Finnegan's Week by Joseph Wambaugh Read Free Book Online Page A

thousands of guys got to live a long time on all this, so we’re prestaging.”
    â€œUncle Sam takes care of his navy,” Shelby said to Abel.
    Then the manifester said, “Damn, I’m late for a lunch date with a lady. You guys can use a forklift, can’t ya?”
    â€œUse ’em all day long in our job,” Shelby said.
    The manifester pointed to a pair of yellow forklifts and said, “Don’t take the one with the busted lift lever. The other one’s better.”
    â€œEnjoy yourself,” Shelby said, baring his gap-toothed grin. “And remember what the chaplain says: Don’t take your most treasured possession and stick it in somethin that’d scare you to death if you was sober.”
    The manifester gave a thumbs-up, turned, and strode off along the quay, leaving the waste haulers alone. Lunch break lasted from 11:30 to 1:00. The warehouse was theirs .
    Neither trucker spoke for a minute. Then Abel said, “Buey, our job gone een two, three week. We got nada then.”
    â€œAnd our boss is a cheap prick,” the ox said, working himself into it, sensing what was going to happen here. “And I ain’t paid in enough to be drawin much unemployment. I’m fucked!”
    â€œI get the truck. You drive forkleeft down to the nex’ loading bay. We don’ take nothing from this bay.”
    â€œExcellent!” the ox said. “That manifester logged us in at this one, but there’s dozens a truckers in and out a the rest a the bays all day long. The navy won’t even miss whatever it is we take. Matter a fact, we’re taxpayers, ain’t we? We bought em all this shit in the first place, right? We got it comin to us, right, dude?”
    It took them less than ten minutes to load the four fifty-five-gallon drums full of the U.S. Navy’s contaminated fuel mixture that had been shipped from Guam. They dollied the drums into the back of the van next to the drum they’d picked up from Burl Ralston at Southbay Agricultural Supply. By the time Abel got the rig backed up to the next open bay, yet another tractor-trailer was already parking alongside the oiler.
    More suspects , Shelby thought. There was no way the navy would ever know which truckers to blame. That is, if anybody noticed there’d been a theft in the first place. Shelby had the forks hooked into a pallet of boxes when Abel ran inside the second warehouse bay.
    The ox was so excited he looked like he was wired on methamphetamine. “Flaco!” he said. “There’s some kinda computers and shit in these big boxes!”
    â€œNo,” Abel said. “No computer. Too hard to sell.”
    Abel began running along the pallet stacks reading the military specifications on the boxes. Suddenly he stopped, took a knife from his pocket and cut open a box. He struggled for a moment, and pulled out a black, steel-toe, high-top, nonskid U.S. Navy flight-deck shoe. Then he grinned at Shelby.
    â€œLeave that!” Shelby said. “There’s TVs in them other boxes!”
    â€œNo TV,” Abel said. “Serial number. Remember how you get caught before? These.” He held up the navy shoes.
    â€œShoes? Who the fuck wants shoes? ”
    â€œBuey!” Abel said, grabbing the big man by his tattooed biceps. “I promise to you two thousand dollar! Today !”
    â€œToday? How?”
    â€œGet on forkleeft! Work, Buey!”
    In less than twenty minutes the truckers had forklifted every pallet containing boxes marked “shoes” into the bobtail van. “They don’t mees them. They got so much they don’t mees the shoe,” Abel said, pronouncing it choo .
    Nobody inspected their load when they wheeled back through the gate. No one had ever bothered to inspect a load, not in the thirteen months that Abel Durazo had been hauling toxic waste.
    When they were driving beside the Silver Strand State Beach, away from Coronado, the ox