His smart-ass grin crawled over onto the left side of his face. He said, “I dunno, I dunno, Jack. I had me a… better than average couple days, you might say.”
“Piss.” I shook my head. “How much can you make driving a cab?”
He kept grinning, eyes twinkling with all sorts of private knowledge. “Just so happens you caught me when I’m not that bad off, Jack. So whatever your hustle is I ain’t interested.”
“You should be.”
“Oh should I be? I see. Suppose you tell me why you should be interested in me? I ain’t in the blowjob business, if that’s what you’re here for.”
I put on an indignant look and said, tightly, “Maybe I’m talking to the wrong guy. The guy I wanted was supposed to be a real hardass. I asked around to find just the right kind of guy, and they tell me, see Vince, this guy at the cab station, and I say, shit, I ran into that guy already, he’s a fucking queer, and they say, don’t let him fool you, that’s how he makes side money, rolling queers and generally hardassing it around. And they say this Vince isn’t afraid of doing anything, anything that’s got good money tied up to it somehow.”
He rubbed his chin. He wasn’t nervous anymore. He studied me for a moment, then said, “Maybe you got sent to the wrong place.”
“Yeah?”
And then the cocky little bastard wagged his head side to side and grinned wide and said, “Yeah, and maybe you got sent to the right place, only it just ain’t open for business at the time being, so forget it.” He stood up.
“I pay big and ask little.”
“Forget it, Jack.”
“One hour of your time.”
“Just forget it.”
“One thousand bucks.”
That caught him on one foot. He swallowed. His expression settled into a blank stare, which I took to be concentration. He sat back down. Then he started to nod. He was nodding more emphatically by the time he said, “Let’s go outside and talk. We can sit in my cab.”
I said, “Fine,” and followed him outside. The rain was easing up, but it was still insistent. We both were wet by the time we were sitting in the front seat of his cab. He was excited, his breath fogging up the windows right off.
“One thousand fucking bucks, Jack?”
“That’s right.”
“Times is good for me now, but even in good times I can use that kind of bread.”
“Who can’t?”
“But money that big, whew! Hell, Jack, that’s got to mean trouble, and I don’t know you from Adam, I don’t know you from shit, I don’t know period.”
“The less you know the better.”
“Fuck that shit, Jack! You can tell me what the hell’s going on or you can stuff the thousand. You haven’t even told me what the hell it is you want me to do.”
“All I want from you is one thing. One simple thing. I want you to drive a car for me. I want you to deliver a car.”
“A thousand bucks to deliver a car?”
“This car is special… what it’s carrying is special. The people you deliver it to will take the car to a garage and strip it down immediately and get the stuff they’re after.”
He smiled, tense, not showing his chipped tooth. He knew what I was talking about. He all but said, “Narcotics.” He wanted to say it. But he restrained himself. Finally he said, “Okay, Jack, but why me? You got a load of… Jesus, a load like that, and you ask a stranger’s help? You must be fucking desperate.”
“I am. I’m desperate.”
“What the hell’s the situation, anyway?”
“Well…” I made a show of weighing the consequences of telling him “the truth.” With mock reluctance I said, “My partner and I were making this run, and last night he took sick. Terrible sick. This was an overnight stop for us, so I figured by morning he’d be okay. But he got worse, much worse.”
“What was wrong with him?”
“I don’t know, food poisoning maybe, or some weird-ass virus. All I know is he’s practically dying. This infection or something hit him all at once, hit him out of nowhere, and now I need a driver. To complete the run. What do you say?”
“He’s too sick to drive?”
“I’m asking you, aren’t I?”
“That’s just it, it’s so crazy, you asking me.”
“Who the hell else can I ask in this damn hick town? You got to bail me out, Vince. The money’s good. Do it.”
“When is it, this delivery?”
“Midnight.”
“Shit, it’s after eleven now. Where we got to be?”
“The quarry on the river road, just outside Davenport.”
He was nodding his head, starting to buy it. He said, “We could make that, easy.”
“Good. You take the lead and I’ll follow you. After you deliver the car, I’ll drive you back to Port City.” I got a roll of bills out from my pocket, part of the money Mrs. Springborn had given me. I peeled off five bills, all of them hundreds, and tossed them in his bluejeaned lap. He stared down at them. “Five more like that,” I told him, “when the job’s over.”
He thought about it. He scratched his oily head and said, to himself, “This has been a day,” then to me, “Let’s get going, Jack.”
“Right,” I said.
We shook hands.
28
The River road followed the Mississippi’s edge faithfully, and no doubt provided much visual pleasure for folks out on sunny afternoon outings. On the one side of the road, cottages dotted the river shore; on the other side, a high green bluff was strung with all sorts of houses, from modest to lavish, mutually enjoying the scenic view. After ten miles or so the bluff dwindled and the ground became flat and fenced off, the rich farmland Iowa is known for; on the other side of the road the cottages had given way to thick forest-like clumps of trees. At times the road rolled up hills, one of them peaking and leveling out to provide an overview of the river from a breathtaking highpoint, while on the road’s left was a sheer cliff-like wall of rock, like something out of Colorado or Wyoming. Other times the road swung down through valley-nestled villages, quiet, sheltered little worlds removed from this era. The river road was a Sunday driver’s paradise, the scenery varied and having more slices of America along it than any single stretch of twenty-five-mile road you can think of. At midnight, in the rain, it was a fucking nightmare.
I was staying a quarter mile behind Vince because I didn’t want him to get a good look at the car I was driving. I’d hustled him into my rental Ford and after he’d taken off I had followed in Boyd’s green Mustang. I figured there was some chance Vince would recognize the Mustang as Boyd’s and I didn’t want him tipping to who I was or what I was doing. On the other hand, I didn’t want to let him get out of my sight. Out of my reach. So I had to stay right with him, without tailgating him.
He’d questioned me about why I was trusting him with the delivery of the cargo-laden car, and I had to explain it six ways to get him to accept it. I kept inventing reasons and he kept shuffling and saying, “I dunno, Jack,” and then finally he said he guessed it made sense to him that I’d want him in front of me where I could see him, rather than in back where he could quietly disappear with my five hundred bucks and a car provided by me. Such a contingency he could comprehend, because it and every other crooked-ass possibility had occurred to him:
