Cold City (Repairman Jack - the Early Years Trilogy) (8 page)

“There’s been more than one?”

“Of course there’s been more than one,” Bertel said, sounding a bit testy. “Good driver’s licenses don’t grow on trees. 

Maybe he didn’t like being awakened at 2:30 in the morning.

“What happened to the last Buechner?”

“Got domesticated.  He stashed away enough for a down payment on a house. Married a teacher and joined the nine-to-five life. Is that what we can expect from you?”

“Not likely.”

Bertel looked dubious.  “We’ll see.  This is where you’ll drop off and pick up the truck.  You will give Tony the truck keys, and he will give you a room key.  While he takes the truck off to stock it, you will catch a little sleep.  He will return at six A.M., at which time you will both trade keys again.  Then you will drive north to an address I will give you later.” 

He sounded like he was reading from a teleprompter.

“That’s it?” Jack said.

“That’s it.  I believe in keeping things simple.”

And cellular, Jack realized.  Jack knew neither Tony’s last name nor where he took the truck to stock up.  Tony knew nothing about Jack except that his name was not Lonnie Buechner; probably didn’t know where Jack was dropping the cargo either.  He’d bet only Bertel knew the whole operation.

Smart.

Jack checked the number on his key: room A-9.  He yawned.

“See you in a few hours.”

As he started toward the motel he glanced over his shoulder and saw Bertel climb into the truck cab with Tony.  They were gone by the time he reached his door.

Not a bad room, not a great room.  Just a room with a bed.  Jack had assumed he’d conk right off, but that hadn’t happened.  He kept thinking about the drive back, about being pulled over for some careless minor infraction and having the cop tell him to open up the back of the truck.

So now he sat by the window and waited for that truck.

2

Bertel and Tony arrived at 6:07.  They brought donuts in a box labeled “Krispy Kreme.”  Jack jumped on the coffee first.  Not so great, but he desperately needed caffeine.  He tried one of the donuts.  He’d never heard of Krispy Kreme – he was used to Dunkin’ Donuts – so he played it safe and chose a glazed.  It all but melted in his mouth.

“Holy crap, where’d you get these?”

“Down the road apiece,” Tony said with a knowing grin.  “They’re a local chain.  To die for, right?”

“They’ve
got
to come to New York.  They could clean up.”

He grabbed one of the heavier cake donuts and found it even better than the first.

“Okay,” Bertel said.  “Now that you’ve been introduced to the local delicacies, down to business.  You’ve got forty master cases of Marlboros on board.”

“What’s a master case?” Jack said as he scarfed down the second Krispy Kreme and reached for a third.  He could binge on these all morning.  He felt like a young Abe in training.

“Fifty cartons – five hundred packs.”

Jack blinked as he multiplied.  “That’s…”  

“Right – twenty thousand packs.”

“Can I see?”

He tried to sound innocently curious, but he wanted to make sure he’d be hauling what they said he’d be hauling. 

“Yeah,” Bertel said.  “I wanted to show you how it’s laid out.”

He led Jack around the back where he keyed open a padlock.

“We could have fit a few more cases,” he said as he pulled open the doors.  “But we need a certain amount of camouflage.”

Jack caught a short surfboard as it fell through one of the swinging doors.

“Whoa!”

“Good catch,” Tony said.  “That’s one of the props.”

Jack saw a disassembled bike, hanging clothes, a couple of floor lamps, and other odds and ends packed just inside the doors.  Behind them, boxy shapes were piled to the roof and draped with moving pads. 

Jack lifted the flap of one of the pads and saw a shrink-wrapped cardboard box labeled “Marlboro.”

“Checking up on us?” Bertel said.  He looked more amused than annoyed.

Jack gave only a shrug as a reply.  Seeing a cigarette brand name on the boxes didn’t guarantee they weren’t filled with ganja, which would put him on a whole other level of legal trouble if he got caught.  But Abe had said Bertel was a straight shooter.  He’d have to go with that.

Bertel added, “I’d think less of you if you hadn’t.”

Tony repositioned the surfboard, then Bertel reclosed the doors and locked up.

“I’ll keep this,” he said, holding up the key.

Jack wasn’t so sure he liked that.  “What if I’m stopped for some reason and the cop wants to see inside?”

“First off, he needs probable cause.  And he’s not going to have that, is he?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“You didn’t do anything stupid like sneak your Ruger along, did you?”

“Would have liked to, but…”  He shook his head.

As much as it would have made him feel safe, getting caught smuggling unstamped cigarettes would be bad enough, but adding an unregistered weapon to the charges – uh-uh.

“Smart.”  He handed Jack a sheet from a yellow legal pad.  “Here’s your route north.”

“Same as down, right?”

“Right.  Be faster on the freeways, but this way is safer.  We always check the truck six ways from Sunday before we let it go.  All the lights and signals work.  All the rental papers are in the glove compartment.  But if you
are
stopped, just turn off the engine and keep your hands on the steering wheel.  Be ready to show that new license and the rental papers.”

“What if he asks–?”

“You don’t have the key.”

“Won’t that make him suspicious?”

“Explain that you’re helping your girlfriend move.  Her father rented the truck – his name’s Robert McAllister, right there on the rental agreement – and locked it up after you helped pack it.  You’d be glad to let him look, but–”  He gave a helpless shrug.  “What this does is deflect the cop’s annoyance from you to the father.  Now he’s got to have
real
probable cause.  He’s got to see contraband in the truck cab or he’s got to have a drug-sniffing dog raise a ruckus before he can do anything.”

“But we’ve got no drugs, right?”

“Just nicotine, and they aren’t trained to sniff for that. If he really wants a look, he’s going to have to impound the truck to get a warrant to open it.  Does he want to go through all that for what’s most likely nothing, and leave himself looking like a dummy?”

Jack had to smile.  “Sounds like you’ve really thought this thing through.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been doing it awhile.” 

“But if it’s locked and can’t be opened, why the bike and the surfboard and stuff?”

Bertel glanced at Tony.  “Told you he was sharp.”  Back to Jack: “Because on one of the rare times one of our guys was stopped – this was on a Detroit run – the cop used a crow bar to pry open a corner of one of the doors and flashed his light inside.  Luckily all he saw was one of the moving pads that had slipped down against the door, but it got me to thinking.  If that happened again and he saw typical dorm-room stuff, he’d be satisfied.”

Jack was starting to feel better about the trip.

Bertel motioned him toward the front of the truck.  “Two more things.”  He opened the passenger door and grabbed something from inside.  “Wear this.”

A gray sweatshirt.  Jack held it up.  The front showed a cartoony wolf wearing a NCSU cap.  Beneath him:
NC State Wolfpack
.

“My new alma mater,” Jack said.

“And check this.”

Bertel handed him what looked like a cream-colored brick with buttons along one face and a black antenna sticking out the top.

“Hey, a car phone.  Cool.”

“Yeah.  Cool.  Keep it plugged into the cigarette lighter.  If you need to call me, the number’s on the directions sheet – under ‘Mr. McAllister.’  I don’t want to hear from you unless it’s absolutely necessary – like you’re being searched or you’ve had a breakdown or you’re running an hour or more behind schedule.  Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Good.”  He tapped the yellow sheet.  “If you keep to the speed limits – and you will keep to the limits – it will take you about eight hours, depending on traffic.  I’ll expect you at that address around mid afternoon.  Now get going.”

“But when I reach Jersey City–”

“I’ll be there.”  He held up the key.  “Somebody’s got to unlock those doors.”

3

All that worry for nothing.  The trip turned out to be a piece of cake.  No one paid him the least bit of attention.  Along the way, Jack did some calculations. 

He had twenty thousand packs of cigarettes on board.  If Bertel took a markup of just fifty cents a pack, the profit on this load was ten grand.  That made paying Jack a thou small potatoes.  And Bertel was talking three runs a week just for Jack.  That didn’t count the runs to Boston and Detroit he’d mentioned.  What about runs he hadn’t mentioned? 

Dane Bertel was raking it in.

He had overhead, of course.  Needed other employees besides Tony and Jack.  Had to rent space somewhere to store all the ciggies.  But still… all those runs a week, fifty-two weeks a year.  Jack wondered how he laundered the money.

The route through Jersey City was slow, winding through a maze of rutted streets, some with exposed streetcar tracks, flanked by empty, dilapidated buildings.  When he reached the address – a graffiti-coated garage looking as empty and dilapidated as everything else – he stayed in the truck. 

After a good five-minute wait, a bearded guy wearing a long brown robe and some kind of embroidered pillbox hat – inanely Jack wondered what it would look like in leopard skin – stepped through a paneled door and approached. He tapped on the passenger window and held up a pack of Marlboros. 

Jack fought an urge to say, No, thanks, don’t smoke.  Instead he nodded. 

The guy signaled to another robed beard in the doorway and the garage door began to rise.  As the first beard motioned him to back into the garage, Jack looked around for Bertel.  He said he’d be here with the key.  Where the hell was he?

Well, he’d talked about delivering the load to an Egyptian named “the Mummy,” and these guys certainly fit the Egyptian mold, so Jack began the laborious process of backing the truck through the barely wide-enough opening.  With helpful hand signals from the beards, he succeeded without losing a side mirror.  As the door rolled back down its tracks, Jack turned off the engine. 

The first guy tapped on the window again and made a turning motion with his hand, indicating the need for a key. 

Jack rolled the window down a couple of inches.  “The boss has it.”

The guy looked baffled.  Didn’t he speak English?

Jack held up the key chain, showing only the ignition key.  “No key for the lock.”

Again that baffled look.  He hurried through a doorway into what looked like a tiny office and yammered something.  He emerged with a taller, heavier man following – thicker body, thicker beard, but wearing a white skullcap.  If this was the Mummy, he didn’t look like one.

“I have never seen you before,” he said in a heavily accented bass voice.

“Well, that makes two of us.”

“We need the key to open the back.”

“My boss has it.  He said he’d be here.”

“He usually is but he is not.  Usually the driver has the key.”

Was that so?  Interesting.  But it made sense in a way.

“This is my first run.”

The guy hesitated, then nodded.  He didn’t seem perturbed.  “I see.  Then we shall have to wait.”

It didn’t take long.  Bertel showed up about ten minutes later and motioned Jack out of the truck as he handed the padlock key to one of the beards.

“You made good time.  No troubles, I take it.”

“None.”

He clapped Jack on the upper arm.  “Easiest money you ever made, right?”

Jack hadn’t seen the cash, so he didn’t feel he’d made it yet.  But he only smiled and nodded.

The Arabs unloaded the props, then stacked the shrink-wrapped master cases of Marlboros against a wall.  Jack saw a couple of cases of Kools there when he arrived, but that was it.

“Not much stock,” he said in a low voice.

“Didn’t I tell you?  These Mohammedans can move cigarettes like nobody’s business.  That’s–”

“Mohammedans?”

“Yeah.  What do you call them?”

Jack shrugged.  “Muslims?”  At least that was what they were called in the papers.

“We called these oil-mongering, humus-slurping, camel-humping bastards Mohammedans when I was growing up, and I don’t see any reason to change.”

“So, I take it you’re not drinking buddies.”

“They don’t drink!  Never trust a man who won’t have a beer with you, Jack.”

“Is that the real reason you bought us that six-pack the other day?”

“Damn straight.”  He looked over at the office door.  “Speaking of Mohammedans, I’ve got to go jaw with the Mummy.  Looking for an exclusive here – become his only supplier.”

Bertel disappeared inside the office, and Jack watched one of the Mummy’s men reload the props while another made a show of counting the cases.  Eight stacks of five, like that took counting.  He heard voices rise in the office but couldn’t make out what was being said.

Bertel emerged from the office carrying a white legal envelope.  The Mummy followed.

“I need more Kools,” he said.  “You can supply me many Kools?”

“Sure can.  Full load?”

“Forty cases, yes.  I need soon.”

Bertel jerked his thumb toward Jack.  “I let this guy sleep some, he can be back here day after tomorrow.” He looked at Jack.  “Think you can handle that?”

Jack didn’t see why not.  If he didn’t leave until six tomorrow night, he’d have nearly twenty-four hours to recoup.

“Piece of cake.”

Bertel smiled.  “Famous last words.  But I like your attitude.”  He turned to the Mummy.  “Forty of Kool, day after tomorrow.  Count on it.”  Back to Jack.  “Still got enough driving left in you to get us back to the city?”

“Sure.”

The door went up, they drove through Jersey City and Hoboken and back into the Holland Tunnel.  As soon as they entered the tiled gullet, Bertel pulled out the Arab’s envelope and counted out hundred-dollar bills.