Dead on Arrival

hadn’t seen the car in maybe six months. The last time was before the strike. Yeah, he’d seen it maybe three times before the strike, always at night near the plant. He’d noticed the car because his worthless brother-in-law had owned an El Camino. Only an idiot, which his brother-in-law was, would buy one. Eddie always figured: You wanna car, buy a car; you wanna truck, buy a truck; but for God’s sake don’t get something that thinks it’s both.

There was something else bothering him about what he’d just seen, but he didn’t know what it was.

He finally got to the gate and Billy let him into the refinery and gave him this where-the-fuck-you-been look as he drove through the gate.

The bar had an outside deck and a disc jockey that played rock-and-roll oldies, the kind of music DeMarco liked. Fortunately, for the moment, the guy had picked something slow, an old Roy Orbison song. He held Ellie close and she felt good. He wished the guy would just play slow dances the rest of the night. He didn’t look like such a doofus dancing slow and he got to hold a beautiful woman in his arms while he danced.

He was sweating a little — Ellie was sweating more because she moved more than just her shoulders when she danced — and the breeze coming off the lake felt great. There was a funny smell that came with the breeze though. Maybe it was coming from that big ugly facility he’d seen on the way to the bar. Whatever, the breeze felt good, funny smell or not.

He looked over the top of Ellie’s head and saw another woman dancing that reminded him of Emma — tall, short blondish hair — and he wondered how Emma was doing with Edith Baxter. Emma had told him she was going to save Edith. She had a brilliant psychologist friend in New York, a woman she’d once lived with, and Emma and the doctor were going to see Edith whether Edith liked it or not. Emma figured Edith was such a formidable personality that her friends — she had no relatives left — were afraid to force her to get help. Well, Emma was pretty formi dable too, and she was determined to make Edith get some help before she killed herself.

And while Emma was off doing good works, DeMarco was dancing with a pretty woman, and he’d spend tomorrow zooming around Lake Erie in a fast boat. He really got a kick out of driving that ski boat.

‘You wanna head on home?’ Ellie whispered into his ear. She sounded both tired and sexy at the same time.

‘You bet,’ DeMarco said.

‘You’re late,’ the little Mormon shit said to him, as soon as he stepped into the guard shack. ‘And you’re drunk.’

Eddie was still trying to get his belt buckled, the belt that held the gun he’d never fired and the can of Mace he’d never used. Finally, he got the damn thing through the hole in the belt; if he didn’t lose some weight he was gonna have to get a bigger belt.

‘Shut up,’ he said to the Mormon kid. Before the kid could say something else, he said to Billy, ‘I saw something funny tonight, on the way here.’

‘Oh, yeah,’ Billy said.

‘Yeah, this El Camino.’

‘El Camino. You mean one of them cars that’s-’

‘Yeah, one of them weird Chevys. My dickwad brother-in-law, he owned one. Anyway I seen this-’

‘Billy, it’s your turn to patrol,’ the Mormon kid said.

‘Shut the fuck up!’ Eddie said. ‘I’m talkin’ here and it might be important. Anyway,’ he said to Billy, ‘I seen this same car parked around here, two-three times before the strike.’

‘On our shift?’ Billy said.

‘Yeah, but there’s something else. I saw this kid gettin’ outta the car, and there’s something about this kid, this little scrawny hook-nosed kid, but I just can’t put my finger on it.’

‘Have you seen the kid around here before?’ Billy said.

‘I don’t know,’ Eddie said. ‘There’s something about him, but I can’t remember what. And when I saw him tonight, I think he was holding something in his hand, but-’

The Mormon kid said, ‘You say you’ve seen this car, this …’

‘El Camino,’ Eddie said.

‘You’ve seen it near the plant a few times on our shift?’ the Mormon kid said.

‘Yeah, that’s what I just said. Clean out your ears!’

‘We should call this in,’ the Mormon kid said.

‘No way!’ Billy said.

‘I dunno,’ Eddie said, talking more to himself than the other two guards. ‘There’s just something about this kid.’

‘We should hit the button,’ the Mormon kid said, and Eddie looked over at him. The kid’s eyes were all bright, all lit up, like he’d just seen Jesus.

‘Are you outta your goddamned mind?’ Billy said.

There really wasn’t a button, it was just an expression. Hitting the button meant they’d make three phone calls. The first one would be to the foreman of the guys working in the plant, telling him there was a potential security problem and to get his guys assembled in case they had to evacuate the plant. The second call was to one of the big bosses. But the third call went to the sheriffs. The company had a deal with the sheriffs that if they had a potential security problem on the backshift, the sheriffs would send some patrol cars, lights flashing, sirens blaring, and they’d start searching the plant with the guards. The last thing Eddie wanted was to be talkin’ to some boss — or some deputy — smelling like a damn brewery, then telling them that the reason he’d hit the button was that he’d seen something funny, but he didn’t know what.

Goddammit, what was it about that scrawny kid he’d seen next to the El Camino?

‘If you even think we have a potential security threat,’ the Mormon kid said, ‘the manual says you’re supposed to hit the button.’

‘Aw, shut the fuck up,’ Eddie and Billy said at the same time.

Maybe he’d just patrol with Billy but really patrol. Just walk around a little and check things out. Plus the walk was a good idea, it’d sober him up some.

‘I’m making the call,’ the Mormon kid said.

‘You touch that phone, and I swear to God I’ll break your arm,’ Eddie said.

77

DeMarco got out of bed, trying not to wake Ellie, who was a shapely mound under the sheets, one tanned leg sticking out. DeMarco smiled. He was a lucky man.

He went to the bathroom, took a quick shower, and put on shorts, a faded Redskins T-shirt, and flip-flops, and then made a pot of coffee. He looked out at the lake through the kitchen window and then up at the sky. Perfect. The lake was flat and the sky was cloudless. It was going to be another good day to go jettin’ around in Ellie’s aunt’s boat.

He went outside and got the paper, then took the paper and his coffee out onto the deck. He wished he had a big house with a deck on a lake. He slipped the rubber band off the paper and saw the headline: TERRORIST ATTACK FOILED AT LAKE ERIE REFINERY.

‘Jesus Christ!’ he said out loud, then read the article.

Last night, security guards at the Sheffield refinery on Lake Erie foiled a terrorist attack that could have resulted in hundreds and possibly thousands of deaths. According to FBI spokesperson Jerome Hickson, the terrorist was a fourteen-year-old American Muslim from Cleveland named Javed Khan, who is now in police custody.

At approximately 1A.M., Khan dug a shallow hole underthe refinery’s security fence, entered the refinery, andattached three explosive devices to tanks and pipes containing hydrofluoric acid. According to Dr Matthew Trace, a professor of chemistry at Ohio State University, inhaling even small amounts of hydrofluoric acid can be fatal or cause permanent damage to organs.