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

CHAPTER 8

Allison's red and yellow striped tractor-trailer arrived at Pop Williams's station at 2:45 a.m. It parked parallel to the fill-pipes of the gasoline storage tanks. Allison climbed from the cab of the tractor and slammed the door behind him, having replaced his wrinkled black suit with tight green trousers and an under-sized, matching green jacket. "Sorry I'm late. I had a few traffic problems," he explained, looking entirely too much like an overstuffed sausage as he waddled toward Servito.

"Just hurry up and drop the gasoline," Servito growled.

"You got the cash?"

"Just drop the fucking gasoline, Jerry! I'll give you the cash when you're finished," Servito shouted.

Allison shook his huge head, his thatch of brown hair flying in the wind. "That isn't going to happen. Once I drop that gasoline, it's a son of a bitch to get it out. Then if I find out you don't have the cash, we've both got big problems."

"How do I know you've got seventy-five hundred gallons on that truck?"

"Climb up and check it out," Allison suggested, pointing to the top of the truck. "The trailer has five compartments. All you have to do is lift the manhole cover on each and look inside. You'll see that each one's filled to a government-regulated brass finger." He removed a flashlight from the cab of the truck and handed it to Servito. "Here. You can use this."

Servito climbed the metal ladder at the rear of the trailer and carefully examined each compartment. As Allison had promised, each was filled with gasoline to the level of the brass finger. Servito returned to the ground. "Get your hoses hooked up," he said as he marched toward the office. "I'll get the cash."

Servito had swiped two thousand dollars from Williams's cash register, planning to replace the money with first receipts from the sale of Allison's gasoline. "Here's your bread," he said, handing a large brown paper bag to Allison.

Allison snatched the bag and looked inside. "Jesus!" he hissed, glaring at Servito.

"What's the problem?"

"How the hell did you expect me to count it? I'll be here all night!"

Servito flashed a devilish smirk. "You said you wanted two thousand cash. That's it. Where did you think I'd get the money? I pulled it from the register. If I take all those small bills to the bank and ask for large ones, somebody's going to ask questions."

Allison crumpled the bag from the top, and then pointed an angry index finger at Servito. "I'm going to count it later, kid. If there isn't two grand in this bag, I'm going to come back here and break your knee-caps." He hurled the bag through the opened window of his truck.

Karen stared in silence at the window of an airport limousine as it glided southward on Avenue Road. Jean Taylor placed her hand on top of Karen's. "You're so quiet, dear," she implored.

Karen gave her mother an expressionless glance, and then turned away and shook her head. "It's over, Mom. I just want to forget it. Those bastards stole sixteen months of my life, and there's no way I'll ever get them back."

"What are you going to do now? Have you thought about that?"

Karen again turned to face her mother, her brown eyes showing a burning resolve. "I'm going to find Mike and spend the rest of my life with him. He's all I could think of while I was in that hellhole. I'd be absolutely insane by now if it wasn't for that."

"How did it go?" Allison asked, leaning from the window of his black Lincoln.

Servito smiled, oozing pride. "I sold the whole load." It had taken less than twelve hours for Pop Williams's station to sell seventy-five hundred gallons of Jerry Allison's boot-leg gasoline. Servito had brazenly rolled back the wheels in the pump meters by exactly that volume. He had replaced the two thousand dollars he had removed from Williams's cash register, and happily pocketed the difference.