’t assume anything,” Bruder said.

  Connelly said, “Your English is very good, by the way.”

  “So is yours,” Claud said.

  He pulled out a bag of loose tobacco and rolling papers.

  “I am going to smoke.”

  “No,” Bruder said.

  Claud shrugged and opened the bag and started working anyway, and Bruder reached over and took them away, then stood up and tossed them down a hole in the floor.

  He sat back down.

  “So you’ve been here because you and your crew run this territory. You know the land, you know the properties, and you know where to look for a group of people who are trying to lay low for a while. Your boss—I’m guessing you aren’t the boss—sent a bunch of you out to check all the likely spots.”

  Claud held his hands out, as though presenting Bruder to the room.

  “You see? You don’t need me to say anything.”

  “How did you know we hit the armored car?”

  “Like you said, we know everything that happens around here.”

  “Bullshit. How did you know?”

  Claud grinned at him.

  “You think you might have a rat on the inside? I smell mouse piss in here…”

  He sniffed the air and wrinkled his nose.

  “Maybe some rat too.”

  “No,” Bruder said. “It’s something else. The man we passed in the pickup truck.”

  Claud shrugged.

  Bruder said, “So that’s what happened.”

  “Sure, why not.”

  Bruder took a deep breath in through his nose.

  Connelly picked up on the rising frustration.

  He said to Claud, “So you’re from Romania?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You have Transylvania there. And Dracula.”

  Claud’s eyebrows went up.

  “Oh, you’ve heard of Vlad?”

  He was mocking Connelly, trolling him, like he’d told an Italian, “You have spaghetti there.”

  “Vlad is the best,” Claud said. “Very strong communication skills. Not with the English, like me, but his actions. Impaling all those people sends a strong message. You know, the first time I went around to these farms I saw this attachment, it was on the front of a tractor. It was just a big spike, and I asked the farmer, what the hell is that for? He told me it picks up bales of hay and straw. Just pokes right through them so you can carry them around. And I thought, man, I’d like to try that on somebody. Put them on the skewer—zwip!—and park the tractor on the edge of town, letting everyone know how things are around here. Just like Vlad. A tribute, you know?”

  “An homage,” Connelly said.

  Claud frowned. “That’s French?”

  The pop quiz alarmed Connelly for a moment, then he said, “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Then no, not an homage. A tribute. I think, maybe, I will try it on one of you.”

  Bruder nodded.

  The negotiations had officially begun.

  Bruder said, “The police are working with you.”

  Claud made a big show of thinking about it, stroking his chin and squinting up at the ceiling and finally nodding.

  “Enough of them. The others just take their little cash and don’t interfere, which is fine.”

  “Is your boss local?”

  “What is local these days? We are all connected.”

  “Can I meet with him face-to-face,” Bruder clarified.

  “Not if you like your face the way it is.”

  Claud was proud of his wit and looked around for appreciation. He got hard looks in return.

  Bruder said, “Are you high enough in your organization to make a meeting happen?”

  “Of course. But it won’t happen. Not for talking, anyway.”

  He looked around the trailer.

  “You are all dead men.”

  Bruder ignored the threat and said, “What happens if we try to drive out of here?”

  “You can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “You already know, surely. You seem like professionals. Mostly. The ski masks are a bit much though. So how did you find out about the armored car? Did one of the farmers tell you? Which one?”

  Bruder said, “Why can’t we drive out of here?”

  Claud sighed and sat back in his camp chair.

  “There are only four roads in and out of this area. North, south, east, west. We are watching all of them right now and will keep watching them until we have you and the money.”

  “There are other roads,” Bruder said.

  “Ah, see? You did your research, like I thought. But really, roads?”

  He tilted his head toward the two-track outside.

  “Most of them are no better than this goat trail. And all of them go through property we own or manage.”

  “Manage,” Connelly said. “That’s what you call it?”

  “What word would you use?”

  “Scam.”

  Claud shrugged.

  “That’s fine too. My point is, you can’t get out of here with that truck and the money. You could try to walk out, but these farmers are country people. They watch their land. They have cameras in trees to watch the deer come and go. Four assholes walking through the woods will be noticed. Then, they will call us and we will come get you.”

  “What’s the cost of passage?” Bruder said.

  Claud seemed shocked.

  “That’s it? You’re giving up already?”

  “I’m making a list of options.”

  “Oh, there are no options.”

  “How much will it cost?”

  “All of it. It’s our money.”

  Bruder shook his head.

  “Not right now it isn’t.”

  Claud leaned forward, ready to level with them.

  “Look, my friends, there are truly no options. When you give up, we will kill you all and take our money back. It will be fast in return for your coop
eration. If you fight, or make us come in here and get you, it will be slow. We might force you to kill each other or draw cards to see who gets their arm or leg cut off first. Have you done that before?”

  Claud looked at Bruder and Connelly, then over at Rison, whose eyebrows were furrowed in disgust.

  “I mean, from here it looks like none of you have had limbs cut off, but have you played the game with others? You have a deck of cards, and diamonds are left arm, hearts are right arm, clubs left leg, spades right leg. The higher the card, the more you cut off. Yes?”

  “No,” Bruder said.

  Claud went on.

  “So the two of hearts, you cut off the fingers on the right hand. Ace of clubs? Oh baby, that’s the whole left leg, goodbye. And you need a good saw, because what happens if you get the four of diamonds, then the five of diamonds? Sometimes the cut is just an inch or so. You almost have to be a trained butcher to make it. But you get to draw the cards yourself, so it’s your luck that determines the results. You guys, it’s so much fun.”

  Connelly said, “What happens if both hands are gone? How do they pick?”

  Bruder appreciated him jumping in to keep Claud talking.

  Claud tapped his nose and bent forward.

  “They do like this. Peck. Peck. Peck. Sometimes they lose enough blood and pass out and die, and then the game is done. Oh well, too bad.”

  “And that’s going to happen to us,” Bruder said.

  “Only if you’re a pain in the ass. If you just give up and say you’re sorry, and all the money is here, it will be much better for you. We’ll shoot you and bury you in some field or put you on a burn pile and bury the bones or give the bodies to the pigs. Have you seen that before? Amazing. Maybe the boss chooses that if you put up a fight. Tie you up or cut your joints and toss you in with the pigs. That way the pigs get some free food, so it’s win-win.”

  Claud seemed impressed by this and nodded to himself, then looked up at Bruder.

  “So give me my phone. I will make one call and we’ll get started.”

  Bruder took the phone out of his pocket and looked at the dead screen.

  It was a newer iPhone and certainly had tracking capabilities, allowing others to see where the phone was if it was on and had signal.

  But he didn’t know if the Romanians used apps that kept track of the last known location, which for this particular phone would be the end of the two-track, right before he turned it off.

  Turning it back on to check wasn’t an option.

  He said, “What happens if you don’t call?”

  Claud frowned. “I think we’ve been over that already.”

  “No, I mean what happens if you don’t call, you don’t go back, you don’t tell anybody about us and where we are.”

  Now Claud was very confused.

  “You’re not making sense to me.”

  “Say, hypothetically, we gave you a stack of the cash to get back in your car and drive away, but not back to town. I’m sure you know the people at all the roadblocks and can get through. You take the cash and keep driving. Someplace warm. Maybe LA, maybe Miami. A guy like you would love Key West.”

  “A bribe?”

  “Call it whatever you want,” Bruder said. “What happens then? Do they pivot the hunt for us toward you, thinking you’re in on the whole thing? Or are you just some peon and it’ll be a week before anybody notices you’re gone?”

  Claud looked at the other men to see if they were buying it.

  “Are you serious?”

  “I’m still collecting options.”

  Claud closed his eyes and shook his head, then rubbed his face with both hands before sliding them over his thinning hair.

  “I thought you were a little bit smart, but you must be a fucking moron to ask me that.”

  He spat on the floor, a white bullet slapping the floor between Bruder’s boots.

  “I just told you what will happen if you cause more trouble. What do you think they would do to me if I took a payoff? And it wouldn’t even matter. You’d still be stuck here and I’d have some of the money. What’s the point? What does it get you?”

  “More time,” Bruder said.

  “Time? What does time matter? Today or a week from now, we will come in here and get you if you make us.”

  “We’ll blow the money.”

  Claud gave a wry smile.

  “That’s right, you boobytrapped the bags.”

  “And the woods,” Bruder told him.

  Claud kept the smile and swept a hand around the trailer, over the food and water stacked against the wall.

  “You will run out of supplies. Your heaters will grow cold. You want to have siege warfare, Americans? We fought the Ottomans. We fought the fucking Mongols!”

  Connelly said, “How old are you?”

  Claud thumped his chest.

  “It’s in the blood, asshole.”

  “What about an exchange?” Bruder said. “We hand you over with some of the money, then we’re on our way out of town.”

  “Oh, now I’m a hostage? I thought this was a friendly negotiation.”

  “We can tie you up if it makes you feel better.”

  “There will be no deal,” Claud said. “Get it through your fucking heads. You can stick your bribe up your ass, and trying to use me like a—what is it—a bargaining chip? That will only make things worse for you.”

  Bruder thought about it for a moment.

  “Then I guess we’re out of options.”

  Claud said, “There never were any. I told you from the start.”

  “I don’t suppose you want to tell us anything else about your operation. Where the boss is right now. That sort of thing.”

  “From negotiation to hostage situation to interrogation. What’s next, torture?”

  Bruder shook his head.

  “Relax. We aren’t the torturing kind.”

  Claud smiled along his nose again.

  “I know.”

  Bruder took the man’s iPhone out again and dropped it on the floor, then used his boot to smash it. He picked up the mess and twisted it in his gloved hands until he got to the SIM card, then snapped it in two.

  Claud looked on with growing concern.

  Bruder looked at Rison.

  “You have your ears in?”

  Rison nodded.

  Claud looked at Rison with a slight frown, and before he could turn back to Bruder to see what was happening Bruder shot him in the side of the head.

  They all pulled their balaclavas off, then Bruder’s earbud clicked.

  From his spot by the road Kershaw said, “Did I just hear something?”

  “You did, we’re fine,” Bruder told him. “Our guest just left.”

  “You need me back there?”

  “Not yet. How loud was it?”

  “Barely, but I was listening for it. Or something louder.”

  He was referring to the explosives nestled in the bags of money.

  “We aren’t there yet,” Bruder said, and let go of the radio button.

  Connelly frowned at Claud’s body, slumped over the arm of the camp chair.

  “I think I could have worked something out of him.”

  Bruder shook his head. “He was enjoying it too much, playing with us. He wasn’t going to give up anything. Except a trap.”

  Bruder and Connelly carried Claud’s body outside and around the back of the trailer.

  They dropped it on the ground, sending out a brief halo of snowflakes, and Bruder looked at Claud’s car, thinking.

  Connelly interrupted him.

  “Should we stash him in there? Maybe we can put him in the trunk and leave the car somewhere. Throw them off the trail.”

  “What trail? He’s the only one who found us.”

  “Well, like you said, they gotta have more guys out looking. If they’re reporting back, it’s only a matter of time before this dickhead gets missed. Somebody goes, ‘Where was Claud looking? You, Grigore, go look for hi
m.’ But if we can drop the body across town, somewhere they’ll find it, everybody goes that way and we hoof it out the back door.”

  Bruder shook his head.

  It was a decent idea and would have been worth trying except for one thing.

  “How do we get the truck and his car across town with the roadblocks up and all the other Romanians patrolling without catching someone’s eye?”

  Connelly stared down at Claud and chewed his lip.

  “Wait until dark?”

  “It’ll be worse then. Less traffic, easier to stand out. And I don’t think we’re going to stay here that long. Come on.”

  They rolled and shoved the body under the trailer and left it there and went back inside.

  Rison was staring at the TV and scanner.

  “I think these things are busted.”

  “They work fine,” Bruder said. “There’s just nothing on them.”

  He turned to Connelly.

  “You’re up.”

  Connelly closed his eyes.

  “Ah, shit.”

  Chapter Five

  Five Weeks Earlier

  Connelly rode the bus from Omaha into Iowa and eventually into the town, arriving at three o’clock on a brisk, sunny Thursday afternoon.

  He wore jeans and a hooded sweatshirt under a barn jacket and had thick silver rings on most of his fingers and both thumbs. He carried a faded army surplus duffel bag full of clothes and a black guitar case covered with random stickers.

  The guitar inside was his but the case was used, found in a Vegas pawn shop, and Connelly had spent most of the bus trip coming up with stories about how and where he got each sticker. It passed the time and might be good fodder for small talk.

  He was the only one to get off at the town’s depot, which was a room with benches on the back side of a drug store, accessed by a narrow lane running one block north of the highway. The road didn’t seem to get any direct sunlight, and there were piles of old snow crusted with dirt piled against the cinderblock wall.

  Connelly went past the benches and through the drug store, nodding at the old sourpuss behind the cash register, and emerged on the main east-west road through town. He stood there for a moment and got his bearings with his eyes watering from the bright sun and cold air coming down the highway like a wind tunnel.