Down Jersey Drive-shaft

Chapter One: How They Met (or A New Job Awaits You in Sunny South Jersey)

Late Autumn 1944

"South Jersey... it's more than just Camden and Atlantic City. But, I guess Ay-Cee is a good place to start the story," she says with a florid Italian accent.

Benny Haskins turns his big head her way as the Chevy Stylemaster they sit in speeds down Forty Nine. Huge hands rest placidly on worn out denim jeans. "Story, huh? Look, Frederica -"

"It's Crank. Everybody calls me Crank," she says, eyes on the road while she drives. Her only movement is a barely noticeable flick of her head, a vain attempt to get the straight black hair out of her face. She pushes the car like a cop in hot pursuit along a glassy road this rainy evening, this dangerous evening.

"Okay, Crank," Benny states in an elevated tone. He rubs his hand across the top of his brown and gray buzz cut. He thinks for a second about helping the young lady get the hair out of her eyes, but shoots down the thought. "Why do people call you that? You seem like an alright kid, sans the violence. Are you typically unhappy?"

She immediately turns to face him, while the powerful car races down the road at one-hundred miles an hour plus. She's got very white skin for an Italian, hair like a moonless night and deep-set eyes. She looks oddly enough like the wife in that Charles Addams' comic strip, scary and beautiful all at once. Her mood is constantly dire.

"Why do you ask that? I'm happy right now," she poses with a blank face, staring into his confused eyes.

"Nevermind," he grumbles, shaking his head and waving his huge hands around the car's space. "You grabbed me outta the poultry farm from where I was working, harassed my boss Mister Harmon, and for what, because we gotta go to the Army airfield in Millville to pick up someone - - or something- - called Milkman?" He laughs sarcastic for a good while, and then holds on for dear life as Crank takes her souped-up baby around a bend like a pro. Ice water swishes past the passenger window. Benny chokes.

"That's the short of it!" Crank answers, a bit of anger in the tone. Somehow, the lady could drive like a maniac and still fit in time to adjust her black lace gloves and cashmere sweater of cream with roses across the shoulders. "They got smart this time around. Didn't fly in directly across the river from Philly, but arced around the Shore and snuck into Egg Harbor and Cape May. I had to get out of the Cape and find help, so I bolted for Atlantic City, which brings me to where I began. That was the last order I got. Hand me that hat on the backseat, please."

Benny grabs the black soldiers' hat, noticing the badge on it is not any military branch he'd ever heard of and bearing the initials 'ST'. She places it down snug on her head, and immediately looks like an alluring chauffeur. He doesn't know what to make of this chick.

"Anyway," she begins, "you've been reading the papers, right? Weird stuff started happening right after Pearl Harbor three years ago. Stuff like that?"

"Yeah, I've seen a lot, and assumed even more. But that's typical of government cover ups. I flew with the Ninety-Fourth in the Great War, and there's always things they won't tell a guy. So what?"

"Vecchio, what I've got to show you is a lot stranger than a government secret. Let me slow down La Donna a little so I can talk."

The Stylemaster powers down to a mean seventy-five. Benny wonders why the car's hood is so high, seats so jacked up and why the engine revs like one from a fighter plane. The chick did say she was a mechanic when she came literally kicking his door down. He thinks about whether he should have brought more from his house than a mere change of clothes, flashlight and his old 1911 handgun. Benny thinks one too many thoughts on this unfriendly drive across the dead of South Jersey night. As the car speeds over wet asphalt, Haskins regrets not writing his will before ditching Ay-Cee.