Night Road

by Brendan DuBois

  Duncan strolled away, went up the front porch, and into the house. Nat turned to Zach and said, “Come along, fella, let me show you what’s what.”

  He followed Nat into the near barn, where there was a strong scent of hay and manure. Inside were three of the largest creatures Zach had ever seen: oxen, each in its own stall, each towering above and looking down at them with wide brown eyes. Nat said, “My prize oxen. Bring them out to all the fairs from spring to fall, in pulling contests.”

  Across from the stalls was a large piece of mounted plywood, and stuck on the plywood were scores of blue ribbons. Nat pointed to them proudly and said, “That’s what we got last year. Can you believe it? Won almost every competition we entered, thanks to their hard work, and thanks to Duncan Crowley.”

  Zach said, “Why Duncan Crowley?”

  Nat moved some straw around with his right boot. “Tell you the truth, what happened was a couple of years back, I was an independent trucker. Didn’t make a lot but enough to get along. Then most of the companies around here, the ones that hired me out, they either got sold or bought out. My trucking contracts dried up, and when the cost of diesel kept on going up and up, had to declare bankruptcy. Things got real tight. You know how tight? Tight is when you go through the seat cushions, looking for coins back there, coins you can wrap up and bring to the bank so the electric don’t get shut off.”

  “That’s tight,” Zach said, looking at the peaceful brown eyes of the three oxen, their nostrils gently moving in and out.

  “Damn right,” Nat said. “Things got so bad, I was planning to sell these three, even though they and their ancestors have been part of the family for decades. Cooper family has always been known for their prize oxen, since the early 1800s. Tough times, but Duncan Crowley, he heard about my troubles and came over to help. No damn welfare or bailout, I’ll tell you, but money for work. He’s a good man, he is. He truly is a good man.”

  Zach said, “That’s what I hear.”

  Outside there was shout and Duncan emerged from the house, carrying a small paper package. A stout woman with long black hair and wearing tight jeans and a black sweatshirt followed him out, smiling. He turned and yelled out, “Thanks, sweetie, for the pie and the good wishes!”

  Handshakes were exchanged all around on the front lawn, and Duncan said to Nat, “Come to my house tomorrow at five p.m. for a briefing for what happens later.”

  Nat said with a smile, “Dora give you permission to let me out tomorrow night, then?”

  “Surely did,” Duncan replied. “Said to make sure that your worthless carcass comes back in one piece.”

  Inside the truck cab, Duncan started up the engine and paused, his hands fussing with the brown package next to him, as Zach entered from the other side. Nat trudged back to the barn, followed by the English Springer Spaniel, dirty tennis ball still in his mouth.

  Zach said, “Good people.”

  Duncan said, “They’re all good people. Throughout this county, there are lots of good people. You hear about people falling through the cracks? People up here, they’ve been falling into canyons the past few years, and nobody gives a damn. The state and the Feds do what they can, but these years at least, war’s been declared on the rural and poor.”

  Zach said, “You forget every four years.”

  Duncan laughed, put his truck into drive, and started going out the driveway. “Damn, you’re right. Every four years, time of the New Hampshire primary, all those nice sounding, well dressed folks come trooping through promising help for industry, help for medical care, help for everything. They grab the people’s votes and then head off to the next primary, and that’s it. About the only place that makes out during the primary season is Channel Nine, the television studio. Gosh, the money they make from commercials. That’s about it.”

  Back on Gosham Road, Zach said, “What’s your other job, then, Duncan? Helping everybody you can?”

  “I do what I can, Zach, do what I can … but I know it won’t last.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Duncan pondered that, and said, “My dad, he used to love watching old TV shows, programs he loved when he was a kid. Got them on VHS and made me and Cameron watch them. Some of the craziest stuff you ever saw, like Welcome Back, Kotter and Three’s Company and older stuff, like My Mother the Car. Couldn’t believe the crap he made us watch.”

  “Some people might call that child abuse,” Zach said.

  A laugh from Duncan. “Sure enough. Anyway, he also liked the old Ed Sullivan shows. Comics who were as dry as toast, funny animal acts, and one guy that always stuck in my mind. Can’t remember his name none, but he was this guy who had these tall sticks, and on the sticks, he’d rotate these white plates. Know what I mean?”

  “Sure,” Zach said. “I remember that, too.”

  “Yeah. So this guy would put one plate up, and then another, and then another. And he’d be going back and forth, back and forth, trying to keep the plates moving so they wouldn’t fall. My dad thought it was hilarious, watching this guy run back and forth, back and forth, ’cause eventually, the plates would start falling and breaking. Funny, hunh? But I asked my dad, why the heck didn’t he just grab the plates and prevent them from falling. Dad said, that’s not the point. The point of the act is to have those plates fall and break.”

  They came to the intersection of Gosham Road and Route 117. Duncan looked left and then looked right as he took a left out on the road. “That guy is me, Zach. I got lots of plates in the air, and I can’t afford to let any one of them fall. All I need is for one curious cop, one ticked off weed smoker, or one guy who thinks I’m charging too much for smuggled smokes, and those plates will fall—and my butt will be in jail for a long, long time. Then, I won’t be able to help anyone, including my family. Zach, that’s intolerable. That’s why the shipment tomorrow night matters. It’s going to set me up so I can get out of my illegal stuff, be able to go straight for the first time in nearly twenty years, and still be in a position to help out where I can. Do you know what I mean, Zach? Do you?”

  Chest tight with betrayal and with a haunted tone in his voice, Zach said, “By God, I do.”

  thirty

  Tanya Gibbs was outside of the Center of New Hampshire when her government-issued cellphone rang. Her head throbbed with pain as she grabbed her phone out of her overnight bag. It had been a long night after her dinner meeting with Major Kenyon of the State Police. She had gone up to her room, switched on HBO, and worked through two more bottles of wine. She had switched off her cellphone, told the front desk not to put through any calls, and had watched two movies in a row, some childish pieces of crap with lots of explosions and fireballs and special effects.

  Unfortunately her room didn’t carry Turner Classic Movies. She thought Ted Turner was a pompous blowhard who claimed to be an environmentalist while busily fencing off and using thousands of acres in Montana, but damn, the man knew how to run a cable channel. She could spend hours surfing through TCM, watching movies that would still be classics centuries from now, while those hours of trash she suffered through last night would be forgotten in—

  She punched the phone on and put it to her ear, wincing once more. “Gibbs.”

  “Madam, it is I, your special agent up in the north woods,” Zach Morrow said. “How’s it going for you?”

  “It’s going,” she said, wishing she had brushed her teeth once more before checking out. “What do you have?”

  “Two things,” he replied. “Number one, the delivery is definitely on for tonight.”

  She forgot her head was hurting. Tanya said, “Do you have a time and location?”

  “Not yet,” he said.

  “Contact me the moment you get that information,” she said, trying not to let her voice tremble. Emily, she thought, oh Emily.

  “Ah, that’s where the second thing rears its ugly head. We need a
face-to-face meeting today. As soon as you can.”

  Her excitement disappeared like a snowflake on a frying pan. “Impossible,” she snapped. In the thin line of traffic on Elm Street, her Crown Victoria was nosing its way towards her, driven by the always reliable Henry Wolfe.

  “Then make it possible,” Zach said. “Make it possible, or I’m done, I’m through. And you won’t get one more bit of information.”

  Anger racing through her at being so very close, her voice quavering, she said, “I’ll break you, Morrow. The number of ways I can break you reaches to the infinite.”

  “Perhaps,” he said. “But there’s a clock ticking. Meaning this shipment is going to roll across the border in a number of hours. If you want to intercept it, you need me. Oh, you can break me into pieces at your convenience later on, but I don’t care. I’m broke, no pension, no healthcare, no home. I have a black mark on my record that even rules out working at McDonald’s in the future. So keep that in the back of your mind when you’re thinking of all the possible ways of hurting me.”

  She closed her eyes. So damn close and to have this happen!

  “I can give you ten minutes,” she said, exhaling in frustration. “Where and when?”

  “When is in approximately fifty minutes. The where is north on Interstate 89, a rest stop run by the state, right by Exit 40. Has a nice large parking area, with picnic tables among the trees, where you and I can have a productive, adult conversation. I’m sure you’ll love it. Deal?”

  She sighed, feeling her stomach roll and dip from last night’s drinking and this unexpected phone call. “I’ll be there.”

  Tanya snapped the phone closed, put it back in her overnight bag, and slowly walked to the Crown Vic. Henry helped her in and when he got up forward, she said, “Change of plans. I need for you to get on Interstate 89, heading north. There’s a rest area you’ll stop at, by Exit 40.”

  “Certainly, Miss Gibbs,” he said, easing out into Elm Street, the main drag of downtown Manchester. “What’s going on?”

  “Our Coast Guardsman is apparently having second thoughts,” she said, settling into her seat, hoping the drive north would be a smooth one, for her stomach was roiling indeed. “I need to go up there and reignite his enthusiasm for his mission.”

  “And what if that doesn’t work?”

  Tanya fastened her seatbelt. “To quote another broad with a lot on her plate, ‘We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat. They do not exist.’”

  “Who said that?” Henry asked.

  “Queen Victoria of Great Britain.”

  “That was some broad.”

  She closed her eyes. “Tell me about it.”

  On a windswept knoll of land off I-89, where the state of New Hampshire had placed a rest area cunningly disguised as a white Cape Cod house, Zach Morrow waited in the large and nearly empty parking lot, leaning against the fender of his Ford F-150 pickup truck. Before him, a tree-covered valley swept out, with only the interstate and a few distant houses visible. Behind him, a hill sloped up, the trees thinning out and with picnic tables scattered about. A fair wind blew and he brooded as he looked to the ramp leading up to the rest stop from the interstate.

  Last night, after the behind-the-scenes tour of Turner, he and Duncan Crowley had returned to his house, where Karen had made a roast pork dinner for them, Cameron, and the two children, Lewis and Amy—allowed to visit home for the night. Lewis was a high-wired bundle of energy, sprinting from the kitchen to the living room, up and down the hallway, wanting to show Zach his pitching stance, which, as he had proudly explained, “I learned from old VHS tapes they have at the high school, showing dad when he was kicking Manchester Central’s ass.” Amy was just as energetic, but she wanted to show him drawing after drawing of horses. At first, Zach had assumed he’d be seeing creations one step above stick figures, but the girl knew perspective and shading, and the horses were startling life-like. He looked around at the family and the home life and thought about all the places he had lived—BOQ barracks, temporary housing, rented apartments near military bases—but never, ever had he ever called one of those places home. Envy had come to him, envy of Duncan and what he had.

  Later, with a new lens for his telescope, the bearded and long-haired biker Cameron took them to a dark part of the yard, where he gave a half-hour tour of the moon, including one splotch of gray and black that was the Sea of Tranquility, where Armstrong and Aldrin had landed nearly fifty years ago. Cameron had announced, “We’d have Luna City there if it wasn’t for the fucking politicians.” Karen had shushed him, since the kids were around, but Duncan had laughed and they had all gone back in, and Zach had slept on the pull-out couch. This morning, after breakfast—and once again, he had slipped Duncan a couple of slices of bacon—Duncan said, “Hey, go out and take the day off, all right? See you back here for dinner.”

  So he stood and waited, and then saw the Crown Vic come up the ramp.

  Driving his silver Audi, Francis Ouellette pulled into a dirt lot outside of a small private airport a few kilometers west of Laval, Quebec. Nearby was a dark blue Bell 429 helicopter, its main rotor blade slowly rotating. He got out and Michael Grondin approached from a dark green BMW, not smiling, his hair cut short. Damn, at least the good fellow was still following orders. Two other men got out of the BMW and stood by the trunk. They were members of the club—a short, squat guy named Johnny, and an older guy with a white beard named Phil—and were the hardest of the hard men they had.

  Michael had a folded-over map in his hand, which he spread open on the hood of the Audi. Francois said, “What do you have?”

  “A little luck for a change,” Michael said. “About an hour after we put the word out, got a call from one of our affiliate clubs, southern part of the province. The Knight Stalkers. Think they could come up with an original name for once.”

  “Maybe they’re originally from Newfoundland,” Francois deadpanned.

  Michael said, “Yeah, maybe. Anyway, night before last, two of their members was at a tittie bar in Charlottesville. Saw a tractor-trailer truck with a half-sized shipping container pull in and pull out after the driver got a private show.”

  “What made them call?” Francois asked.

  “Trailer was the correct size, and it was freshly painted. The guys were positive they saw a company logo underneath the new paint job, but they can’t remember the whole name. Just the first letter. An M.”

  “Christ, that’s good stuff.”

  “Gets better. Seems the driver was some American Southern trash boy. Drank up a bit, got a private dance, but when he let loose, got all spooked and ran out, like he was ashamed or something. So that’s a connection, eh? A shipping container that has all the badged types with their panties in the twist, and it’s being driven by some Southern shithead. Sounds pretty damn important, explains the hefty reward.”

  Francois said, “What’s the map for?”

  Michael went on, still not smiling. “So this is where we’re at. I put the word out to the Knight Stalkers with a description of the truck, and it’s down here, on Route 257, about as close to the New Hampshire border as you can get. They’ve got a good mobile and stationary surveillance going on with their club members, but the damn funny thing is, the truck’s going around in circles. Down one lane, zips over on a connecting road, and then back up again. Hour after hour.”

  Francois tapped the map. “The guy’s waiting for the word to cross the border. He’s biding his time.”

  Michael gestured to the Bell helicopter. “That’s what we don’t have a lot of: time. Drive will take too damn long, but we take the chopper over there, we can be down there in less than an hour.”

  “How did you set up the chopper?”

  “Pilot’s girlfriend is hooked on smack. We give the pilot a clean, steady supply, and he’s our airborne taxi driver.”

  Francois look
ed at the two other men. “Johnny and Phil know what’s up?”

  Michael took the map off the Audi’s hood. “They know enough. We need them for a truck hijacking worth a fuck-load of money. Anything else they need to know?”

  “That’ll do for now,” Francois said. “Let’s get a move on.”

  Keys in hand, he opened up the Audi’s trunk, took out a dull gray duffel bag, and started walking towards the waiting helicopter. Johnny and Phil saw his movement, opened up the BMW’s trunk, and took out their own gear.

  Francois gently slapped Michael on his back. “A hell of a job, Michael, a hell of a job.”

  His second-in-command kept quiet. Francois added, “You look pretty damn good, now, since you got that haircut.”

  “Whatever,” Michael said.

  Tanya said to Henry, “Pull up there by the pickup truck. Keep the engine running. I’m hoping it won’t take long.”

  Henry drove in by the pickup truck, and Tanya saw the Coastie guy standing there, leaning against the fender. He looked tired, a bit wired, but there was still a presence about his face and his eyes that struck her. There were only two other vehicles in the long empty parking lot, a Wal-Mart tractor-trailer truck, parked to one side, and a light yellow van with Wisconsin plates, the side door open, mom and dad up forward, arguing over a map, a young boy and girl racing around the van, shrieking and giggling.

  “That might be your plan,” Henry said. “He might have his own.”

  Tanya opened the rear door. “You know what they say: when it comes to plans, God’s on the side of the heaviest artillery.”

  Zach unfolded his arms as Tanya approached. She had on a mid-length black dress coat, clear nylon stockings, and sensible flat black shoes. Her face was flushed and she looked queasy, like a teenage girl who had come home after sneaking into a local college frat party. Zach said, “My, looks like you had one hell of a night.”