Double Shot

by Chris Bostic

  “I’m totally exhausted.”

  “I know. Me, too.” Lee shoved off the door to start walking, completely oblivious to my hesitation. “We’ll grab the water bottles on the way. That should help.”

  “I’ll grab a nap,” I muttered, but I wouldn’t do that to Lee. He sort of needed me to help, I supposed, though I might have been more of a liability than an asset when it came to sneaking around.

  Mostly I needed to not be alone at that moment.

  I followed behind him, grumbling under my breath the whole time. Not at Lee. He didn’t deserve that. I was more aggravated at the situation in general.

  Before we got back to our hiding place, I slowed short of the rick where several barrels were missing, and pointed ahead. “This where they were at?”

  “Should be-” Lee paused abruptly, and crouched at the end of the rick to reach inside. “Well, well, well. What do we have here?”

  “Printer paper,” I deadpanned as he held up a few sheets.

  “An inventory list.”

  “Let me see that.” I butted in next to him. It only took a second to recognize the spreadsheet. “Now I know who Bethany’s the guys were.”

  “No shit. You’re right.” Lee stared at me. “You think she’s in on this?”

  “I dunno.” After I gave it a little more thought, I shook my head. “I wouldn’t think so.”

  “I’m just asking ‘cause I don’t know her at all.”

  “I don’t know her real well either, but it seems unlikely. I would think she just thought she was doing her job. But it’s still weird. Very weird.”

  “That’s as good of a way to look at it as any.” Lee looked down the hallway. “In the grand scheme, it probably doesn’t matter. So I reckon we better get going.”

  “Fair enough.” I let him lead, and soon found myself stopping again to duck into our hiding place to retrieve the water bottles. I came back out with a bottle in each hand and called out, “Hey, water boy. Catch.”

  He turned around just in time to snag the bottle out of thin air, possibly taken aback by my silliness.

  I’ll admit, I was being kind of a reckless brat in the moment, but it was just the annoyance of everything getting the best of me.

  I decided I really needed to get out of the bourbon business—and pretty much every other occupation I’d tried to date.

  I took a big swig of my bottle, and that perked me up a tiny bit. By the time we made it to the far door, I was crumpling the bottle and tossing it aside.

  Lee finished his last swallow and threw his bottle down next to mine.

  Semi-refreshed, I settled back on my heels and leaned against a rick as Lee cracked the door open. He watched outside for a little while through a sliver, before finally holding it wide open.

  “We can go.” He looked back at me. “You ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be.”

  “So not much.” He gave me a sad, crooked smile and took my hand. “Let’s just get this over with and get the hell outta here.”

  “I’m good with part two of that plan.” Before he could reply, I figured I’d better toughen up a bit. He needed support, not a whiner. “Just kidding, man.” I slapped him on the butt like a football player. “Let’s do this.”

  “I like that,” he said, smile blossoming. “That’s more like it.”

  “There’s more where that came from when this is over.”

  Or I might collapse on the couch and sleep for a couple days. Hard telling.

  CHAPTER 20

  We took off across the field, working our way toward the distillation building. It was more of a jog than a sprint seeing how there was a fair amount of ground to cover. I bent over at the waist, making the running all the less comfortable. But it seemed like the thing to do when trying to avoid detection, even though we were in the wide open.

  On the positive side, we were out of direct line of sight from the loading side of the building. The dock was situated on the far end, where barrels could be rolled right off the truck and into the dumping area of the bottling hall.

  My breathing grew labored, even at the jog. I was glad I hadn’t worn pants, as I could imagine the pistol bouncing in my waistband, rubbing against my skin. Probably trying to fall out onto the ground, much like my courage.

  Better yet not having a weapon in hand, seeing how I didn’t want to attract any more attention than necessary. It looked bad enough that we were running. Worse yet if someone saw me brandishing Lee’s big pistol.

  Lee had holstered his smaller pistol as well. He set a steady pace and appeared not nearly as winded. He’d done that before to me, practically running me into the ground trying to keep up with him.

  But I wouldn’t tell him to stop. I much preferred to get to cover, then collapse.

  The heat sapped my strength. My lungs burned, but I pressed onward.

  Finally, we reached the edge of the building, and hunkered down below a bank of windows on the story above. That was where the fermenters were located, up in the corner where they could catch a breeze through the windows on warmer days.

  I put my hands behind my head and tried to suck in a deep breath. The humidity didn’t make it easy.

  I bent over at the waist. Not ideal for filling the lungs, but it made me feel the slightest bit better at first. Then nauseous.

  Lee rubbed my back as I coughed. A deep, ugly gargle of a cough that wracked my whole body.

  “Straighten up,” he said. “You need to breathe.”

  He was right. I knew that much, but it was more the effort required to move.

  “C’mon, Hope. You got this.”

  “I got…shit,” I muttered between shallow breaths, and tried to lift my head. Just the simple movement made me lightheaded.

  I wonder if this is what heat stroke is like.

  I slumped back against the building. Lee moved in to prop me up. Though I didn’t need more warmth, it felt good to lean my head on his shoulder.

  “We got a minute,” he whispered as he continued rubbing my back. “Catch your breath. We’re good.”

  “I’m…trying.”

  Eventually I got enough air in my lungs to find my bearings. I straightened up a little to find Lee’s arms wrapped around my waist, steadying me and I hadn’t even noticed.

  “I’m useless,” I said. “Leave me here.”

  “No way,” he said. “I’m not getting separated from you again.”

  “I won’t move. I’ll wait here.”

  He shook his head aggressively. “Don’t you quit on me. We’re a team.”

  “Piss poor team. Probably lose all our games.”

  “We won the last one.”

  It took me a second to realize he was talking about the ordeal at Bison Fork. I had no interest in playing that kind of game again. Life or death, high stakes stuff was not a game to me.

  But I realized that was sort of the way he looked at it. Probably to keep himself sane, or calm, or whatever it was that kept him from being a trembling wreck like me.

  Time to put on my big boy pants.

  I pulled at my imaginary waistband, visualizing like I was hiking my pants back up from where the pistol would have been trying to drag them down.

  Following a deep breath, I said, “Alright. Lead on, Cowboy. I’m ready.”

  He bumped me with his shoulder, nearly knocking me over with a light tap. “That’s the spirit.”

  “Lots of spirits. Reckon a double shot’s what I need to calm my nerves.”

  “Let’s catch ‘em red handed, then we can have a little celebratory drink.”

  Whiskey still didn’t sound that great to me, especially with the heat. But I didn’t rain on his parade.

  “I’m down with that,” I said instead and firmed up my countenance. “It’ll be a helluva nightcap tonight, if I can stay up ‘til dark.”

  “If not, we’ll start early.”

  Lee walked us toward the corner of the building, and fished out his wad of keys one last time. He unlocked
the nondescript, solid metal door. It was a fire exit, which made me tense up for a moment, half-expecting an alarm to sound when he pulled it open.

  Nothing happened other than the soft creak of little used hinges.

  Lee stuck his head inside to check, then pulled the door wider. “Here we go.”

  “Great,” I mumbled and followed him down a short hallway, right on his heels. Literally, almost taking his shoe off in the process. “Sorry.”

  “It’s cool. No worries.” He bent over long enough to fix it, and to reach into his ankle holster. The pistol came out.

  He held it behind his back, perhaps to avoid a misunderstanding if we stumbled upon the thugs actually working.

  But there’s no way they’re still on the job.

  We should be calling the cops.

  I mentally kicked myself for not pushing the issue with Lee. When they took off for the bottling hall, it seemed almost impossible that they weren’t up to something suspicious.

  Then again, I’d been wrong before. If they were just simply moving barrels to get ready for tomorrow, it would have constituted overtime, and that clearly wasn’t illegal. The illegality came if they actually started dumping them and doing the work of the bottling crew. Or after they’d bottled and hauled new bottles out to their personal vehicles.

  “Damn, we need the cameras working…to catch ‘em in the act,” I whispered to Lee.

  “Ideally,” he agreed. “Better that than having us witness it, but we can’t get to the cameras with them in there.”

  “I know.” I sighed. “What fools we’ll look like if we bring in the cops for nothing.” When Lee agreed, I said, “Still, I know they’re up to something fishy.”

  “Oh hell yeah. Fishier than the Great Lakes.” Lee grabbed the handle on the outer door. “As soon as we get proof, we’re outta here. I promise you that.”

  “I’ll hold you to it.”

  “I know you will.”

  Lee pulled the hallway door open. It led directly into the still room, as he had noted. I should have realized that seeing how the square tower part of the building rose right above us.

  Lee moved to the side, since a giant tube of copper practically blocked the way right in front of us. I swear it was as big around as a California redwood, and seemed just about as tall.

  Clearly not, but up close the column was certainly impressive.

  I had to incline my head all the way back to see the top, and followed the condenser piping over to a sidewall where the new make would drop into a splitter box.

  Heads and tails. Hearts and….

  I blanked out on the other term for the bitter, lower proof part of the alcohol that ran out at the end of distillation.

  Whatever.

  It wasn’t important right then. Keeping up with Lee was the chore, but he made it much easier to do that inside than he had outside.

  He moved deliberately, stopping at the corner to listen before he stuck his heard around to check.

  After a quick wave that all was clear, he hugged the wall as he moved on to the next turn. He stopped at that corner and pointed high up on the wall.

  I nodded when I saw the video camera. Too high to check for batteries, even with a step ladder, which explained why it still received a signal.

  I looked at it more closely to see if I could figure out why it had appeared cloudy on the video feed. It wasn’t covered with a shirt or cloth or anything I’d assumed before. Obviously it wasn’t smoke from inside the building.

  Instead, it looked like someone had spray painted the lens white to match the rest of the housing on the camera.

  Lee pointed to a barrel in the corner. That explained a lot. It still wouldn’t have made Bowling Ball tall enough to reach the camera, but high enough to coat it with paint.

  Lee waved us on. We cleared the rest of the column still section of the little distillation room, then advanced beyond to a couple holding tanks for the pot still.

  From the doubler, which used a copper pot shape to make the distillate into a barreling quality alcohol, we turned another corner and came face to face with a stairwell.

  That would bring us up to the same level as fermenting. More importantly, a view of bottling too.

  CHAPTER 21

  “Off we go,” Lee said, pausing for just a second at the base of the steps.

  Ever since Bison Fork, I’d been freaked out about stairs. Most of the time, I saw myself standing guard at the top, ready to shoot down anyone coming up. Then I’d do a little flip test and put myself in the opposite situation, ready to be gunned down when my head popped over the floorboards.

  It was a good thing Lee went first, though it didn’t make me much more comfortable.

  The steps, of course, were a metal grid that seemed to hum or sing with every step, no matter how gentle. We went painfully slow, to the point I thought my stomach might be better off if we just ran for it.

  Just shy of the top, Lee stopped. I bent over and swallowed at the bile in the back of my throat. I cursed under my breath an untold number of times, thoroughly ready to be out of the trap and into a more open room—as counterproductive as that seemed for a stealth operation.

  Lee moved on, but the next spot wasn’t much more open. We found ourselves on a catwalk of metal gridding that ran along a row of fermenting tanks—three in total.

  Nowhere near the size of the industrial operation at Bison Fork with its twelve tanks, but Old Tyler prided itself on craftsmanship over production volumes.

  Too bad their craftsmen are crooks.

  We went back to a crouch, keeping our eyes just above the tops of the fermenting tanks. I snuck a peek into the first one, putting my head over the edge to stare inside a steel tank full of the classic sour mash. I’d photographed it dozens of times for promo pics, but not usually from that close.

  “Careful,” Lee cautioned. “You’ll pass out.”

  I knew I was tired, but it seemed like a strange thing to say. Lee picked up on my confusion.

  “That’s pure carbon dioxide coming off those tanks. That’s what the bubbles are.”

  I looked at the bubbles breaking the surface through a clumpy yellow mixture that looked like cream of wheat, grits, or something similarly nasty.

  “Breathe deep and I’ll pass out?”

  “Maybe. Or more like definitely considering how tired and winded we are.”

  I leaned back a little farther, then gave up on looking altogether. It didn’t matter what was in the tanks. We weren’t looking for a hiding place. We needed to be moving on.

  Lee pointed to the far wall. “We can get a look at the bottling lines through those windows.”

  “Not too far to go,” I said, my nerves making me state the obvious again. I really wished I could kick that habit.

  We stayed in our crouch, slowly advancing over the metal grid flooring. At least it didn’t sing like the stairs. Or groan.

  The only groaning came from me. Being a lowly office worker mostly tied to my desk for the last few months, my feet ached. My back as well.

  My earlier headache had eased a bit, thanks to the water, but I was far from back to normal. My chest stayed tight. My heart pounding out a fast rhythm wasn’t doing me any favors either.

  The windows ahead were tall and narrow, starting at maybe two feet above the grid. From the platform, we could get in front of three of them. Lee broke off for the one on the left, leaving me to head for the one immediately to his right.

  To keep out of view, we needed to crouch over extra low, to the point it seemed like we might be better off crawling than attempting to walk.

  As we closed the distance, the first strange noises in a while carried to my ears. Something pounded. Metal clanged.

  The nearer we drew, the better I could hear muffled voices. One of them sounded clearly deeper than the others.

  More thumping and clanking followed. The men seemed more interested in speed than quiet, which I verified once I stuck my head barely above the sill of the
window.

  The second I had a quick look I jerked back down.

  “Well, they’re bottling,” I whispered to Lee, who’d also had a look.

  “Technically they’re still trying to dump the barrels,” he said with a chuckle. That drew an icy stare from me. “But, yeah. This takes it up a whole new level.”

  “Clearly they’re stealing, or intending to steal. There’s no other reason for a barrel crew to be doing the bottling crew’s job.”

  “And not very well at that.” Lee chuckled again. “Looks and sounds like they’re having trouble getting the barrels up to the trough for dumping.”

  “You think they even know how to use the machine?”

  “I’d say doubtful, but they might have enough collective brainpower to figure it out.” Lee scratched at his head. “Then again, the manual line is a whole lot easier to use. There’s no need to run the automated one for a few barrels.”

  “All the specialties are hand bottled,” I noted from my earlier photo sessions. Those particular days were great for getting pictures of the bottling team in action.

  Lee had already backed away from the window. He waved me over to him.

  “Now I can make the call.” He gestured with his head toward the staircase we’d come up. “Let’s just get a little farther away from here first.”

  “Fine with me.”

  Lee reached into his back holster to pull out the big pistol for me. “I think we’re good, but….you might want this now.”

  I hesitated, sort of wanting to hang onto it, yet wondering if the crew downstairs was preoccupied enough to leave us alone.

  I took it from him, hefting it in my hand. All the thoughts about having to shoot someone flooded through me.

  We’re gonna be fine.

  “I don’t need this,” I said, thinking it was all the better to let my bodyguard secure the weapon. Lee was already on the move when I finally went to hand it over.

  “Say what?” He turned and knocked into me. The gun went flying, clattering onto the metal floor.

  “Fuck!” My eyebrows about flew off my forehead.

  Lee scooped up the gun quickly, panic evident in his expression.