THE BRIDGE TO CARACAS (Volume 1 of The King Trilogy)

CHAPTER 6

June 17, 1964. 3 p.m.

A large black Lincoln glided to a stop beside one of Pop Williams's gasoline pumps. The driver rolled his window down and leaned out. "Hey!" he shouted. "You gotta minute?"

Servito glanced at his visitor, and then turned away. "Nope, I'm busy," he replied.

"Then I'll assume you're not interested in making a lot of money."

Servito turned and glared at the driver, his deep-socketed gray eyes wary but interested. He pointed in the direction of the building. "Join me in there."

The large man hoisted himself from his car and waddled to the office. He wore a loose fitting, shiny black suit and matching tie, topped with a thick mane of brown, unruly hair. His shoes were enormous. "My name is Jerry Allison," he said, removing his sun-glasses with a smile and extending his beefy right hand.

Servito stared at Allison's humongous palm. "Tell me how you can make me a lot of money," he demanded.

Allison sat on Pop Williams's gray metal desk, his fat buttocks depressing the surface. "Okay. I'll get right to the point," he said with a dimpled grin. "I can supply gasoline to your station at a price that'll blow your mind."

"How do you know this is my station and how do you know what blows my mind?"

"I know you don't make nine cents a gallon."

"Who the hell does?"

"My customers."

Servito was impressed, but still skeptical. A profit of nine cents a gallon was far more than Pop Williams had ever seen. "How can you supply me when I'm under contract to Canam Oil?" he asked. He didn't own the station—sure—but Pop had told him enough about it to make it seem as though he did.

Allison chuckled. "You ever heard of the midnight express?" he asked, flashing a devilish smile.

"Nope. What the hell is the midnight express?" Servito demanded.

"Bootleg gas. We'll bring gasoline in here after midnight and drop it into your tanks. If we do it right, Canam will never know. You pay the driver in cash and get a new life. What do you think of that?"

"How do I know it's good gasoline?"

"You don't, and you never will unless you try it."

Servito stared out the window. He needed time to consider Allison's proposal and to contemplate how he could take advantage of it. Nine cents a gallon was an absolutely obscene profit. If he presented the idea to Pop Williams, he risked blowing the whole opportunity and losing his job. The old man was far too honest—there was no way he would risk double crossing his relationship with Canam. "I like it," Servito said with a hint of a nod.

Allison jumped to his feet and rushed to shake Servito's hand with both of his own. "Then we have a deal. My driver will be here between midnight and three. He'll drop six thousand regular and fifteen hundred premium. It'll cost you two grand, cash up front."

Servito completed a quick calculation on the back of an envelope, and then smiled. It would mean a difference of almost four hundred dollars per truck load. Blood rushed to his head when he mentally calculated how much he could make in a year if he dealt exclusively with Allison.

"See you tonight," Allison said, and then turned to leave.

Servito frowned. "Wait a minute. How the hell am I going to convince Canam I'm not buying boot-leg gas? They read my pumps every time they deliver."

Allison rolled his eyes and chuckled. "You really are a rookie. I thought you knew the game when I drove in here. Let's go outside. I'll show you how we solve that little problem." After leading Servito to the nearest of Williams's six gasoline pumps, Allison pointed to the glass panel covering the meters. He lowered his finger to the stainless steel panel below. "Take those panels off," he ordered.

Servito lifted the keys from his pocket, unlocked the panels, and quickly removed them.

Allison pointed to a pipe extending upward from the ground and connecting to the pump. "See that pipe?" he asked.

Servito nodded.

"The pump draws the gasoline from the storage tank, up through that pipe, through the meters and into the customers' cars." Allison removed a small screwdriver from his pocket and used it to remove the white metal facing, which obscured a full view of the meters. "Those meters just measure how much gasoline went through. The flow of gasoline through the meters activates an impeller, which activates the volume, dollar, and cents wheels. But you can roll the wheels backwards. The next guy who reads the meters won't have the slightest idea you moved an extra seventy-five hundred gallons through them."

"How do you roll the wheels?"

"First you have to break the seal," Allison said. He showed Servito how to break the lead seal installed by the Department of Weights and Measures. "Then you have to make the seal look like it was never broken." Allison carefully reinstalled the seal in such a way as to make it appear unbroken. He turned to face Servito. "Do we still have a deal?" he asked.

Servito was amazed. He could move gasoline through the pumps without the Canam driver ever knowing and, if he was careful, he could even do it without Pop Williams ever knowing. "Let's do it," he said, flashing a conniving smirk at Allison.

Servito's criminal mind was in overdrive. The menial job he had taken as a means of survival had led him to the threshold of a beautiful scam. Pumping gasoline was far from the career he had planned, but his meeting with Allison had brought a whole new light to his prospects. His mind zoomed to the future. If he owned Pop Williams's station, he could make a lot of money by eliminating the Canam supply agreement and buying his gasoline from independent sources. As an independent retailer, he could control the street price and increase the volume with aggressive discounting. If he owned more than one station, the possibilities were limitless.