by Harry Bryant
I helped him along. "Okay, maybe it goes like this," I said. "Deputy Hackman gets nervous about all the drugs floating around the valley. Goes up to confront the man in charge. Gets popped and dumped for his trouble. But then something happens to Wilson, which makes it hard for him to deny any of this story, right? Maybe someone killed him in self-defense. Right after they got shot."
Clint narrowed his eyes, and his gaze hovered on my left shoulder, where the bullet from Sullivan's gun had gouged out a chunk of me. "Oh, this?" I pointed at the dried blood on my shirt. "Different gun."
I pointed at his leg. "The bullet in your leg? That came from Wilson's gun. The gun on the counter over there."
Clint looked, and I could see the wheels turning in his head. "It's not enough," he said finally. "There's still . . ."
"McCready and the rest of the CMFMC?" I nodded. "I know. What to do about them? If only you had someone who knew something about their distribution network who was willing to talk. Someone who realized everything was about to go to shit, and wanted to get on the right side of things before it was too late. Man, don't you wish you had someone like that?"
I pushed off from the table and came over to Clint. "You remember Marty?" I asked. "The kid who works the desk here. The one who called you and told you get your ass over here?"
Clint nodded slowly.
"He's in the back room. He's heard everything. He knows the gun is on the counter. He's probably wondering right now if he can get to it before you can. He's also wondering if I'm right. If he should be thinking about getting out before it all goes really, really south."
Clint stared at me, his breathing quick and shallow.
I put my foot on the pillow and pressed down. He screamed and writhed under me. I let him yell for a minute before I let off. Clint collapsed on his side, whimpering and moaning. There was more blood on the floor and on the pillow.
"That's for the three thousand dollars you took from me," I said.
And I walked out of the hotel.
I threw the saddlebags from Clint's bike onto the passenger seat of Dolly's car. It started on the first try, and I let the engine warm up for a second, idly watching the lobby. Clint was crawling toward the counter, but it was taking him a long time. Eventually, he'd get to the gun.
Which was empty. The last bullet was in his leg.
I doubted Marty knew the first thing about firing guns anyway.
I slipped off the handbrake and drove out of the parking lot, heading north. Going to find the 101.
In the backseat, the blanket moved. Cautiously, a head poked up. "Is it over?" Dolly asked.
I glanced up in the rearview mirror and smiled at her pale face. There was dried blood in her hair. Wilson had actually tried to shoot her in the shack, but he had missed.
"Yeah," I said. "It's over."
"Where are we going?" she asked.
I glanced at the saddlebags on the seat next to me. I could smell the faint odor of men's cologne and dog urine. "North," I said. "I thought maybe we'd find a place with sandy beaches and decent waves."
"Are we going to get naked there?" she asked.
The lesson Our Illustrious Leader of the First Church of the Holy Relic had learned during his year of solitary contemplation was that it was easy to be alone. Gloria had learned that lesson too, during all those years of working in the adult film industry. And they both thought that finding someone who understood that isolation and who wanted to save you from it was nigh impossible.
I looked at Dolly again in the mirror, and thought about surfing and lying in the sand.
"Every day," I said. "Just you and me. Every day."
I liked to think that maybe they were wrong about that, in the end.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Harry Bryant lives in the Pacific Northwest with a house full of pretty books.
Hidden Palms is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used in an absolutely fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Mark Teppo
All rights reserved, which means that no portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the express written permission of the copyright holder.
This is R005, and it has an ISBN of 978-1-63023-101-9.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017936784
This book was printed in the United States of America, and it is published by ROTA Books, an imprint of Resurrection House (Sumner, WA).
Flow like water across stones . . .
Book Design by Mark Teppo
Copy Edit by Shannon Page
First trade paperback ROTA Books edition: June 2017.
ROTA Books
www.rotabooks.com
Butch Bliss will return
