Fabrication
Anthony Neil Smith

Anthony Neil Smith is an editor with Mississippi
Review Web and Plots With Guns. His recent work has
appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Futures, Barcelona
Review, Handheld Crime, and others. This summer,
he's spending time bumming around New Orleans
bars, hoping to mend his broken heart. Sometimes,
he helps Victor Gischler write about this creep
called Z. Z. DelPresto.
Email: ansmith@netdoor.com
©Copyright 2001
Anthony Neil Smith

Terry and Lancaster were installing a battery into a sweet old
Chevy Cavalier they’d found near the Franklin Creek Exit on the
shoulder of I-10 when the State Trooper’s patrol car rolled up,
parked between the Chevy and Lancaster’s F-150 pick-up. He
punched the siren to get their attention, then sat in the car a couple
of minutes and watched while big rigs and cars and SUVs whizzed
past like roaring smudges. Terry leaned against the Chevy, hands in
the pockets of his Abercrombie and Fitch khaki shorts, an oversized
Polo shirt covering a beer gut, and a cap pulled low above his eyes.
A frat boy plus five years. He stared at the trooper, a tall thin man
in his late thirties, blonde mustache and small eyes, hard to read.
Lancaster stepped from behind the raised hood, a tight Nautica Tshirt
stretched over muscled-up chest and shoulders, in cut-off jeans.
Short dark hair and a face that narrowed to a strong pointy chin. He
wiped his hands on a rag, shrugged, then ducked back to the
battery.
The trooper stepped from his car, stalked over to the guys but left
plenty of room in case he had to draw down on them. The shoulder
of the road was wide, with a narrow grassy ditch separating it from
the woods.
He nodded. "Morning."
Terry nodded back. "We’re doing fine. Don’t need any help."
"What’s the problem, anyway?"
"Damn battery, or the alternator. I can’t tell, so my friend brought
a new battery so we can at least get it back to the house."
The trooper shook his head, the hat teetering. He laughed a bit,
moved his right hand to his Sig Sauer pistol.
"Bullshit," he said, doing Gleason from Smokey and the Bandit.
"You boys are trying to sell me a fab-ree-cation."
Terry pushed himself off the car, nice and slow. "What are you
talking about?"
"This one?" The trooper pointed at the car. "It’s my wife’s car, you
dumb fuck. She called me an hour ago, and I just dropped her off
at home, came back to take a look."
Terry squinted. "You sure about that?"
The trooper reached for his handcuffs. "Both of you, against the
car."
Terry pulled his hands from his pockets, turned and placed them
on top of the driver’s side door. "But what did we do? Just trying to
help, save you the trouble."
"You lied to me."
"A little, but no harm done. You get a free battery."
The trooper steeped closer, barely an inch away from cuffing.
Lancaster’s arm arched from behind the hood, hand wrapped
around a small .380. Two shots like balloons popping smashed into
the trooper’s shoulder and chest, not killing him but dropping him
but he still had enough to yank his gun free, get off a shot that
missed Terry by a hair, clanged off the hood and shattered the
windshield.
Terry moved fast as the trooper’s free hand grabbed for his
radio-stepped on the trooper’s wounded shoulder, grabbed the
gun and twisted as the grip gave way to pain. He slipped the gun
into his waistband, took the radio, then dragged the trooper by the
shirt off the road, through the grassy ditch and into the woods.
Lancaster watched to see if anyone noticed and would stop, turn
around. A few minutes went by. Nothing. He followed Terry into
the woods. They were sweating in the July heat, over a hundred,
and the shade of the trees calmed their nerves a little, but not much.
Terry said, "Shit, in front of God and everybody. What the hell?"
"We were so damn close. His wife’s car? Come on, there’s no
talking our way out of that one."
"Call it a loss now. Blows out the windshield, shit. We’ve got to
book it out of here."
"What about the battery?" Lancaster said.
Terry stomped the trooper’s shoulder again. High-pitched scream.
The blood was soaking the khaki shirt, spreading fast.
"Get the battery double-fast. We’ve got to take him in his cruiser,
you follow in the truck."
"What’s the plan?" Lancaster said.
Terry shook his head. "I’ll think better driving."
• • •
What Terry and Lancaster did for a living was find decent
abandoned cars on the side of the Interstate that cut through the
piney woods along the Mississippi Coast and sell them for cash to
people who needed good cheap cars, mostly other hoods. Usually,
they’d find ones like the Chevy, in fine shape except maybe dead
batteries, no gas, flat tires, fucked-up alternators and belts. So they
carried a bunch of spare parts in the bed of the truck and made the
fixes, boosted the rides. They passed a lot of them on to a
middleman in northern Alabama, but sometimes made an exception
and sold to folks in Biloxi and Gulfport. Just the week before, they
had to lean on a little fat guy for his final installment of six hundred
bucks.
Three years of this, and they’d never been caught, and when it
looked like trouble was closing in, Terry was good at charming their
way out. Natural born con artist. Even though Lancaster always
carried a piece, he never had to fire it while working with his
friend, until this trooper came along.
Who knows, maybe he could have smoothed it out, thought
Lancaster as he tailed them off the Interstate exit ramp and north on
Franklin Creek Road, a badly paved two lane that twisted up into
the country. Lots of nice homes and big yards, then there’s old
trailers, small churches, tiny gas stations, torn papers and beer cans
circling the tree trunks.
Maybe. But Lancaster wasn’t taking any chances. He’d done a two
year stint in Angola once. No more. His oil-stained hands tightened
around the steering wheel as he remembered, his foot press the gas
a little heavier. The truck gurgled and responded, closing the gap
between the vehicles. Best thing to do would be drop the car in a
lake, burn the body, scatter the bones as far apart as possible. And
if Terry disagreed, maybe he’d have to kill him, too.
• • •
Terry knew there was a pond around the area big enough to sink
the car, and he was headed that way. Figured out how to turn off
the radio after already knocking out the camera that had caught
every moment of the encounter. The car smelled like strong
mouthwash. He glanced in the rearview. Lancaster was riding his
bumper, had a severe look on his face. Terry was always afraid his
partner would crack again, go on a psycho rampage Terry had only
witnessed once, near sunrise in the bathroom of a motel, Lancaster
dunking a hooker’s head into the tub filled with ice cold water,
demanding she tell him his breath wasn’t so bad and show it by
kissing him. She did. She was shaking. He paid her and she backed
out of the room holding her clothes to her stomach .
The trooper stirred in the backseat, still alive, but he startled 
Terry. Lucky he cuffed the guy, just in case, even though he thought
the trooper was nearly done bleeding all his blood. Terry glanced at
him, then back at the road, which had ended at a T, a Baptist
church straight ahead. Terry turned right, then looked at the trooper
again. This time, the eyes were open and staring back.
"It’s not fair. I’m going to die over this, and it’s not fair because
you two punks got lucky. Not even a real shoot out."
"Don’t say we got lucky just because you got sloppy."
A pained chuckle, sharp breath. "Say it’s some of both, then. But
still, a shoot out with dangerous criminals, okay, I can live with
dying like that."
Terry tapped the steering wheel, nervous rhythm, and kept quiet,
hoping the trooper would shut up and keep bleeding.
"My wife, my son-"
Terry said, "All right, I got that whole hero thing you want. You
probably tell them every night how you love them, ‘In case I don’t
come back.’ Like you get anything more than drunks and pot
runners."
"I don’t have to listen to this."
"That’s right. You can die. Go on, it’s easy."
The pond wasn’t far, because Terry remembered this road now,
one he’d run many nights while seeing a girl up this way back
when he was in high school, just got a car. She had long dark hair,
country girl accent, liked to go barefoot. Terry loved that perfect
walking cliché. He fucked her in her bedroom while her parents
were home, the radio loud on a contemporary gospel station. Yeah,
she used to live down one of these roads.
"Can’t you at least make it look like I died in a real fight, like I
had a chance?"
"Oh, man," Terry sighed, thinking Just die and Might as well give
him a last request and Don’t listen to him.
"Let me call in for help, and they’ll find me dead. Just, please,
don’t let them figure out the truth."
Terry blinked, blinked, held his eyes shut, then opened them.
Another look in the mirror. Lancaster still right on him, panic turned
to anger turned to determination. The trooper was right. It wasn’t
fair. Terry thought about it for another minute, then asked the
trooper, "You got another gun in here?"
• • •
Lancaster didn’t know why he kept so close. He had an urge to
the bump the damn cruiser, forgetting it was Terry in there instead
of a couple buzzcut troopers with those dead eyes that looked at
him like he was a bug on somebody’s burger, crawling around in
the mustard. 
Then there was a commotion, looked like Terry was slapping at
the backseat, and the brake lights flashed quick and the car
swerved. Something gone wrong. The car veered onto the roadside,
the steep incline, and stopped half a foot from a tree. Lancaster
pulled over and put the truck in park, jumped out just as Terry
sprang from the car, the trooper’s gun in held high, a small video
camera in his other hand, but he was trying to cover his head, run
low.
"Another gun!" Terry yelled. "He hid a fucking gun!"
Lancaster looked at the trooper, propped against the door and
pointing a .38 revolver at the window. One, two, three shots
slammed into the window, wild spider-webbing all over it, until one
slug made it out and dropped into the ground, puff of dirt rising.
Lancaster felt the adrenaline rush build and do his thinking for him.
Four steps up to the door, unloading his gun into the trooper’s
body. It jumped like popcorn the first two shots, but then just took
the rest lying there.
Terry ran up behind Lancaster. "We’ve got to go. I’ll wipe off my
prints, but then we’re out. He’s called for back-up."
"Where’d he get the radio?"
Terry twisted his mouth. "They carry two of everything."
"No they don’t."
Terry grabbed Lancaster’s shirt and pulled, pulled, saying, "A radio
under the backseat. Get in the truck. Let’s get the hell out of here!"
Lancaster turned for the truck, took two steps, then flinched and
spun, aimed, when he heard more shots. Terry had fired at the car,
making big holes in the doors.
"What was that?" Lancaster said.
"I thought he moved."
It sounded fishy. Lancaster thought something about the story
wasn’t fitting but it wasn’t a logical thing. Nothing practical. Just a
feeling. But he would stay out of jail at least tonight, could lay low
for a while. A lot less work to do since they wouldn’t have to
drown the car and burn the trooper. So things worked out well
enough. He walked back to his truck, slipped inside.
Terry wiped the door handle, the steering wheel, the trooper’s
gun. He tossed it into the dead man’s lap, which Lancaster thought
was a bit weird. Then he noticed the dead man’s hands, free and
spread wide.
Terry climbed into the truck, held the camera in his lap, and
Lancaster looked at him before pulling the stick into gear. "I thought
you cuffed him?"
"I did."
A grin curled. "You’re going to start lying to me now. What really
happened?"
Terry took off his cap, met his friends eyes and held the gaze, 
dead serious. "You remember that hooker you almost drowned?"
It took him a moment. "Yeah."
"Remember when her sister found you at the bar that night,
followed us outside and plugged you with the Tazer? Then kicked
the shit of you? You said that if anyone asked, I should say you got
jumped by bikers in the restroom. Let’s just say it was something
like that."
Lancaster nodded, accelerated and made a sharp turn, headed
south. "Good enough."