$200 and a Cadillac

by Fingers Murphy

  Victor looked up and watched Mickey turn into the lot. “Maybe he’ll make an arrest this time, now that we’ve practically handed the guy to him.”

  They watched the Suburban go up and down the lanes of parked cars, much as it had earlier in the day. But this time it didn’t stop at the pick up truck. Instead, it came up near them and backed into a spot behind a large metal dumpster that would shield it from view.

  It was only after he parked that Mickey noticed the two of them sitting there, already staked out in the only part of the lot that would not draw attention from the departing workers.

  “He sees us.” Victor smiled, and then spoke through his grin. “Looks like once again, the FBI has beat the local boys to the punch.” He turned to Tom and nudged him with his elbow. “Must be shitty, always being second fiddle.”

  Mickey looked around the lot, trying to avoid looking directly at them. Hoping to avoid having to interact with them. Something about the FBI guy rubbed him the wrong way, in every way, and it would be best to keep him at a distance. Mickey could see Agent Asshole grinning over at him. What a prick.

  Mickey studied the dash and the seat around him. Trying to keep busy. Then he sat still for a few minutes before checking his watch. Unless Ron left early, it was going to be a long wait. He could feel the eyes on him. Both of them were looking at him now, and he knew he would have to get out and talk to them, at least inquire as to their investigation. There was no way he could avoid it for the whole time he was likely to have to wait.

  Mickey left the Suburban running with its air conditioner cranking out semi-cool air in a futile battle with the high desert sun. He opened the door and walked across the parking lot, watching the two of them through the window. They watched him approach with expressionless faces. When he got there, Mickey leaned in and spoke as Agent Asshole rolled down the window.

  “You boys find your oil thief yet?”

  “We believe we have, Sheriff. It looks like a pretty big job. Several players involved.”

  “Is that so? Well, it looks like all those years in the Bureau paid off. You boys work fast.”

  Victor shifted in his seat, but kept his grin steady. “You know how it is, Sheriff. There’s always a little luck involved. You just gotta keep your ear to the ground and your eyes open, and sometimes they practically come to you.”

  Mickey nodded and peered across the seat at Tom, who smiled back, looking thoroughly out of place in his obviously expensive silk shirt. “Well,” he said, “like I told you last night, our resources are pretty thin up here now, what with your employer practically shutting things down, so I can’t offer much in the way of help. In fact, things are heating up on our murder case.”

  “You don’t say.” Victor feigned surprised. “Things falling in place for you, are they?”

  “We’ve had some breaks. That’s why we really can’t spare anything to help you boys out until you’ve pretty much got your thing put to bed.”

  “Well, we’re not too worried about that, Sheriff. It’s good to see things coming together.” Victor nodded. “Hell, we used to have a saying back in the Bureau about crime. We used to joke that it was all one case. You know, just one big crime out there, all interconnected.”

  “Sounds a little paranoid,” Mickey chuckled. “Truth be told, I think it gives the criminals too much credit. Most of them I’ve ever met couldn’t find their pecker if it had a bell on it.”

  Victor laughed and slapped at Tom with a light backhand. “You hear that, Tom? That’s a good one. I’ll have to remember that one.”

  Mickey watched the performance and wanted to reach in and smack the pompous bastard. But instead, he let out a mild chuckle and tried to think of a way to end the conversation as soon as possible. “Well, anyway,” he leaned down and said, “we’ll be happy to make an arrest when you think you’ve got the proof you need.”

  “We may have it sooner than you think.” Victor grinned. “Who knows, maybe the crimes are connected. Maybe our cases will finally prove that it’s all one big crime, in a cosmic sense, I mean.”

  Mickey shook his head and kept smiling. “I’m not sure we could handle something like that around here.” Then he rapped on the top of the car a couple of times and said, “Well, keep me posted boys.”

  Mickey turned and walked back to the idling Suburban. He slid into the air-conditioned interior and checked his watch again. Then he snatched the radio from the dash and hollered into the mouthpiece.

  “Jimmy. You there?”

  After a few seconds Jimmy answered. “Right here, Chief.”

  “Anything from Kramer yet?”

  “You’ll be the first to know, Chief.” Then there was a brief pause. “Hell, it ain’t been that long, Chief. You just left here an hour ago.”

  Mickey checked his watch again. “I know. I just want to make sure you’re still there. I don’t want any delay when Kramer calls. I’ll be following Grimaldi around until I hear something from you. The sooner I hear, the better.”

  “I know, Chief. Just relax. You’ll know something as soon as I do.”

  XXXIII

  The sun had nearly put Hank to sleep when he heard the oil truck pull up. He perked up and peered through the hole in the cinder block when the truck was halfway down the hill. He heard the rattle of the engine before he heard the crunch of the wheels in the gravel. He checked his watch. A little after three. Still a while to wait.

  The truck idled in the lot for a few seconds, and then made a wide turn, jockeyed back and forth several times, and backed into the warehouse. Eli got out of the truck with a gun in his hand and stood there like he had no idea what to do with it. Hank watched him through the hole in the wall.

  Eli tucked the gun in the front of his pants and tried to conceal it by pulling his shirt down over it. Unsatisfied, he moved it around to the small of his back. His movements were stiff, fidgety, and he paced around aimlessly like a grain of rice popping and jumping in a red hot frying pan. He was all nerves and energy. He was making Hank tense just watching him.

  What did he do about the kid? It was a bad situation. Hank stared off up the hill to where the dirt road broke over the crest, the blue horizon still and calm behind it. He tried to picture how it would happen. Lugano would drive his truck down the hill and most likely park out in the center of the driveway. But that was the only thing that was clear. What would the kid do? What would Lugano do? Where would they be when it happened? It would take Hank a few long seconds to get down the wall and around the side of the building. In that short time, the two of them would have moved from where they were when he last saw them through the hole in the wall.

  This meant Hank would not know exactly where he was going or aiming when he came around the side of the building. It was a lot more complicated than standing behind Lugano’s door in his living room. And more complicated meant more dangerous.

  Hank turned his attention back to the kid. Eli began hooking some equipment to the truck that was connected to some kind of pump with hoses dropping down into the large hole in the ground. But after a few minutes he got distracted and started fucking around with the gun again.

  Eli would take a few steps, casually, and then reach around and draw the gun, pointing it at an imaginary assailant. It looked terrible. Hank grinned, wiped the sweat from the back of his neck, and shook his head.

  Eli repeated the act. A few steps, then a reach, sometimes groping for the pistol grip, sometimes fumbling—nearly dropping it—as he brought it around to aim. Maybe the kid would get lucky and do Hank’s job for him. That would be nice, convenient. But the more Hank watched, the less likely it seemed. Eli looked like a child playing cops and robbers, but he wasn’t. The gun was real. And Howie Lugano was a stone cold killer.

  Out along the road to town, Janie sat in the car with the windows down, hoping for a breeze. But the stagnant desert air offered nothing but suffocating heat. The only benefit to the car at all was the shade it gave her from the sun.

  She
waited half an hour. Then she waited longer, checking her watch every few minutes and feeling nervous. It was getting near to four o’clock, and the shift change would happen soon. She kept her eyes on the road. It stretched off toward the horizon and she studied the spot where the road disappeared over it. Watching as though Eddie could somehow sneak by if she failed to pay attention.

  But he didn’t sneak by. A few minutes before four she saw the black dot appear in the distance. It slowly took shape and she sat forward with a start. Then she opened the door and waited by the side of the road, watching the old tanker get closer and closer.

  When it was a quarter of a mile away, she stepped into the road and started waving her arms. Then she began hopping up and down, just in case he couldn’t see her. She felt a relief roll through her as the truck slowed and pulled over, coming to a stop nearly nose to nose with the old Camaro.

  It was as though Eddie’s mere appearance on the obvious and only route he could come, at the time of day he should be coming, made everything seem alright. She came around the side of the truck and looked up into the cab as Eddie opened the door and looked down at her from the high bench seat.

  “Hey,” he grinned. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  She shook her head at him, wide-eyed and solemn. “We need to talk,” she said, and stepped back so he could climb down from the cab.

  At that moment, she knew that she had saved him, but from exactly what, she wasn’t sure. And for the first few minutes, as she told her brother the story, she didn’t care. But then she thought of Hank, huddled by the wall of the cinderblock building, cradling his gun and waiting to kill a man.

  An urge to make things better came over her, but there was nothing she could do. It was that same primal urge that had brought her home to care for her mother and compelled her to stop on the roadside to save her brother, but that was as far as she could go with it. The urge could take her no further, could compel her to do nothing other than what she had already done. And it was then that she realized she was helpless, bound to her one simple path like a planet caught in the invisible rut of its orbit, doing the only thing it could: keep going, around a central point that gave off nothing, not even heat or light.

  XXXIV

  Ron left Monarch at four sharp, just like any other day. He didn’t notice anything unusual at all. Mickey spotted him when he was halfway across the parking lot and watched him climb into the truck without noticing that someone had been inside of it.

  The parking lot came to life with dozens of departing workers. Some stood around in groups, talking, laughing, planning to meet each other later at the Golden Dragon. Cars backed out of spaces cautiously, weaving in and out of the pedestrians. But Ron got in and was gone. He looked like a man in a hurry to get somewhere.

  Victor nudged Tom, pointed with his chin and said, “Guy wants his fifty grand.”

  Tom shifted in his seat but said nothing. He was just happy to have something happening. The back of his shirt was slick with sweat and it disgusted him to move against the seat. When Victor started the car, the air conditioner blasted to life, blowing hot air all around them. Tom aimed the vents out the open window and waited for the air blowing through them to cool. The heat was killing him.

  Across the way, Mickey was nice and cool. The Suburban had been idling away for over an hour with the A/C going full blast. Mickey watched Ron Grimaldi move slowly through the parking lot and then accelerate as he turned onto the road back to town. The problem with trailing a car in the open desert is that a driver could see a car a mile or more away, so the one doing the trailing had to keep a lot of distance.

  But the departing traffic made Mickey’s job easier. He let Ron get a quarter mile down the road, let a string of other cars fall in between himself and Ron, and then he pulled out. He noticed the FBI guys leave the parking lot several cars behind. He shook his head as he glanced in the rearview mirror. They were determined to drive him crazy.

  Ron turned on the radio, tapped his fingers on the steering wheel along with an Eagles song, and began to think about what he might do with the fifty grand. A long weekend in Vegas or LA would be nice. He’d like to spend some time back in New York, but that was too dangerous. Maybe Hawaii? He hadn’t been there in twenty years. He’d also thought about taking the fifty, and the next fifty, and the next, and getting himself a small place down in Mexico. Somewhere down in Baja where he could run a small meth lab. He figured he could sell wholesale to dealers in San Diego. It would be virtually impossible to get caught, especially with all of the local police on the payroll. Why not? Have a nice little town all to himself and make a bundle off America’s obsession with drugs. It would be even easier to do than running a lab in Nickelback, which was pretty damned easy, as far as he could tell.

  Ron was so busy imagining life on the Gulf of California, with his small villa, his fishing boat, and his Mexican housemaid, that he nearly missed the turn. The only thing that brought him out of it in time was the tanker truck on the side of the road. When Ron saw that, he hit the brake and realized where he was. He slowed and turned left onto the gravel road, staring at the truck and Justin Banner’s ugly Camaro parked off in the distance.

  He could see what looked like Eddie talking to someone. But the other person was hidden by the car, and was too far away to identify in any event. Ron assumed it was Justin. What the hell would the two of them be doing out there at that time of day?

  There was something strange about it, but not strange enough to make Ron stop. Instead, he shrugged and shook his head. It was just another example of what was wrong with the two idiots. They couldn’t focus. They got distracted. And every once in a while, it took a good beating to get their attention again. It’s what I get for getting involved with them, Ron told himself, and sped off down the dirt road toward the warehouse.

  Eddie watched Ron’s truck make the turn and almost come to a stop before speeding off. When Ron was far enough away, Eddie pointed, “There he goes now.”

  Janie turned to see the truck with the pipe rack speeding away, clouds of dust roiling up behind it. She didn’t know what to say, she just watched him drive off into the distance. “What do you think will happen?”

  Eddie shrugged. “I dunno,” he responded. “Eli seemed pretty intent on killing the guy. After what Ron did to him, I can’t blame him. But that was before we knew who he was.” Then he smiled, but not from humor. “Hell, I guess Eli still doesn’t know who Ron is.”

  But Janie realized she wasn’t interested in Eli, she was really asking about Hank. Somehow Eli’s fate didn’t concern her. She knew she should feel differently, but she couldn’t feel any other way. Now that her brother was safe, it was only Hank that concerned her. Part of her knew that she and Eddie should get in the Camaro and drive away, leaving the mess behind them. But she stood and watched the truck disappear over a distant rise, its wake of dust slowly settling back to the ground.

  The only good thing about the dust was that it made a car easier to follow. The driver couldn’t see anything behind him, and the guy doing the following could get a lot closer without being spotted. Mickey liked that aspect of the dirt road. As for where Grimaldi was going and why, that made him uneasy. He’d assumed Grimaldi would go home, or to the Golden Dragon for a beer, someplace that would make him easy to watch while Mickey waited for the word to come in over the radio. But the dirt road, that was something else altogether.

  Mickey stopped the Suburban and tried to think of where this particular road went. But nothing came to him. He hadn’t grown up in Nickelback. He’d never worked on any of the old oil claims, never tried to find a place where he and his buddies could drink beer on a Saturday night, never had a reason to learn where all of the odd roads crisscrossing the desert went. If there had never been a crime or other problem down this road—and as well as he could remember, there hadn’t—then he had no idea where it led.

  He’d been sitting for half a minute before he noticed the oil truck parked on t
he side of the road a quarter mile away. The Camaro parked in front of it seemed familiar to him, but he couldn’t say why. He strained to make out who was standing there, watching him, and thought he recognized Janie and her brother. What the hell were they doing there? What was going on?

  And then he saw Agent Asshole pull up behind him and something set him off. Mickey opened the door and climbed out, walking fast toward the car where the two guys sat grinning, pointing down the road toward the oil truck. As Mickey came up to the side of the car, Victor rolled down the window and smiled.

  “Looks like our cases may be connected after all, Sheriff.”

  “Goddamn it,” Mickey surprised himself with the sharpness of his voice. “I don’t need you fucking up my investigation.”

  Victor jerked his head back, as if the force of the words themselves had pushed him. “Now, Sheriff,” he said, “I don’t see that we’re interfering in any way. We have reason to believe that the man in that truck that just went down this dirt road is the man behind this oil theft.” Then he pointed down the road to town toward Janie and Eddie. “There’s one of his co-conspirators right there. Tom and I saw him down at our Long Beach facility yesterday. In fact, I think we have probable cause for an arrest right now.”

  Mickey glanced back down the road at Janie and Eddie. The thought of them stealing oil from Monarch almost made him laugh. It served the company right, after what it did to the town. Mickey turned to stare back into the car, but not at Victor or Tom. He held his weight with his right hand and studied the layout of the dash, the steering column, and position of the turn signal arm.

  He spoke as his eyes ran over the car’s interior. “I’m in the middle of a murder investigation. Frankly, I don’t give a shit about your oil theft. Those people you’re pointing at have lived in this town most of their lives. I doubt they’re involved, but if they are, they’ll be easy to find tomorrow or whenever you manage to bring me some proof.”