“You haven’t been to Goblin in thirty years.” Then he smiled. “Think you’ll recognize the city? Think the city will recognize you?”

He heard a sound like a hammer falling a short distance to the ground. He looked over his shoulder, deep into the warehouse, then climbed into the cabin at last.

“Don’t let mysterious boxes freak you out, Tommy,” he told himself. “And don’t follow directions from people who don’t know any better than you do.”

3

He started the drive on edge but didn’t really know it.

He’d made it out of the lot by ten fifty-two and the map told him Goblin was actually seventy-two miles away. Cool: $172.80. And sixteen years of driving trucks had given him an excellent sense of timing, if nothing else. He popped in a cassette tape, smoked the butt end of a cigarette he’d hidden in the ashtray, and figured he’d reach Goblin by eleven forty-five. At an average of eighty miles an hour for seventy-two miles, with some give or take here and there, he ought to pass between the topiaries at exactly eleven forty-five…giving him some time to drive the additional twelve miles from the city gates to 726 Rolling Hills Drive.

Destroy contents of box.

Tom rolled the window down partway and thought he could smell a storm coming. What was with the loony-tunes instructions? Seriously. Was he delivering something illegal? Sounded like it. He knew a bunch of drivers who sniffed cocaine to stay awake—hell, there were even guys blowing lines for full three-hour runs—but he ran a pretty clean ship himself. After sixteen years of successfully avoiding all the seedy shit, he wasn’t interested in transporting drugs no matter how good the money. It wasn’t that good.

He knew a guy back when he started driving, a grizzly sort named Wernor Mount, who got ten years for driving a hundred and something pounds of—

110 lbs.

Come on. Could the unfathomably heavy box be a hundred and ten pounds of…drugs? Tom didn’t think so. He didn’t want to think so and he actually didn’t believe that was the case. Jerry must have gone over all that with this Dean Crawford of 726 Rolling Hills Drive…right? Jerry didn’t want that happening any more than Tom did. And Jerry certainly didn’t want a driver-in-the-dark saying,

I had no idea what was in it. Jerry just told me to get it to Goblin by midnight.

Not even for triple the money. No way.

But Tom was getting triple. How much was Jerry making on this delivery? Would it be beneath Jerry to pocket a few grand for a sideshow like this? Maybe. Maybe Jerry and this guy Crawford worked it out that they’d get an innocent bystander (a patsy) to move the goods. Get the illegal stuff into the hands of someone who honestly knew nothing and couldn’t point any fingers.