Poor Boy Road (Jake Caldwell #1) (6 page)

“So,” Bear continued, “how long you gonna be in town?”

“Till it’s over, I guess. Kinda in between jobs and I don’t have a hell of a lot of pressing concerns back home.”

Bear’s cell phone rang and he answered it with a gruff greeting. How could Jake subtly ask about Langston? Bear had to have some bead on his whereabouts, but it would raise too many questions. Bear grunted into the phone and hung up.

“I gotta run,” he said. “Tell you what. You get Stony situated and give me a call. We’ll grab some brews and head out on the lake, catch some catfish and get caught up.”

Jake held out his hand and Bear grabbed it, giving it a couple of shakes and flashing his pearly whites like he’d just won a million dollars.

“Goddamn,” Bear whispered. “It’s good to see you, man. Don’t forget the nurses.”

He pumped Jake’s hand one more time with a wink, donned his sunglasses and headed back to his patrol car. Jake leaned against the body of the truck and waved as Bear drove off. Forgetting about his coffee run, he climbed in the cab of the truck, cranked the engine over and drove toward Sedalia to find a place for his father to die.

Willie drank his mid-morning coffee on the porch as the cook arrived in a beat up, black paneled van. The cook eyed the house through the windshield and climbed out, all bones in tattered, denim shirt sleeves. The van door screeched with rust as he opened and shut it. He took off a ragged John Deere ball cap, ran his hands through stringy, russet hair and replaced the cap as he approached the porch.

He stopped short of the steps, regarded Willie for a moment and pulled out a pack of Marlboro’s. He lit one, inhaled deeply, and walked the perimeter of the house as he smoked. Willie stayed on the porch and waited for the cook to come around the other side. It didn’t take long.

“Place looks like a shithole,” the cook said.

“It is. Got it cleaned up inside, though. We should be good to go.”

The cook took one last deep drag and crushed the butt into the dirt.

“I’m Dexter.”

“Willie.”

Neither man made a move for the customary handshake.

“How many you have here now?”

“Me and three others. They’re inside waiting.”

“Call them out and help me get the stuff out of the van. Then, send ‘em home,” Dexter said. “Shane says you’re pretty good in the kitchen, so we won’t need ‘em yet and they’ll be in the way. You good with that?”

“Yup.” Whatever got the money rolling in. As Dexter walked back to the van, Willie went in the house to rouse Bub, Howie and Bennett.

                                                        #

With time to burn before his appointment with the Hospice House manager, Jake used it to cruise to Langston’s dealership, which sat on a busy corner a few miles from Hospice. Jake circled the block a few times, checking the place out, and finally parked up in front of the showroom. Polished Navigators with sparkling windshields guarded the front door.

He got out and perused the lot, milling around trying to formulate a plan. A beanpole in a cheap suit spotted Jake and slinked over with a flash of teeth. His name tag read “Brad.”

“Mornin’, sir. Anything you’re looking for in particular?”

Yeah, your dickhead owner in a body bag. Can I get the bag in black or is that extra?

“Just browsing,” Jake said, running his hand along the window of an overpriced sedan.

“We have some great specials. Trying to clear out last year’s models.” Brad invaded Jake’s personal space and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial tone. “I can make you one hell of a deal.”

“That a fact?”

“As sure as I’m standin’ here. Our owner’s got to make room for a new shipment. Practically giving these things away.”

The opening Jake needed. “Your owner?” Jake asked. “Shane Langston, right?”

Brad nodded. “That’s him. Great guy. He’s willing to…”

“He here today?”

“Mr. Langston? Not at the moment, but he’s authorized me to make each of our customers…”

“Any idea when he’s coming in?”

Brad stopped his sales pitch and took a half step back, his eyes narrowing. “Do you know Mr. Langston, sir?”

“Just met him a coupla times around town. Told me to stop in and look him up if I was interested in a car.”

Brad managed to revive his salesman’s smile. He didn’t buy it. “Live around here, do you?”

“Warsaw.”

“And where’d you meet Mr. Langston?”

“You ask a lot of questions, Brad.”

“It’s my job, sir,” Brad said, the smile faltering. “You know, get to know my customers. Find out what they’re really after.” Jake wanted to punch him in the nose and knock the smile the rest of the way from his face. He hated sales people.

“Appreciate the attention, but I think I’m going to just browse around for a while. If I need anything, I’ll flag you down.”

“Take your time…Mr.?”

“Maxwell. James Maxwell.”

Brad extended his hand and Jake took it, the grip weak and sweaty. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you.”

Jake wandered toward the south end of the lot. When he glanced over his shoulder, Brad regarded him for a moment before turning away. Jake walked the line of cars leading to the building and waved off a couple other salesmen before they got too close. When Brad trekked to the far corner of the lot to help an elderly couple, Jake made a beeline for the showroom and the offices behind it.

Three new cars with jaw-dropping window stickers covered the showroom floor. Two employees sat at desks talking on the phone, oblivious to his entry. Across the polished tile, a service bay bustled with mechanics while bored customers watched
The Price is Right
from a muted television mounted in the corner. He turned left down a short hallway past the restrooms and around a corner to the office area. The first one had Brad’s name stuck to the door on an engraved metal plate. Jake resisted the urge to shove the clutter of paperwork covering the desk to the floor. He passed three empty cookie cutter offices to one in the back with Langston’s name plate; a closed door with no window. An alarmed emergency exit dead-ended the hall beyond Langston’s office.

Jake checked around and tried the knob. Locked. This was a stupid idea. What would he do if Langston sat in the office with his feet up? Shoot him in the head in a crowded car dealership? He should leave the detective work to the cops and stick to being the muscle. But Keats’ clock ran and he had nothing else to go on. A quick glance at the lock revealed it was old and cheap. He could pick it in seconds and maybe find something useful inside.

He double checked the coast was clear and took out his wallet. He thumbed past the credit cards, generally too rigid for this kind of deal. You could bend them to the point where they couldn’t be used or snap them in half. Instead, he selected a thick, laminated and expired gym membership card.

Jake pushed in the door to get a look at the locking mechanism. No trim to get in his way, so he slid the card into the vertical crack between the door and the doorjamb. Once he felt the bolt, he bent the card the opposite way to force the bolt back into the door. After a few seconds of wiggling the card, the door popped open. He checked over his shoulder one last time and darted inside, shutting the door behind him.

Light filtered in the office from partially opened blinds on the south wall. Jake turned the angle of the blinds down so nobody could see him from the lot. Get in and get out. He set the timer in his head for sixty seconds and began his search.

He walked behind the large, tan veneer desk and opened desk drawers, finding nothing but invoices and bank envelopes addressed to the dealership. A batch at the back of the drawer, rubber-banded together, was addressed to Marion Holdings c/o Shane Langston. Forty-five seconds left. Nothing much on the desktop except a phone, a monitor with an empty docking station for a laptop, and a half-used, five-inch memo pad with Langston Motors printed on them.

Jake moved to side-by-side file cabinets on the far wall, four feet high with three drawers each. The first set was locked. The ones closest to a window overlooking the lot opened. Nothing but office supplies and a few dust covered trophies from a softball team Langston Motors sponsored. Twenty seconds left. What was he looking for? He scanned the room one last time, his gaze ending at the window where Brad approached with the elderly couple in tow. Jake pressed against the wall as Brad looked toward the window. Get the hell out of there.

As he stepped toward the door, sunlight from the window filtered on the desk. From that angle, indentations showed up on the writing pad. He ripped off the top few pages and stuffed them in his jeans. Opening the door, he peeked down the empty hallway. He engaged the lock and quietly closed the door, hearing the bolt thunk.

He inhaled and hurried to the bend in the hall—almost knocking over Brad.

“Can I help you, Mr. Maxwell?” Brad asked, his smile gone. Brad may have just been a smarmy salesman, but he smelled something fishy. Had he seen Jake through the blinds?

“Just looking for the bathroom,” Jake replied.

“Back toward the front. You passed them on the way in.”

“Thanks,” Jake said, skirting around him. He popped in the bathroom and waited, washing his hands for effect. He counted to twenty and left the building. He started his truck and stared out the windshield, the air through the vents drying the sweat on his brow. If nothing else, he could stake out the dealership and wait for Langston to show. Then what? Could he kill him in cold blood? If it came down to Keats’ goons killing Jake or Jake taking out a scumbag drug dealer, he could probably do it. There had to be another way.

He lifted the middle console and rooted around until he found a pencil. He took out the notepad pages from Langston’s office and lightly rubbed the graphite back and forth against the indentations. White letters appeared through the gray. 5145 Southbend Avenue. Pulling out his cell phone, he plugged the address into his navigation app. 3.2 miles away. The clock on the truck dash said he had another twenty minutes before his appointment at Hospice. As he drove through the lot, he glanced in the rearview mirror. Brad stood in the safety of the showroom, his cell phone pressed to his ear. Jake should’ve punched the guy.

                                                                      #

5145 Southbend Avenue was a non-descript, rectangular, steel building, the kind you’d see farmers build to store their equipment. Forty feet high, and a hundred and fifty feet long, the corrugated steel building sat on the east end of town with a large bay door in the front and a man door at the corner. A dirty, white cinderblock small engine repair shop sat idle to its left and a pasture with a handful of cows grazing by the fence on its right. Jake parked up in front of the steel building. A small plaque next to the door read “Global Distribution Center” above the address. No trucks, no cars. It felt empty.

Jake drove along a narrow dirt road around the side of the building to a back lot adorned with a couple of forsaken cars abandoned in a tall collection of weeds. A door with a reinforced window stood below a single bulb in cobwebbed housing. He kept the truck running and walked to the back door. Locked. A look through the window revealed nothing but a small, cluttered maintenance shop and a darkened door leading to the rest of the building. He didn’t have time to mess around inside. He had to get to Hospice.

                                                        #

Jake sat in the manager’s office, who explained, in excruciating and unnecessary detail, the dying process and what his father could expect over the next several days or weeks. But Jake's thoughts were about the Global Distribution Center building and its link to Langston. All Jake cared about was that Hospice had a room and he’d have enough money to cover it if Stony didn’t hold out too long. If he did hold on, Jake would be calling Keats for some additional work in the near future.

Jake signed his name to a number of lines on the extensive paperwork below legalese clauses he didn’t bother to read. Sign here, initial there. Page after page. The woman said he could bring Stony in that afternoon as they had a vacancy.

“We’ll take good care of him, Mr. Caldwell,” she continued. “Don’t you worry.”

“I’m not worried.” Jake pushed up from the chair. The woman reached across the desk and extended a bony hand with impossibly long fingers. They wrapped around Jake’s hand and a shiver went up his spine; it was like shaking hands with Stony’s skeleton.

He ventured to the hall. The exit to the left and a long hallway with a number of doors leading to the rooms on the right. A fat woman in a muumuu the size of a circus tent talked in hushed tones on a cell phone, a box of Kleenex in her free hand. A young couple scurried past, the woman crying into the shoulder of a suited yuppie. Jake started to follow them out, then remembered Bear’s advice to check out the nurses so he took several tentative steps along the hall.

The first few doors were closed. In the next, a withered old man hooked to beeping and purring machines by tubes running from his arms focused on a soundless television playing from a wall mount on the opposite side of the room.

A nurses’ station sat at the end of the hall. A nurse in light blue scrubs wrote on some charts with her back to him as he approached. She had long, wavy champagne hair and strong, sinewy arms protruding from a short-sleeved top. She shifted her weight from foot to foot as she wrote, and Jake couldn’t help but admire a very nice backside. She glanced over her shoulder as his boots clomped on the thin carpet. The corners of her mouth turned up to reveal a perfect row of gleaming, white teeth. Now he knew why Bear wanted him to check the nurses. He’d have to thank him later.

She set the pen on the chart, turned, and stepped forward. The woman working at a computer stopped pecking and alternated her glance between her and Jake like they were two fighters squaring off.              

“Oh my God.” The blonde nurse clasped a hand to her sensuous lips. “Jake? Is that really you?”

“Hi, Maggie,” he said, heart thundering at the mention of her name. She threw herself into his arms and held him in his second hug of the day. Jake had to admit he liked Maggie’s much more than Bear’s.