Poor Boy Road (Jake Caldwell #1) (10 page)

About the time Bear pulled Howie out of his trailer, Jake pulled up to the Hospice House entrance. The single-story, cream-brick building rested at the back of a long, macadam driveway that set it apart from the traffic of Highway 50. Jake crept up the drive, the thick pine trees on either side thinning out until the building spilled in front of him. He stopped at the entrance, shut off the engine and stared across his old man to the front door. He’d phoned ahead to the director to let her know he was on his way. Stony’s gaunt face rolled from the window. Bloodshot eyes squinted at him.

“Where are we?” Stony rasped, his bony hands tightening over his stomach. Though it had been a decade since Jake heard the man’s voice, the mere sound of it raised his blood pressure. The last conversation involved him saying “Hold on” when Jake made a rare call to talk to Janey.

“Hospice in Sedalia,” Jake said.

Stony’s thin lips curled upward into his patented shit-eating grin before a coughing spasm racked his body. It took a good minute for the fit to pass.

“Aw, man.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Fucking Hospice? Am I that bad off?”

“Yeah, you are,” Jake said. He focused on a crushed bug on the windshield, hands alternating between his lap and the steering wheel. Another coughing spasm lurched Stony forward. He covered his mouth with the sleeve of his gray shirt and Jake noted specks of red as he pulled his arm away.

“How long you been home?”

“Couple of days.”

“Staying long?” Stony asked.

Jake ground his teeth. When the hell would someone come out and get him? “Just long enough. Not a day more.”

Stony reached a shaky hand to the door and pushed himself up in the seat. He squinted across the cab.

“You doing okay? You look good,” Stony said, his demeanor catching Jake off guard.

“Doing fine, Stony,” Jake managed, his white knuckled hands squeezing the steering wheel.

“You got your mother’s eyes. I ever tell you that?”

“I don’t recall too many lucid father and son exchanges in our past.”

Stony chuckled a couple of breaths before erupting into a cough that rocked his body. Jake waited for this spasm to pass and handed him a bottle of water. Stony managed a couple of sips, wiping a bit from his chin with the back of his hand.

“You ain’t gonna get many lucid conversations with me past this one either. I’m so doped up I’m lucky if I remember my goddamn name half the time.”

This civil exchange with his father put Jake in an emotional upheaval. Your mother’s eyes…his self-deprecation. It did nothing but raise Jake’s hackles. Why did it take the decrepit old bastard crawling into his death bed to become civil? Jake sure as hell wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.

“I’ll make sure they spell it right on your tombstone,” Jake said. Pain on Stony’s face from the shot flashed, followed by a knowing huff of resignation. His old man knew it. Too little, too late.

“You know what I keep dreaming about? Playing catch in the front yard with that scuffed up, old football you got for Christmas when you were six or seven years old.”

“Ten.”

“Took you a year to be able to catch two in a row. Taught you good, didn’t I?”

“It was either catch the ball or get your boot up my ass. Guess either I was a slow learner or your foot got sore.”

Stony’s gaze moved from Jake’s face to the gold ring sitting in the cup holder next to him. He picked it up, a smile breaking across his face.

“Damn,” he said. “Haven’t seen this in a long time. Figured you took it when you skipped town. And you kept it all these years to remember me by?”

“No. Just wasn’t going to let you do any more damage to anyone else with it,” Jake said, turning his gaze from the windshield to see his father’s smile disappear. Jake needed to get him out of his truck before he screamed.

As if on cue, a couple of nurses in bright, flowery scrubs emerged through the front door with an empty wheelchair. Jake waited for Stony to pop the ring on his finger. Instead, he caressed the rough surface and dropped it back in the cup holder.

Jake got out of the truck and opened the passenger door. The two nurses worked together to load Stony’s bony frame into the wheelchair. They pointed across the lot to an empty space in front of a line of evergreens where Jake could park and disappeared with Stony into the building.

As Jake pulled forward, he resisted the urge to gun the motor and careen out to the highway and disappear. Just hearing Stony’s raspy, three-pack-a day-for-forty-years voice box grate syllables in his direction cracked the door of past shadows. Jake had worked hard over the last decade to push them into a room of their own, to contain them and not let them wash him away. Now, with a few spoken words, the waste of welfare opened the door.

Jake drove into the parking spot, absently rubbing his knee. He had to see this through. If he bailed now, Janey would hunt him down. Stony would continue to haunt his dreams. The sound of the pipe shattering his kneecap would echo in his ears. He’d keep seeing Nicky in every junkie he met in Kansas City.

He hopped out of the truck and slammed the door too hard. As his boot heels beat relentlessly on the parking lot, his resolve built. With each step toward the entrance, his certainty solidified this was meant to be. It might be hours, it might be days, but Jake would be there when he drew his last phlegm-filled breath. When Stony died, Jake wouldn’t need that room of past shadows any longer. He would be free.

Halle Holden dropped her backpack on the couch, the old sofa groaning in protest under the weight of textbooks. She’d skipped cross country practice, telling Mr. Monroe she suffered from “female issues”—her excuse when a rare bout of laziness rolled through her. Today, she couldn’t handle the track coach’s running regimen he probably pulled off the Internet. Mr. Monroe may be a decent Biology teacher, but he was a lousy track coach.

She checked out each room, thankful her mom wasn’t home from Hospice. Lately, they’d butted heads anytime Halle explained her teenage rationale for doing whatever she did. You’d think being a straight-A student and on the Varsity track and cross country teams as a sophomore would buy her a little leeway from an occasional beer, joint or slightly missed curfew. Her mom cut her zero slack.

She donned her favorite pair of running shorts and a tank top, and admired herself in front of the floor-length mirror in her tiny bedroom. She twisted to and fro, admiring her muscled legs and how her ass looked in the aqua shorts. The summer of running those Ozark hills paid dividends. The boys at school already noticed how she’d grown over the summer. Even her big crush, Senior Mason Dell, did a double take yesterday when she passed by. At least that’s what her best friend Alicia said.

On her iPod, Sara Bareilles asked how big her brave was as Halle trotted out the front door, down the driveway and on to the chipped pavement of Poor Boy Road. She figured she could work in a quick three or four miles before meeting Alicia at their spot. Hang there for a couple hours and be home before her mom got back from her shift. Perfect.

The late school bus rumbled by as she hugged the side of the road. A lone face peeked from the back of the bus, little hands pressed against the dusty glass. Tyler Garrett gave her a wave with his little elementary school hands. Halle gave him a big smile and waved back. She babysat for Tyler on occasion, his house not far from the place she and Alicia discovered a few months ago.

It looked abandoned when they first approached, knee high weeds growing around a sunken, wooden porch. A thick layer of dirt and grime covered the windows and a screen door hung on for dear life by one hinge, rapping gently against the flaking front door. There were no cars, no lights, no sign of life anywhere. She and Alicia squirreled around the outside, wiping away the dust into makeshift peepholes in the windows. The place was furnished, but no doubt abandoned.

They didn’t venture inside that day, but over the ensuing weeks became brave and wormed their way in through an unlocked back window. The dusty pictures on shelves and old bills scattered on the floor clued them in there wouldn’t be an angry owner barging in.

Halle jogged at a brisk pace along Poor Boy Road, thinking of the bonding memories she and Alicia forged at the old house over the last five months. She giggled recalling their first marijuana smoking experience. Stoned to the bejesus and talking about boys. She reached the hidden path to the drive and ducked below arching tree branches, not thinking twice that the normally closed green gate lay open. She ran through dark shadows that mixed on the dirt path with spatters of light piercing the thick tree cover.

Rounding the last curve leading to her secret house, she expected to spot her Alicia sitting on the lawn chair waiting for her arrival. Instead, a white panel van and a familiar rusted out pickup truck were parked in front of the house. She slowed to a walk, panting hard, each step slower than the one before as her brain worked the scene in front of her.

Flickers of yellow moved through the front windows but she kept moving forward. What was she doing? It reminded her of those crappy slasher movies she sometimes watched with Mom. They made fun of the bimbos who just had to find the source of the commotion. Blood dripping through the ceiling? Hmmm, let’s go upstairs and look. Home alone in the dark, a loud thump comes from the basement. Better go investigate. Yet here she stood, being that bimbo.

Her mother’s voice saying “curiosity killed the cat” rang in her head, yet Halle crept along the tree line of the clearing, approaching the house from a blind spot on the side. As she reached the front porch, she glanced to the pickup. Two pairs of feet stuck out of the truck bed. Her heart stuck in her throat and her hand shot to her mouth.
Oh my God! There are dead people in that truck
. Then one of them raised a leg and spat a rattling fart.

Every fiber screamed at her to get the hell out of there. Instead, she slid to the sagging porch, carefully setting her weight toward the edges where the rotting wood was best supported and less likely to groan and give her away. She inched to the window.

Inside, two figures worked elbow to elbow amongst tables of pots, tubes and beakers, dressed in yellow plastic suits she recognized from the movies whenever someone waded through hazardous waste. They wore gas masks under the hoods and one swung a hammer, smashing something on the table. The other one grabbed handfuls or red crystals and weighed them in quart-sized Ziploc bags. With her attention fixed on the crystals, she failed to notice the figure doing the hammering had stopped and now stared straight at her.

Halle’s heart thundered, and her face grew hot and flushed. The man with the hammer pulled back the hood and removed the gas mask, his face crunched in disbelief, as if he needed an unimpeded vision to believe what he saw before him. She recognized him and had a pretty good idea the content of those baggies wasn’t rock candy.

“Oh, fuck me,” Willie Banks mouthed. He moved toward the front door and Halle ran like a bat out of hell past the back of the house and into the woods.

The manager told Jake it would take them a little while to get Stony situated in his room. She suggested he hang out in the waiting room or go get something to eat. Outside, he soaked in the sun when his cell rang. Dwight.

“What do you have?” Jake asked.

“Did you know some of this shit is flagged by the FBI? The FBI, Caldwell.”

Interesting. “So did you get it?”

“Yeah, but this wipes our slate clean. In fact, you should be paying me with whatever proceeds you’re gettin’ from whatever the hell it is you’re doing.”

“Come on, Dwight. Just give me the info and we’re even.”

“Okay, Marion Holdings is the one the Feds flagged. It’s an ownership group with a shitload of properties including a chain of restaurants, bars, car washes, convenience stores, warehouses and a car dealership.”

“What dealership?” Jake asked.

He heard a shuffle of papers. “Langston Motors in Sedalia. This holding company also owns title on the Global Distribution Center you mentioned.”

“Why was it flagged by the Feds?”

“I had to hack into the FBI database to do it and you can’t hang around there too long. You can only bounce your signal around so many times. Best I could see it was for concerns with drugs and money laundering. The thing is, the FBI files are all about Marion Holdings. Nothing about this Global Distribution Center.”

“That doesn’t make much sense,” Jake said.

“I see it all the time. The spectrum of competency in the FBI is broad. Everything was flagged except for the Global Distribution Center. It’s a new site in the last six months. Doesn’t look like they’ve either put two and two together, or done another search since the new site came into the picture. Gotta love the efficiency of our government.”

“What about Shane Langston? He’s the owner of Langston Motors.”

“Langston Motors? Hell, he’s the principal of the holding company. He owns all of it. Guy’s a freaking millionaire.”

“You found it that easy?”

“Easy? Hell no. I had to look through six different databases to connect the dots. You’re lucky I have OCD. Doubt anyone else could’ve found it. We even now?”

“Yeah, you did good, Dwight. Stay away from the casinos.”

He checked his watch. He had about an hour to kill so decided to head over to the warehouse. His time was running out with Keats. If he couldn’t get to Langston or chickened out of killing him, maybe he could come up with something to hang Langston out to dry.

                                                        #

Minutes later, he turned into the empty lot of Global Distribution Center. Jake followed the side road around the corner of the warehouse, heading toward the back.

He got out of the truck and checked the back door. Still locked. He checked the door frame but couldn’t see any alarm contacts, and, given the age of the building, decided to take a chance it wasn’t wired. He shoved his Glock into his waistband and pulled a sledgehammer from the back of the truck. With a grunt and a swing, he cracked off the doorknob, ready to bolt if sirens sounded. He pushed open the door and examined the frame. No wires, no alarm.

The door opened into a small maintenance shop. A few workbenches were covered with tools and an overhead hoist hung above a grease spot on the floor. With nothing of interest there, Jake headed through the door on the opposite wall. It opened to a single, vast expanse, dark save for light filtering through cobwebbed windows set along the roofline. The lone occupant of the warehouse, a large John Deere tractor, rested along the west wall with an office area toward the front.

He rummaged through the office and found nothing of interest except a thick layer of dust on the desks and chairs. He turned to leave when a muffler rumbled outside and the large bay door began rolling up. His slid behind the open office door, peering out to the warehouse floor through the crack. Seconds later, a black panel van drove inside and blocked his view of the tractor. The garage door screeched down, taking out the flood of sunlight. Jake slid the Glock from his waistband and held it by his leg, adrenaline surging.

A bulky Hispanic man dressed in jeans and a beige jacket climbed out of the passenger side and walked around the front. He spoke in Spanish to the driver then climbed into the cab of the John Deere. The tractor fired up, its engine echoing in the empty warehouse. Over the top of the van, Jake watched the tractor roll forward a few feet and stop. The driver’s door squealed open and the man in the tractor climbed down. More doors creaked, probably the back of the van, followed by the scrape of dragging metal. Jake closed his dry mouth and he prayed they wouldn’t come this way.

A few minutes later, the scraping metal sounded again followed by van doors slamming shut. Back in the tractor, the Hispanic man reversed it to its original spot. He got back in the truck, the bay door opened and they were gone. Jake waited until the door closed and the sound of the van faded into the distance.

He emerged from behind the door, pointed the Glock and eased into the warehouse. Empty. Nothing but him and the tractor. What the hell were they moving it for? He crossed the warehouse and stood by the huge tractor tires. He pulled out his cell phone and turned on the flashlight feature. The bright LED lit up the dirty floor and revealed the source of the scraping sound. A large, orange grate which rested underneath the tractor tires. Jake shined the light through the gaps to an empty trough. Probably a drain for washing down equipment.

He climbed into the tractor and fired it up. He’d never driven one and it took him a minute to figure out the controls. Those guys didn’t move this beast for the hell of it. Something must lay underneath. He managed to roll the tractor forward a few feet then killed the engine. Climbing down, he wrested the bulky grate from the floor without throwing out his back.

Inside the empty trough, a rectangle shape outlined the metal with a small, circular ring at the top and a hinge on the opposite side. He knelt on the floor and yanked the ring. The metal raised on the hinge revealing a compartment, about three feet long and a foot wide. Jake whistled at the contents.

Inside, clear plastic bags of white powder glistened. Probably not baby powder. A cheap, black-leather duffel bag sat in the space. Jake leaned down and unzipped the top. Strapped bricks of dollar bills. He thumbed through the pile. Maybe fifty thousand. Now what the hell should he do?

Langston owned the warehouse and this had to be one of his stashes. Jake should take the drugs and the money and get the hell out of there, but what would he do if he got stopped by the cops, several kilos of what he assumed to be cocaine in his truck? He left the drugs in the trench and grabbed the duffel bag. Heck, he needed the money more than Langston and considered the find the spoils of war.

Jake set the duffel bag to the side, closed the lid and wrestled the grate back in place. He clambered up the ladder to the cab to back the tractor up, but figured he had just as good a chance of driving the thing through the warehouse wall. Leave well enough alone. Instead, he grabbed a rag, wiped down everywhere he touched and ran out the back door with the duffel bag, picking up his sledgehammer along the way. A minute later, he rolled out of the parking lot with the fifty grand locked in the tool box on his truck.

Now what? He had Langston’s money, but what about the drugs? He headed back toward Hospice, searching the shops on the way. Finding Bigfoot would have been easier than finding a pay phone. Spotting one at the edge of a dilapidated strip mall, he called in an anonymous tip to the police, giving them the location of the warehouse and where to look. He wiped the phone down with a rag and drove away with a grin on his face. A rare win for the good guys.

                                                        #

By the time Jake got back to Hospice, Stony slept. The room was homey, with brown, threadbare carpet and wallpaper with flowers and vines. Sepia maybe, who knew. He never claimed to be an interior decorator. A basic dresser sat along the wall at the foot of the bed with a mid-sized, flat-panel television on one end of the wood. A ceiling fan rotated lazily overhead. Jake plopped in a recliner, running a visual circle between the window with a view of the sun-drenched parking lot, the spinning blades of the fan and his father who lay on his side, his face crunched in agony.

A heavy-set nurse in pale blue scrubs floated silently into the room, checking the IV hooked into his father’s hand. After writing some things on a chart, she slid over to the chair where Jake sprawled, interrupting his attempts to come up with a way he might reveal to the cops Langston’s ties with the warehouse.

“Hi,” she said in a soft, practiced manner. “I’m Judy and I’ll be looking after your father at night. If you need anything, let us know.” She patted Stony’s leg and slipped out of the room. Overall, Jake had to admit, an impressive display by the staff. Regular hospitals either acted like they didn’t care with a calculated indifference or they over-schmoozed to make you think they did. The rhythmic rocking of the chair and the cool breeze from the ceiling fan hypnotized him and he dozed off.

He held an absurdly large fishing pole in his hand at the banks of the pond behind their house. The rod as thick as a small sapling and the reel as big as his head. A blood-red line dove into the murky water.

Across the dock, Nicky sat on the edge fishing, his feet dangling in the water. His thick mane of black hair hung on his shoulders and he bobbed his head back and forth like he jammed to a tune. A needle gleamed in the sunlight next to him.

“Nicky,” Jake yelled, but all that came out was a tiny squeak. A chill ran down Jake’s back as he realized what day this was even though he wasn’t here when it happened. The dock, the needle, the smile on Nicky’s face.

Nicky’s head continued to bob to the music in his head. He picked up the syringe, examining the icy contents. Jake tried to move his feet, but they were buried to his ankles in the mud. The rod sang and burned in his hands; the buzzing of the cicadas grew in volume, every sense amplified a hundred fold. A sweaty sheen covered Nicky’s brow. Even across the lake, Jake could smell the heroin in the syringe, his panic rising.

Nicky’s head stopped bobbing and the smile disappeared from his face. The song in his head had ended. He set the syringe on the dock and dropped his fishing pole in the water, peeling off his T-shirt and undoing the belt holding up his ratty, stained jeans. As he wrapped it around his skinny bicep and cinched it tight, Stony sauntered down the hill from the house toward the pond, a square bottle of Jack Daniels swinging by his side.

“Dad,” Jake yelled, this time finding his voice. “Dad, help!”

Simultaneously, his father and brother put their index fingers to their lips, shushing Jake. Nicky picked up the needle. Jake screamed and twisted, pulled and tugged. Nicky put the needle to his arm and pierced the bulging blue vein.

Nicky’s thumb hovered over the plunger and he looked over to Jake. Sadness and gut-wrenching anguish draped his face. “Got no choice, little bro. You left me here to die.”

Nicky pushed down. His brown eyes rolled back in his head, which lolled back and forth. His mouth gaped in a knowing grin as he lay gently back on to the weathered pine boards.

At the same moment, the line on Jake’s rod and reel jerked, the top of the rod bending impossibly. Jake used all his strength to crank the handle, bringing in the line a few inches at a time. Across the way, Nicky coughed and twitched. The more his older brother sputtered and gagged, the faster Jake cranked the reel.

A figure rode below the surface of the pond, following the tiny wake from the thick fishing line as it sucked through the water. Jake spun the reel, drawing in the line as if Nicky’s life hung in the balance.

With his catch mere feet from the bank, Nicky twitched one last time and the light disappeared from his eyes as if someone flipped a switch. Light to dark. Life to death. Fade to black. At the same moment, the figure launched itself out of the water and landed face to face with Jake. His father, waterlogged and motley skinned, the green lake water filling his eyes, a mouth full of jagged teeth and black ooze.

“It should’ve been you, Jake,” Stony said.

Jake yelled and jumped out of the recliner, frantically swiping away at imaginary threads of the dream. Nurse Judy rushed in.

“Everything okay, Mr. Caldwell?”

“Yeah,” Jake replied, sweaty and shaky. “Everything’s fine.”

The dream rushed back and his mind’s eye saw Nicky dead on the dock. His mother’s grave with her fine blue dress draped over the headstone. The Dad-thing from the lake camped in Stony’s chair in the house, swinging a thick lead pipe in a scaly, muscular arm.

“You sure?” she asked.

“No.” He grabbed his keys off the dresser and left without a glance back.