Sit with eyes closed and see those days working on Brown’s farm, fixing lessons in my mind about men and women. About giving hurt and learning to fight so others can’t give it back.
Other days in the cave with Günter Stroh, hiding from the world. Drink myself stone drunk ’cause hiding from the world don’t cut it.
Time works like waves in the head.
Come and go.
Dreamy.
Screeching tires!
Look out the glass — cherry red Mustang convertible slide sideways, ass wheels churning.
They got the top down. Smokin’ gorgeous blonde and a red with her. Cram fists in the eyes. Jam the bleary out and look agin.
Tat dye her hair blonde. Corazon red — it suits.
Stinky Joe in the back seat, looking to maybe jump out.
Save me from these crazyass women!
Tat waves behind the wheel. Corazon got her arm out, beating the door. They lips is moving but the Jeep glass turn the sound to noise.
Tat look back the way they came — like jackboot thugs is around the bend. She search the dash and press a button. Look back. Look front, up top the windshield. Mash another.
Convertible top start coming up.
I got the gold in back. What the skippy fuck? I dunno.
By shit I don’t know.
Unlock the door. Stumble out the Jeep and rub the eyes. The girls is still there.
“Get in!” Corazon say. “We must go now!”
“Hurry!” Tat say.
Look at Stinky Joe.
He look back, drop the tongue out the side. Grin.
Well?
“I got a bucket in back the Jeep. Pop the trunk!”
Race around, unlock, shit this bucket heavy. Lift it by the edges and heave. Waddle like I swapped nuts with a woolly mammoth. Spring a back muscle throwing gold in the trunk.
“Hurry! They’re coming!”
Fetch my pack out the Jeep. Feel for Glock. Good to go. Dump the pack in the trunk and slam the lid.
Mustang’s a two-door. Corazon pop out and fold the seat forward…
And I see her legs is wet with blood and her sweater too.
Knife on the floor.
I stop.
“What you doing? Get in!” Corazon say. “We must hurry!”
“Baer, come on!” Tat say.
Stinky Joe cock his head.
Man, don’t leave me alone again. Not with these two…
Deep breath and dive to the back seat. Throw an arm over Stinky Joe.
Corazon jump in the car and Tat’s already spinning wheels.
“I won’t, Stinky Joe. No I won’t.”
Chapter Eight
Since we left the motel I spot the black sedans and suits everywhere. Helicopters next, jackboot thugs. Got this claustrophobe pressin’ in and Stinky Joe sit up in the back seat with eyes peeled like mine. Tat can’t drive for shit. They jacked a ’68 Mustang with four hundred and twenty-seven cubed inches and all Tat’s ever drove was a Jeep with the four-banger lawnmower engine. Slammin’ this side to that. How the fuck she manage to stall a V8 Mustang with an automatic?
“Who we runnin’ from?”
“Don’t know, we haven’t seen them yet.”
“What? All this skullduggery’s prophylactic?”
“What, like a rubber?” Corazon say.
“Yeah, like a fuckin’ rubber. Does that sound like me, what I’d say?”
“Sorta.”
“What the hell’s goin’ on?”
“Corazon was arrested.”
“For what?”
“Murder.”
Fuckey fuckey. “What?”
“Attempted murder.”
“Who she try to kill?”
“Nobody. That’s why they let her go.”
“They up and let her go? Who?”
“FBI. And police.”
“Nah.” Sink in the seat. “It was a good run, Stinky Joe. We’s fucked.”
Why are we fucked?
“They don’t let nobody go.”
I scrunch down in the seat and look up and out the rear window for shock troops rappelling four-inch ropes. Like Chicago Mags said, just ’cause you can’t see em don’t mean they ain’t there.
“Get off the town roads and out in the country. Too much shit around us here. Can’t see if we got a tail.”
“Yes. I think there might be two. A blue minivan and a tiny pickup truck.”
“Those is just people driving behind us.”
“They are following us.”
My head needs a good scratch so I give it one. Maybe a good beatin’ agin the glass…
“They follow every turn,” Tat say.
“Sound like a tail. Turn left up here.”
Tat turn left. Minivan go straight, tiny truck turn left.
“Take that next right.”
Tat turn right.
Tiny truck go straight.
“See? If they was a tail that minivan’d be back on us. Didn’t you watch TV six months in a cave?”
Houses thin out and the mountains bunch up tight around us. Road squiggles left and right and Tat brakes when the wheels squeal. Look down and it’s hundred-foot cliff to boulders below.
“See! Look!”
Tat jabs her finger to the front left. Adjust the rearview mirror. They’s nothin’ but a mile of air where she point so I look behind.
Minivan.
“Yeah, see. That’s just what I meant. That minivan’s a tail. Next place you see a mountain or crick, pull over like a tourist, nice and slow. And put your signal on. We’ll let ’em go by.”
I keep an eye out the window so I can see death comin’, summoned by Tat’s drivin’ or the government’s lack of humor. I’m ’bout to throw up yesterday’s cheeseburger and Tat hit the turn signal and pull over on a thirty-foot patch of dirt on the right. I twist. Minivan come ’round the bend and the nose dip.
Corazon hold up her cell phone.
“Wait here. Maybe get out and stretch the legs.”
“Got them,” Corazon say.
“Got what?”
Corazon pass a cell phone to me. Got a picture on the screen, man and a tig bitty bleach blonde inside a blue minivan.
“Good thinkin’,” says I.
Give her back the phone.
“If that truck is following us, the minivan probably told them to pull over,” Tat say.
“Yep. Let’s go back the way we come and soon’s we get off this cliff I want you to haul ass. See how hard this Mustang’ll kick.”
Tat’s eyes grin in the rearview.
“Try and don’t kill us.”
Got this empty I’m-gonna-die feeling in my balls. Woman, Speed and Cliff might be too much temptation for ole Fate to cope with, all at the once. Stinky Joe give me a look… but he don’t know the plan and I can’t tell him.
Need some separation…
Tat cut the wheel and stomp the gas. We jump. She hit the brake and I bang my noggin on Corazon’s seatback. Gas again.
“One or the other.”
She choose the gas pedal and keep the wheels churnin’ dirt. Ass end swing around ’til it burps on macadam road. Gas, brake into the turn and raise hell comin’ out. A couple mile and Tat got the feel for it.
Corazon squeals.
“Shut up!” Tat say.
“Give ’r hell!” says I. “What’s death anyway?”
Engine roar out the bend and we zip by a skinny pickup tucked in a tiny turn.
“Okay, up here take the next right, left, whatever.”
“Shit,” says Corazon, lowering her phone. “I missed them.”
“It don’t matter if we never see ’em again.”
She look over her shoulder, struck dumb with the wisdom.
“You should have your seatbelt on,” says Tat.
“Don’t wear ’em.”
“Not you,” Tat says. “Her.”
“I don’t either,” says Corazon.
Brace myself on the door
. Stinky Joe tumble into me and I hold him close. He press his head agin my shoulder and let his eyeballs roll up. Terrifyin’ times for sure.
Tat stomp the brake and cut the wheel hard. Slide ’round and we got us a new road headed into the mountain pass. Boulder’s right there blockin’ the view. Engine blast wide open, throw us back in the seat.
“Yes!” Tat say.
“Doom,” says I. “Repent.”
We rocket up the road. I watch out the back window and after the bend the road we come from disappear. Now it’s luck alone if they nab us.
“You know,” Corazon says, “With two tails and two turns for choices, all they have to do is — ”
“Tat! Need you to scare up another couple turns. Go straight on the next and take the one after.”
“Where?” Tat say. “You see any turns? It’s just mountains.”
“That’s what I said. Scare ’em up.”
“What’s that mean?”
Turn appear.
“Good job. Take the next. Hit it hard on this straightaway.”
“This?”
“Yep.”
“It’s ten feet.”
“You missed it.”
She swerve into the next curve and stomp the brake. Head smushed into the seat I see it. She conjured a new road and cut the wheel. Bounce through a ditch, hit the rear quarter on a rock.
“Okay, slow down just enough we don’t die.”
Stinky Joe say, Maybe pad it a little.
Mush his head back into my shoulder.
We’re through the tightest of the mountain and the terrain unfolds, got some grass wishes it was green and a house way the hell up the side hill.
Tat’s got the Mustang wide open, faster and faster ’til I doubt she got the skills to keep it in low orbit. We go a mile then ten and I don’t see the vehicles after us. “You know where you are?” says I.
“Colorado,” Tat say.
“Uh-huh. I meant which road. Where’s the highway from here and all that. You know. It’s called knowin’ where you are.”
“Glad to see you too.”
“Ahh, shit.”
Chapter Nine
Dust float from the Mustang roof. We bounce and wiggle and I got a seat spring wants to get fresh with the stink chute. Trees and rocks flash by so fast the belly’s sick. Things is outta hand.
“Hey, lookit that! Slow down! Lookit that up ahead!”
“What?” Tat screams.
I lean up close and cup the hands. “SLOW DOWN.”
Roarin’ engine go soft. We start a hundred mile an hour coast. Corazon let out a long breath like she been holdin’ it two mile.
“What are we doing?” Tat say. “Why’d you tell me to stop?”
“See that comin’ up?”
It’s a gold Cadillac Eldorado. Maybe ‘78. Sign say:
4 SAIL
“Tat, pull over. Law people know this Mustang. Time to make the switch. Pull over right here.”
“You don’t want me to drive to the car?”
“Stop here so these people can’t get a look at the Mustang. All you know they own it.”
She swerve to the dirt like to win an Oscar.
“Corazon, lemme out. And next time maybe steal a four-door with less engine.”
She look at Tat like to get permission from the warden. Tat nods. Corazon busts out the door. I wrestle the seatback and gravity. Spring gets one more poke at my ass.
“Stinky Joe, you come with me and mind your manners. Tat, pop the trunk.”
Latch clicks and I find the gold bucket never toppled. Must be the trunk lid held it in place. Fill my pockets with coin. Look at all my worldly wealth, product of a life of stillin’ shine and livin’ simple. If Tat takes off with the gold, I’ll survive one way or the other.
Nah, fuck that.
“Tat, gimme them keys.”
“What?”
“What I said. Hand me the keys.”
“No.”
Reach in, elbow past the titties and they’s no key.
“I hotwired it,” Corazon says.
“We came back for you,” says Tat. Under her breath, “Such a dick.”
“And I come back for you. But just tellin’ the truth, I ain’t exactly sure why and I bet you ain’t neither. Right?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes you do.”
“I don’t know what we are doing,” says Tat.
“I ain’t set on one way or the other. I figger’d you’d holler if anything change and you ain’t hollered yet.”
She folds her arm out the window like to sun her elbow. I touch her arm and she let me work it into a stroke then a caress afore she put her arm inside.
“I got to see ’bout this car up here.”
Got the old FBI Glock tucked in my ass crack. Give it a feel. Pull down the shirt, cinch the belt and reseat the Glock as I walk.
Gold in my pocket I stop at the El Dorado. Kick the right rear tire — sure as shit it’s a tire. All good there.
Gander along the trunk edges and the bottom quarter panel, then feel up in under like Jubal White taught me on his Pasadena car. Zip on rust. Paint got a polish shows off the trees ’n clouds.
What do you want with a new car?
“Tween me and you, Odiferous Joseph, this little travel party’s ’bout to bust and we need some wheels. Maybe head somewhere else.”
Chicago, you mean?
“Dunno. You thinkin’ we ougghta go see Mags up there?”
Mags who?
“Just a woman. She’s a genius.”
That doesn’t sound very promising for you.
“Help you?”
Screen door slams and I look up. Granny from Any Which Way but Loose tromps across the porch. Got a yippy dog in the house gone berserk.
“You stay here, Joe. Let me do the dealin’ with this woman.”
Step to the front right, closest part of the car to the house and Granny. Wave. Dip the head.
“That’s a pretty set of wheels.”
“Ten thousand.”
“Sheeeeit.”
“Eleven. And the bigger dislike’ I take, the higher it goes.”
Most these old girls like a toothy smile so I crack my best.
“How much for a feller pays in cash?”
“Now we’re back to ten.”
“And a fella pays in gold specie?”
“You one of them kooks?”
“Nah, I ain’t with ’em.”
More toothy smile. Hope it works ’cause I used all the teeth I got.
“Real gold?”
“Most is Canadian Maple Leafs. Last spot price I saw was $800. Like to be more, with the Treasury printin’ paper all these months. I shoulda checked afore I called but I just saw the Eldorado and thought — ”
“Who are you? Jimmy’s boy?”
“Uh, well, not I know. ’Less he spread the seed wide.”
“You sure as shit look like him.”
“Where he from?”
“Where you from?”
“Gleason, way. East a here.”
“Gleason. Where the hell’s Gleason?”
“Right agin Swannanoa.”
“Ah, piss,” says she.
Woman after my heart. I pull out a Maple Leaf and offer.
“Put it in your hand. Get a feel of real gold and think on what it’ll mean to have money that go up in price, ’steada down.”
“Don’t hardly sound American.”
She take the piece. Bite it. She wince. Me too when I spot the tooth mark at four feet.
“Now, you said the price for fiat money was ten grand and what I got to know is the price for real money. Gold. Given all the satisfaction and peace of mind you’ll have knowin’ your wealth ain’t a piece of government paper.”
“Now look here, Gleason. The price is ten grand. In dollars.”
Smile winsome. Wink. “Maybe if we drink a jug of sweet tea it’ll brighten your mood a little.”
“My mood’s
none of your concern.”
“All right. We best find the spot price on gold, you want things accurate.”
She nods. “That’s the way we deal in Colorado, Gleason.”
“Be right back.”
Tramp to the Mustang. Make the rolly motion and head for Corazon’s side. Approach the window and say, “You want to grab that cell phone for me.”
She already got in her hand.
“I appreciate you, Corazon. How about lookin’ up spot gold on that gizmo.”
“What?”
“Price of gold.”
“How?”
“I dunno. Turn it on.”
Tat punch her leg.
Corazon smirk. Thumbs press the phone. “Here.” She hand me the cell.
I carry it back to Granny and show her.
“Shit.”
“That’s right. Nine twenty-five. You’d a done better to dicker at eight hundred. But Southern men respect old folk so I’ll give you eleven coin and you’ll come out a little ahead.”
“What’s the math on that?”
“Nine times eleven? That’s ninety-nine. Eleven times the twenty-five is two fifty plus twenty-five more. Two seventy-five plus nine hundred-ninety is one thousand two hundred and sixty-five.”
“Pretty quick with the numbers. You want to give me twelve of those gold pieces, the car’s yours.”
“Shit. I might could give you six, or seven if you threw in one hellacious bushel a cabbage, but I don’t know the car even runs.”
“Seven! What kinda horseshit lies — !”
“Whoa now, that’s a mean accusation. Don’t tie your titties in a knot, Granny; tie ’em in a bow. Eleven coin is top dollar and we don’t know which dollar this old Cadillac is. Might be bottom dollar. Might be no dollar.”
“I’d appreciate if you leave my tits out of the negotiation.”
“By all means you can keep ’em. You say the vehicle runs?”
“What? Look mister… you’re a vexin’ somebody. Accourse it runs. Look at it.”
“I seen rocks that shiny but couldn’t drive ’em. You got the — ”
She toss the keys.
I glance up and down the road. They got the one house per two mile rule in effect. She was quick out the front door with me only walkin’ and no sound to cue her… means she’s watchin’ close. Shingles on the house got a bit of rot. Weeds up the side. Dealin’ high on the price right out the gate, this woman needs every dollar but wants the quick sale.
The Men I Sent Forward (Baer Creighton Book 6) Page 5
