In fifteen minutes Brett came back. He was carrying a takeout order in a Styrofoam carton. When he came around the front of the truck and saw me sitting on the running board, he stopped. He was a fat kid dressed in gray sweatpants and work boots half laced and a black and orange Wheaton High School football jacket.
'Excuse me,' he said, as if a guy sitting on the side of his truck in a Maine snowstorm was the usual stuff.
'Sure,' I said, and stood up and stepped aside.
He climbed up on the running board clumsily, carrying the takeout in one hand and swinging up by holding the outside mirror strut. Standing on the running board he fumbled the keys out of his jacket pocket and opened the cab. I took my gun off my right hip and pointed it at him and said, 'Take me to Havana.'
The kid looked at me and saw the gun and his eyes widened.
He said, 'Huh?'
I said, 'You're being hijacked. Get down, and give me the keys.'
'What'd you say about Havana?' he said.
'A joke, kid, just climb down and give me the keys.'
The kid climbed down slowly, holding the keys in his left hand, and the takeout in his right hand made it harder and he had to jump off the running board. He landed heavily and staggered a step and the takeout carton pulled loose from his grip and spilled into the snow. It looked like cheeseburgers again, with a side of fries.
Brett stared at me, still holding the tornloose cover of the Styrofoam takeout and the keys. I put out my left hand. He gave me the keys.
I said, 'You can go on back into the restaurant and order up some more and take your time eating it.'
'I ain't got no more money,' he said.
I put the keys in my pants pocket, took out my wallet with my left hand, extracted a five-dollar bill with my teeth, put the wallet back in my pants pocket, took the five from my teeth and handed it to Brett.
'Go on,' I said.
He took the five and stared at me. We both had to squint to keep the snow out of our eyes. I jerked my head toward the restaurant. 'Go on,' I said again.
He nodded and turned slowly and began to walk slowly toward the restaurant.
I climbed into the truck and put the keys in the ignition and started it up. The kid was still walking with his head down, slowly and more slowly. I put the clutch in and shifted and let the clutch out and the truck lurched forward. It had been a while since I had driven a truck. Through the snow I could see that the kid had stopped and turned and was looking after me. It was hard to see and I couldn't tell for sure. But he might have been crying.
I got the truck into some gear where we weren't struggling and cruised south in the right lane. If this cargo was clean then there was no reason why Brett shouldn't call the cops. In which case I was going to be doing some heavy explaining to the Maine State Police in a little while. On the other hand, why was a guy who dealt in produce picking up a load from a fish dealer in an unmarked refrigerator truck. And why hadn't the refrigerator truck been hooked up to a power source so the refrigeration would run and the fish wouldn't spoil. I didn't believe that they were conserving power by letting the winter weather do the job. On the other hand, if you were importing cocaine a coastal town with a fish distribution point wouldn't be a bad place to bring it in.
It was about four in the afternoon when I hit Route 128 north of Boston and humped the big tractor trailer off of 128 and down a ramp and through an underpass and up into the vast parking area of the Northshore Shopping Center in Peabody. I parked out of the way, partly to be inconspicuous and partly because I wasn't too confident I could parallel-park a ten-wheeler. The snow was mixed with rain down here. I climbed down and walked over to the shopping center. I cut through Herman's sporting goods and went into the Sears store. I bought a big pry bar and a hammer with a steel shank, a new padlock and a flashlight. Then I went back out to my truck. In ten minutes I had the lock off and I was inside. There were cases of mackerel, most of which didn't smell that good. I pried them open and rummaged around and found under the mackerel, packed neatly in clear plastic bags, about three hundred kilos of cocaine.
No wonder no one had called the cops.
Chapter 19
I called Susan from a pay phone in the shopping mall. Her voice sounded sleepy.
'I'm at the Northshore Shopping Center,' I said. 'I need you to come and get me.'
'Where's my car,' she said.
'On the Maine Turnpike,' I said. 'Safe in a parking lot behind the Burger King.'
'The Maine Turnpike?'
'We'll go into it later, it's perfectly safe.'
'And you're at the Northshore Shopping Center?'
'Yes, near the movie theater, in a big trailer truck.'
'A trailer truck.'
'Yes.'
'Jesus Christ,' she said.
'I knew you wouldn't mind,' I said.
'I'll be there in about an hour,' she said. Susan exaggerated a bit, it was actually an hour and thirty-five minutes before she showed up, but time has never been Susan's master and, as always, she was worth the wait. She had rented the sportiest thing she could find, which was, in this case, a red Mustang convertible with a white
