The Box

Chapter 12

Where the main street ended and the quarter began there was also a dirt road which went down to the water. They went down to the water, past the rocks, and sat in a black shadow. Only the night sky seemed to have light. Turk said nothing because he was waiting and Quinn said nothing because he was trying not to think. I’ll start with the first thing that comes to my mind “I’ve changed my mind,” he said.

Turk didn’t know yet what that meant, but the voice he heard next to him in the dark was hard and impersonal. It was impersonal with an effort and Turk felt uneasy.

“I told you once I’d help you to a slice of Remal if you helped me.”

“I know. I remember.”

“You came through and now I’ll come through. Except for this.”

Turk bit his nail and wished he could see Quinn’s face.

“I want a slice, too,” said Quinn. “I really want to carve me one out now.”

Turk grinned in the dark, grinned till his jaw hurt. He was afraid to make a sound lest he interrupt Quinn or disturb him in any way.

“Did you hear me?”

“Yes, yes! I see it. I can see how…”

“You don’t see a thing. Now just talk. Tell me everything that goes on with this smuggling operation. And don’t be clever, just talk.”

Turk went on for nearly an hour. Where the girls came from and where they went. It was, Quinn found out, a fairly sparse business and needed connections which he could not make in a hundred years. He learned about the trade in raw alcohol, black market from American bases, and how it left here and then was handled through Sicily. And watches which one man could carry and make it worth while. And inferior grain, sold out of Egypt.

None of the operations were very big and there wasn’t one which was ironclad. Remal, with no competition and with his thumb on a lethargic town, ran matters in a way which looked sloppy to Quinn-unless Turk told it badly-and ran them, for the most part, pretty wide open.

Quinn smoked a cigarette and thought of chances. He thought business thoughts about business and once he thought of Remal who was an enemy. But he stuck mostly to business.

Taking a slice here or there was ridiculous. Remal would hit back. But to roll the whole thing over, and then leave Remal on the bottom “Stuff leaving here goes mostly to Sicily?”

“Yes. Not tonight. Tonight there are just the women, and they go just up the coast. And the silk…”

“Never mind.” Quinn picked up a pebble. “Does Remal run the Sicily end, too?”

“Oh no. He never goes there. Sometimes the Sicilian comes here.”

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know. He sees Whitfield. Sometimes Remal.”

This could mean anything. It could mean Remal runs the show at both ends, or the Sicilian comes down with instructions for Remal, or he comes just to coordinate. Turk didn’t know. Quinn couldn’t tell.

“Is it important?” said Turk.

It is most likely, thought Quinn, that the two ends are run independently.

“Remal ever send anybody over there?”

“No, he never does.”

And put that together with the Sicilians and their reputation in a business like this-It is likely, thought Quinn, that they’re bigger at the other end.

“Now tell me again about the alcohol. All the details,” said Quinn. “You mentioned something about tonight.”

“Yes. Tonight he went down…”

“But there’s no alcohol going out tonight, you said.”

“I know. I said twice a month, like tonight. Remal goes down to the warehouse to see about the alcohol in cans. It comes in by truck and goes out by boat.”

“Does it come in tonight?”

“No, it comes in and goes out, all in the same day. Tomorrow.”

“Then what’s Remal doing down there tonight?”

“To send the driver out to the pick-up point. Remal always counts the empty cans, and when the truck comes back the next day he counts the full cans or has Whitfield count them. And he gives instructions to the driver, about little changes in plan.”

“What kind of changes?”

“Little changes, like time and place and so on.”

Quinn sat a moment and started to play with a pebble. “On the truck,” he said, “there’s just this one driver?”

“Yes.”

“Kind of careless, isn’t it?”

“Who would dare interfere?”

Quinn nodded. Who indeed. “As far as I know,” he said, “there are only two ways out of this town. One east, one west, and both along the coast.”

“For trucks, yes.”

“Which way does this one come and go?”

“Both ways the same way, west. Because the alcohol is black market from Algerian ports. It comes overland, and then this driver picks it up out of town.”

After that, the talk became more and more detailed, about how many cans and how large, time schedules and distances, and while none of it came out as precise as Quinn might have wanted, it was enough. Enough for a fine, hard jolt.

“Now something else,” Quinn said, “and this time I don’t have questions but you do the listening.”

Turk noticed the difference in Quinn and paid attention.

“With no more effort than you put out now, doing nothing, you can pick yourself off the street and no more handouts, like the kind you’ve been taking all your life.”

“Oh?” said Turk, because he had not understood all the slang.

“Here’s what. You told me Remal picks his help as he needs it.”

“Yes?”

“This is good enough when there’s no competition, but not good enough when the opposition is organized.”

“Are you discussing a war?”

“Just shut up a minute. Remal doesn’t have a gang. I’m going to make one.”

“Gang?”

“A few men, always the same men, working their job not for pennies, but a cut.”

“Ah,” said Turk. “No war. You are talking now like a brigande.”

“Call it what you like. The point is we run it a new way. This leaves out the knife play in the street, it means picking our men with care, and it means no talk whatsoever. Everybody knows of Remal’s operation. Nobody knows of yours and mine.”

“Ah,” said Turk. “Anything.”

“For a start we’ll need three men. Whom can you suggest?”

“There is my friend,” said Turk, “the one who you saw by the steps.”

“Can he be trusted?”

“Absolutely. He is my friend. Then,” Turk said, “there is the man whose face you cut. He has…”

“Him?”

“Not him, he will not be able to help us for a while. I was going to say, he has two brothers…”

“They’ll work for me?”

“They will not hold it against you that you injured their brother. Especially after I explain that it was an accident and they hear there’s money to be made.”

They then talked details about what they would do in the morning. What most impressed Turk was that Quinn would start all this new life immediately in the morning.

“Can you have the men ready on time?”

“Of course. I have already thought about…”

“Don’t of-course me. Remember, we’re not setting this schedule ourselves. We’ve got to follow one.”

“Understood.”

“Make sure your help understands it.”

“I will.”

Quinn threw the pebble away and got up. “I’ll stay at the hotel tonight. You got somebody to watch me?”

“Of course. The man who got hurt in the arm. He is a very good watcher.

“You’re of-coursing me again. He just came over from Remal and he’s going to watch me sleep tonight?”

“Well. I feel…”

“And he’s going to sit there in the hotel with blood all over his arm?”

“I have a great deal to learn, about watching in hotels.”

“Then say so in the beginning and don’t make stupid suggestions instead.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. What you know you know well, I think. Walk me over.”

Turk walked with Quinn to the hotel and they said nothing else. I could love him, thought Turk. If he’d let me. I really could-And after Quinn had gone into the hotel, Turk got a boy from the quarter who had only one eye. He told the boy to sit in the street all night and to kill anyone who went into Quinn’s room or he, Turk, would dig out the boy’s other eye. He forgot to explain how the boy was to know, while sitting in the street, who would be likely to go into Quinn’s room.

At ten in the morning Quinn had an Occidental-type breakfast downstairs, and while he was drinking his coffee Remal walked in. He came up to the table and asked if he might sit down. Quinn nodded.

“And how are you, Mister Quinn?”

“Alive.”

“Yes, I heard. And now I see.”

“Coffee?”

“No, thank you.”

“You see what, Remal?”

“I see you in a new light, Mister Quinn.”

“In the cold light of dawn?”

“You make small talk almost as well as our Whitfield. Only less amusingly.”

“Then let’s drop it.”

“Very well.” Remal folded his arms on the table and looked out the window. “You have indeed demonstrated,” he said, “that you can draw attention.”

“We cleaned up all the mess lying around.”

“Yes. Thank you. That was thoughtful of you and, I suppose, in the manner of a beau geste.”

“A what?”

“You could have left the bodies there and made it difficult for me to cover things up. It was generous of you.”

“Welcome, I’m sure.”

“And of course the meaning is that it will not happen again, but the next time you will draw as much attention as possible.”

Quinn hadn’t thought of the last night’s corpse-dumping that way but he let the impression remain. He said nothing.

“And of course, in the same night’s work you have demonstrated something else I had not known, that you have help. Rather good help, as it turned out.”

“I’m alive.”

“Yes. We discussed that,” and Remal wiped his mouth. “I have learned to be flexible in my position, Mister Quinn, and will make a new proposal.”

“I know.”

“We are not friends, but we are not yet enemies. Let us choose something in between.”

“What’s that?”

“A gentlemen’s agreement.”

“The thought is new to me, but go on.”

“You sit still, Mister Quinn, and I will sit still. You stay in sight and you will come to no harm. Maybe I can harm you with more success than I had last night, but for the moment why risk it? In the meantime, I will do what I can to expedite what needs to be done to get your papers and pas sage.”

“A truce?”

“For the moment.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“Why? Because I no longer underestimate you.”

They parted as politely as they had talked, each wishing that the other would do nothing else.

At eleven Quinn met Turk. This was different. No hotel hush, no polite conversation, no touch of imported European culture. The narrow streets of the quarter were so full of screaming that Quinn thought something terrible was about to happen. But the noise was normal-only he felt excited. Neither he nor Turk talked at all. They walked. They left the street after a while and went through a courtyard, through an arch, then more courtyards, through a house once, and then came out into the open.

This was the back end of the town where the desert started. It was not all sand or large sand dunes, the way Quinn had thought of the desert, but there was gray and black rock strewn around and the sand was not really sand but rather bare packed dirt with nothing growing in it. The last sirocco had blown sand against the backs of the houses, fine and loose like dust, but the expanse of the desert was hard, hard as the light and as hot as the air.

“The jeep is here,” said Turk, and they walked to an oval passage which had no gate.

The jeep still showed army markings. It showed no signs of care and at first glance looked like four over-sized tires with two seats and machinery hung up in between. There was no windshield and the fenders were gone.

But the motor worked. Turk drove and Quinn sat with his eyes squinted tight. Turk was whistling.

The trip, Quinn knew, would not take very long. A short trip across the desert to catch the West highway away from town. Turk whistled and drove like a lunatic. Quinn appreciated the breeze but not much else.

“Look. You got all this land here. All this open space, like air to fly in. Stop going back and forth in zigzags like this was fun or like we had all the time in the world.”

“I am going the shortest way,” said Turk.

He spun the wheel and made Quinn fly sideways and almost out of the jeep. “I will explain to you,” said Turk, and drove straight for the moment. “Open your eyes more and look at the colors.”

Quinn opened his eyes and in a while he saw the colors. The sand was not yellow. It was brown, grey, whitish, and-a trick of light-sometimes blue.

“The colors show the way.” said Turk. “Some are too hard and some too soft and that big patch there, you can drive in it without sinking in but you can drive only in a very slow creep. All right?” and Turk laughed. Then he said, “I drove oil trucks for the French, from the Sahara fields to the coast, in Algiers. Then came the fighting, so I left,” and he laughed again.

Quinn grunted something. He held onto his seat and tried to squint the sun out of his eyes. A lieutenant I got, a real right-hand man. Then the fighting came and I left, haha.

But he did not worry the thought and just kept squinting, which drew his face into a constant grin. In a while he grinned for real. He was starting to look forward to the thing he had set up.

Turk swung the jeep around a large boulder and after that they could see the road. The heat on the road turned the air to silver which shimmered, waterlike.

Turk bounced the jeep on the road and drove North a short while until they came to a ruined house. It was four broken walls by the side of the road and the roof was gone. Turk left the road again and drove into the walled space by ramming the jeep through the door frame which had no top and one incomplete side. Turk let the motor die.

Now the air was very still, like water in a pond. They could not look out and from the road they could not be seen. It was important that the jeep should not be seen.

A dirty burnoose lay in one corner and a large pile of skin bags which were full of water. On the rubble floor of the house was old camel dung.

“You brought the tool?” Quinn asked.

“The tool? Ah, the tool, yes,” and Turk reached under his seat and came up with a wrench.

“And the rag,” said Turk.

Turk did not have a rag. He had seen no reason for a rag and so had forgotten it. But then he went to the corner where the dirty burnoose was lying and tore a piece out of that for a rag.

They had time and Quinn smoked a cigarette. Then Turk got on top of the jeep and from there to the top of the wall. He sat there and looked. Quinn wrapped the rag around the wrench.

“Anything?”

“I can see the camels.”

He could see three camels walking, one behind the other. They were crossing where the jeep had been driving and then they disappeared behind the boulder. Only one camel came out on the other side, head up in an angle of disdain, knock-kneed lurch of a walk. It went slowly, as if thinking about other things, but the Arab who was leading the animal had to trot to keep up.

Turk stayed on the wall and Quinn went out to see. The camel and the man had stopped on the other side of the road. Those two figures stood there and Quinn stood opposite. Nothing else happened-only grit itch prickled Quinn’s back.

“Tell him to put that beast down, the way we said,” Quinn called to Turk.

Turk yelled Arabic and the man with the camel walked into the road. He left his animal and walked alone to the middle of the road where he put his hand on the pavement a few times and then walked back to the camel.

“He says it’s too hot. Ah! I saw the truck for a moment!”

“Tell that goddamn animal…”

“He won’t listen. He says it’s too hot.”

Quinn started to sweat a new sweat, which was thin and rapid. He did not argue or curse now but ran back into the broken house, then came out again with a water skin. He ran with it, so that there was a gurgle sound from the skin. The skin was black and moist and made inside water movements under his arm so that it felt alive. On the pavement Quinn pulled the wooden plug out of the bag and let the water run out. He trained the stream all over the road and pressed pressure into the stream with his arm.

“You see him?” he called to the wall.

“No. It means now that he will come out of the dip when I see him the next time.”

Quinn licked sweat from the side of his mouth. The moist pavement was starting to steam.

“Get off the wall,” he said.

The skin was limp on his arm now and the water sputtered. Turk got off the wall.

“All right,” said Quinn and stepped back. “Tell him to put that animal down now. It isn’t hot any more.”

The Arab brought his camel over and made it stop in the middle of the road while Quinn ran into the broken house. He came back with the dirty burnoose on his arm, and with the wrench.

“He says you are very clever,” said Turk. “Very clever about the water.”

“Tell him to put that goddamn animal down. And you come over here and help me with this sheet.”

Turk showed Quinn how to wrap the burnoose and the Arab with the camel was hitting the animal’s front legs with a stick. This made a wood on wood sound and in a while, like a building collapsing, the camel folded down and sat in the road. It showed its teeth and made a groan like an agonized human.

There was nothing else to do now except wait. The Arab talked to the camel, or cursed the camel, Quinn stood inside his sheet, and Turk was gone, inside the house.

The truck, Quinn saw, was a Ford pick-up. Because there was a camel in the road, the truck stopped. The driver came very close, made the brakes and the tires scream, but he stopped. The talk, which came next, was all in Arabic and Quinn did not understand a word. But he knew what was supposed to go on and he could see how the screaming got more and more violent. The point was, get that camel off the road and, I can’t get the beast to get back on its feet. And then the driver, in an excess of violence, was supposed to jump out of his cab to give the camel a kick or to give the man with the camel a kick.

But the two men just kept screaming. Quinn stood by and sweated under the big burnoose. What else could go wrong now? The driver backs up, leaves the road, and bumps across the desert. Or he just keeps sitting there and screams for another hour. If that idiot with the camel would stop tugging that halter rope, would stop putting on such a convincing show-At that moment he did. Quinn was sure the man had worked himself into a genuine rage and only at that point did he think of the next thing. He dropped the halter rope, threw up his arms, screamed something which was probably very obscene, and then he too sat in the road, legs folded. It took another second before the driver decided to get out of the cab.

Quinn stood still by the truck and watched the door fly open. He stood still while the driver jumped out, turned toward the camel, and then Quinn hit him.

He let go of the burnoose flap with which he had covered his face, got his right arm free, and tapped the wrapped wrench on the back of the driver’s head.

It is hard to judge the right force of a blow like that, unless the purpose is murder. Quinn wanted the man out cold for perhaps half an hour. This was important, because the man should later drive his truck for the rest of the trip.

When Quinn caught the man he turned the head up and saw that the eyelids were fluttering.

From here on in, a number of things were supposed to happen like clockwork.

Quinn put the man down on the ground, slowly, leaned the man back and felt the tension. This was the natural tensing of trying to balance oneself while leaning back. Quinn hit the man again because he had not been entirely unconscious. He used his fist this time, a sharp uppercut, feeling much more certain about what he was doing now. When the man sagged in the right way Quinn was done.

Turk, by the house, was whistling.

The man with the camel got up, yelled at his beast, and tapped his stick under the animal’s chin.

Quinn dumped the driver on top of the canisters in back of the pickup, got into the cab, and maneuvered the car off the road and behind the ruined house. When he got there Turk was ready with the tools.

So far, nice and smooth. Quinn felt nervous and happy.

While Turk pushed the jack under the front axle Quinn started to undo the nuts on one wheel. By then the first camel came around the corner of the house, and then the other two, each led by a man. Quinn did not know any of them but they’re working out, he thought, maybe they’ll work out. He hardly looked at them, no time now for this, and told Turk what he wanted each of the others to do. Then he took the first wheel off. He let the air out of the tire while he took off the second wheel. He let the air out of that one too. Turk was coming back out of the house.

“Check the driver,” said Quinn.

Turk went to the back of the truck and said, “Do you want me to hit him again?”

“I said check him! I want to know if he’s still out.”

“He sleeps.”

“Make sure.”

“I did.”

Quinn did not ask how Turk had made sure. He only told him to put the driver into his cab and they should get busy with the cans on the truck. The three Arabs came out of the house, carrying the skins. One camel was lying down by itself, one stood, and one was grinding its teeth.

Then Quinn pounded the tires off the front wheels, and then he bolted the bare wheels back on the wheel-drums. After that he got the jack out and put it under the rear of the truck. There he did the same thing he had done to the front. He took the tubes and tires off the wheels and then put the bare wheels back in place. Make them think there’s a gentleman thief around. Puts the wheels back on, after the deed.

Turk and the three others were pouring alcohol into empty skins and water into empty canisters. Quinn smoked a cigarette, standing back a little. It smells like a hospital, he thought, or a brewery. I can’t decide which.

The men put the canisters full of water back on the pickup and they tied the skins full of alcohol to the packsaddles of the three camels. They were all scratching themselves and they were grinning while they stood around because none of them knew what this was all about. Quinn checked the driver again and then walked to the Arabs.

“Tell them what I say, Turk.”

He gave all of them a cigarette and they all smoked. Turk smoked and so did two of the others. The third split the paper open and ate the tobacco.

“Tell them they can sell the tires as soon as they wish. And I don’t care to whom they sell them or where.”

“The best place…”

“Shut up and listen. Make it clear that it will go badly with them, if Remal finds out who stole his tires. Tell them.”

Turk told them and they all talked at once. Then they listened again.

“Tell them that I will do nothing to them, if the tires get traced, because Remal will take care of them good and proper if they aren’t careful.”

“That will be difficult,” said Turk, “to sell the tires and Remal knows nothing about it.”

“It can be done.”

“But how?”

Quinn picked up sand from the ground and rubbed it in his hands. It took some of the grime off and then he wiped his hands on the dirty burnoose.

“I want them to figure that out by themselves. Because I can’t use them if they can’t sell stuff without getting traced. Tell them.”

Turk told them and there was much discussion while Quinn got into the truck. He leaned out and told them to move the camels out of the way, he wanted to back up. Then he said, “Do they know about the alcohol?”

“Oh yes. They are to hide it, not sell. They know.”

Quinn nodded, kicked the starter, geared into reverse. It was a clanking, hard maneuver without tires on the wheels, and gave a weird motion to the truck. Once the truck hit the highway, it sounded like a tank clattering over the pavement. Quinn stopped with the truck pointed towards town. It had been twenty minutes since the driver had gone under and Quinn was a little bit worried. He propped the man up and then got out of the cab. Behind the house the Arabs and Turk were still arguing.

“Since it might take them a while to figure a way of selling the tires,” said Quinn, “give them this as an extra.”

He handed bills over to Turk which amounted to about one dollar apiece. Then he said that the three men and the camels should go.

Quinn did not watch them leave but sat in the jeep, inside the ruined house, smoking. He said nothing when Turk came and thought, I hope I did that with a sufficient, imperial touch, stalking off that way.

“Quinn,” said Turk and started the motor, “did you like the men I picked?”

“I don’t know yet. We’ll see how they’ll work out with the tires.”

“That was very clever of you, Quinn, and they too thought you are very clever. And generous.” Turk drove out of the building and crossed the highway.

“They’ll make more, if they stick.”

“Yes, but they thought you very generous. They know how much you got for the cans which you sold to Whitfield and that you have no other money.”

Quinn did not care to show that this irritated him and said nothing. When the jeep was on the other side of the road Quinn looked back, worrying about the driver in the pick-up truck. The man sat in the cab as if he were asleep.

“And they want to stick with you,” Turk was saying, “because they believe you will do great things.”

“That’s very devoted of them, I’m sure.”

“They know how little money you have and they are sure your greed will make all of us rich.”

The jeep bumped and leaped and made so much noise on the rough terrain that Turk could not hear how Quinn was cursing.