Jake Caldwell Thrillers Page 3

  Keats nodded. “You bury this guy and your old man. Two birds with one trip. Then you can ride off into the sunset and do whatever the fuck you want.”

  Jake narrowed his eyes. Here was his lifeline and he wouldn’t have to spend the rest of his days looking over his shoulder. Keats wrote on a slip of paper and slid it across the table.

  Jake lifted it and read the name. “If I don’t want the job?”

  Keats swallowed the rest of the Scotch and chuckled. “I think you know the answer to that question.”

  Chapter Four

  Willie Banks angle parked at the entrance to Casey’s convenience store west of Warsaw’s downtown. He ran his hand along the rusted side of his truck—its primary color best described as primer—tracking the lunchtime crowd. He waited for three things: the phone call; his partner Bub to finish taking a crap; and for sweet Halle.

  A red flash of guilt rolled through Willie as Halle strolled out the front door, but it didn’t stop him watching her across the parking lot. He may not have finished high school, but even his limited twenty-three-year-old intellect was well aware that sixteen-year-old Halle represented statutory rape. But he could look and fantasize. Perfectly round, little ass in tight jean shorts, bronze quads popping with each stride. Long, blonde hair flowing down the middle of her tanned back. A brilliant smile that stopped his heart every time he saw it. She was the full package and he loved her, not that he’d ever let anyone know. He licked his chapped lips as his partner Bub lumbered out the door behind her, a missile-lock stare on her swinging back end. A stare so hard he stumbled off the curb and dropped his pizza box; but only giving up when Halle climbed into her mom’s car.

  “Goddamn,” Bub said as he hefted himself into the truck with an acrid wave of body odor, like he had dozens of rotting rodents stuffed in his pockets. He scratched the sparse stubble on his cheeks, the fat folds on his neck bunching up as he craned to watch the car drive away. “That Halle gets any hotter and I’ll just have to take my chances with the Old Bear.”

  “He’d skin your fat ass alive, Bub.” The car headed east up the hill toward downtown and out of sight.

  “I ain’t scared of big bad Sheriff Bear.”

  “Then you’re a fuckin’ idiot.”

  “Wish he’d back off us,” Bub said, balancing the greasy pizza box on his lap as he got situated. “We gotta make a living, right?”

  They waited in silence while the Lake of the Ozark weekend tourists mixed with the locals around them. Bub finished off the pizza slices, downed the forty-ounce can of Budweiser and scrubbed his mouth with the back of his meaty forearm. He belched loud enough to shake the flakes of rust from the side of the truck.

  “So what the hell are we sitting here for?” he asked, tossing the empty box to the floor and wiping his greasy fingers on his overalls.

  “We’re waiting,” Willie said.

  “Duh. For what?”

  “For Shane to call.”

  Bub huffed and lit a cigarette from a white generic pack.

  A rail-thin woman with stringy, black hair that looked as if it hadn’t been washed in a month walked out of Casey’s, a bottle of soda in her hand and two dirty, snot-nosed kids at her feet. Delilah Warner. She stopped when she spotted Willie’s truck. She jerked her head around checking out the area for cops, trying to appear casual—and doing a piss poor job of it.

  “Get a load of Delilah,” Bub said.

  “She looks like she got hit by a truck. You got anything on you?”

  “Yeah, a little bit.”

  “Good, ’cause she’s heading our way.”

  Delilah slid over to Bub’s side of the truck, dropping a twenty in his hand. He handed over a plastic bag and she disappeared around the corner of the store.

  “Right in front of her fucking kids, man,” Willie said.

  “So?”

  “So? That doesn’t bother you?”

  “Why would it? Cash is cash. When we getting another shipment?” Bub asked, stuffing the twenty in his pocket. “We’re runnin’ low. Down to pebbles.”

  “Supposed to be next week.”

  “Mexicans hauling it again?”

  Willie nodded. “Monday, I think.”

  Bub belched again. “I hate dealin’ with those greaseballs. Puffin’ their chests and flashin’ their guns. Assholes.”

  “Got no choice, Bub. Bear has a vapor lock on supplies. We can’t make any quantity worth a damn on our own.”

  “Well, Shane’s still making a fat ass roll off it. What about us?”

  Willie didn’t answer. The economy sucked and people were strapped, which cut into Willie’s margins. Of course, Shane got his cut. Shane Langston always got his cut.

  “Shane oughta say something to those guys,” Bub continued. “That last package sucked. Might as well been selling rocks of baby powder. You try it?”

  Willie shook his head. He didn’t touch the product. Never do what you deal. Especially when what you’re dealing ain’t yours in the first place. He’d seen firsthand what meth did to people—his mom, the poster child. Lank hair, black gums, cadaver face; like someone sucked the life essence from her and left nothing but a shell. Too consumed with the poison to even think about actually being a mother. He also saw what Shane did to dealers who dipped into their supply and got sloppy. Willie liked having all his fingers attached.

  “I still think we should take the Mexicans out,” Bub said. Willie rolled his eyes. “A truckload of drugs and wads of cash. One score, that’s all we need. Hightail it out of Benton County and disappear.”

  “You got a death wish, my friend,” Willie said.

  “Not if we do it right.” Bub took a deep drag and flicked the cigarette butt out the open window.

  “There ain’t no doing it right. They got Uzis in those trucks and those crazy wetbacks would carve the Mexican flag on your fat, dead belly. Even if you got away with it at the time, they’d find you. Where you gonna go? Mexico?”

  “Maybe Canada,” Bub offered. “My momma says I got some Frenchy in my blood.”

  “You’re as French as a Mickey D’s fry,” Willie said. “If the Mexicans didn’t get you, Shane sure as hell would. Dude’s got mad reach.”

  “Still worth thinking about, man. Better than this nickel and dime shit we’re making now.”

  Willie couldn’t argue with his logic. They used to make a decent living passing meth to the County’s downtrodden. Until Sheriff Bear squeezed the trade, shut down the labs, and the mass distribution of meth in Benton County came to a screeching halt. Now that the Mexicans were moving product north, a chance of getting back in the game reared up. There certainly wasn’t much else to do for a living for the likes of him in Warsaw.

  “We need some bank,” Bub said. “Get us on the good side of Poor Boy.”

  Willie nodded, thinking about his trailer back in the deep woods off Poor Boy Road. Out of sight, out of mind. A stranger venturing off Highway 7 or Old Highway 65 heading toward Fristoe on double-lettered roads like MM or NN might find some seriously nice lakefront homes owned by people in real estate or banking. The stranger had an equally good chance of wishing he never made the turn off the highway and would be happy to get out of there unscathed. Crumbling wood-framed homes and shacks, some so run down that hanging laundry provided the only clue someone actually lived there. Every town, every city had their economic dividing line between the haves and the have-nots. Poor Boy Road was their line.

  Willie fantasized about moving far away plenty over the last year. Fly away with the little bankroll he stashed away in his momma’s old music box behind a loose brick at his trailer. Drop the meth dealing and live cheap as he made his way somewhere warmer. Maybe go to Colorado and hook up with his little brother. Avery said it was good money. Anywhere else would be fine as long as it was far from the rotting meth mouths pleading for more and the vice grip of Shane Langston.

  Just as Willie was a hair’s width from kicking Bub’s ass out of the truck and peeling away in a cl
oud of dust with a hearty Hi-Yo Silver, his burner cell phone rang. Willie answered, listened, and the thoughts blazing down the road disappeared. Sixty seconds later, he grunted and hung up.

  “So what’s the plan?” Bub asked.

  “Shane wants to meet.”

  “Here?”

  “My place. We gotta get Howie and Bennett.”

  “What the hell is it about?” Bub asked.

  “Didn’t say. I didn’t ask.”

  “He sound okay?”

  “He sounded pissed. Someone’s ass is in a sling.”

  “Hope it ain’t mine.”

  “You and me both, man.”

  Willie started the truck, backed up and sputtered out of the parking lot to Main Street. He hung a left and paused at the intersection at Highway 7. The empty stretch of road invited him to head west out of town. Willie’s instincts screamed at him to turn that way. Instead, he turned east toward home. A knot balled in his gut. When Shane was pissed, things tended to get bloody.

  Chapter Five

  How the hell had he got himself twisted in this mess? Jake sighed as he cruised south on US 71 Highway out of Kansas City, through the city of Grandview and on to places less populated. Take care of his dying old man and kill a rival drug lord for his boss. What a clusterfuck homecoming.

  Hard to believe he’d been doing this shit for Keats for six years. He used to lie to himself and think of collecting as just a job like someone working in a bank or flipping burgers. He’d tell himself those he collected from were degenerate scumbags who rolled the dice the second they took a dime from a man like Jason Keats.

  The douche bags were the easy ones. The ones to whom the world owed a favor. Nothing was ever their fault. The fuckin’ Jets blew the spread by allowing that last meaningless touchdown. The asshole boss fired them, not because they couldn’t show up to work either on time or sober, but because they didn’t like their ethnic heritage, whether black, Hispanic, Italian or White Trash. These people always blamed someone else for their crappy lives and Jake had no qualms putting a few lumps on their skulls with a blackjack to collect what they owed.

  The problem was they weren’t all douche bags. Sometimes they were friends. Sometimes the sound of a friend’s thumb snapping like a twig echoed in his dreams. Sometimes the howling winter winds outside his window in the dark of night sounded like the screams of a child walking in as he punched their daddy to a bloody pulp. Sometimes he had to get up and scrub his hands raw under scalding-hot water to get at the blood that would never wash out. Sometimes he stared in the mirror at hollow eyes, seeing the face of a man who hid in the shadows, a man he swore he’d never become. Sometimes.

  He rolled past Harrisonville and exited US 71 on to Highway 7, his stomach knotting tighter as he closed in on his hometown. Thirty minutes later, he drove into Clinton and stopped at Wendy’s to take a leak and grab a late lunch before pressing on.

  Jake could almost smell the oil and grease from the Clinton junkyard where the old man used to take them on the weekends. Jake and Nicky crammed together in their dad’s ancient heap, listening to him cuss the wasted truck’s very existence in between puffs of Camels lit one after the other in an unending chain. Stony placed Nicky in charge of keeping upward pressure on the eight-track cassette in the dash, so “He Stopped Loving Her Today” would play without warbling. Any deviation to the tone of George Jones would earn Nick a smack to the back of the head. Ever since Mama died, Stony would listen to almost nothing else in his truck but that eight-track. The premise itself made for a stupid country song.

  The roads curved and the hills deepened the further Jake got from Clinton, like the road itself didn’t want to go to Warsaw either. He took a pull from his water bottle and turned on the radio, tired of the silence. He sang along and agreed with Kenny Chesney; he should indeed sit and have another beer in Mexico. Mexico sounded good. Warm sun, fine sand beaches, clear blue water and Pacifico beers lined up in front of him. Find a big-breasted señorita with a happy disposition. Maybe after this trip. Maybe after Stony finally kicked the bucket and he fulfilled his obligation to Keats.

  The town of Coal swam up, so small that if you sneezed, you’d miss it entirely. Jake slowed without thinking and pulled into the dirt lot of The Coal Bin. He dropped his six-foot two-inch frame out from the truck and ran his hands over his cropped hair, pushing his muscular arms into his back. The vertebrae clicked and crunched.

  As he leaned on the warm hood, smelling a mix of manure and exhaust fumes, a dark-haired boy darted out the front door of the white-washed general store and jumped off the step. The boy looked just like Nicky. Mop head and deep dimples the girls giggled over. Nicky. It was hard not to remember their last trip here.

  They’d had a particularly good junkyard hunt, Dad finding a needed part to some contraption he was fixing. Old Stony feeling generous, actually hugging his two boys as they went inside, the non-violent physical contact a rarity. Jake peered into the pop cooler while Nicky perused the candy rack. Stony’s thin, steely arm draped around Jake’s neck.

  “You always had a sweet tooth for that orange fizzy shit, Jakey.” He stroked the back of Jake’s head. “Why don’t you get one of them Orange Crushes?”

  “Just wondering if I should try somethin’ new,” Jake said, liking the feel of his dad stroking his ten-year-old head despite the cold band of the ring on Stony’s finger.

  “Nothing good comes outta new things, boy,” Stony said. “Stick with what ya know and you’ll never be disappointed. Come on, pick something. We got shit to do today.”

  Jake grabbed the can of Orange Crush and set it on the counter next to Nicky’s Hershey bar. Stony added three packs of Camel shorts to the haul, which would last him the rest of the day and into tomorrow afternoon at best. Depending on how much he drank.

  Jake and Nicky grinned ear to ear as they strolled out of The Coal Bin. Janey would whine she didn’t get anything, but for now, the brothers were kings. Kings until Nicky tripped over a pothole on his way to the pickup sending his unwrapped candy bar flying through the air, dumping with a puff on the thick dirt in front of the gas pumps. Tears welled up in his eyes as he stared at his lost treasure.

  “Pick it up,” Stony said after a moment, dark storm clouds rumbling to the east with his clipped cadence. Stony’s mood could turn on a dime. Dust covered Nicky’s candy bar along with a dark liquid. Probably oil leaked from some junk heap. A glop of bird shit rested on the edge, already blending in as the summer sun blast melted the chocolate.

  “Pick it up,” Stony repeated, each word a menacing statement. Jake tightened his grip on the Orange Crush can.

  “But, Daddy,” Nicky protested. Stony took a step toward them and leaned forward, his bared, yellow teeth inches from Nicky’s face.

  “Boy, I paid a quarter for that candy bar and you will pick it up in the next two seconds or you will be one sorry little son of a bitch.”

  Nicky picked up the candy bar by the end, holding it in front of him between his thumb and index finger, like a dead rat he held by the tail. He shook it. Some of the dust fell away, but the dab of bird shit clung to the end of the bar, white with black speckles.

  “Eat it!”

  Nicky looked at Jake in horror, desperate for some support. Jake dropped his gaze to his wiggling big toe sticking out of his hand-me-down tennis shoes. There was nothing he could do.

  “Eat it,” Stony repeated.

  “But it has bird poop and dirt on it,” Nicky said, his voice the high-pitched whine that set their father off every time. Jake cast a quick glance to the old man’s wry smile.

  “I don’t give a damn what it’s covered in, boy. I give you a treat and you throw it on the ground like we got money coming out our asses. Now, eat it. And if you try to wipe off anything from that candy bar before it goes into your whiny fucking mouth, I’ll beat your little ass until you can’t sit for a week.”

  Tears rolled down Nicky’s face as he brought the shit-covered chocolate bar to his mo
uth. Jake held out his Orange Crush for Nicky to wash down his punishment. Stony’s hand shot out like a striking snake and knocked it from his hand. His soda fizzed in the dirt before Jake scrambled to grab the can. He hurried to the pickup, away from his brother and Stony. He faced the truck and raised his head to the cloudless sky. Nicky began to cry.

  The slam of the front door to The Coal Bin scattered the echoes of Nicky’s cries. A farmer emerged from the store with a pack of cigarettes in his hand. Jake climbed into his truck. He’d thought about going inside for old time’s sake, but remembered the old times weren’t so good. As he rolled back on to Highway 7, he remembered after that trip, Nicky never ate chocolate again.

  Chapter Six

  Shadow and light danced as Jake cruised the tree-lined highway, the outskirts of Warsaw looming ahead. Three years ago, he’d made it this far, only to chicken out and take the long way around to the cemetery, so he didn’t have to set foot in town. How much had the place changed in his sixteen-year absence? The sign declaring the town’s motto of “Striving to Be Drug Free” was gone. He guessed they eventually gave up.

  Casey’s hunkered in a depression on his right, the lot full of trucks and boats gassing up for a day’s adventure on Truman Lake. The lake and the associated reservoir covered over fifty-five thousand acres, featuring great crappie and bass fishing waters bounded by jagged bluffs. Thousands of tourists flocked to the area for weekend getaways or national fishing tournaments. It appeared the town’s big source of income hadn’t changed.

  His sister Janey would be waiting at the house. The thought of the homestead tightened the knot in his stomach and an overwhelming urge to head back to Kansas City rippled through him. But that would mean a return to a life with Keats. If he wanted out, he had to press on. He turned off the highway and on to Main Street, Bob Seger ironically playing a song of the same name on the radio.