Burn Scars, Eddie Generous [read full novel txt] 📗

“A week from today you’re going to help us rob my husband for every cent the warehouse stock’s worth.”

“What? Why are…?” Rusty was shaking his head, piecing things that did not fit together into normalcy’s jigsaw.

“He’s a pig. A broke pig. He’s flushed everything. He owes more than he’ll ever pay back. He’s done irreparable damage to my well-being and livelihood.” Linda spoke through clenched teeth and with the real emotion that came from honest wasted effort and righteous indignation.

“Okay, but, why me?” Rusty clutched his beer so tightly that the label had begun slipping sideways as the condensation nullified the glue.

Linda loosened her entire body and then sighed. Obviously adding him to the mix was not her idea. “Because nobody would believe you could do this.”

Rusty looked around the room again, only Cary kept eyes on him, everyone else looked at hands or beer bottles. “What the hell does that mean?” he said.

“It’s okay. Just listen, okay?” Cary said, his voice calming. “It’s the optics, that’s all. People think what they think. At one time, everyone thought the world was flat. It’s the optics of you, okay?”

“I don’t get it,” Rusty said.

After a short pause and a shuffle of pages, Linda found her words. “You’re a twenty-one year-old going to high school. The whole town knows your history. Everybody’s seen you hitchhiking, seen you driving that shitbox car, shopping at the goodwill stores, nobody expects much of anything from you. Get it, nobody would believe you could plan out a robbery, empty the warehouse, and liquidate all the assets while somehow the paperwork appears to match everything on the showroom floor and suggests that nothing’s missing at all. Imagine someone piecing that together, but with you as a mastermind behind it. No cop would ever put something like that together and say, yeah, must’ve been Rusty Talbot who pulled it off.”

Rusty let his jaw fall, but snapped it closed with an audible click of his teeth. Offensive maybe, but right on the money. His social standing outside the school was only marginally better than in the school. If at all. “I’m only twenty. Okay, but it’s not like anyone would think Danny could do this. Why me?”

“Sure, but maybe I know somebody. Everybody knows you don’t know nobody,” Danny said, his usually jokey character flipped into the opposite. His mouth was set tight, his eyes hard as diamonds.

“Okay,” Rusty said. “I get it, but what if I don’t want to?”

“That’s fine, but Cary’s the only reason Dwayne hasn’t fired you. You’re in or you’re out,” Linda said.

Rusty rubbed his forehead, mulling this. It took him a second to clue into the full meaning. “So I’m fired if I don’t join? That’s it, eh? What’s keeping me from going to the police?”

“You wouldn’t do that,” Jim said.

He was right. If it wasn’t his business, it wasn’t his business, but forcing him into this made it his business, though in a different way. Rusty clicked his tongue, thinking.

“It’s simple, all you have to do is drive,” Linda said.

“Drive what?” Rusty still had his hand over his face.

“A truck,” Cary said.

Craig cracked a fresh beer and added, “A rig.”

“I never drove a rig. I can’t.” Rusty let his hand fall. He still hadn’t sipped from the beer her held with the other hand, the label had migrated to the neck beneath his grip.

“You can. It’s like a tractor, but a little more complicated. You only need to drive out of town,” Cary said. “A little ways and I’ll help you understand beforehand.”

“Cary will take over once out of town, but he needs to be seen first. Everybody but you needs to be in the public at the time, we aren’t worrying about you. You live alone, nobody knows if you’re home, nobody knows if you’re doing something, nobody cares. That’s why it has to be you.”

Rusty finally rediscovered the beer and slugged half of it back in a single breath. Bottle lowered, he said, “I get it, I’m a screw up. Get over it already, okay?”

Linda checked herself, surprisingly. “Sorry. You’re right.”

“Start from the beginning,” Cary said and touched Linda’s arm with two fingers.

She took a deep breath before digging deep. Six months earlier, Linda had begun tracking every item on the floor and marking off and swapping in old and nonsense serial numbers so that everything on the floor would match the most recent shipments, which would eventually clear the numbers on the items in their paperwork to move the items to a buyer. It wouldn’t stand great scrutiny, but it would give enough time for the entire scheme to appear that Dwayne was trying to weasel out of his grand and ever-increasing debt.

The night it was to happen, Linda had scheduled a light shipping day so nothing would hiccup with an exhausted delivery crew. Everything was ready and waiting for them to act. Linda said this with more than a trace of pride, and when she finally said, “Dwayne will get everything he deserves,” she did so a peacock proud.

“Man, I think you’re missing something,” Rusty said, knowing there was an element somewhere in his subconscious ringing a warning bell.

“I’m not finished,” Linda said and then continued.

Linda had Dwayne’s door code and would call Jim that night—a last minute thing because Dwayne got suspicious and changed his codes on whims. Jim would’ve spent most of the day—his day off—moving boxes in the warehouse for easy access, readying them by the loading bay. At four, Linda would whisper into Dwayne’s ear concerning a certain new toy and set of lingerie that were to land in the mailbox that day—of course she already had the items, and after Rusty asked, she sighed and explained in detail, for the sake of full-disclosure, no surprises,