Here is a preview of Leadfoot, the second McGraw novel and a prequel to Rumrunners by Eric Beetner…
1
SOUTHEAST IOWA, 1971
“Slow it down, McGraw.”
Calvin McGraw, in his natural element—behind the wheel—turned his eyes to the rearview mirror and looked at his passenger through narrowed lids.
“You have any idea who you’re talking to?”
The man in back turned away and watched the flat Iowa fields race by out his window.
In the passenger seat beside his father, Webb McGraw grinned to himself. He’d grown up in this seat, hanging on around hairpin turns, getting to know the sound of a V8 as keenly as his own dad’s voice. He knew who the man in back was talking to: the best outlaw driver in the Midwest. Maybe anywhere.
Nineteen years old now, Webb had been tagging along on actual jobs with his dad for two years. There were no secrets between McGraw men. Webb knew what his father did. He drove for the Stanleys, a family who would call themselves a criminal empire, but even a nineteen-year-old knew nobody could build an empire in Iowa. An empire of pigs, maybe.
Eyes on the road as he pushed it past seventy, Calvin said to the man in back, “You keeping an eye on the time?”
The man checked his watch. “Ten of.”
“Yeah, so if I don’t run the cylinders a little hot, we ain’t gonna make it. And I never been late yet.”
“I know, Calvin. Jeez. I was just sayin’…”
“Well, Bruce, say it to yourself. I know what the hell I’m doing.”
What they were doing was a delivery, a big part of the McGraw job. They moved things. Used to be crates of booze. Now it was more drugs, money, people. Anything that needed moving by anything that had an engine in it: Calvin McGraw was your man, and he was grooming his son to uphold the family name. Bringing Webb up in the life came with reservations. Calvin and his wife, Dorothy, had many a late night talk about whether to let Webb find his own way in the world; do something beyond the outlaw life, but so far Webb hadn’t shown much interest in anything else.
This was a short run. Eighty-five miles, each way. If Bruce hadn’t been so damn late getting to the pickup, they’d be there already. But Calvin didn’t need to remind him of that, he only needed to drop his foot a little lower and get them to the meet on time.
Webb acted as navigator and called the turn off.
“Up here, Pop.”
Calvin hardly slowed as he spun the wheel on his nearly new Mercury Cougar Eliminator. It took the corner like a champ. In the backseat, Bruce moaned like his stomach was churning. Calvin had heard the sound before.
“You’re gonna upchuck, you roll down the goddamn window. Don’t get it on my seats.”
They were off the highway on a two lane blacktop road leading into what looked like an ocean of green. Hip high corn stalks rose on either side of the road. A murder of crows took to the air as the Mercury’s V8 blasted their picnic with the birdsong of internal combustion.
“There it is,” Webb said, pointing to a farmhouse in the distance.
“What’s the time?” Calvin asked.
Bruce checked his watch again. “Four minutes ’til.”
Calvin slapped the steering wheel. “Hot damn. Streak stays intact.”
They parked in a gravel strip near the front of the house. On the opposite side, closer to a worn down barn, was a four door Chrysler sedan. Beyond that lay a rusting tiller at the edge of the corn. Calvin left the engine running. He turned to his son. “You want to drive home?”
Webb’s face brightened. “You mean it?”
“Yeah.”
The gesture of confidence wasn’t lost on the boy. Calvin placed a firm grip on his son’s shoulder, his hand still wrapped in a leather driving glove. He squeezed hard and Webb almost winced, but focused on the look of pride in his dad’s face instead.
Calvin got out and Webb slid over behind the wheel. Bruce climbed out of the back and waited by the trunk. Calvin removed his spare key and handed it to Bruce who unlocked the trunk. Calvin leaned against the car by the driver’s window, unconcerned with what he’d been carrying. Those were the rules—never open the package. Never worry about what’s in there. It’s not your job. Just get it there and get home safe and don’t involve the cops.
Calvin pointed at the wheel. “Hands at ten and two. Never take them off the wheel. Always keep it running. Keep your eyes on your mirrors same as if you were on the highway.”
“What for? We’re stopped.”
“And that makes you twice as easy to ambush. It’s a damn sight easier to sneak up on a parked car than a moving one.”
Webb had been good at absorbing the lessons. They were getting down to the serious stuff now. Calvin had taught the boy how to drive, a skill he’d been born with in his blood. But the job…in a hundred different ways the job could get you killed faster than a head on collision at a hundred miles per.
Calvin wished his son would cut his damn hair, but he knew that didn’t matter. It’s what the kids were doing. Cal had never wavered from his high and tight, even if it did show the first stubby grey hairs mixing salt with the pepper. Driving with Webb these days also meant no radio. They just couldn’t find a thing there to agree on. Better to let the soundtrack be the rumble of the engine and the rush of wind going by.
Seeing his son behind the wheel gave Calvin a twinge of worry—not something he liked on a job. It’s a distraction. And it confused him. Wasn’t this Webb’s birthright? Could his wife be right? Was it too dangerous? He tamped it down, figured it was just the oddness of being out of the driver’s seat. Reminded him of that time he tried to drive one of those little British roadsters with the right hand drive. The mechanics were all the same but damned if it didn’t make him feel like he was driving drunk.
“Shouldn’t be more than five,” Bruce said. “I drop this, then I get the package from him and we’re outta here.”
“You do what you gotta do. We’ll be here.”
Calvin parked himself by the open trunk, ready to receive the next package. As odd as it was not being behind the wheel, Calvin liked getting the chance to stretch his legs.
It also gave him time to think—a dangerous hobby.
Now north of forty, Calvin had been giving thought to retiring. It was part of Webb’s grooming, to make a replacement. But as Webb grew older and the reality appeared on the horizon, he and Dorothy started discussing.
The life of an outlaw wasn’t always easy. It wasn’t always safe. He had taken gunfire over the years. He’d been in a few close scrapes but—knock on wood—he’d never spent even a single night in jail unless you counted that one night in the drunk tank up in Ottawa. He also knew a streak like that was bound to run out.
His own father had cracked up on a right hand turn he’d taken a thousand times before, and at higher speeds. Something about that day made the good Lord call him home, but not without merging his face with a tangle of steel and the sharp metal hands of a speedometer, which, if Calvin thought about it, was about the right way for a McGraw to go.
But he didn’t want that for his son, and Dorothy didn’t want that for her husband.
The car’s idle changed and the brake light by Calvin’s knee went dark. He walked back to Webb’s window.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing. I put it in park.”
“Did I say to do that?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “No. You leave it in gear. Engine on. In gear. Ready to roll.” Calvin looked at his son’s hands. “And Jesus Christ, ten and two.”
Webb lifted his hand from his knee where he’d let it rest. He shrank in the seat, felt his cheeks go hot same as they did when he got scolded as a toddler.
“I’m not saying this just to be saying it, Webb. This is important shit.”
“Yes, sir.”
He put the car in drive, kept his foot on the brake. Hands in position.
Calvin went back behind the car, drummed his leather-wrapped fingers on the open trunk. The first gunshot came from deep within the house. A second and third came quickly after, each one getting closer.
Calvin tensed, his hands reflexively reaching for a steering wheel that wasn’t there. The front door banged open and Bruce came falling out, hands clutching his gut. Calvin jumped to the passenger door, got it open and shoved the front seat forward to make an open path into the back for Bruce.
Another shot splintered against the door frame as Bruce dug a gun out of his coat pocket, turned, and fired a wild shot that banged into the porch wood and burrowed there. The recoil of the gun made it drop from his weakened hand.
“Go, go,” Calvin urged him.
Behind the wheel, Webb waited for his father to come take over, his knuckles white in his clock position.
Calvin didn’t carry a gun. He never needed one. He waited outside the action, in the car. A disused Browning sat in the glove box, but that seemed miles away now as Bruce stumbled forward like a drunk, leaving a trail of blood down the steps of the porch and across the gravel.
Calvin put a hand on his arm and guided him into the backseat as two men burst through the front door. Cal flipped the seat back into position and slid down into the passenger side. It felt like putting on your pants backward.
“Drive.”
A bullet pierced the side of the Mercury and Calvin cringed as if he’d been hit himself. The competition orange color and hood stripes had been extra. To get it repainted would cost a fortune. But Calvin knew they were lucky to get away with their hides.
Webb pressed his foot to the floor and the tires kicked gravel. The trunk lid nodded like it was waving goodbye.
“You know your way out?” Calvin asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Get us to that blacktop and they can’t catch us.”
This was Webb’s test, and he aimed to pass it.
Calvin turned to look behind them but couldn’t see past the open trunk lid. He watched through his side mirror and saw what he feared. The two men were getting into the Chrysler.
“You remember what I told you, son. Keep your eyes front. What’s ahead of you is always more dangerous than what’s behind.”
Webb nodded, eyes cemented to the road ahead.
Calvin leaned over the seat to Bruce. He tried not to think about his upholstery when he saw all the blood.
“They got you, huh?”
“Yeah.” Bruce kept his eyes and his teeth slammed shut, gritted together to ward off the pain, but it didn’t look to be working.
Calvin saw two holes in his gut, and by the looks of what he was leaking out onto the seat, he had another hole in back.
“You hang tight. We’ll get you home.”
“Those sons a bitches.” Bruce lifted a hand to wipe the sweat off his forehead. His hand was so covered in blood he painted his face red. “Fucking Cantrell scumbags.”
Calvin knew the name of the rival crime syndicate, but he’d never heard of them this far east. Maybe Bruce was talking crazy. Blood loss making his thoughts jumbled up. Or maybe this was a very bad sign of things to come.
Webb turned the Eliminator onto the two-lane blacktop and gunned the Boss 429 V8. The narrow hood scoop sucked in air and blew it over the sizzling engine. Webb’s hands hadn’t moved to any more than 9:55 and 2:03. He stared down the road in front of him like it owed him money.
“Keep her steady,” Calvin said. “Looking good, Webb. Real good.”
In his mirror, Calvin saw the Chrysler bounce onto the road behind them. They were two football fields away, not a problem for the Mercury to keep that lead. Calvin knew they had guns though. They wouldn’t dare fire at this distance…would they?
With his eyes on the mirror he jerked forward as Webb hit the brakes. Tires skidded. Bruce cried out in a harmonizing pitch with the wail of the burning rubber as he flung into the back of the seats.
“Webb, what the fuck are you doing?”
“It was a fox. A little fox or something. Ran right out in front of the car.” He was already accelerating again, but he was frazzled. His hands were in the wrong position. He had to downshift to keep the engine from straining.
“So you run the fucking thing over.”
“I’m sorry. It was just instinct.”
“That’s the instinct of a housewife, not a goddamn McGraw. Get your head out of your ass, boy.”
The sudden slow down and re-start had slammed the trunk closed and now Calvin had a clear view of the gaining Chrysler. He could see the man in the passenger seat leaning out the window, pistol in his hand. Calvin looked at his glove box.
It wasn’t like he’d never shot a gun. He had plenty of times. Mostly rifles and mostly at deer. This was supposed to Bruce’s job. And Webb was doing Calvin’s job. Everything was upside down.
He looked back at Bruce. “How you doing, buddy?”
Bruce had passed out. For the first time in his life, Calvin McGraw was sitting in the shotgun seat.
He opened the glove box, took out the oilcloth inside and unwrapped the pistol. It hadn’t been properly maintained and he hoped like hell it wouldn’t blow up in his hands if he had to use it. He checked his mirrors one more time. Yeah, he would have to use it.
The first shot from the Chrysler zinged past them. Calvin sucked in a deep breath and pushed it out quick. He pumped the handle on the window and the car was filled with fast moving air and the smell of manure.
“Hold on, Pop. Wait a minute.”
Webb swerved the car into the oncoming lane, offering up a better shot for his dad. Calvin leaned out, took aim at the front tire of the chasing Chrysler and let a shot go. The gun fired, but his shot was off. Calvin ducked back inside as two more shots came his way from the Chrysler, which was only twenty yards off their tail now. He knew he didn’t look dignified as he cowered and winced at the incoming gunfire. He also didn’t give a shit.
“Hang on, Pop,” Webb said. “You get ready.”
“Ready for what?”
Webb hit the brakes again. The Mercury slowed and the smell of grinding rubber on asphalt pushed out the manure smell for a moment. With the Chrysler fast approaching, the gap between them closed in a matter of seconds. Calvin found himself side by side with a stunned driver in the sedan.
It took five bullets to get the tire, but he blew the right front wheel on the Chrysler and it spun wildly as Webb stood on the pedal again and shot the Mercury out of there. Calvin watched in the rearview as the blown tire shredded into mulch and the rim of the sedan bit pavement and spun the car, flinging it down into a ditch and ramming the grill into a culvert, flipping the back up over the front until the car landed on its roof amid a row of spring corn.
Webb hollered and slapped the wheel with his right hand. “We got ’em!”
“We did, son. Now get your hands back on that wheel.”
Calvin locked the gun back in the glove box and watched his son with pride as the smells of the farmland settled back in over them and the breeze cooled his scalp through his high and tight haircut.
Calvin looked back at Bruce and saw he wasn’t breathing. No surprise there. The surprise was what he said about the Cantrells. If it was true, it could only mean bad things ahead. Calvin repeated his own words silently to himself, what’s ahead of you is always more dangerous than what’s behind.
2
Webb parked the car outside of the Stanley’s main office. It seemed a novel idea when they opened shop—criminals having a front office, a secretary, coffee brewing for guests—but the Stanley’s prided themselves on appearances. Fine clothes, country club memberships, only the best in front businesses to launder their money and hide their illegal activities from the police and from the other members of the club.
The engine exhaled when Webb turned the key at the end of the hard ride. Webb exhaled too. He could finally relax a little now that they were on friendly territory. It didn’t last. Calvin was turned in his seat looking at Bruce in the back.
“Goddammit. Ruined my upholstery.”
Webb refused to look. “Why would they shoot him?”
“Same reason any man shoots another—they wanted to see him dead.”
Webb felt little comfort in that answer. Calvin dragged a hand down his weary face.
“Guess I’ll go break the news.”
“I still don’t know why we didn’t pull over and phone it in.”
Calvin looked at his son. “Because news like this you deliver in person, son. And this isn’t just about ol’ Bruce here. This is more than just one man dying. Could be we just witnessed the start of something bad. Real bad.” Calvin slid out, leaving Webb alone in the car with a corpse. “You stay here.”
Webb got out and stood by the front of the car where the smell of hot oil and gasoline fumes overtook the scent of drying blood inside.
Calvin pressed the tiny white button and heard the electronic chimes. The single story office complex had been bought for a song once the previous tenants were convinced it was time for them to move on and move out. The glue outlines of plastic letters left a ghost image of the name Saul Birnbaum, Ophthalmologist, the previous occupant of Hugh Stanley’s new office.
The door buzzed and Calvin went in. He passed the outer offices and didn’t stop for Cheryl, the busty secretary outside Hugh’s suite.
“He’s expecting me and he’s gonna want to hear this ASAP.”
Cheryl waved him in with long red nails like bloody claws. Calvin knocked twice on the door and didn’t wait for a response before opening.
“Well, that went to shit right quick.”
Hugh Stanley, top man in the organization being the eldest brother of the man who started this mob back during prohibition, sat behind his massive oak desk. Hugh was tall, dark hair oiled back like Dean Martin. He wore a dark blue suit with contrast stitching in white. A deep red shirt, open at the collar and a brightly colored silk cravat where he used to wear a necktie. Calvin liked the old look.
“What did?”
The voice came from Victor Stanley, one of Hugh’s younger brothers and the second in command. He sat on a leather sofa facing Hugh’s massive desk. His feet were up, a pair of those tall heeled shoes on his feet. He sported a mustache, hair grown over his ears and a silk shirt in gaudy colors, open at the collar and no tie at all. He sniffed, the incessant habit of a cocaine addict.
“Bruce is dead,” Calvin said.
Hugh sat up straight in his chair. “He’s what?”
“What the hell did you send me into?” Calvin walked to the bar and poured himself two fingers of bourbon on ice.
“They killed him?”
Cal drank half and let the liquor burn down his throat. “Shot him dead and ruined my backseat.” He set the rest of the drink down. “Don’t you have any beer?”
Victor slammed a palm down on the glass topped coffee table, nearly cracked it. “Those sons of bitches.”
“He mentioned the name Cantrell,” Calvin said.
“Yes. This did involve them,” Hugh said.
“I wasn’t aware you did any business with them.”
“Not normally, no.” Hugh folded his hands across his belly, clear that he wasn’t going to offer any further details on the deal.
“Not nearly enough, you mean,” Vic said. Hugh shot him a look with all the venom of a cobra. Calvin didn’t want to get in the middle of whatever spat they were having.
Calvin waved it away. “It was supposed to be a drop-off, that’s it.”
“That’s all it was.”
“Well, it turned into Bruce’s funeral.” Calvin looked at the unfinished glass of bourbon but didn’t pick it up.
Hugh thumbed the intercom on his desk. “Cheryl, get Oscar and two other boys out to Calvin’s car right away.” He leaned on his elbows and rested his square jaw on his fists. “Good thing we had you out there behind the wheel, McGraw.”
“I wasn’t behind the wheel, my son was. I was in the shotgun seat and I did not care for it, let me tell you.”
“Webb was driving?”
“It was supposed to be a mailman run. Drop off and pick up. I tell you though, the kid did a bang-up job.”
Victor sniffed again. Calvin knew the stress of this news made him crave a line of coke, but he didn’t dare drop his nose to his brother’s glass table and get high. Not around Hugh, the eldest, the responsible one.
Vic fidgeted, bouncing on the couch cushions. “What the fuck are we gonna do, Hugh?”
“We gotta get to the bottom of this.”
“I told you something like this would happen.”
“Not now, Vic. This thing with Cantrell could be something but I don’t want him calling the shots. We don’t want to send it off the rails right at the start.”
“It looks like he’s calling shots already. Now if you’d listened to me and—”
Hugh roared. “Enough, Vic.”
Calvin studied the two brothers as he got tired of waiting for a beer and drained his glass, thankful to be above this kind of decision making. He just wanted to drive, not deal with this bullshit.
Hugh tapped his front teeth with his fingernail, thinking. “We just have to think this out.”
“Well, for God’s sake, don’t let Kirby know.”
Kirby Stanley came around the corner and saw Webb leaning against the front of the Mercury. Kirby was the younger brother, the oddball. Kirby was quick with a fist, hot tempered and mean. He seemed to enjoy scaring people. He’d taken a near-obsessive interest in the Manson murders a couple of years back and loved to talk about it with anyone who’d let him. Most people in the family avoided him. He didn’t even have an office in the building so he was left to hang around the fringes of the business.
Kirby always liked the McGraws. He liked the cars, the speed, the noise.
Webb was as freaked out by Kirby as anyone, but right then he needed what Kirby always had.
“Hey, Kirby, you got a joint?”
“Sure.” He reached into the pocket of his fringed vest, the tassels hanging down over his red and orange striped pants. His shaggy hair and worn out hippie threads made him look like someone who’d auditioned, but hadn’t made it into The Monkees.
Webb took the offered joint. Kirby held out a zippo and thumbed the wheel. Webb toked and got the joint rolling, relishing the warmth of the smoke hitting his lungs. He wanted to smoke it down to the roach, but he knew it would be rude not to offer a toke to the man who’d just hooked him up, so he held out the joint for Kirby who took it with a pinch of his fingers as he eyeballed the car.
“She looks fast.” Kirby took a hit of the pot.
Webb exhaled and rolled his neck, loosening his shoulders. “She sure saved my ass tonight.”
“Hit some trouble?” Kirby passed the joint back to Webb.
“You could say that. Made out better than Bruce though.” Webb toked and pointed a thumb over his shoulder toward the backseat. Kirby bent over and peered in. When he saw Bruce sprawled in the back, eyes still open and blood on his shirt—Kirby went black.
He stood up straight as an arrow. “Who did it?”
Webb felt he’d said something he shouldn’t have. “I don’t know.”
“Who killed him?” He asked again.
“He said the name Cantrell. That’s all I heard.”
Kirby pushed past Webb and nearly took the door to the office off the hinges as he pushed through. Damn it, Webb thought. He kept the joint.
“We’ll set up a meeting,” Hugh said.
“Bruce had a meeting with them,” Victor said. “How’d that go?”
The door kicked open. Calvin dropped his tumbler. The bourbon was gone, but ice spilled out like dice across the carpet. Kirby came in with heavy footsteps, the smoldering joint still pinched in his fingers.
On the sofa, Victor recovered from the shock. “Jesus Christ, Kirby. What the hell?”
“Cantrell did this?”
Hugh shook his head in frustration. “Calm down, Kirby. We’re handling it.”
“I’ll fucking kill him.” He flung the joint to the carpet.
“No, you won’t.” Hugh stood, holding his palms out like he was talking a bear away from his picnic. “We’ve got this under control. Okay?”
Kirby stood clenching and unclenching his fists, like two pumping hearts at the end of his arms. He breathed heavily through his nose.
“We got it,” Hugh said in a quieter voice. “It’s fine. If we need you, we’ll call you.”
Kirby ran his black eyes over his brother. “That’s what you always say.” He spun and stomped out, leaving the door open and deep indents from his feet in the shag. The room stayed silent after he left.
Calvin finally broke the spell. “Well, I should get outta here.”
“Me too,” Victor said and he stood with a long snort. Calvin would head back to the car, see if the men had gotten Bruce’s body out yet. Victor would go to his office, pull out his Peruvian hand-carved snuff box and dig out a spoonful. Hugh would stay behind and try to figure this shit out.
3
Calvin crossed the lobby, grateful to be leaving the mess behind with Hugh. Ahead of him, Victor slipped into his office and the door quickly shut. Everyone steeled themselves for battle in their own way, he supposed.
He passed through the front doors and saw three men at work on his car. Bruce was long gone and the backseat would be shortly. The men tugged at bolts, pulled hard at the braces holding the seat in place. Calvin was disgusted. He thought these were the type of men who ripped a woman’s dress on a first date, tore open a neckline and said stuff like, “Show me them titties.” No grace. No caress. But he was too tired to correct them and show them the proper way to treat a vehicle.
Instead, Calvin stepped off to the side of the building into a small courtyard with a fountain——a leftover from the days of this squat building being a medical plaza. Some place for people to sit out a bad diagnosis, though in this place nothing more serious than the need for bifocals or an impacted molar was ever the bad news of the day.
Times like these, other men would have a smoke. Not Calvin. He’d picked up the habit for a few short years in the early fifties, but it didn’t stick. One time he was waiting for a pickup and sat behind the wheel smoking an unfiltered Lucky Strike. When the man sprinted to his door, tore it open and said, “Go, go, go.” Calvin needed a moment to toss the smoke. He pitched it, bouncing it off the glass of his window and back into his lap. He choked on the lungful of smoke and had to beat out the orange ash from his crotch. It cost him seconds. Precious seconds. They got out and everything was fine, but he didn’t like the feeling. No more smoking on the job. No way.
Calvin thought he might find Webb in the courtyard, but he found another familiar voice.
“Well, well, if it isn’t the man with the lead foot.”
Nancy Stanley, Victor’s wife. She sat on a small bench overlooking the fountain, long dark European cigarette in her hand. Her raven hair was done up in a Jackie Kennedy style she’d adopted the day after the inauguration and hadn’t abandoned since. Her lips were deep red, as usual, and her heavily outlined eyes smoldered at Calvin.
This was the way with Nancy. She’d been trying to get Cal in bed for more than a year.
She did a French inhale and thought it looked sexy, like a girl from a black and white movie. Calvin thought it looked like she was trying to give herself smoke inhalation.
“Nancy,” he said. Curt, professional.
“You here to give me a ride?”
She tried—and succeeded—in making her every word a sexual entendre.
“Just wrapping up. Letting the boys do a little work on the car.”
“So you have time to do a little work on me?”
“Nancy…” Calvin sighed, tired of this game. Not only was she Victor’s wife, but Calvin loved his own wife. Way more than a roll in the hay with an admittedly attractive woman.
“When are you going to lighten up, McGraw? Give a girl a chance.”
“Why don’t you give your husband a chance?”
“What Victor’s been giving me since the night we were married isn’t worth taking a chance on. He doesn’t know how to treat a woman. Especially when he’s got that nose candy running the show below the belt.” She pointed to her nose. “Up it goes.” Then down to her crotch. “And down it goes.”
“That’s really none of my business, Nancy.”
“I’m just saying, you’d be helping a girl out.”
Calvin had no doubt there were plenty of younger studs on the payroll willing to help her out, and he was sure they did exactly that. He could see it in her eyes, beyond the makeup—she wanted him because he said no.
“Look, it’s been a long night. Things are getting kinda heated in there.”
“We could make things downright hot here.”
She blew a plume of smoke. Calvin exhaled a tired breath of his own. “Have a good night, Nancy.” He turned and walked back toward his car.
“I’ll get you someday, Leadfoot.”
Calvin ignored her. When he got back to his car he couldn’t ignore it any more.
“Boys, boys. Go easy on her, all right? This isn’t your high school prom under the bleachers. You gotta sweet talk her a little bit.” And he moved in to help.
Calvin and Webb got home well past midnight. Dorothy, Calvin’s wife, waited up.
The difference between Dorothy and most wives waiting up after twelve o’clock, was that she was there with hot coffee, a plate of brownies and a smile. She knew everything Calvin did, and had done. They bore no secrets. She knew she married an outlaw and she wore the McGraw name proudly.
“Long one, huh?” she said as they came in the door.
“Too long,” Webb said and he excused himself off to his apartment over the garage. At least this late at night they would probably avoid the ear crushing music coming from his stereo and his gnarled attempts to play the guitar like Jimi Hendrix.
Cal sat down at the kitchen counter, let out a long sigh.
“Rough day?”
“Someone got killed, Dot. Died right in my backseat.”
“Oh, Cal.” She put a hand over his.
“Wasn’t anyone I knew real well, but my upholstery is a total loss.”
“You really think that’s what you should be worrying about right now?”
“It’s all I can worry about. There might well be bigger things brewing, but it’s my job to stay out of it and I’m happy as a clam to do it.”
She patted his hand twice, turned to serve him a brownie off the tray. “I’ve never seen a clam I could say was any happier than any other creature. And I’d bet there hasn’t been a truly happy clam who ever found himself in the state of Iowa.”
“You may be right about that.”
Calvin kissed her on the cheek, begged off the coffee which she set back on the counter for morning.
“How many more late nights and dead friends is it gonna be before we talk serious about you stepping out?”
Calvin didn’t have the energy for this conversation so late after a hard day, but he figured that’s exactly what Dorothy counted on. Get him while his defenses were down.
“It might not be a good time to bail on them right now.”
“Is it ever going to be a good time?”
“I s’pose not.” He went to the fridge and took out a can of beer.
“The man from Empire Racing said he’d give you until end of summer, right?”
Cal swallowed a mouthful of beer, fighting the foam from overflowing in his over-eager mouth. “That’s what he said.”
“It’s coming up.”
Calvin had gotten a job offer from a stock car racing company. His name got around in the world of gear heads, motor maniacs, gas huffers, tire burners, oil jockeys and pit crews. They wanted him to run the team. Train new drivers, teach the old ones some new tricks. They didn’t offer to have him drive, though. Too old. That didn’t sit well with Calvin.
On the other hand, nobody would be shooting at him on a race track.
“It’s not like it’s big time or nothing. I won’t be crew chief for Richard Petty or nothing.”
“Steady work, though. You get to be around cars all day long.”
“Yeah, around ’em. Not in ’em.”
“Still.” Dorothy could remain calm in any situation. She refused to argue with Calvin. She knew he needed to come to a big decision like this on his own. She also knew she was tired of men shooting at her husband. And she for damn sure didn’t like the idea of them shooting at her son.
“It means traveling a lot. And not to fun places like Daytona. This is Midwest Regional. State fairs, dirt tracks, small towns.”
“I just want to know you’re thinking about it, Cal.”
“Oh, I’m thinking. When those bullets were coming at us, I was thinking all right. Don’t you worry about that.”
She set a hand on his. “I never worry, Cal.”
“Mrs. McGraw, I work with liars on a daily basis, and you, my dear, are the best damn liar I ever met.” Calvin kissed her. “Let’s get some sleep.”
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