that suitcase I looked at this morning over? Okay, great." Six donuts, a lot of small talk, and a half hour later, the suitcase showed up. Derby slipped on the accompanying plastic gloves and opened the suitcase. Forty-four pounds of metal chunks clanked against each other.
"It was full of hash. What's this stuff?"
"Pure scrap yard metal. It was padded so it wouldn't move."
Jack sank back into his chair. "I don't get it."
"Here's my phone. You can make a call if you want."
"Thanks. Uhh, I've never been to Minneapolis before. You have a phone book?"
Derby smiled. "My turn to fetch something. Be right back." After delivering the book to Jack, Derby motioned to his partner. "Let's give Jack some privacy." The two exited the room and joined other agents in the adjoining room that allowed them to watch Jack through a one-way window. "What do you think?" Derby asked the others.
"Guilty as sin. He must have stashed it somewhere before Minneapolis. Probably switched suitcases to rip them off."
"But the bus driver swears that a suitcase that big would have been in the luggage compartment the whole trip."
"I think he's telling the truth. It's possible that they put what they really wanted delivered somewhere in his clothes. When the lawyer gets here tell them that to clear him we need to test his clothes and shoes for signs of THC first."
"Then you're going to let him walk?"
"Can't hold him for bringing metal across the border. What's the woman say?"
"That she was going to get a thousand bucks to pick up a suitcase full of hash from Jack at the restaurant down the street from the bus depot."
"Do the descriptions of the one that hired them match?"
"Pretty much."
"Then that's the man we want. These other two are just poor dumb mules."
21
The year following Jack's attempt at easy money had been the best of his life. The attorney he had called in Minneapolis had agreed to let his client turn over the clothing and shoes to Agent Derby for adequate reimbursement. He had even gotten Jack's sizes and run to a nearby store so as to outfit him for his return flight home.
"How come you let them have my clothes?"
"Any THC on them could have been the result of secondhand smoke. Whatever they find, I won't let it stand up in court. Besides, I had them sign a statement that what we turned over had no evidence of drug usage or possession. Here's a copy of that statement for your records. If you're ever back here again, here's my card."
"Uh, how much I owe you?"
"Let's see. You called me at 9:31. That's when I went on the clock. Took a while to find parking and your new clothes, but I got us out of there in time for lunch, which, by the way, you're buying. That comes to $187.63."
"I'm a little short. Can I send you a check when I get home?"
"Sure. I have a collection company that will come after you if you don't."
Jack kept biting at his sandwich. "How come you're so cheap? The lawyers back home charge way more."
"My company downsized last year. I took my severance pay and paid off my home loan. Been working out of my home ever since. How did you find me?"
"The phone book. I figured the lawyers with full-page ads would cost a fortune, so I called you because it was just your name and phone number."
The lawyer laughed. "One way of keeping down expenses. The airport is near my home. Let me drop you off there."
Jack's flight did not leave for 5 hours, so he had wandered through the terminal until he bumped into someone who stared at him.
"Jack?"
"Do I know you?" His sleep deprived mind was fading fast.
"Toni."
"Toni? From high school?"
"Toni, the one and only."
Jack's brain, which had gone without sleep for 33 hours, actually began to recall his classmate. "Toni? Now I remember. Where you headed?" Thus a long-distance relationship was born which had ended in marriage six months later. Now Jack's bright new life was crashing down around him as the one who had recruited him for easy money stood sneering at him.
"Where is it?"
"What?"
"Your watch."
"Inside."
"Let's go get it"
Once inside the small cabin Jack handed over a battered timepiece.
"This isn't it. I need the one you had on you when you delivered the hash. The pocket watch."
"There wasn't any hash. Why'd you set me up?"
"I didn't. Someone, we don't know who, switched suitcases on you." A half-truth almost always sounds believable. The suitcase indeed had been switched after Jack had passed out from too much booze and hash in his Canadian hotel room; switched by the one who had shown Jack what appeared to be blocks of black hash wrapped in plastic and seemingly broken off a piece from one to smoke with him. The go-between had told Jack that he would lock the suitcase before he left and keep the key. "The people at the other end can tell if you even try to unlock it. If you do they won't pay you."
"What if I decide to keep it all and sell it myself?" Jack had joked.
"Then they'll kill you."
All those memories flooded back to Jack as he nervously watched his captor's 9 mm pistol.
"Where is the watch you had when he met you at the hotel room?"
"I sold it to a pawn shop during a bus stop before we got to Minneapolis. I was hungry and your tightwad friends didn't front me any of the $5,000 so I needed the money."
"Okay. Let's go find the pawn shop."
"You're crazy."
"Maybe. But I'm out of business if I don't get that watch back. Let's go. This time you drive, Mr. Smaltz. Here are my keys."
Jack eased the car onto the narrow road and away from the cabin that his stepfather Sam had left to him in his will shortly before the years of hard living ended his life. Sam had built it close to his beloved mountains. He slowed the car to see if the surveillance equipment that Agent Derby had installed along the only road to and from the cabin was still operational. "Eventually, he'll find you. If he finds you here we'll know it," Derby had assured him.
"Don't worry, the camera is still working. Unfortunately for you it is showing a tape loop of no one entering or leaving here. No one will know you're gone until your wife returns home hours from now."
"It's a long drive to the town where I sold the watch."
"No problem. As you can see I'm no longer driving the car with the license plate number that you phoned to your friend the last time we did business. I read your lips when you made that call. A handy skill, reading lips."
"You're working for some evil people, man."
"No problem. They pay top dollar."
"So you'll sell out your country for a few bucks?"
"We have no country anymore. It's full of lukewarm patriots. Just a few are willing to die. As a result millions will die."
"But you aren't whom I'd expect?"
"I just look out for number 1. Either way I win. If my business associates lose, I've made a ton of money off of them. If they win, I'm one of those who gets to live. Maybe I'll even permanently switch sides if the price is right."
Jack's mind raced back to the stories Sam had told him. Jack remembered Sam telling of an Irish priest named Father Carney who had told the class that while suicide was never an option, a course of action that could possibly keep one from getting killed, even though dangerous, was permissible.
"Even if we find the watch, you're going to kill me."
"Don't worry so much. We need you for other deliveries. Just drive."
Jack noticed just a slight tremble on the pistol aimed at him.
"You sure look different without the beard and the new hair color. Even put on a few pounds. Good disguise. Whoever trained you did an excellent job."
"Thanks."
"Well, I'd really like to help you, man. But best case scenario is that we don't find the watch and you kill just me. Worst case scenario is that we find the watch, which has somethi
ng in it that will help make lots of innocent people die, just like the woman whom I was supposed to deliver the hash to. How many bullets did you put into her?"
"Don't worry so much." The pistol shook again.
"No problem. You see there's just a slight possibility that both of us might survive the plunge up ahead. But I really hope I do and you don't."
With that, Jack floored the gas pedal. The forensics team calculated the car's speed at 50 mph when it crashed over the guard rail and plummeted to the creek 60 feet below.
Epilogue
Danielle, Jack's mother, attended his memorial service. "He was more like his stepfather, Sam, than his biological father," she confided to Toni. "His biological father died when Jack was only a year old. I'm glad Sam was willing to raise him. They were so close that Jack demanded to have the same last name when he was only four."
Ever thorough, Mr. Derby relied not only on the forensics report, but also his own examination of the crash site when he filed his report. "Both air bags worked on impact," he wrote. "This, coupled with the creek's high water due to the spring thaw, appears to have kept both of the car's occupants alive as the vehicle hit the water and floated downstream until it wedged against rocks. The driver of the car appears to have exited the vehicle and was hit by three 9 mm bullets in the back. He was found dead at the creek's edge. The forensics report concluded that massive bleeding from the bullet wounds was the cause of death. The passenger appears to have exited the vehicle and crawled about 200 feet into the woods surrounding the creek. It appears that his broken left leg kept him from moving further. Unfortunately, his identity cannot absolutely be determined because it appears that a bear, hungry after hibernation, consumed most of this unidentified