Hey, Cowgirl, Need a Ride?

by Baxter Black

  Cody began to stir. He felt the pillow beneath his head, the bed under his back, the lips pressed against his, the heaviness of her body weighing on his chest. He smelled wet snowsuit. The fist of remorse squeezed his heart like only a Judas could know.

  The memory of a flashing bilateral areola borealis caused a rush in his loins. A wave of shame rolled over him, in spite of the heart-stopping thrill that literally pulled his head back. The lips separated briefly from his own, then pressed hard again . . . and blew into his mouth. He inhaled involuntarily and coughed.

  “Talk at me, Countdowns. Are you all right? Can you hear me?” The voice was coming from above him. It was very faint and far away. He felt a rough wet rag rub across his face, a cool palm touch his forehead, and a throbbing on the side of his head. He opened one eye.

  Chrisantha swam over him. She appeared to be looking through a porthole. Her eye was large and fishlike.

  “What . . . where?” He paused and watched her come into focus.

  “You fainted,” she said.

  Feinted? he thought. Were we boxing and I faked a left hook and she poleaxed me?

  “You fell and hit yur head on the table there,” she explained.

  “Why were we kissing?” he said, still foggy and confused.

  “I vassn’t kissing you, I was givin’ you the Hammerlick Mold-over,” she elaborated clear as day.

  “Isn’t that where you squeeze somebody from behind?” asked Cody, suddenly locating her plane of thought.

  “I don’t think so. Der vass no squeezing of behind, just the blowing of airs into yur mouth.”

  “That’s artificial brespiration,” he slipped, Freudianly.

  “They are not artificial,” she said, affronted.

  Cody slowly raised his hand to stop this spiraling miscommunication. “One question,” he said. “Did we . . . did we have, have we been . . .”

  She stared at him uncomprehendingly.

  “No,” he said aloud, but mostly to himself. “No, we couldn’t have or surely I would remember and . . . I’m not undressed and you’re not nak—, uh, . . . not undressed, either . . . like me, if we were, undressed, I mean, which we would be if we’d been . . . Besides, if we had and I didn’t remember, I don’t know if that would be a greater tragedy than not doing it and remembering. What do you think?” he asked sincerely.

  Chrisantha frowned in genuine consternation. “I think you should see if you can get up and . . . But maybe you have amnesty and your brain is damage. Let me hellup yew.” Facing him, Chrisantha leaned over and hooked her elbows under his armpits and lifted. He nearly smothered before he stood erect.

  “There,” she said as she steadied him.

  Cody weaved a little and felt a momentary blackout. It passed. He shook his head and sat back down on the bed. “Lick,” he suddenly said.

  “Lick?” she asked. “The same Lick who appeared out from of the clear blue sky at the tiger show?”

  “Wait,” he said, waving his hand to stop her talking. He rubbed his eyes. “No. Lick is— This is what I need to talk to you about. I either need to tell you or you need to leave.”

  “Vat about us?’’ she asked, spreading her arms and shrugging her shoulders.

  “They are . . . beautiful,” he answered, assuming she was speaking for herself and her accessories, which, of course, she wasn’t, but it was an English-language nuance that escaped her.

  “Yes, ve could be beautiful. Ve have the wine, the satin sheets, the protection, the room, and tomorrow vould be a great day for the hunting, ya?”

  “No,” said Cody, steeling his nerve. “I am married. I cannot have . . . relations with you.”

  “You do not like me?” she asked, sliding by the concept of “cleaving to no other till death do us part.”

  “You need to understand something,” said Cody. “And you can, because you’re smart, I can tell, and you’ve seen a lot more of the world than me. So you know it’s not because I don’t like you, or find you attractive, or—”

  “But no one vould know,” she interrupted, puzzled. “I don’t even know yur name, vat could possibly harm it? Besides, I’m so . . . how do ve say it, thorny.”

  “Thorny, yeah,” he agreed. “But I’ve got bigger fish to fry. Bigger fish to catch,” he corrected. “No, skip the bigger fish, I’ve got a serious problem and I need you to do me a favor and it has nothing to do with fish.”

  “Vell, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s happened before,” she said.

  “What?” asked Cody.

  “Somebody vat turned me over.”

  “Down,” he said.

  “Turned me overdown.”

  “Best I can tell you is, don’t take it personally. As tempting as you are, I am married to a woman that I would climb mountains for, swim oceans for, crawl through twenty-six acres of broken glass just to sniff the tracks of the wagon that hauled her laundry. I love her . . . and she loves me. So, you see, even if you were Mona Lisa, Marilyn Monroe, Cleopatra, the Venus de Milo, or the African Queen, you would still not be able to break the love barrier. As I said, it’s not personal between you and me, it’s personal between her and me.” He stopped and looked at her pleadingly. “Chrisantha, the right thing for me to do would be to walk out the door right now, but my friend is in a terrible bind. He needs my help and I could very much use your cooperation . . . your assistance. It would make what I have to do so much easier.”

  “Vell,” she said after a moment’s consideration, “vat is it I vould be respected to do?”

  Cody sighed with relief. “I need to look around the compound, the park,” he said. “I need to do it secretly and I need you to cover for me. To stay right here in this room all night. And . . . not say a word to anyone.”

  “Are you goin’ to give me a raisin?” she asked.

  “A raisin?” He pondered a moment. “I imagine they have snacks in the little refrig there, the minibar.”

  “No, no, a raisin . . . to stay and hellup you and not tell Mr. Pankanker and da Crayon vat it is you are doing. Vitch is, vat it is, I don’ know . . . anyway.”

  “Oh,” said Cody, nodding his head. “Yes, staying here for no raisin except to help me.”

  “Do you vant it is that I should know?”

  “Tell you what, Chrisantha. I assure you I’m not going to hurt anybody. And you won’t get in any trouble, you have my word. So, for right now, the less you know, the better it is . . . for now, I mean. If you can live with that,” he finished.

  “If I can live vit that, I can. And maybe you might change your mind? If I had a good enough raisin . . . who could know?”

  Cody stepped out into the hall thoroughly vexed.

  58

  DECEMBER 13: SEARCHING FOR LICK AND T.A.

  Cody made his way outside and past the animal pens. He advanced toward a big machinery shop. A large halogen lamp lit the maintenance yard.

  The crew had gone home but Cody suspected that a night man might be about, so he stayed to the shadows. Several pieces of large machinery were lined up like dinosaurs at parade rest. Front-end loaders, a road grader, two backhoes, a tractor, three semi trucks, and assorted flatbeds, pickups, and cement mixers.

  Light shone from the shop windows. He eased up to one of them and peered in. What he saw looked like a heavy-metal video game. Several elaborately customized four-wheel-drive vehicles sat like lions waiting to be released on the Christians in the Roman Colosseum. Mad Max meets Bigfoot. Two of the vehicles had flying bridges behind the windshields; tomorrow’s hunters would be able to stand and look out over the top of the cab. Another vehicle had a turret like a tank. A .50 caliber machine gun was mounted in front of the manhole. The shooter would have a 180-degree field of fire.

  There was an open-topped Suburban that resembled a touring bus. An obviously rebuilt World War Two jeep sat proudly amongst the others. Cody could see it had headers and dual exhaust, and the chassis and axles had been altered to accommodate twenty-four-inch truck wheels. It had
no windshield. Shoot at will, Cody guessed. There was a dune buggy that could have been owned by the Sheik of Palm Springs. Two motorcycles were partially hidden, but they appeared to have vented rifle barrels protruding from either side of the center post on the handlebars like guns on the wings of a P-51 Mustang.

  What a collection, Cody thought. It was every redneck monster-truck driver’s dream. Every smash-’em-flat, dogfight, diesel dirt bike, three-eyed super Harley, good ol’ boy, with Technicolor tattoos, head reared back, shirttail out, three sheets to the wind, and burnin’ like a house on fire.

  Man oh man. Cody could almost smell the smoke.

  He tried the steel door to the big shop. It was locked, as were the back two doors and all the windows. He made a pass around the five animal enclosures. He found signs denoting the residents: WHITE RHINO, BLACK RHINO, PANDA, POLAR BEAR, and GRIZZLY.

  Where’s the tiger? he wondered. The one Ponce had used in his act. He continued to explore and found an enclosed aviary where Ponce had stashed two California condors with their wings clipped, at least twelve bald eagles, and an assortment of spotted owls, pygmy owls, and a covey of whooping cranes, along with some crowned lemurs and koalas.

  Finally he worked his way around to the Big Cat House. He tried the door. Locked tight. Another steel door. He peered through the glass in the door. He saw that it opened into a large, well-lit concrete alleyway with cages on both sides to his right. To the left were work-rooms, offices, and a hallway. Suddenly he heard people coming down the hallway from the left. Cody stepped back and plastered himself against the side of the building.

  The door opened and two men came out. One was large, with a buckaroo moustache and hand-tooled cowboy boots. The second was smaller and wiry. Both had on baseball caps and jackets.

  “Whattaya think they’re gonna do with ’em?” the smaller man asked as they passed outside.

  “I don’t know. It’s not our deal,” said the big man.

  “She’s not gonna talk, ya know.”

  “It’s not our deal, Busby. Just let it go.”

  “Well, they can’t just . . . I mean, if she tells ’em or doesn’t tell ’em, seems to me it’s the same outcome. I don’t know whether I wanna be mixed up in this.”

  “Don’t think about it. Just do what you’re told. It ain’t our deal to worry about. We’ve just got to make sure they don’t escape on our watch.”

  “But—”

  “Knock it off! I don’t wanna hear any more. I’m tired.”

  “Okay, but—”

  The big man stopped and looked at his companion. “No more,” he said. “No more.” They walked toward the atrium in silence.

  Cody let out his breath and was about to step out from the wall when he heard a new set of footsteps coming confidently his way. Ponce de Crayon strode out of the darkness heading for the same door the other two men had just exited.

  Ponce paused at the door long enough to unlock it, then entered. Cody broke from the shadows and tried to catch the door before it closed. No luck. Only a scuffed knee. He looked up at the tower. They must be in there somewhere, he thought, but what do I do now?

  He looked down at his watch. It was long past midnight. Cody’s coach had become a pumpkin.

  59

  DECEMBER 13: PRISONERS IN THE TOWER

  Three stories up in the tower, Lick and T.A. each stood on a straight chair, trussed hands suspended upright at chin level, elbows bent. Their faces were less than twelve inches apart.

  The two were immobilized through a devious figment of Valter’s ingenuity. They were tied to opposite ends of a polyethylene ski rope, which ran up and over a large iron chandelier hanging from the twelve-foot ceiling. The rope was so short that when one sat on the chair with arms stretched above his or her head, the other was forced to stand on the chair with arms stretched overhead. Only when they both stood on the chairs could they lessen the pressure on their arms. Valter kept an eye on them from the bed.

  The only thing that lessened the indignity was that T.A. had been allowed to change back into her dirty jeans and khaki shirt before being locked in the tower.

  T.A. leaned in to whisper to Lick. “Do you think I should tell them where the money is?”

  “I don’t know what I’d do if I were you,” he responded quietly. “There’s no tellin’ what’ll happen, even if you tell ’em.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said. “I don’t think F. Rank would harm us, but I have little doubt that Ponce and Valter here would do us in, in a heartbeat. My problem is,” she said, “you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. I couldn’t let them . . . I can’t even say the word . . .”

  “Murder,” he suggested.

  “Yes. I couldn’t let that happen. I would have to tell them on the condition you were let free.”

  “We . . . we were let free,” he whispered with a flash of anger.

  “Having a lover’s quarrel?” asked Valter lazily from his sitting position on the bed.

  Lick mumbled an unintelligible retort.

  “Watch your lip, Two-Bit,” laughed Valter. “You’re not speaking from a position of strength.”

  “Yer pretty tough, all right, pendejo,” sneered Lick in frustration, “with a gun in yer hand, six guys at yer back, and a girl between us.”

  Valter rose from the bed and in one swift movement kicked Lick’s chair out from under him. Lick fell hard, his back hitting the floor, which jerked T.A. off the chair she was standing on. She cried out in pain. Then Valter kicked the chair out from under her dangling feet. She hung suspended, all her weight on the joints of her shoulders. She screamed in agony.

  “Valter!” an authoritarian voice boomed as the door to the tower flung open and Ponce strode in. “Wot are you dooink! Yew moost not get zo ekzited. Yew moost ekzercize control. I yam a liddle sewerprize-ed. Yew alwaze zeemed zo profess-see-own-al.”

  “Sorry, sir. I was—”

  “He was tormenting the girl,” Lick lied in a disgusted tone. “He was teasing her and touching her—”

  “I was doing no such thing!” exclaimed Valter, his pride wounded.

  “A little jealousy? Do I detect indignation from the inept Sir Galahad?” observed Ponce. “The truth is,” he continued, the Eastern European accent morphing into the vocal clarity of an Iowa native, “I couldn’t sleep knowing you two were alive and kicking. So I have brought a solution. Valter, it will let you rest easier, too.”

  Valter looked uneasy. Although he was good at using it as a veiled threat, he had never been asked to commit cold-blooded murder and didn’t know what he would do if the occasion arose.

  Ponce produced a small valise and from it drew a bottle and a disposable plastic syringe. He carefully broke the seal on a 20-gauge needle and attached it to the syringe. He made a big production of filling the syringe from the bottle.

  Lick’s eyes widened as he looked up from the floor. T.A., her head down, was spinning slowly by her tethered arms.

  Ponce looked over at Valter. Valter froze his expression. He looked like a still frame of a candidate who had just broken wind as he was being presented for baptism.

  Ponce smiled his crooked smile. One side of his moustache quivered like a wounded bird. “This will put them to sleep for several hours. After the hunt is concluded we will use more effective methods to elicit the location of . . . MY MONEY!” He whirled on T.A. He drove the needle through her jeans right above the left hip pocket. She screamed! Ponce pressed his left hand against her belly and held her steady as he pushed the plunger, emptying the syringe. Finished, he retracted the needle swiftly and let her go.

  Lick scrambled to his feet, which lowered T.A. She wobbled slowly, her toes touching the ground, arms still stretching upright. Her head fell. Her knees buckled. She was out cold. Lick’s arms stretched even tighter against the dead weight.

  “Your turn, buckaroo,” said Ponce refilling the syringe and fitting a new needle. Lick kicked out at Ponce. Ponce deftly dodged
the attempt.

  “Now, now. Do you want to remain in this position all night, or would you like to go to sleep peacefully? Do you think she looks comfortable?”

  Lick grimaced and looked down at T.A., who was breathing regularly but hanging in an awkward position, all the weight of her body pulling on her arms.

  “Maybe this would help her,” said Ponce. He grasped T.A.’s side of the rope and hung on it, pulling it down until she lay crumpled on her knees, relieving some of the tension. Lick’s feet were now twenty-four inches off the ground. He hung and swiveled.

  “Make up your mind, cowboy,” said Ponce. He waited for ten seconds, then ordered Valter, “Pull his pants down around his knees.”

  Valter walked behind Lick carefully. Ponce still held the rope but stood back from Lick’s hanging body. He held the syringe up so Lick could see it.

  “I should give this intramuscularly, but I could go directly into the peritoneal cavity if I was just stabbing in the dark,” warned Ponce. “Of course, there are other ways to induce slumber if you choose to make this difficult.”

  Lick tried a swift kick but was off target. Valter threw a hard kidney punch, which took Lick’s breath away. Valter then reached around from the back, undid his buckle and zipper, and pulled his pants down around his boot tops.

  “Turn him around,” ordered Ponce.

  Valter moved Lick 180 degrees.

  With one hand Ponce stuck the needle through Lick’s white jockey shorts and injected him with the powerful anesthetic.

  60

  DECEMBER 13: LATE-NIGHT RECONNOITER

  Cody walked around the perimeter of the tower. No windows were openable and no other doors except the one he had seen Ponce enter. He checked his watch: 2:10 a.m. Ponce had been inside twenty-five minutes. At last the door opened and Ponce emerged. He paused at the sound of footsteps. As Cody watched from the shadows, F. Rank Pantaker rounded the corner, heading for the tower.

  “Where do you think you are going?” asked Ponce.