Bad Penny by John D. Brown Read Free Book Online

heading toward I-80. Then he hung up and began to run. Big-booted strides.
    His phone rang. It was the dispatcher. He let it ring.
    He ran across the intersection on D and 2 nd , past the bowling alley on the back side, past the lumber store and into the old residential part of town. He approached the fuel oil dealer with the yard full of oil tanks stacked up next to the fence. Sam should have been here by now. Frank swore Sam had a Mustang. Not tall, but fast. It would do just fine.
    Up ahead, tires squealed. A motor raced. The tires squealed again and some soccer mom with serious road rage came around the corner up ahead in her baby blue Mazda minivan.
    Come on, Sam. Come on.
    And then Frank saw that the soccer mom wasn’t a soccer mom. It was Sam, driving like a bat out of Hell.
    Sam saw him, flashed his headlights, then hit the brakes hard and pulled over in a rush of debris. He leaned over and opened the passenger door. “Where we headed?”
    A minivan? Seriously? But beggars couldn’t be choosers. “Dewar and I-80,” Frank said and slid in. A box of wet wipes lay at his feet. He picked it up and tossed it into the back seat. Cheerios had spilled out down the center aisle along with a lime green ball and some plastic robot toys. A jumble of other stuff rose from behind the back seat, including some fat PVC pipes.
    Sam was in his thirties, medium height and build, clean shaven, tidy shirt, tidy accountant hair. He was a little overweight, not in a fat greasy sloppy way, but in a cuddly, chubby, happy way. Like a good luck charm.
    Frank had never seen Sam without a Bluetooth receiver in ear. He was wearing one now. “I-80, out past Walmart,” he confirmed to someone on the phone.
    Frank said, “I’ll tell you which direction on I-80 when we get there.”
    “You got it, buddy.” Sam looked in his mirrors. A car was coming up behind, but Sam put on his blinker, stepped on the gas, and the Mazda shot out into the road in front of it.
    The person behind laid on his horn and slammed on his brakes.
    Sam glanced in the mirror. “I put on my blinker, buddy,” he said.
    “Thanks for coming,” Frank said.
    “No problem.”
    The Mazda was small as minivans went, but it accelerated well enough to escape the driver blaring his horn behind. “This thing has a couple of gerbils under the hood.”
    “Couple?” Sam asked. “It’s got a whole village, complete with a town square.”
    Frank was sitting up so high he was looking through the shaded top of the windshield. He fumbled around for seat controls, but only found a lever to lower the back of the seat.
    “The wife’s got the pickup,” Sam said. “Otherwise, I would have brought that.”
    “This moves. It’s better than roller skates.”
    “I can get more help.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I can make some calls.”
    Who would Sam call? The Mormon pastor? “I don’t think the missionaries on their bikes are going to be much help at this point,” Frank said.
    Sam’s eyes widened like a light bulb had just flashed in his head. “The missionaries have a car. I didn’t think of them, but I could call them too.”
    “I already called 911,” Frank said. “We’re good.”
    They raced past the fuel oil place, took a hard left, worked their way out onto Blair which ran parallel to the train tracks. The whole time Frank scanned for the Nova.
    When they crossed over the tracks onto Dewar, Sam said, “Hey, Honey.”
    Frank looked over at him.
    “Yeah, I’ve got the van. I’m a little busy now. Mind if I call you back?” There was a pause, then, “Chow,” and Sam turned onto Dewar.
    Frank decided yet again that phones in the ear were just plain wrong. Who walked around making everyone you passed think you were talking to them?
    Sam kept his eyes on the road. “So who did this? Why in the world would they want Tony?”
    “It’s kind of complicated.”
    “More complicated than the tax code?”
    “Probably not,” Frank said, “but I’ll give you the