Brett Halliday - Win Some, Lose Some

“They all looked normal to me. Kid on a motorbike, couple of truck drivers.”

Frieda was in the cab of a second payloader. Using a channel far down the band, Shayne told her the cooler was back. Benjamin had made a rough count, and it all seemed to be there. Tim Rourke, in Frieda’s van on the highway, had his citizen’s band set to the same channel, and Shayne told him to signal DeLuca that the count was acceptable and he could proceed to the toilet and free the prisoner. Still a fourth radio was part of this hook-up. It was inside the toilet, heavily muffled with rags.

Frieda’s payloader moved. A haphazardly parked car, Shayne’s own, left only one exit from the parking lot, past the toilet, into the main cross-site road below Shayne’s payloader. A short lateral movement would close the trap. Six county cops waited in the command trailer.

Shayne started the countdown. DeLuca was seven minutes away.

“There’s a bike,” Benjamin said, craning. “A Honda! It’s the same-no, that guy was wearing a club jacket.”

The motorcyclist, a short figure in a striped undershirt, came all the way through, then turned toward the parked cars.

“Frieda?” Shayne called.

“I see him. A motorcycle could be a problem.”

Shayne called the cops in the trailer and directed them to move two cars to the highway.

“Don’t shoot him. We want to ask him some questions.”

The motorcycle, kicking gravel, went in among the cars, out the far side, and came back, to stop near the Pontiac after a short, tight skid. Usually a motorcyclist’s first move after dismounting is to take off his helmet. This one kept his on. Straddling his machine, he looked the site over deliberately, slapping his leg with a pair of driving gauntlets. He could only be seen from the payloaders, which continued to charge forward and draw back, forward and back. The hot plant was grinding slowly with a hideous clanking. Hot trucks moved out, carrying loads of freshly cooked asphalt to the paver, which was inching almost imperceptibly south. A heavy crane was swinging one of the big cross culverts into place. More trucks came and went continually with gravel and sand. Pickups darted about, seemingly at random. The afternoon sun slanted in through the haze.

The motorcyclist moved to the toilet, as though to read the sign on the door. Shayne put his lips to the transmitter and groaned. Benjamin looked around in surprise. Shayne groaned again, then made muffled breathing sounds through his hand.

Greco had played playground basketball as a lad, before he stopped growing, and he could remember days when he knew he couldn’t be stopped. Everything he threw toward the basket had to go in. When you felt that way, he discovered, it had generally happened. You could make impossible shots.

He hadn’t liked the idea when he first heard it from DeLuca, but now, after looking it over, it almost seemed to be arranged with the hit-man in mind. The toilet was surprisingly private. Noisy, DeLuca had said. The place was so noisy he could have got away without using the silencer. One quick look had shown him six possible exits. Bang, bang, bang. And when DeLuca showed up with the cops, they would find that the kidnappers had tricked them. Not wanting to take any chances, the bastards had drilled Canada after making him dictate the tape.

All the same, Greco intended to take full credit for this. By then DeLuca would be established. He wouldn’t be hurt by rumors.

Greco was carrying the gun in one of the gauntlets, the long barrel poking into the middle finger. He eased it out to be sure the silencer hadn’t caught. Then he noticed the Pontiac. Greco had a good eye for the different makes and models, and he knew at once that this was the car that had picked up the money. He sauntered in that direction. Sure enough, there was the white Styrofoam box on the front seat, sitting there right out in the open, looking so tempting, with the familiar friendly dolphin on the lid. The car would be locked, probably? Yes, the windows were closed, the lock buttons were down.

The dust got to him all at once. He was having difficulty breathing. What did they expect him to do, leave it for somebody else? That wouldn’t be human nature. He owed it to Nick, who had done so well in the night. It would give his death some meaning. DeLuca would be so delighted to see it again, he might be willing to split it down the middle, half to DeLuca, half to Greco.

He decided to do it. He’d feel like such a schmuck if he didn’t. Of course, he had to shoot up the toilet first. When he started something, he finished.

After looking around again, he moved to the tall portable box. He distinctly heard movement inside, breathing, a muffled moan. After reading the notice on the door, he put on a little act for anybody who might be watching, as though he had to take a leak and couldn’t hold it any longer. He went behind the toilet and took out his whang, which was a little shriveled from all the excitement.

He waited for the flow to commence before firing. Through the thin metal, he heard impact, a grunt: a hit on the first shot. DeLuca had wanted all eight. Greco gave him all eight, stitching a random pattern inside the strike zone, a rectangle between two feet and five feet from the floor. High and inside, high and outside, a slider low and away. That man was now dead.

He finished his piss, snapped in a new clip, and put everything away, the gun and his cock. The payloaders were still going, the trucks going and coming. Returning to the Pontiac, he smashed a window, unlocked the door, and lifted out the cooler. It was pleasantly heavy. He strapped it on his rear rack.

The basketball feeling was now extremely intense. He kicked off. Instead of using one of the traveled paths, he went over a bank, swerved at the bottom, recovered, and headed for the south road.

The motorcycle gave him a dreamlike feeling of power. It was a real brute. He could fly from the fastest cars. But first he had to get out in the open, and one of the payloaders was rolling at him. Seeing no way to get through, he spun all the way around, hitting the ground with one foot. They didn’t like outsiders, was the only explanation. They couldn’t be after him yet. He saw an opening and went under one of the belts at the hot plant, between the belt and the gears. He gave a high, crazy laugh and a wave. Who was he? One of those nutty bikers from Miami out to bug the straight people, run a few obstacles, and be on his way. He got a wry shake of the head from one of the truck drivers, who had to respect machismo even in this freakish form.

Now he had a straight run to the highway, but to continue the show, he dodged between trucks and then, taking what he realized immediately afterward was one hell of a chance, rode through a loose section of culvert lying around waiting to be laid.

He saw DeLuca’s pickup coming in. He wouldn’t stop to talk, but he wanted to convey a message: Canada was dead, Greco had recovered the money. He detoured so DeLuca would be sure to see the box on the back of the bike. Light flashed from the pickup’s windshield. He couldn’t see DeLuca’s face, but the look of the truck itself told him he was being naive. Pickups are plain and practical. For DeLuca the practical thing to do would be to take the cooler and tell Greco to go screw himself, here’s five hundred, buy yourself a drink. Down the middle? Don’t be silly. And for the first time Greco realized that the Styrofoam box an inch from his ass was filled with real money, which anybody could spend. You could be any age, at any level. Your name could be Greco.

He headed straight between the truck’s headlights. He saw the truck’s brakes take hold, and he spun out and around. DeLuca shouted a question. Greco pushed the leather glove into the open window. DeLuca reached, thinking Greco was giving him something. And Greco was. He was giving him death. He fired through the finger. The upward shot shattered the lower half of DeLuca’s face.