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  RUMRUNNERS

  A McGraw Crime Novel

  Eric Beetner

  PRAISE FOR RUMRUNNERS

  “By far the most fun I’ve had reading a novel in a long time.” —Stuart MacBride, author of A Dark So Deadly

  “Buckle up...Rumrunners is a fast and furious read.” —Samuel W. Gailey, author of Deep Winter

  “Rumrunners just never lets up. It’s a fuel-injected, mile-a-minute thrill ride. I had a blast.” —Grant Jerkins, author of A Very Simple Crime and Abnormal Man

  “Few contemporary writers do justice to the noir tradition the way Eric Beetner does. Others try to emulate and mimic; Beetner just takes the form and cuts his own jagged, raw and utterly readable path. Rumrunners is the latest example of his great storytelling skills, and his uncompromising commitment to the dark, often violent truth at the center of the human heart.” —Gar Anthony Haywood, author of the Aaron Gunner series

  “Beetner is an old school talent, a crime writer’s crime writer like Gil Brewer (although, in my humble opinion, he’s better than Brewer), who writes stuff that is fast and funny and dark all at once.” —Jake Hinkson, author of Hell On Church St. and The Big Ugly

  PRAISE FOR ERIC BEETNER

  “To be blunt, he’s the 21st century’s answer to Jim Thompson.” —LitReactor

  “Eric Beetner seems to have a formula that he has used for every book he has published: Fun plot + believable characters + witty dialogue + breakneck pace = novel that knocks your socks off.” —Regular Guy Reading Noir

  “Beetner has a keen eye on how to plot a book that never allows the reader a chance to catch their breath.” —Out of the Gutter

  Copyright © 2015 by Eric Beetner

  Down & Out Books Edition: June 2017

  All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Cover design by Eric Beetner

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Rumrunners

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by the Author

  Other Titles from Down & Out Books and its Imprints

  Preview from Leadfoot, a McGraw Crime Novel by Eric Beetner

  Preview from Crossed Bones, a Tommy & Shayna Crime Caper by S.W. Lauden

  Preview from Polo’s Long Shot, a Nick Polo Mystery by Jerry Kennealy

  For Gracie—you make every day better. Now put this book down, you’re not allowed to read it until you’re older.

  1

  There was a bullet hole in the window of the donut shop, pasted over with duct tape and an unevenly cut square of cardboard. It had been there ever since Calvin McGraw first came to the shop for a morning coffee and a glazed. But Calvin looked beyond the hole, an artifact from some long ago robbery. He didn’t know how much they would have gotten away with from a donut shop heist. Not enough, he thought.

  Instead, he watched the cars go by outside the greasy window. His eighty-six-year-old eyes had barely lost any focus and he mumbled to himself with each passing ride, “Ford. Chevy. Ford. Chrysler. Goddamn Toyota.”

  His paper plate held only a sugary ring where his glazed had been, but his coffee was still tongue-scalding hot as he sat on the swivel stool and wasted another day. He didn’t want to be watching cars, he wanted to be in them. Driving fast. Cops on his heels, sirens and gunshots in the air. Tires screaming, rubber burning, oil thrumming through a well-tuned engine like the blood pumping fast through his heart.

  Like the old days.

  Calvin still remembered. Running liquor through the Iowa trees. Sneaking bales of pot across the river into Illinois. Driving anything and everything for the Stanley clan as they built their criminal empire, such as it was in a lonely southeastern corner of Iowa.

  Even today he thought he got out of the game too early. He could still have been driving, like his son—in his sixties and still taking jobs. It wasn’t about the money anymore. The goddamn Stanleys never paid that great anyway. It was about the smell of gasoline and the feel of a pedal when it hit the floor and couldn’t go down any more.

  Now here he was. Living in Omaha. How the hell did that happen?

  Outside, past the streaks of sugar glaze blurring the window, one of those electric hybrid cars passed by on a whisper.

  “Disgrace,” Calvin said out loud.

  “What’d you say to me?”

  Calvin turned. A skinny man in his mid-twenties, but dressed like Calvin might have in the 1940s, glared at the old man.

  “Nothing,” Calvin said.

  “No, you called me a disgrace. What did you mean by that?”

  Ever since this place started making donuts with crazy-ass things like maple and bacon on them—bacon for fuck’s sake—these downtown types who seemed to think they lived in Brooklyn, not in Omaha about as far away as you could get, had been taking all the stools and raising the price on a cup of joe.

  “I didn’t say it about you. I said it about the goddamn battery car that passed by.”

  “What’s wrong with electric cars?”

  Calvin rolled his eyes. He wanted to sit and watch his cars in silence. Longing and regret about the past was a solitary hobby.

  “Nothing other than everything. They’re fuckin’ stupid.”

  “I happen to drive a Prius.”

  “Of course you do.” Calvin swiveled on his stool. He wasn’t sure if the skinny guy was being bold because Calvin’s age made him feel safe, but he was sure the guy had no clue who he was dealing with.

  “Do me a favor,” Calvin said. He curled his index finger twice to draw the man near. The hipster pushed his mustache closer, probably thinking the old man couldn’t hear so well.

  Calvin grabbed him by the middle finger. He pulled it back until it nearly touched the back of the man’s hand. The man opened his mouth in a silent scream, too shocked to yell out. Or too embarrassed to be bested by an octogenarian.

  “Listen kid,” Calvin tugged the finger closer to breaking. “Just take your green tea-dusted donut with quince paste filling and fuck off out of here. I’m drinking coffee and watching the cars go by. I ain’t hurting you.”

  The skinny guy was down to one knee now, wincing in pain.

  “Oh.” Calvin looked at him. “I guess I am hurting you now. But I wasn’t then.”

  He released the man’s finger. The hipster exhaled like he’d been underwater. Nobody else in the shop noticed their tussle.

  Calvin said, “So beat it, okay?”

  “You’re crazy. You could have broken my finger.”

  “Yes. I could have. And I didn’t. Let’s call that a win.”

  Cradling his wounded hand in his other, the man grew a pair of balls again and aimed his angry mustache at Calvin. “I can have you arrested, you know.”

  “I guess you didn’t get the message, son.”

  Calvin snatched the man’s good hand, twisted his index finger while jerking up on it. Felt the pop. This time, the guy screamed.

  Calvin lifted his coffee cup. Still hot. He walked out.

  2

  “Webb, got a big one for you.” Hugh Stanley didn’t call many people directly, bu
t when you’d known an employee and his family since the day you were born you made an exception. Webb’s father Calvin had driven Hugh’s mom to Mercy Hospital to deliver the boy in a snow storm an early January morning in 1958. Webb was six years old and helped his dad wipe down the back seat afterward, soaking up all the fluid she dumped when her water broke. Didn’t smell like no water to Webb.

  “Thank Christ you called, Hugh,” Webb said. “I was beginning to think you all forgot about me.”

  “You know how it is, Webb. Things are slow.”

  “Yeah, yeah. The economy and all that shit. Isn’t that when people do more illegal substances? Crime goes up? Shit like that?”

  “Look, I got a doozy for you. You want it or not?”

  “I want it.”

  The Stanley family would have liked to think they ruled over a vast criminal empire but really they just happened to be the biggest fish in a very small pond. Running anything and everything illegal was all the Stanleys had known for nearly a hundred years.

  And all along the McGraws had driven for them. Like one of those remora fish attached the underbelly of a shark, a McGraw had been swimming along with the Stanley clan for almost a century.

  Webb McGraw was the last one. His boy, Tucker, wanted no part in the driving business. Just as well. Didn’t have the nerve for it.

  Webb was getting up in years, but still he was the man to call when a Stanley needed a driver. And not some chauffeur around town open-the-door-for-you bullshit. It might not be the thrill-a-minute days of running liquor through the backwoods, but plenty of things got shipped that you wouldn’t call FedEx for.

  “This one will set you up for quite a while,” Hugh said.

  “Well, color me curious, boss. Whacha got?”

  “A certain shipment from a certain pharmaceutical company has been, shall we say, lost en route. I need you to go get it and bring it to me.”

  “Alright. What about the boys who found the lost items?”

  “Intermediaries. Don’t want them too close to this one, lest they get big ideas.”

  “I see.”

  Webb stayed true to one of the cardinal rules for driving—never ask what the cargo is. Doesn’t matter if it’s a ton of heroin or a ton of candy canes. You do the job, deliver the goods, say goodbye.

  This one, however, was too good for Hugh to keep to himself.

  “You know how meth has been our growth industry lately?”

  “Lately being the last fifteen years, yeah.” The Midwest was the birthplace of trucker’s speed and now the whole damn country was off the high falutin’ booger sugar of the cities and deep into the hick high of crystal meth. That and corn. Iowa had it all.

  Hugh continued with an excitement in his voice like his teenage granddaughter talking about the latest pop music haircut with a record deal.

  “We got a whole shipment of pseudoephedrine. Straight from the factory. A whole mountain of the stuff.”

  “That’s big time.”

  “You better believe it. This one score will keep us in the pink for three years, I figure.”

  “My usual cut?” Hugh had blown any chance to lowball Webb on this one.

  “For your trouble, twenty-five Gs. How’s that grab you?”

  “Wish I got grabbed like that a lot more. When and where?”

  Hugh gave him an address across the river in Illinois then almost derailed the whole affair. “You can drive a big rig, right?”

  Webb hoped the boss man didn’t notice the pause before, “Sure. No problem.”

  An eighteen-wheeler? Hell no, he couldn’t drive that. Webb grew up a muscle car guy. American only. Hated the feeling of anything less than eight cylinders under his feet, but always four wheels and only four. He didn’t go the other way and do motorcycles. But a big rig?

  For twenty-five grand, he’d learn.

  There were very few pleasantries whenever Tucker’s father called him. He knew he’d turned out to be a big disappointment to Webb. No aptitude for driving, no interest in a criminal lifestyle, hated watching NASCAR.

  “You know stock car racing was born out of bootlegging, don’t you? Your granddaddy practically invented the sport.”

  “Yes, Dad.” Sigh. “I know.”

  Reminding Webb how many times he’d told that story was beside the point. Webb knew he’d explained it hundreds of times before. The kid wasn’t getting it. This was him. This is who he was. It was all in there and Tucker refused to let it out. The real McGraw inside him lived as a prisoner in solitary.

  Tucker ignored his dad as easily as he ignored the caged DNA animal inside.

  “Tucker, you know anyone who’s a trucker?”

  Tucker heard his dad snigger on the other end of the phone, amused by his own rhyme.

  “A truck driver? No, Dad. I don’t.”

  “Shit.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause I’m looking for one.”

  Seven phone calls and about a dozen layers of referrals later he found a guy who knew a guy who worked with a guy who did a favor for someone or other who owed some money to Webb.

  How the fuck could it be so hard to find a truck driver? Freaking highways were littered with ’em.

  When they met up outside Moline, Illinois, neither one could unravel the knot that tied them together. They decided to hell with it, the five grand Webb was paying sure smelled good and this guy, Lonny, could drive a truck and that was that.

  “So what are we hauling?” was the first question out of Lonny’s mouth after he got in the car next to Webb.

  Webb turned to look at him. Fat gut hanging out a good six inches over a longhorn steer belt buckle, thinning hair at the top that tapered off into a wispy pony tail in back, black T-shirt under an open red-checked flannel. Yep. A trucker all right.

  “We don’t ask that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It don’t matter what’s inside. We get in, drive it to the destination and take our check. You always know what you’re hauling?”

  “Yeah, I do. I got it on the manifest.”

  “Well, no manifest for this one.”

  For the forty-minute drive Lonny’s mind wandered to wild speculative places. Guns. That was his first assumption. Arming some militia out in the sticks against the government or the zombie apocalypse, whichever descended first.

  Human trafficking. A trailer’s worth of Russian prostitutes or Central American workers. Lonny lingered a little longer on the vision of the prostitutes.

  Eventually the curiosity gnawed at him like a chigger under his skin.

  “I can’t do the job if I don’t know what I’m hauling.”

  Webb nearly drove into a ditch. “What do you mean?”

  “You offer me five grand to drive a rig and you won’t tell me what’s in it? It don’t smell good. Might be the risk isn’t worth five grand.”

  “I knew it. You bucking for a raise?”

  “No. I just want to know what I’m hauling so I know how to proceed.”

  The timetable had already begun. Webb was due back in Iowa by morning and it took too damn long to find this lazy trucker. Protocol had to be broken.

  “It’s a shipment of unprocessed drugs used to make methamphetamine. The stuff they use to make cold medicine, only before it gets put into the pills and shit. That’s about all I know about it except that it’s worth a shit-load of money and we need to get the load back to my employers by the a.m. Is that enough for you?”

  Lonny’s eyes went glassy, lost in thought again. He never would have guessed.

  “Yeah, sure. Okay. I’ll do it.”

  “Damn right you will.”

  The rig sat parked behind a self-storage unit. Two skinny twenty-somethings in hooded sweatshirts and jittery limbs waited by the back of the trailer, twin orange dots from their cigarettes glowing.

  Webb parked the car, watched the two kids he was to meet and figured they’d be using a little of the product they were helping to make. No matter what p
rofit they made from their little truck-jacking, most of it was going right back to the Stanleys for powder to put up their nose. Ah, the circle of life.

  Webb saw Lonny eyeballing the truck. “Can you drive it?”

  “Yep.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  The two orange dots hit the ground and were crushed underfoot. “Where the fuck you been?” The taller of the two oozed smoke as he talked.

  “Driving. Where you been?” Webb countered. Sixty-four years old and he could still bring a cement hard attitude to a meeting if needed.

  “We been here freezing our asses off.”

  “It’s not even cold out. You should put a little meat on your bones.”

  “What, like this fat fuck here?” he said, gesturing to Lonny.

  “Why don’t we make this happen so you can get out of here and go soak in a warm tub or some shit.”

  “Alright, alright. You wanna check it?”

  “Nope.” Webb moved his eyes between the two tweakers. “If it’s not all there the Stanleys will know it and they’ll send someone else out. You know what that means, so I won’t go all schoolteacher and spell it out for you.”

  The two men shifted on their feet. It looked like they were about to start a two-on-two basketball game except Webb and Lonny remained flatfooted.

  “I wanna see it,” Lonny said.

  Webb shot him a look like, didn’t you hear what I said?

  “I always check my load against the manifest.”

  “I told you there isn’t any—”

  Webb heard the metal scrape of the trailer door rolling up. The skinny silent one had pushed open the back and now shone a mag light into the trailer. It wasn’t filled top to bottom with cargo but there were two long stacks on either side leaving an aisle up the middle. Boxes were stacked three high. Webb had a flash vision of the ending to Raiders of the Lost Ark.