Once inside the hut—which we called “the hangar” because it resembled a small airplane hangar—I flipped on the overhead lights, and navigated around the arbitrarily strewn tools and oil containers. At some point we were going to have to clean this place up. An orange 1965 Dodge Charger 273 sat ignored in the middle of our mess.
It was the car we’d been working on in August when we found out Momma was sick. We’d planned to give it to her for Christmas, after it was all fixed up and painted sky blue. Even Billy was helping with the engine work. But she’d died the first week of October. No one had touched it since.
I moved to a cluster of chairs at the back of the space and reached inside the small refrigerator to one side. Thankfully, it was still stocked with beer; I popped the top off a bottle and handed it to Beau, reserving the can of Guinness for me.
Drink in hand, I took a deep breath and tried to organize my thoughts.
“So, what’s going on? Why are we hiding out here?” Beau asked.
“I had visitors on Wednesday; Repo and Dirty Dave.”
Beau lifted a single eyebrow, his lips curving in to a sneer. “Those two morons? What did they want?”
I gathered a deep breath, not liking that I had no choice but to involve Beau in this. “You better sit down.”
He sat down. I didn’t. I paced while I drank my beer and related the story of their visit, their demands, as well as my trip into Knoxville for the disposable laptop.
“Damn,” he said on an exhale, shaking his head as he absorbed the facts. His expression mirrored my own anxiety. “What was on the thumb drive? Or do I not want to know?” Beau looked like he was imagining the worst.
“You need to know. Besides, it’s nothing…violent or disturbing. It’s traps.”
“Traps?” Beau’s forehead wrinkled with confusion.
I stopped pacing, most of my restless energy spent, and faced my twin. “Yeah. Traps. The thumb drive has a video of Jethro. A camera is following him around a garage I don’t recognize, as he shows some unknown person the location of secret compartments he installed in several cars, how to access them, how to keep them concealed.”
“Oh. You mean, like those vanity compartments? Like on that old MTV show, Pimp My Ride?”
“When have you ever watched MTV?”
“When you were off running around the woods and playing baseball with the Valley kids, I was over at Hank Weller’s house watching MTV and playing Grand Theft Auto on his PlayStation.”
“Oh…”
“So, the traps?”
“Yes, so they’re secret and hard to access. It’s actually kind of genius. In order to open the compartment, you have to have the car off, in neutral, with the windows down, the driver’s seat all the way to the front, and know where the release button is located. Then and only then will the trap open. Otherwise it just looks like regular carpet.”
Beau shrugged, “So what’s the big deal? So Jethro installed secret vanity compartments? How is this supposed to compel us to become the Iron Order’s chop shop?”
I grabbed a nearby chair and turned it around; I straddled it, facing my brother. “That’s not the issue. Well, it’s part of the issue. The real problem is that on the video someone tells Jethro that the traps will be used to transport drugs.”
Beau frowned, his gaze became unfocused as his thoughts turned inward, and I could see he understood the implications.
I continued delivering the bad news. “Jethro cusses a few times, yells at the guy who is off camera, tells him he didn’t sign up to install the traps for drug transportation. They argue a bit. Basically though, the voice reminds him that the only way Jethro can extract himself from future involvement with the Order is to install the traps—which he did—and keep his mouth shut about how they’re being used. The date of the video is about three years ago. They time-stamped it.”
Beau closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair as he reiterated the facts. “So, they have a video of Jethro finding out the traps are being used to transport drugs, which basically makes him complicit or an accomplice to their drug running.”
“Yeah. He installed the traps. Then he taught them how they’re used, how to hide stuff. Then, they pointblank told Jethro that the compartments were going to be used to transport drugs and hide those drugs from the police.”
Beau opened one eye, peeked at me. “And no one else is on the video? Just Jethro?”
“If you don’t count the voice off camera, it’s just Jethro. And the cars.”
“Fuck.”
I nodded, sighing at the frustrating futility of our situation.
“Did you call Jethro? Ask him about the video?”
“No. I didn’t think calling him on Drew’s government satellite phone, while they’re off in the middle of the Appalachian Trail backwoods wilderness was a smart idea.”
“Have you told anyone else?”
I shook my head. “No. I don’t want anyone else to know, just in case we have to go through with this.”