Way Past Legal

by Norman Green

  I could go on at length but I will not. From now on I will only reproduce the pronunciations when I can’t help myself. One final word: While a family whose members exhibit a consistent lack of judgment, ambition, and financial acumen may be called “a bunch of swamp Yankees,” a Yankee, by and large, is a baseball player from the remote and foreign isle of Noo Yok. You, however, are “not from round heah,” and should pull yaw christless Winnebago over to the side of the road once in a while, you son of a ho-ah, and let people who got to get to werk go on past. Ya bahstid.

  Gevier’s garage was about ten miles south of where the minivan had broken down. I had driven past the place on my way north, but I had taken no note of it on the way by, apparently, because I had no memory of it when Louis pulled his wreck of a Jeep off the road and into the yard. The yard must have been paved once upon a time, because traces of the blacktop still remained, and crushed stone filled in the holes where it had worn away. The building itself was made of concrete blocks unadorned by paint or siding, the roof was galvanized metal, and there was one oversized garage door that fronted on the yard, with a personnel door off to one side. An amazing array of vehicles was parked on the fringes of the yard, along the sides of the building, and among the trees out back. Some of them looked repairable—older American sedans, station wagons, and pickups—and there was a big green amphibious assault vehicle on black tires. But for the fading paint, it looked untouched by time. A lot of the other stuff was done for, though still interesting, like the ’57 Nomad that had weeds growing up through the empty engine compartment.

  When I opened the door of Louis’s pickup to get out, Nicky grabbed my arm and held on. I am the only thing in this kid’s entire universe that looks familiar, I thought. If I were in his shoes I would be shitting my pants. I took him by the hand and helped him down out of the truck.

  Gevier hadn’t shaved or washed his face in a while, or changed his clothes, either. Forget about a haircut. He had his feet up on his desk in his amazingly cluttered den of an office while he watched an afternoon soap opera on a black-and-white television that used a long piece of wire for an antenna. He had a fire burning in a wood stove fashioned out of two fifty-five-gallon steel drums.

  “Damned hot in heah,” Louis said to him. “Gonna burn all your wood up before it gets cold. Whattaya gonna do when winter comes?”

  Gevier did not move. “Don’t you worry about me,” he said. “End of September, you ain’t got a stick of firewood cut yet. I’ll bet you’re gonna be burning green wood all winter long, just like lahst yeah. And the yeah before that.”

  “No, sir,” Louis said. “I’m changing my ways, I’m gonna get it all cut in time this yeah. I got almost a cord left over, anyhow. Listen, I brought you a customah. This is Manny, and his van is broke down about five mile noth of heah.”

  Gevier dropped his feet to the floor and looked at me. “What happened?”

  “CV joint,” I told him.

  “Get her off the road?”

  “Yeah, I was lucky.”

  “No steerin’, all of a sudden, and when you step on the gas she revs but she don’t go nowheyah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “CV joint,” he said, nodding his head, “most likely. What is she?”

  I told him the make and the model, handed him the spare key. “You want some money up front?”

  “That’s all right,” he said. “If I got ya cah, I don’t guess you’ll get too fah off.” He looked at Louis. “Where ya gonna put ’im up?”

  “I was thinking he could stay up to Gerald’s trailah. Won’t be no one using it till hunting season.”

  “How is Gerald these days? I ain’t seen him in a while.”

  “No, he don’t get up to visit too often. He got laid off that air-freight place in Boston and had to go back doing long-haul driving. No telling where he is right now.”

  “Well, that’s a hell of a note.” He looked at me. “All right,” he said. “I’ll go get her, drag her back here, find out what we need. Then I’ll call Ford, see what they say. I’ll give a yell, tell ya the bad news.”

  We got back into Louis’s pickup and headed back north. I looked over at him.

  “Who’s Gerald?”

  “My son,” he said. “Ain’t no jobs up here, unless you want to work at the mill. Working at the mill can be discouraging, because you can see where yo-ah gonna be and how much yo-ah gonna make for the rest of yo-ah life, and it ain’t enough. Gerald lives down in Massachusetts. I give him the sixteen acres next to my house, and we put a little trailah on it. We’re gonna replace it with a cabin, but we can’t do it until Gerald saves up the money.” Louis shook his head. “He’ll get a union pension in another twenty years, and Social Security, if there’s any left. He had a 401(k), but the economy has ate that up. My grandson is going to college, so Gerald is gonna pay for that, too. It’s hahd, you know. You have a little dream, you think it’s just out of reach, but all the time it’s running faster than you are, you lose ground on it every day.”

  “So you rent out his trailer?”

  “Ayuh,” he said. “Fishing season and hunting season, ’lantic salmon and deer. Gevier’s daughter Edna takes care of the place, cleans it up and whatnot. You’ll like it.”

  “I’m sure I will. Better than sleeping in the woods. Ain’t that right, Nicky?”

  Nicky was sitting in my lap, looking out the window at the trees going by, swiveling his head to catch the occasional patches of ocean visible from the road, not paying any attention to the two of us. He looked up at me, no suspicion, no wariness, no fear in his eyes. He was trusting me to take care of him. “Yeah,” he said, nodding his head, unaware of what he was agreeing to. He was with his Poppy, and everything was gonna be okay. I felt uncertainty gnawing at my stomach, and I wondered if Louis’s son Gerald had that same feeling, worrying about college tuition.

  “You think Gevier can handle the van? I don’t know how many CV joints he sees.”

  Louis grinned. “Well,” he said, “he’s a bit queeah, I’ll give ya that. He was the smahtest person evah went to school round heah. Went off to college aftah high school, we all thought he’d be a rocket scientist or somethin’, but he come back up after twenty yeahs or so. You think that garage was a sight, you ought to see where he lives. He’s right downstreet from me, lives with his dottah Edna. Best damn mechanic I evah met, though, and I’ve met a few. He’ll take good care a ya.”

  Nicky got very still when he saw the police cruiser. It was parked on the shoulder behind the van, lights flashing. Louis pulled his truck over and stopped behind the police car. “We shoulda grabbed yoah bags befoah,” he said, staring out his windshield. “Now we gotta deal with this son of a hoah.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” I said. I felt Nicky tighten up in my lap.

  “His name is Thomas Hopkins,” Louis said. “He’s got the disposition of a bay-ah with a bad case of hemorrhoids.”

  “All right.” I gave Nicky a squeeze. “You stay here with Louis, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said, in a small voice.

  Hopkins got out of his car when he saw me coming. His yellow hair was cut boot-camp style, and he had pale blue eyes in a square face. He was about a head shorter than me but he was not a small guy—even without the bulletproof vest he was a big son of a bitch. Some guys never get over the fixation with height, though. You can build strength, you can build quickness, you can do the martial arts thing, carry a cannon, stick needles full of steroids in your ass and turn yourself into a monster, but if the other guy is taller than you, you still gotta look up to him. Hopkins was doing that now, and he did not look happy about it. Maybe it’s just the alpha male thing. “This yoah cah?”

  “Yeah,” I said. Hopkins was looking at the tattoos on my forearms. I was wearing a sweatshirt, and I had the sleeves shoved up to my elbows. “I broke down, and this gentleman was nice enough—”

  “You got any ID?”

  “Yeah.” I watched him as I slowly reached for my w
allet with my left hand. Hopkins was not theatrical about it, but he got ready for me to do something rash. He rose up on the balls of his feet, looking like he was hoping I would take a swing at him. I got the feeling then that if Hopkins and I had met in a bar, one of us would definitely have had a bad night. Maybe both of us. I came up with my wallet, fished out Emmanuel Williams’s license, and handed it to him. He glanced from the picture to my face.

  “Wait here for one minute, please.” He left me standing there, went back to his car, and talked on the radio for a minute. Back in the Jeep, I could see Louis mouthing the word “asshole.” Nicky’s eyes went from me to the cop and back. I winked at him, but he missed it.

  Hopkins didn’t find anything on Manny, Manny was cool. He came back and handed me the license. “Do you mind if I take a look through yoah cah? You have a right to refuse permission, and if you do, we will all wait right heah for a search warrant.”

  I watched the muscles working in the side of Hopkins’s jaw. I reached into my pants pocket for my keys, handed them to him. “Knock yourself out.”

  He looked at me, reached around behind him for something on his belt. It was my turn to bristle. No way this cocksucker is putting me in cuffs. He seemed to think about it, then change his mind. “Wait over here by the cruiser,” he said.

  “All right.”

  He walked up to the passenger-side door, glanced back at me, then went to work. Back in the Jeep, Louis was shaking his head in disgust, but I was beginning to sweat. Suppose whoever owned this van before me left a roach under the seat? Then it hit me. I had a hundred and twenty grand, more or less, wrapped up in a paper bag in one of my duffels. There might not be a law against it, but there’s nothing I can tell this bastard that will keep him from slapping those bracelets on me and taking me and Nicky to some police station until he’s satisfied I’m nothing more than a rich guy who likes to keep a lot of cash around, and not a bank robber. Or a burglar.

  I couldn’t believe I’d been so stupid.

  I didn’t even need the money. I’d been doing pretty well, as burglars go, and I had never developed the sailor-on-payday mentality that a lot of crooks get. I had a little better than thirty-five thousand bucks in a bank account in Emmanuel’s name, and I could access it through any ATM. I had taken the cash out of impulse, and now it was going to cost me. Maybe everything. I could see them sticking me in a cell, I could see Nicky, confused and losing hope, thrown back into the state machinery that would slowly grind him down, turning another lost child into someone like me.

  How could I have been such an idiot?

  Hopkins finished with the glove box, the console between the seats, the space under the front seats, and he moved on to the passenger compartment. All right, the guy is armed, he’s ready, and he looks tough, but I can handle him. Fuck, I have to handle him. When he gets to the bag the money is in, I’ll jump him, and then I’ll cuff him and leave him in the cruiser, I’ll take Louis’s keys, I’ll grab Nicky and we’ll take off. I’ll dump the van in Machias, right, boost a car. . . .

  The van doesn’t work, Einstein.

  Okay. I’ll never get far in Louis’s truck. I’ll cuff Hopkins, leave him with Louis. I’ll toss Louis’s keys into the woods, steal the cruiser. You can’t leave Hopkins with a gun, either. Oh, this is great, man, this is fucking brilliant. But what choice do I have? I’m not losing Nicky, not after all this.

  All right, I’ll bribe Hopkins with the money. That’s got a chance. What can the guy make, thirty-five, forty grand a year? It’s cash and it’s good, take it and drive away, buddy. . . . He might go for it. If he doesn’t, though, I’ve just made him a lot more difficult to handle, he’ll be expecting me to make some kind of move. Fuck it, I can still handle him. I better be able to handle him. . . . Okay, grab the police car, dump it in Machias, hope nobody notices an inconspicuous motherfucker such as myself, with a kid, driving a police car, leaving it someplace, stealing another car. Hey, it might work. And then what? Head for the Canadian border, maybe. If I remember the map right, we’ve gotta be about an hour from Calais, which is the first place you can cross. Maybe two hours. Do I have two hours? Louis or Hopkins might be able to walk to a phone in that time. And the van is registered in Emmanuel’s name, so if they get to a phone before I get across, I’m fucked. How about if I head for Ellsworth instead? I could dump the second car there, boost another one, head west instead of north, but now I don’t have a good ID anymore, so I’ll have to forget about Canada. Shit.

  There was nothing in the passenger compartment, so Hopkins moved back and opened the rear hatch. Three bags, two of mine and Nicky’s knapsack. Which one was the money in? I couldn’t remember. I glanced back at the Jeep, felt Nicky’s eyes on me. Hopkins grabbed one of my bags and unzipped it. I could feel my heart picking up speed and my mouth went dry. I got ready. Hopkins turned back to me, a condescending smile on his face. He had something in his hand.

  “What the hell is this?”

  I could barely talk. God, if you’re there, I owe you one, man. Another one. “It’s a spotting scope,” I croaked.

  “What’s it for?”

  “I’ll show you.” Hopkins stepped to one side. I wiped my hands on my jeans, hoped they weren’t shaking too much. I fished my tripod out of the bag, set it up, mounted the scope. I sat on the end of the van, scoped the far end of the field across the road from where we were parked. “All right,” I said. “Take a look.”

  I moved out of the way, and Hopkins peered through the scope. “What?”

  “Red-winged blackbird.”

  He straightened up, looked at me, incredulous. “You got this thing for looking at birds?”

  “Oh, yeah. I also got a digital camera that mounts onto it. Say I got a bird I can’t identify, okay, I can capture the image of the bird, download it onto my laptop, then compare the image to Sibley. That way—”

  “Sibley? What is a Sibley?”

  I reached into the bag, pulled out the fat hardcover edition.

  “Oh,” he said. I could see the transformation in him. I was no longer a threat to his manhood, I wasn’t a tattooed ironhead freak itching to find out if I could kick his ass, I was an eccentric, a harmless dork. A bird-watcher. “How much did all this crap cost you?”

  “The scope was about eight hundred, the camera was about a grand. I don’t remember what I spent on the tripod. Then, you know, there’s books, binoculars, not to mention the cost of trips and stuff.”

  He stared at me for a minute. He shook his head once. “All right. You can put all of this stuff away, Mr. Williams. I’m going back to have a word with Louis Avery.” He walked back to the Jeep.

  I broke the scope and the tripod down, stuck them back in the duffel bag. The paper bag with the money in it was at one end of the bag, underneath some shirts. My hands were shaking again as I thought about how close we had come to disaster. Stupid, man. No matter how careful I try to be, I still do something moronic at least once a day. . . . I got everything stowed, then turned and sat on the tail of the van and watched Hopkins back at the Jeep. Louis was wearing an expression of distaste. Hopkins, looking at Nicky, asked questions. Nicky, a true son of Brooklyn, looked at the floor and either shrugged, shook his head, or gave one-word answers. Attaboy, Nicky. Don’t tell him shit. After a while Hopkins got tired of it and came back up to the van.

  “Well, Mr. Williams,” he said, not looking at me, “I’m sorry for taking up yoah time. We’ve been having a lot of problems with the drug traffic in Washington County. I thought maybe I’d gotten lucky.” Hopkins avoided eye contact, looked like he despised apologizing, but someone must have told him he had to do it.

  “Drug traffic? You’re kidding me.”

  He shook his head. “Nope. I spend more time on OxyContin than just about anything else.”

  “Oh, yeah. Hillbilly heroin. I heard of that.”

  “I wish I hadn’t,” he said, and a little bit of that short-guy resentment came back into his voice. “Enjoy yoah time in
Maine,” he said, and one corner of his mouth lifted in what I would consider a sneer. Another time I would have called him on it. I don’t like unfinished business. Prison had given me this attitude, you know, you got a problem with me, let’s work it out right now. I didn’t say anything, though, I swallowed it. You got away with one stupid mistake, I told myself. Don’t make another one. Hopkins got back in his cruiser and fired it up, shut off the lights, pulled a U-turn, and drove away. I carried the bags back to the Jeep.

  “What a jerk,” Louis said when I got back in. Nicky climbed back into my lap.

  “Yeah,” I said. I was flooded with relief. I didn’t care about Hopkins. You’ve got to be smarter, I told myself. You came this close to losing everything.

  Louis went on, oblivious, shouting over the noise of the Jeep. “Ya know, the trouble with a fella like that, ya give him a nickel’s worth of authority, right away he wants to hit somebody with it.” He squirmed in his seat, warming to his subject. “Bookman says Hop is the smahtest officah he’s got, and he might be right about that, but Hop is too much of an ahshole to be walking around with a gun, you ahsk me.”

  “Who’s Bookman?”

  “County sheriff. Hoppie married one of the Pottle girls, but he smacked her around once too often and she run off to New Hampshah, left his sorry ahss. Now theyah ain’t a female up here with any sense will go out with him, he’s gotta do his laundry by hand. Serves him right.”

  “He said he had to go through all that back there because you guys have been having trouble with drugs. OxyContins, he said.”

  “Ayuh,” Louis said, “well, that much is true. My wife, Eleanor, is on that stuff. It’s the only thing will handle the pain spells she gets. Costs me almost two hundred a month. I’ve bought houses for lower payments than that. And ya practically need an escott when ya got to pick it up, because of how many addicts being so desperate for it. Probably don’t cost the drug company squat to make it, either. Anyhow, ya run across Hoppie again, wise man might keep an eye on him. Don’t call him Hoppie, neither, unless yo-ah ready to do battle. He don’t like it much.”