Bad Signs

by R.J. Ellory

  Earl Sheridan went into isolation a sad and sorry mess. Soaked to the bones, his wrists bleeding, his shirt filthy, the cuffs of his pants looking like they’d been chewed to length. But he did have one thing that no one knew about. He had a metal comb. Had seen it on the floor of the car as Rawley twisted his hands down and threatened him with silence. In the moment that followed his release—hyperventilating crazily, his head down between his knees as if accepting defeat—he had reached right on down and picked it up. Jamming it into his shoe, moving it then beneath his foot, he had walked it all the way into his cell. They removed his cuffs when he was through the door, and they left him to his own devices.

  “One night you’re here,” Rawley had told him through the grate in the door. “Tomorrow morning we drive you on down to San Bernardino and finish what we started.”

  Rawley walked away. Sheridan said nothing at all. It was only when Rawley reached the external door that he heard Sheridan singing. He knew what it was; that old Rabbit Brown song—Sometimes I think you’re just too sweet to die. And other times I think you ought to be buried alive.

  Things kicked off in earnest a little before ten that night. The storm hadn’t let up, wouldn’t until six the following morning, and by then much of the surrounding farmland would be a swamp of dirty oatmeal. Rawley’s deputy, a skinny man named Chester Bartlett, brought Earl some dinner. Though nothing more than a mess of cornmeal, a couple of pieces of fatback, a fried egg, and a cup of coffee, Bartlett still needed the key to get through the door, and he still had to hold the tray while Earl got up off of the floor. Experienced Bartlett might have been at convoying chained prisoners from one part of the state to another, but when it came to attending a confined man there was a procedure and a protocol about which he was ignorant.

  First Rawley heard of it was when Sheridan had already made it to the kitchens. It was here that he found Clay Luckman and Digger Danziger.

  Chester Bartlett was bleeding out from a wide neck wound inflicted by a metal comb. He would die before they got to him. Earl Sheridan had used Chester’s own keys to lock him in the isolation cell. Now he had Chester Bartlett’s sidearm, a pocketful of shells to go with it, and he was about his business with vigor and excitement.

  Digger had heard word of Sheridan. It had been news throughout the entire facility within thirty minutes of the man’s arrival. There was something hypnotic and addictive about a hanging, more so about the man who was to be hanged. Faced with the condemned himself, Digger saw nothing but the opportunity to escape. He believed that if he allied himself to Earl Sheridan, if he showed him the way out of the facility, then both their purposes would be served. Earl had other intentions in mind. Earl saw two young hostages, a healthy collection of sharp knives, and a way to avoid the scaffold.

  A rapid evaluation of the situation gave Earl Sheridan a clear comprehension of what he was dealing with. The older kid was up for the thrill, the younger one looked like he was going to piss his pants right where he stood. The older one would work with him, help him control and manage the younger, and the three of them would be out together. Somewhere along the line he could kill the younger one, perhaps kill them both, or if he was feeling humanitarian he could just ditch them on the road somewhere and go it alone. Go where, he did not know. For in amongst all the running and hiding, in amongst the rush and panic of this thing, he had forgotten to think about what would happen next.

  By the time Earl Sheridan, Elliott Danziger, and Clarence Luckman made it to the main gate the entire facility was ablaze with searchlights. Dogs, men, guns; trucks revving in the back of the compound ready to chase this guy down to nothing if that’s what was needed. Sheridan had Danziger and Luckman tied together with a whole mess of twine he’d found in the kitchen. It served the purpose, for he had those two kids on a leash just less than three or four feet long. Anyone with a twitch on their trigger finger could so easily have taken out one of the hostages instead of Sheridan himself. Sheridan demanded a pickup truck. He got one. He wanted three days’ worth of food; he got that too. Facility governor Tom Young took his sweet time about organizing these things, charging every man present from the top down to work in the direction of double-crossing Sheridan, creating the appearance of cooperation, all the while looking for a way to bring his dreadful plan to a halt. The difficulty was the hostages. Young had his deputy on the phone to the local police, to the federal authorities. They had a convicted death row escapee, now responsible for another murder, and he had to be stopped. But in stopping him they could not endanger the lives of the two brothers. The simple fact that Tom Young didn’t give a solitary damn about Clay Luckman or Digger Danziger was beside the point. The newspapers gave a damn. The taxpayers gave a damn. The public at large would be the ultimate judge and jury in such a scenario, and they always erred in the direction of the underdog. No, the boys needed to come out of this alive, and that—first and foremost—was in Young’s mind as he tried to figure a way to outfox Sheridan.

  When Sheridan demanded a shotgun to go along with Chester Bartlett’s sidearm, well Tom Young told him to go fuck himself. It was then that he took one of the knives he’d taken from the kitchen and cut Clay Luckman’s shoulder. It was a shallow wound, but it bled like a bitch, and Young didn’t have much choice but to accede to the man’s demands. Sheridan told them he was driving away. They were going to see which way he was going for only so long, and then he was gone for good. He said if they sent cars or trucks or helicopters or any of that shit after him then both the kids were dead. And he would shoot himself to boot. Save the State a few bucks but ruin the day for Young. Young—old enough and wise enough to recognize a crazy one when he saw him—held up his hands and said nothing. Kidnapping really did make it a federal mess, and as soon as Sheridan hightailed it out of the facility gates he planned to speak to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and tell them the mess was all theirs.

  Sheridan and his charges went out of those gates a little before midnight. Facility governor Tom Young went back to organize the facility lockdown. Once the place was secure he called the FBI. He spoke with a man named Garth Nixon. Nixon said they’d take it from here. All he needed were details of the stolen truck and pictures of the two boys. They already had enough pictures of Earl Sheridan to make a snapshot album. Young wrote up a dispatch with the requested details, and sent one of his men out to the Anaheim Bureau Office. Nixon made it clear that Governor Young and anyone else involved in this fiasco was relieved of their responsibility for the matter. The bureau would attend to whatever internal investigative and resultant disciplinary action might be required for Rawley and his escort team. Earl Sheridan was a fugitive from the law, a condemned man on the run, and a kidnapper. Throw into the mix the charges for which he was going to hang and he was numero uno as far as the FBI were concerned. Had Nixon known then even some small aspect of Sheridan’s nature, even the nature of sociopathological behavior in its crudest form, he would not have been so quick to criticize or censure his colleagues. He thought Rawley, Young, others of their ilk, little more than hicks and rednecks, no more capable of restraining and transporting a known felon across a hundred and twenty-five miles of countryside than he himself was capable of dancing an Irish jig. This was now Bureau business, and the Bureau would attend to it.

  Forces were mobilized for the search. Pictures were distributed, radio bulletins were issued on the wires and relayed to all stations in the surrounding counties. It was the most excitement the FBI had seen in years, and they were going to take advantage of the publicity and media furor that they knew was coming their way. In such cases, Nixon knew that if you did not unofficially deputize the populace and get them alert and looking too, well, you were screwed.

  Earl Sheridan was a matter of enormous concern, as were the kidnapped brothers, Clarence Luckman and Elliott Danziger. The state governor was apprised of the situation within a matter of hours. He made a personal telephone call to the widow of Chester Bartlett and ensured her that they were doi
ng everything they could. He assured her that Earl Sheridan would be brought to justice.

  Everything they could do was hampered by their lack of understanding of Earl Sheridan.

  By six o’clock, morning of Saturday, November 21, Nixon had been deputized to Anaheim Field Agent Ronald Koenig, a fourteen-year veteran of the Bureau, a prior history in the Anaheim Sheriff’s Department, before that a handful of years in the military, the last two in Berlin during the establishment of the East-West divide. He had been around the block and then some. He estimated that Sheridan would kill or release his hostages within twenty-four hours, that they would be found dead or alive within thirty-six, that Sheridan himself might manage another seventy-two or ninety-six hours, and then die in a hail of bullets in some small dust pocket of a town like Calexico or La Rumorosa. Of this he had no doubt. Sheridan would make for Mexico. He would be dreaming of sunshine, tequila, cool cerveza, and hot girls. A man like Sheridan was driven by his instinct and his dick.

  Of this Ronald Koenig could not have been more wrong. Earl Sheridan was driven by his instinct and his hatred. He did not head south as was expected. He did not intend to ever get to Mexico. He went southeast toward the Arizona state line. He did not understand federal law sufficiently well to appreciate that he was now being looked for by the government entire. He believed that his salvation lay outside the state of California. Once he was over the border there was little anyone could do. He would steal some money, buy some clothes, color his hair, change his name. He would vanish. It was that simple.

  How it then became something more than simple had a great deal to do with the quantity of hatred that Earl Sheridan felt for people whose names he didn’t even know.

  DAY TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  The diner was just a little box of a place with a few seats in back for the coloreds. The menu was made up of wooden letters stuck to a board behind the till. A layer of dust and grease adorned those letters. It said that the menu had never changed, and never would. Fatback, meatloaf, ham and eggs, steak.

  Sheridan had a fist of dollars from someplace or other. Clay did not know where he had come by them, but he also had a clean T-shirt, which he told Clay to put on. “Can’t have you walking around with blood all over yourself,” he’d told Clay. “Just attract flies and unwanted attention.”

  It was eight, a handful of minutes after, and they stood in the doorway of that diner as if they’d blown in on the back of some ill wind.

  They’d slept in the truck—he and Digger tied together, and then the rope looped over the back of the tailboard and secured to the chassis. Earl—if he had slept, and he sure didn’t look like he had—had been in the cab, the shotgun across his knee, Chester Bartlett’s revolver in his lap.

  Surprisingly—from the moment Clay had put his head down against the baseboard of the pickup to the moment he felt a rough hand hurrying him awake—he had slept. No dreams, no fear, nothing. He had slept like a newborn. Once he was awake he became acutely aware of how much his shoulder ached. The quantity of blood had belied the shallowness of the wound, but he was concerned it would become infected. There was little he could do at this juncture. The clean T-shirt concealed it but did not allay the discomfort he felt. Above and beneath whatever concern he may have had for his physical well-being, there was the blunt reality of Earl Sheridan.

  “We’re going to find breakfast,” Earl had told them, and then he untied them, and even in that moment—even as he appeared to be friendly—there was something dark and unsettling about everything he did. Clay did not know how to describe the feeling. Like approaching a firework already lit that had not yet flared. You just didn’t know. Was it a dud, or would it explode in your face?

  Standing at the side of the highway, the three of them pissing into the wind, Earl had said, “Have to acknowledge you boys. Most kids would be crying like orphans in their first boys’ home. A pair of wet and whimpering sacks of shit. Well, I’ll tell you something right here and now. People feeling sorry for themselves just makes me mad as hell. Makes me feel like I really want to give them something to moan about, you know? So, it’s good for you that you ain’t bein’ that way about this. You’re takin’ it like men, and I feel it’s only right and proper that I acknowledge you for that.” He shook his dick and put it back in his pants. “When we started out from that place I had a mind to kill the pair of you and leave you someplace, but I’ve changed my mind. Seems to me you never did me no wrong, and I don’t have a right to hurt you for that. We’ve come from the same place, and more than likely we’re gonna end up in the same place, right?”

  Digger glanced at Clay.

  Clay shook his head. Say nothing, that gesture said.

  “Hey, I’m talking to you,” Earl Sheridan barked. “You hear what I said?”

  “Yes, sir,” Digger replied.

  Earl laughed. “Sir? Jeez, kid, you been in that place too long. You don’t need to be callin’ me no ‘sir.’ Lordy, lordy, you really are a pair of misfits and troublemakers. You been in that place all your life?”

  “Ever since our mama died we’ve been one place or another,” Digger said.

  Clay said nothing. He wanted to maintain as much distance between himself and Earl Sheridan as he could.

  “Your mama?” Sheridan asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You pair are brothers?”

  “Yes, sir,” Digger replied.

  “Well, I’ll be damned. I never would have guessed it.” He paused, frowned, squinted at one, then the other. “Well, now you come to mention it, I do see something there. Maybe in the eyes, huh?” He shrugged. “Well, okay then. Seems you pair have seen the sorry end of nothin’ for quite some time, eh? Reckon a bit of a change is good for the calendar, whaddya say?”

  “Sure thing,” Digger said.

  “Well, good enough,” Earl said. “Reckon we should start with a good breakfast and then we’ll figure out where the rest of our lives is gonna begin.”

  Clay listened to his brother talking with Sheridan, and though he wanted to tell Digger to shut the hell up, he could not. Ignoring the man would just make him mad, and there was no telling what mad would provoke him to do.

  The town was called Twentynine Palms. It sat along 62 at the edge of Joshua Tree, a hundred or so miles from Hesperia.

  Earl had already explained to them that he was doing what the authorities would least expect. “Tell you something now,” he said. “Ninety-nine out of a hundred guys in my shoes would run right to Mexico. I know this part of the world. I’ve been causin’ trouble here for as long as I can remember. Right now they’ll have people in Palm Springs, maybe Moreno Valley and Escondido. Hell, maybe they’ll even have people looking for us in San Diego ’cause they think we’re gonna try and get in through Tijuana. There’ll be roadblocks on all the highways … and shit, man, they’ll be runnin’ themselves ragged wonderin’ where the fuck we disappeared to! Anyways, we ain’t doin’ nothin’ of the sort. We’re heading for Arizona, maybe even Texas. Texan girls are a sight to behold …” And then Earl turned and saw the waitress walking toward them with a smile on her face like Christmas.

  She had on a peasant blouse with a pattern like a tablecloth. Red and white checks. The front tails were tied up in a fist-sized knot above her navel, and it pushed up her breasts like an invitation to all and sundry for something wicked and wonderful.

  Earl Sheridan just stood there, dumb as a fence post.

  “You boys wanna table or you gonna stand there till sundown?” she said.

  Earl didn’t speak.

  “A table please,” Clay replied, and the girl smiled and indicated the table right beside the window.

  “You’ll be wantin’ breakfast, I presume?” she said.

  “Three times,” Clay said, and he elbowed Digger along the seat so he could sit down too.

  Earl was still dumbstruck, like a mule hit by lightning.

  The waitress leaned forward. Her cleavage was as deep as the San F
ernando Valley. You could have pitched a silver dollar from the other side of the room and never missed that target. “My name’s Bethany,” she said. “I’ll be your waitress today. Now d’you boys want coffee or milk or juice or what?”

  “Co-coffee,” Earl stuttered, and then he smiled like a fool and his cheeks colored up.

  “Well, coffee it is,” Bethany said, and then she turned around and walked away.

  Earl watched her ass like it was the last train to freedom.

  The food came. Digger ate with his arm down, his left hand guarding his plate, his right hand around the spoon in a fist.

  Earl showed him how to hold it properly. “Like a pen,” he said, “and you can put your left hand someplace else. No one around here is looking to steal your food.”

  There was fatback and grits, eggs, some waffles with syrup, even sausage-meat gravy and corn. The three of them ate enough for a Kiwanis Convention, and then they sat back and held their guts like Santa.

  Bethany brought more coffee.

  “You all here by your own sweet self?” Earl asked her.

  Clay saw something flash in Earl’s eyes. It was a dark thing, a bad thought. Clay could feel the tension in the man, tight like a spring.

  “For a little while,” she said. “My husband and I own this place together, but he’s down the road apiece getting a spare tire for his truck. He’ll be here in a while or so.”

  She went on in back of the diner. Earl waited no more than a minute, and then he told Clay and Digger to go get in the pickup out front.

  “I’ll be no more than a couple of minutes,” he said, and he got up from his seat. “I have the keys to the pickup,” he added. “Those guns in there ain’t loaded right now, and won’t be until I get back. You can make a run for it, but in the time it’s gonna take me to finish up here you’re gonna make it half a mile, and that’s if you run like a pair of halfwit motherfuckers. My advice is just to hang tight until I’m done, and then we’ll all leave together.”