Sallow City

by Jim Heskett

  Rourke flared his nostrils and squeezed the baseball in one hand so hard that pain shot up his elbow. Ethan slipped his earbuds back in and resumed bopping his head.

  “Hey,” Carter said, smacking Rourke on the shoulder. “You need to relax, dude. Your worrying is only going to put the finishing touches on that ulcer you’ve been grooming. All the contingencies are accounted for.”

  “I don’t even know what that means,” Rourke said.

  Ethan took his earbuds out again, oblivious. “We should go get some food after this.”

  Carter popped the glove box and took out a pistol. He checked the clip and tested the safety. “We’re just buying some assault rifles from some guy we don’t know. What could possibly go wrong?”

  Despite the tension, Rourke chuckled a little. They were running out of time to raid the casino, and he knew it. If this weapons dealer didn’t show up, they were in serious trouble. Even though Rourke himself had insisted on setting a hard date to get it done, now he doubted if their plan had legs.

  “Seriously,” Carter said, “why are you so agitated?”

  “Fair question,” Rourke said. He didn’t want his two friends to know how uncertain he felt about everything. What good would that do for their leader to show his weakness?

  Headlights flashed among the trees at the other end of the bridge.

  “Oh, thank Christ,” Rourke said. “He’s here.”

  Carter shoved the clip into the pistol and pushed his glasses up his nose as a big truck came into view. “Except why are there four of them?”

  Ethan paused his music and leaned forward, placing his fleshy hands on the headrests of the seats in front. “Great. Mexicans.”

  “What’s wrong with Mexicans?” Rourke said.

  Ethan grumbled. “These don’t look the like mow-your-lawn kind of Mexicans. More like the put-you-in-a-flaming-stack-of-tires kind.”

  “Damn, Ethan,” Carter said. “For someone who donates to the Anti-Defamation League, you’re pretty racist.”

  “Not the same thing,” Ethan said.

  “Guys. Stop it,” Rourke said. “This might turn ugly. There are two more heaters under the back seat, but please don’t walk out there with your guns raised. One Mexican, four Mexicans, it doesn’t matter. We need what these guys are selling, and I don’t want to spook them.”

  Ethan ducked and got the two revolvers, then offered one to Rourke.

  “You remember that piece-of-shit guy from Madison who shorted us on that bag of hydroponic last year?” Ethan said.

  Rourke remembered. “Of course. And I know what you’re getting at. This isn’t that same kind of situation. I don’t think you’ll get the chance to throw anyone off a second-story balcony today.”

  The truck rolled slowly toward them, crushing beer cans under oversized tires. The four men inside were stone-faced.

  Ethan pointed at the railing of the bridge, at the cars rolling by underneath. “We’ll see how it goes.”

  “Let’s try not to start shooting if we can help it, okay?” Rourke said.

  “No promises,” Ethan said as he slipped the gun into his waistband and got out of the car.

  “Christ on a cross,” Rourke said. Ethan could be so damn impulsive. He stowed the gun in his pocket and followed Ethan out of the car. Rourke held up a hand to keep them back. He, Carter, and Ethan all sat on the hood. When Ethan sat, the car dipped a few inches.

  “Be cool,” Rourke said. “Please.”

  “I will if they will,” Ethan said.

  The truck stopped a couple hundred feet away on the other side of the bridge. Four truck doors opened and four men got out. All of them wearing white headbands and identical button-down shirts and khakis. Some kind of gang thing, or an insane barber shop quartet.

  “Ethan,” Rourke whispered, “who the hell are these guys?”

  Ethan shrugged and said nothing. The four men walked in unison, like troops in battle. They kept their heads high.

  “I don’t like this,” Carter said. Rourke agreed, but he kept his mouth shut.

  The wind picked up and a discarded Halo Burger fast food bag went skittering across the bridge. A few french fries tumbled along after it.

  “Which one of you is Ethan?” shouted one of the four men. In addition to his bandanna, this one had a teardrop tattoo under his eye. He stepped in front of the other three.

  Ethan raised his hand. “That would be me. You’re friends with Scully?”

  Teardrop shook his head. “I don’t know nobody named Scully. I’m just here to do some business. You’re supposed to be expecting us. If you’re here for something else, we going to turn around and get back in our truck.”

  Rourke took a couple steps forward, and two of the bandanna crew reached for guns. Rourke held up his hands in surrender. “We’re here to do business, too. No need to leave. Our friend said you had three untraceable rifles plus ammunition. Is that right?”

  Teardrop flicked his head at one of his associates, who jogged back to the truck. The man returned with a duffel bag, which he slung onto the ground a few feet in front of Teardrop. Teardrop then dropped to one knee and unzipped the bag. He pulled out a sleek black rifle with a wooden stock. A thing of beauty.

  “AK-47,” Teardrop said. “They’re a little old, but they work, no problem. You won’t find anything better for this price.”

  Teardrop waved Rourke forward. Ethan opened his mouth, probably to protest, but Rourke held up a hand to silence his friend and then crossed the bridge. Stopped a few feet away from the duffel bag.

  Up close, Rourke could see that Teardrop had a spiderweb of scars crisscrossing his face, as if someone had taken a cheese grater to his cheek. The teardrop tattoo was misshapen and not completely filled in.

  He grinned up at Rourke and pointed at the rifle. “These are good quality. Untraceable.”

  Rourke knelt. “Fifteen hundred, right? For the guns and the rounds?”

  Teardrop shook his head. “Two thousand.”

  “Bullshit,” Ethan said from behind.

  Teardrop slid the gun back in the duffel and zipped it. “This is the price, my friend. If you don’t want to pay the price, my people and I will go. We don’t have to be here, exposing ourselves like this.”

  Before Rourke could respond, Ethan advanced, and so did Carter. In turn, the other three bandanna-wearers joined Teardrop. In only a few seconds, they had all gathered in the middle of the bridge.

  Teardrop’s crew drew their guns.

  Carter and Ethan also pulled out their weapons.

  Rourke rose to his feet, with his arms extended to hold back his two friends. What would they accomplish by shooting up this bridge out here today? Stupid testosterone driving everyone to act like children. “Okay, let’s all be cool. We had agreed with Scully on one price, and you’ve said it’s another. We can work this out.”

  “I told you,” Teardrop said as he stood. “I don’t know nobody named Scully. This is the price. There ain’t gonna be any haggling or hemming and hawing. You’ve seen the merchandise, now you’re going to buy it.”

  “Screw this,” Ethan said. “This is a crock. You made us waste time coming out here and now you’re trying to hustle us.”

  Rourke thought he might barf all over the duffel bag. He could practically feel Ethan’s anger rising in pulses of energy. The big guy was likely to shoot all four of them for mouthing off, whether the deal happened or not. “Ethan, damn it, calm down.”

  Rourke reached in his pocket for the bank envelope. He counted his bills and held them out. “All I have is eighteen hundred.”

  Teardrop looked at Carter and Ethan. “What about you two? Have two hundred to pitch in?”

  “Eat shit,” Ethan said, and Rourke was surprised when Teardrop smiled at this.

  Teardrop stared at the money, then slipped his hands into his pockets. “Okay, then. Eighteen will work. We can make this trade, then my friends and I are going to leave. If these guns ever come back on us, we will hunt do
wn and kill each and every single person you know.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  A split second after the bullet sliced the air next to Micah’s head, he slammed the motel room door closed. Swinging the door put his upper body off balance, and with Frank’s weight pulling him down, they both tumbled backward, landing on the bed.

  Another bullet hit the front door of the room but didn’t penetrate it. The wood splintered, just below the peephole. Bits of wood dust hung in the air.

  “Can you stand?” Micah asked Frank.

  “I think so,” Frank said as he rolled over onto his elbows. He pressed against the bed and tried to steady himself on his feet. “There’s no back door to this room. We can’t stay in here.”

  Micah crept to the window and peeled back the edge of the curtain, but could only see a thin sliver of the parking lot. A few cars, but no people. The two wings of the motel bordered the parking lot on two sides like a steel square ruler. A third side of the parking lot exited to the street, and the fourth backed up to a fence and some trees. The motel itself stood three stories, with exterior walkways and enclosed stairs at the end of each wing. If they could get out of this room, they’d have a chance.

  Micah angled his head to look at the other wing of the motel, but couldn’t discern anything useful. The shots had seemed like they’d come from the parking lot, but he couldn’t survey enough of it to be sure.

  Another gunshot cracked the window a foot from Micah’s head. He spun around, and Frank was leaning against the bed, barely upright. His food poisoning was going to make moving him around a challenge. Frank’s eyes were slits and his chest heaved in time with his noticeable breathing.

  “Can you walk?” Micah said.

  “Looks like I don’t have much choice.” His voice sounded even more grumbly than usual.

  Micah’s thoughts raced. He tried his best to settle himself and work through it, but the bullets occasionally pelting the room didn’t help. The only way they could leave was by the front door. There was at least one attacker with a gun who had a clear line of sight to their motel room. So they would have to distract this attacker somehow and slip past him.

  “Right. We’re getting out of here. The closest stairs are to the left from the breezeway. Out there, it’s a straight shot down to the parking lot. We can cut left at the edge and make it around the front of the building.”

  “We need to…” Frank trailed off, grimacing in pain.

  Micah snatched a chair from the desk and held it above his head. “I know, Frank. Don’t worry, I’ve got this. You open that door, I’m chucking this thing, and then we’re off. Okay?”

  Frank nodded and rose to his feet. “I can do this.”

  “I know you can.”

  Frank yanked back the door and Micah hurled the chair with all his strength. It clanged off the railing and tumbled down one flight to the ground. The metal railing reverberated in both directions, like a tuning fork.

  A couple of gunshots followed, and Micah dashed out onto the breezeway, hoping like hell that Frank had the strength to follow him.

  He cut left toward the stairs, and he did hear Frank behind him, his heavy footfalls thudding on the concrete breezeway, making it shimmy.

  Noises came from below.

  Micah reached the stairs and spun to see Frank nearly hyperventilating as he tried to keep pace. His eyes looked glazed over. Despite it all, he pushed through and met Micah at the stairs as the attackers barked orders at each other.

  Micah made out two distinct voices. Tried to get a look at the parking lot, but his vision was a blur of motion.

  He grabbed Frank’s hand and pulled him down the stairs, hustling around the bend toward the front of the motel. They skirted the fence line to reach the alley.

  No gunshots or footfalls coming after them. They hadn’t been seen.

  Micah and Frank rounded the building as a chorus of new voices arose. Shouts and now screams of motel inhabitants echoed around the building. Micah dragged Frank along the alley, toward the motel office.

  “Frank, where’s your .357?”

  Frank closed his eyes. “Crap. I wasn’t thinking. It’s back in the room. I’m so sorry.”

  Micah gritted his teeth as he threw back the office door, and guided Frank into the office. Motel counter on one side, a set of chairs and a continental breakfast bar on the other. Past the chairs were elevators and a hallway.

  Micah sat him in a chair, and then Frank groaned while he clenched his side. His eyes rolled back in his head as he tried to get comfortable.

  A distraught man behind the office counter was babbling into the telephone. When Micah looked his way, the man slammed his hand against a button on the wall, which caused a gate to slide down from the ceiling.

  “I’m talking to the police right now!”

  “I’m not the shooter, damn it,” Micah said.

  “Micah,” Frank said, growling. “We have to hurry. We need to get to the car and get the hell out of here. Forget the gun in the room and find out how we can sneak to the car.”

  “It’s okay,” Micah said. “You stay here. I’m going to deal with this.”

  Frank nodded and slumped into the chair, beaten and exhausted. Micah looked around the manager’s office for ideas. He didn’t have much to work with. An out of order sign hung between the two elevators.

  The hallway beyond the elevators led to the outside, back to the parking lot they’d come from. There were no inner stairs to reach the second floor. His hand instinctively went to the bump in his pocket where Boba Fett should be, but he found the pocket smooth. Like Frank’s gun, Boba was back in the motel room. He felt naked without the little plastic space bounty hunter.

  Was it worth going back to get Boba? No, that would be crazy. Still, Micah wanted it. Wanted that comfort of knowing his trinket was with him.

  He crept toward the door to the outside, his eyes on the safety glass cutout. Looking for movement outside.

  When he was close enough to bring the parking lot into focus, he spotted two heads poking out above the trunk of a small sedan. This was good news. They hadn’t figured out that Frank and Micah had escaped around the side of the building. They would soon, though. They might have only stopped to reload their weapons or to make a plan to search the motel.

  Either way, they wouldn’t sit there forever.

  Micah was outnumbered and outgunned. The cops would be here at any second. If these two gunmen died in a shootout or escaped when the sirens approached, Micah would lose any chance of getting information. Who these guys were. If they were connected to the Crossroads casino people, or beautiful backstabber Olivia, or maybe even the cartel.

  They might know the identity of the lookalike in the morgue. If Micah had a chance to learn what they knew, he had to take it.

  He pressed open the door while the two gunmen remained hidden behind the car. Thirty feet in front of Micah, only the car and a stretch of motel back porch separating them. What were they waiting for?

  He considered taking them on directly. But that would be suicide. He had to sneak back up to the room to get Frank’s gun. It was the only way he could even the odds.

  He crept forward, glancing at the stairs. The bulk of the car kept him hidden, but if he made a break for it, it would be too easy for them to gun him down. He needed a distraction but was all out of chairs to throw.

  Gunshots blasted down from above. On the second floor of the motel, from a few rooms down from Micah’s. The two gunmen returned fire, stepping out into the open to expose themselves.

  Micah jumped forward to get a look. The two gunmen were wearing suits, just like the guards at the casino. White men. No reason to think they were cartel.

  Another shot came from above and Micah’s eyes flicked up to see a man wearing a bathrobe, his wild hair jutting out at odd angles. He was gripping the breezeway railing with one hand. In his other hand was one of the biggest pistols Micah had ever seen. Magnum .44, maybe, although Micah was too far away t
o know for sure.

  “Goddamn bastards!” the man shouted between blasts. His round belly jiggled with each pull of the hand cannon’s trigger.

  Didn’t take Micah long to figure out what was happening here. Some kind of vigilante currently staying at the motel had heard the commotion and had come out shooting.

  The vigilante clipped one of the gunmen in the leg, who screamed and dropped to the ground. The other gunmen stepped in front of him and squeezed off a shot which hit the vigilante in the neck. Fountain of blood streaming down his wifebeater t-shirt, he bent over the breezeway railing and tumbled down to the parking lot. This amateur had never stood a chance, exposing himself like that.

  Micah ducked back behind the front of the car as the standing gunman tried to help his injured colleague. He slung his arm over the guy and started dragging him toward the edge of the parking lot. Streaks of blood on the ground followed them.

  Sirens echoed in the distance.

  And the injured gunman had dropped his pistol, a compact Glock 43. It gleamed in the sun, a few feet from a parked motorcycle.

  Micah scrambled after it as the gunmen lurched toward the fence at the edge of the lot. He snatched up the Glock and kept his footfalls quiet. Didn’t matter much, because the screams and shouts of the motel inhabitants made everything a chaotic mess of sound. More people had wandered out of their rooms, cellphones to ears. Micah kept his head down, trying not to show his face to anyone above him.

  The attackers slipped around the fence, and Micah hurried to catch up with them. He paused at the edge of the fence when he heard voices. They were talking at a normal level, but with street noise, Micah couldn’t make out any of the words. Just a babble of sounds.

  After a few seconds, he abandoned trying to listen and raised his new gun. With a deep breath to steel himself, he jumped around the edge of the fence.

  Only one gunman was there, sitting, resting against the fence, a pool of blood gathering around his leg. Big blond mustache that curled around his lips like a handlebar.