“So Beasley is some kind of right-wing, para-military nut?”
“Yeah, you could say that, but that was just the beginning. The guy is something else… weird… scary weird… but I had other stuff going on. At that point, Willy and I had been together for five days and I was pretty conflicted. I claimed sickness and signed in to my job remotely… that way I could keep up with my work, but as far as Margo was concerned, I had disappeared. Despite the distance between us, I knew she was worried, so the pressure to get back was huge, but what about Willy? I was really attached to the old guy… yeah, he was crooked as a snake but I couldn’t just dump him. So anyway, I guess that’s when the whole Beasley and PAGWAG thing started getting to us. I mean, okay, the guy was a total asshole… nothing indicated illegal activity at that point, but the fucker was up to no good… and yeah, he took our minds off Margo and robbing donut shops… I guess he was kind of a distraction, although I didn’t see it like that then… we talked about him later in the motel room.”
A few hours after discovering the location of the PAGWAG compound, Ted and Willy are talking. “You still think that guy’s harmless, Storky? He don’t look so harmless to me.”
“I don’t know, Willy. Yeah, he looks kind of threatening, but I don’t buy it… Like I said, these guys talk big, but they don’t back it up.”
“All puff an’ no stuff, huh? I don’ know, Stork… I feel something evil in that guy…an’ I’m always right about this stuff. I tell you, he’s evil and we gotta stop him. I think we should go back to that Packywhack place an’ check it out… maybe follow him an’ see what he’s up to. Besides, I been countin’ my money an’ I pretty much got enough for Millie’s operation, so I don’t need to be pullin’ no more jobs… whatcha think, Storky?”
“Yeah, I guess so, Willy. It won’t hurt to check him out. We’ll go over there in the morning after breakfast. Oh yeah, I also got his license number… I’ll see what I can find out with that.”
There’s no activity in the PAGWAG compound when Ted and Willy arrive the following morning. Parking the Honda where it can’t be seen, the tall techie pulls out a pair of binoculars, leans over the top of the car and watches as Beasley walks out the front door, pulls the .45 from its holster, then empties its clip, firing into the empty air. Apparently satisfied, he enters a fresh clip in the gun butt, climbs into the Hummer and slowly approaches the gate.
While his partner was spying on their adversary, Graves remained in the car. Alarmed by the sounds of shots, he whispers loudly, “What the fuck, Storky? What’s that asshole doin’?”
As he reenters and starts his car, Ted’s expression reveals a feeling of apprehension, “I don’t know, Willy… the guy must be gun-crazy. I don’t think we should get too close.”
Guarded, he follows the Hummer at a safe distance as it passes through Kingdom City before stopping in front of two large warehouses just outside of town. Not wanting to arouse suspicion, Hendricks continues past the parked SUV as Beasley exits and approaches one of the buildings. A few hundred yards beyond is a gas station; pulling in, the content screener watches as the older man unlocks and enters one of the metal buildings. A few minutes later, a semi-tractor truck stops beside the big car and, as it does, the metal door rises and Beasley instructs the driver where to unload the shipment. Using a forklift, the man lifts two pallets from the truck bed and deposits them inside the warehouse.
As he fills his tank, Hendricks watches the unloading process, then enters the station and speaks to the attendant. “Hey buddy, my friend is looking to rent some warehouse space around here. Do you know anything about those buildings down the road?” He points at the warehouses. “Think there might be some space available over there?”
The attendant, a man in his seventies, is obviously in no hurry. Moving like his legs are marooned in molasses, he lumbers out from behind the counter, walks to the window and stares at the two metal buildings. Deep in concentration, the man almost appears to be seeing them for the first time. “Oh, those buildings… huh… don’t know so much about them buildings… belong to a newcomer… he just built them about a year ago… don’t nobody seem to know much about him. You oughta just ask him. That’s his car down there… only one like that around here. They say he’s got a hot tub in the back of that car… Can’t say as how I believe it… why would anyone want a goddam hot tub in a car? Can you imagine how that goddam water would splash around… I heard he carries a lot of guns in it, too… strange guy if you ask me, but nobody does… wife died a couple of years ago so nobody asks me nuthin’ anymore. Where you from an’ why the hell would you want to rent warehouse space around here? There’s a buncha warehouses over by Doobie Creek. I used to live over there a few years…”
“Uh, it’s not important. My friend inherited some, uh, furniture and he needs a place to keep it for a while.” Convinced that the old man could maintain his monologue indefinitely, the tech worker is anxious to leave, but the old man continues.
“Furniture, huh? I inherited some furniture one time from my uncle… Uncle John Harold… He was a hemophiliac… raised guinea hens, too… sold ’em to restaurants… that furniture was under his house when he died… can you believe that?… all covered with dirt… looked like shit, but it cleaned up real nice… my wife really liked it… she died of food poisoning… damnedest thing…”
“Uh, I’m sorry, but I have to leave… my friend is not feeling well… sorry…”
Exiting the gas station, Hendricks watches as Beasley leaves and locks the warehouse, returns to the Hummer then drives back in the direction of Kingdom City. Feeling abandoned and ignored in the car, Willy’s greeting is less than pleasant. “So where the fuck you been, Stork? Look, the sunufabitch is leaving… we can’t let him get away.”
“Hold on, Willy… he’s not going too far. We know where he lives now… and you could spot that car anywhere, but we’ll follow and see where he goes.” Anxious to find out more about the enigmatic Beasley, the pair tails him for a while but after a series of mundane stops at the post office, hardware store, and dry cleaners, they’ve had enough.
Bored, Willy remarks, “We need another plan, Stork. We ain’t learned shit doin’ this. Whaddaya think of those warehouses? What’s goin’ on back there?”
“I don’t know. The guy at the gas station said he just built them a year ago. He must have something he needs to store… and a lot of it, judging by the size of the buildings. But we still don’t know that he’s done anything illegal. Maybe they’re full of hay.”
“I don’t think so… I got a feelin’ about them warehouses. Let’s go back over there and look around.”
As they arrive back at the warehouses, Willy checks out the narrow corridor separating the two buildings; not seeing any security devices, he instructs Ted to park in the passageway so he can check out the rear of the building. Slowly approaching the corner, he peeks behind the warehouse, notes a motion detector over the back entrance and returns to the car. “Nuthin’ to it… it’s a goddam PIR sensor… passive inf’ared… easy to fool…an’ I can pick that lock in half a flash… piece of cake… let’s go.”
It’s late afternoon and Ted is sitting at his computer in the motel room he and Willy have occupied for the last two days. The TV is on, as always, but Willy has fallen asleep.
Inane and mindless, the sound of the television drones on, but Hendricks, staring at his laptop, blocks it out with headphones. A close look at the screen reveals a website called DMV FILES, a site where the owner of any license plate number can be identified. After consulting his notes, Hendricks enters the license number of the Hummer and pays the fee. Almost instantly, as he stares at the laptop, the Hummer’s owner flashes before him: Crawford Beasley.
Next, the young techie brings a Google search engine up on his home screen and enters “Crawford Beasley” into the search field. Again, the result is almost instantaneous: POWERBALL WINNER CRAWFORD BEASLEY CALLS MISSOURI HOME! “Any place is home when you have 267 million dolla
rs,” says Beasley.
For a long tense moment, Hendricks’ eyes remain locked on the screen.
It’s 10 p.m. when Ted and Willy drive up and park in the corridor between the two warehouses. Ted is speaking as he stops the Honda, “I don’t know, Willy, but you may be right about the nut job… his name is Crawford Beasley… and get this… the asshole won the lottery… 267 million dollars… that may not make him evil, but it’ll buy a lot of pain.”
“I told you… I told you… I got a bad feelin’ about the dude. His goddam teeth are almost black! Weird… creepy… c’mon, let’s see what’s inside there.”
After getting out of the car, they grab two mylar thermal blankets from the back seat and drape themselves like kids in ghost costumes at a school Halloween party. Peeking out through holes in the silver blankets, Willy instructs Ted on how to fool the PIR sensor: “Goddam thing works on body heat… the mylar will block the sensor but just to make sure, we need to move real slow… got it?” Looking like cartoon spooks, the ultra tall Hendricks and short Graves, oxygen bottle in tow, slowly glide, as if in a dream, toward the rear door of the warehouse. As they reach the entrance, the ex-con raises his blanket, giving him access to the lock which he immediately picks. Still pulling his oxygen bottle behind him, the old man enters the building, looks around with a flashlight and signals his partner to join him. “Just like I figgered, there ain’t no more alarms in here. Everything’s on the outside. Let’s check it out.”
Holding two small flashlights, they discover the warehouse is two-thirds full of neatly arranged pallets, which are then stacked three high. Row after row of nearly identical bundles, all exactly like the ones delivered earlier and all bearing the same cryptic Chinese characters, create a series of pathways crisscrossing the warehouse in an orderly pattern. Unable to control his curiosity, Willy finally hobbles over to one of the stacks, reaches up and pulls one of the sealed packages down. Ripping it open, he finds its contents are also wrapped in plastic which he tears away. Holding the dark rectangular object up to his nose, the old man exclaims, “TEA?”
Hendricks, shining his flashlight on his partner, steps up, grabs the rectangular shape and takes a deep whiff. “You’re right! It is tea… a tea brick.” At that point the young tech worker steps back, looks around and suddenly comprehends the astonishing reality: covertly stored in this warehouse in northern Missouri are thousands and thousands of tea bricks. Shoving the brick back up the top of the stack, Ted Hendricks looks at his comrade in crime, his eyes wide with dismay, and speaks, his voice quivering with disbelief, “Let’s go, Willy. We gotta get out of here. I have to think about this.”
At that point, as Deputy Bodie reappeared, Hendricks spoke up, “How much longer are you going to hold me, Deputy? The officer who brought me here from Kansas City said this was a routine matter… just a few questions. He didn’t say anything about a jail cell. Am I being charged with anything?”
“No, Mr. Hendricks, there are no charges against you… yet. Sheriff Fitch just came in, he will see you now. Yeah, we need to ask you some questions. There’s nothing to worry about… as long as you haven’t done anything.”
Looking a little sheepish, the tall content screener rose and walked to the cell door. “Uh, yeah, okay.”
Trailing behind Deputy Dawg, Hendricks disappeared into the sheriff’s office leaving me alone in the cell, my mind beyond boggled at the sheer amount of bizarro information it had absorbed in the last twelve hours. Needless to say, there was more than abundant room for skepticism, but then, as they say… who makes this kind of shit up? Not Ted Hendricks. It just wasn’t in the kid’s character. Whatever else he might be, underneath it all, Hendricks was a straight arrow. And wacko as his story was, it plugged the holes of my own investigation like a gold filling in a monkey’s molar.
Hopefully, they weren’t going to release the kid immediately. I pretty much had the whole picture by now but a few details were still missing… details I wanted to hear first-hand.
Soon they were back. Bernie, skeptical as usual, eyed the young techie suspiciously as he re-entered the cell. “Okay, Mr. Hendricks, you’ll be released as soon as your girlfriend gets here, but we will be checking your story, so don’t take any vacations in Mexico… understand?”
Obviously nervous, the kid stammered out a reply, “Y-ye-ah… sure, I, uh, understand… no problem, deputy.”
“So how did it go, Ki… uh, Ted? Were they rough on you? Deputy Dawg is a bitch, for sure.”
Distracted, it was a moment before Hendricks replied, “Huh? Oh, no, it wasn’t so bad. They mainly just asked me about Willy and the explosion, but I denied everything. It seems like they don’t have much to go on, but they’re trying to figure it out… then they let me call Margo… she was furious, but she’s coming to get me… she’ll be here in a couple of hours. It won’t be a fun ride home.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet… but at least you’re getting out of this dump.” We sat in silence for a moment until I finally blurted out, “But what about the explosion? You haven’t told me what happened with the explosion yet.”
Still distracted, Hendricks was slow to reply and when he did, it was obvious that his mind was still on Wilmer Graves. “Willy… poor old Willy. It was just too much for him.” He paused again, reflecting, then continued. “Willy and me… you know, neither one of us drank alcohol… at all… not a drop. It was kind of weird how we connected over that.”
Returning to a moment several weeks earlier, Hendricks and Graves are driving down a two-lane highway when Willy suddenly blurts out a question. “What about your ol’ man, Stork… what was he like?”
Taken off guard, the tech worker hesitates for a moment then responds, “Well… both of my parents are dead… Mom when I was a baby and my dad OD’d when I was eight, so I don’t remember too much about my father.” Uncertain, Hendricks continues, a puzzled tone in his voice, “Uh… why do you ask, Willy?”
“Oh, I don’t know… I was thinkin’ ’bout my ol’ man for some reason… the asshole… I hated his fuckin’ guts.”
Not knowing how to respond, Ted focuses on the highway. As both men stare straight ahead, the car remains silent for several moments until Willy speaks again. “He beat me… beat me with a belt… me an’ ma both. He wuz always drunk when he done it…an’ he drunk a lot… tha’s why I don’t never touch th’ stuff… makes me sick t’ think about it.”
“I’m sorry… I didn’t know…” Hendricks reaches over and turns up the heater, then continues, “You know, it’s funny… I don’t drink either.”
“No shit! How come, Stork?”
“It was my grandfather, Dido… he raised me after my parents died… Dido was a great guy.” Hendricks pauses and looks over at his companion. When he continues, a feeling of warmth softens his voice, “Actually, you kind of remind me of him, Willy.”
“Huh?” Caught off guard by Ted’s unexpected comment, the old man looks back with skepticism. “Are you shittin’ me, Stork? You’re jokin’ right? Nobody says nice shit like that to me.”
“No… It’s true… you’re not as tough as you act, Willy… just like Dido.”
Uncomfortable, the old man turns the conversation back toward his companion. “Uh, so you don’t drink ’cause of Dido?”
“Well, yeah, but it wasn’t just that… I actually did see Dido drunk once. It was weird.”
“Did he whup you? Was that it?”
“No… no… nothing like that. You see he had this dog, Charlie… Charlie was just a mutt, but Dido sure loved him. Then one day he found Charlie lying in the road…hit by a car. Poor old guy couldn’t move… looked like his back was broken. Dido took him to the vet but it was no good… they had to put Charlie to sleep. As soon as he got home, Dido went straight to his closet and dug out a bottle of whiskey… I.W. Harper, and then drank the whole thing… straight… and he went nuts. He just, like, exploded in this insane rage, destroying everything inside his little house. First he broke all the dishes and glass
es, then he went after the furniture with a chain saw… after that, he drug everything outside and burned it in the back yard… I tried to stop him, but I was just a kid… he was about to set the house on fire when he passed out… he apologized the next day… we never talked about it again, but I never had much interest in alcohol after that.”
The car grows silent for a few moments then Hendricks continues, “But… you… you said you don’t drink because of your father?”
“Yeah… yeah, I still don’t know why I even thought of him… the fucker… I guess he beat on me ’til I wised up… I was fourteen… my ma done run away six months before… hell, that only made him meaner… then all of a sudden one day, it was like, that was it… wud’n gon’ take any more… you know, it’s funny… the only thing he ever did worth a shit was play banjo… an’ he could play that fucker, sure as hell… I jus’ kept thinkin’ about that goddam banjo an’ how it was all he cared about… how much he loved that fuckin’ banjo… so one night when he was out playin’ with his buddies, I piled up all this furniture and stuff in front of the door… he was boozed up out of his mind when he got home… yellin’ and screamin’ an’ beatin’ on the door…’til he finally come ’round to the back where I was waitin’ …I’d turned off all the lights an’ he comes stumblin’ in, blind fuckin’ drunk… I knew I had him… you see my ol’ man was a fisherman an’ he always had these gill nets around… you know, fixin’ holes in ’em an’ stuff… so I spread one of ’em out on the kitchen floor an’ put a rope up by th’ door… soon as I hears him stumblin’ in, I jerked on that goddam rope an’ tripped him… asshole fell right in that goddam net… all fucked up an’ confused… he was already tangled up in it when I flipped the light on and tied that rope aroun’ an’ aroun’ an’ aroun’ him… then I beat the shit outta him with that goddam banjo… he just laid there on the floor blubberin’ while I pulled out my dick an’ pissed on him… I left after that… never saw th’ sunuvabitch again.” The old man sits in silence for a few moments, then continues, “You know, Stork, I never tol’ that story to nobody else.”
The Brickeaters Page 14