by Paul Blades
“Sure, sure,” Moondog said. “But I just gotta tell ya, the way you busted out and all that, I mean, you’re the man, you know what I mean?”
“Thanks, but….”
“Okay, okay,” Moondog replied. “I gotta lock up my bitch first or she might run off. Last time it took me three days to find her and then after I paid her back for runnin’ off, she was out of action for a week.”
Jack looked over at the girl. She looked maybe 24 or 25, but she had a lot of mileage on her. Moondog seemed to read Jack’s mind.
“And anyways, I’m dumping her off to a guy who runs street whores in Santa Fe at the end of the week. I got a little Salvadoran girl all lined up. Less trouble. You know what I mean? My boys have been breaking her in for a couple of weeks. She’s about ripe by now.”
“Nice to hear it,” Jack replied dully.
“I’ll be right back,” Moondog said.
Jack watched him go up to the whore in the corner. He spoke to her briefly and she got up from her stool. Moondog held the door for her as she walked unhappily into the back room. Moondog followed her in and came back out a few minutes later. “I’ll be back,” he said to the bartender.
Jack followed him out of the bar. “Where’s your car?” Moondog asked. And then he said as they walked into the parking lot, “No, don’t tell me. It’s the Lexus, right?”
“Yeah,” Jack answered.
“You do know how to go in style,” Moondog said, “but you lack something in subtlety.”
“It was the best I could do,” Jack answered.
“The broads in the trunk?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll bet its getting a little stuffy in there by now. Just make sure you don’t stop off and pick up any more on our way outta here,” he joked.
Jack was not in a joking mood. He just stared back.
“Okay,” Moondog said, “here’s the drill. I’m not taking you in. I don’t rank that high, yet. I’m taking you to a guy, his name’s Mouse. He’ll take you in. So just follow me, okay?”
“Okay,” Jack answered.
“Man oh man!” Moondog blurted out. “I can’t believe it’s really you! There’ll be makin’ songs up about you! Say hello to those senoritas down Mexico way for me. Maybe I’ll get down there someday and we can toss back a few, huh?”
“That’d be fine,” Jack replied impatiently.
“See ya around, partner,” Moondog said, holding out his hand.
Jack took it and shook it.
He went up to the Lexus and popped the trunk. It was dark outside, but he could see his two captives squiggling inside. He reached in and checked their bindings to make sure they were secure. The older one was mewing and crying. The other was silent.
“It won’t be long now,” he told them, more for the younger one’s benefit than the older. He chided himself for not remembering her name. It was Carolyn, he thought, or something like that. Her pocketbook was in the back seat of the car. He would have to look it up again. He would be damned if he would ask her.
He closed the lid, got in the driver’s seat and started the car. Moondog had started his chopper and with a loud roar he advanced out of the parking lot turning right. Jack followed him.
“It won’t be long now,” Carly thought. Not long for what? Whatever it was, it wouldn’t be good for her. Nor for the woman who was lying next to her. Carly assumed that she was the owner of the new car they were in. The man had solved the problem of everybody knowing what car he was driving pretty fast. And he had taken another prisoner. What did that mean for her?
The woman had barely stopped whining and sobbing since Carly had been plopped down next to her. She squirmed and jerked and moaned and groaned almost the whole time. Carly wanted somehow to shut her up. The only good thing about being shut up in the trunk had been the quiet and the fact that she could take her mind off the presence of the man for a little while. During the ride, when she had been alone in the trunk of the other car, she had, after a half hour or so of self pity and intermittent crying, deadened herself. It was the only way to deal with the solitude, the confinements and the looming unknown. Being with this other woman had prevented her from doing that. It made riding in the trunk twice as miserable.
She had had the feeling that they were close to some destination the man had plotted out for himself even before he had announced it. The car had been still and quiet for a long time. She had deduced that he was meeting someone, probably a member of the gang he was a member of, the Rogues, as the newsman had called it. She had never heard of them, although she had heard of others, the Pagans and, of course, the Hell’s Angels. She assumed they were, as an aggregate, as cruel, corrupt and remorseless as her captor. What would they do to her once they got to their headquarters or hideout or whatever? Would he turn her over to them? Was she to be the price of his liberty, an exchange for their help in getting him to Mexico?
The presence of the other woman certainly raised that as a possibility. Her mere presence in the trunk of the car instead of dead in the trunk of the other meant that the man had kept her for some further purpose. He never did anything on a whim. It made no sense otherwise since, so close to his goal, he would have to dispose of her soon anyway.
Carly’s blood ran cold. The ending she had so much feared was rapidly approaching. She had served her purpose, at least as far as the man was concerned. Now he would be getting rid of her. But what fate would she meet at the hands of his friends? Would they use her until they got tired of her and then bury her somewhere out in the desert? They couldn’t keep her around forever. Sooner or later she would escape. They couldn’t let that happen.
For the hundredth time, she struggled at her bonds and suppressed a wail of unhappiness. She had been in the trunk for hours, had endured utter loneliness and dismal fear for so long. Now, as she felt the car wheels running again along the asphalt beneath her, her destiny was coming closer and closer with each passing second. How long did she have? An hour? Two? Probably less. It was so horribly frustrating to think that their pictures were all over the news, the whole country was looking for him, and yet he had slipped by them, the police, the FBI, everyone, so easily. She had thought all day, while she rode up front all bound, silenced and blind, and later, riding so cruelly confined in the trunk, of all the cars they passed and which passed them. Normal, everyday people were in them, people who had control of their own lives, their own future, and her an abject prisoner, mere feet away from them, with none.
They undoubtedly listened to the news with a sense of outrage and sympathy for her, remarking to one another how awful it was that something so terrible should happen. They undoubtedly congratulated themselves on their safety, their immunity from such horrible things that always happened to other, less fortunate beings. In a week or two it would pass from their consciousness. “It’s too bad they never found that girl,” they would think, and then forget. “What a horrible thing to have happened,” they would say to each other, and then move on with their lives. And the police officers and FBI men and women who had engaged in the search for her would move on to their next case and the details of her abduction and mysterious disappearance would be filed away in some cabinet to be looked at every once in a while wistfully. “It’s too bad,” they would say. “It’s a shame.”
More than once she had felt sorry that the man hadn’t killed her. Her torment would be over. Neither the man nor the men he was going to deliver her to would be able to hurt her any more. And the worst part of it was that she probably was wholly without any power to force them to foreshorten her ordeal. She had no power to resist them. They would beat her and torture her until she submitted. And she would submit, just as she had submitted to the man who had captured her, so frightened of the violence he could mete out that she could not summon one iota of rebellion. And he was just one. It would be all the worst when there were many.
The woman next to her would not stop whining and moaning. It was driving Carly mad. Her only recompense
was the knowledge that she would soon experience the things that she had. She would surrender herself too. They would use her and fuck her and whip her. They would strip her naked and bind her with chains and ropes. “Then she’ll have something to cry about,” Carly thought. And maybe, just maybe, they would pay less attention to her as a result.
Moondog led Jack along a series of two lane county roads, turning here and there. Jack kept a close watch in his rear view mirror for any signs that they were being followed. Every time a car appeared behind them, sooner or later it would turn off or they would turn off and the other vehicle would go on straight. Jack was so nervous his hands were sweating. Sanctuary was so close he could almost taste it. For three days he had lived on the razor’s edge, fearing that any minute somehow he would be found out and the final showdown erupt. He wished he had asked Moondog how long it would take to get where they were going. He wanted to know how long he had to sweat it out.
And he thought of the girl. It had been a magical time he had spent with her, just the two of them in their own universe. Once they got to the safe house, all that would come to an end. The other men would see her and want her. That bothered him. He didn’t want anybody using her until he was done with her. What happened to her after that was not his affair, but he didn’t want to be thinking of the other men using her, fucking her, while he was nearby, where he would have to see her afterwards and wonder whether she panted and moaned and shuddered with pleasure for them as she had done with him. He would be expected to share her though. And though he had rank, and rank had its privileges, it was really former rank and maybe notoriety. That would only take him so far. And once he arrived at the safe house, he would be utterly dependent on them. If he crossed them, disrespected them, they could find a hole in the desert for him too.
About 40 minutes after they had begun their ride, Moondog veered his bike off the road and stopped in front of a small, run down diner. He pulled into the parking lot, stopped his bike for a second and waved. Then he edged the bike out to the road again and went back the way they had come. A few moments later, a man stepped out of the dark as if he had sprung up from the depths. He tapped on the passenger side window with his ring. Jack popped open the door locks and he got in.
“Mouse,” he said. He was wearing a green military style jacket and jeans. He put out his hand and Jack shook it briefly.
“Turn right outta here. I’ll tell ya where to turn,” he said.
Jack followed his directions. He kept checking his rear view mirror to see if they were being followed. After a while, he noticed a beat up old pick up trailing them about 3 or 4 hundred yards behind.
“There’s somebody behind us,” Jack said.
“That’s one of our guys,” Mouse replied. “He’s just making sure we don’t have a tail. He’ll drop off in a little bit.”
Jack accepted the explanation and continued to drive. His heart was pounding and his mouth was dry. “Get a hold of yourself, Jack,” he told himself. It was funny, when he had no future, or when the possibility of having one was still remote, resting largely on the chance that he would not be spotted by law enforcement, he had been almost calm, having overcome all of his anxieties. Having the girl to fuck probably had a lot to do with that. But now that there was a good probability that his life would go on, he was as nervous as a kitten.
How would he live? He didn’t speak a single word of Spanish except for maybe adios and via con Dios. He had a little bit of money, and he would probably get more for the woman he had kidnapped, the jewels, the guns he had stolen and the car, but money had a habit of running out fast. He needed some form of transportation, preferably a bike. He needed a place to stay. He would need to have some social connections with somebody or he would go mad really fast. And then there were the Mexican police. If they thought there was more profit for them in turning him in, he would be gone in a New York minute. Somehow, he needed to be able to finance the cost of their inaction.
And pussy. He needed that too. He knew there was plenty of it down Mexico way, and it was cheap, at least as far as American standards went, but it still cost something. It had been a long time since he had had to pull his meat to get off. Even in prison he had had sex every day. These were all things that he hadn’t really thought about until now. Maybe it was better to go out in a blaze of glory than to die a little bit more every day as he tried to scrounge out a living in a strange country. Maybe, after all, he would have been better off in prison where he had three hots and a flop, sex almost any time he wanted it and the respect and fear of everyone around him. Everything was certain. Each day was like the last. There were no decisions to make. You knew where you would be at the end of the day, every day, week after week, month after month and year after year.
Jack looked over at his passenger. He was staring out the window, not dully, but without expression. This guy Mouse was a lot different from Moondog, he thought. The exact opposite. He didn’t chatter, he had no exuberance. He was all business. There was something a little creepy about it. On the other hand, he was so on edge that he wouldn’t have been a very good conversationalist anyway.
They drove for about another 45 minutes. The roads kept getting more desolate and the signs of civilization more rare. They came up to an old, ramshackle, wooden building that looked like it had been abandoned years ago. Mouse told Jack to pull into the parking area in front of it. He told Jack to stop the car and put out the lights. They sat there for about 15 minutes, saying nothing. Then, without comment, the man got out of the car. He went up to what looked like a solid wall of the broken down building and put his shoulder to it.
To Jack’s surprise, the wall rolled open. The man waved to jack, indicating that he should pull the car into the vacated space. Jack did as he was told. He watched from the rear view mirror as Mouse took a broom that had been laying against the wall and swept over their tire tracks. He then pulled the wall of the shack closed, sealing them inside the building. He walked up to the back wall and it too opened up. Mouse pushed it aside and waved to Jack to proceed. Jack pulled the car through the opening. It emptied onto the beginning of a packed down trail. Mouse closed up the wall, hustled back up to the car and got back in.
“Okay,” he said. “Just follow the road. There’s plenty of light so turn off your headlamps.”
Jack did as he was told. The moon was sailing almost full at about halfway up the sky. It cast a soft light on the craggy and rough terrain. Deep shadows spread over the trail at parts and Jack was careful to limp the car along, peering intently ahead of him. The trail twisted and turned. At one point it turned right, but Mouse told him to get on a smaller, apparently more disused one on the left. When they had crossed into it, he made Jack stop the car again and, using a big tuft of tumbleweed, wiped out the traces of their passage.
Fifteen minutes later, the car came up over a rise. It was then that Jack saw it. The hacienda was nestled into a sort of box canyon. It was entirely invisible from the approach they had taken until you were directly on top of it. The windows were blacked out, but you could see just a peek or two of light emanating from the building. A small vent stack on the roof was emitting a tiny puff of smoke, probably, Jack thought, from a kitchen stove.
As Jack pulled down the hill, he saw a number of motorcycles and pick-ups lined up in an orderly fashion about 40 or 50 yards away from the building. They were tucked into a cut out made on the hill that formed a semi-circle around the house. They would be invisible from the air.
Mouse directed Jack to pull the car into a wide space between two pick-ups. Jack shut off the engine and issued a deep sigh of relief.
“Welcome to La Casa Picaros,” Mouse said. He clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re home, man!”
CHAPTER FIVE
Yeah, he was home. It was hard to believe. He had travelled about 1500 miles or more, the most wanted man in America, and he had made it. Home. It just sounded so nice.
Mouse opened his door and got out. Jack followed suit.
“You can bring in your things later,” Mouse said. “The boys are all waiting for you.”
“Well, there’s some things in the trunk I need to get out,” Jack said.
“You mean the girl?” Mouse asked. “You still got her?”
“Yeah, and another one I picked up on the way.”
Mouse issued something close to a smile. “Well, the more the merrier,” he said.
Jack beeped open the trunk. Two men had emerged from the house. It was Rocker and Chaz. “Hey man,” Rocker said exuberantly, “Let me shake your hand.” Jack turned and extended his arm. Rocker took his hand and shook it vigorously. Chaz was next. Jack was starting to pick upon the excitement of the moment.
“What ya got in the trunk?” Chaz asked.
Jack stepped away so that they could see. The girl and the woman were squirming and sniffling. The woman’s eyes were wide open with fear.
“Hey, lookie here, Rocker, the guy’s brought his own amusement park,” Chaz said excitedly.
“This the one that was on the TV?” Rocker asked, pointing at the girl.
“That’s her,” Jack answered.
“You cut off her hair,” Chaz noted. “She was a cute little blond if I remember right. Now she’s a redhead.”
“It’ll grow back,” Jack said.
“Let’s get in the house,” Mouse offered. When Ike wasn’t around anything that Mouse said was akin to an order.
Jack bent over the edge of the trunk and untied the girl’s ankles. She was blubbering and crying as he lifted her out of the trunk. She could hardly stand.
“I’ll hold her,” Chaz said, taking hold of her arm.
Jack went back in the trunk and released the ankles of the woman. She was blubbering too. Jack pulled her from the trunk. “Hey, she’s nice,” Rocker said. He reached down and took hold of the hem of her skirt and lifted it up until her white silk panties were visible. “And she’s got legs that go all the way up,” he joked.
