Pale Kings and Princes

I got the truck into some gear where we weren’t struggling and cruised south in the right lane. If this cargo was clean then there was no reason why Brett shouldn’t call the cops. In which case I was going to be doing some heavy explaining to the Maine State Police in a little while. On the other hand, why was a guy who dealt in produce picking up a load from a fish dealer in an unmarked refrigerator truck. And why hadn’t the refrigerator truck been hooked up to a power source so the refrigeration would run and the fish wouldn’t spoil. I didn’t believe that they were conserving power by letting the winter weather do the job. On the other hand, if you were importing cocaine a coastal town with a fish distribution point wouldn’t be a bad place to bring it in.

It was about four in the afternoon when I hit Route 128 north of Boston and humped the big tractor trailer off of 128 and down a ramp and through an underpass and up into the vast parking area of the Northshore Shopping Center in Peabody. I parked out of the way, partly to be inconspicuous and partly because I wasn’t too confident I could parallel-park a ten-wheeler. The snow was mixed with rain down here. I climbed down and walked over to the shopping center. I cut through Herman’s sporting goods and went into the Sears store. I bought a big pry bar and a hammer with a steel shank, a new padlock and a flashlight. Then I went back out to my truck. In ten minutes I had the lock off and I was inside. There were cases of mackerel, most of which didn’t smell that good. I pried them open and rummaged around and found under the mackerel, packed neatly in clear plastic bags, about three hundred kilos of cocaine.

No wonder no one had called the cops.

19

I called Susan from a pay phone in the shopping mall. Her voice sounded sleepy.

“I’m at the Northshore Shopping Center,” I said. “I need you to come and get me.”

“Where’s my car,” she said.

“On the Maine Turnpike,” I said. “Safe in a parking lot behind the Burger King.”

“The Maine Turnpike?”

“We’ll go into it later, it’s perfectly safe.”

“And you’re at the Northshore Shopping Center?”

“Yes, near the movie theater, in a big trailer truck.”

“A trailer truck.”

“Yes.”

“Jesus Christ,” she said.

“I knew you wouldn’t mind,” I said.

“I’ll be there in about an hour,” she said.

Susan exaggerated a bit, it was actually an hour and thirty-five minutes before she showed up, but time has never been Susan’s master and, as always, she was worth the wait. She had rented the sportiest thing she could find, which was, in this case, a red Mustang convertible with a white roof, which looked a little forlorn as it pulled up through the dark winter night. When she got out and walked toward me through the headlights of her car, she was wearing gray boots, and jeans, and a silver fox fur coat. Her hair was in perfect place and her makeup was elegant. I had always suspected that were she routed out of bed at 3:00 A.M. by the secret police she’d find a way to do her hair and put on her makeup before they hauled her away. I climbed down from the cab and put my arms out and she leaned in against my chest and put her arms around me and kissed me. I had the feeling I always had, every time, the feeling of breathing deep and clear, and a lot of the sleepless tension in my back and shoulders eased.

“I may someday faint from contentment,” I said with my face against her hair.

“Um hum,” she said.

“Will you give me mouth-to-mouth,” I said.

“I’m doing that now,” she said, and kissed me again. “Preventive medicine,” she said with her mouth still against mine. “Now what’s up?”

Standing as we were, arms around each other, I told her.

“Three hundred kilos of cocaine?” she said when I was through. “We’re rich!”

“Even if we keep a little for your nose,” I said. “Current street price in Boston is a hundred dollars a gram, a hundred and twenty if it hasn’t been stepped on too heavy.”

“That’s enough for a new car,” Susan said.

“Un huh.”

“What are we going to do with it?”

“I don’t know exactly,” I said.

“Are we going to turn it over to the police?”

“Not right now,” I said.

“Why not?”

“I think we’re going to hold it hostage,” I said.

“Is that law-abiding?”

“No.”

Susan moved her head against my chin. “I thought it wasn’t,” she said.

We unloaded the bags of cocaine from the truck and put them in the trunk of the Mustang.

“It would make a nice headline,” Susan said. “Cambridge therapist collared in drug bust.”

“Claim you were my love slave,” I said. “Any jury would buy it.”

Susan closed the trunk. “What about the truck?” she said.

“We’ll leave it, eventually someone will wonder what it’s doing here, quite soon if the weather warms.”

We got in the Mustang, Susan on the driver’s side.

“Will they trace it to the owner?” she said.

“I doubt it,” I said. “I suspect they’ll find that the registration is a fake.”

Susan slipped the Mustang in gear and drove out of the parking lot and onto Route 128 very quickly.

“It would not be good to get busted for speeding with a trunkload of coke,” I said.