A few weeks ago, fellow Cabana Boys and mad geniuses
Dave White and
Bryon Quertermous came up with a crazy idea: a themed story anthology, spread across a dozen or more blogs. Yep, for some reason, they included me in this madness. Here are the instructions I was given:
The idea to get you started is that a character is driving along with something in the trunk when they are pulled over by the police. The character, the something and what happens when they are pulled over are all up to you.
And here, for better or worse, is what my brain spat out.
State Trooper Joke
by Duane Swierczynski
I stuffed her body in the back of the Audi, slammed the lid down, and made a pumping motion with my right arm.
Yes!
James Brown was going through my head.
I feel good, deh-neh-neh-neh-neh-neh-NEH.
I remembered to lay down plastic and everything.
Not it really mattered. I knew I didn’t have a prayer of outthinking the forensics boys. Fuck, I watch
CSI. And really, who wants to go through all of that hassle? If I wanted hassle, I’d have stayed married.
Nah, one weekend was all I wanted. One weekend to myself. If the guys in the overcoats wanted to come and haul me away Monday morning, so be it. An uninterrupted Friday, Saturday and Sunday would be enough. No changing out the screens for the storms. No sweeping out the basement. No mulching. No shining. No wiping. No screaming. No Home Depot. No Body Works. No Bed, Bath nor Beyond.
And now it was time to get drunk.
I checked my watch and saw a stray speck of blood on the plastic face.
See?
That right there. That would have hung me. They would’ve bagged the watch, and I wouldn’t see it again for a few months until my trial, and I’d be sitting next to Scott Peterson as we both got our right legs and forearms shaved. Screw that.
Anyway: it was 10:45 a.m.
The battle plan: pick up enough booze, cash and DVDs to last me clear through Monday morning. Then phone in the tip, and swallow enough allergy pills to make that last bit of Johnnie Walker Blue count. I’ve got heart problems. It won’t take much.
I washed my hands, then drove up three blocks through gray slush to my local state store. The Audi stopped halfway into a parking space. What was I doing? Pennsylvania liquor stores bit the big one. No selection. High prices. Clueless service. And from what I remembered from last New Year’s Eve, absolute shit when it came to champagne selection.
Not this weekend.
No relatives, no kids, nothing else to worry about. Just a debit card—she wouldn’t let me have a credit card—with two grand on it.
Dear, I’m going to get all Veuve Cliquot on your bitch ass.
Ho yeah.
So I took the Audi down Robbins Avenue and winged it over the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge. Roger Wilco’s was just two minutes up the road.
Now I know what you’re thinking: guy with a dead body in the trunk, gonna get pulled over right?
Uh-uh.
Look at me. I’m middle-aged, I’m white, I’m wearing a tie, and I’m driving a decent yet not flashy car. No one’s gonna stop me. Not on a Friday morning.
And if they do, it’d be the first time, and I’d get a book deal out of it.
Hell, I could even pack ice around the body, shove some bottles of ‘pagne back in there with the whore, do it right there in the parking lot, and nobody would look twice.
In fact, that’s what I did. I bought a dozen bottles of Veuve Cliquot Gold Label (1996, $59.99 per bottle—see what I mean about prices?), six bags of ice, and one Johnnie Walker Blue ($174.99). I popped open the trunk, pretty much in clear view of Route 73, and cut open the bags of ice and dumped them all around her. Her eyes were open, and her mouth slightly agape, as if she was about to say something. I wished I had an apple.
With twelve bottles—(“Hey, your daughter getting married?” the clerk had asked; “Yeah, it’s one big family celebration!” I replied)—daintily arranged around her corpse, the J.W. Blue in the passenger seat, I was ready to leave New Jersey for the last time.
A mile from the bridge, just as I was fishing the two bucks out of my overcoat for the toll, I saw the flashing cherry. I pulled over. Checked the rear view: an unmarked car, with one of those mini lights attached to a wire on the hood.
He waved me off the side of the road. I complied. But he kept waving, like, move further off the road. So I did. He kept waving, and I kept moving until I was pretty much behind a giant pink billboard advertising the “Can-Can Girls XXX Peep Show.”
“Good morning officer,” I said, but I had my doubts. He’d turned off his flasher, and both of our vehicles were hidden from the road.
“Lt. Murphy, New Jersey Liquor Control Board,” he said, showing then flipping shut a leather badge. He pointed to the passenger seat. “Did you buy that in this state, sir?”
“Yeah, back at Roger Wilco.”
“I see you have Pennsylvania plates.”
“Right.” And his point was… ?
“Are you aware that it’s a crime to transport alcohol over state lines?”
“That’s still a law?” I was serious. I mean, what was this, the 1920s? Did Eliot Ness still ride his horse up and down the fucking Canadian border, looking for Capone’s bootleggers?
“Yes, sir,” he said, and now I could pinpoint the odd smell on his breath. It wasn’t mouthwash. “I’m going to have to confiscate everything you bought, and levy a fine on each bottle.”
“You are, huh.”
“Yessir. Now step out of the car and open the trunk.”
I knew what was coming next. So I nodded, and reached down and hit the open trunk button. Murphy started around back to check out my stash, and reached down and grabbed my Club. Never used the damned thing; I kept it in here to appease Her Royal Bitchface.
I heard him yell, so I jumped out of the car and came around swinging the Club at his head.
That made him yell again. It was kind of funny. But he shut up once the steel smacked into his skull.
That’s when I noticed the gun his hand, which he squeezed.
Gut shot.
Ouchie.
A couple of minutes—hell, maybe hours?—later, I managed to crawl around and pull myself up into the driver’s seat.
I wasn’t all that surprised to see him sitting in the passenger seat. Blood covered half of his face—thankfully, the half facing away from me. He’d already helped himself to my J.W. Blue.
“You’ve got a dead woman back there,” he said.
“You’re not really a liquor control agent,” I replied.
“Fair enough.”
He handed me the bottle, which I took. I had this funny image of the scotch trickling out of the hole in my gut, like a leak on a hose.
“So what do you do? Take the bottles?”
“Yeah, but the fines are the best part. People really get scared. They usually give me cash. A lot of it. Or we hit an ATM. You know, I can’t see.”
“Sounds like a good scam.”
“I’m just doing this until something better comes along,” he said, taking a long pull of Blue. “So who is she? Your wife?”
“My mother.”
“Huh. I think I’m blind.”
“Long story. Don’t ask.”
“I didn’t like my mother much, either, to tell you the truth. Ah, shit. I can’t feel my legs.”
Which was fine. We drank the hell out of the morning, and I started feeling really dizzy, and then I saw something flash in the rear view. Neither of us had thought to close the trunk. The ice was probably melting.
“You know any good trooper jokes?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You know. The kind where the trooper stops the guy, and he has a wise crack for the trooper, and that’s, like, the punchline.”
“Oh. Yeah. No.”
“Like, sorry, Officer, I was speeding down the highway to put it to your wife. Only they’re usually funnier. I’m not funny.”
“That’s not a crime.”
We drank some more.
“Wait, I got one,” the guy said.
“Good,” I said, and heard the tapping of the revolver on the glass. “Tell him.”
