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

something worse. I didn’t even know if Tug would remember having the conversation the next morning, you know? I go up to him and start talking about Iowa and he pulls a gun and goes, ‘Who told you about that?’”

“But if he does remember, and he tells the other Romanians about you, and we take down the truck…”

Rison grinned like a wolf.

“Nah man, they don’t know shit about what he told me. It was the craziest thing. I guess Tug was so distraught, right after he got done filling me in, he got out of the jacuzzi and jumped off the balcony. Thirty floors up.”

“Huh,” Bruder said. “That’s too bad.”

“A damn shame,” Rison agreed.

The food arrived at the cabana and they both picked through it and sat chewing and watching the pool for a few minutes.

Bruder said, “We’re going to need somebody with local information.”

Rison wiped his face and fingers on a thick cloth napkin and took a drink of beer.

“Well, it won’t be Tug.”

“No. From what you’ve said, I wouldn’t rely on him even if he was still around.”

“A solid bet.”

“And from the sound of it, nobody in the Romanian crew is going to be pliable.”

Rison said, “Pliable. I like that. And I agree—Tug was a crazy son of a bitch, and he made the crew in Iowa sound even worse. None of them are going to give us an assist.”

Bruder thought about it.

“These farmers. Some of them wouldn’t mind seeing the Romanians take a hit.”

“Maybe. Yeah, maybe. I bet they’re scared though. If somebody helped us and the gang found out…And what if we approach the wrong person? We see a corn-fed Billy Bob who looks prime to work with us, and it turns out he’s filing for Romanian citizenship, you know?”

“Yeah,” Bruder said.

He was looking at the angles and holes and dead ends, trying to find a spot to pry against.

“How many random strangers show up in this place?”

“Population for the town is just over two thousand. The township website calls it a village, and it damn sure ain’t a city. The main drag is pretty much all there is to it. The rest is farms and a school and a big-ass train station where they load up grain and corn and whatever. Soybeans, maybe.”

“Have you been there?”

Rison took a bite out of another slider.

“Nah. I found all this online.”

“Let me look into it a little more. I’ll bring Kershaw in if you’re good with that.”

“No problem. Is he in Vegas too?”

“Not yet,” Bruder said.

That night the three of them were in Bruder’s hotel room at Caesar’s looking at Kershaw’s laptop.

He’d flown in from Austin with a carry-on bag that afternoon and Bruder and Rison got him caught up on the ride from the airport.

The laptop showed a map of the town in Iowa. The satellite view showed what looked like a ball of yarn in the middle of a set of crosshairs. A tight grid of roads in the center, where the town was, then a mess of old, curving roads that wandered around the countryside and somehow found their way to another piece of thread that kept the wander going.

The only roads in and out of town were the crosshairs—north, south, east, and west.

Other browser tabs had the town’s Wikipedia page and websites for the school and some of the local businesses, including a farm machinery dealership, the granary train depot, a motel, and a bar named Len’s offering live music Friday and Saturday nights. It also had, according to the site, the world-famous Lenburger as featured on a TV show called Dash & Dine.

Kershaw clicked on the tab showing the machinery dealership. The page had a sidebar with current job openings, of which there were two: Lead Account Manager and Agricultural Service Technician.

“I still like this one,” he said.

Rison said, “What the hell is an Agricultural Service Technician?”

Kershaw shrugged.

“Somebody who works on tractors?”

“You ever worked on tractors?”

“No. But I bet I could sell you one.”

Rison looked at Bruder. “The Account Manager?”

Bruder said, “All we need is a reason to be in town. One of us can apply for that job. One of us can do the one at the granary.”

Kershaw went to that tab and read: “Second Shift Site Manager.”

Rison said, “What’s that mean?”

“You manage the site during the second shift.”

“Thanks, smart-ass.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Bruder said. “We look at the job requirements and build a resume that makes sense. Drop it off and tell them you’re in town at the motel until the next day. Drive around, scope the town. Eat at the bar. Watch the people. If you get a call, go in for the interview or don’t. Tell them you got another offer somewhere else.”

Rison tilted his head from side to side, thinking about it.

“We stagger our visits?”

“A few days in between. If we see enough out-of-towners some overlap is okay. We share what we find out so the next guy going in doesn’t have to cover the same ground.”

Rison looked at Bruder.

“Wait, what about Lola?”

“What about her?”

“Well, I called her to get in touch with you about this, so I assume you two are still on speaking terms?”

Bruder said, “What’s that got to do with this?”

“She might come in handy. I mean, a bunch of dudes rolling around town could raise eyebrows. A guy and his lady, or just a single lady…”

Bruder shook his head.

“That won’t work.”

Rison looked at Kershaw, who just shook his head and refused to participate.

Rison said, “Why, because she’s your ex…?”

He didn’t know how to finish the question—Wife? Girlfriend? Lover?—so he just let it dangle.

“No. She would do fine pretending to be with any one of us to blend in, but she won’t be bait or a honeypot.”

“Really? Not even chatting somebody up?”

Bruder said, “Look, if one of these Romanians tries to touch her, she’ll kill him. Job over. It’s not worth the risk.”

Rison blew his cheeks out, then turned to Kershaw and the laptop.

“Go back to the school for a minute.”

Kershaw clicked