Night Road

by Brendan DuBois

  So instead of putting his money in bank accounts or sticking it in a safe or even shoving it under a damn mattress, Ronnie dropped his weed money on a huge house, toys for him and his wife and in-laws and out-laws, bringing the whole Gibbons clan down to Aruba twice a year. Duncan thought it was like painting the roof of his house in bright orange and with black letters a story high, saying Drug Dealer Lives Here.

  Duncan stayed with Ronnie until he knew his contacts, his operations, and where he bought his lighting and fertilizer supplies, and then left, saying his bum leg hurt too much to keep working for him. About six months later, the DEA, the State Police, and the county sheriff’s department descended onto Ronnie’s McMansion with SWAT teams, a helicopter, and enough police cruisers to outfit a medium-sized Mexican city, and that had been that.

  Duncan parked in front of his two-car garage, hesitated. A light blue Toyota Camry sagging to one side with lots of rust was parked in the driveway, a car he didn’t recognize. His wife’s Toyota RAV4 was in the garage. He reached under his seat, where a Bianchi holster was secured, holding a Smith & Wesson Model 5906 semiautomatic. His hand was grasping the butt of the 9mm pistol and he relaxed when his wife Karen came out the front door. She was carrying a dish towel in her hands. That was the all-clear signal. If the dish towel was over her shoulder, that meant trouble.

  Duncan stepped out, carrying the Styrofoam container. Karen smiled, came up to him, and he still felt a little flip in his belly as she approached. It was an old story but a good story, of the prettiest and most popular girl in high school and the star baseball player getting together after graduation. The story had been preplotted—they were both going to UNH, she on a scholarship set up by some New York financier, he on a baseball scholarship because of his skill at tossing change-ups and curve balls—but like lots of stories, theirs took a few detours along the way. His was first, when his knee and lower leg got nailed in a drunk driving accident, where he was the pissed-off passenger, trying to talk sense into a drunk older driver. A year later, her detour came when the New York financier got his picture on the cover of Newsweek and Time after being revealed as one of the biggest Ponzi schemers Wall Street had seen since Madoff.

  So goodbye scholarship for Karen. She came back to Turner, and a year later, they were married.

  Tonight she was dressed in white sneakers, tight jeans, and a buttoned yellow sweater showing off a hint of freckled cleavage, her long red hair about her shoulders. She kissed him on the lips and said, “Do me a favor?”

  “I’m yours to command,” he said.

  “Hah,” she said. “Keep on deluding yourself. Monica Ziff is in your office. She needs some help. I do her hair twice a month.”

  “What kind of help?”

  “She got caught up in that mess when Tyson Heating Oil went bankrupt. She pre-bought her winter’s supply and now she and her kids are going to be out in the cold later this year. Literally.”

  “I thought the State AG’s office got a settlement from Tyson Oil for its customers.”

  Karen wrinkled her nose. “They sure did. If you call getting a fifty-dollar voucher to use at a nonbankrupt oil company of your choice a settlement.”

  He handed over his Styrofoam container. “Sweetie, you do know if that you keep this up, when we get to our final reward, Lewis and Amy are going to inherit a mortgage and your collection of Hummels.”

  Another kiss on the lips. “I trust you more than that.” She opened up the container, frowned. “Honey, you should know better than this. A salad like this won’t last. The lettuce will get soggy and the dressing will make everything slimy.”

  “Maybe I’ll have it for dessert,” he said.

  She gave him an impish grin. “If you take care of Monica, maybe I’ll have you for dessert.”

  Inside he greeted Lewis and Amy—ten and eight years old—who both said, “Hey, dad,” as they turned back to watching an old Jonny Quest cartoon on television, sitting on one of the couches. Behind them were sliding glass doors that led to the rear deck. Duncan had watched the same cartoons as a kid, and one day, a couple of months ago, was horrified to see that the cartoons had been heavily edited, taking out explosions, fist fights, and other acts of violence. What the hell was that about? Wasn’t anything sacred anymore? He decided then that if he could find them, he’d get his kids the unedited versions of the TV series as Christmas gifts.

  As Karen stayed in the kitchen, he passed through the living room, down a hallway that had doors leading to the kids’ rooms and the master bedroom, then to a spare bedroom he had converted into an office once they had moved in. It was small but cozy, with built-in bookcases, two black metal filing cabinets with sturdy locks, a high-speed shredder that turned documents into dust, and a nice old wooden desk Karen had picked up for him at an estate sale some years back.

  A woman sitting in front of his desk stood up. She was in her mid-fifties, thickset, wearing black stretch pants and a black sweatshirt with a Disney World logo on the front. Her brown hair had little auburn streaks at the ends, no doubt from Karen’s handiwork. She stuck out her hand and he gave it a quick shake.

  “So happy you could see me, Mr. Crowley,” she said.

  “Please call me Duncan,” he said, going around the desk and taking his own chair. “What can I help you with?”

  She sat down heavily. “I won’t keep you, ’cause I know you’re busy and all. And I won’t take charity. Too damn stubborn for that.”

  “All right,” he said, folding his hands together, “Go on.”

  Monica sighed. “Things have been tight ever since I got laid off, when the paper mill down in Berlin closed. Fucking Iranians, excuse my French. They came into town, made lots of promises, got Federal loan guarantees and grants, and then they robbed the place blind and skipped town. Living someplace in the Caribbean, I hear, on some island that don’t have a treaty with the United States to extradite them. So me and about six hundred others are out of a job. Still, I get by, doing housework, some babysitting … but Tyson Oil, they had a good deal for the oil pre-buy late last year. I don’t have to tell you what happened next.”

  “You and the other customers got a fifty-dollar voucher from the state of New Hampshire. I know it won’t go far.”

  That made her tear up. “Won’t go far at all. So … here I am. It’s just me and my three girls, and last year, oil ran out early so I had to heat the place up by keeping the stove open. Before putting the girls to bed, I warmed up the sheets with a hair dryer, and made them share a bed. Anything to keep them from shivering. I swear, I’m not going to let them go through that this year.”

  Duncan nodded, not wanting to press the woman, but he was getting hungry and his shoulders ached from his earlier work.

  Monica said, “I’m keeping you, I’m sorry. I’ll wrap this up. Whatever you give me, whatever you can, I’ll make it worth your while.”

  He unlocked the top desk drawer, pulled it out. “Don’t worry about it.”

  She took a deep breath. “I do worry about it. So here’s what I’m offering. I love gardening, landscaping. I’ve already talked to your wife and she said I could help her with the flowerbeds and shrubbery … if you agree.”

  Duncan tried not to grin. “With my wife negotiating on my behalf, how could I not agree?”

  That earned him a smile from his visitor. He took out his ledger-style checkbook, opened it up. “All right. How much do you need?”

  Her face struggled and he sensed the fight that must be going on within her overworked and stretched and proud soul. “Would … would five hundred dollars be all right?”

  Duncan took a fountain pen in hand—a real fountain pen, not one of the knock-offs that had ink cartridges—and wrote her a check for one thousand dollars. In the memo section, he wrote “Advance for landscaping” and tore it out, blew on the ink, and passed it over. Monica took the check, brought a hand to her mou
th, gasped. Tears trickling down her cheek, she said, “I owe you something big, Mr. … er, Duncan. I really do.”

  “You might change your mind when you’re digging through the dirt this summer, yanking up weeds.”

  “The hell I will change my mind.” She folded the check in half, slipped it into her purse. She took a deep breath. “One other thing, before I leave.”

  “Oh?” Duncan asked, really feeling his shoulders tighten up, wondering how he could easily push her out of the house before his dinner got cold. “Go ahead, then.”

  Monica snapped the purse shut, wiped at one eye and then the other. “Thing is, my girl, she babysits the kids next door. The woman there, she has a boyfriend, and my girl, she overhead him talking. His name is Gus Spooner. This Gus, he claims he works for you.”

  Duncan said carefully, “Maybe. I’ve got a number of people working for me. I’m afraid I don’t know all of their names.”

  Her eyes narrowed and got tight. “Now Duncan Crowley, I have a piece to say, and do me the favor of not interrupting, all right? I know you and I knew your parents, God bless ’em, before they died in that airplane accident. So I’ve got that on my side, all right?”

  He nodded. She firmly went on. “I even watched you in high school, when you made those baseball records. I know about your scholarship, about how you hurt your leg, how you didn’t leave Turner. I know how you kept busy since you graduated. Lots of us do. I could rightly give a shit for what you do besides running your stores and your gun shop and other things. None of my business. Me and so many others are just so goddamn thankful that you’re here.” She patted the purse, as if for reassurance, and went on. “So I’ll wrap this up. My girl, she overhead Gus Spooner say he had a plan to make some real good money, real quick.”

  He no longer cared dinner might get cold. “Did he say how he was going to get this good money, real quick?”

  Her hands were tight about her purse. “Gus Spooner, way I found out, he works at one of your convenience stores. Somehow there was a screw-up in delivery and a case of cold medicine got dropped off. Instead of shipping it back, he kept it and now he’s going to use his Daddy’s hunting camp to cook meth.”

  Duncan slowly leaned back in his chair. “Do you know where the hunting camp is?”

  Monica said, “I checked it out. Before I came over here. Up on Town Road Twelve. You go up five miles, you’ll see a wooden sign on the left, nailed to a birch tree. Name there says Williams, the previous owner. Go up that side road, it’s right there. Dumpy piece of shit on concrete posts, the front porch is falling down.”

  “I see,” Duncan said. He took out his wallet, passed over five twenty-dollar bills. “Thanks for the information. I appreciate it.”

  She got up, the twenty-dollar bills in her hand. “Now I’m keeping you from your lovely bride, your sweet kids, and your dinner. I owe you more than you know. I hope what I told you about Gus Spooner is worth something.”

  “It is,” he said. “Can I ask you a favor, Monica?”

  She smiled, revealing a dimple on her left cheek. “Of course.”

  “Have my wife come in when you pop out.”

  He swiveled his chair around, looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows that gave him a great view of the back lawn, the thick green sprawl of pines and other evergreens, and the distant peaks. He never tired of the view, which was so fine, even though the glass was particularly thick. Such thickness impeded the view some, but also made it safe to sit here, without thinking of some disgruntled customer or potential rival sending a copper-jacketed .308 round through the back of his skull at about twenty-five hundred feet per second.

  But the windows didn’t keep prying eyes away. There might be somebody out there with a spotting scope, keeping track of visitors, keeping an eye on what was going on here, the center of the Duncan Crowley empire. So what. They would see a woman come in, and a woman leave. As for electronic surveillance, he had the house swept once a week. With Karen here most of the time, and one of her sisters babysitting the kids, there was no way anyone could get in to set a bug.

  Still, he had that nagging feeling. Even before Andre had confessed that Duncan’s upcoming shipment had reached someone’s attention, he had the sensation he was being watched, that he was under some sort of unexpected observation.

  Damn.

  That shipment was going to set him up well, so he could finally leave the day-to-day running of his businesses and give it up, take his wife on some trips, be able to go through life without looking over his shoulder all the time. Oh, they had squeezed in an occasional visit to Bermuda or South Beach in Miami, but long trips were out of the question. You go on a long trip and sometimes things go to hell, or knuckleheads who worked for you thought it was a good idea to start cooking up meth in the back woods.

  Crystal meth. A great way to catch the attention of everyone from the DEA to the FBI to the State Police. His own activities were highly illegal, no doubt about that, but hardcore stuff like meth or Oxycontin would show up on law enforcement radar like a damn Boeing 747 coming onto approach at the single skinny runway at Milan airport.

  So to have this new shipment come through unscathed was vital. It’d give him breathing room, a chance to start getting out of the business, do something fun with Karen and the kids.

  Karen came in and put her strong hands on his shoulders. “You did good.”

  “Thanks. Just don’t make it that much of a habit.”

  She kissed the top of his head. “I’ve made you so many promises, sweetie, but you know I can’t keep that one. I’m always here to help our neighbors. But can I ask you another favor?”

  “Go right ahead.”

  “My uncle, Hubert Conan. He’s still bugging me about you. Being a stringer for the Union Leader, his stories are usually about the moose lottery or lost hunters. But he thinks a story about you, a successful businessman in a county that has twice the unemployment rate of the rest of the state, would be great.”

  “I thought we’d agree we’d say no. You know publicity is something we don’t need.”

  “I can’t say no to him, hon. He’s my Uncle Hubert. You’re going to have to do it.”

  “Right, your Uncle Hubert who got fired from the New York Times for being a drunk.”

  His wife kept her hands on his shoulders. “He was fired because he was drinking. Big difference.”

  “Care to explain?”

  “He got drunk one night in the newsroom and said he had voted Republican all his life, that he supported the Second Amendment, and thought Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of the twentieth century. Right there and then, he committed career suicide. They didn’t care he was a drunk. They cared that he was a right-wing knuckle-dragger.”

  “So much for celebrating diversity,” Duncan said. “All right, I’ll try to take care of it. Mind telling me what’s for dinner, or is it a surprise?”

  “Stuffed pork chops. But you get the smallest one.”

  “Swell.”

  She started kneading his shoulders and he sighed with pleasure. Her fingers worked his muscles and tendons expertly, and he felt himself relax and unwind. He’d have to talk to Cameron in a bit, set up a session to take care of Gus Spooner and his new business. Most of the time he admired entrepreneurship among his workers, but this wasn’t going to be one of those times.

  “My, your shoulders are so very, very tight,” Karen said, again kissing the top of his head. “How was your day, hon?”

  He recalled the two Quebecois bikers, one with dismembered limbs, the other with a 9mm round through his forehead, the blood and spatter that had to be cleaned up, the stench of death, the sharp smell of burnt gunpowder. Karen knew some of what he did, but not everything—a good arrangement.

  Duncan reached up, patted her right hand. “Routine.”

  three

  Tom Leighton followed his
older cousin Dickie as the old buck drove the Lexus with Quebec license plates up Route 15, keeping it under the speed limit, coming to a complete stop at every stop sign, which were few and far between. Even though there wasn’t any goddamn traffic on the road this time of the night, his uncle drove like he had just gotten his license. Tom was driving his cousin’s Jeep Wrangler, a ten-year-old piece of shit that had duct tape holding up the passenger-side window, and lengths of wire keeping the muffler from dragging on the pavement. Tom wanted to drive the Lexus—a sweet, sweet piece of drivability that he would have loved to put through its paces—but Dickie grunted, “hell no,” and that had been it.

  But damn, what a waste, he thought, as he got off on an unmarked dirt road to the right. That car should be driven by someone who appreciated the fine seats, the purring engine, and damn, the whole clean-smelling interior. Not like this Jeep, smelling of stale cigarettes, spilt beer, and grease.

  The dirt road narrowed, tree limbs whipping along the fenders as they climbed up and up. The Lexus lights spilled out, lighting everything up, and when they spun around one corner, a deer startled, leaping into the side of ferns and low brush, the white tail flicking up as it raced into the woods. The road got bumpier and dust was kicked up behind the Lexus, and then the brake lights popped twice as the Lexus came to a stop.