by Rob Aspinall
So I turned the wheel hard to the right. Aimed for a giant wooden telephone pole and pressed the accelerator all the way down. The pole came at us fast. I stamped on the brakes and slowed us down to thirty. We hit the pole at an angle—an almighty crunch. I smacked my head on the rim of the wheel.
Hector's head splatted and bounced off the windscreen, cracking the glass. And my rifle let off a burst inside the car.
I rebounded off the wheel and sat upright in my seat.
The front of the car steamed. A crumpled mess. I looked across the cabin in a daze. Saw Hector, a bloody mess in the front passenger seat. Craned my neck around to see Tony bleeding out in the backseat. He'd taken a real bullet in the neck from the rifle.
And then there was Blake. He was dazed, wounded, but conscious. He pushed open his door and fell out. He got up, dragged one of the holdalls off the backseat and staggered away into the desert.
I turned in my seat, moving slow. The bloody airbags didn't deploy. I told Tony to get the thing serviced. Cheap bastard must have lied about that, too.
I tried opening my door. It wouldn't budge. I was too weak. Everything a haze. I flopped forward, my head hitting the horn.
14
Marco Riccini was an athletic man, who unlike many of his peers, steered clear of pasta and flashy suits. Rising out of his grey Chevrolet Impala, he stood six-three tall, with dark, curly hair cut short and tidy. He walked in long strides across the car park. He wasn't especially tall by the day's standards, but his robust stature made him an imposing figure.
The car park in front of the strip mall was mostly empty. The mall was officially closed for the night. But Squeezer's Juice Bar was still open. Marco walked through the door and nodded to the spotty young kid in a green t-shirt behind the counter.
The kid made him his usual. A lemon and lime slushy in a clear plastic cup. The kid popped a straw through the top and handed it over. Marco didn't pay. It was on the house.
It was always on the house.
He sucked as he walked, screwing up his face at the tart zing of the ice cold lemon and lime. He loved it.
Marco pushed through a staff door and walked along a short, tight corridor. He turned right into a back office and found his boss, Levi De Luca, going over a sheet of figures with the store manager, Lisa. She was a plump blonde woman with a short bob of dirty blonde hair. Friendly, funny and didn't bat an eye as a steady stream of mystery money came rolling through the door.
The office itself was small. A narrow window behind Lisa’s desk. A round meeting table took up space in the centre of the room, with notice boards on the walls—the spotty kid was employee of the month.
Marco stood in the doorway, waiting for the right moment to interrupt. He didn't have to. De Luca looked up and nodded. He asked Lisa to leave.
Lisa did as she was told. "Hey, Marco," she said on her way out of the office.
Marco acknowledged her and closed the door behind him.
De Luca reclined in Lisa's office chair behind the desk. He wore a grey suit and a purple shirt with wide, open collars, a gold chain around his neck and a large gold ring on the index finger of his right hand.
Marco pulled up a spare chair and sat down on the opposite side.
"So what is it?" De Luca said, stroking a greying goatee.
"Just been talking to those pricks out of Rattlesnake."
"How did it go?" De Luca said.
"He got away."
De Luca sat forward in his chair, the light bouncing off his head, shaved and receding. "Did they get anything out of him?"
"Yeah," Marco said. "A broken nose and a bullet to the leg. And I swung by the crime scene earlier . . . Slick work. Professional, even. Nothing anyone local could have pulled off."
"So they drafted in some ringers," De Luca said.
"Yeah, or the guy we're after has tradecraft."
"You know who he is?" De Luca said.
"Our three idiot friends say he talks funny. They reckon he's Australian. But that's all they know."
De Luca slapped a hand on the desk and sat back in his chair. "Fuck."
"Told you we shouldn't have used those stoners," Marco said.
De Luca held up a hand. "I know, I know. But I don't wanna get too deep into this one. It's a sensitive time . . . We need to know who this funny-talking guy is."
"Already did some digging," Marco said. "I got a name from the Sheriff's Department—Charlie Ronsen."
"Ronsen?" De Luca said. "Never heard of the guy."
"Neither has anyone," Marco said. "All anyone knows is, he showed up two weeks ago. He's been working for Bill Collins."
De Luca folded his arms over his ample stomach. "So what d'you think? He's doing more than shovelling cow shit? We know Collins needs the money."
"One hell of a coincidence," Marco said. "If they knew the time of the delivery and the value of the haul, they had to have someone on the inside. You want us to question employees at the bank? Put the frighteners on?"
De Luca paused a moment. He shook his head. "No, no. We can't afford the heat. We'll get to that. In the meantime, step it up. Forget the local clowns. Pull some of our own muscle together."
"Sure, I'll send in the best we've got," Marco said, sucking on his slushy.
"No, I want you heading up the team," De Luca said. "I don't want any fuck-ups. I want that fucking money back and I want it done quiet."
"When do you want it done?"
"Tonight," De Luca said.
"Are we talking dead or alive?" Marco asked.
"Once you've got the money, put him in the ground."
"And what about Collins?" Marco said.
"If he had the money, he'd have paid the loan by now. And if he is involved, we'll find out. And then he'll get what's coming, six months, a year from now, when everything's in place, but not now. It's slippers-on-feet time, understand?"
Marco nodded and rose from his chair. "Understood." He threw his empty slushy cup in an office bin beside Lisa's desk.
"What about the fourth man?" De Luca said. "If he got away he must have taken a cut of the money."
"His name's Blake Patterson. Small time crook. Got a private dick on the case. Thinks he's in Phoenix. He's working on it."
"Tell him to work faster," De Luca said, sucking on an orange slushy of his own. "I'll be glad when this week is over. This deal is backing me up," De Luca studied his slushy. "Oranges are good for constipation, right?"
15
The jigsaw is complete. The pieces put back together. I finally have the picture on the front of the box. And while I'm not too happy about being back in the game, I'm glad I got involved. Even if those pricks had succeeded on their own, they would have ripped Collins off.
It doesn't make the mess any easier. But at least I know where I'm standing in it.
And come to think of it—it should be pretty simple to clean up. All we need to do is stick to the original plan. Tomorrow I dig up the cash and hand it to Collins. He rinses it through the good people of Rattlesnake and their various enterprises. They produce a bunch of fake invoices and matching credit notes—and each one makes a transfer into his business account.
He takes a trip to the bank and makes the payment on the loan. Collins keeps his land and Mainline Oil look for somewhere else to drill.
In the meantime, Collins happens to run into the sheriff and gives me an alibi. I was working on the farm, same as usual. Janice made me breakfast and I went out shooting coyotes. Only the cows could argue any different.
I look around the basement in the barn. "We need to get rid of all of this," I say.
"I'll handle it first thing, "Collins says.
"No, right now," I say, scrunching up the map on the decorating table. "You got something we can burn these in?"
Collins stands on the opposite side of the fire. I throw in the last piece of evidence—a crudely-drawn visual of the highway, the armoured truck and our strike point. I watch my marker pen drawings turn to ash as the pa
per folds in on itself in an open oil drum. Sparks spit and wriggle their way up into the night. I hear the howl of a wolf in the far distance.
"I'll get you the money tomorrow," I say.
Collins breathes a big sigh of relief. "You don't know what this means—"
"Don't count your chickens just yet," I say, as we walk away from the fire. "Not until that loan is paid off."
"So how do you wanna do this?" Collins says.
"Pick me up tomorrow. I'll call you and tell you a time. We'll take a drive out on the highway and we'll bring the cash back into town." We stop in front of the farmhouse porch. "In the meantime, let the fire burn down to ashes. Pour water on the embers and scatter them out on the fields. If anyone asks, you were burning old wallpaper, telephone bills, whatever . . . Making nitrates for the soil."
Collins shakes my hand. "Sure I can't run you into town?"
"No, it's better I go alone. I'm one of your ranch hands and that's as far as it goes."
"Sure thing," Collins says.
"Thank Janice for supper," I say.
Collins waves me off from the porch.
As I make the long walk back to town, I touch the bump on my head. It's going down a treat. In a couple of days it'll be a bruise. And as far as I can tell, no brain damage.
No more than usual, anyway.
I pull my cap on over my head and stroll slow along the roads. They don't have stars like this back home. Too many buildings and streetlights dulling the effect. Having said that, the sky is starting to congest. The air growing thicker. Giant black clouds rolling in fast and low off the mountains.
I quicken my pace, aiming to beat the rain. As I make it onto the main street, I see a pair of SUVs parked up outside the motel. They're big and new. Chevrolet Tahoes in black. I cross the street and walk parallel. I retreat into the shadows in a narrow space between buildings.
A handful of guys climb out of the SUVs. They're dressed in dark clothing. Can't see their faces in the dim light, but they don't appear friendly.
They're clean-cut guys. All six-footers. I start to wonder if they're FBI.
One of 'em ducks his head in the front office. It's a tiny box of a room with a manager who wears the worst Hawaiian shirts and a greasy grey combover. I see 'em talk through the window. The guy has close-cropped curly hair. He's the biggest of the bunch, greying at the sideburns. He produces a photograph from his jacket pocket and shows it to Kurt, the manager.
Kurt nods. Says something. The guy tucks the photograph away.
The other men stand around by the SUVs. I expect them to gather and take a walk together to my room. To knock on the door. Bust it open if they need to and try to make an arrest. But they don't. The leader says something to his men. They get back in their Chevys. They turn around and head out of town. I watch the red tail lights shrink into the far distance. I look up and see those clouds gathering over Rattlesnake. I wait a few minutes. Then I come out of the shadows and cross the street.
I open the door to the office.
Kurt watches a ball game on a small TV. The picture breaks up with static.
He slaps the side of it. "Son of a bitch."
"It's not the TV, it's the storm."
Kurt looks out of the window. "I don't see it rainin'."
"You soon will," I say. "Anyone been in here, asking about me?"
Kurt squirms in his seat behind the counter. "Like who?"
"Like anyone from out of town."
"Nope," Kurt says, turning to the TV on the left of the counter.
"Let me rephrase," I say, reaching over the counter. I grab the little bastard by the shirt collars. I drag him up off his seat and halfway over the counter.
Kurt breaks easy. "Okay, okay . . . Federal Marshals were here. Told me not to say anything."
"They have my name?"
"Your name and your face . . . On a photo."
"What did they want?"
"Wanted to know which room you were in."
"You tell 'em?"
"What was I supposed to do?" he says. "They're Feds.”
“What else did they say?"
"They asked if I knew whether you were in your room or not. I said I saw you leave earlier. Hadn't seen you come back."
I let go of Kurt's collars. He straightens his shirt and his combover. I glance over his shoulder and see eight other room keys hanging on their hooks. It's a miracle the place stays open. The motel is dead at the best of times and tonight I'm the only guest.
"Well, I'll say goodnight then."
"Yeah, um, goodnight," Kurt says, still a little shaken up.
I step out of the office and taste the air. So thick you could spread it on toast. I walk along the row of motel rooms to my door. I linger outside and stick a hand in my pocket. I take out the key and rub a thumb over the key ring. I turn and walk back to the office. I stick my head through the door. Kurt straightens up in his chair, expecting more trouble.
"What time do you knock off?" I ask.
"Huh?"
"What time do you close the office?"
Kurt checks his watch. "Ten minutes."
"Good," I say. "You got a screwdriver?"
16
The motel room bed is a slab. The pillow a rock. Feels like I'm back in prison, sitting up in bed trying to read the Bible by a light screwed into the wall above my head. The pages in this thing are skin-thin and the print microscopic, but I'm wading through it.
Well, skipping through the boring bits looking for the good parts.
The stuff with lessons. The stuff I can actually make head or tail of.
I flick through to the next section. Ah, here we go, a bit of action at last. Fire and brimstone. Revelation 21.8: "But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death."
Don't ask me what an idolater is when it’s at home, but unbelieving—check. Abominable—check. Murderer--check. Liar—check.
Bloody hell, I'm doomed.
At least I'm not a sorcerer or a whoremonger. That's some consolation.
I look up from the book and see a flash of blue lightning behind the thin white curtains of the motel room. I hear a deep rumble of thunder overhead.
The sound of judgement?
I keep reading. It's heavy going. The language could use some updating, too. I wonder who wrote it. I thought God wrote it, but obviously not. There's no direct quotes from the guy, just eyewitness reports of who said what and when.
I flip through some more, my aim to find some kind of wisdom I can apply to my own life. A clear set of rules and regs I can follow.
The only things I was told growing up were:
Charlie, don't stick your tongue in the power socket.
Charlie, stop picking your nose.
Charlie, don't punch other kids unless they punch you.
I try to concentrate, but the words blur through tired eyes and my mind starts to wander back to the business outside the motel. I know the law when I see it. And there's no way in hell those guys in the SUVs were Feds.
The question is, who were they?
I rub my eyes, turn the corner of the book in and mark the spot where I stop reading. I close the book and rest it on the bedside table. I reach up behind me and pull on the thin cord of the overhead light.
The room falls black and blue. Another lightning flash. Another huge clap. Closer. Louder. It shakes the entire room.
The heavens open. The rain comes down in rods.
I turn onto my side and try and get comfy on the thin pillow.
I listen to the rain lash down outside the motel. It pounds the roof, the windows and the streets. I find it relaxing. Too relaxing. My eyelids start to drop.
17
Marco rode in the front passenger seat of the lead SUV. The driver was one of four other men—the organisation's best. Specialists trained in the art of wet wor
k.
"Kill the lights," Marco said.
The driver did as instructed. Marco checked in the passenger wing mirror and saw the second Tahoe do the same. They rolled slow into town, rain beating down, wipers batting fast over the windscreen. Marco saw a jagged lightning strike connect with the peak of a distant mountain. It lit up the town. Al's bar to the right. The motel coming up on the left, the manager's office locked up for the night.
"Stop here," Marco said into a microphone wire plugged into his right ear.
Both SUVs came to a rest a short walk back from the motel, parked tight to the kerb. They sat in silence a moment, bathed in the green glow of the dash.
Marco peered through the wash of rain over the windscreen. "Leave the engines running and the doors open. Weapons hot. Quick and quiet."
The driver and the man in the back took out their pistols and screwed on their silencer barrels. They inserted their clips. Marco did the same.
"Go, go, go," Marco said, opening his door.
He left it open, letting the rain bounce in. They all did. Damaging the leather the least of their worries.
A quick getaway would be essential. As was a silent approach.
They moved as a pack, Marco out front. The cool of the air conditioned Chevy replaced by a hot, muggy night.
Rain bounced hard off Marco's scalp. Rivers ran fast down the street, finding their way to storm drains built into the pavements. Marco and his men ghosted across the narrow motel car park—a row of ten spaces just off the road.
"Room number six," Marco whispered into his microphone, peering through the rain.
He led the team along the row of motel rooms. The room numbers started at nine, with room number one on the far end of the row. Backwards bastards, Marco thought, droplets exploding off the barrel of his gun. He stepped onto the wooden walkway that ran in front of the rooms. A board creaked underfoot. Other than that, conditions were perfect.
The hour was late.
The town was dead.
The sound of the silencers would be lost in the rain.
