Midnight Haul by Max Allan Collins

going to have a nasty bruise.”
    “No kidding.”
    She helped him up; he felt a little dizzy. She went and got her camera off the ground while he tried to stay on his feet. Then she walked him toward the Datsun.
    “Go fuck yourself,” Crane said.
    “What?”
    “That’s what you told that guy. I can’t believe you sometimes.”
    “I guess I do lack tact,” Boone admitted. “Are you starting to understand?”
    They were at the car.
    “Understand what?”
    She opened the door on the rider’s side. “The seriousness of this.”
    He touched the side of his face. “I understand pain, if that’s what you mean.” He got in the car. She went around the driver’s side and got in.
    “I also understand why that guy was pissed off at us,” Crane said. “Like anybody in his place would be.”
    “You can rationalize anything, can’t you, Crane? Even getting the shit beat out of you.”
    She started the car. Crane looked back at the barrels, standing on top of each other, as if to get a better look at them as they drove away.

Chapter Twelve
    They were parked alongside the road again. The midnight skyline of the Kemco plant was a study in plastic and steel and soft-focus green-yellow-aqua light, against a backdrop of smoke and smokestacks.
    “Why doesn’t it make any noise?” Crane asked. “It’s creepy that it doesn’t make any noise.”
    “It isn’t a noisy operation,” Boone shrugged. She was leaned back casually in the Datsun’s driver’s seat, munching on sunflower seeds. The near-darkness they were sitting in made for interesting shadows on her face; she looked quite lovely, for a girl, woman, eating sunflower seeds.
    “What are they making in there, anyway?” he asked her.
    “Herbicides. Pesticides. Plastics. Lots of things.”
    “Useful things,” he countered.
    “Right. Like Agent Orange.”
    “Are they still making that?”
    “Yes, and PCB, until a year ago.”
    “Isn’t that a little unfair?”
    “Bringing up the recent past? I don’t think so. I don’t think there should be a statute of limitations, just because the murder you committed was ten years ago.”
    Crane said nothing.
    “I don’t object to everything they make. I know a lot of farmers depend on the stuff… though personally I can’t see eating anything that isn’t organically grown.”
    “Jeez, who’d have guessed?”
    “What’s with you, Crane?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You’re really on the rag tonight.”
    “I guess I am. Sorry.”
    They sat. Boone ate her sunflower seeds, watched the loading-dock area. It seemed a quiet night: not a Kemco truck to be seen. Crane was still studying the Kemco plant itself, fighting ambivalent feelings. His face hurt, from where he’d been hit.
    “What are those things?” he asked her, pointing.
    “Those fat silo things? Storage vats.”
    “What’s in them?”
    “Waste, I guess.”
    “They’re fucking huge.”
    “That they are.”
    “You can’t be right. There isn’t that much waste coming out of this one plant.”
    “You been reading my research material, Crane. You’re up on how much hazardous waste is produced in this country every year.”
    Yes he was. Thirty-two million tons. But somehow it seemed obnoxious of her to mention it right now.
    “I also know,” Crane said, “that this plant, like most chemical processing plants, has its own waste-disposal unit. They are
not
dumping all that shit illegally.”
    “Of course they aren’t. Most of it gets dumped in the river.”
    “What river?”
    “The Delaware River.”
    “Where’s that?”
    She pointed back behind the Kemco plant. “We can drive straight into it, if you like… we aren’t a mile from it.”
    Feeling foolish, he said, “The stuff’s processed when it goes in, isn’t it? It’s probably cleaner than the river it’s going into.”
    “Maybe. But that’s not what we’re here for. We’re here to find out about the stuff they
can’t
run through their disposal unit. The stuff they