2

 

“Webb, got a big one for you.” Hugh Stanley didn’t call many people directly, but when you’d known an employee and his family since the day you were born you made an exception. Webb’s father Calvin had driven Hugh’s mom to Mercy Hospital to deliver the boy in a snow storm an early January morning in 1958. Webb was six years old and helped his dad wipe down the back seat afterward, soaking up all the fluid she dumped when her water broke. Didn’t smell like no water to Webb.

“Thank Christ you called, Hugh,” Webb said. “I was beginning to think you all forgot about me.”

“You know how it is, Webb. Things are slow.”

“Yeah, yeah. The economy and all that shit. Isn’t that when people do more illegal substances? Crime goes up? Shit like that?”

“Look, I got a doozy for you. You want it or not?”

“I want it.”

The Stanley family would have liked to think they ruled over a vast criminal empire but really they just happened to be the biggest fish in a very small pond. Running anything and everything illegal was all the Stanleys had known for nearly a hundred years.

And all along the McGraws had driven for them. Like one of those remora fish attached the underbelly of a shark, a McGraw had been swimming along with the Stanley clan for almost a century.

Webb McGraw was the last one. His boy, Tucker, wanted no part in the driving business. Just as well. Didn’t have the nerve for it.

Webb was getting up in years, but still he was the man to call when a Stanley needed a driver. And not some chauffeur around town open-the-door-for-you bullshit. It might not be the thrill-a-minute days of running liquor through the backwoods, but plenty of things got shipped that you wouldn’t call FedEx for.

“This one will set you up for quite a while,” Hugh said.

“Well, color me curious, boss. Whacha got?”

“A certain shipment from a certain pharmaceutical company has been, shall we say, lost en route. I need you to go get it and bring it to me.”

“Alright. What about the boys who found the lost items?”

“Intermediaries. Don’t want them too close to this one, lest they get big ideas.”

“I see.”

Webb stayed true to one of the cardinal rules for driving—never ask what the cargo is. Doesn’t matter if it’s a ton of heroin or a ton of candy canes. You do the job, deliver the goods, say goodbye.

This one, however, was too good for Hugh to keep to himself.

“You know how meth has been our growth industry lately?”

“Lately being the last fifteen years, yeah.” The Midwest was the birthplace of trucker’s speed and now the whole damn country was off the high falutin’ booger sugar of the cities and deep into the hick high of crystal meth. That and corn. Iowa had it all.

Hugh continued with an excitement in his voice like his teenage granddaughter talking about the latest pop music haircut with a record deal.

“We got a whole shipment of pseudoephedrine. Straight from the factory. A whole mountain of the stuff.”

“That’s big time.”

“You better believe it. This one score will keep us in the pink for three years, I figure.”

“My usual cut?” Hugh had blown any chance to lowball Webb on this one.

“For your trouble, twenty-five Gs. How’s that grab you?”

“Wish I got grabbed like that a lot more. When and where?”

Hugh gave him an address across the river in Illinois then almost derailed the whole affair. “You can drive a big rig, right?”

Webb hoped the boss man didn’t notice the pause before, “Sure. No problem.”

An eighteen-wheeler? Hell no, he couldn’t drive that. Webb grew up a muscle car guy. American only. Hated the feeling of anything less than eight cylinders under his feet, but always four wheels and only four. He didn’t go the other way and do motorcycles. But a big rig?

For twenty-five grand, he’d learn.

 

 

There were very few pleasantries whenever Tucker’s father called him. He knew he’d turned out to be a big disappointment to Webb. No aptitude for driving, no interest in a criminal lifestyle, hated watching NASCAR.

“You know stock car racing was born out of bootlegging, don’t you? Your granddaddy practically invented the sport.”

“Yes, Dad.” Sigh. “I know.”

Reminding Webb how many times he’d told that story was beside the point. Webb knew he’d explained it hundreds of times before. The kid wasn’t getting it. This was him. This is who he was. It was all in there and Tucker refused to let it out. The real McGraw inside him lived as a prisoner in solitary.

Tucker ignored his dad as easily as he ignored the caged DNA animal inside.

“Tucker, you know anyone who’s a trucker?”

Tucker heard his dad snigger on the other end of the phone, amused by his own rhyme.

“A truck driver? No, Dad. I don’t.”

“Shit.”

“Why?”

“’Cause I’m looking for one.”

Seven phone calls and about a dozen layers of referrals later he found a guy who knew a guy who worked with a guy who did a favor for someone or other who owed some money to Webb.

How the fuck could it be so hard to find a truck driver? Freaking highways were littered with ’em.

 

 

When they met up outside Moline, Illinois, neither one could unravel the knot that tied them together. They decided to hell with it, the five grand Webb was paying sure smelled good and this guy, Lonny, could drive a truck and that was that.

“So what are we hauling?” was the first question out of Lonny’s mouth after he got in the car next to Webb.

Webb turned to look at him. Fat gut hanging out a good six inches over a longhorn steer belt buckle, thinning hair at the top that tapered off into a wispy pony tail in back, black T-shirt under an open red-checked flannel. Yep. A trucker all right.

“We don’t ask that.”

“What do you mean?”

“It don’t matter what’s inside. We get in, drive it to the destination and take our check. You always know what you’re hauling?”

“Yeah, I do. I got it on the manifest.”

“Well, no manifest for this one.”

For the forty-minute drive Lonny’s mind wandered to wild speculative places. Guns. That was his first assumption. Arming some militia out in the sticks against the government or the zombie apocalypse, whichever descended first.

Human trafficking. A trailer’s worth of Russian prostitutes or Central American workers. Lonny lingered a little longer on the vision of the prostitutes.

Eventually the curiosity gnawed at him like a chigger under his skin.

“I can’t do the job if I don’t know what I’m hauling.”

Webb nearly drove into a ditch. “What do you mean?”

“You offer me five grand to drive a rig and you won’t tell me what’s in it? It don’t smell good. Might be the risk isn’t worth five grand.”

“I knew it. You bucking for a raise?”

“No. I just want to know what I’m hauling so I know how to proceed.”

The timetable had already begun. Webb was due back in Iowa by morning and it took too damn long to find this lazy trucker. Protocol had to be broken.

“It’s a shipment of unprocessed drugs used to make methamphetamine. The stuff they use to make cold medicine, only before it gets put into the pills and shit. That’s about all I know about it except that it’s worth a shit-load of money and we need to get the load back to my employers by the a.m. Is that enough for you?”

Lonny’s eyes went glassy, lost in thought again. He never would have guessed.

“Yeah, sure. Okay. I’ll do it.”

“Damn right you will.”

 

 

The rig sat parked behind a self-storage unit. Two skinny twenty-somethings in hooded sweatshirts and jittery limbs waited by the back of the trailer, twin orange dots from their cigarettes glowing.

Webb parked the car, watched the two kids he was to meet and figured they’d be using a little of the product they were helping to make. No matter what profit they made from their little truck-jacking, most of it was going right back to the Stanleys for powder to put up their nose. Ah, the circle of life.

Webb saw Lonny eyeballing the truck. “Can you drive it?”

“Yep.”

“Then let’s go.”

The two orange dots hit the ground and were crushed underfoot. “Where the fuck you been?” The taller of the two oozed smoke as he talked.

“Driving. Where you been?” Webb countered. Sixty-four years old and he could still bring a cement hard attitude to a meeting if needed.

“We been here freezing our asses off.”

“It’s not even cold out. You should put a little meat on your bones.”

“What, like this fat fuck here?” he said, gesturing to Lonny.

“Why don’t we make this happen so you can get out of here and go soak in a warm tub or some shit.”

“Alright, alright. You wanna check it?”

“Nope.” Webb moved his eyes between the two tweakers. “If it’s not all there the Stanleys will know it and they’ll send someone else out. You know what that means, so I won’t go all schoolteacher and spell it out for you.”

The two men shifted on their feet. It looked like they were about to start a two-on-two basketball game except Webb and Lonny remained flatfooted.

“I wanna see it,” Lonny said.

Webb shot him a look like, didn’t you hear what I said?

“I always check my load against the manifest.”

“I told you there isn’t any—”

Webb heard the metal scrape of the trailer door rolling up. The skinny silent one had pushed open the back and now shone a mag light into the trailer. It wasn’t filled top to bottom with cargo but there were two long stacks on either side leaving an aisle up the middle. Boxes were stacked three high. Webb had a flash vision of the ending to Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Lonny’s eyes wouldn’t have been any more hungry than if it had been those Russian hookers.

“Okay, looks good. Shut it now.” Webb tried to hustle it along. All three of the men in his company made him nervous.

Skinny boy jumped up and grabbed hold of the strap then leapt off the tailgate and used his slight body weight to draw down the roll door. It slammed shut like a prison cell.

“You’ll be contacted with payment. Keys?”

The tall one tossed out a single key on a ring. Webb raised a hand to catch it but Lonny intercepted the missile instead.

Webb caught his eye. “We good?”

“Oh yeah, real good.”

Webb saw him spending that five grand already behind his eyes. More belt buckles, probably.

“What about your car?” the tall one said. “Someone coming to collect that too?”

“Keep it,” Webb said. “It’s stolen.”

 

 

The rig started right up and after an awkward left turn to make it out of the storage lot they were headed back toward Iowa and Lonny already found a country station on the radio.

The driver’s side window had been left open and the cab had a chill, but the heater worked fine and Lonny seemed to be enjoying the nearly-new condition of the Peterbilt. He rolled the window up and noticed a smear as he did. Something on the weather stripping around the window that streaked as he cranked it back into place. Something red. He cranked the gearbox up as they gained speed toward the highway then Lonny reached out and touched the smear. He checked his fingers.

Blood.

He showed the stain to Webb who shrugged his shoulders. He sure didn’t figure it was those two kids who drove the big-rig out there in the first place. Some poor sucker on his night shift drew the short straw and ended up hauling the wrong cargo.

The after midnight traffic on the interstate moved a steady five miles over the limit. There wasn’t much to be said so Webb and Lonny let the country crooners do all the talking.

Webb breathed a little easier once they were back across the river and into Iowa. Illinois never quite felt right to him. Something about that state felt like a kid who’d been dropped on his head as a baby. There was something…off about it.

When his body relaxed Webb realized how badly he had to piss.

“Hey, pull off the next stop. I gotta take a leak.”

“Yeah, I don’t see any trucker’s friends in here.”

“A what?”

“Empty bottle you can pee in.”

“Jesus Christ, you do that?”

“You get real good at taking out your prick at highway speeds.”

Webb shook his head.

 

 

Lonny piloted the rig into a space along a row of other trucks parked and idling.

“Hey, grab me a Mountain Dew in there,” Lonny said.

“You don’t need to piss?”

“Nah. Got a bladder of steel.”

“Okay.” Webb hopped down out of the cab. He dodged oil stains as he walked across the lot to the brightly lit mini-mart and fast food combo.

Easiest twenty grand I ever made, he thought. I don’t even have to do the driving.

More country music assaulted his ears inside, but he could tolerate some whiny twang for the next hour it would take for the truck to be delivered.

After an epically long piss he bought two Mountain Dews and wove between more oil slicks on his way back to the truck.

Looking at the long line of sleeping cabs, yellow running lights on and heaters, TVs and DVDs of porn starring chubby girls playing inside, he felt a wave of nausea. The fumes didn’t help, but it was the realization that he left Lonny unsupervised with the stash.

His brain made a logical justification out of the illogical idea that Lonny couldn’t take off with the load because he didn’t have the address where it was being delivered. Only now did Webb see that if Lonny was going to make off with the rig he would go anywhere but the meeting place.

He gripped a can of Mountain Dew in each hand and began running. The backs of all the trailers looked the same. One truck was a moving van with a bright green logo on the trailer so that wasn’t it. His truck had almost no markings at all. It was generic. Easily lost. Easily hidden.

Webb hadn’t run in quite a while and thoughts of a heart attack now flooded his brain with the influx of fast moving blood. Pressure was building inside the cans of soda as he pumped his arms and ignored the spots of oily ground, his eyes skimming from one trailer to another, all of them blending into one anonymous truck barreling past on the highway.

A lifetime in service to the Stanleys and this was how it ended. Webb would finally be the one to bring disgrace to the McGraws. Losing a few cases of liquor for his dad would have been a hanging offense. Losing an entire big rig full of unprocessed meth? Webb’s mind didn’t even know of a punishment to suit the crime.

A sound penetrated the pounding thoughts. A high lonesome wail. Country music. Webb stopped. He turned to his right, looking at the tractor trailer he stood behind. It had no markings. Plain. He followed the sound.

Inside the cab the tunes were cranked and a tin-eared trucker sang along. Sounded like he was celebrating something.

Webb hoisted himself up on the running board of the cab and saw Lonny belting out a tune, big ol’ smile on his face.

Webb exhaled, felt his blood pressure drop fifty points. Better than leaving a hundred Illinois times. He opened the cab door and slid in, trying to catch his breath.

Lonny didn’t turn down the music or stop singing. He took the can of Mountain Dew. “Thanks!” he shouted over the song. Webb wasn’t sure, maybe Willie Nelson?

Before Webb had his answer he was falling backward out of the cab. The tire iron hit him square between the eyes. That smile never dropped off Lonny’s face.

He tumbled down and hit the cool asphalt, hard. He already tasted blood from the split in his skin across the bridge of his nose. The can of Dew split and sprayed like champagne mocking him.

The sound of the engine coming to life was a T. Rex, King Kong and a Terminator all rolled into one. Webb slid back away from the tire as the gears clawed into reverse like teeth gnashing at meat. The truck began to move and Webb reached out a hand but it only brushed against the front tire as the eighteen-wheeler rolled away.