Plugged

Silence for a moment. All I can hear is the discreet growl of the engine and the asphalt joins bumping under the wheels.

The heartbeat of the road.

Faber gets over his pointing sulk. ‘Have you got the product?’

‘Two barrels of it. I hope you have secure storage.’

‘Two fucking barrels? Where am I going to put two barrels?’

‘Hey. I can dump one, no problem.’

‘No. I can store it. I wasn’t expecting two barrels. A briefcase maybe.’

‘This is steroids, Faber, not heroin. There must be half a million doses here.’

Faber whistles. ‘Those steroid guys really work for their money. The mark-up would make a crack dealer piss himself laughing.’

‘Faber, this wouldn’t be you trying to weasel out of giving me my fifty large? Because if that’s the case I can drive this truck to any one of a dozen people I know.’

‘That would be a bad idea, Daniel.’

‘Tell me why, arsehole.’

So he tells me. ‘Because your buddy Deacon, she’s already gone in the freezer.’

My stomach sinks.

‘Okay, dickhead. You watch your little screen and you’ll see me coming.’

‘I better see you coming fast. It’s cold in that freezer.’

I hate this guy and I wish he was dead.

Faber’s playing it cool, but he must be sweating over his decision to send me for the steroids. Even with a monitor on my ankle I’m a wild card and he knows it. Greed made him hasty and now he’s had an entire day to think about the possible consequences. I bet that pointing monkey just cannot wait to roll me into the freezer beside Ronelle, and start peddling his steroids outside health clubs all over New Jersey.

I drive slow, keeping to the speed limit, with the radio tuned to local travel news, in case there’s a pile-up on the motorway I need to avoid. Accidents mean blues, and this pick-up screams drug money.

Traffic is light and there’s a sweeping mist scything past the streetlight beams. All those little drops, like half a million twinkling steroid pills.

I drive on without seeing a single cruiser, in spite of our mayor’s road-safety drive, and in a couple of hours I’m back on good old I-95, cruising past monolithic Borders and Pottery Barns, past giant empty parking lots and all-night diners. I am envious of the people inside in their cocoon of light, enjoying the simple pleasure of some late eggs or a coffee refill. Not that I’m hungry yet, with the congealed lump of Mexican takeaway melting slowly in my stomach acid.

Christ. When you’re inside a diner you wanna be outside and when you’re outside you wanna get back in. What are you, schizo?

I’m talking to you, aren’t I?

By three thirty I’m bumping my tyres down the Cloisters off ramp and swinging a wide arc into the bus station car park. I have to look hard to find a young hood selling pot. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think this sleepy town had no hostess-killing lawyers living in it. I cut across empty spaces in the car park and pull in behind the dumpsters, beside a certain white Lexus that I had hoped never to see again.

No doubt Faber’s computer will pick up this unscheduled stop, but he’s not going to risk shocking me now with all this junk in the trunk. If he calls, I’ll tell him I’m filling up at the twenty-four-hour pumps.

It could be true. Long Island is a long way from New Jersey, and the pumps are fifty feet away.

The engine is still ticking when Faber calls.

‘I got my finger on the button here, McEvoy.’

‘Come on, boss. I need gas,’ I tell him. ‘Five minutes’ delay. Maybe seven if I grab a coffee. Check your doodad, there’s a Texaco here.’

I imagine Faber pointing at the phone. ‘Gas? You couldn’t drive another four miles?’

‘You pointing at the phone, Jaryd?’ This pointing thing is a great needle and I am going to work it to death. ‘I thought I heard a rush of air. Like a ninja thing. You a ninja pointer, Faber?’

I hear a crackling noise, like Faber’s snorting into the phone. ‘That little remark just cost your detective friend two degrees of heat. That raincoat won’t keep her warm in the freezer, especially since I got it here in my hand. What the hell were you two doing before you came over here? She’s only wearing purple panties and a raincoat. Tell me why you really pulled over, Daniel.’

‘I’ve been running on fumes for the past half-hour. The goddamn on-board computer is telling me I have a radius of two miles. So I am filling the hell up, unless you want the real cops to get hold of your steroids.’

‘And?’

‘What do you mean, and?’

‘I am sensing an and here, McEvoy. Do you want to tell me what it is, or, should I just go ahead and turn the thermostat down as low as it can go? See if we can’t freeze Deacon’s lingerie right off.’

So I give him an and, but not the real and. ‘Okay. All right. Take it easy. I picked up a few weapons from my locker in the bus station on the way out, and now I’m dropping them off. I bring ’em over to your place and they get confiscated, right?’

The secret to a good lie is to bury it in truth.

‘What’ve you got there?’ asks Faber, playing it cool like he could tell the difference between a Gatling gun and a Colt.45.

‘I got two phasers and a fart ray. What do you care? You’re getting your steroids. Maybe you should take a couple of them yourself, beef up that pointing finger.’

I can’t help it. It’s a curse.

‘Five minutes,’ says Faber gruffly, then hangs up.

I squeeze the steering wheel until the leather groans, then laugh a long, jagged laugh that chops at my throat like an axe hacking on a steak. When the fit passes, I buzz down the window and spit into the night.

You okay now? asks Ghost Zeb.

Yep. Fine. Peachy.

Just over seven minutes later, what I had to do has been done and I’m pulling around back of The Brass Ring thinking that the parking lot seems a little placid without canaries and praying I didn’t get any blood on my clothes.

One of Faber’s guys, Wilbur, is on the ramp cracking his knuckles, and I’m having a little chuckle over his shit-kicker name when I remember how eager Wilbur was to shoot Goran in the face. I’m thinking that Wilbur got teased a little too often in the schoolyard and is taking revenge on the world.

Wilbur throws me a nod that speaks volumes. Not good hey, McEvoy, let’s go grab a Cobb salad volumes, more see what I did to Goran? Well you’re next kind of volumes. I’ve had so many security guys giving me the hard face over the past few days that it’s getting kind of comical. I wonder, is that how the world sees me?

Bald and comical, says Ghost Zeb. That’s it exactly.

Screw you, Zebulon Kronski. Stay fucked, why don’t you?

Hey, come on. I’m kidding. Can’t a guy kid?

Keep a civil tongue in your head. No more bald cracks after all the money I paid you.

Understood.

It better be.

Wilbur comes down the ramp and is half trotting beside the Hilux before the vehicle comes to a full stop. I step on the gas a little just to piss him off, then reverse to the ramp.

‘What the fuck you doing?’ he huffs when I step down from the cab.

‘Sorry, Wilbur man. Overshot. Big truck, you know.’

Wilbur rests a ham hand on the wing mirror. ‘Where’s the stuff?’

That deserves an eye-roll. ‘Where’s the stuff? You see the two enormous white barrels in the back. What do you think?’

Wilbur pats something. Either his heart or a shoulder holster.