The Box by Jeremy Brown (ebook reader play store txt) 📕

said, they gotta have more guys out looking. If they’re reporting back, it’s only a matter of time before this dickhead gets missed. Somebody goes, ‘Where was Claud looking? You, Grigore, go look for him.’ But if we can drop the body across town, somewhere they’ll find it, everybody goes that way and we hoof it out the back door.”

Bruder shook his head.

It was a decent idea and would have been worth trying except for one thing.

“How do we get the truck and his car across town with the roadblocks up and all the other Romanians patrolling without catching someone’s eye?”

Connelly stared down at Claud and chewed his lip.

“Wait until dark?”

“It’ll be worse then. Less traffic, easier to stand out. And I don’t think we’re going to stay here that long. Come on.”

They rolled and shoved the body under the trailer and left it there and went back inside.

Rison was staring at the TV and scanner.

“I think these things are busted.”

“They work fine,” Bruder said. “There’s just nothing on them.”

He turned to Connelly.

“You’re up.”

Connelly closed his eyes.

“Ah, shit.”

Chapter Five

Five Weeks Earlier

Connelly rode the bus from Omaha into Iowa and eventually into the town, arriving at three o’clock on a brisk, sunny Thursday afternoon.

He wore jeans and a hooded sweatshirt under a barn jacket and had thick silver rings on most of his fingers and both thumbs. He carried a faded army surplus duffel bag full of clothes and a black guitar case covered with random stickers.

The guitar inside was his but the case was used, found in a Vegas pawn shop, and Connelly had spent most of the bus trip coming up with stories about how and where he got each sticker. It passed the time and might be good fodder for small talk.

He was the only one to get off at the town’s depot, which was a room with benches on the back side of a drug store, accessed by a narrow lane running one block north of the highway. The road didn’t seem to get any direct sunlight, and there were piles of old snow crusted with dirt piled against the cinderblock wall.

Connelly went past the benches and through the drug store, nodding at the old sourpuss behind the cash register, and emerged on the main east-west road through town. He stood there for a moment and got his bearings with his eyes watering from the bright sun and cold air coming down the highway like a wind tunnel.

The four lanes spread to five at the main intersection to include a left-turn lane. Connelly could see where they’d had to encroach upon the sidewalk at some point to add the extra lane, and he could picture what it looked like years ago, just dirt tracks with the two-story buildings on all four corners.

He didn’t see anybody who looked like a Romanian thug, but he also didn’t know if he would be able to tell the difference between that and a farmer.

So he turned left and headed straight for Len’s.

The buildings along the north side of the main drag were all two levels, connected to each other by shared walls with no alleys or sidewalks in between.

The facade for Len’s was made of faded and warped wooden shingles with a row of short windows running along the top half of the first floor. The second floor had standard double-hung windows. Connelly figured that level was either offices, apartments, or a more formal dining area for people who didn’t want the bar experience.

The first floor windows had neon signs in them, but they couldn’t compete with the daytime sun and Connelly couldn’t tell what they said. The shingles were covered with paper posters advertising the kinds of beer and liquor you could get inside—exotics such as Bud Light and Captain Morgan.

There was also a wind-whipped banner, a physical version of the image Connelly had seen on the website proclaiming the world-famous Lenburger, as seen on Dash & Dine. This banner included a faded photo of the two hosts of the show flanking a short, pudgy man with a red face beneath a blue trucker hat with Len’s Bar & Grill on the front.

Connelly committed the face to memory, assuming it must belong to Len.

He pulled the heavy steel door open and stepped into what seemed like a pitch-black cave compared to the street. His eyes adjusted and he found himself in a small waiting area enclosed by a paneled half-wall with thick wooden newel posts forming the upper half. Wooden benches ran along the walls, and all of the wood from floor to ceiling was stained dark brown.

The laminate flooring had a pattern of brown and maroon tiles, and the array of six gumball and candy machines had greasy fingerprints on the chrome and glass.

The gap in the wall that led into the bar had a podium next to it with a sign that said, “Please wait to be seated.”

Connelly put his stuff down and waited.

Through the gaps between the newels he could see four-top tables spread out in an area between booths along both walls. TVs mounted near the low ceiling showed football and hockey highlights, with one of the sets running some sort of truck drag racing event.

A few of the tables and booths had patrons; a young mother trying to keep her two kids from toppling out of their chairs on purpose, two grizzled men in work clothes and hats perched high on their buzz-cut heads drinking coffee with baskets of burgers and fries, a chubby man wearing a shirt and tie with his sleeves rolled up, talking to a woman in between bites of salad. The woman wore a blazer and skirt and was taking notes on a legal pad.

Past all of them was the actual bar along the back wall.

Two men sat with an empty stool between them, talking and laughing with a woman behind the bar. She looked to be in her forties, but it was hard to tell with