The Coaster (23 page)

I wasn't particularly looking forward to seeing Swanson's little “demonstration,” but it sounded a lot better than carrying part of my body back to the city in a bucket. Swanson nodded and Jim brought the rat over to the Muffin Maker.

I'm sure the rat didn't know what he was being lowered into, but he knew he didn't want to go there. He struggled, but there's not much you can do when you're being held by the tail. I don't know which part of his body touched one of the spinning cutters first, but it didn't matter much. Like everything else, the rat was immediately flattened and forced down into the tiny space between the twin rows of whirling blades. I'm sure he was killed almost instantly.

The linebackers looked as green as the Packer uniforms I imagined them wearing. Jim looked like a guy who was just following orders. Swanson was the only one who looked like he was enjoying himself. He probably pulled the wings off flies and burned anthills with a magnifying glass when he was a kid. Maybe he still did.

Swanson pulled out the wastebasket and carried it over near the drain. He turned it upside down and dumped out a bloody, pulpy mess. Jim hosed the gore down the drain with the sanitizer and Swanson sprayed the area with Luminol. The whole thing took less than five minutes.

Swanson yelled “Hit the lights!” and someone did. We all stared at the spot where the rat's liquefied remains had puddled.

“Look at that, Bob,” Swanson said. “No traces of blood. No traces at all.”

Chapter Twenty-seven

I rode back from the warehouse in the backseat of the black sedan with Justin Beaver on my lap. My hulking escorts didn't say a word, not even to each other. They didn't even turn the radio on. They just stared straight ahead. I probably should have been pumping these guys for information or turning them against their boss or something, but I couldn't think of anything to say. I'd been in a state of constant fear for days. I wasn't two steps ahead of Swanson with an ingenious plan I haven't told you about yet. I was being played like a violin computer program that simulates music. No one plays real instruments anymore.

This was about the time I needed an ace in the hole, that one previously unmentioned friend of mine who used to be a green beret before he got kicked out of the army for assaulting his superior officer for needlessly putting his men in danger. Or that old high school buddy who is now a career criminal but respects me because I took the blame for something he did when we were kids. The problem with the ace-in-the-hole plan is I don't know anyone like that.

So when I got back to the office, I called the one person who is always willing to give me advice whether I want it or not.

“Hi, honey,” Sarah said.

***

“We need to talk,” I said. Normally this would have elicited a list of all the things Sarah had on her plate at the moment, but she must have sensed something in my voice because she just said “Pick me up in front of my building in an hour.”

As soon as she got in the car, she said “Did something happen?”

“Sort of. Give me a minute to park and I'll tell you the whole story.” I drove a couple of blocks and parked in the back of a fast food parking lot that was mostly empty at this time of day. My stomach reminded me that Swanson had interrupted my lunch, not that I had any appetite left after watching him make rat gumbo.

I turned and faced Sarah. She stared at me wide-eyed. “First of all, the kids are at school, everyone's fine.”

She exhaled. “That's a relief. I assumed they were or you would have come out with that right away, but I'm glad to hear it.”

“Here's what happened. Swanson had a couple of his goons kidnap me.”

“What do you mean? They blindfolded you and threw you in the trunk?”

“Maybe ‘kidnap' is the wrong word,” I said. “A car pulled in front of me as I was walking across the street and two linebacker types got out and told me Swanson wanted to see me. They didn't exactly force me into the car, but if I refused, I'm sure they would have. They took me to a warehouse where they have their operation.”

“They let you see where it was?”

“It's not a secret lair inside a volcano. It's just a warehouse.”

“What was in it?”

“Not much. They had clearly just moved in.”

“What did Swanson want to show you?”

“How his sanitation system works. But he really wanted to explain how the financials work. You know how the numbers seemed too good to be true?”

“Yes. I look at puffed-up projections all day long and I've never seen any that good.”

“It turns out there's a simple explanation. They're going to use the sanitation equipment to clean up meth labs.”

“That's their great business plan?” Sarah asked. “Marketing and selling directly to meth labs? That's a real stable wholesale market.”

“They're not selling to Jimmy Don and Faylene cooking meth in their double-wide while their kids drink goat milk out of test tubes. They're setting up their own labs. Eliminating the middleman.”

“So all that profit they project comes from selling illegal drugs.”

“A lot of it, anyway. From what I saw, the sanitation system could be successful in its own right, but not to that level.”

“Drug dealers don't normally print up prospectuses, but if they did, they'd look pretty impressive.”

“Swanson explained the whole setup to me. On paper, purely as a line item on a financial statement, meth is a dream product. Cheap to produce, huge profit margin, no marketing expenses, inelastic demand. Other than the lab explosions, destruction of human lives, and possible lengthy prison sentence, it's a slam dunk.”

Sarah shook her head. “This all just sounds unbelievable to me.”

“I know,” I said. “I'm not normally inclined to believe in conspiracy theories. Nobody can keep their stories straight and their mouths shut. But it's different with a criminal enterprise. It's right there in the name. It's
organized
crime. And they have a great system for keeping people quiet. The threat of having your tongue cut out does wonders for a person's ability to keep a secret. So I definitely believe Swanson's story is within the realm of possibility.”

Sarah thought for a moment. “Why would he tell you all this?”

“He knew I didn't trust the numbers so he wanted to prove to me they're real.”

“Surely he must know there's no way you'd invest now.”

“Swanson has somehow gotten the idea that I am of dubious moral character.”

Sarah raised an eyebrow at me. “Somehow?”

“He claims he knows I killed Dave.”

I'm not sure I'd ever heard anyone actually gasp before, but Sarah gasped out loud. “Omigod! How does he know?”

“First of all, let's remember that I did not kill Dave. Your horse did. Second, I don't think Swanson does know. He knows Dave's missing, so he took a shot in the dark. I've got a pretty good poker face, so I think I hid my reaction pretty well.”

Sarah smirked. “Oh, really? Then how come you never win at poker?”

“I'm talking about a poker face in real life. I fool you all the time.”

“Maybe you just think you do.”

“Anyway,” I continued, “there's no way he really knows anything. There's nothing to know. He's just trying everything at this point. He tried getting your dad and then me on board as legitimate investors. That didn't work. Then he tried the blackmail scheme with the girls. That didn't work. Now he's upped the ante on the blackmail to murder. At the same time, he's thinking ‘Maybe I just need to lay all my cards on the table. If Bob would ruthlessly kill his old friend, why would he have a problem selling meth?'”

“Because it's illegal?”

“So is murder.”

“You didn't kill anyone.”

“But he thinks I did.”

“Wait a minute,” Sarah said. “There's more, isn't there?” She looked around the car. “What's Emily's Justin Beaver doll doing in the backseat? What haven't you told me?”

“Swanson also made some vague threats against the entire family.”

“How do you make a ‘vague' threat? Did he threaten us or not?”

“He poured blood on the floor and cleaned it up with the sanitizer,” I said. “There were no traces of blood left behind.”

“And you think that was a threat?”

“I think he meant it both as a selling point for the product—
with the new Sanitol sanitation system, you'll be able to eliminate your competitors without a mess—
and as an implicit threat—
or we could just kill you if don't cooperate
.”

“How is that a threat against the family?”

“He showed me this machine called a Muffin Monster that will grind anything to bits. They shoved a whole couch through it and then just washed it down the drain.”

“What do they need that for?” Sarah asked.

“To dismantle labs and get rid of the evidence.”

“How does that make things worse?”

“He hinted that he could grind up other things as well.”

“Like what?”

“Like something that looked an awful lot like that belt you gave me for Christmas. And those shoes of yours with the red soles.”

Sarah's eyes flashed with anger. “That son of a bitch shredded my Christian Louboutins?”

“It sure looked like them. And Nick's red, white, and blue basketball.” I decided not to tell her about the rat. Sarah would beat a rat to death with a shovel if she saw one in the barn, but the idea of someone else hurting an animal made her sick.

“But you saved Justin Beaver,” she said.

“I wasn't sure it was really our stuff until then.”

“Wait a minute.” Comprehension dawned across Sarah's face. “Those bastards have been in our house?”

“That would appear to be the case,” I said.

“That changes things. That changes everything. Violating the sanctity of our home crosses a line.”

“I agree,” I said. “We have to come up with some kind of plan. But everything's on the table now. Everything.”

***

“Everything?” Sarah asked.

“The first thing we need to consider is just doing the deal.”

“We can't do that. What about all the lives meth ruins?”

“Swanson's actually pretty persuasive about that,” I said. “We're not really hurting anybody. They're going to do meth anyway. Why not provide a safer product?”

“That's a pretty big rationalization,” Sarah said. “By that logic, we should start pushing drugs at the junior high school.”

“I agree that ‘ethical drug dealer' is a bit of an oxymoron, but we'd also stop people from having to turn their houses into meth labs. It would probably save some children's lives.”

“I don't think I could ever convince myself this is some kind of benefit to society.”

“I'm just laying out the arguments here,” I said. “But what about the money? Other than the minor detail that it's an illegal operation, Sanitol is going to be a cash cow for somebody. Why not us?”

“Because it would be wrong?”

“I don't disagree. But when it comes down to it, I'm basically being forced, upon threat of bodily harm to me and my family, to make a boatload of money. That's not the worst resolution to this shitstorm.”

“But would the threat go away once you invest?” Sarah asked.

I considered that. “No. The man's a criminal. Why would he pay me anything at all? In addition to being a drug dealer, I'd be pissing your dad's hard-earned money away and the family wouldn't even be any safer.”

Sarah looked at me with a determined stare. “So what do we do?”

“Now that Swanson's told me everything, he can't let us just walk away. In fact, that's probably one of the reasons he told me. He's blocking the exits, giving me no choice but to say yes.”

“But you do have a choice.”

“Yes, but Swanson can't be left standing. He has to be in jail or dead.”

“What about his partners in crime?”

“I don't think there's some vast conspiracy. The linebackers are just hired hands. They won't be out for revenge or anything. And whoever else is behind this whole setup will just move on. We'll be too hot to touch at that point.”

Sarah nodded. “Okay. What do we know?”

“We know they've been in our house. That's why I wanted to talk in the car. They could be listening to everything we say at home.”

Sarah was quiet for a moment. “Does it seem strange to you that Swanson destroyed the other stuff but let you keep Emily's stuffed animal?”

“No, I took it from him. He was about to—oh, shit.” I grabbed Justin Beaver and examined him closely.

“Does it look tampered with?” Sarah asked.

“How could you tell? Some high school burnout stitched it up right in front of us at the store. It's not like I can tell if the fine craftsmanship has been altered.”

“There's only one way to find out,” Sarah said.

I spoke directly into the doll's face. “Swanson? Can you hear me? Stop masturbating to your own reflection in the mirror and answer me.” I looked at Sarah. “Nothing.”

“That's not the way I meant.” She handed me a nail file from her purse.

“Sorry, Emily.” I split Justin Beaver down the middle of his chest like an autopsy.

I dug around in the stuffing, but I could find nothing but the little chip with Nick's message. “Looks clean.” I tossed Beaver into the backseat. Just one more casualty in America's war on drugs.

Sarah rolled her eyes in the manner females have mastered by the time they're five years old. “You can't tell if the toilet seat is clean and you're declaring this doll free of bugs?”

“That's correct,” I said.

“So we don't think we're bugged here, but we think we are at home.”

“Right,” I agreed. “So if we have any advantage at all, it's that we know Swanson's listening at our house, but he doesn't know we know.”

“He doesn't know we know because we really don't know.”

“The key is making sure Swanson doesn't know we know.”

“How are we going to do that?” Sarah asked.

“We're going to need to work from some kind of script.”

More eye-rolling. “You're barely convincing when you're telling the truth. I can't wait to see you try to act.”

“What about you?” I asked. “The kids and I laugh behind your back about your phony nice act whenever you answer the phone.”

“That is not phony, but anyway, people buy it, so what's the difference?”

“Nothing,” I said. “And if we screw this up, what's the difference? Even if Swanson knows we know, what's that going to do for him? I know we know and I have no idea what we're doing.”