“Okay, but I need a drink.”
Bobbie was supercharged when Shelby Pate parked his bike in the lot of Green Earth Hauling and Disposal. She drove her car around to the side street looking for Jules’s car. Not knowing what he drove, she could see the rear end of a yellow car in the corner of the truck yard. He was the yellow roadster type, that’s for sure.
She parked, got out, and walked up to the locked truck gate. Why had he put his car inside? Why not park out front where he could enter the building through the main door? She decided that possibly he had to enter through the back door because of a preprogrammed burglar alarm. On the other hand, maybe he didn’t want his car to be spotted by someone driving by. It could be that he didn’t want anyone to know that he’d been at Green Earth Hauling and Disposal on Sunday evening. They might be plotting another theft.
He’d managed to stall long enough to get a glass of Scotch in his hand, but he hadn’t returned to his desk when Shelby Pate said to him, “I’m gonna need some long-term unemployment insurance and you’re gonna give it to me.”
“How much … insurance did you have in mind?”
“I ain’t a greedy dude,” Shelby said. “Say, fifty grand.”
“If I give you fifty grand, you’ll give me back my property?”
“Why not?”
“Would you give me the property first?”
“After the check clears.”
“I see,” Jules said, knowing that fifty thousand dollars would only be the first installment.
He glanced at his watch. It was as dark as it would get. He took a sip of Scotch. There was a moon, but it was mistshrouded.
Bobbie, standing outside the gate of the truck yard, was surprised to hear the roadster’s engine turning over. It was very dark now, and the rear of the car was barely visible. Who could be starting up the car?
Jules pressed the button on the remote control inside his belt, and said, “I’d like to be certain that you’ll keep your …” He was interrupted by the sound of the engine in the yard below, easy to hear because Jules had left the window open.
Shelby turned toward the window, and said, “Somebody’s out there.”
“That’s my car!” Jules cried. “I parked it in the yard! Somebody’s stealing my fucking car!”
Jules got up, ran around the desk, leaped over the outstretched legs of Shelby Pate and hurtled down the stairway.
Shelby got up and moved to the window to look out. The little yellow Miata was parked behind one of the trucks, and all Shelby could see was the rear bumper.
He saw Jules running across the yard yelling, “Hey! Hey, you asshole!”
Bobbie Ann Doggett was stunned when Jules Temple came running out the back door of the building hollering his head off! At first she thought he’d spotted her, and that she was the asshole he was screaming at. She ducked back behind the concrete wall and was ready to get the hell out of there before the cops arrived and mistook her for a prowler.
Then she heard Jules Temple cry out in pain!
Shelby Pate stuck his head out the window when Jules screamed: “Ohhhhhh!”
Bobbie sprinted along the sidewalk heading for the front door of Green Earth, every neural fiber on red alert! Somebody in the truck yard was attacking Jules Temple!
Shelby scrambled down the back stairway in the darkness, and ran into the yard, a thought whistling through his brain: Just his luck if Jules Temple got his throat cut by some nigger car thief!
He really wished he had a gun now, but he drew the buck knife from his belt. He held it like a hammer and charged around the truck expecting to find somebody killing Jules Temple.
Shelby didn’t exactly feel the crowbar so much as he heard it. Then he collapsed like his spine exploded. He was slumped against the front fender of the yellow Miata when Jules grabbed the collar of Shelby’s leather jacket and tried to drag his massive body away from the car for another clear swing.
Shelby flopped onto his side, blood flowing into his eyes, when Jules stepped forward, holding the crowbar like an ax. Shelby was sure that he could hear the mournful trumpet, sure that they would call The Lost Child home. When Jules swung the bar a second time. And yet again. Jules stopped when the target got spongy.
She didn’t blunder out into the darkened truck yard like Shelby Pate had done. She stood inside the building peering out, unable to see anything across the darkened yard except the rear of a yellow Miata. She hadn’t heard a thing since Jules had cried out. The.45 was in her right hand and she was cursing the navy regulation that forbade them to carry it with a chambered round. She had her left hand on the slide, but didn’t want to draw it back and rack one into the chamber because the sound would be heard in the stillness of the truck yard.
Jules was proud of himself for not having panicked when it came time to do it. He turned off the ignition with the remote control, thinking giddily that he should write a testimonial to the manufacturer that it does work from up to three hundred feet away!
He hadn’t needed to resort to his more desperate plan if this one had failed. There beside him on a shelf in the storage shed was a 9mm Beretta. Two years ago, he’d bought the pistol from a former employee who’d no doubt stolen it. “Mister Beretta is the finest Italian I’ve ever known,” that employee had said when the money changed hands.
If Jules couldn’t have physically handled Shelby Pate, he’d been prepared to shoot him down. And if gunshots had alerted anyone, he’d been prepared to say that he’d surprised a thief in the truck yard who turned out to be an employee. A very unsatisfactory plan that hadn’t been needed after all.
Jules uncovered the empty fifty-five-gallon drum. The dolly and forklift were ready. He only had to get the body into the drum and the drum forklifted into the bobtail van. He was extremely glad that Shelby Pate had ridden his motorcycle. He was going to transport the bike and the drum to the vicinity of Hogs Wild and dump the body and the bike on the street. If Shelby had driven his pickup truck it would’ve meant using a taxi to get back from the dump site. This was infinitely better.
He’d have to do a good job cleaning up the blood, that’s for sure. He’d had no idea that the human head contained so many blood vessels. Jules would have to hose down the ground, and the Miata, and even the truck next to it. The drum was needed in case something happened en route: a traffic accident for instance. No loose ends.
Jules was stepping into coveralls and Wellington boots when he thought he heard something: like a foot scraping on the asphalt in the yard. He stopped and listened, but there was nothing.
Now for the hard part. Jules realized this would not be easy, but he hadn’t guessed how hard it would be. The dead weight of Shelby Pate made it like trying to lift a water mattress. Jules turned the drum on its side and wedged it against the truck wheel. He got the feet and legs inside, but when he got on the ground and pushed against the shoulders, the corpse wouldn’t budge. He had a panicky thought that maybe Shelby Pate was too big to fit inside a fifty-five-gallon drum and he’d have to forklift the bloody heap right onto the floor of the van.
Then Jules dragged the body back out of the drum, but he slipped in the viscous puddle of blood and engine waste. Jules bumped his head on the fender of the truck, and soon was panting, sweating, cursing. He got the corpse turned 180 degrees by using the blood on the asphalt as a lubricant. He got the head and shoulders inside, but he couldn’t get the drum upright without the forklift.
He’d decided to give up on the drum idea when a woman’s voice cried out: “WHAT’RE YOU DOING?”