$200 and a Cadillac

XV



No more wake ’n bake.

That was the deal, at least on work days, when they woke up earlier than usual.

Well before dawn, when the desert was quiet and the air held a brief, matutinal cool, they were making coffee and trying to shake out the cobwebs. Sounds seemed magnified in the small kitchen, and for some reason they kept trying to be quiet despite there being no one to disturb but each other. Eddie filled a thermos with coffee. Eli scrambled half a dozen eggs with cheese, and the two of them ate at the rickety dinette like a domestic couple preparing for work.

“Why make it hard?” Eli asked, out of nowhere. “We can just shoot him and bury him out in the desert.”

Eddie responded like they were talking about remodeling the kitchen. “We don’t have a gun.”

“Getting a gun is easy.” Eli rubbed his puffy cheek and lip, then added, “I got a feeling using it will be easy too. At least on that son of a bitch.”

Eddie didn’t say anything. He finished his eggs without talking and then spoke again from the sink where he washed his plate. “But how do we get him out there? What do we do with his truck?” Eddie took a pipe down off the fridge and lit it. Wake ’n bake rule be damned. This was serious. He held the smoke in and waited for Eli to come up with something. But Eli just sat there, looking perplexed, trying to figure out how to do it. Eddie couldn’t believe they were talking about it so casually. But he was convinced it would never happen, especially if he could keep pointing out the problems with their plans.

Finally, Eddie exhaled and added, “That’s the problem. We gotta get him alone to do it, but he’ll never travel anywhere with us.” He handed the pipe to Eli.

“What if we poisoned him?”

Eddie laughed. “What the f*ck do we know about poison? How the hell do you get him to eat something? Just invite him over for dinner? Then he’ll be dead in our house instead of out in the desert, and we’ll still have to deal with his f*cking truck.”

Eli didn’t have an answer for that one.

Then it was out to the car in the dark. The sun wouldn’t be up for an hour and a half. By then, Eddie would be well on his way to Los Angeles and Eli would be filling the second truck for a trip of his own. They drove through town. Main Street was dead quiet. Pools of streetlight dangled like inverted cones from the telephone poles, stalactites of photons against a desert ghost town. Past the café, the Golden Dragon, the Super 8, into the desert and then down the dirt road toward the property.

As they passed the spot where Ron had beaten him senseless barely twelve hours before, Eli said, “What if we broke into his house and made it look like a burglary?”

It was a good suggestion, and Eddie wasn’t prepared with an easy deflection. He thought about it for a minute, then said, “Killing a guy during a burglary would raise flags. What if we got caught in the middle of it?”

“That’s the beauty of it. He lives in your family’s old house. You used to sneak in and out of the place all the time when you were a kid. We can surprise him, kill him, mess the place up, take some shit just to make it look good, and we’ll be out of there before anyone knows any better.”

“Yeah, but that’s not the kind of thing that happens around here.”

“What are you talking about? People get robbed all the time. Some meth freak runs low on cash, next thing you know somebody’s house gets broken into. Dude, the fact that someone hasn’t been killed yet is a miracle. It’s just a matter of time. It’s perfect. Then we’re rid of that motherf*cker and we can make enough runs to line our pockets and then get out of town.”

Eli was getting excited. And Eddie had to admit it was a good plan. The only problem was he didn’t want to do it. He stared out the window into the darkness and watched the headlights bob along, spilling off into the sage and Joshua trees and then back onto the roadway until, at last, they dropped over the hill and the headlights reflected for a moment off the roof of the warehouse, sitting by itself down in the dark gully.

Eli parked the car and shut off the lights. They sat in the silence for a second. Then Eli said, “Shit, I’ll bet the guy hasn’t even changed the locks on the doors. We might be able to just walk into the place.” He laughed and smacked Eddie on the shoulder. “F*cker won’t know what’s happening until it’s too late.” He said it like it was a done deal, like the decision was made. Then he opened the door and got out.

One of the two 1968 model tanker trucks was already inside the warehouse. They set to work quickly, silently. Two young men raised on a dying oil industry tapping into their own past and following routines laid down by their grandparents, and the generation before them. It was easy work. All the hard stuff had been done already. Now it was just a matter of hooking up and filling up.

Eli fastened the hose to the tank and clamped it on, testing it to be sure it was secure. Eddie checked the pump—the fluid levels, the power connections. When it was ready, they stood around the shaft of dirt and peered into it. Eli ran the beam of a flashlight around the edges of the hole and then down into it. Nine feet. A surprisingly short distance, it seemed to him. Eddie had questioned the need to bury it at all. It seemed like a lot of work for nothing.

Altogether, it had taken only three days to dig. Quick work. The hole was ten feet across at the top, tapering to only three at the bottom where the dull steel of the pipeline sat exposed. Eddie had cut a hole in the top of the pipeline and tack welded a three-foot length of six-inch pipe to the hole. They dropped a four-inch hose down into the pipeline. The hose ran up out of the hand-dug pit, into an industrial pump that siphoned the oil out of the pipeline and through the other hose that Eli had attached to the tanker.

Eli fired up the pump and the two of them smiled at each other and laughed at the simplicity of it while the truck filled with oil. Twenty thousand gallons. With oil prices the way they were these days, they were clearing damned near ten grand a trip. Stealing it from the Monarch station made them feel a little better about the layoffs. Selling it back to Monarch’s parent company, Southwest Petroleum, made them feel like geniuses.

They’d been nervous about the first loads they’d taken. Setting up the account, waiting for the wire transfer to go through. Ron breathing down their neck, making sure everything worked. It was nerve-racking. The second, third, and fourth runs had made them feel better about the process, more confident. But they’d all been half loads, and only one truck each time because they wanted to work out any kinks on quick, simple runs. The process was smoother each time. And better still, Ron only knew about the first one. Now, there in the morning darkness, it seemed so simple. It was such a small amount of oil that no one would ever notice, and by the time anyone did, they’d be long gone. And once Ron was out of the way, they could do whatever they wanted when they shut the operation down.

When the tank was full, they shut the pump off, unhooked the hose, and let the truck warm up. The old diesel rumbled and coughed black smoke, but it ran well enough. It was Eddie’s handiwork. He was savant-like when it came to fixing things, which was a necessary skill set given the age of the equipment Eli’s father had left behind.

As they stood around outside, Eli felt a strange pride come over him at having the oil outfit up and running again. Being up early, working with his hands, using the tools and the gear, getting black crude on his clothes, the smell of oil and diesel and greasy machines—it was all part of the work he grew up doing. He had never been lazy, despite recent months, and standing outside in the early morning, listening to the truck idling behind him made him nostalgic.

“Funny to be out here again.”

Eddie stuck his hands in his pockets and kicked at a rock. “It is, isn’t it?”

There wasn’t much to say beyond that. After a few more minutes they agreed that the truck was probably ready and they went back in. Eddie jumped up in the cab, put his thermos beside him on the bench seat and leaned out the window. “Two runs still seems like a lot, but maybe I’ll see you down there.” He gave Eli a mock salute, grinned, threw it in gear and drove off.

After a few minutes, when the truck was completely gone and silence returned, Eli stood alone outside, looking over the remnants of his family business. The sky was streaking with light and the oil derricks stood like random grave markers, denoting the death of another time, another life. Suddenly the nostalgia turned to sadness and then a spark of anger. He wanted to steal everything he could from Monarch. It had run his father’s business into the ground. It had sucked five years of labor from him and then cut him loose. It was eventually going to destroy the entire town by simply closing up shop and hanging everyone out to dry, once the pipeline had sucked every last dime from the ground.

He fired up the other tanker truck and backed it into the warehouse. He started pumping another load and stood around, trying not to think about what was really bothering him. But being alone with his own thoughts was too much. There were no distractions. Ron might as well have been standing there, poking him in the shoulder. They would have to get rid of him. Despite Eddie’s reticence, it had to be done.

He wandered up the hillside while the tank was filling and looked out over the desert. There was nothing out there. A sea of rolling sagebrush stretched out in all directions. An orange and pink glow spread outward from the distant eastern peaks—bleeding upward through the sky like an infection. Standing on the ridgeline, less than two hundred yards away from the warehouse, he could barely hear the pump, which was deafening when you stood beside it. The desert seemed to swallow sound with all its space. He wondered how far away a gunshot would be heard. A single, solitary, sharp noise, lasting half a second or less, was all it would take. The odds anyone would hear it, recognize it, and respond to it were as remote as the coyote running out in front of that guy they heard about. There was almost no way it could happen.

He could see it in his head, playing like a movie—Hey Ron, you need to come out here and look at some things—they’d tell him. Then he’d pull up in his truck, and they’d walk around, and as soon as Eli was close enough he’d just do it, without thinking. No speeches, no threats, no bullshit. Just pull the gun out and pull the f*cking trigger. BANG! Ron’s dead. Problem solved. Dig a hole and stick the bastard in it. Or better yet, use the hole they’d already dug.

By the time he thought it through he was grinning. It had to work. It was just like their oil scam. It was so damned simple there wasn’t room for any problems. When he walked back down the hill, the tank was nearly full. He waited a few more minutes and then shut it down. As he was driving away he started liking the idea of making two runs a day. Why not? It was all going to be their money anyway, once it was over.

As he pulled out onto the main road, he thought through the plan again, such as it was. Once Ron was out of the way, maybe they’d finish getting the hundred grand together and call it quits. Fifty apiece wasn’t bad. A guy could change his life with cash like that. All they needed was a gun, and there were guns everywhere.