Cold City Read online

  “Oh. Sorry. I thought you said fageleh. Speaking of women, he told me once he’d love to hire females – less chance of being stopped, he thinks – but couldn’t justify putting a young woman on the road alone at night.”

  Something about that helped Jack make up his mind.

  “I think I’ll give it a shot.” His stomach knotted as the words passed his lips.

  Abe concentrated on the cake. “You’re sure?”

  “Not in the least. But I’ll give it a trial run. If I’m a basket case after it’s over, I’ll know it’s not for me and I’ll quit. He will let me quit, won’t he?”

  Abe nodded. “Of course. He may deduct certain startup expenses from your pay, but I don’t believe a blood oath is involved.”

  “That’s a relief. Do me one favor though?”

  “If possible.”

  “Talk me out of it?”

  Abe’s eyebrows shot up. “Me? Talk yourself out.”

  “No, I’m serious. Hit me with the downside.”

  Abe drummed his fingers on the counter for a second, then said, “Well, as I see it, a unique and wondrous situation you’ve got: The official world has no idea you exist. This can be a useful thing if you wish to maintain it. Transporting black market goods puts your unique and wondrous situation at risk. You get caught and booked and you’re like the rest of us.”

  Jack nodded silently. A pretty good case for turning Bertel down.

  Abe stuffed another piece of cake in his mouth. “What’s he offering, by the by?”

  “A thousand a trip.”

  Abe almost choked. “What? Don’t be a shmoiger! Take it!”

  MONDAY

  1

  Three days later Jack sat at a motel room’s front window and stared at the parking lot. He hadn’t slept much. Better to sit and watch the sky lighten than lie in bed and stare at the ceiling. A thick stand of long-needle pines bordered the cracked and rutted asphalt. He imagined that somewhere beyond them, rosy fingers of dawn were inching above the horizon.

  Crappy image. He tried to remember the supposed owner of those supposed fingers. Eos? Not that he gave a damn, but he found it easier to think about things like that than what was to come.

  The weekend had flown.

  Things had begun moving immediately after he’d called to accept the job. Bertel had sent him straight downtown to a tiny camera shop on West Houston with instructions to ask for a guy named Levinson – maybe his real name, maybe not. Levinson turned out to be a skinny guy in his late thirties with spiky black hair and a sniffle. He photographed Jack, took his phone number, and said he’d call when “it” was ready. Jack figured he didn’t mean a portrait.

  Yesterday morning the call had come and Jack returned. Levinson waited till the store was empty – not a long wait – then handed Jack an envelope.

  “Check it out,” he said.

  Jack pulled out a laminated card and frowned. His own face stared back at him, but…

  “Doesn’t look like a driver’s license.”

  “It’s not,” Levinson said. “Your boss has the license. This here’s an NC State student ID. The license is in the system, the library card isn’t.”

  “Then what good is it?”

  “It’s a photo ID. Never hurts. When the name agrees with the license – which, as you will learn, has no photo – it reassures the cop or whoever stops you that you’re you.”

  “But when they check with the school they’ll–”

  Levinson smirked. “Trust me, when it comes to a choice between verifying a college library ID and a state-issued license, they go with the license every time.”

  Jack checked the name. “Lonnie Buechner? Jeez.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that.”

  “Couldn’t you come up with something simpler?”

  “You want simple or safe? This guy’s safe because he’s real – or at least he was. Died a few years ago.”

  “What of?”

  Jack didn’t want to hear that he used to drive for Bertel.

  “The big C. North Carolina DMV’s got no dead file so, as long as your boss keeps renewing Lonnie’s license, he’s still alive… in a way.”

  Swell, I’ll be a driving dead man. George Romero images followed him out of the store.

  When he called Bertel to let him know he was now licensed, he was instructed to wait at the corner of Sixth Avenue and King Street, a few blocks away. Bertel showed up in a U-Haul truck. He slid over to the passenger seat and handed Jack a laminated card – the second in less than an hour.

  “There’s your driver’s license.”

  “You mean Lonnie Buechner’s.”

  “Yeah. Some name, huh?”

  Jack shook his head. “Tell me about it.”

  “Really, who names their boy Lonnie?”

  “Mrs. Mack did.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind.”

  Bertel said, “Well, when I hear ‘Lonnie’ I think of big blond hair and big boobs – you know, the gal on that WKRP show.”

  “Loni Anderson.”

  “Right. And Anderson’s a lot easier to spell than Buechner. Make sure you know how to spell it like your own.” He pointed ahead. “Drive.”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere. I know you can handle a motorcycle, but I want to see how you handle four wheels.”

  Jack hadn’t driven a truck before, but this rig, with its automatic shift, wasn’t much different from a car. Its extra width, though, made handling the narrow West Village streets a little hairy at times.

  “All right,” Bertel said after half an hour. “You pass. Go home and take a nap. I’ll pick you up at six. We drive all night.”

  “ ‘We’?”

  “I’ll drive down with you the first time – make sure you get where you’re supposed to be when you’re supposed to be there. You’ll come back on your own.”

  “How’ll you get back?”

  He grinned. “Fly.”

  Well, the nap didn’t happen.

  Bertel showed up right on time, put Jack behind the wheel, and off they went. Out the Holland Tunnel and down the NJ Turnpike. After they crossed the Delaware Memorial Bridge, Bertel handed him a sheet of directions that took him down the DelMarVa peninsula to a town he’d never heard of: Elizabeth City, North Carolina.

  “Gotta be a quicker way,” Jack told him.

  “I know. But you’ll be taking this route back and I want you familiar with it.” He leaned back. “Wake me when we hit the NC line.”

  Then he closed his eyes and went to sleep.

  The instructions were simple enough: south through DelMarVa to the tip of Cape Charles, over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel to Norfolk, then south from there to Elizabeth City in the northeast corner of NC.

  Hours later, after a stop for coffee and gas, he roused Bertel who guided him to The Lonely Pine Motel. The name gave Jack a start. He’d grown up not far from a different Lonely Pine Motel, on Route 206 in Burlington County, NJ. Took its name from the huge solitary pine on its property. He’d witnessed something weird there as a kid.

  A dark-haired guy, who could have been forty but might have been fifty, was waiting in the parking lot. He was good looking and might have been better looking without the beard he was trying to grow.

  Bertel introduced him simply as Tony but didn’t mention Jack’s name. Jack immediately found out why.

  “So you’re the new Buechner,” Tony said as they shook. He was smiling and his big chicklet teeth reflected the light from the motel, giving him a Cheshire Cat look.

  “There’s been more than one?”

  “Of course there’s been more than one,” Bertel said, sounding a bit testy. “Good driver’s licenses don’t grow on trees.

  Maybe he didn’t like being awakened at 2:30 in the morning.

  “What happened to the last Buechner?”

  “Got domesticated. He stashed away enough for a down payment on a house. Married a teacher and joined the nine-to-five life.
Is that what we can expect from you?”

  “Not likely.”

  Bertel looked dubious. “We’ll see. This is where you’ll drop off and pick up the truck. You will give Tony the truck keys, and he will give you a room key. While he takes the truck off to stock it, you will catch a little sleep. He will return at six A.M., at which time you will both trade keys again. Then you will drive north to an address I will give you later.”

  He sounded like he was reading from a teleprompter.

  “That’s it?” Jack said.

  “That’s it. I believe in keeping things simple.”

  And cellular, Jack realized. Jack knew neither Tony’s last name nor where he took the truck to stock up. Tony knew nothing about Jack except that his name was not Lonnie Buechner; probably didn’t know where Jack was dropping the cargo either. He’d bet only Bertel knew the whole operation.

  Smart.

  Jack checked the number on his key: room A-9. He yawned.

  “See you in a few hours.”

  As he started toward the motel he glanced over his shoulder and saw Bertel climb into the truck cab with Tony. They were gone by the time he reached his door.

  Not a bad room, not a great room. Just a room with a bed. Jack had assumed he’d conk right off, but that hadn’t happened. He kept thinking about the drive back, about being pulled over for some careless minor infraction and having the cop tell him to open up the back of the truck.

  So now he sat by the window and waited for that truck.

  2

  Bertel and Tony arrived at 6:07. They brought donuts in a box labeled “Krispy Kreme.” Jack jumped on the coffee first. Not so great, but he desperately needed caffeine. He tried one of the donuts. He’d never heard of Krispy Kreme – he was used to Dunkin’ Donuts – so he played it safe and chose a glazed. It all but melted in his mouth.

  “Holy crap, where’d you get these?”

  “Down the road apiece,” Tony said with a knowing grin. “They’re a local chain. To die for, right?”

  “They’ve got to come to New York. They could clean up.”

  He grabbed one of the heavier cake donuts and found it even better than the first.

  “Okay,” Bertel said. “Now that you’ve been introduced to the local delicacies, down to business. You’ve got forty master cases of Marlboros on board.”

  “What’s a master case?” Jack said as he scarfed down the second Krispy Kreme and reached for a third. He could binge on these all morning. He felt like a young Abe in training.

  “Fifty cartons – five hundred packs.”

  Jack blinked as he multiplied. “That’s…”

  “Right – twenty thousand packs.”

  “Can I see?”

  He tried to sound innocently curious, but he wanted to make sure he’d be hauling what they said he’d be hauling.

  “Yeah,” Bertel said. “I wanted to show you how it’s laid out.”

  He led Jack around the back where he keyed open a padlock.

  “We could have fit a few more cases,” he said as he pulled open the doors. “But we need a certain amount of camouflage.”

  Jack caught a short surfboard as it fell through one of the swinging doors.

  “Whoa!”

  “Good catch,” Tony said. “That’s one of the props.”

  Jack saw a disassembled bike, hanging clothes, a couple of floor lamps, and other odds and ends packed just inside the doors. Behind them, boxy shapes were piled to the roof and draped with moving pads.

  Jack lifted the flap of one of the pads and saw a shrink-wrapped cardboard box labeled “Marlboro.”

  “Checking up on us?” Bertel said. He looked more amused than annoyed.

  Jack gave only a shrug as a reply. Seeing a cigarette brand name on the boxes didn’t guarantee they weren’t filled with ganja, which would put him on a whole other level of legal trouble if he got caught. But Abe had said Bertel was a straight shooter. He’d have to go with that.

  Bertel added, “I’d think less of you if you hadn’t.”

  Tony repositioned the surfboard, then Bertel reclosed the doors and locked up.

  “I’ll keep this,” he said, holding up the key.

  Jack wasn’t so sure he liked that. “What if I’m stopped for some reason and the cop wants to see inside?”

  “First off, he needs probable cause. And he’s not going to have that, is he?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “You didn’t do anything stupid like sneak your Ruger along, did you?”

  “Would have liked to, but…” He shook his head.

  As much as it would have made him feel safe, getting caught smuggling unstamped cigarettes would be bad enough, but adding an unregistered weapon to the charges – uh-uh.

  “Smart.” He handed Jack a sheet from a yellow legal pad. “Here’s your route north.”

  “Same as down, right?”

  “Right. Be faster on the freeways, but this way is safer. We always check the truck six ways from Sunday before we let it go. All the lights and signals work. All the rental papers are in the glove compartment. But if you are stopped, just turn off the engine and keep your hands on the steering wheel. Be ready to show that new license and the rental papers.”

  “What if he asks–?”

  “You don’t have the key.”

  “Won’t that make him suspicious?”

  “Explain that you’re helping your girlfriend move. Her father rented the truck – his name’s Robert McAllister, right there on the rental agreement – and locked it up after you helped pack it. You’d be glad to let him look, but–” He gave a helpless shrug. “What this does is deflect the cop’s annoyance from you to the father. Now he’s got to have real probable cause. He’s got to see contraband in the truck cab or he’s got to have a drug-sniffing dog raise a ruckus before he can do anything.”

  “But we’ve got no drugs, right?”

  “Just nicotine, and they aren’t trained to sniff for that. If he really wants a look, he’s going to have to impound the truck to get a warrant to open it. Does he want to go through all that for what’s most likely nothing, and leave himself looking like a dummy?”

  Jack had to smile. “Sounds like you’ve really thought this thing through.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve been doing it awhile.”

  “But if it’s locked and can’t be opened, why the bike and the surfboard and stuff?”

  Bertel glanced at Tony. “Told you he was sharp.” Back to Jack: “Because on one of the rare times one of our guys was stopped – this was on a Detroit run – the cop used a crow bar to pry open a corner of one of the doors and flashed his light inside. Luckily all he saw was one of the moving pads that had slipped down against the door, but it got me to thinking. If that happened again and he saw typical dorm-room stuff, he’d be satisfied.”

  Jack was starting to feel better about the trip.

  Bertel motioned him toward the front of the truck. “Two more things.” He opened the passenger door and grabbed something from inside. “Wear this.”

  A gray sweatshirt. Jack held it up. The front showed a cartoony wolf wearing a NCSU cap. Beneath him: NC State Wolfpack.

  “My new alma mater,” Jack said.

  “And check this.”

  Bertel handed him what looked like a cream-colored brick with buttons along one face and a black antenna sticking out the top.

  “Hey, a car phone. Cool.”

  “Yeah. Cool. Keep it plugged into the cigarette lighter. If you need to call me, the number’s on the directions sheet – under ‘Mr. McAllister.’ I don’t want to hear from you unless it’s absolutely necessary – like you’re being searched or you’ve had a breakdown or you’re running an hour or more behind schedule. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Good.” He tapped the yellow sheet. “If you keep to the speed limits – and you will keep to the limits – it will take you about eight hours, depending on traffic. I’ll expect you at that address around
mid afternoon. Now get going.”

  “But when I reach Jersey City–”

  “I’ll be there.” He held up the key. “Somebody’s got to unlock those doors.”

  3

  All that worry for nothing. The trip turned out to be a piece of cake. No one paid him the least bit of attention. Along the way, Jack did some calculations.

  He had twenty thousand packs of cigarettes on board. If Bertel took a markup of just fifty cents a pack, the profit on this load was ten grand. That made paying Jack a thou small potatoes. And Bertel was talking three runs a week just for Jack. That didn’t count the runs to Boston and Detroit he’d mentioned. What about runs he hadn’t mentioned?

  Dane Bertel was raking it in.

  He had overhead, of course. Needed other employees besides Tony and Jack. Had to rent space somewhere to store all the ciggies. But still… all those runs a week, fifty-two weeks a year. Jack wondered how he laundered the money.

  The route through Jersey City was slow, winding through a maze of rutted streets, some with exposed streetcar tracks, flanked by empty, dilapidated buildings. When he reached the address – a graffiti-coated garage looking as empty and dilapidated as everything else – he stayed in the truck.

  After a good five-minute wait, a bearded guy wearing a long brown robe and some kind of embroidered pillbox hat – inanely Jack wondered what it would look like in leopard skin – stepped through a paneled door and approached. He tapped on the passenger window and held up a pack of Marlboros.

  Jack fought an urge to say, No, thanks, don’t smoke. Instead he nodded.

  The guy signaled to another robed beard in the doorway and the garage door began to rise. As the first beard motioned him to back into the garage, Jack looked around for Bertel. He said he’d be here with the key. Where the hell was he?

  Well, he’d talked about delivering the load to an Egyptian named “the Mummy,” and these guys certainly fit the Egyptian mold, so Jack began the laborious process of backing the truck through the barely wide-enough opening. With helpful hand signals from the beards, he succeeded without losing a side mirror. As the door rolled back down its tracks, Jack turned off the engine.

  The first guy tapped on the window again and made a turning motion with his hand, indicating the need for a key.