The Devil's Copper by Jamie Crothall (ink ebook reader .txt) 📕

dog from him.  It began to panic and whimper the moment it was handed over.  The damn thing was rarely away from him.

“Take care of her,” he said.

Only I couldn’t hear him for the dog’s yelping. “What?”

“I said take good care of her,” he shouted.  “I’ll be back in an hour.”

He left, but he left the dog behind in my care and it began yelping all the more frantically when it saw him depart.  Right in my damn ear.

“You’re lucky,” Pat said.  “He obviously wasn’t going to trust me with it.”

I put the dog down on the floor to let it roam.

It just sat there, in the middle of the floor, and continued to cry out for it’s parasitic master.  Eventually, it cowered over by my feet under the desk and continued, only this time with an echo.

The phone rang.  I wanted to answer it, but there was no way I would be heard.

“Shut up,” I hissed at the dog.

It kept wailing.

“Dammit, be quiet!” Pat shouted.

It continued.

I reached down and shoved the dog, hoping the sudden physical reaction would startle it enough to break it’s fixation.  Nope.  It only got louder.

“How the hell are we supposed to work?” Pat asked, his hand hovering over the phone that was still ringing.

Then the dog stopped.  Pat didn’t see what happened.  All he saw was my body shift a little bit, followed by a sudden stop to the whimpering.

The dog then slowly crept away.

“What did you do?” he asked.

“Pat, don’t ask the butcher about his job if you want to enjoy the steak.  Answer that, will you?”

I think he was a little afraid of me. I was starting to realize I was okay with that.

Once the dog stopped being a nuisance, the morning was able to proceed as normal.  Or as near to it as I could pretend.  In truth, any time a vehicle pulled into our lot, I braced myself for the worst, convinced it was Frankie, or his thugs.  Worse yet, Shay.

Shortly after lunch, a cab pulled into the lot and right up to the building.  The driver got out and approached the office.

“Hey.  Is there a ‘Billie’ here?”

I gulped.  “That’s me,” I replied.

Was I being sent for?  Was I going to be taken somewhere?

“Okay, cool.  Uh…I have a delivery? I guess you could say?”

I stood, not so much to approach, as to face my fate on my own two feet.

“What is it?”

He seemed a little out of his depth.  “You’re going to want to come and see.”  He pointed to Pat.  “You may need to help with this.”

“You don’t have to get involved,” I told Pat, putting out a hand to hold him at bay.

Pat laughed.  He didn’t see how the seriousness of my tone could match the awkwardness of the situation.  He followed me as we stepped outside the office and approached the cab.

“He asked me to bring him here,” the driver said, opening the door.

Walter was huddled up asleep, wrapped in his trenchcoat.

“He’s not moved since,” he continued.  “To be honest, I pulled over once to see if he was still breathing.  I think we’re going to have to lift him out.  Unless you think he needs to go to a hospital?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head vigorously, both in insistence and relief.  “He’s fine.  He just has narcolepsy.” I turned to Pat.  “Can you help me?”

“You know this guy?”  asked Pat.  “What are we going to do with him?”

Good question.  We couldn’t just leave him in the office, in case Joey came back.  I had no car to drive him somewhere, and really had no ‘somewhere’ to drive him to.

“The old Mack,” I said.

We had an old Mack truck at the back of the lot.  It was a 1979 tank truck, barely roadworthy, but Joey insisted on keeping it licensed.  People would come and offer to buy it for scrap metal.  But Joey insisted it should remain operational.  I assumed it was a sentimental attachment, rather than a bad business decision.  Either way, it hadn’t moved since 1995.

“Go get the keys,” I insisted.

Pat ran back to the office.

I turned to the driver.  “Did he pay you?”

“No.  He said it would be C.O.D.”

I rolled my eyes.  “Grab the petty cash box,” I called out to Pat.  Then, back to the driver, “Extra ten bucks if you help us move him and never mention this again.”

“Deal.”

Fortunately, all the drivers were out on jobs, and the phones were quiet.  We moved Walter from the cab to the unused truck at the back of the building, traipsing through overgrown weeds and weaving through old equipment and machinery Joey refused to get rid of.  We managed to hoist Walter into the truck, stretching him across the storage space behind the two front seats.  Not once did Walter stir during the whole ordeal.  If his sleep patterns were based on his mental exertion, I shuddered to think how many days worth of work he did in the last twenty-four hours.

“You sure he’s okay?” asked the cabbie.

“This is hardly the first time this has happened,” Pat insisted.

All right, kid.  Nice one.  He totally had my back despite not knowing what the hell was going on.

I paid the cab driver. He left us, with only the distant ringing of a phone and an awkward silence between Pat and me.

“Look, I know this is probably…”

“Your life, your business,” he said.

I smiled. “You’re a good kid.”

“Tell Joey that.  As many times as possible.  I’ll go get the phone.”

I returned to the old Mack truck to see if I could rouse Walter.  Which was doubtful; our awkward transportation of his limp, lifeless body didn’t seem to.

“Walter,” I called, shaking him.

When that didn’t