Rumrunners

by Eric Beetner

  By Anthony Neil Smith

  Worm (TP only)

  All the Young Warriors TP only)

  Once a Warrior (TP only)

  Holy Death (TP only)

  By Liam Sweeny

  Welcome Back, Jack

  By Art Taylor, editor

  Murder Under the Oaks: Bouchercon Anthology 2015

  By Ian Truman

  Grand Trunk and Shearer

  By James Ray Tuck, editor

  Mama Tried 1

  Mama Tried 2 (*)

  By Nathan Walpow

  The Logan Triad

  By Lono Waiwaiole

  Wiley’s Lament

  Wiley’s Shuffle

  Wiley’s Refrain

  Dark Paradise

  Leon’s Legacy

  By George Williams

  Inferno and Other Stories

  Zoë

  By Frank Zafiro and Eric Beetner

  The Backlist

  The Short List

  Published by ABC Group Documentation, an imprint of Down & Out Books

  By Alec Cizak

  Down on the Street

  By Grant Jerkins

  Abnormal Man

  A Scholar of Pain (*)

  By Robert Leland Taylor

  Through the Ant Farm

  Published by Shotgun Honey, an imprint of Down & Out Books

  By Hector Acosta

  Hardway

  By Angel Luis Colón

  Blacky Jaguar Against the Cool Clux Cult

  By DeLeon DiMicoli

  Les Cannibales

  By Nick Kolakowski

  A Brutal Bunch of Heartbroken Saps

  Daniel R. Lester

  Dead Clown Blues (*)

  By Albert Tucher

  The Place of Refuge

  (*) Coming soon

  Back to TOC

  Here is a preview of Leadfoot, the second McGraw novel and a prequel to Rumrunners by Eric Beetner…

  1

  SOUTHEAST IOWA, 1971

  “Slow it down, McGraw.”

  Calvin McGraw, in his natural element—behind the wheel—turned his eyes to the rearview mirror and looked at his passenger through narrowed lids.

  “You have any idea who you’re talking to?”

  The man in back turned away and watched the flat Iowa fields race by out his window.

  In the passenger seat beside his father, Webb McGraw grinned to himself. He’d grown up in this seat, hanging on around hairpin turns, getting to know the sound of a V8 as keenly as his own dad’s voice. He knew who the man in back was talking to: the best outlaw driver in the Midwest. Maybe anywhere.

  Nineteen years old now, Webb had been tagging along on actual jobs with his dad for two years. There were no secrets between McGraw men. Webb knew what his father did. He drove for the Stanleys, a family who would call themselves a criminal empire, but even a nineteen-year-old knew nobody could build an empire in Iowa. An empire of pigs, maybe.

  Eyes on the road as he pushed it past seventy, Calvin said to the man in back, “You keeping an eye on the time?”

  The man checked his watch. “Ten of.”

  “Yeah, so if I don’t run the cylinders a little hot, we ain’t gonna make it. And I never been late yet.”

  “I know, Calvin. Jeez. I was just sayin’…”

  “Well, Bruce, say it to yourself. I know what the hell I’m doing.”

  What they were doing was a delivery, a big part of the McGraw job. They moved things. Used to be crates of booze. Now it was more drugs, money, people. Anything that needed moving by anything that had an engine in it: Calvin McGraw was your man, and he was grooming his son to uphold the family name. Bringing Webb up in the life came with reservations. Calvin and his wife, Dorothy, had many a late night talk about whether to let Webb find his own way in the world; do something beyond the outlaw life, but so far Webb hadn’t shown much interest in anything else.

  This was a short run. Eighty-five miles, each way. If Bruce hadn’t been so damn late getting to the pickup, they’d be there already. But Calvin didn’t need to remind him of that, he only needed to drop his foot a little lower and get them to the meet on time.

  Webb acted as navigator and called the turn off.

  “Up here, Pop.”

  Calvin hardly slowed as he spun the wheel on his nearly new Mercury Cougar Eliminator. It took the corner like a champ. In the backseat, Bruce moaned like his stomach was churning. Calvin had heard the sound before.

  “You’re gonna upchuck, you roll down the goddamn window. Don’t get it on my seats.”

  They were off the highway on a two lane blacktop road leading into what looked like an ocean of green. Hip high corn stalks rose on either side of the road. A murder of crows took to the air as the Mercury’s V8 blasted their picnic with the birdsong of internal combustion.

  “There it is,” Webb said, pointing to a farmhouse in the distance.

  “What’s the time?” Calvin asked.

  Bruce checked his watch again. “Four minutes ’til.”

  Calvin slapped the steering wheel. “Hot damn. Streak stays intact.”

  They parked in a gravel strip near the front of the house. On the opposite side, closer to a worn down barn, was a four door Chrysler sedan. Beyond that lay a rusting tiller at the edge of the corn. Calvin left the engine running. He turned to his son. “You want to drive home?”

  Webb’s face brightened. “You mean it?”

  “Yeah.”

  The gesture of confidence wasn’t lost on the boy. Calvin placed a firm grip on his son’s shoulder, his hand still wrapped in a leather driving glove. He squeezed hard and Webb almost winced, but focused on the look of pride in his dad’s face instead.

  Calvin got out and Webb slid over behind the wheel. Bruce climbed out of the back and waited by the trunk. Calvin removed his spare key and handed it to Bruce who unlocked the trunk. Calvin leaned against the car by the driver’s window, unconcerned with what he’d been carrying. Those were the rules—never open the package. Never worry about what’s in there. It’s not your job. Just get it there and get home safe and don’t involve the cops.

  Calvin pointed at the wheel. “Hands at ten and two. Never take them off the wheel. Always keep it running. Keep your eyes on your mirrors same as if you were on the highway.”

  “What for? We’re stopped.”

  “And that makes you twice as easy to ambush. It’s a damn sight easier to sneak up on a parked car than a moving one.”

  Webb had been good at absorbing the lessons. They were getting down to the serious stuff now. Calvin had taught the boy how to drive, a skill he’d been born with in his blood. But the job…in a hundred different ways the job could get you killed faster than a head on collision at a hundred miles per.

  Calvin wished his son would cut his damn hair, but he knew that didn’t matter. It’s what the kids were doing. Cal had never wavered from his high and tight, even if it did show the first stubby grey hairs mixing salt with the pepper. Driving with Webb these days also meant no radio. They just couldn’t find a thing there to agree on. Better to let the soundtrack be the rumble of the engine and the rush of wind going by.

  Seeing his son behind the wheel gave Calvin a twinge of worry—not something he liked on a job. It’s a distraction. And it confused him. Wasn’t this Webb’s birthright? Could his wife be right? Was it too dangerous? He tamped it down, figured it was just the oddness of being out of the driver’s seat. Reminded him of that time he tried to drive one of those little British roadsters with the right hand drive. The mechanics were all the same but damned if it didn’t make him feel like he was driving drunk.

  “Shouldn’t be more than five,” Bruce said. “I drop this, then I get the package from him and we’re outta here.”

  “You do what you gotta do. We’ll be here.”

  Calvin parked himself by the open trunk, ready to receive the next package. As odd as it was not being behind the wheel, Calvin liked getting the chance to stretch his legs
.

  It also gave him time to think—a dangerous hobby.

  Now north of forty, Calvin had been giving thought to retiring. It was part of Webb’s grooming, to make a replacement. But as Webb grew older and the reality appeared on the horizon, he and Dorothy started discussing.

  The life of an outlaw wasn’t always easy. It wasn’t always safe. He had taken gunfire over the years. He’d been in a few close scrapes but—knock on wood—he’d never spent even a single night in jail unless you counted that one night in the drunk tank up in Ottawa. He also knew a streak like that was bound to run out.

  His own father had cracked up on a right hand turn he’d taken a thousand times before, and at higher speeds. Something about that day made the good Lord call him home, but not without merging his face with a tangle of steel and the sharp metal hands of a speedometer, which, if Calvin thought about it, was about the right way for a McGraw to go.

  But he didn’t want that for his son, and Dorothy didn’t want that for her husband.

  The car’s idle changed and the brake light by Calvin’s knee went dark. He walked back to Webb’s window.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing. I put it in park.”

  “Did I say to do that?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “No. You leave it in gear. Engine on. In gear. Ready to roll.” Calvin looked at his son’s hands. “And Jesus Christ, ten and two.”

  Webb lifted his hand from his knee where he’d let it rest. He shrank in the seat, felt his cheeks go hot same as they did when he got scolded as a toddler.

  “I’m not saying this just to be saying it, Webb. This is important shit.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He put the car in drive, kept his foot on the brake. Hands in position.

  Calvin went back behind the car, drummed his leather-wrapped fingers on the open trunk. The first gunshot came from deep within the house. A second and third came quickly after, each one getting closer.

  Calvin tensed, his hands reflexively reaching for a steering wheel that wasn’t there. The front door banged open and Bruce came falling out, hands clutching his gut. Calvin jumped to the passenger door, got it open and shoved the front seat forward to make an open path into the back for Bruce.

  Another shot splintered against the door frame as Bruce dug a gun out of his coat pocket, turned, and fired a wild shot that banged into the porch wood and burrowed there. The recoil of the gun made it drop from his weakened hand.

  “Go, go,” Calvin urged him.

  Behind the wheel, Webb waited for his father to come take over, his knuckles white in his clock position.

  Calvin didn’t carry a gun. He never needed one. He waited outside the action, in the car. A disused Browning sat in the glove box, but that seemed miles away now as Bruce stumbled forward like a drunk, leaving a trail of blood down the steps of the porch and across the gravel.

  Calvin put a hand on his arm and guided him into the backseat as two men burst through the front door. Cal flipped the seat back into position and slid down into the passenger side. It felt like putting on your pants backward.

  “Drive.”

  A bullet pierced the side of the Mercury and Calvin cringed as if he’d been hit himself. The competition orange color and hood stripes had been extra. To get it repainted would cost a fortune. But Calvin knew they were lucky to get away with their hides.

  Webb pressed his foot to the floor and the tires kicked gravel. The trunk lid nodded like it was waving goodbye.

  “You know your way out?” Calvin asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Get us to that blacktop and they can’t catch us.”

  This was Webb’s test, and he aimed to pass it.

  Calvin turned to look behind them but couldn’t see past the open trunk lid. He watched through his side mirror and saw what he feared. The two men were getting into the Chrysler.

  “You remember what I told you, son. Keep your eyes front. What’s ahead of you is always more dangerous than what’s behind.”

  Webb nodded, eyes cemented to the road ahead.

  Calvin leaned over the seat to Bruce. He tried not to think about his upholstery when he saw all the blood.

  “They got you, huh?”

  “Yeah.” Bruce kept his eyes and his teeth slammed shut, gritted together to ward off the pain, but it didn’t look to be working.

  Calvin saw two holes in his gut, and by the looks of what he was leaking out onto the seat, he had another hole in back.

  “You hang tight. We’ll get you home.”

  “Those sons a bitches.” Bruce lifted a hand to wipe the sweat off his forehead. His hand was so covered in blood he painted his face red. “Fucking Cantrell scumbags.”

  Calvin knew the name of the rival crime syndicate, but he’d never heard of them this far east. Maybe Bruce was talking crazy. Blood loss making his thoughts jumbled up. Or maybe this was a very bad sign of things to come.

  Webb turned the Eliminator onto the two-lane blacktop and gunned the Boss 429 V8. The narrow hood scoop sucked in air and blew it over the sizzling engine. Webb’s hands hadn’t moved to any more than 9:55 and 2:03. He stared down the road in front of him like it owed him money.

  “Keep her steady,” Calvin said. “Looking good, Webb. Real good.”

  In his mirror, Calvin saw the Chrysler bounce onto the road behind them. They were two football fields away, not a problem for the Mercury to keep that lead. Calvin knew they had guns though. They wouldn’t dare fire at this distance…would they?

  With his eyes on the mirror he jerked forward as Webb hit the brakes. Tires skidded. Bruce cried out in a harmonizing pitch with the wail of the burning rubber as he flung into the back of the seats.

  “Webb, what the fuck are you doing?”

  “It was a fox. A little fox or something. Ran right out in front of the car.” He was already accelerating again, but he was frazzled. His hands were in the wrong position. He had to downshift to keep the engine from straining.

  “So you run the fucking thing over.”

  “I’m sorry. It was just instinct.”

  “That’s the instinct of a housewife, not a goddamn McGraw. Get your head out of your ass, boy.”

  The sudden slow down and re-start had slammed the trunk closed and now Calvin had a clear view of the gaining Chrysler. He could see the man in the passenger seat leaning out the window, pistol in his hand. Calvin looked at his glove box.

  It wasn’t like he’d never shot a gun. He had plenty of times. Mostly rifles and mostly at deer. This was supposed to Bruce’s job. And Webb was doing Calvin’s job. Everything was upside down.

  He looked back at Bruce. “How you doing, buddy?”

  Bruce had passed out. For the first time in his life, Calvin McGraw was sitting in the shotgun seat.

  He opened the glove box, took out the oilcloth inside and unwrapped the pistol. It hadn’t been properly maintained and he hoped like hell it wouldn’t blow up in his hands if he had to use it. He checked his mirrors one more time. Yeah, he would have to use it.

  The first shot from the Chrysler zinged past them. Calvin sucked in a deep breath and pushed it out quick. He pumped the handle on the window and the car was filled with fast moving air and the smell of manure.

  “Hold on, Pop. Wait a minute.”

  Webb swerved the car into the oncoming lane, offering up a better shot for his dad. Calvin leaned out, took aim at the front tire of the chasing Chrysler and let a shot go. The gun fired, but his shot was off. Calvin ducked back inside as two more shots came his way from the Chrysler, which was only twenty yards off their tail now. He knew he didn’t look dignified as he cowered and winced at the incoming gunfire. He also didn’t give a shit.

  “Hang on, Pop,” Webb said. “You get ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  Webb hit the brakes again. The Mercury slowed and the smell of grinding rubber on asphalt pushed out the manure smell for a moment. With the Chrysler fast approaching, the gap
between them closed in a matter of seconds. Calvin found himself side by side with a stunned driver in the sedan.

  It took five bullets to get the tire, but he blew the right front wheel on the Chrysler and it spun wildly as Webb stood on the pedal again and shot the Mercury out of there. Calvin watched in the rearview as the blown tire shredded into mulch and the rim of the sedan bit pavement and spun the car, flinging it down into a ditch and ramming the grill into a culvert, flipping the back up over the front until the car landed on its roof amid a row of spring corn.

  Webb hollered and slapped the wheel with his right hand. “We got ’em!”

  “We did, son. Now get your hands back on that wheel.”

  Calvin locked the gun back in the glove box and watched his son with pride as the smells of the farmland settled back in over them and the breeze cooled his scalp through his high and tight haircut.

  Calvin looked back at Bruce and saw he wasn’t breathing. No surprise there. The surprise was what he said about the Cantrells. If it was true, it could only mean bad things ahead. Calvin repeated his own words silently to himself, what’s ahead of you is always more dangerous than what’s behind.

  2

  Webb parked the car outside of the Stanley’s main office. It seemed a novel idea when they opened shop—criminals having a front office, a secretary, coffee brewing for guests—but the Stanley’s prided themselves on appearances. Fine clothes, country club memberships, only the best in front businesses to launder their money and hide their illegal activities from the police and from the other members of the club.

  The engine exhaled when Webb turned the key at the end of the hard ride. Webb exhaled too. He could finally relax a little now that they were on friendly territory. It didn’t last. Calvin was turned in his seat looking at Bruce in the back.

  “Goddammit. Ruined my upholstery.”

  Webb refused to look. “Why would they shoot him?”