collection looked a little portentous as a result. The sideboard was in the center, taller than the others, and the only one not stamped ‘Barlow and Straker, 27 Jointner Avenue, Jer. Lot, Maine.’
‘Well, this don’t look too bad,’ Royal said. He consulted his copy of the invoice and then counted boxes. ‘Yeah, they’re all here.’
‘There are rats,’ Hank said. ‘Hear ‘em?’
‘Yeah, miserable things. I hate ‘em.’
They both fell silent for a moment, listening to the squeak and patter coming from the shadows.
‘Well, let’s get with it,’ Royal said. ‘Let’s put that big baby on first so it won’t be in the way when we get to the store.’
‘Okay.’
They walked over to the box, and Royal took out his pocket knife. With one quick gesture he had slit the brown invoice envelope taped to the side.
‘Hey Hank said. ‘Do you think we ought to-’
‘We gotta make sure we got the right thing, don’t we? If we screw up, Larry’ll tack our asses to his bulletin board.’ He pulled the invoice out and looked at it.
‘What’s it say?’ Hank asked.
‘Heroin,’ Royal said judiciously. ‘Two hundred pounds of the shit. Also two thousand girlie books from Sweden, three hundred gross of French ticklers-’
‘Gimme that.’ Hank snatched it away. ‘Sideboard,’ he said. ‘Just like Larry told us. From London, England. Portland, Maine, POE. French ticklers, my ass. Put this back.’
Royal did. ‘Something funny about this,’ he said.
‘Yeah, you. Funny like the Italian Army.’
‘No, no shit. There’s no customs stamp on this fucker. Not on the box, not on the invoice envelope, not on the invoice. No stamp.’
‘They probably do ‘em in that ink that only shows up under a special black light.’
‘They never did when I was on the docks. Christ, they stamped cargo ninety ways for Sunday. You couldn’t grab a box without getting blue ink up to your elbows.’
‘Good. I’m very glad. But my wife happens to go to bed very early and I had hopes of getting some tonight.’
‘Maybe if we took a look inside-’
‘No way. Come on. Grab it.’
Royal shrugged. They tipped the box, and something shifted heavily inside. The box was a bitch to lift. It could be one of those fancy dressers, all right. It was heavy enough.
Grunting, they staggered out to the truck and heaved it onto the hydraulic lifter with identical cries of relief. Royal stood back while Hank operated the lift. When it was even with the truck body, they climbed up and walked it inside.
There was something about the box he didn’t like. It was more than the lack of customs stamp. An indefinable something. He looked at it until Hank ran down the back gate.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get the rest of them.’
The other boxes had regulation customs stamps, except for three that had been shipped here from inside the United States. As they loaded each box onto the truck, Royal checked it off on the invoice form and initialed it. They stacked all of the boxes bound for the new store near the back gate of the truck, away from the sideboard.
‘Now, who in the name of God is going to buy all this stuff?’ Royal asked when they had finished. ‘A Polish rocking chair, a German clock, a spinning wheel from Ireland… Christ Almighty, I bet they charge a frigging fortune.’
‘Tourists,’ Hank said wisely. ‘Tourists’ll buy anything. Some of those people from Boston and New York they’d buy a bag of cowshit if it was an
‘I don’t like that big box, neither,’ Royal said. ‘No customs stamp, that’s a hell of a funny thing.’
‘Well, let’s get it where it’s going.’
They drove back to ‘salem’s Lot without speaking, Hank driving heavy on the gas. This was one errand he wanted done. He didn’t like it. As Royal had said, it was damn peculiar.
He drove around to the back of the new store, and the back door was unlocked, as Larry had said it would be. Royal tried the lightswitch just inside with no result.
‘That’s nice,’ he grumbled. ‘We get to unload this stuff in the goddamn dark… say, does it smell a little funny in here to you?’
Hank sniffed. Yes, there was an odor, an unpleasant one, but he could not have said exactly what it reminded him of. It was dry and acrid in the nostrils, like a whiff of old corruption.
‘It’s just been shut up too Ion ‘ he said, shining his flashlight around the long, empty room. ‘Needs a good airing out.’
‘Or a good burning down,’ Royal said. He didn’t like it. Something about the place put his back up. ‘Come on. And let’s try not to break our legs.’
They unloaded the boxes as quickly as they could, putting each one down carefully. A half an hour later, Royal closed the back door with a sigh of relief and snapped one of the new padlocks on it.
