Max Collins - Midnight Haul

“I wouldn’t mind stopping myself,” he said.

They took a room. It had two double beds. Boone took a shower, came out in a towel and discreetly got into one of the beds. She then began snoring.

He smiled. He didn’t blame her for being tired: it was four-thirty in the morning, and the intensity of what they’d just been through had been draining.

He didn’t bother with a shower; he was too exhausted. He got in the other bed and was just about asleep when he heard a truck out on the highway. Just a truck going by.

He went out to the Datsun, got the gun out from under the seat, and slipped it under the bed.

Then he slept.

Her voice woke him.

She wasn’t talking to him; she was on the phone, checking in with the neighbor she’d left Billy with, another young divorced woman who’d been very nice about looking after the boy from midnight till two each night, no questions asked. Boone had explained to her friend that any one of the nights might turn into an all-night thing, as it had yesterday.

“Billy got off to school all right?” she was saying. “Good. Thank you, Kate, you’re a pal.”

Boone was sitting on the edge of the bed Crane was in, using the phone on the nightstand between the two beds. Her back was to him. Bare back.

Soon she hung up and went over and got back in her own bed, sitting up, blankets down around her waist. She stretched and yawned. Scratched her head. Her hair was tousled. Her breasts were not large, not small. Firm white breasts, delicately veined; pert pink tips. He noted this through eyes that pretended to be shut.

She smiled at him. “You’re awake, aren’t you, Crane?”

He opened his eyes. Smiled sheepishly.

She didn’t cover her breasts.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Hi,” he said. Sitting up.

She got out of bed and walked bare-ass into the bathroom. Water ran in the sink.

She came back out, smiling. Her body was very lean, with a high, rather bony rib cage, making her breasts seem larger than they were. Her pubic triangle was wispy, like a young girl’s.

She sat on the edge of the bed, hands on her knees. “Go rinse out your mouth,” she said. “You’ll feel better. It’s not like having toothbrush and paste, but it’ll help.”

He did so. He was in his shorts but still felt embarrassed walking in front of her, knowing she was looking him over just as he had her. When he came back, she was in bed. His bed.

He got in with her and kissed her, tentatively. She kissed him back, not at all tentatively, and put one of his hands on one of her breasts. The nipple hardened. He was already hard. They kissed and stroked each other for a while. Made love.

It was over rather quickly, too quickly, and he rolled off her, feeling empty.

“Sorry,” he said.

“What are you apologizing about?” she said. “That was nice.”

He sat up in bed and stared at the blank TV screen across the room.

A minute went by, and she said, leaning on an elbow, studying him, “You’re going morose on me, aren’t you?”

“What?”

“You’re feeling guilty. You’re thinking about Mary Beth and feeling guilty.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“You think you cheated on her, don’t you?”

“Boone, please.”

She touched his shoulder. Not wanting to, he looked at her. Her smile was faint, sad, understanding; it was a smile he couldn’t evade.

He looked away and said, “Don’t be with anybody else, she said. ‘Don’t be with anybody but me.’ I can still hear her saying it.”

“She’s gone, Crane.”

“No. Never.”

He cried for a while; she kept her hand on his shoulder.

She said, “This was the first time I’ve done it since Patrick.”

He looked at her again. “No kidding?”

She wiped his eyes with a corner of the sheet, smiling, her chin crinkling. “No kidding.”

“I thought you hippie types slept around.”

“Don’t believe everything you hear. I was with two other boys, before Patrick. Nobody since. Until now.”

“I’ve never been with anybody but Mary Beth. Till now.”

“No wonder you’re feeling guilty.”

“I’m not feeling guilty. Exactly.”

“I know you loved her, Crane. And me, you don’t even like, exactly. But this was bound to happen, and I’d rather it happen here than at home where Billy might see us.”

“Now who’s sounding guilty?”

“I just want it clear that when we get back to the house, you’re to keep to your sleeping bag across the hall.”

“Fine. I like sleeping on the floor. It’s natural. Organic, even.”

“Smart-ass. I’m not saying it won’t happen between us again. Billy’s at school all day, you know.”

He leaned over and kissed her, briefly. They exchanged friendly smiles.

“Looks like we’re starting to get along,” he said.

“Why not? We’re quite the team. We’re about to bring a corporate giant to its knees.”

“Are we?”

“I think so. I think we really got something last night.”

“The ‘smoking gun’ you said you needed.”

“Exactly.”

“So where do we go from here?”

“I admit I’m tempted to sit on this, save it and use it in my book, not break it till then. But the right thing to do is contact the proper authorities.”

“Which are?”

“There’s a couple of possibilities. New Jersey’s a heavily industrialized state. It has more than its share of problems of this sort, but it’s also ahead of a lot of states in dealing with those problems.”

“So you’ll be taking your photographs and your suspicions to a state agency, as opposed to the feds.”

“The Environmental Protection Agency, you mean? They basically just provide guidelines to state agencies, though in a way they’re who I’ll be going to. I plan to go to the Hazardous Waste Strike Force, in Princeton.”

“That sounds like a cop show.”

“It is, sort of. It’s an investigative unit, a joint effort by the EPA and the state of New Jersey. They’re doing some good things.”

“But they’ve never nailed Kemco.”

“They never tried, as far as I know. And they’re relatively new. Which means they’re tackling the really blatant offenders. It’s a big problem, Crane. It’s been estimated something like 80 % of the waste shipped in New Jersey is illegally dumped. It’s a multimillion-dollar racket.”

“What we saw last night was just one truck. That’s no multimillion-dollar operation.”

“First, you got to think of what Kemco saves. They pay maybe fifty bucks a barrel to the hauler, which is sure cheaper than processing that foul fucking shit. And then the hauler takes it and dumps it in a landfill, like last night, or just on the ground someplace or even along a roadside. So last night they dumped, what? Fifty or sixty drums? That’s approaching $3000 for that one load. Let’s say that truck is picking up just one illegal load per week. That’s $150,000 in one year.”

“Jesus. This is starting to sound like organized crime.”

“Of course it is. It’s the goddamn Mafia, or anyway I wouldn’t be surprised if it was.”

“What happens when these people get caught?”

“The haulers? Sometimes nothing. You want to know how to make a million dollars? Rent some land. Don’t buy it, rent it. Get a permit to pick up and store drums of waste on your land. Let the drums pile up. Wait till you have twenty or thirty thousand drums sitting there, full of Christ knows what. And then go bankrupt and go away. Let the state worry about cleaning up after you. Just lean back in your cabana chair and sip your Piña Colada and enjoy the Bahamas breeze.”

“Is that the game Chemical Disposal Works is playing?”