by Mike Cooper
“How much does Wes know?” Finn asked.
A moment’s confusion. “About us?”
Which, in turn, caught Finn off guard. He covered by shaking his head. “The job.”
“Not much. He doesn’t want to know.”
“Did you tell him the date we’re planning?”
She thought. “Early January. No more specific than that.”
“Good. Let’s leave it that way.”
They finished the meal and ordered Atitlán coffee. The other tables were now full. Despite the restaurant’s small size, the larger crowd increased their privacy, because the noise and multiple conversations covered up their own.
“How did you get into this?” Emily asked.
“Working for Wes?”
“What you do.”
“Oh.” He added the smallest amount of cream to his coffee. “The same way most people end up where they are—by accident. I grew up outside Pittsburgh, and when I got out of high school, the mill was still hiring. Then, a couple years later, they shut it down. After the layoffs, they hired me back to dismantle equipment—everything was being sold to Bangladesh or Vietnam or somewhere. I was nineteen and I had to cross a union line to do it.” He fell silent, remembering the yelling, rocks in the air, guys swearing they’d stomp him later. All for fifty cents over minimum wage. “Didn’t take long to realize I could do the exact same job in the middle of the night and sell the machinery myself. After that—” He lifted one shoulder briefly, like, You know.
“So you’ve been an outlaw your whole working life.”
“‘Outlaw.’” That was funny. “I guess so. How about you?”
“Bad choices, about the same age as you.”
Finn waited. “‘Bad choices’?”
“Harvard Business School.”
“No. Really?” He peered at her. “And you ended up with Wes?”
“The ethics seminar didn’t stick.” Emily grinned. “The real problem was graduating into the teeth of the global financial meltdown. Not a lot of jobs on offer then. And after a few years, no one’s hiring you to start over—not when they have a fresh crop of new MBAs to choose from, none of them burned out and cynical.”
“Is that you? Burned out and cynical?”
“As hard-edged as they come, Finn.” She raised her small porcelain cup in salute. “You have no idea.”
Setting up the deal was surprisingly easy.
“You have a shopping list?” The man Corman introduced as Gil scratched his beard and squinted at the paper. It flapped in the cold breeze outside his garage.
“More or less.” The evening before, Nicola had found a local newspaper clipping online, from two years earlier when Wes had displayed many of his cars at a Memorial Day vintage-car rally in Greenwich. Along with the insurance declaration provided by Emily, Finn had been able to compile an inventory, which Nicola rapidly retyped and printed.
Nothing to identify the owner or location, of course.
“Huh.”
They stood by the side of Gil’s body shop in a light industrial zone south of Elizabeth. When Corman had hinted at their purpose, Gil had led them away from the shop mechanics, around the side of the building. The usual noises drifted from inside—air wrench, a compressor, late ’70s classic rock on the boom box.
“You pick what you want,” said Finn. “Lots more there than we can fit on a single car carrier.”
“You’re not gonna drive them away one by one?” Gil looked up, then back at the sheet.
“Don’t have enough people for that.”
“I guess the Lamborghini might be good. And the Bugatti. A Shelby Cobra! … Nice.” He spent a few minutes marking the paper with pencil ticks and greasy fingerprints.
Corman stood in the background, arms crossed, looking around rather than focusing on their quiet discussion. Thin sunlight filtered through low gray clouds, not providing any noticeable warmth.
“Might be we can do business.” Gil handed the sheets back.
“Up to a dozen cars will fit the autorack. ’Course we won’t know exactly which ones we can get until we’re inside.” Finn looked up from the paper. “How about this? We ballpark some figures, get a range for the different cars. Then I’ll call you when we’re done, tell you what’s loaded up.”
Gil frowned. “I dunno—”
“We can use some dumb code if you want. Or we can buy a couple burner phones. The point is you need to know how much to have in the duffel bag when we meet up.”
They worked it out. Gil lowballed them some, but not too bad. Finn didn’t think they needed to worry about a hijack, because Gil wouldn’t know where they were until they showed up at the rendezvous.
“When we get there with the merchandise,” he said, “I don’t expect any surprises. Right?”
“Of course not.” Gil managed to look offended. “You don’t cross family.”
“What?”
“He didn’t tell you?”
Finn looked over at Corman. “Tell me what?”
“We’re cousins,” said Gil. “Birthdays are just a week apart.”
“Really?”
Corman made a dismissive sound. “Mother’s side.”
“You don’t look it.” Gil had to be two feet shorter and a hundred pounds weaker than his relative.
“Don’t worry,” Gil said. “Anyway, only a moron would fuck with Corman.”
“Good point.” Finn folded the paper and tucked into his jacket. “Oh, one other thing.”
“Yeah?”
“We haven’t lined up the car carrier yet.” He grinned. “Maybe you could lend us one?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Asher looked at the rows of red plastic cans they’d just unloaded from Jake’s truck. They’d shut the warehouse doors, closing out not just the brisk, sleet-spattering wind but also the view to any curious passersby. The high interior lights were on, buzzing from the thirty-foot ceiling. Even with the clerestory windows, it was dim all the time.
Dust rose as Jake swept the empty concrete floor, pushing a well-used broom with no particular attention to thoroughness.
“How we gonna do this?” Asher said.
“Set the lines first, I think.” Jake ran the broom all the way to one wall and leaned it there, abandoning the pile of dirt and small debris. He walked back and handed over the clip end of a chalk line. “Here.”
They’d marked the corner points already: short pieces of blue masking tape at the vertices of a ten-by-fifteen rectangle, its far end close to the street-side wall. Once they started digging, it would block one of the bay doors.
Asher knelt and held down the end of the string. Jake scrolled it out of the metal holder, walking over to the next corner. He held down his end and snapped a dusty yellow line on the floor. They repeated the operation three more times.
“Finn says a one-foot grid.” Jake cranked the line into its holder, rechalking the string.
“We got enough acid for that?”
“Hope so.”
They measured end points and started laying down the checkerboard.
“Corman should be doing this,” Asher said. “Why don’t I get to drive the fancy cars?”
“Because.” Jake moved to the next point, snapped another line.
“Because what?”
“Because look at your fucking truck. It’s so dented up, you’re lucky you don’t get pulled over on general principles.”
“So?”
They finished one set of lines and started on the perpendiculars. Jake shook the holder, chalk running low.
“Corman seem different to you?” Asher said.
“Different?”
“I dunno. He ain’t hardly said ten words to me since we got here. Like he’s pissed about something.”
Jake laughed. “Corma
n doesn’t get angry.”
“Not at you, maybe.”
“I guess that’s the difference between us.”
“Huh? You don’t do a lot of yelling yourself.”
“No, I mean—” Jake shook his head. “Never mind.”
They finished the grid. Asher opened one of the jugs and sniffed.
“Jesus fuck.” He put it down fast, eyes watering.
“Be careful there.” Jake tossed him safety goggles and a pair of heavy rubber gloves. “Don’t splash any of that on your pants.”
Finn had rigged them a dispenser: a screw-on spout fit into a length of plastic tubing ending in a narrow funnel. It was held together with duct tape. Jake took the gas can Asher had opened and connected the cap, tightening it carefully.
“You carry the container,” Jake said. “I’ll guide the funnel. Keep the flow nice and steady. We don’t need to flood the floor.”
They tried it, starting at the far end of the grid.
“That’s good.” Jake walked backward along the line, pouring a steady dribble along the chalk. “Maybe a little more. No, a little faster, this will take all afternoon at—wait, that’s too fast. Wait. Slow down! Stop! It’s slopping everywh— Holy shit!”
Hydrochloric acid overflowed the connection with the funnel, spilling in a messy spray. Jake dropped it and jumped back. The concrete hissed where the drops fell. Along the chalk line, carbonates burbled in a white fizz.
“Nice.” Asher held the canister one-handed, peering down at the action. “I could use this shit to clean my bathtub.”
“Changed my mind,” Jake said. “I’ll carry the container.”
They kept going, slowly emptying the first jugs. After finishing the entire grid, they started over and did it again.
Asher put down the funnel and stood, stretching his back.
“Fuck it,” he said. “That’s got to be good enough.”
Jake looked at the jagged grooves they’d cut into the floor. “Concrete’s probably eight inches thick, right? The whole point of this is to avoid jackhammers, keep everything quiet. We need to go as far through as possible.”
“I don’t mind a jackhammer. Ran one for days at a time when I was a kid.”
“Yeah, and that’s why you can’t hear for shit.”
“What?”
Another half hour and they were down to the last five gallons of hydrochloric. The air was thick with stinging fumes. Jake stood back to examine the floor, wiping at his eyes.
“Okay, good enough,” he said.
“About fucking time.” Asher carried the last empty over to the row of jugs and dropped it with the rest. “Still got some left here.”
“That’s okay. Might use it later if the excavator can’t deal with this.”
The excavator itself sat quietly at the back wall, opposite the hazmat dump of acid containers. They’d brought it in on a flatbed trailer attached to Jake’s truck, because Asher’s Tacoma was underpowered for the haul. The machine was a rental, one week in advance, small-bill cash, from a huge equipment supplier in Union. Jake had handled the negotiations, conducted in the shade of the vast metal shed, while Asher wandered among the rows of bore rigs.
He didn’t think they were off the books completely, but he figured a good part of Jake’s stack of fifties had gone into the other man’s pocket. Easing the way.
“I still think Corman should have been on duty today,” he said. “Don’t figure how he even fits into one of those fucking Lamborghinis. Probably break the shocks when he gets in.”
“What is it with you two?”
“What?”
“He does what he’s supposed to and doesn’t complain about it all the time. Is that a problem?”
Asher pulled off his gloves, then the goggles. “I told you: He’s acting different.”
“Yeah, you said. Too quiet.”
“Exactly.”
“Maybe he just doesn’t have anything to say to you.”
“Ah, fuck it.” Asher set his safety gear on a cheap folding table they’d gotten off Craigslist along with a half dozen plastic chairs and some large plastic crates. “What time is it? Think they’re on their way back yet?”
Jake looked at his watch. “Should just be getting started.”
“None too soon.” Asher sat in one of the chairs. It bent alarmingly, then a few seconds later collapsed, dumping him to the floor. “Yow!”
“Hey, don’t break the furniture.”
“Piece of shit.” He got up, kicked the chair into a corner.
Jake placed his own gloves and goggles in a clean plastic bucket, along with the chalk line and measuring tape. He looked thoughtfully at the excavator. It was still on the trailer, strapped down.
“We should probably give that a test,” he said.
Asher shrugged. “It worked at the rental yard.”
“All he did was turn the motor on.”
“Yeah, yeah, okay.”
Electric or not, the thing was no toy. Full-size operator seat and controls under open roll bars, hydraulic arm with a five-meter radius, steel tracks. These last had caught Asher’s attention.
“Gonna tear the hell out of the floor with those,” he said.
Jake picked up the coiled power cable, grunting at its weight, and stepped off the trailer.
“Find an outlet,” he said.
Asher took the plug end and dragged it across the floor. “Hard to believe this runs off standard one-twenty,” he said. “Like plugging in a shop vac.”
“It’s not the volts that matter, it’s the amps.” Jake found the power receptacle on the rear of the operator’s platform, snapped the cable into its holdfast, and looked over. “You good?”
“I guess.” Asher had found a panel of outlets near the breaker box. “Don’t know if it’s live, though.”
“We’ll find out.”
Jake clambered onto the operator’s seat and took a moment to dry-shift the controls. Then he turned the key, pressed a button, and yanked the skid-steer handle. The motor spun into gear, no louder than a car engine, and Jake backed it off the trailer.
“Don’t run over the cord,” Asher said.
Jake gave him a look and moved to the grid. Hydraulics whined, more noisily, as he lifted the bucket arm, then swiveled right, left.
“Let’s try it out,” he said, and shoved the handle forward, slamming the bucket’s toothed edge into the concrete floor.
CRACK!
A burst of white fire at the junction box, then a second explosion. Asher felt a burn spatter across his arm and dove for the floor. Every light went out at the same instant, plunging the building into darkness.
“What the fuck?”
Dead silence in the dark. The excavator was still, its outline barely visible in faint light from the clerestory.
“You okay?”
Asher felt his arm, wincing. “I think you melted the cocksucker.” He saw shadows move—Jake, climbing off the machine.
“You know,” Jake said, “this might be a problem.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
They drove through town a little under the speed limit—twenty-five, low enough to get a good look around. Not that there was much to see. One main street, two gas stations, various small and dilapidated businesses. Churches. A convenience store, brightly lit in the evening dark.
“There it is,” said Finn. He pointed through the truck’s windshield to a low concrete building surrounded by blacktop, a plain illuminated sign above the glass doors reading police.
“Yup.” Corman was at the wheel.
“Keep going. We’ll find someplace to stop down the road.”
Grunt.
“Shift change should be in … twenty minutes. Don’t go far.”
A few minutes later, the rig was parked behind a shu
ttered roadhouse, the engine ticking and grumbling to rest. Gil’s loaner was at least two decades old, a sagging Kenworth tractor hitched to an enclosed trailer fifty feet long. The trailer’s undercarriage sat low to the ground, much lower than a typical freight hauler, with a flip-out door and extra hydraulics at the end. With two interior levels, it could hold as many as ten cars, depending on their sizes. That was two fewer than an open autorack, but Gil’s trailer kept the world from seeing what was inside.
“You might want to wait over there somewhere,” Finn said. “Behind a tree. In case it’s a bunch of redneck cops who come back here instead of me.”
“Uh-huh.” Corman nodded.
“Half hour ought to do it.”
The night was cold, clear, and moonless. Finn walked along the left side of the road, squinting into the infrequent headlights of passing traffic, until the first intersection. After that, he kept one block south, parallel to the main road, passing small bungalow-type houses. Most had weedy yards and firewood stacked somewhere close to their doors.
Close to the police station, he stopped, standing by an SUV parked in front of a dark house. The vehicle’s hood was halfway warm. He waited, absently patting his pocket to check that the papers were there.
A car pulled into the station’s lot and went around back. It didn’t reappear, and no one walked to the front, so Finn assumed the driver had entered the building through another door. A few minutes later, a cruiser bumped into the lot. An officer got out, stretched his back, and went inside.
The night air was cold.
Finn adjusted his insulated cap, pulling the brim low. He walked across the street—no oncoming traffic visible in either direction—up to the doors and straight through without stopping.
Pretty much what he’d expected: a counter, some cheap vinyl-covered chairs, a view into a larger room with metal desks and clutter and cabinets along the wall.
More important, no cameras that he could see.
The interview room probably had a video setup and maybe the holding pens. But nothing in the front. Most little towns, especially in live-free-or-die country, kept their law-enforcement agencies on short budgets. A spare dollar would more likely be spent on Tasers or bullets, not more tech equipment.