Black Cat Weekly #39

Chapter 5

bySitting in the passenger seat, Travis did a rough count of the bundles of cash in one of the three big canvas bags. “Little over a hundred and fifty grand,” he said. “If the others are the same, we’re in good shape.”

“We won’t be in good shape for a while,” Andre said. “We left a hell of a mess back there.”

“It was Conklin who put those guys down.”

“Find me a judge who’s gonna care.”

He was gripping the wheel so hard his hands were cramping. He had to remind himself to keep within a couple of miles of the speed limit. The whole time Travis was counting, Andre wanted to yell at him, wanted to grab the money and throw it out the window. Of course, he was enraged with himself. Andre had rules that were supposed to keep him and Travis from ending up on the wrong side of steel bars. After the mess last month in Baton Rouge, though, cash reserves were low and there was nothing on the horizon. So, Andre broke his most important rule: he went on a score somebody else planned.

“It’s a cakewalk,” Conklin promised them. “This armored car picks up cash deposits from businesses all over St. Paul. At their last stop they park behind a mini mall, completely out of sight of the road. We come in with a car from each direction, they’ve got nowhere to go. And get this, I know a girl who works dispatch for the city cops. She can make sure there are no cruisers around.”

“How many guards?” Andre asked.

“Just two. Couple of fat retired cops. I’ve watched them. They’re lazy, do things the easy way. Never been hit, so they don’t expect it.”

“Retired cops can still pull triggers.”

“I’m telling you, man, these guys won’t be a problem. Look, you ever heard of Minnesota Nice? It’s their damn slogan up here. They, like, pride themselves on being pushovers. Hell, they’ll probably offer to carry the bags for us.”

prideMinnesota Nice. Sounded better than some places he and Travis had worked. They hadn’t set foot in Texas since the jewelry store, three years back, where every single clerk and customer turned out to be carrying. Travis damn near got ventilated by a mouthy old woman in a wheelchair who started firing the Sig in her purse without bothering to take it out. Conklin made Minnesota sound like the anti-Texas. That was enough for Andre to break his rule.

Just like every other time he’d broken a rule, he was paying for it now.

He and Travis were ferrying bags of cash to the cars when the two loud shots came. They spun to see Conklin standing over the dead guards. He claimed they were making a move. Andre had his doubts. Conklin suddenly reminded him of guys who just plain liked killing, liked it so much they stopped being useful. There was no time to debate the issue. The back doors of three of the mini-mall shops opened as people looked out to see what was happening. Conklin took off one way, Andre and Travis another.

Now Travis was looking at his phone’s GPS. “This ain’t the route to Milwaukee.”

“No.” Heading for Milwaukee had been Andre’s plan for immediately after the job. It would put them across a state line quickly, and from there it would be easy to catch a flight. They could be in New Orleans or Phoenix or, hell, Alaska before the job was twenty-four hours old. Conklin changed the math. While Travis counted, Andre had edged around the northern suburbs of Minneapolis and turned west, sticking to state roads. “With two dead they’ll be watching the nearby borders and major roads.”

“So, where we going?”

“Denver.”

“Denver? What, did you fall in love with this car?” It was a deliberately anonymous black sedan, a beater they’d bought three days earlier through a Craigslist ad, using phony ID.

Denver“Fleming is working in Denver, last I heard. He can clean the money.” Andre forced his attention to the road, trying to erase the image of Conklin standing over the guards. “We’ll head west, take our time, cut south in a day or two. Stay out of trouble.”

FREE ICE WATER!!!

The tired old cowboy on the billboard was taking a bath in a horse trough, his clothes draped over the pump handle and his trusty steed drinking from the other end. Sal Russo had been looking at him for two years. There was nothing else to look at. The gas station he was given to manage when he went into witness protection, complete with a sagging single-wide out back to sleep in, sat at what had to be one of the loneliest intersections in America, where two Minnesota state highways crossed near the South Dakota border. The closest town was five miles away, and anybody trying to get anywhere took the Interstate fifteen miles to the south. The land stretched out flat and green in every direction to distant stands of pine. Aside from the gas station and the roads themselves, the billboard was the only manmade thing in sight.

Sal hated it.

He hated the cowboy. He hated the horse. He hated whoever drew them and whoever built the billboard and put them on it. He hated the cheerful suggestion that ice water was some kind of treat. He hated the billboard almost as much as he hated the gas station, which was almost as much as he hated the trailer. More than any of it, he hated Marshal Lacey Bertolet, who picked this place for his exile. Even worse, she chose his new name: Steve Robinson. Something that damned white bread had to be a deliberate insult, and after two years Sal still couldn’t think of himself as Steve. The way he saw it, “Steve Robinson” was the smallest offensive lineman on his high school team. “Sal Russo” was the guy dealing w**d under the bleachers and screwing Steve’s prom date behind the concession stand, while Steve had his a*s handed to him out on the field.

SteveHe knew which guy he wanted to be.

He was sitting on the bench in front of the station drinking beer near the end of another day in purgatory. The long October twilight was just gathering as a black SUV turned into the gas station lot from the southbound road and rolled to a stop at the pumps. Lacey Bertolet climbed out. Third Thursday of the month. Sal’s least favorite day.

Bertolet was wearing mirrored sunglasses, and her g*n and badge were clipped to her belt. She put the gas nozzle in the SUV and started it, then walked over and took a beer out of the cooler between his feet. She twisted off the cap and took a long swallow.

“You wear the glasses while you’re driving?” Sal asked. “Or do you put them on when you get here because you think they look badass?”

She touched the cool glass of the bottle to her wrists, not looking at him. “How’s business, Mr. Robinson?”

“Raking it in. I’m surprised you could get here through the crowd.”

“You missed your last mortgage payment.”

Sal snorted. “What do you want me to say? Check’s in the mail? I never asked to own a damn gas station.”

Bertolet finished the beer and dropped the bottle, which broke against the asphalt. “It’s witness protection, Mr. Robinson, not the lottery. We give you a way to live clean. The rest is up to you. And until you pay it off, we own the damn gas station, not you.”

Sal finished his own drink. “I wish I knew why you hate me so much, Marshal. Did I piss on your birthday cake or something? Kill somebody you’re related to?”

“Given the number of people you killed, I can see where you’d lose track,” Bertolet said. “But I don’t have anything personal against you, Mr. Robinson. This is just a job.”

“Sure. You treat all your witnesses like something scraped off a shoe.”

“I think I have some complaint forms in the car. You want to fill one out?”

Sal shook his head. “Just forget it. You’ve done your duty, Bertolet. I’m still here and I’m not hosting coke parties or plotting to overthrow the government or whatever. See you in a month.”

“Sooner.” Bertolet propped her foot against the bench and leaned forward, stretching her back leg. “Sergei Lebedev’s trial starts next week. Time for your starring role.”

“Be damned. His lawyers finally ran out of motions to file?”

She ignored the question. “I’ll be here at nine on Monday morning with three other agents. I’m not telling you what airport we’re going through and I’m not telling you what hotel we’ll be using in Miami. We can’t be sure when you’ll actually be called, so you should pack for a stay.”

“Sure. I’ll have my valet pick out some nice pastels.” Sal shifted on the bench. “Sergei will be right there in the room?”

Bertolet straightened up. For the first time she looked directly at his face, though he couldn’t see her eyes. “This is the deal, Russo,” she said. “The whole deal. You get cold feet now and I will put you in a hole that will make you long for the good old days pumping gas.”

“Nobody’s getting cold feet. I just want to be sure I’m safe. I’ve seen what Sergei does to people who cross him.”

“Don’t try to play citizen,” Bertolet said. “Up until two years ago you were the one Sergei sent after those people.”

“I know better than anybody. Be damned sure there are no leaks on your end.”

“You’ve been here two years. If there was a leak. you’d be dead.” She walked back to the SUV and put the gas nozzle back in its cradle. “Be ready Monday morning.”

“You gonna pay for the gas and the beer?”

“We’ve been over this, Mr. Robinson. Until you pay off, it’s our gas station.” She slid into the SUV. “Monday morning. Until then, all you have to do is stay out of trouble.”

“We need gas,” Andre said.

Dusk was giving way to night. His head and lower back ached from the tension and monotony of hours of two-lane blacktop. Every time they seemed to be building up momentum, they hit a little town where the speed limit dropped to 25, or they were trapped behind a piece of farm equipment. At one point he made a wrong turn and went forty miles north before realizing his mistake and backtracking. He wanted west, not Canada.

“There’s a gas station,” Travis said. “Looks closed.”

“We’ll take a look. I need to stretch my damn legs.”

The station was a ramshackle little building with a couple of pumps. A blue tarp covered a car parked to its side, and a trailer squatted behind it. The big halogen lamp over the intersection spilled some of its light over the station lot, but the surrounding fields were dark.

Crude lettering on a piece of cardboard taped to the pump read “Closed at 7PM. Use credit card.”

“Damn.” Andre exited the car, tucking his g*n into the back of his waistband. He had a couple of hot credit cards, but he couldn’t be completely sure they were still safe. “I’d rather pay cash. See if there’s somebody here who can open up for us.”

Travis put his small .22 into the front pocket of his cargo shorts. Another of Andre’s rules, drilled into him so often that he didn’t think about it: always have a g*n within reach when you’re on a job. Until unloaded the cash, they were still on the job. He shook the station’s locked door and walked around to check the trailer. Andre paced between the car and the pump, wondering what the hell kind of place advertised having ice water.

In a minute Travis came jogging back, holding his phone. “Nobody in the trailer,” he said. “But we have bigger problems. Conklin texted me. That police girl says somebody back there got our plates. There’s a statewide bulletin out.”

Andre swore, bouncing a fist off the top of the car. “This is what I get for breaking rules. Conklin better hope he’s never in the same room with me again.”

Travis stuck his hands into his hip pockets. “We’re almost to South Dakota, right?”

“Sure. But they might have put it out to neighboring states.” Andre let his gaze drift to the west, waiting for an idea.

“We could take whatever that is under the tarp,” Travis said.

“So, Mr. Trailer comes back from dinner or whatever and finds his car stolen and this one sitting in the lot. We might as well send the cops an invitation letting them know where to pick us up.”

“Okay,” Travis said. “We just take the license plate.”

Andre raised an eyebrow, looking it over. “That’s not bad,” he said. “With a little luck the guy might not even notice until we’re done with the car anyway.” He turned back toward the pump. “Okay. You go get the plate and I’ll try one of the cards.”

There were about three nights a year when the trailer wasn’t miserably hot or punishingly cold. Sal had never been much for TV, anyway. He was in the habit of sitting out in a lawn chair on clear nights, drinking and listening to true crime podcasts or nothing at all. The problem was that people who stopped by after closing time could find him and demand service, so he started carrying the chair twenty or thirty yards out into the field and setting it up on one of the little rock outcroppings. From there he could keep an eye on things, but once the sun went down, he was essentially invisible.

He was working on a bottle of Jack and thinking about seeing Sergei Lebedev again when a beaten-up black sedan turned into the station off the westbound road and parked by the pumps. A Black man got out of the driver’s seat. He stretched his arms, and even at this distance Sal could see the g*n, a big automatic, in his right hand. He tucked it into the back of his pants as a white man exited the passenger side and put a smaller g*n into his pocket.

Out in the protective darkness, Sal straightened. He screwed the top on the bottle and set it gently on the ground. The guns didn’t necessarily mean anything. Lots of people out here in the sticks went around armed.

Still.

The two men conferred briefly. The white man went to the door of the station, rattled it, and cupped his hand to the glass to try to see inside. Seeing nothing, he trotted around and knocked at the trailer.

Moving slowly, Sal eased out of the chair. He folded it and laid it flat on the ground, where some glint of light wouldn’t catch the aluminum tubing. Half crouched, he took a few cautious steps toward the station.

The white man was looking at his phone now. He broke suddenly into motion, running back around the station and yelling. Sal couldn’t make out the words. Whatever it was seemed to be bad news, judging from the way the Black man punched the roof of the car. The two men talked for a minute, both looking around.

Sal thought he knew what they were looking for.

His hands ached for a g*n. Of course, he wasn’t supposed to have one, and of course, he didn’t have one. He had two. The Glock nestled under a cutaway section of floorboard next to his bed. He could roll off the bed and push his hand through and have it in less than two seconds. The sawed-off was tucked over a loose ceiling panel just above the gas station cash register. Knock the panel askew with a broom and the weapon would fall right into his hands.

Very clever. Assuming he was inside when trouble came.

insideThe white man walked over to Sal’s car. He flipped up an edge of the tarp and started doing something Sal couldn’t see at the back. The car was a vintage red Trans Am. It had belonged to one of the locals Sal sometimes paid to cover shifts, until she received her third DUI and lost her license. Sal picked the car up cheap, getting rid of the rusty pickup that had come with the station. He took it into town a couple of times a week to buy food, and to Sioux Falls once a month or so to find a woman. He kept it under a tarp most of the time because he grew tired of idiots who wanted to talk about Smokey and the Bandit.

Smokey and the BanditThe Black man was pumping gas. Sal moved forward more quickly, still bent low. He’d be more visible as he crept closer but hanging back wasn’t an option anymore. He’d been expecting this for two years. They’d found him.

The white man was completely absorbed in what he was doing, and Sal had spent a lot of years learning how to move quietly. The man had no idea he was there until Sal’s left arm clamped firmly around his neck as his right hand closed over his nose and mouth.

The first card Andre tried in the pump worked. About time we had a piece of luck. He watched the numbers climbing, leaning against the car and keeping half an eye on the roads. Wouldn’t do to have somebody show up while Travis was busy lifting plates. He grunted to himself. Might as well get the bad plates off this car while the gas was going. He pushed himself upright and went around to the back of the car. A noise came from over where Travis was working, like something heavy hitting the ground.

About time we had a piece of luck“Travis?” he yelled. “You okay?”

Sal took the g*n from Travis’s pocket, grimacing when he saw it was a piss-ant little .22. He thought about going for one of his guns, but speed was more important. The Black man was yelling. Sal stepped over the dead man and walked around the corner of the station, g*n held straight out in front of him. As soon as he saw the Black man coming from the rear of the car he started firing.

Andre had taken a couple of steps in Travis’s direction when a bearded man he’d never seen before came around the corner, firing a g*n. Andre swore and spun, trying to break for cover and draw his own g*n at the same time. For half a second, he couldn’t decide between heading back to the car or running for the more substantial cover of the building. The hesitation cost him. He felt two solid blows slamming into his left side. He fired back blindly and half-ran, half-stumbled toward the gas station, going around the corner at the other side.

He could get to the trailer. Or go around the back, find Travis, team up to take this guy out. Except Travis was probably dead, right? His foot caught on something in the gloom, and he fell forward, the g*n flying away. Hitting the ground knocked the air out of him. He tried to push himself up, to reach for the g*n. He wanted to do those things. He waited to feel himself doing them, but nothing happened.

Then he felt the hand on his shoulder, rolling him over onto his back.

The left side of the man’s shirt was dark with blood. When Sal rolled him over, his mouth was hanging slack and for a minute Sal thought he was already gone. But then he blinked. His eyes rolled around until they found Sal and focused on his face.

Sal knelt and let him see the g*n. “I’ll get help,” he said. “But you gotta tell me who sent you.”

The man looked calm but confused. His eyes wandered over Sal’s shoulder like he was looking for somebody.

“Your partner’s gone,” Sal said. “Forget him. You can get through this. Just give me the name. Was it Bertolet?”

The man was looking straight up into the sky now. Sal slapped him lightly, brought his focus back.

“Tell me who sent you,” he said again. “Bertolet, right?”

The Black man made a weak sound. Sal realized he was laughing. Probably slipping into shock. Sal slapped him again, a little harder. The little chuffing laugh stopped, and the man’s lips moved. Sal leaned forward to catch what he was saying. “What the hell happened to Minnesota Nice?”

“I’m from Florida,” Sal said. He held up the g*n again, waved it until the man’s eyes fixed on it. “Last chance. Give me a name.”

“Conklin.” The man’s voice was thin but clear. “Jason Conklin. Thief out of Pittsburgh.”

“Jason Conklin,” Sal said. “This Conklin sent you after me?”

No good. He was talking to himself.

There was a leak somewhere. That was clear enough. Maybe it was Bertolet and maybe it wasn’t, but Sal sure as hell wasn’t going to call her and ask, and he wasn’t going to wait to see who turned up next.

He grabbed the Glock and his little stack of emergency cash from the hidey hole and tossed some clothes into a bag. The Trans Am was registered to Steve Robinson. Whether Bertolet was dirty or not, there were about to be a lot of people looking for Steve Robinson. He took the keys to the sedan from the black man’s pockets. The back seat was heaped with big, bulky bags. He could check that out later. Right now, the priority was putting as much distance as possible between himself and this corner.

He peeled out of the lot, raising a middle finger to the cowboy as he passed the billboard.

By the time he reached the Interstate he had a rough sketch of a plan. He’d start in Pittsburgh, see if he could find this Conklin and figure out where he fit. Had to be Bertolet, moving against him now to keep him from testifying. The Black man said Conklin was a thief. Bertolet must have busted him at some point, put him on a leash. If Sal could put her on the other end of that leash, she’d spend the next big chunk of her life in Leavenworth.

He smiled at the image as he merged onto the Interstate heading east.

It was twenty minutes later when the blue and red lit up the rearview mirror.

Joseph S. Walker lives in Indiana and teaches college literature and composition courses. His short fiction has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Mystery Weekly, Tough, and many other magazines and anthologies. He has been nominated for the Edgar Award and the Derringer Award and has won the Bill Crider Prize for Short Fiction. He also won the Al Blanchard Award in 2019 and 2021. Follow him on Twitter @JSWalkerAuthor and visit his website at https://jsw47408.wixsite.com/website.

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