Rigged (22 page)

Rook took a couple steps toward Charlie, eyeing him up and down. “I’m thinking you’re going to tell us where the product and The Baker are, or we’re going to make you jealous of how easily and relatively quickly this little bitch died.”

Charlie weighed his options; he was long on odds and short on options. There were five armed men, and at least one of them was a decent shot. Charlie thought he might be able to take out two, maybe three, but there was no way he would make it out alive if he actually made a play.

“I can tell you where the drugs are, but The Baker is a little tied up at the moment,” Charlie said.

Rook stood there solemnly, either weighing his options, or deciding how he was going to hide Charlie’s body. He really hoped that Rook’s attire was suggestive of his business mentality over his desire to rack up a body count.

“Okay,” Rook said and motioned for the others to lower their guns. “We start with the drugs.”

“Fine. Then take me to your leader,” Charlie said. He could remember wanting to say that kind of line as a kid, but as soon as he said it, he couldn’t for the life of himself figure out why that line ever sounded good to him.

“What?”

“You personally escort me to meet Damon.”

That made Rook smile, not the reaction Charlie would have expected. He was a dark-skinned black man, and his bright smile was almost mocking. Charlie figured that it must be annoying to be a black man in North Dakota, kind of a proverbial sore thumb, especially surrounded by a cracker barrel full of meth dealers. He was sure that kind of thinking just stirred up more angst in an already angry man, and even though Rook hid it well, Charlie was sure he was brimming with a roiling whirlpool of angst and anger at the moment. “You’re in no position to make demands,” Rook said as he shook his gun at Charlie.

“It’s not a demand. It’s a provision.”

“I don’t care what you call it. You’re not in charge here. I am.”

There it was, the ray of light Charlie knew he needed to make a grab for. “I’m aware of that,” Charlie said, “but my eyes ain’t brown because I got shit for brains. I’m not gonna try anything. I just want to see the guy who got my sister strung out,” he said, knowing it was time to start laying cards on the table.

Rook looked between the faces of the gang members standing around Charlie. His eyebrows twitched, like he wasn’t quite sure if he wanted to laugh or not. “You’re kidding me. That’s what this is all about? You came here and stirred up all this shit just because of some woman?”

Charlie looked down at Dee Dee’s lifeless body. “Yeah, women can make us do crazy things.”

Rook looked down, too, and his eyes narrowed into slits as he thought about it. “Fine. I’ll tell you what. First, you show us where you stashed the drugs. Then we’ll take you to Damon—not that the order of events is going make any bit of damn difference for you in the end.”

“What about The Baker?” Charlie asked, assuming it was a loose end Rook should have cared about.

“What do I care? Once the deal is done, what the fuck do I need with that whining little punk? I’ll be on an island, sipping a Mai Tai, forgetting this worthless state even exists.”

Charlie had to admit that it was a far nicer-sounding scenario than what he’d gone through over the last week. He nodded in agreement. “All right. I’ll take you to the drugs.”

Rook continued staring at him with that hard look in his eyes and that strange smile on his face. “Isn’t this about the time when you ask if you can trust us?”

Charlie shrugged. “I’m not sure what all Dee Dee told you about me, but the way I figure it, a bullet from you will be a lot quicker and less painful than the brain tumor that’s killing me anyway. You’re gonna have to do a lot better if you’re trying to threaten me.”

“You really want me to do better?” Rook asked.

“I just want to meet this Damon before I die.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” Rook said and pushed Charlie to the door.

Chapter 24

They drove for almost half an hour, out into the bare prairie land north of Bluff Falls. They didn’t seem to be looking for roads, but there were occasional paths of loose dirt along the way. Charlie had been put in the middle row of seats in the black SUV, where he could be covered from all sides. Stony drove, and the nameless guys flanked him in the back seat. Trey drove Rook’s SUV, he had a strange looking head, too big and wide for his shoulders, and round in the gut. Trey had fire-red hair like he was straight from Ireland and got ridiculed for it incessantly. Rook rode shotgun and Marcus, with his chipped tooth crooked grin, rode in the back seat. Rook wasn’t going to take any chances. The guy in the fashion-statement-hat seemed smart enough to put a lot of wheels in play and mess up their operations so far, but he’d come along too late to stop the deal, as long as they got the drugs back. He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d make a move in a vehicle going forty miles an hour off road, but just in case, Rook rode in the SUV that trailed behind, where he could keep an eye on him. He gave explicit instructions that if Charlie made a move, they were to only shoot him in the leg. He was, after all, their only link to that much-needed grade-A meth The Baker had cooked up.

The longer they drove, the more agitated Rook became. He wanted to know where they were going, and he’d never liked surprises. He really hated having to sit there and think about shooting Dee in the back of the head. Sure, the cleanup crew could make her disappear easily enough, but for the most part, she’d been good to him. Rook hated most of the people he’d met since moving to North Dakota, mostly a bunch of redneck hicks who seemed like they were looking at a black man for the first time. He had grown to like the idea of using a power drill on the yokels, just to put the fear of God in their minds and make them leave him be. Dee Dee had been a good thing in the quiet times, a reprieve from it all, but he couldn’t abide that kind of betrayal.

“Where do you think he left the shipment?” Rook asked Trey as they bounced along. “There’s nothing out here.”

Within five minutes, Rook had his answer. The driver pointed up ahead in the moonlight. “Shit, it’s an actual trucker graveyard.”

“What the fuck is that?”

“Never been to one,” Trey said, his wide face catching the glow of the dashboard lights, his stomach bulging almost to the steering wheel. “I’ve just heard it mentioned before. Some crooked company used to buy old semis and trailers. They’d run it like a chop shop and sell for scrap. Disgruntled drivers would say the truck was stolen and file false police reports. Some guys actually cashed in. The cops caught on pretty quick, though, and they had to dump all their stuff. What better place to hide semis than right out in the open, in Middle-of-Nowhere, North Dakota?”

“It was more like some meth-head urban legend, some rumor,” Marcus argued. “They acted like it was some kind of Shangri-La. That was back in the days when they’d get so tweeked out they’d drink trucker bombs.”

Trey made a gagging noise, but Rook was lost.

“What’s a trucker bomb?”

Trey gave a little shiver. “Long-haul drivers have a schedule to keep, so instead of stopping to piss at a gas station or whatever, they’d just take a leak in Gatorade bottles or milk jugs and toss ‘em out the window.
Splat
. Trucker bomb.”

Rook shook his head in disbelief. He was about to make a lot of money off something that made people act like total freaks. There was either something poetic or ironic in it, though, even if he didn’t know which.

Both vehicles slowed down as they drove down into the bowl area that must have housed over two dozen trucks, with trailers scattered around. It didn’t look much different from a dump or junkyard. The place made Rook feel edgy all over again; he knew if Charlie did plan to try something, that would have been the perfect place to do it. Rook needed to keep him on a short leash. He told Rook and Trey to get out and cover Charlie from a distance, at least fifty feet away, as soon as the other SUV stopped.

The first SUV slowed to a stop about a hundred feet from the closest abandoned truck. There were a ring of trucks and trailers around the outside, something like a circle of covered wagons, trying to defend from an Indian attack in the Old West. When they came over the ridge, they could see the scattered trucks inside the ring, but up that close, all there was to see was the outer wall of steel and rubber.

Rook sat, with gun in hand, and watched as the SUV doors opened. First one guy stepped out slowly, as if he was walking into a minefield. Then Charlie scooted out the side, with his hands zip-tied in front of him. He looked around and back at Rook, who sat there staring as the second man pushed Charlie from behind and prodded a gun into his back. Once Charlie was covered from three angles, Rook gave the okay for the two in his car to get out, but reminded them to keep their distance and a good line of sight.

Charlie looked up into the sky, toward the full moon, and exhaled a visible breath into the cold air. “Nice night, all things considered.”

“Where’s the product?” Rook asked from thirty feet away.

Charlie just stared back at him for a second, maybe considering trying to make a break for it, then tilted his head toward the graveyard. “This way.”

Rook made sure they all kept a wide perimeter around Charlie. They were in the open, and he had nowhere to run, but that didn’t mean a man with a gun trained on him wouldn’t make a bad decision and try to make a break for it. Charlie walked slowly, looking left and right before any direction change.

“You’d better not be stalling,” Rook’s driver said.

Charlie didn’t respond and just kept walking. Several more turns, and Charlie finally slowed. “It’s just ahead.”

“Where?” Rook asked.

“In the trailer of a truck.”

“Show me…and while you’re at it, why don’t you tell me where The Baker is?”

Charlie looked around at all the guns again and started to walk. “I imagine he’s back where I left him, next door to the place I stole him out of, unless he worked himself free or the cops found him.”

“Why didn’t you cap him like you capped the two guys at the lab?”

“That wasn’t me,” Charlie said.

“Whatever,” Rook said. “Move.” He pushed Charlie forward with the barrel of his gun.

They came to two semis with attached trailers parked side by side, and Charlie started to walk past them. They were big old rigs, weather beaten, but they still looked to be in decent shape, other than their flat tires. Rook took note of it and thought about making a call to an old friend who ran a chop shop. There was no sense in passing up a little extra cash if it was just there for the taking.

Just as Charlie passed the first semi, he stopped and looked back. Rook froze as his hand tightened on the grip of his gun.

Charlie looked at the two trucks and started to move again, then stopped again just as quickly. “Nope. It’s definitely this one.” Charlie turned and started walking between the two trucks.

“Stop,” Rook barked. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

“It’s in the back of this one,” Charlie said and tilted his head to the left.

“Get back out here,” Rook said.

Charlie rolled his eyes. “Jesus. Calm down. Does it really look like I have anywhere to run from all six of you?”

When Charlie turned and started to walk again, Rook raised his gun, almost positive Charlie was going to make his move, but Charlie just kept walking. Rook told the other five to circle around the trucks and make sure Charlie was flanked. “Watch under the semis for his feet. They even start to turn, blow his kneecaps off.”

The other five moved around opposing trucks, and Rook followed Charlie down the middle.

Charlie made no move and in no way changed his speed. He turned to the first truck and stopped at the back double-door. “Here it is,” Charlie said.

Rook looked at the door and saw his guys appear from around the trucks. He looked at the handle and back at Charlie. “Is it rigged?”

“What?” Charlie asked.

“The door. Seems you’ve got a hard-on for blowing things up. Maybe you brought us out here on this little scavenger hunt just to lead us into some kind of bomb trap.”

“If it blows up, I’ll die too,” Charlie said. “Kind of defeats the purpose of getting to meet Damon, don’t ya think?”

“Still,” Rook said, his eyes on the door, trying to see if there were any wires or triggers attached. “You blew up Dick and Clarence, then kidnapped The Baker and shot those two tweekers before lighting up the lab.”

“I told you I didn’t kill those two,” Charlie said. “I admit to the other stuff, but I didn’t kill those two guys or set that fire.”

“Don’t waste your time,” Rook said, his focus still on the door. “I saw the police report. I know they were capped right through the mouth. You’ve got skills.”

“That wasn’t me. I don’t like guns.”

“Then who was it?” Rook asked.

Charlie shrugged.

“Whatever. Here’s the deal. You’re gonna open this door nice and slow, with my man here standing right next to you with a gun in your back.” Rook motioned over at Marcus, though Marcus gave him a look to suggest he didn’t want to get any closer to those doors than Damon did. It was the first time Rook had seen Marcus without his mouth hanging open. His chipped tooth was hidden behind tightly clenched lips. “Anything goes off, my boy Marcus goes off. You got that?”

“Nothing is gonna explode,” Charlie said. “You’re paranoid.”

“It keeps me alive,” Rook said.

Charlie started to raise his zip-tied hands forward to release the truck door handle, and Rook reminded him to do it slowly. Charlie rolled his eyes again but did as he was told. Still, the moment the lever clicked, Rook felt himself pucker and expected the worst, but nothing happened. Charlie swung the door open and there, inside the trailer, was a brand new, black Chevy 1500, The Baker’s truck, holding brick upon brick of meth, 100 kilos by the looks of it.

“You’re kidding me. A pickup truck? You hauled 100 keys in meth in a goddamn pickup truck, out into the middle of nowhere?” Rook said, though he couldn’t believe the words he was saying.