Bad Penny (13 page)

11
Precious Cargo

FRANK GOT HIMSELF comfortable on the particle board bench. Then Ed pulled out of the truck stop and turned onto the road. They passed the fat motorist and his dog; the man was still oblivious. A few moments later, Ed made a right and accelerated up the on-ramp to the interstate heading east.

Jesus lay on his back behind the front seats and gingerly felt his nose. He said, “It’s broken.”

Shotgun looked down at his face. “You look like a bulldog, man.”

Jesus cursed, something in Spanish. “We’re getting it looked at,” he said.

“Sure,” Ed said. “But we lock down everything first.” He looked in the rearview mirror.

Frank ignored Ed and turned to Tony. “I didn’t know Yeti Inc. had expanded its services.”

Tony shrugged and looked down. He was completely strung out. Heavy-lidded eyes he could barely keep open.

“What did you give him?” Frank asked.

“Bugs Bunny vitamins,” Ed replied. “They’re chock full of B.”

Frank turned back to Tony. “You’re going to be all right.”

Tony didn’t respond.

Frank nudged him with his foot. “Look at me.”

Tony looked up through slits.

“I told you I’d find you. We’re going to be all right.”

Tony gave a half nod. His lids fell. “Dude.”

“You lie down,” Frank said. “It will all work through your system.”

“Hey,” Tony said, but the rest was mumbled. Then he lay down on the carpet.

Frank looked at the girl. Early twenties. Smooth brown skin. Jeans and a green button-up blouse that had come untucked. She wore work boots. What kind of girl wore work boots? And those weren’t designer jeans either. They looked like they belonged on a man. Her dark hair hung down loosely to her shoulders and covered part of her face. What it didn’t cover revealed recent bruising. There was a scrape on her cheek. One lip was cut and swollen like she’d taken a fist or elbow to the mouth. She was out, sleeping like a baby on the filthy carpet next to Tony, her zip-tied wrists all angry and red like she’d been working at her bonds.

From Frank’s position it appeared she’d been abducted, beaten, thrown in a trunk, probably beaten again. She had not had a very good recent twenty-four hours.

He wondered how much these dirt bags were asking for her. Was she some drug dealer’s daughter? Or the daughter of an illegal who was now a prosperous businessman? Someone who could pay a hefty ransom. Or maybe this was blackmail—maybe her daddy was a politician, maybe someone in her family was chosen to testify in some court. Or maybe this was payback.

Frank shook his head. There was a whole shadow world out there where people were killed and kidnapped; they lived and died and worked for dirt, unseen, in the shadows, and only the tip of the iceberg ever came to the attention of the police. They lived on U.S. soil, but the suburban-apple-pie-fourth-of-July Americans rarely saw them. When they did, it was like the fleeting sighting of a mountain goat up in the rocks as you raced past at seventy mph.

Frank looked around the back of the van. He looked for anything—a screw, a pencil, a piece of wood. There was nothing. Up behind the passenger’s seat sat a clear plastic tub with handles that came up and locked on the sides. It was full of what looked like black socks.

Frank twisted his wrists: the zip tie was good and tight. They’d done a bang-up job on him, or at least that’s what they thought.

He assessed the space between him and Shotgun. Jesus was lying still in his own miserable world. Ed was driving. Frank could probably make it to Shotgun before he brought his weapon around. One blow to his face, maybe to his eyes, and Frank could break his skinny, but finely decorated neck.

But what would the cost be? Shotgun would likely have his finger on the trigger. He would discharge the shotgun with the barrel pointing somewhere in the direction of the back of the van before he said goodbye. It would make one hell of a sound in this little space. Make them all half deaf and put a ringing in their ears that would take hours to fade.

The shot from such a gun might blow a nice hole in the side of the van and then go on to hit any car that might be in the next lane. It might blow a hole in the floor. It might hit Jesus. But it also just might hit Tony or the girl.

A bullet from a handgun punched a relatively small hole through the body. In the right spot it could kill immediately. But more likely it would zip on through the target, and you’d have to wait for enough blood to spill out before the heart failed to pump the life-giving juice to the brain. Only then would your man be truly incapacitated. It was all about blood pressure and springing leaks.

A shotgun, on the other hand, turned everything in its path to ground beef. At six feet, even with that short barrel, the spread pattern would still be just a few inches wide. Maybe as wide as the bottom of a Coke can. If it was loaded with double-aught buck shot, then nine pellets, each about as big in diameter as Lincoln’s head on a penny, would fill that space. It was like getting shot with nine .22 rifles all at once. Except these pellets were .33 caliber, a little bigger, a little heavier than the bullets from a .22. They would blast into Tony at more than 1,000 feet per second, chew up anything in their path, and blow out the other side, leaving nothing but carnage in their wake. A wound that big, taken in the torso, was not something you survived, which was why people who got hit that close with a shotgun rarely made it to the hospital.

Frank put aside his plan to break Shotgun’s neck and sat tight, watching as Ed followed the interstate through Laramie, home of the University of Wyoming Cowboys. Frank hoped Pinto and Sam hadn’t run into any trouble. Of course, with the plane painted in University of Wyoming colors, they could say they were Cowboys coming for an early tail gate. Surely the locals would welcome them with a beer and open arms.

The interstate led into the canyon, then up into the mountains. The sun was setting, lighting up the whole hillside in glorious color. Ed kept his speed right around the legal limit. A highway patrol vehicle shot down the canyon on the other side of the interstate, but by the time Frank spotted it, it was too late to have made enough of a ruckus to attraction his attention.

Frank watched the road and what he could see of the light show out the front, running scenarios through his mind. He could go for them when they unloaded; he could take a dump on the floor and see if that didn’t goad Shotgun to come back; he could go for Shotgun’s weapon, and not Shotgun himself. They reached the summit and the massive monument with Lincoln’s head on top appeared off to the left, a blaze of glory in the fading light, and then Lincoln was behind them.

Shotgun turned around and opened the plastic tub full of black socks. Except they weren’t socks. They were hoods. He threw three of them at Frank. “Two for them. One for you, dick head. Put them on.” He pointed his shotgun at them.

Shotgun was a skinny thing, a bit twitchy and drawn out. His teeth were bad, which could mean he hadn’t learned how to brush as a lad or that something more industrial was eating them, something manufactured in great quantities in Mexico and shipped north. Nothing like red phosphorus, Drano, and battery acid to give a man that winning smile.

“I get carsick,” Frank said. “You want me to barf all over the back?”

“I think we just kill the big one,” Shotgun said.

Ed looked into the rearview mirror. “It’s up to you, Jockstrap. You can make this easy. Or you can dig yourself a hole. Where these boys come from, a dead body doesn’t mean a thing.”

Frank nodded. A hole was being dug, but it wasn’t his. “Are these your boys?” Frank asked.

Ed didn’t reply.

Frank looked at Shotgun. “Is Ed the jefe?”

Shotgun pointed at Jesus. “You laid out the jefe’s son, verga. Estúpido como un perro.” As stupid as a dog.

“But I sure am good looking,” Frank said.

“Put on the hood,” Ed said.

“Tell me who I’m dealing with.”

“You just prettied up one of the Goroza family,” Ed said.

Frank had never heard of them.

“Estúpido como un perro,” Shotgun said again.

Frank knelt on the nasty carpet, pulled Tony a bit closer, then picked up a hood and slid it over his head. He wondered who the Gorozas were and the size of their operation.

“Get it on real good,” Shotgun said.

Frank pulled it down, but made sure the material was pulled as far away from Tony’s face as possible. He did the same for the girl.

“Now you, dick wad,” Shotgun said.

“How long did you spend coming up with that one? The effort must have been tremendous.”

“Shaw,” Ed warned.

Frank sat back on the bench and pulled the hood over his head. It was good thick cotton, but it had been used and smelled faintly of rancid hair oil and something else minty that had probably been lip balm. He wondered what woman had worn this last. Frank found he could see out the bottom, so he studied his feet.

Ed turned on the radio to some Mexican station, then searched until he found something classical. Some guy with a heavy voice came on and said they were going to listen to Claude Debussy. Then the piano music started.

The light in the van diminished, indicating the sun was finally setting. Frank figured it was past eight o’clock. Ed and Shotgun talked in low tones. They argued about the radio station and getting food, then rode on in silence.

About thirty minutes later, the van started to slow, and then the blinker began to click-clack and they exited the freeway. Frank concentrated on the movement. They didn’t want him to know where they were going, but he could feel his way well enough. They didn’t make a big cloverleaf turn to go north, nor did they make a gentle bending turn. This wasn’t the interchange between I-80 and I-25. It was just a regular exit before or after that. But he’d heard an increase in traffic five minutes earlier, which meant they were probably somewhere east of the big interchange in Cheyenne, but not too far east.

They drove down a slope and stopped. Then they turned right. South. They traveled straight for a while, stopping now and again at what had to be traffic lights, because he could hear the cars to the side and behind stop and speed up. They went south for quite some time, then turned east onto a dirt road.

It was night, made even blacker by the hood. They rumbled along for a while over the dirt road, made a few more turns, and then Ed rolled onto gravel, let the van idle for a second, then shut the engine off.

Ed and Shotgun got out and slid open the side door. Cool night air rushed in. Frank listened hard. No dogs. No cars. Nothing but the night air breathing with crickets. They were out in the middle of nowhere. Out in the Colorado plains. Out in old Shawnee land.

Jesus got out. Then the back doors opened.

Frank reached up to remove his hood, but Shotgun slapped his head. “Keep your hood on, dick chew.”

“Please stop,” Frank said. “I don’t know if I can bear up underneath this devastating verbal onslaught.”

They opened the padlock holding the bicycle cable, and Ed said, “You’re going to get out the back. And you’re not going to do anything stupid, because I don’t want to have to kill you, Frank. Or your fine piece of Tony.”

Not here in the van, but Ed could very well want to kill him as soon as he stepped out and moved to a better spot.

“Get up,” Shotgun said.

The girl got up and exited the van, crunching on the gravel. Tony followed. Frank came last. It was pitch dark outside. No city glow, no street lights, nothing but a bit of moonlight.

“This way,” Ed said.

Frank shuffled blindly forward, the gravel crunching under his feet. “Tony, you feeling better?”

“I can keep my eyes open,” Tony said.

“Nothing to worry about here,” Frank said.

“That’s right,” Ed said up ahead of them in his best imitation of a friendly snake. “You’re all going to be fine. Just a little catch and release.”

Except that isn’t what this was. Frank knew it. Ed knew it.

A screen door squeaked open; the handle of a regular door turned. Someone pushed on Frank’s shoulder to change his direction, and then he walked up some steps into a dark house and onto some linoleum. It stunk like someone had been cooking fish.

“Hey, qué hubo?” How’s it going, a new male voice said. So the house had occupants, but they probably kept the lights out just to make sure nobody saw what they brought in.

“Primo,” Shotgun replied. “We got the puta.”

“This way, people,” Ed said. “You’re going downstairs.”

They walked around a corner, still in the dark, and then someone flipped a switch and a light went on. Not much, but he didn’t need much for it to make a big difference. Frank could see the stairs out of the bottom of his hood. They were narrow stairs, covered in old linoleum, going down into an old basement.

He didn’t like this, but he followed the girl and Tony down the creaking stairs. It smelled of old cement and must. There was a whiff of old urine overlaid with something floral.

Someone put a black nylon restraint belt around Frank’s waist, the kind used to transport prisoners. The kind that had a metal loop in the front to which hand cuffs were attached.

Who said convicts couldn’t learn from their betters?

They backed him up to a home-made 2x4 and plywood bench, knocked him off balance, and sat him down. He was going to protest, but Shotgun pressed the barrel of his weapon hard into Frank’s face and shoved his head against the wall. And then they broke out the zip ties again, looping one through the zip tie on Frank’s wrists, down through the loop on his restraint belt, and finally through a wide half-moon hole someone had cut out of the front of the bench. They’d run a long length of rebar all along the underside of the seat right at the front. This new zip tie was attached to that. But they didn’t stop. Two more zip ties came out, one to tie each ankle to one of the many bench legs. When they were done, they stood back.

Frank tried to move, but they’d done a solid job, and he began to wonder if maybe he should have done something on the way in.

They zip tied Tony and the girl next to him. Then Shotgun ripped the hood off Frank’s head.