“Well,” he said, “there goes the fucking band.”
He shook his head sadly before turning to Rachel and making a game attempt at smiling.
“I’m Dewey,” he said, extending his free hand.
Rachel introduced herself. And then, true to his nature, Dewey said something completely inappropriate.
“I sure hope you’re not a crazy bitch like Bev.”
Rachel came inside to watch some TV. She’d been curious about our digs for a while. Dewey took the recliner, and I settled into my driver’s seat on the left-hand side of the sofa. Rachel examined the dirty couch. She sat down slowly, as though the upholstery might scald her.
It was just past midnight, so I switched over to Johnny Carson on channel 2. Buddy Hackett was riding the guest chair, giving Johnny grief about all of his marriages.
After a while, the phone rang. I leaned over the edge of the sofa and grabbed the receiver. I was surprised to hear Nick’s voice. He sounded like he was out of breath.
“I’m in jail,” he said.
“Oh, fuck.” I sat up straight and scooted down to the end of the sofa. “What happened?”
Dewey and Rachel cut their eyes my way, appearing concerned. I motioned for Dewey to turn down the volume on the TV.
“I got stopped for speeding on my bike,” Nick said. “Plus I had some pot in one of my saddlebags. I’d forgotten all about it.”
“How much did you have?”
“Enough to cause me some problems. Let’s just put it that way.”
“Does Muskgrave know about this?”
“Not yet, but I’m sure they’ll call him in. He beats off to this kind of shit.”
“Well, what do you want me to do? Should I call Cash?”
Nick started whispering, his voice so low I could barely hear him. “Yeah, call Cash,” he said. “But that’s not all. I’ve got another problem that’s gonna be worse than this one if it’s not taken care of. I’m supposed to pick up some stuff that Chuck’s dropping off in a little while. That’s why I needed my fucking car keys.”
“What kind of stuff? Cocaine?”
Nick shushed me. “You don’t need to know. But I need you and Dewey to go pick it up for me. Do you think you could borrow your girlfriend’s car?”
“Yeah, she’s still here.”
“All right. Now listen close and write this down, because I can’t repeat myself. God knows who might be listening.”
I grabbed the TV Guide and a pen from the floor and looked for a place to write. Thankfully, Bea Arthur was on the cover in a white gown.
“Do you know where Grimes Road is?”
“Yeah, me and Lyndell used to go driving around there. It sort of runs parallel to Green Lake Road.”
“Good,” Nick said. “That’s good. Well, there’s an old horse farm out there, it used to be called Grimes Stables. It sits way off the road, and it’s pretty much abandoned now. They’ve got three big pastures in back.”
“I know where you’re talking about.”
“Okay, then. That’s where you need to go. Chuck’s supposed to be there around two o’clock. It’s the back pasture. Just grab the duffel bag and bring it back to the house. Put it in the attic.”
I told him that sounded fine. And then something dawned on me. “Wait a minute. This doesn’t make any sense.”
“Why not?”
“Well, if Chuck’s got something for you, why can’t he just bring it by the house?”
“Oh, yeah,” Nick said, “I almost forgot. Chuck’s gonna be dropping the bag from his Piper.”
He said it like it was the most natural thing in the world to be doing.
“You mean from the sky?”
“Yeah. But don’t worry. He’s pretty accurate. You just have to take my flashlight and wave it around when he flies over.”
I was having a difficult time picturing all of this in my head.
“Are you still there?” Nick asked.
“Yeah, I’m still here.”
“Listen,” he said, “I wouldn’t put you on the spot like this if it wasn’t extremely fucking dire. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“And you know how I didn’t want you getting caught up in any kind of crap like this.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “Don’t sweat it. I’ve got things covered.”
I heard him exhale, and I figured they must have been letting him smoke a cigarette.
“So you’re leaving for Shreveport after Labor Day?” I asked.
“Hopefully,” he said. “But it was looking a lot better about an hour ago.”
“Well, don’t worry about this end of it. Me and Dewey will take care of it.”
“Okay, bro. And, hey. Listen.”
“What is it?”
“I’m sorry you had to see that stuff with me and Bev.”
“That’s all right. I guess you did what you had to do.”
There was a long pause. He blew out some more smoke. “Yeah, I sure hope so.”
20
My plan was to drop Rachel off at her apartment. That way, if Dewey and I stumbled onto any trouble, we could always say that we had stolen Rachel’s car, shielding her from any heat.
But she insisted on going with us. “You’re not taking my car without taking me,” she said.
She agreed that I should drive. She also let Dewey ride shotgun, accepting his lame-ass explanation about getting carsick when he rode in back. I knew that what really made Dewey sick was not being able to exert absolute control over the radio. He couldn’t ride in a car unless he was constantly fiddling with the knobs.
The rain had picked up. Heavy drops thunked against the windshield as we made our way outside of town. Rachel’s wipers were a beat slow and her headlights a little off kilter, kind of like her eyes, one aimed straight ahead, the other off into the mysterious woods beside the road.
I flipped on the defroster, and my face caught a blast of musty air. Dewey was playing with the radio, and Rachel was leaning up into the space between the front seats, her face lit by the pale glow of the dashlights.
“Should I even ask what we’re going to pick up?”
Dewey scratched at his chin like a sleuth. “Cracker barrel logic tells me it’s a white, powdery substance.”
In the rearview mirror, I could see Rachel cutting her eyes my way.
“Cocaine?” she asked.
I waved my thumb in Dewey’s direction. “I think Barnaby’s right.”
Someone had planted a For Sale sign at the edge of the road in place of the Grimes Stables sign. I slowed up, checking the rearview mirror to make sure that nobody else was around before turning onto the gravel road that led to the stables and back pasture where Chuck was supposed to make the drop. The road was narrow and rutted and overhung by tree branches and bushes. Between the leaves swirling through the air and the rain peppering the windshield, it made for a spooky scene.
“I could be home watching Don Kirshner right now,” Dewey said. “Thin Lizzy was gonna be on tonight.”
“Well, nobody made you come.”
“I know. I was just saying.”
The trees finally broke and the gravel road took its route to the edge of a wide, flat pasture. I followed the fence line to the back of the property. I stopped the car at the edge of the woods, turned off the headlights, and pulled up the emergency brake.
Dewey sat in the car with the radio playing. Rachel and I waited outside, leaning back against the warm hood of the Peugeot. I’d brought along Nick’s motorcycle jacket for myself, and she had her own leather jacket zipped up to her neck. We both ducked our heads against the rain.
“So, I don’t guess your brother’s really in the landscaping business.”
“I had to lie when you asked me. It was nothing personal.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “You’re loyal. Most people would have spilled their guts.”
“I just thought that I should keep quiet. The sheriff has been leaning pretty hard
on Nick lately. He even thinks that I’ve got something to do with it.”
“Well, you do. I mean, now, at least.”
“Thanks for reminding me.”
She looked at me. Her cheeks had turned scarlet in the rain. It looked like she’d stolen blush from the drugstore and dabbed it on herself as a joke.
“So, what would happen if you got caught?”
Normally, I wouldn’t have wanted to discuss those possibilities. But now that I’d started telling things to Rachel, I didn’t want to stop. It almost felt like I was protecting myself from the very things that could get me.
“For starters, I’d spend a couple of years at the youth correctional institute. After that, they’d probably transfer me to a real prison. Maybe Reidsville, or somewhere like that.”
Rachel was quiet for a moment. I got the feeling she was trying to imagine what I’d look like in prison garb.
“So,” she said, “why are you taking this kind of chance?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“That’s easy. I don’t trust you with my car. Your checkered past speaks for itself.”
“Trust me, that Peugeot is not worth going to jail for.”
She shrugged.
“Nick’s not a career criminal, you know. He’s planning to go legit. I’d just like to see him get what he wants.”
“You mean the house and the family and the radio job?”
“Yeah, and some respect. I think he wants that as much as anything. Just to have people respect him for what he does.”
“You think that if he goes legit and gets all those things, then you’ll be able to do the same.”
“I never said I wanted to spin records.”
“Okay, then. Bail bondsman. Bounty hunter. Maybe you’ll have a garage full of cars and a house with cable TV in every room.”
“The bathroom, too?”
“If that’s your dream…”
She was making some sense.
“You think you might like to live in that house with me?” I glanced at her from the corner of my eyes.
“Not if it was tacky,” she said. “I mean, if you went all Elvis on me, with the jungle shit, I’d have to say no fucking way.”
“So,” I said, “what kind of house would you like?”
“Nothing ridiculous,” she said.
“What do you consider to be not ridiculous then?”
She was chewing on her bottom lip, smiling faintly. “We lived in this little Cape Cod the last few years that my father was alive. It was just a rental, you know. Pretty rough around the edges. But it was cool. My father had all these birdhouses and feeders that he hung in the backyard. He had birds flying in from all over the place. They’d all stop in to fill up. It was like a fucking Waffle House for birds. My father had these bird books that he kept on the kitchen table so we could figure out what was what. We’d get up in the morning and sit there checking them all out. Goldfinches and hummingbirds and little sparrows. He’d have a class to teach, and I’d have school, but sometimes, he wouldn’t even notice. Or at least he’d pretend not to notice. And of course, I didn’t remind him. So we’d end up bailing. Both of us, we’d just take the whole fucking day off.”
The corners of her mouth quivered a little, as though she was trying to hold back an even bigger smile.
“So, we’ll have birdhouses,” I said. “Birdhouses and cable TV.”
“And we can let our little convicts skip school,” she said.
“I didn’t think you wanted any little convicts.”
“I said I didn’t want any kids. You know, like regular kids.”
“Well, fuck, yeah,” I said. “They can skip all the time, if they want. They can just take the GED when they get older.”
She smothered a laugh with her hands. “I can’t believe you just said that. I’ve been thinking about taking the GED. That’s what I wanted to tell you about back at your brother’s house.”
“Are you serious?”
She grinned and looked down in a bashful sort of way, like it was some kind of big news, an acceptance to Harvard or something.
“My mother’s talking about moving again,” she said. “Like sometime after the fall semester. And I’m just sick of it, you know, following her around while she tries to get her shit together. All she does now is go to these AA meetings. She’s addicted to them.”
I felt a nudge of recognition. “Where does she go to the meetings?”
“At the Baptist church in Green Lake.”
“Hey, I know the guy who leads those meetings. Wade Briggs. He’s the cop who arrested me when I took the car.”
“Is he a tall guy, with dark circles under his eyes?”
“Yeah, do you know him?”
She told me her mother had dragged her to a meeting one night. “That was enough for me. All those people sitting around, patting each other on the back for being such fuckups. They started talking about how they’d been to hell and back. Ha! What a laugh. They don’t know what hell is. Hell is having to live with people like that.”
The wind picked up again, howling through the trees, beating the grass flat and blowing the rain against our faces. We ducked our heads to our chests and waited for it to let up.
“So, you’re really gonna take the GED?” I asked.
She smiled, her face becoming animated again. “Yeah, and I was thinking about moving back to Champaign, maybe getting a job and renting a room. And I just thought that since your brother was planning to leave and all, and since I’d already asked you to move in with me anyway, that you might want to come, too. You could drop out of school now that you’re sixteen. You can just take the GED when you turn eighteen.”
Her idea shot right through Nick’s jacket. It caused my heart to bounce against my rib cage like a speed bag. I liked the thought of us being together. Birdhouses and TV sets and all of that. Champaign probably wouldn’t have been my first choice. It sounded kind of landlocked. But Rachel would make up for the lack of water.
“So when are you thinking of leaving?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe in the fall.”
“I get my license back October first.”
“Are you serious about this?”
“Fuck, yeah,” I told her. “Let’s do it.”
I reached over and shook some of the water from her hair, and then I draped my arm around her shoulder. When we finally heard the faint buzz of Chuck’s Piper, we snapped our heads back as though a fire-works display might break out. Alas, all we got were three tiny red lights bobbing above the tree line.
21
Dewey climbed out of the car. “That’s gotta be him. Nobody else would be flying around in this shit.”
I pulled the flashlight out of Nick’s jacket, turned it on, and waved it in the direction of the plane. As if on cue, the Piper’s wings tilted back and forth. It headed for the road, made a lazy banked turn, and flew back in our direction again. At this point I stepped away from the car and started to move the flashlight around in a circular motion.
Dewey stepped up beside me. We stood there as the plane circled a few more times, descending lower with each pass. The closer the Piper came to the treetops, the more it fluttered against the wind. The wings tilted wildly, and the tail swung from side to side.
Rachel had a concerned look on her face. “Jesus, he looks like he’s going to crash.”
“It’s this fucking wind,” I told her.
Dewey flinched as the plane dropped straight down and then bounced back up like it was tied to the end of a rubber band.
“Are you sure this guy’s really an airline pilot?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’ve seen him in his Delta uniform.”
“Well, he’s making a damn good case for Greyhound.”
Finally, the Piper dipped low enough for us to read the tail letters: N634CS. It was flying just above tree level. That’s when something came tumbling out the door.
“Ta-daa,” Dewey sang. “There’s yo
ur money shot.”
The bag dropped straight down into the middle of the pasture, like a turd from a giant pigeon. The plane’s motors sputtered a couple times and then picked up a louder, throatier hum before the nose lifted and the lights slowly shrunk in the distance.
Rachel opened the Peugeot’s trunk while Dewey and I tromped across the soggy grass to retrieve the bag. It was a huge blue duffel, about four feet long. We stood over it for a long time, both of us reluctant to move forward with the operation.
“You still got that flashlight?” Dewey asked.
I held up the light and jiggled it for him.
“Well, I think we should look inside,” he said. “I think we should know what we’re getting ourselves into before we go any farther.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.”
I held the beam on the bag while Dewey ripped open the zipper. As soon as we saw what was inside, we both stepped back as though it might jump out and bite us. We’d gotten what we expected, which was cocaine, but a lot more of it than we could have ever imagined. White bricks were packed together like the foundation of a sand castle. There must have been twenty of them.
“Oh, Wilbur,” Dewey moaned. “That’s a lot of fucking cocaine.”
The only answer I could muster was a slow nod. All of the sudden, my wet clothes made me shiver. My knees turned watery, and my pulse started to thrum behind my ears.
Dewey pointed a shaky finger at the bag as it lay there glistening in the rain.
“How much do you think that is?”
He appeared frightened by the answer that I might give. He was looking all around, like somebody might throw a net over us at any second.
“I’d say that’s enough to get us a matching set of leg irons.”
“Why don’t we just leave it?” he asked. “Let’s just get the hell out of here.”
“We can’t leave it. Let’s just finish what Nick told us to do. Do you know how much this shit is probably worth? If Nick were to lose this stuff, somebody would probably kill him.”
I was waiting for Dewey’s response, but he’d stopped paying attention. He was looking over my shoulder, up into the black sky.
“Luke?” he murmured. His voice was high and unsteady.
Drive Like Hell: A Novel Page 22