Shotgun Boogie

  SHOTGUN BOOGIE

  By Steve Brewer

  Copyright 2016 by Steve Brewer

  Cover design by Denise Weaver Ross

  For more about the author, go to www.stevebrewer.us.com. Write him at abqbrewer@gmail.com.

  ISBN-13: 978-1539162643

  ISBN-10: 1539162648

  Chapter 1

  Nate McCoy sat tall in his blue Freightliner cab, no place in the world he'd rather be.

  The big rig throbbed with the idle of the truck's mighty five-hundred-horsepower engine, which provided juice to the soft interior lights, the purring heater, his dash-mounted laptop computer and his sixteen-speaker stereo, currently set on a Waylon Jennings marathon. All around him, rumbling semis filled the acres of blacktop around the Albuquerque Truck Terminal, but Nate's sleeper cab was one in a million, customized to his own tastes, from its heated leather seats to its chrome wheels to its Christmas-tree array of red and amber running lights.

  Nate was pumped for his red-eye run across the empty desert, with decent weather predicted along Interstate 40 all the way to Los Angeles. His truck was gassed up and ready to go. His belly was full of chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes and biscuits from the Terminal Café, topped off with a pot of coffee and a shot of Jack Daniels from the flask he kept under the seat.

  He felt like the King of the Highway. The only thing missing was female companionship. The king needed a queen, for a little while, before he hit the road.

  Then he spotted the young woman walking unsteadily toward him in high-heeled boots. The parking lot was a minefield of potholes and cracked asphalt, but she managed to weave her way through the midnight shadows between the rows of idling trucks, which were lined up nose to tail like snoring circus elephants.

  Nate got a better look at her as she passed under one of the thirty-foot-tall security lights spaced around the parking lot. No question she was a working girl, what the truckers call a "lot lizard." Above the knee-high boots, she wore black stockings and a snug pink miniskirt that barely covered the subject. Cold enough on this January night that her breath fogged the air, but her fake-fur jacket was unzipped to show off her pushed-up cleavage. Her blond hair fell to her shoulders in waves that fluttered in the ceaseless New Mexico wind.

  She was a tall girl and a bit stout by modern standards, but Nate liked his women meaty. His wife, Flora Mae, was a chunky woman nearly six feet tall, strong enough to chop wood for four hours straight and still wear him out in bed afterward. Nate never worried about leaving Flora Mae home alone on their farm in the Ozarks. The woman could take care of herself.

  But Flora Mae couldn't take care of Nate's needs, not from nine hundred miles away. As the hooker reached his truck, he muted the music and rolled down his window.

  "Hey there, darling," he called to her. "You lost?"

  She squinted up at him, her face spreading into a lipstick smile.

  "I must be. And it's freezing out here. If only I had a warm place to sit for a minute and get my bearings."

  Nate cackled.

  "Why don't you come up here into my nice warm cab? We'll get you straightened out in no time."

  Laughing, she sashayed around the front of the truck, her muscular thighs glowing red and orange as she passed the fender lights. Nate felt himself getting a boner already.

  He leaned across the cab to pop open the passenger-side door. The hooker tucked her leather handbag under her arm like a football and nimbly climbed the four steps to the sleeper cab. Nate thinking: She probably gets a lot of practice, climbing in and out of trucks.

  She slammed the door shut and took a deep breath.

  "Whew. Nice to be out of that cold wind for a second."

  She leaned back against the leather-upholstered door, looking him over, both hands on the shoulder bag in her lap. She had big blue eyes and eyelashes so long and spidery, they had to be fake. She was older than he'd thought at first. Thirty, maybe thirty-two. Still twenty years younger than Flora Mae.

  He tried to see up her stretchy pink miniskirt, but she kept her knees together. For the moment.

  "You want a drink or something?"

  "Business before pleasure, slugger," she said, smiling. "Do you have cash on you?"

  "Sure. How much?"

  "For a hundred dollars, I'll rock your world."

  Nate laughed. "How can I turn down a deal like that?"

  He dipped his fingers into the pocket of his plaid shirt and pulled out a roll of bills. He counted off five twenties, then put the rest back and snapped the pocket shut. As he went to hand her the money, he saw that the hooker was studying the double-barreled shotgun holstered in a leather loop on the back of his seat.

  "That's quite a gun," she said.

  "That there's my pride and joy. Sawed off the barrels and stock myself, then carved that feather pattern into the butt to give it a good grip."

  "It's pretty, in its way."

  She reached toward the shotgun, but he said, "Don't touch it, darling. I keep it loaded at all times."

  "Really?"

  "Truckers can't be too careful. We sometimes carry millions of dollars' worth of merchandise in these trailers. Lots of hijackers out there who'd gladly take it off our hands."

  "I know what you mean," she said somberly. "A man's got to protect himself."

  "That's right, sugar."

  She opened her leather bag and tucked the money inside. Digging around in the purse, she said, "Speaking of protection . . ."

  "Aw, come on," he said. "Do we have to use a rubber? For a hundred bucks, I oughta get to ride bareback."

  Her hand came out of the purse, but it wasn't holding a condom. He at first mistook the black metal cylinder for a lipstick. But it was fatter than that and it had a red button on the top. She pointed the thing at him and pushed the button and sprayed burning pain directly into his eyes.

  Nate howled in agony and clapped his hands over his sopping face. He was blinded by the searing pain, literally seeing red, choking and gasping and sobbing and clawing at his own eyes.

  What the hell? Why did she do that? He'd given her the money—

  Then it hit him. This was no ordinary hooker. He was being hijacked, right here in the truck stop parking lot.

  To hell with that. Even blinded, Nate knew how to protect what was his. Crying and cursing her for the bitch she was, he turned in his seat, fumbling for his handy sawed-off shotgun.

  Too late. The hooker jammed the twin barrels of the shotgun into the side of Nate's neck, an unmistakable figure-eight of cold steel against his skin.

  "Aw, Jesus," he moaned.

  "Don't move," she said. "And shut the fuck up."

  Chapter 2

  Her heart pounded and her hand shook, but Jackie Nolan kept the double-barreled shotgun pressed against the trucker's fleshy neck.

  She pulled a liter-sized bottle from her shoulder bag and used her teeth to twist off the cap. She gave the plastic bottle a quick squeeze, splashing water over the sputtering trucker's tear-streaked face.

  "This is the only thing that will help that pepper spray," she said. "Wash out your eyes. Keep blinking."

  He reached out for more, and she jabbed the shotgun harder against his neck, making him gasp.

  "I'll give you the rest of this water," she said. "After you get out of the truck."

  "I can't fuckin' see."

  "Feel your way down the steps."

  The driver dragged his shirt sleeve across his face, which was already puffing up in red splotches from the pepper spray.

  "You're stealing my goddamned truck?"

  "You can get out alive or dead," she said. "I don't much care either way."

  He fumbled for the handle and popped open the door.

  "If you yell for help," she said,
"I'll shoot you where you stand."

  The trucker went out the door butt-first and clambered blindly down the clanging steel steps. As soon as he reached the ground, she tossed the water bottle to him. It hit him in the chest and he juggled it for a second, water splashing out, glinting in the light from the security halogens. He got both hands on the slippery bottle and poured more water into his eyes, his head tipped back, steam rising from his gaping mouth.

  A sheepskin vest was tucked behind the driver's seat. After she slid behind the wheel, Jackie tossed it down to him.

  "Put that on before you freeze."

  She slammed the door shut before he could argue.

  The Freightliner was only five years old, but it didn't have an automatic transmission like most modern trucks. Jackie hitched up her tight skirt so she could manage the clutch easier. She shifted the truck into first gear and it lurched forward, Jackie spinning the steering wheel so the Freightliner's long hood would clear the truck parked in front of her.

  Checking her mirrors, she saw the damp trucker fumble a phone from his pants pocket, already trying to blindly call the cops.

  "Shit."

  She floored it, shifting twice more as the truck roared across the parking lot to the exit, barely pausing as she rolled onto University Boulevard. This late on a Monday night, there was little traffic around the truck terminal, and Jackie had all four lanes to swing the truck wide. She hit a traffic light just as it was turning yellow, and was northbound on Interstate 25 within a minute, running through the gears as she got the seventy-thousand-pound rig up to speed.

  She drove for a couple of miles, watching her mirrors, her heart still hammering. This was the seventh truck she'd stolen in the four months since she began hijacking them, but it was the first time she'd dealt directly with a driver. The other times, she'd slipped into unoccupied trucks that had been left running, driving away before anyone realized what was happening. But she'd had no luck with that technique tonight, and that trucker had practically asked to be hijacked. The pig.

  Only an independent driver would invest so much in his custom cab, which meant he likely used the laptop computer on the dashboard for all his communications with dispatchers. She touched the space bar and the screen lit up. Sure enough, it was logged into the nationwide Qualcomm system used to monitor truckers' locations and drive times. She unplugged the laptop and ripped it from its Velcro straps.

  No cars around her at the moment. Jackie opened the window and cold air flowed inside, blowing strands of the blond wig across her face. She hurled the laptop out the window like a Frisbee, heard it clatter to pieces on the asphalt behind her.

  She rolled up the window, then pulled off the wig and dropped it onto the passenger seat next to the sawed-off shotgun with its fancy carved stock. The truck and its cargo were spoken for, but Jackie intended to keep that shotgun for herself.

  Her short hair was damp with sweat and she fluffed it with her fingers between shifting gears. One hand always on the wheel, just as her daddy taught her.

  She got off the freeway at the next exit. Shifting all the way down, she chugged the rig through sharp left turns, dipping under the interstate and back up the ramp to go the opposite direction. A dozen miles south, a twenty-minute drive, and she could put the truck and trailer safely out of sight at Duke City Truck Salvage.

  Fighting nerves, she forced herself to stick to the slow lane all the way south to the Rio Bravo Boulevard exit. Still no sign of anyone following her. She drove downhill to Broadway, where she hit another light green and turned south onto the empty four-lane.

  South Broadway was lined by salvage yards and auto repair shops and you-pull-it parts lots, all dark this time of night, except for security lights that stood on poles here and there.

  One such light stood over the concrete-block office that fronted Duke City Truck Salvage. The office was painted white, so it glowed under the halogen light, its two front windows like the empty eyes of a skull.

  Behind the office loomed a prefab garage with three work bays. Another security light stood on a pole next to the twenty-foot-tall garage, partially illuminating a three-acre gravel lot full of semis in various states of undress and disrepair. The lot was surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with coils of glinting razor wire.

  Jackie pulled the Freightliner into the narrow paved lot that separated Duke City Truck Salvage's office from the shoulder of the road. She killed the lights and sat still for a second, catching her breath as the truck idled in the dark.

  She dug a Mini-Mag flashlight out of her purse and used it to look around the sleeping compartment behind the cab. It was a messy nest of porn magazines and dirty clothes and twisted sheets. Struggling against her tight clothes, she checked under the dash and under the seats. No sign of a transponder or a GPS or any other tracking device. She figured the trucker had used his laptop for all that.

  Jackie hated to go back out into the freezing wind, but she knew she wasn't in the clear yet. She zipped up her jacket and climbed down to the asphalt, wobbling on the unfamiliar heels as she went around the trailer, checking the wheel wells and the undercarriage. Sure enough, on the right side of the trailer near the hitch she found an anonymous gray cylinder the size of a can of soup. A transponder. Whoever shipped the cargo inside the trailer wanted to keep track of it as it made its way across the country.

  She used the butt of the steel flashlight to crack open the plastic case. The square transmitter inside was wired into the power supply that fed the trailer's rear lights. The wires were coated with plastic, so she didn't even need pliers. She grabbed hold with two fingers and yanked them loose.

  Jackie went to the front gate of the chain-link fence that surrounded the gravel lot and used a key to open the padlock. The gate was set on wheels, and she rolled it all the way open to make way for the big rig.

  She was shivering as she climbed up into the cab of the idling truck. She cranked up the heater, then turned on the lights and wrestled the gearshift into reverse. Still no headlights in sight in either direction, so Jackie backed the rig out onto Broadway far enough that she could swing wide into the open gate.

  She drove the rig into the lot and parked it in front of the garage. She went through the cab once more, finding the driver's paperwork and some extra shotgun shells under his seat. She stuffed the wig and the papers and the shells in her purse, then climbed down to the ground, carefully holding the shotgun in one hand, pointed at the sky.

  Jackie used her flashlight as she crossed the gravel lot to the gate and her waiting car. The salvage yard was creepy at night, a silent cemetery of dismembered trucks.

  The loaded shotgun was a comfort.

  Chapter 3

  Howard Bell got to work early Tuesday morning, but Jackie was already there, the lights burning in the small office that fronted Duke City Truck Salvage. Through the tall windows, he could see her standing with her arms crossed, glaring at the coffeemaker, as if that would make it perk faster.

  Howard watched her from behind the wheel of his idling gray Mercedes-Benz sedan. He hated to get out of the car and face the howling wind, his mortal enemy. He lived in fear of losing his expensive hairpiece in an unguarded moment, and often pictured his curly black toupee skipping across the desert like a tumbleweed.

  The office was a white concrete cube with a yellow-and-black sign standing on its flat roof. The entire office – Jackie's reception desk, the rows of filing cabinets along the walls, even Howard's cluttered desk in the rear – was visible through the two front windows. He thought such openness was good for appearances. Nothing nefarious going on here, Officer.

  Anybody else pulling into the parking lot, seeing Jackie in there, would probably mistake her for a man. She kept her light-brown hair cut short, and she wore jeans and a blue chambray shirt with the sleeves cuffed to her elbows. She had a nice rack, but the loose shirt pretty much hid the fact.

  Howard had hinted before that she might dress in a more feminine manner for work, give
the place some class, but she always laughed him off. She mostly did paperwork in the office, but hardly a day went by that she wasn't climbing into semis or moving them around the lot out back. Not exactly a job for a frilly dress.

  Too bad, though. Jackie could be a good-looking woman, if she made half an effort, but she couldn't be bothered. She wasn't looking for a husband at Duke City Truck Salvage, she always said, she was looking for a paycheck.

  Howard knew she'd been married once, right out of high school, and the marriage had lasted only a couple of years. He suspected her ex must've been some special kind of asshole, bad enough to make her swear off matrimony forever. It had taken three painful, expensive divorces to teach Howard that lesson. Now, at forty, he was happily alone, but he sometimes caught himself looking at Jackie. The way her pink tongue worked in the corner of her mouth when she was concentrating. The curve of her hip as she bent to get a folder from a file drawer.

  Once in a while, a customer would flirt with her, loud and bawdy as only truckers can be. Jackie always cut them off at the knees. Howard once asked her to at least be nice about the rejections, in the spirit of good customer relations. She'd told him to go fuck himself.

  Sometimes, he'd like to tell her—

  Jackie turned to the windows, looking annoyed that he was sitting there in his car, staring at her. Howard felt caught.

  He cut off the engine and slid out from behind the wheel, one hand holding his toupee in place against the snatching wind. He wore a wool coat buttoned to his chin, but the icy wind sliced through his brown slacks, propelling him indoors.

  "Whew!" he said once the glass door closed behind him. "It's colder than a prostitute's heart out there this morning."

  Jackie rolled her eyes.

  Howard patted his toupee to make sure it was where it belonged, then he peeled off his coat and hung it on a coat tree near the door. He took the long way around, squeezing between Jackie's desk and a row of file cabinets, rather than get too close to her.