Rumrunners

by Eric Beetner

“You okay?”

  “Doing fine. Keep her steady.”

  That answered his question.

  Calvin balled up the movers blanket in one hand. It was heavy and the quilting was frayed in spots. He patted the gun in his belt, resting on his hip like an old west sheriff ready for the draw.

  He bent down and lifted fast on the roll door. He let go when the door was on its way and let inertia take the steel the rest of the way up so he could get a two-handed grip on the blanket and heave.

  The Hummer had come close, angling for a pass, so Calvin had to adjust his throw at the last second to aim more to the right. The blanket unfurled as it flew and moved like a giant bat in the night, whipping and changing shape as it sailed.

  The single flat wing landed on the hood and spread out across the windshield where it stuck. Calvin could see a tiny triangle of glass on the driver’s side but the space was hardly enough to drive by.

  The Hummer swerved.

  Calvin drew.

  “You brung this on yourself, you little shits.”

  He fired his .38 in a pale imitation of the roaring large caliber blasts that had been lobbed at him all night. Three shots, all grouped around the same front tire. He heard a pop and a hiss and the Hummer ducked like it was a football player taking a knee, only at eighty miles an hour.

  Sparks flew from the front end and the car spun around the point where the frame dug into the road. The asphalt proved unforgiving and held the corner of the Hummer to a stop while the rest of the car went past, flipping it up and over the nose to land hard on the roof.

  Calvin slid down onto the bench seat head first through the panel, bumping Tucker as he did.

  “What happened?”

  “Take us home. We’ve got planning to do.”

  29

  Calvin fed another quarter into the payphone. Tucker’s cell phone was dead and it took them a half hour of driving around to find one before they spotted the silver box on a pole in the far end of the diner’s parking lot.

  “Tell me again why you had to make this call now?” Tucker asked. “You said go home.”

  “I know I did but I gotta see it for myself first. It’ll effect the plans we make.”

  Someone on the other end of the line picked up.

  “Georgia darling? It’s Cal McGraw.”

  “Cal who?” The old woman was still half asleep. More than half.

  “Calvin McGraw. Sorry to call you so late, Georgia.”

  “Cal McGraw, what in the hell?”

  “I need to ask you a question and I wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t in a spot of trouble. I need to know what happened to Kirby Stanley.”

  “Kirby? Why you need to know that for?”

  “Can you just tell me if he’s alright.”

  “He’s alright if you don’t forget to change his feeding bag.”

  Calvin turned to Tucker and raised his eyebrows. “Is that right, darlin’?”

  “Got shot in the head. Right through his left eye. Can’t speak, can’t walk. They call him a, what do you call it…a vegetable.”

  “Where’s he at, Georgia?”

  “Why do you want to know all this, Cal?”

  “I told you I’m in a mess of trouble with Hugh. Things sure ain’t what they used to be.”

  “You can say that again. Used to be a man wouldn’t call someone in the middle of the goddamn night. Especially a lady. Especially a lady he hasn’t talked to in ten years.” She thought about it. “More like twenty.”

  “Tell me where I can find Kirby and I’ll leave you be.”

  “He’s in a hospice over in Coralville. Nurses twenty-four hours a day. Him and all the invalids live over there. Called whispering pines or weeping willow or some damn thing. I don’t know, it’s too late.”

  “That’s good enough darling. I thank you, Georgia. You always were the one that got away.”

  “I only got away ’cause I ran so damn fast whenever you came around, Cal. I get the feeling I should still be running.”

  “Thanks, Peach. Be seeing you.”

  “Not if I see you first.”

  The line went dead. Calvin turned to Tucker.

  “Point that thing for Coralville.”

  Another payphone outside a public library in Coralville turned up that rarest of things—a phone book. Waterlogged and bloated it still had a legible section on nursing homes and hospice care that listed a Willow Creek less than half a mile from where they parked.

  The night nurse wore slippers as she answered the door.

  “Don’t knock so damn loud or you’ll wake the patients. Now who the hell are you two?”

  Tucker hung back behind Calvin who spoke. “We need to see Kirby Stanley.”

  The nurse, fitting firmly into the category of sassy black woman, thrust out a hip in defiance.

  “I don’t know if you can tell, but it ain’t exactly visiting hours right now. You all can come back later.”

  “It’ll take all of five minutes.”

  Tucker put a hand on Calvin’s arm. “He’s here, that’s all we need to know.”

  “No, I need to see him.”

  “You best listen to your friend here. Don’t make me call the po-lice on your ass.”

  “I won’t wake anybody up unless you make me.”

  Calvin pushed forward placing an arm across the nurse’s chest and forcing her open like a swinging door. Tucker followed to make sure Calvin didn’t do anything stupid.

  “Hey!” Sassy black nurse realized her own volume and hushed her voice. “Hey. You can’t be in here.”

  Calvin found a room chart on the wall. The alphabetically arranged chart made it easy to find Stanley—38.

  Tucker tried to placate the angry nurse. “We’ll only be a second.”

  Calvin moved quickly forward down the hall.

  The nurse moved quickly behind him, her slippers sliding silently across the tile floor.

  Tucker moved in her footsteps right behind her. “We’re not going to do anything but look. We really will be out in five minutes.”

  She crooked a single eyebrow up as she looked over her shoulder at Tucker. He smiled at her.

  Calvin reached door 38 and turned the knob and pushed the door open slowly. He stood in the doorway, the nurse and Tucker stopped behind him. The three of them sat still in the hall like tombstones.

  Inside the room Calvin saw a figure of such menace and fear in earlier days reduced to a science fiction comic book of beeping machines, green LED lights, the steady wheeze of artificial breathing and the stale smell of cleansers and a urine bag waiting until morning to be emptied.

  Kirby Stanley. Even the name would strike fear into men enough to make them leave the state. If they could see him now. A breathing tube hung from a tracheotomy hole, drool dried in white lines like old snail trails ran down from the corners of his mouth. In the light from the open window shade Calvin could see the missing eye and a deep indent above where the bones in Kirby’s skull had to be removed.

  He wanted to run around the room and pull all the plugs, not to end Kirby’s suffering, but to end his own. Seeing a human life sustained by tricks and fakery hurt Calvin’s heart. He wanted to tell Tucker not to let him get that far gone. Smother him with a pillow if need be.

  Calvin turned. “Thank you for your time, ma’am.”

  He passed by quietly. Tucker followed. “Thank you.”

  The nurse stood still, tightening her cardigan around her.

  They arrived back at Webb’s at three-thirty in the morning. Tucker turned off the truck, but they both sat in the cab as the engine knocked.

  “So it was Hugh,” Tucker said.

  “Seems that way.”

  “He lied to our faces.”

  “Yep.”

  “He killed Webb.”

  “Did that too.”

  Webb’s house, previously only used for beer drinking and watching Burt Reynolds movies, had been turned in a headquarters for a new venture tentatively titled Revenge Inc
. The title only lived in Calvin’s head.

  “What happened out there?” Milo asked as he brought two cold cans of PBR for his dad and granddad.

  Calvin cracked the seal on his and inhaled the foam off the top. “They tried to fuck us is what. I know a boy at your age would entertain the idea of a fucking from about anywhere and anyone but trust me, this is not the kind of fucking you’d want.”

  Tucker was beyond scolding Calvin for his language. “So what’s the plan?” he asked.

  “We bring it right to him. We go see Hugh.”

  “Okay. Then what?”

  “I’m not so sure. I’m not even sure we can get in the door.”

  Tucker set down his beer, unopened. “How do we hurt him? Y’know, without actually hurting him. I’m still not ready to become a killer. Any more than we’ve had to.” He turned to his son. “And we had to, otherwise we’d be dead.”

  Milo nodded with understanding.

  “It’s the truth,” Calvin said before pulling deep on the can of beer.

  “The money,” Tucker said. “He needs it or he’s going to go under, right?”

  “It sure sounds that way.”

  “Well, I sure as hell don’t want it anymore.”

  “What are you saying?”

  Tucker stared into an empty bowl meant to hold fruit, but that held only dust. “I’m saying I think I know how to hurt him.”

  “What about the money though?”

  “We can’t keep it.”

  “Says who?”

  “It’s blood money. It’s tainted. It’s got bad luck all over it.”

  “I’ll ask again, says who?”

  Tucker leveled a stare at Calvin. “Says me.”

  Calvin stared right back. “If you go by that logic then every dollar your dad used to raise you was blood money and bad luck. I never heard you complain before. And you haven’t exactly been running a lucky streak.”

  “I’m not winning the lottery.”

  Calvin continued to meet Tucker’s eyes. “Your numbers just hit big, Tuck. Those boxes are the payoff.”

  “I don’t want it. I’m not a criminal.” Calvin opened his mouth to lay into his grandson. Tucker raised a hand to cut him off. “After tonight.”

  Milo sat on the arm of the couch watching the two older men square off. He watched Calvin’s shoulders sink a little, the fight going out of him.

  “It’s a damn stupid thing.”

  “I’m not going to have my son raised on that money. No matter how easy it would make things. I’m going to show him that being a McGraw means being an honest man. A man who defends his family when they’ve been wronged, but a man who will not steal and will not make excuses for what can be gained by other people stealing.”

  Calvin sat quietly, a fingernail tapping on the half-empty can.

  “Can you get me into Hugh Stanley’s house?” Tucker asked.

  “I think I can. I need the boy though.” Calvin turned to Milo. “You ready for your first job?”

  “Yes, sir. Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  30

  “I never thought in a million fucking years a giant refrigerator on wheels would be my primary mode of transportation.” Calvin sulked in the passenger seat with Milo sandwiched between him and Tucker.

  The white truck wound through residential streets in an area of hundred-plus year-old houses with wide lawns. Calvin gave directions to Tucker who steered the truck to the curb in front of Hugh Stanley’s house, a three-level with a wrap-around porch and two imposing oak trees in the yard.

  Nothing about the house distinguished it as a drug kingpin’s home or set it apart from his university professor neighbors.

  Tucker compared the house to the Scarface image he held in his mind. There was no gaudy opulence or row of Italian cars. No Roman columns or teams of roaming bodyguards or electrics fences. There was no fence at all. This was Iowa after all.

  Tucker figured a life of crime would buy you more than a nice home in a suburban college town. He remembered what his dad had always said about the Stanleys being big fish in a small pond. Now he knew what that meant, and this pond had a little scum on the surface, a few too many dead leaves sunk to the bottom.

  The three generations of men stepped down out of the truck and made their way along the driveway to a two-car garage. They passed a little two-door Japanese sports car with aftermarket add-ons like a rear spoiler and flared bumpers that made the whole thing look ridiculous. Easy to rule the two-door out as Hugh’s car, but it would become integral to the plan.

  When they reached the garage a few yards later Tucker pulled at the handle and the door began to slide up. He paused and moved it as slow as he could to remain quiet.

  Calvin searched for surveillance cameras but found none. He watched the door for signs of movement, but all remained quiet.

  Once the garage door was lifted all the way, Calvin took over.

  They snuck in and stood next to a four-door Mercedes in black. Calvin had never gone for German cars. Too stiff. Good engines, but if you ended up with a bad back the rest of your life it wasn’t worth it.

  He produced a slim jim from his coat and guided Milo in the art of breaking into a car. Tucker tried not to watch. What had he let his son play party to?

  Calvin slid the strip of metal between the window and door frame then handed it to Milo.

  “You gotta work it around a little bit, but you’ll feel it catch. Just like hooking a bass. When you feel it hit, you jerk it up and get it to set.”

  Milo stared off at nothing while he felt the slender metal tool tapping against the inner workings of the car door. Tucker began to bounce on his heels, impatient. Calvin turned to him and silently put a finger to his lips to shush and calm Tucker down so as not to unnerve the boy.

  Milo kept at it for a good three minutes. “I can’t feel it.”

  “Son, you ever been with a woman?”

  Milo was speechless. Tucker broke in. “What the hell does that have to do with it?”

  “Answer me yes or no, you ever been with a woman?”

  “What do you mean been with?”

  “Oh, for Christ sake.” Tucker stepped out of the garage to scope out the front of the house.

  Calvin turned to Milo once Tucker had left. “He’s gone, you can tell me.”

  “Not, like, sex but…”

  “You’ve felt around a pussy at least?”

  “A little bit.” Even in the dim light of the garage Milo’s blushing was obvious.

  “Then you know what a delicate touch it takes. This is the same thing.” Calvin put a hand over Milo’s on the slim jim and guided them both together. “You move it around. That slot in the slim jim is waiting to meet the perfect match. They’re meant to go together like a man and a woman. You ease it around, don’t go jamming it in and poking at everything you feel. Just like a woman, you go slow. She’ll thank you for it. So will the car.”

  Calvin pulled up sharply on the slim jim and the door lock sprang up. He smiled, remembering days of women and cars and how he could make either one do whatever he wanted. Those were good days.

  Milo grinned at his first B&E.

  As Calvin ran Milo through the fine art of hot-wiring a car, Tucker crept slowly to the window on the first floor of the house. The curtains were drawn and he could see nothing but the soft yellow light from inside. He checked his watch: five-twenty-five a.m.

  Behind him, the Mercedes came to life. He turned and could see a fine mist of exhaust steam rising out of the garage door in the early morning chill. He moved back to his son and granddad.

  Milo sat behind the wheel proudly, his hands gripping the leather-wrapped steering wheel. Calvin patted the boy on the shoulder and stood straight.

  “You ready?” he asked Tucker.

  “I guess so.”

  “I can’t change your mind?”

  “I thought you agreed.”

  Calvin shook his head once, not believing he’d ever agreed to giving away tha
t money. “I guess I did. Worth a shot though. It’s a lot of money.”

  “That money killed my father.”

  “No, whatever was in that semi-truck killed Webb. You’re taking it out on a bunch of innocent Ben Franklins.”

  “I’ll go in alone if you want.”

  “No, no. We go together. This is family business.”

  They walked to the door as Milo eased the Mercedes out of the garage and left it idling in the driveway in clear view.

  Tucker knocked. They both stood and began to feel the cold for the first time as they waited for someone to answer. Calvin stepped forward and pounded on the door with a balled up fist before returning his hands to a fold behind his back.

  The door opened and young man in a dark suit stood there looking pissed off. The night security. The owner of the Japanese car. Also the owner of a gun he held down by his thigh in his right hand.

  Calvin spoke first, implementing his plan that he claimed had worked sometime in the mid-fifties.

  “Don’t look now but someone is stealing your car.”

  He and Tucker both moved aside and Milo saw his cue to rev the engine a few times.

  The gunman looked at his boss’ car then at the two men on the porch. He had obviously been woken from sleeping on the job and the situation was coming to him a little slowly. Calvin helped his understanding along.

  “Better get moving if you want to catch him.” Behind his back he waved one hand and Milo saw his second cue. The car dropped into gear and began racing backward down the driveway.

  The gunman blinked twice and then bolted out of the house after the car. As he passed, Tucker loosed the grip on his own gun that had been shaking in his hand inside his pocket. He exhaled the breath he’d been holding.

  Milo hit the street and put the Mercedes in drive then waited as the suited man pocketed his gun and slid behind the wheel of the two-door. As soon as the engine turned over Milo gassed Hugh’s car away on a pre-designated route. He had begun his final exam in the college of McGraw.

  By the time the suited man had reversed down the drive and started to chase, Tucker and Calvin were already on their way back to the truck. When they arrived back at the front door each carrying a box of cash Hugh Stanley himself had made it halfway down the stairs, pulling on a robe.