Alphabetic Karma, Part 7

Complications in the Wholesale Business

We're serializing Alphabetic Karma, a short story originally published by Hawkshaw Press. Sign in every Wednesday and Sunday to get the next paragraphs. When we left Kim last, Tony had just proposed a crime partnership

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Tony appeared bashful, for someone who had just confessed to armed truck-jacking.

This new career worked pretty well for a while. Uncle Zach never heard me coming or going at night, as he lay in the back of the trailer exhausted from breathing. To celebrate my hidden illegal wealth, I had my left eyebrow pierced twice, for two gold dumbbells. Outside of that, I didnʼt splash out—the money was reserved for emergencies. I hid the rubber-banded rolls up under the trailer in a waterproof bag. Tony was as good a human turning over trucks as his garage persona, and I didnʼt mind collecting only an eighth of the take.

By the fourth jack, I was in the zone. For this one, Tony had located a yard with six trucks behind chain link and a padlock. He cut the chain and eased himself inside; he looped the whole thing back up so the gate appeared locked. He picked out the truck facing out, checked the back to confirm the trailer held a load, then jimmied into the cab. I waited, leaning against a wall at the end of the fence, thanking God no dogs showed. But I could make out security cameras, so Tony had left his image behind—a bear-shaped figure in coveralls and a black ball cap tugged down real low, collar turned up.

In about ten minutes, Tony had broken the column lock, bypassed the kill switch, and hot-wired the rig. The diesel fired up, Tony flicked the lights, and I ran to open the gate. He cruised out of the lot and turned to the right as I swung onto the step and crawled into the cab. Six blocks later, minus the GPS, he dropped me off and I trailed behind in our vehicle.

We parked near a junkyard, back to back, door to door. I crawled into the liberated trailer and shoved a steady progression of boxes towards Tony on the ground. He grunted them up into our trailer, and, when the doorway was jam-packed, we both swung up to re-stow the load deep in our own rig. We had boosted a mixed load, maybe on its way to a hardware store. The last things off nearly killed me — a hundred five-gallon buckets of paint. We kindly left their pallets. One thing for sure—my upper-body strength was way better and I was into Ibuprofen.

The unload and load took us about an hour, and thatʼs when we were sitting ducks. Tony shifted location each time, searching out parking lots or graveled areas with no cameras. He insisted we work in the dark, but chose nights with a moon. He allowed, “Cameras ainʼt no big deal. They can figure out weight and height, but thatʼs about it. Still, when you can avoid them . . . ”

Tony also insisted I drive back, to hone my trucker skills. Weʼd park in his warehouse and unload—afterwards his wife Helen would feed us breakfast in the apartment upstairs while the kids got ready for school, slapping together their own PB&Jʼs.

# # #

Tony and I finally cracked a tractor trailer that was too tough. We stumbled across a driver sleeping in his rig to save money on a motel. We turned sloppy, I guess.

The truck had been slotted against the curb outside of the transport yard. Tony said, “Guess he showed up here after they locked up.”

Scanning the fence, I spotted a camera covering the street. “Weʼre on tape, Tony.” We both hauled our caps down and our turtlenecks up over our mouths.

He broke the seal on the trailer door and cut the padlock off with his bolt cutters. The doors swung open—he flashed a light around. “Looks like Samsung appliances. Need a dishwasher?”

I banged the doors shut and latched them down. “Time to move.”

Tony ran down the side of the truck and swung up on the step. The door burst open. Tony flew away from the truck. He landed on his shoulders in the street. As I sprinted towards him to haul him to his feet, I heard a flat crack, like concentrated thunder banging into my ears. “Iʼm hit! The sumbitch shot me.”

Stupid me. I ran forward to heave Tony up on his feet. I glanced up at the truck door to spot the driver, phone in one hand, a silver revolver in the other. I believe luck turned my way—he was dialing with his thumb even as he threw off a couple of shots at me. Like a red hot iron, the first bullet tore across the front of my thigh, banged the street, and sang off into the blackness. The second ripped off the first joint of my ring finger. Most of this I comprehended later.

I jerked Tony onto his feet. “Run! Run, you Polack.” The driver ignored us as he shouted into his phone.

Our parked truck waited a half block away. By the time we staggered up to it, Tony knew he had been hit through and through. “Candy ass gun. The entry isnʼt as big as my finger.” Tony, the bastard, had taken a round into the shoulder and out his back, and was reporting on the bullet size. Maybe shock. Probably showing off. He grunted like a weightlifter as he tried to scale the steps into the passenger seat, and all the time Iʼm shoving on his ass, trying to boost him up.

Ten miles to Tonyʼs warehouse, with the crease across my thigh red-hot and throbbing. It let me know the gun wasnʼt that small. As the streetlights trolled by and rained pallid blue or amber into the cab, I could detect the puddle of black across my jeans. Not bad—I didnʼt see any gouts of blood spurting out. I had jammed my bleeding hand into a work glove, so I didnʼt have to gaze at that.

Tony jumped on his mobile and called ahead—“Helen, I been shot. Call Doc Murchison and have him get to the warehouse as quick as he can. Tell him weʼll pay double. Get Donnie to open the doors.”

Big man, balls like brass—but he had passed out by the time I rumbled us into the building and jerked to a stop.

From there it was an anticlimax. Doc Murchison showed up from his vet clinic within a half hour. Helen told me, “I think weʼre out of business for a while.”

“You think?”

“Weʼll patch you up down here. I donʼt want the kids to see.” Doc replumbed Tonyʼs shoulder and quick-glued my bullet crease together. He gave me four stitches in the end of my finger and a lecture about the dressing. It took both Helen and me to carry Tony up the stairs. Panting like exhausted horses, we poured him into the bed. She asked, “You okay to get home?”

Tony made it back to Ravenʼs within a week. He claimed it had been a hernia and laid off heavy tires and crap for a while. He may have gone back to truck-jacking later, but it wasnʼt with me. My crime run didnʼt last as long as Uncle Zachʼs, but then, I didnʼt have to do the nickel.