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

He’d thought about important points of the heist off and on since finding out, but there were other bits that needed cleared up. Inconsequential things, or maybe important things, he couldn’t quite say, but he had to know.

“When and how’d you start banging Linda?” Rusty asked, focused on the green world passing by the window.

“Oh a girl never tells,” Cary said with a lisp, but only after a beat, and the joke fell flat. Here was a touchy subject, obviously, for a man with few touchy subjects.

“Man, come on.”

“About a year ago, a little more in fact.”

“How?”

“She was doing the paperwork late and, I guess, you know…we’d been making eyes some behind Dwayne’s back. She’d make fun of him sometimes to me. He’d tell me to do something stupid and then after he stormed away, she’d come over and say something in passing. Like mimicking him and stuff like that.”

Rusty shook his head as he dumped the last of his thermos into the travel mug. “So what, you ask her out or something? Some sneaky dates?”

To this, Cary’s grin stretched to his ears and his eyes sparkled a bit behind his heavy glasses. “Don’t you say a word to any of the guys. Got it?”

“Sure, why would I tell them anything?”

“Right. She called me into Dwayne’s office one night. It was way after we closed and I was putting the truck keys away. You’d just left before me. Dwayne was already gone.” He gazed into the past, as if relishing the memory in the physical rather than only in the visual. “Linda was bent over Dwayne’s desk, her skirt hiked up and she had garters and red silk panties. My god, I know Linda isn’t exactly Playboy material, but you get older and…I figured I’d never get laid again after Carol died. Not unless I paid for it.”

“You did it on his desk?”

Cary nodded, wide-eyed. “Oh yes. Linda hates that man, and she knows moves Carol would’ve never done. Only thing that sickens me is this playing around.”

“You mean her staying with Dwayne?”

Cary moved something around his mouth before answering. Something that appeared to taste like shit sandwich. “She wasted her youth, she says. She’s real’ sick about it and I’m betting she was Playboy material, once. I don’t know, Dwayne must’ve been trim or something, who knows. She says she has to get something out of the whole mess of him doing what he did to her life. She says more than you’d ever want to hear. She put seed money in to start Logic, she says, but Dwayne thinks he’s some bigtime wheeler-dealer. Some of the stuff she tells me, I think it’s to make me hate him much as she does, but…think only Danny might come close.”

“Plus, he’s one nasty sonofabitch. Imagine rolling off that walrus.”

“Especially that. I pretend to her I’m okay knowing it’s only to keep appearances, but that image makes me want to puke.”

Rusty grabbed his smoke pack from the dash and freed a stick. “If this doesn’t work just right, we’re probably in a hell of a lot of trouble.”

Cary turned then. “You don’t worry nothing about that. We pulled you in and didn’t give you a choice. We get in a pinch, I’ll tell it how it is. Won’t anybody come down on you without my dealing for you. I’m not saying I can get you out scot-free, but I’ll do my best.”

Rusty had nothing to say to that, and time was up for the moment because the stuff in the back wasn’t going to install itself. Cary hit the turn signal and headed up a long, slender lane of ivory white gravel, bordered by deep, green grass ditches that bled into huge swatches of fields that were weedy with wild flowers. Sound of Music looking scene, replace the distant mountains with distant trees. The house was a redbrick bungalow. The color stuck out stark against the greens. Two white dogs about the size of miniature ponies trotted out of an open garage door.

“What kind of people keep horses in the garage?” Rusty said, hand on the door handle, but not quite ready to open up—he’d been bit on the job before and these dogs were big enough to take a leg for an appetizer.

“Those, young grasshopper, are great pyrenees, and they aren’t usually aggressive.”

“That why you haven’t got out yet?”

“I’m simply admiring them from afar.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Sure, why haven’t you gotten out yet?”

“’Cause those dogs could maul Cerberus.”

Cary smirked. “Sounds like your wonderful public education school is paying dividends. You probably wouldn’t have been able to make that joke without at least a ninth grade English credit, or maybe history. And who says you never use the crap you learn in high school?”

“Look at me. Call me professor and shine my apple.”

Cary gave a soft punch to Rusty’s forearm. “Feeling strong?”

“No.”

“Too bad,” Cary said and then opened the door and stepped down. The dogs converged immediately. One popped up, putting its forelegs on Cary’s shoulders and began licking his face. Rusty opened his door then, free and clear of attention. The owner of the place came out after a few seconds, waving and smiling. He dressed Real Canadian: jeans, red flannel shirt, Terra work boots, Toronto Maple Leafs ball cap.

“You bring my new washer?” the man said. The word came out washa—not Canadian at all. “Old washer hit the pits.”

“Down. Go,” Cary said, laughing, and the dogs listened.

Rusty had the back rolled up and the steel ramp hooked into the groves that kept the track smooth and the merchandise steady. He thumped his way up and unstrapped a dolly cart from the wall of the truck. He turned and the dogs stood at the foot of the ramp like the twins from The Shining. “Git,” he hissed