The Other Side of Bad (The Tucker Novels) (17 page)

BOOK: The Other Side of Bad (The Tucker Novels)
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Chapter 32

 

A few days later

 

After a hot weekend of Margie making sure I wouldn’t miss her for a few days, I left the following Monday. She looked worried as I loaded my .45 and an old Winchester Model 12 pump shotgun I’d bought from an elderly black woman in Natchitoches. I packed two extra magazines ,a hundred rounds of .45’s and a box of shotgun shells into a small Wilson gym bag that had a broken zipper.

“Tuck,” she said, worry etched over her gorgeous face, “Do you think you’re going to need any of that?”

“No, Baby, of course not. I just don’t want to look unprepared.”

Robby was outside honking the horn.

Margie came to the door where I had my gear and a small duffel piled up. It looked like I was going on a hunting trip, except there was nothing in season.

She hugged me and gave me a long wet kiss.

She said, “I love you for lying.”

“I love you, too. Don’t worry, I’ll call you when we get there, and again on the way back. And, I wasn’t lying to you.”

“You think they’ll let you?”

“They won’t have any say on the matter. You’re everything to me. I don’t want you here worrying about nothing,” I said, hoping the ‘about nothing’ part was true.

“I’ll just stay inside while you go, okay?”

“Sure, Babe. Just think of it like a little hunting trip. I’ll be back before you know it.”

She held my face in her hands. Our eyes were locked, as I said, “I know
you
will. Take care of Robby.”

I knew she meant, ‘take care of yourself,’ but saying that would have brought the danger too close. It was safer someplace else.

Earlier, Robby told me the money would be in the trunk of a white ’68 Chevy Impala he’d pick me up in. A very nondescript car. I still didn’t know how much money he was talking about.

He honked again.

After kissing Margie again, I went outside and threw my duffel and gym bag on the back seat, then laid the shotgun under a blanket that was on the floor behind the front seat. The broken gym bag was cracked open. Robby looked in and saw the ammo.

“You expecting a war?” he asked, from behind the wheel.

I sat down in the front seat, pulled the .45 out from behind my back and put it under a road atlas on the seat between us.

I said, “After hearing you talk about getting them in a crossfire, I didn’t want to get caught needing and not having.”

“That’s cool,” he said, his eyes tightening with thought.

“Where’s Phil and the other guy?” I asked, looking out the back window.

“They’ll be behind us.”

“What kind of car?”

“See how long it takes you to spot them.”

“Oh boy, a road game,” I said clapping my hands and bouncing in my seat. I didn’t look behind us again.

He laughed and back-handed me on the chest with his right hand.

I hadn’t been told anything but what day we were leaving. I had only been told that on Saturday. Not the time of day, or where we were going, or how much grass we were buying. I was pretty much flying in the dark without instruments.

“When are you going to tell me where we’re going?” I asked.

“We’re going to Laredo, Texas,” he said, firing up a joint.

“Don’t you think we should curtail that until this is over?” I said.

“You can, but me, hell, I work the streets high most of the time. Gives me an edge when I need it, he said, then added sedately, “And calms me down when I need it, too.”

I looked at him. I believed him.

He said, “On this run we’re dealing with a new connection. One of the Mexicans from our last run,
my
last run that is, called and said he could get us a better deal through someone else.”

“You trust him?”

“Sure, why not? I’ve dealt with him before.”

“What’s the time line?”

“We need to be at the Holiday Inn in Laredo by 5 p.m. Wednesday. We’ve got plenty of time. We don’t speed, run stop signs, or do anything to call attention to ourselves.”

“Makes sense to me,” I said, thinking,
Master Of The Obvious
.

He reached under his seat and came out with a portable CB unit, the wires already attached up under the dash.

He keyed the mike and said, “Breaker . . .  Breaker . . . good buddy . . . over,” in an exaggerated country trucker accent.

“Come back . . .
 Teddy Bear . . . over,” came out of the speaker.

He looked in the rear view mirror and said into the mike, “Just checkin’ the connection, good buddy . . . over.”

“Readin’ you loud and clear, Teddy Bear, got you in sight . . . over.”

“Check you later, good buddy . . . over.”

I never got into the CB thing. But I knew enough to know they were on a closed channel. There wasn’t any other chatter.

“Teddy Bear?” I said.

“Yeah, that’s me. Don’t I look all cuddly and shit.”

“And shit? Yeah,” I said, laughing. I must be getting a contact high.

“And who’s ‘good buddy’?” I asked.

“The guy you haven’t met.”

We only stopped for gas and food, making pit stops at the same time. It was at the third stop I noticed the same black Ford Bronco I’d seen at the second stop. I hadn’t seen Sunshine Phil at any of the stops.

We were inside eating burgers and fries when I saw the Bronco parked on the edge of the parking lot. It was in approximately the same position when I’d first noticed it at stop number two, a truck stop north of Houston. We had been in touch with them over the CB. Robby would give them a mile marker number to let them know our location.

“So, Phil and Good Buddy are in a late model Bronco, black with a blue pinstripe.” I said, then took a bite of my burger.

Robby’s burger stopped on it’s way to his mouth.

“That’s pretty good, Tucker. Phil bet me a hundred you wouldn’t spot them before Laredo.”

“I was a Boy Scout,” I said, with a mouth full of burger.

He stared at me and said, “Why doesn’t that surprise me.”

“When do they eat and make pit stops?”

“They have food in the Bronco and a gallon jug to pit in. They’re not supposed to take their eyes off the car.”

What he meant was the money.

“A jug might not accommodate a certain pit,” I said, laughing. Sometimes I just crack myself up.

“Yeah, well, they’ve taken care of that the when we’ve hung out in the parking lots after gassing up, stretching our legs or when I’ve looked at the map.”

There were a few times we had pulled to the far edge of the parking lots at large truck stops after refueling, eating or pitting, and Robby would suggest we stretch ourselves by walking around the car or actually stretching in front of the car. They had been communicating a lot in police code, like ‘What’s your 10-20’ and ‘we want an 8-80’. I hadn’t asked what they all meant because, one; I didn’t care, and two; I think they were making it up as they went along just to mess with me. I also thought that ‘Good Buddy,’ was a cop.

“How’d you make them?” he asked, mopping up a glob of ketchup with his burger.

“Same vehicle in two different truck stops isn’t that unusual, but the positioning was too coincidental. Both times they parked at the edge of the parking lot close to the road, when there were plenty of parking spots closer to the building. I guessed they got gas while we were stretching or when you’re doing redundant map reading?”

I wondered why Robby needed to look at a map. He should know the route.

He looked over his shoulder at the Bronco, and said, “Yeah, they’re not supposed to leave the Bronco at the same time, just in case the bad guys show up. You know, never lose site of us.”

I said, “I guess now you’ve won your C-note, you guys can start speaking English over the CB, and you can stop looking at the map all the time. The stretching is good, though.”

“Hey, we have to have some fun on these trips. Something to do besides drive and wait for a war to start.”

“I guess they’ve never been more than a minute or so behind us, right?” I asked.

He shook his head, “More like thirty seconds. We try to keep about that close using the mile markers.”

“Where were your buddies when they got hit?”

“About an hour out of Laredo, in the middle of nowhere.”

“Did you know them well?”

After a moment of silence, he said, “Not as well as Phil. But I think they were stupid. I bet if it would’ve been you and me on that run, no one would have gotten the drop on us.”

He was a cocky guy.

“I bet they were stoned,” I said around a mouthful of fries.

“They weren’t like you and me, Tucker.”

“How’s that?” I mumbled, chewing.

“Bad to the bone,” he said, grinning with his mouth full, churned mustard visible around the edges. “That’s why we’re carrying the money.”

That wasn’t effective. Maybe too subtle.

I was just reinforced in my conviction that manners only counted with women and family. Even my manners went to hell in a hand basket around a bunch of guys. It was like using good manners around the guys might make you less of a man or too refined. But I knew real men talked with their mouths full of quiche.

The waitress brought the check.

“I take it you made reservations at the Holiday Inn before we left,” I said, after I swallowed my food.

“Yeah, I made’m last week, adjoining rooms,” he said, reading the check, then laying down some bills.

“Let’s go outside and stretch,” he said, getting up.

We moved the car to the far edge of the parking lot. As I got out, I heard Robby say into the CB, “Phil, you owe me a hundred bucks, he made you, game over . . .   over.”

I watched the Bronco move to the gas pumps. Two men got out. Phil started pumping gas, and the other one walked into the restaurant. He was on the other side of the Bronco and I couldn’t get a good look, but there was something vaguely familiar about him. Phil shot us the finger.

By 12:30 a. m. Wednesday and we were an hour out of Laredo. For the past hour we had scarcely talked. Our senses were on heightened alert and had been for a couple of hours. There had been no joking CB chatter or idle talk.

I turned around in my seat, and on my knees, reached over and pulled the shotgun from under the blanket, turned back around and, racking it, chambered a round.

Robby didn’t give me a second look. He was busy alternating his eyes from the road in front of him to the rear view mirror. I hadn’t seen him put the pistol in his lap, the barrel pointing into the seat between his legs, the grip within easy reach of his right hand.

We had been on Highway 59 since Houston. We had gone through Victoria and a little place called Beeville. Probably a sweet town.

The two-lane road was lonesome and dark, with only a few headlights coming towards us. But often enough to keep us on edge.

Inside the Impala, the light from the dashboard gave the interior a greenish tint. The only sounds were the drone of the air conditioner and the whine of the tires interrupted by the little thumps the cracks in the road made as we ran them over. It was a desolate part of Texas and even the darkness couldn’t hide the great expanse and flatness of the countryside.

I changed position, so I could look into the right side rear view mirror. I saw a light so far behind us, it looked like the head of a pin.

“Is that Phil and Good Buddy behind us?” I said, my voice sounding dry and small in the moving car.

Robby cleared his throat and said, “It better be. Any further back, they wouldn’t do us much good if we needed them.”

We could have called them on the CB, but, it would’ve seemed invasive to break the quiet that was giving us our razor’s edge. Robby, Phil and Good Buddy must’ve had similar thoughts, the CB remained soundless.

Up until now, this trip was in some way nothing more than an adventure with a for-sure successful outcome. Now . . . well, it wasn’t that I was having second thoughts. It was a little late for that. But, like many things in life, the idea of doing something is never the same as doing it. There were a few butterflies fluttering around in my stomach. But, I knew that like the butterflies I used to get before a football game, or before the ringing of the first round bell, these butterflies were my buddies. They would help keep me sharp, keep me quick, and, in this case, maybe keep me alive. Go ahead and flutter, my little gossamer-winged friends.

“Coming up behind us, watch it,” Robby said evenly, looking in the rearview mirror. “They’re coming fast.”

His breath quickened.   

“I’m getting in the back,” I said, climbing over the seat. There was a roaring in my ears. I shoved the bags out of my way and started rolling the window down on the driver’s side. When the window was almost halfway down, I had second thoughts about the bags and started piling them in front of my chest, between me and the window.

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