Kathy Hogan Trocheck - Truman Kicklighter 02 - Crash Course (20 page)

“Kind of a spooky place,” Jackie said, rubbing the goose bumps on her arms.

Truman slowed down. A yellow sign loomed out of the darkness.

CAUTION: CONSTRUCTION AHEAD.

Five hundred yards down the road there was another sign.

HEAVY EQUIPMENT ENTERING TRAFFIC.

The traffic part was a joke. The road was two lanes, and not another soul was in sight. After another quarter mile, neon orange rubber pylons marked the way as the road narrowed down to one lane, with the right side of the roadway blocked off by wooden barricades. The skeleton of an overpass was in progress: huge T-shaped concrete columns, steel beams and girders, a mountain of crushed rock, and the requisite construction equipment—cement mixers, motor graders, forklifts, dump trucks, even a construction trailer.

“This is the place,” Truman said.

“Why are they building something like this way out here?” Jackie wondered.

“Progress,” Truman said, slowing to a stop.

Jackie hopped out of the car and swung two wooden barriers inward, like opening a gate. Truman pulled the station wagon through, and she swung them back in place.

“There’s a kind of road back into the woods,” Jackie said, pointing in the direction of the construction trailer. “Maybe you can hide the car there.”

Truman inched the Nova toward and around the trailer. The road was more of a sand footpath really, with walls of thick green scrub oaks, palmetto clumps, and spindly young pines.

“I don’t know,” Truman said dubiously. “Looks like a pretty tight fit.”

“Mr. K, this car is older than I am,” Jackie said. “A couple of scratches on this old paint can’t hurt anything.”

“Original paint job,” Truman grumbled. But he headed into the thicket, flinching each time a tree branch slapped at the windshield or scraped on the sides.

When he was about 100 yards down the trail, he stopped.

“Guess what I brought?” Jackie reached into her gym bag and brought out two brightly colored plastic figureheads, with antennae sticking out from between their ears.

“Batman and the Joker?”

“Walkie-talkies,” Jackie said. “My sister’s kids left them at my place when they were down in June. See,” she said, pushing a switch on the Joker’s ear. The crackle of static filled the car. “New batteries and everything.”

“What are we supposed to do with these?” Truman asked, looking distastefully at Batman.

“We can split up and hide,” Jackie said, opening her car door. “So we make sure we can both hear and see what they’re doing.”

“Might work,” Truman said.

The rain was still misting, but it hadn’t dropped the temperature below ninety. Mosquitoes swarmed in the thicket, lighting on their exposed arms, necks, and faces. Their feet sank into the soft, sandy path and saw-edged palmetto fronds slapped at them as they trudged along. The tiny beam of the flashlight wavered in the cloak-like darkness.

“Ow,” Jackie said, swatting her arm. “Should have brought bug spray. I’m getting eaten alive.”

Truman slapped at a mosquito on his neck. “Keep moving,” he advised.

There was a sliver of moon and it seemed to flit in and out of gray-tinged silver rain clouds. “Not much moonlight tonight,” Truman said. They were at the edge of the woods, in back of the construction trailer.

“There’s a dump truck right up close to the road-side,” Jackie said, flashing her beam on it. “Maybe one of us could hide in the back.”

The truck’s cab doors were locked, as Truman expected. He watched admiringly while Jackie climbed nimbly over the side of the truck, pausing to unfasten a heavy black tarp that had been pulled tight over the cargo area.

A few seconds later, he saw the tarp rumple. She popped her head out near the truck’s tailgate. “This thing is really big,” she said. “But it’s half full of gravel, so I can see out a little bit. Hotter than seven devils under this tarp.”

“Can you hear under that thing?” Truman called.

She disappeared. “Can you hear?” he repeated.

“Yeah,” came a muffled voice. “I can hear, but I can’t see unless I peek out like I was just doing.”

“Stay down then, and just listen,” Truman instructed. “I’ll find a place nearby where I can see what’s going on.”

Jackie’s head popped up. “What’s my code name?” she asked, holding aloft her purple-and-green walkie-talkie.

“Just talk when you need me,” Truman said.

There was more light up close to the road, from an overhead streetlight and the flashing flares mounted on the barricades.

He pulled himself up into the cab of a motor grader and looked around. There was a good view of the road, but it was too open, he concluded. The only way he could see here was to be seen. He’d be a sitting duck.

The other pieces of equipment scattered around were just as visible. He needed to find a vantage point, and quickly. It was nearly eleven-thirty. He swung around in a slow circle. The bright-blue Porta-Potty caught his eye. It was in front of the dump truck, maybe five yards away from the shoulder of the road, to the right of the second set of barricades.

He stepped up into the pillbox, leaving the door ajar. The booth was tiny, maybe four feet square, with a white one-piece toilet and a minuscule metal sink. The stench was incredible. Like a chicken house in July. He tried to breathe through his mouth.

The only fresh air coming into the Porta-Potty was from a set of louvered vents, up high, near the ceiling. Dim rays of light from the streetlamp shone through in narrow strips.

“Something to stand on,” Truman said aloud.

He darted outside, saw a trash pile, and ran over to it. There were plenty of plywood scraps, but they all looked too big. He kicked at the pile, bent down, and clawed through the debris until he found some rough scraps of two-by-fours. He pulled two of the boards out and dragged them over to the Porta-Potty. Wedged side by side across the commode bowl, they made a narrow platform. Gripping the edge of the sink for balance, he pulled himself to a standing position.

The view was disappointing. The flimsy plastic louvers were too narrow. He climbed back down and tried to think. Tools. Maybe one of the construction workers had left some in one of the trucks. Or in the trailer. He glanced down at his watch. Ten of. Too late, he couldn’t risk leaving his post now.

Truman planted both feet apart, so they rested on a single plank, each on the edge of the commode bowl. Slowly, he leaned down and picked up the second board. Once, he felt the two-by-four teetering, and he edged his feet apart, slightly wider.

He used the end of the board as a battering ram, gripping it with both hands and jabbing hard at the plastic vents. After the third strike, he heard the plastic cracking. He jabbed some more, on either end of the vent, trying not to lose his balance, throwing only his upper body into the effort.

More of the plastic cracked. He felt it with his fingertips. The material had gotten brittle and weakened from exposure to the sun. He tore at the louvers, ripping out two and shattering another with his fists.

Better. He’d broken out the bottom half of the vents and now he stood at eye level, looking directly out at the barricaded section of the road closest to the overpass pilings.

The walkie-talkie crackled. He’d set it down in the sink and to get it he had to do a careful deep-knee bend.

“Breaker one-nine, breaker one-nine,” a tinny voice said. “Joker to Batman. Do you read me, Batman? Over.”

“I read you,” Truman said.

“Where are you, Batman? Over.”

Truman sighed. If he told her he was hiding in a Porta-Potty, she would never let him hear the end of it.

“I’m about twenty yards north of you,” he said. “I can see the road from here.”

“What’s going on out there, Batman? Talk to me. It must be a hundred and twenty degrees under here.”

Truman saw a set of headlights outside. The car slowed, the lights were cut, and then it veered sharply to the right, stopping in front of the first set of barriers. It was a cream-colored Mercedes.

“Gotta go,” Truman said softly. “We’ve got company.”

“I copy,” Jackie said. “Joker, over and out.”

Hernando Boone was five minutes early by Truman’s watch. He finally got out of the Mercedes, pushed the wooden barricades aside, and drove through, running over and crushing one of them. Truman heard the wood splintering as the tires rolled over it.

Good. He could see and hear, unless they decided to take up whispering.

Boone snugged the Mercedes up against one of the concrete overpass pilings. He strolled around to the back of the car, reached in the trunk, and brought out a large, clear-glass bottle. He hopped on the closed trunk, fiddled in his pocket, and brought out a stout, hand-rolled cigarette, which he lit with a disposable lighter.

“Spliffs,” the Jamaicans called them. Big as a Havana cigar, only instead of tobacco, this little number was grade-A ganga. Boone opened the quart of Stoli and let it trickle down the back of his throat, savoring the cool burn. He took a long hit off the spliff, then settled back to wait for Ronnie and his crew.

Bondurant wasn’t used to not running the show, but neither was Hernando Boone. He’d had a high school coach once, shitty coach, didn’t know jack about running a passing offense, but old Coach Jackson told him one thing that stuck with him.

“Starting out,” Coach told Hernando, “you gonna work for the man. That’s all right. You listen to the man, take his money, learn how things work, make your mistakes on the man’s time. Then, when it’s time, you do your own thing. And the man comes to work for you.”

Boone trickled some more Stoli down his throat. The bottle had been in the freezer at the meat locker all day, now the frosty wetness felt good in the blanket-like heat.

Bondurant was the man. He was the classic smalltime hustler on the make to get in on the big score. Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t. The home-delivery meat business was a gold mine, but Boone was bored with ghetto enterprises. Insurance. Now that was white collar. Upscale. Florida was the perfect environment for it, but other states were wide open. Texas, for sure. Mississippi, too. With his organizational skills, and for the time being, Ronnie’s knowledge of the racket, he could pull down some heavy change. Get him some computers, hook up to some databases, do it right.

Hernando had already decided that he would take on only one partner. Weems would have to go. It was only a matter of timing. Might piss off Ronnie, but that was okay. Let him know who he was dealing with, in case he got any ideas.

There were lights coming this way. Two sets, close together. As they got closer he saw that one was the big gray Lincoln, the other some kind of yellow Plymouth with a muffler that sounded like one of the old bomber jets.

The Lincoln glided past the splintered barricades, pulling over on the shoulder near a bright-blue Porta-Potty. Seconds later the Plymouth came through, running smack over the barricades, sending chunks of wood flying. The driver screeched to a halt maybe two feet from the back of the Mercedes.

“Jesus,” Ronnie yelled, jumping out of the Lincoln. He ran over to the car, an old Fury, and grabbed the young driver by the collar of his T-shirt, hauling him out through the open window. “Who told you to pull a stupid stunt like that? Huh? A piece of that barricade hit the hood of my car, you asshole. You dinged my Lincoln.”

Wormy pushed open the driver’s-side door and eased out of the seat. His back was killing him. He’d taken two of Doc’s Malaysian mind benders, and they hadn’t kicked in yet.

He walked, stiff-gaited, toward the Plymouth, where Ronnie had the monkey by the scruff of his neck, shaking him like a dirty dishrag.

It was the same kid, the monkey who’d hit Wormy and made him fuck up his back like this. Billy something.

Wormy pulled his pistol out of his waistband and put the gun’s barrel in the kid’s ear. “Tell me your name again?” Wormy demanded. “I like to know a guy’s name before I blow his brains all over the place.”

“It’s Billy. Billy Tripp,” the kid said in a small, strangled voice. “I’m sorry, Ronnie. I was kidding around. Okay? You said … you said we were gonna total the Mercedes. So I just, you know …

Ronnie released his hold on Billy, but Wormy stood his ground, the pistol drilled into Billy’s ear.

Boone, watching, was tired of Weems’s theatrics. The dude was a definite liability. He slid off the trunk of the Mercedes, took a long hit off the spliff, and threw it to the ground.

“Yo, Ronnie,” he said. “Thought we had some business to do here.”

He offered Ronnie the vodka bottle.

Ronnie hesitated. He was particular about who he drank after. But now Boone was waiting, the bottle in his outstretched hand. It was a test. What the hell, Ronnie decided. It was vodka, same thing as rubbing alcohol with some rotted potatoes thrown in for flavoring.

Ronnie closed his eyes and took a long drink, then handed the bottle back to Boone.

“Come on, Wormy,” Ronnie ordered. “You’re scaring Billy. He’s learned his lesson, haven’t you, Billy?”