Conley laughed. “Sure, Ben. See you at church next Sunday.”
Tiffy’s white convertible Volkswagen Rabbit was parked in front of the Cheyenne Club when Benjamin drove up. Mr. Bradshaw had given her the car upon the successful completion of her cosmetology course work at the community college. She never aspired to or attained a position in the industry. She just had a thirst for knowledge. An I Brake for Cowboys decal adorned her rear bumper. Benjamin parked behind the Rabbit, wondering if she had the same logo tattooed on her ass.
It was early and the club was not crowded. Benjamin sat at the bar, took off his hat, and ordered a beer. He drank it without pause. He had been dry near a week and the beer quenched a burning within. He ordered another and looked to the dance floor. Tiffy danced there with a young cowboy. They both wore hats. Benjamin pondered why half the population of Wyoming found it imperative to wear their hats indoors.
Savages, he thought.
Tiffy wore a short denim skirt, white leather boots, and a white long sleeved blouse with a bolo tie. A flimsy bra beneath the blouse barely restrained her breasts. Benjamin pictured her naked. He felt no guilt. Countless men and boys and a proportionate number of women had envisioned Tiffy naked in the course of her young life. Benjamin did not see why he should be the first to forsake that pleasure. The young man she danced with was apparently of the same perspective, as he furtively glanced to ascertain which way her chest swayed. Tiffy left him on the dance floor when the music stopped. She sat at the bar beside Benjamin.
“How did you get out?”
“Hasn’t been a jail built yet that can hold Benjamin Lonetree.”
“Escaped, did you?”
“Three men died in the purchase of my liberty.”
“Uh huh. Buy me a beer?”
Benjamin called for another round. Tiffy uncrossed and crossed her legs again. Her skirt’s brevity impressed the hell out of him.
“I suppose you’ll tell Duncan you saw me here.”
“That was not my intent.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter. I’d tell him myself if I knew where he was. I’d tell him it don’t mean nothing.”
“What do you care? You dumped and forsook him.”
“Is that what he said?” Tiffy touched his arm. “This is all a terrible mistake. I miss him so.”
Benjamin glanced at the young cowboy who in turn eyed him with ill disguised envy. “I could tell.”
“Oh, don’t mind him.” She moved closer. “We were just dancing.” Benjamin smelled her jasmine perfume. “You know where Duncan is, don’t you?”
Benjamin had stopped by the post office on the way to the Cheyenne Club. Amongst the bills and the advertisements in his box was a card from Duncan with his new address. Benjamin had put the card in his pocket and the remaining mail in the trash.
“I know.”
“You’ll tell me, won’t you?” She touched his knee. “I’d be so grateful.”
Benjamin sighed. He set his beer down. It would be rude to ignore an invitation that plain. He kissed her. She expanded her mouth to receive him and he indulged her with his tongue. After a moment she pushed him away and smirked.
“Well, now, Benjamin! Whatever did you do that for?”
“To see if I could.”
“You always could have. You just never noticed.”
Tiffy grasped his ears and kissed him again. She guided his hand to her breast. Benjamin had often laid in bed and mused what he would do to or with or for her if the opportunity ever tendered itself. But now, when she was (technically at least) broken up with Duncan and was as such fair game, he startled himself by resisting.
“You can touch me if you want,” she whispered.
“Which is exactly why I’m not going to.”
“It’s all right. I wouldn’t tell Duncan.”
“I would.”
Tiffy cuffed him once, hard. Benjamin slapped her back. She appeared surprised, then stimulated. She seized him and tried to kiss him again.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said.
“I’ve got a better idea.” He pushed her away. “Why don’t I get out of here and you find someone else to lead around by the pecker.”
He paid for the beers and left. Tiffy followed him to the Purgatory Truck. Her previously smoldering eyes had cooled to glaciers. She handed him an envelope.
“Will you give this to Duncan?”
“Sure.”
“If you tell him anything, I’ll just deny it.” She turned and walked away. “Candy ass pansy Indian fairy,” she said as she retreated.
“White bow-legged cowgirl slut,” Benjamin said as he got in his truck.
Tiffy stopped. “I am not bow-legged!” she yelled. Then she went back inside.
Leroy Kern stood behind the counter at the Lazy Rancher, absently rubbing the goose egg on his forehead. He had been seeing double since the incident and could only today successfully fuse his images. Earlier that morning, Billy Masterson had stopped by and explained the situation. It riled Leroy Kern that Benjamin could, in theory and if he so desired, prefer charges against him. He protested, but Billy held up his hand and said, self defense don’t include protecting yourself from being stared at.
Leroy Kern looked up when he heard the Purgatory Truck. He reached under the counter. He panicked when he remembered Billy had confiscated his gun as evidence. Benjamin shut off the truck and went inside. He took a six pack of beer out of the cooler and placed it in a hand basket beside a plastic wrapped tuna salad sandwich, a bag of chocolate chip cookies, and a half pint of potato salad. He took a quart of thirty weight off a shelf and put it in the basket between the six packs. He put the basket on the counter.
“Howdy, Leroy,” Benjamin said.
“Hey, Ben.”
Leroy Kern, pale and sweating, removed and totaled the items in Benjamin’s basket. His goose egg was a painful purple, and both eyes were bruised. He looked like a fat, bald raccoon.
“No hard feelings?” he asked.
“Just because you tried to murder me? Of course not.”
Leroy Kern relaxed. “That’ll be twenty-one seventy-five.”
“You take care of that, Leroy?
Benjamin picked up his goods and headed for the door. He stopped at the candy rack. He took a Milky Way bar and held it up. Leroy Kern stood there with his mouth open and his eyes dull.
“I believe you owe me one of these.”
He pocketed the candy bar and stepped outside. He placed his appropriated goods on the passenger seat and got in. As he backed up, he looked through the glass and watched with grim satisfaction as Leroy Kern finally closed his mouth, took out his wallet, and put a twenty and three ones into the cash register.
A thin, ebony haired receptionist was sitting behind a chrome and glass desk when Duncan walked into Angela Moncini’s office that Monday, her crossed legs covered in black mesh. Her name was Marie, and she was pretty as a mannequin, though substantially more lifelike. She surveyed him with an entomologist’s indifference. Duncan leaned the two paintings wrapped in butcher paper against a wall and took off his hat.
“I’d like to see Angela Moncini if I could.”
“Is she expecting you?”
“Well, yes and no.”
“Which is it?”
“Both, I guess.”
“Your name?”
“Duncan Delaney.”
“I’ll see if she’s in.” She stood and went through a door.
Duncan looked about. Framed newspaper and magazine clippings on the walls detailed the varying successes of Angela Moncini’s clients and the importance of their work to Western civilization. Looking at the clippings, Duncan felt like a pretentious dung beetle from Wyoming competing with big city cockroaches. He picked up his paintings and turned to go, but a placid, euphonious female voice arrested him.
“You must be Duncan.”
He turned. Angela Moncini’s onyx hair was cut to her shoulders and her eyes were gray and soft above tan valleys cut deep benea
th the ridges of her cheekbones. She wore a black skirt and stockings and a white silk blouse through which Duncan deciphered the intricate pattern of her bra. Duncan understood what Benjamin must have felt when first he gazed upon her.
“Yes, ma’am. I must be.”
“Can I have Marie get you a drink?”
“Yes, please. Beer if you have it.”
“I’ll make a note to get some. Would you settle for champagne?”
“That would be fine.” He really wanted a beer.
“So you’re Duncan Delaney,” Angela repeated.
“Yes ma’am.” He took out his wallet. “I have identification.”
Angela laughed. He put his wallet back, feeling stupid. She took his hand and led him through a door.
“I want to show you something,” she said.
Her office was on the fifteenth floor of a high rise and its window offered a wide vista past concrete and steel stalagmites to the sea. The room itself was like a well-furnished gallery. Two leather chairs sat before an ebony desk with a third chair behind it. An elaborate oriental rug lay atop the mahogany floor. Recessed lights adorned the ceiling. But what seized Duncan’s imagination were the paintings. He could identify a few of the canvases on the walls, and some signatures, but he stalled at a painting of a young blond woman on horseback riding a herd across a wide grassy plain to market. The girl wore blue jeans, a denim shirt, and a white cowboy hat. She was more than beautiful and the view would be idyllic if boring save that the herd she drove was comprised of naked, hairy men on all fours. Duncan scrutinized the signature. Sheila something. He could not make out the last name. He moved on until he came to a painting that routed an icy thrill up his back and down his arms. Benjamin’s family, framed in rosewood and illuminated by recessed lighting, hung like an icon on her wall. Marie materialized with champagne. Duncan gulped a glass down.
“Did I paint that?” he asked.
“It’s brilliant,” Angela said.
He was not prepared to go that far. Still, six hundred dollars no longer seemed ludicrous.
“Holy Jesus,” he said. “What a difference a frame makes.”
Angela laughed. Duncan thought he said something stupid again but there was no malice in her eyes.
“I could sell it for twice what I paid. But I won’t. I keep the first paintings of all my artists. Now let’s see what I can sell.”
Marie brought in his paintings. He tore the butcher paper off and set them against the desk. He stepped back and began to sweat. Angela shifted a foot and put one hand to her chin. Duncan fanned his face with his Stetson, ready to crawl back to Cheyenne. Angela looked up and smiled. Anxiety washed from his body like dye from a new pair of blue jeans.
“Duncan,” she said, “You’re going to be a big hit in this town.”
Duncan was still feeling the champagne when he sauntered past the white, nineteen sixty-five Cadillac convertible parked below his window. Its top was down, and it had immaculate red leather seats and a high polish to its paint. Had he known what it was, and what it would one day do, he would have fetched the baseball bat he had bought that morning and reduced the car as best he could to scrap. Much later, as he watched the killer General Motors product crushed and pulverized at a scrap yard and many times after, he would think back to that day and wonder if he would have done anything different. But he would always conclude the only thing worth changing was the way it all turned out.
He climbed the stairs and ducked under the pipe in the hallway. Inside his studio he hung his Stetson on his easel. He picked up and waltzed Cat across the floor. Cat purred a question and Duncan chuckled an answer. He collapsed laughing on the couch. Cat jumped to the open window.
“Lighten up, Cat! If you can’t stand the painter, get out of the studio!”
The Cadillac started outside. Its stereo blared Only Women Bleed. Cat glanced at Duncan and down at the sidewalk. Then he leaped out to the street. Duncan jumped up and ran to the window.
“Hey!” he yelled, “I was . . .”
Cat had landed in the Cadillac next to a young woman whose beauty shattered him and sent the shards crashing about her feet. She was maybe three years older than Duncan and oddly familiar. Her hair was as blond as his was red but much longer. Her Caribbean blue eyes smiled above full, laughing lips that had never felt the needle’s collagen sting. Her skin was smooth and her teeth even and white. She wore a black leather jacket over a tight black dress. Black stockings sheathed long, athletic legs, ending in black pumps with sharp heels. Her breasts curved wonderfully within the low neck of her dress. She was as beautiful as any model or actress in print or on screen.
“. . . joking,” he finished.
“Hell of a way to treat a cat,” she said in a voice suggesting gravel.
“He jumped!”
“Relax, I wasn’t serious. I have a way of attracting strays.”
She caressed Cat and held him to her chest. Duncan would have donated any of his redundant organs to change places. She leaned over and dropped Cat to the sidewalk. Cat jumped back into the car. She laughed.
“Maybe you ought to come get him . . .”
“Duncan,” he said, “my name’s Duncan.”
“Hi, Duncan. I’m Pris.”
“I’m an artist,” he blurted, ruing the words even as he spoke, thinking them pretentious and hollow. “Painter, I mean.”
“Really. Are you any good?”
“I’m okay. Maybe you could pose for me sometime.”
“Then again maybe not.” She dropped Cat onto the sidewalk and shifted the Cadillac into drive. “See you around, Duncan Delaney.”
“Wait!” Duncan yelled.
He ran from his studio, wondering how she knew his last name. By the time he recalled the pipe in the hallway his head had already contacted cold metal with a sharp thwang at approximately fifteen miles per hour. A galaxy of lights that would have been stars had his life been a cartoon filled his eyes. He missed a step and tumbled down the stairs to the alley. The bum under the stairs drank from a bottle obscured in a paper bag and watched Duncan fall.
“Nice technique,” the bum said, “and a good dismount.”
Duncan looked up the street. The girl and the Cadillac were gone. He dusted himself off, picked up Cat, and climbed the stairs.
“Hey, buddy,” called the bum. “Spare some change?”
“Not today,” Duncan replied, “but thanks for asking.”
Benjamin finally decided he was being followed at a gas station outside Bountiful. He had first noticed the forest green Taurus in Wyoming, but was not immediately wary as both car and color were common. The Taurus disappeared for prolonged periods when Benjamin implemented evasive tactics, like the high speed drift and subsequent u-turn across four lanes of traffic outside Steamboat Springs. The Taurus did not dare that maneuver. But after every such gambit and within fifty miles there would be the Taurus or another like it.
Benjamin had been followed many times, mostly by police, and by eighteen he had developed a healthy paranoia and could spot a plainclothes police car with near ninety-seven percent accuracy. This green Taurus plainly did not contain police, for he had seen soda cans and burger boxes regularly sail out the passenger’s window, and all the cops he knew were fastidious when it came to littering.
Benjamin got out of his truck. He stretched and yawned and scratched his armpit. He gave the attendant twenty dollars and filled his tank. The Taurus braked at an island on the remote side of the lot. A tall man with dark hair and dark glasses got out and slid a credit card into the pump. A second man reclined in the passenger seat, a newspaper over his face. Benjamin replaced the pump, got in his truck, and pulled onto the highway.
He stopped at a road side diner in Salina. The green Taurus pulled into the lot and parked well away from the Purgatory Truck. Benjamin went inside. He settled in a booth and perused a menu a waitress with inordinately big hair placed on the table in front of him next to a tall glass of ice water. A tall, dark-hai
red man came in and sat at the counter and ordered coffee. If it was the same man, he had changed his shirt and put on a John Deere hat. Benjamin was schooled in the minor tricks of effective surveillance, and changing clothes was one. The man at the counter looked like a chicken farmer.
Benjamin ordered a t-bone steak with mashed potatoes, gravy, biscuits, and a vanilla milkshake. He stood and went to the men’s bathroom. He first ascertained he was alone, then he entered a stall and latched the door. He took off and placed his boots before the toilet. He climbed out the window above the stall. He ran barefoot to the Taurus and looked in the back. Empty beer cans littered the floor and half a six pack sat on the rear seat. Benjamin walked to the front and looked at the man sleeping there.
“Well, how about that,” Benjamin said.
It was Leroy Kern, numb to the world, snoring and reeking of beer and sweat. Benjamin’s original plan was to flatten the tires and pull the plug wires, thereby incapacitating and thwarting his pursuers. As he observed Leroy Kern snort and whistle, he devised another. He retrieved the beers through the open window and poured one onto the driver’s seat. The next he poured onto Leroy Kern’s lap. He stirred but did not wake. The last Benjamin drank. He climbed back through the window, put his boots on, and returned to his booth.
He spent the next twenty minutes eating. The tall man toyed with a piece of pecan pie and nursed a coffee while Benjamin finished his potatoes and steak. He mopped up the gravy with a biscuit and stuffed it whole in his mouth. He ordered and devoured a slice of hot apple pie with ice cream and cinnamon sauce. He took his time with his milkshake and then ordered another and lingered over that. The tall man called for another cup of coffee. Benjamin ordered a coffee to go, threw the lid in the trash, paid his bill, and went to a pay phone by the door. As the tall man paid for his coffee and pie, Benjamin dialed three numbers and spoke rapidly into the phone. He hung up and left. The tall man followed. Benjamin walked to the Taurus and set his coffee on the roof. The tall man hung uncertainly back. Benjamin reached through the window, grabbed Leroy Kern, and bounced his head off the dashboard. He heard a small crack.
Duncan Delaney and the Cadillac of Doom Page 5
