Cosmic Banditos

by Weisbecker, A. C.

  At this point, Gary laid his head on José’s massive chest and whispered, “Take me home.”

  High Pockets and I saw it coming and dove for cover.

  “Maricón!” José bellowed, but it sounded more like a defective foghorn than a word.

  He then pulled his pistol and proceeded to shoot up the Crisco Disco West.

  I counted his shots. I knew he always kept one in the chamber, so I waited until nine. I heard José cursing and trying to reload from his bandolier. High Pockets and I jumped up and surveyed the damage. José hadn’t shot anyone yet. I knew he was just blowing off steam, but I doubted that the police would be very understanding.

  I grabbed him and attempted to drag him outside, pleading with him to be reasonable since we had important work to do. Mentioning Tina’s father did the trick. We bolted for a waiting bus across the street. Screaming homosexuals were everywhere, giving the scene a surreal, almost Subatomic look.93

  José seemed to be limping, so I checked his legs for injuries as we boarded the bus. Gary was wrapped around José’s right leg, clutching it in a death grip and whimpering that he would kill himself if José left him.

  José reached for his .45 with the obvious intention of putting the poor wimp out of his misery, but I got Gary in a hammer-lock, peeled him off José’s leg and flung him off the bus.

  “No dogs,” the driver said, referring to High Pockets. He reopened the doors. Gary was back on his feet and staggering in our direction. Sirens were wailing, homosexuals screaming.

  “He’s a seeing-eye dog,” I said to the driver. This concept had worked earlier in the day when I needed money. The driver was a jovial-looking black guy wearing a beret. His eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  “You not blind.”

  “My friend is blind,” I said, jerking my head toward José.

  “No, he in’t. He Mesican.”

  Gary boarded the bus, his eyes wild with passion. I gave him a swift kick in the stomach, saving his life (José had drawn his piece) and sending him flying back outside into the growing Homosexual Riot.

  I pulled my 9mm and put it to the bus driver’s head. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to commandeer this vehicle.”

  “Okay.”

  “Get going.”

  “Where to?”

  “Sausalito.”

  Einstein’s Unified Field Theory was an attempt to unite the macrocosmic realm with that of the subatomic.... This was the culmination of Einstein’s lifelong need to find order in a seemingly disorderly and chaotic universe.... Most physicists agree that his attempt failed abysmally.

  —Gary Zukav

  Sausalito Banditos

  PART I

  It has now been over two months since José and I had our showdown with Tina’s father, but until now I’ve been too shaken up to put anything down on paper. José, God bless him, has nursed me back to mental health and I’m starting to feel like I can confront the truth and all the implications of what happened.

  I read this manuscript to José not long ago, and we both feel that it is vital that I complete it. Looking at it now, with a little distance between myself and the events depicted, with a little psychological perspective, I see it’s obvious that this story is a veritable road map for Lost Souls. But more about that later. First, let me describe our experiences in Sausalito and Berkeley, starting where I left off, with the hijacking of the bus.

  We stopped briefly while José herded the other passengers out, meanwhile repelling crazed homosexuals who were trying to board. We managed to escape from the riot just as the police arrived. I had the driver do some evasive maneuvering to shake off possible tails. I still had the weird sensation that we were under the scrutiny, if not the control, of that same force that had manifested itself as an old twin Beechcraft airplane in Mexico. And that that force was somehow linked (possibly in a Subatomic fashion) to Tina’s father.

  José and High Pockets, innocents that they were, had their heads sticking out one window, enjoying the fresh air and the sight of the Golden Gate Bridge rushing toward us, the sun setting over the Pacific in the background. High Pockets’ tongue had unraveled to its full, almost unbelievable length, and was flapping in the breeze, occasionally snapping like a lion tamer’s whip. José had one arm around High Pockets’ neck and was smiling contentedly. They looked like kids on their way to summer camp instead of a couple desperados careening toward the Unknown.

  “Wha’ exit?” the driver asked.

  “Sausalito,” I said.

  “They two Sausalito exit.”

  “Shit.”

  “Give yo‘self up. It go ‘lot easy on ya.”

  I laughed. “We’d all be shot on sight.”

  “What’d ya do, fer chrissakes?”

  “You name it, we did it. We’re desperate men.”

  “Why ya goin’ Sausalito?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Wha’ exit? Here come de first.” He laughed. “Wee-oow. Dere go de first.”

  “Get off at the second.”

  “Okay. By de way, my name Rafer.”

  “Hi, Rafer.”

  “Wee-oow. Here we go.”

  Rafer exited the freeway and, on my orders, drove randomly around suburban Sausalito while José and I shared a fifth of tequila in the back and planned our next move.

  We had nearly twenty-four hours to kill before our dinner date with Tina’s father (and, presumably, the whole family) and since I had never been in the Bay Area before, I asked Rafer if he had any suggestions as to what a couple of fun-loving guys might do in the way of entertainment.

  “I hungry,” Rafer said in the way of an answer. It turned out that everyone was hungry, so Rafer pulled the bus into a family-type Italian restaurant just outside town. He parked the bus behind the building out of sight of the road.

  “Jus’ in case,” he said, adjusting his beret.

  “In case of what?” I asked.

  “Case de po-lice come by, dey don’ see de bus.” Rafer helped himself to a slug of José’s tequila. “Ya’ll done stoled munici-pal propitty and done kidnapped a city ‘ployee.”

  “That’s right,” I said. I had forgotten. It should have occurred to me that I was beginning to lose touch with reality, but Rafer wasn’t setting a great example. He had mentally included himself in our organization and was behaving as if we’d been partners in crime for years.

  “Ya look like ya needin’ some rest,” he said to me as we sat down to dinner. “I do de thinkin’ fo’ a while.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Sausalito Banditos

  PART II

  After dinner Rafer and José doctored the plates and identification numbers on the bus so we’d have cool wheels for the night. We picked up a case of Cuervo Gold, rolled up some Guajiran buds and hit the road.

  Over dinner I had filled Rafer in on our situation with respect to the law, Subatomic Phenomena and Tina’s father. Rafer wanted in.

  José and I discussed it (in Spanish) and agreed, seeing as how Rafer was familiar with the area and had wheels. His level of enthusiasm was acceptable and he liked dogs. On the minus side, he seemed unable to grasp even the most rudimentary aspects of the New Physics. But the night was young and Rafer soon came up with a concept that immediately appealed to José and me.

  I dimly recall Rafer’s plan of attack. We would first smoke joints and guzzle tequila. Then we’d find Tina’s family’s house and make a few passes at it in the bus. The last phase of Rafer’s plan was the masterstroke. We would look up Tom and somehow persuade him to join us for a night of dissipation and chaos. Naturally, we would fail to mention who we were until the time was ripe. In the meantime, Tom could fill in many pieces of the Big Puzzle without even knowing it.

  It sounded foolproof, but unfortunately things didn’t go exactly as planned.

  The marijuana smoking and tequila swilling went off pretty much without a hitch; then we attempted to locate Tina’s family’s house, with Rafer behind the wheel. H
is hand-eye coordination and motor skills in general were seriously impaired. He kept thinking he was driving his ’64 Impala instead of a sixty-foot municipal bus, which has drastically different handling characteristics.

  Rafer had claimed to know Sausalito quite well, but it became evident that his memory had failed at one crucial intersection or another when I realized that we were on the Golden Gate Bridge, heading back to San Francisco. When I pointed this out, Rafer said, “Wee-oow,” made a crowd-pleasing U-turn and whipped us back to Sausalito.

  Sausalito Banditos

  PART III

  We decided to scrub the strafing mission on Tina’s family’s house, and zero in on Tom. I gave Rafer the address.

  He squinted at it and adjusted his beret. “Mo’ ‘killya.”

  This was Rafer’s way of requesting more tequila. José handed him the bottle. “Wee-oow,” Rafer said after a healthy pull. This expression (“Wee-oow”) was apparently very flexible, and equivalent to one of José’s “Aahhh,” which also could mean just about anything.

  Anyway, ten minutes later we were parked in front of an apartment complex overlooking Sausalito Bay. Rafer blared the horn a half dozen times. Lights were turned on up and down the quiet, middle-class street.

  “Jesus, don’t do that,” I said. “We gotta use some subtlety here.”

  “Mo’ ‘killya,” Rafer said.

  “You’re holdin’ it,” I said.

  “Wee-oow,” Rafer said.

  “How’re we gonna get Tom out of there?” I asked no one in particular.

  “We jus’ go on up and invite de dude out,” Rafer reasoned. “He sayin’ no, we beatin’ ‘im up, steal de stereo.”

  I translated the plan to José. He nodded in agreement. “Sí, sí.”

  The apartment numbering system was completely random. (The place should’ve been called the Subatomic Arms.) It took about twenty minutes to find Tom’s place.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. I had caught a glimpse of us in the reflection in Tom’s curtained front windows. A quick group portrait, so to speak.

  I had everybody stand back for a good look: Rafer, with his bus driver’s uniform, beret and bottle of tequila, was on our right. Next came High Pockets, his fluorescent tongue hanging to the ground. Then me. I was looking a little weird; something about the eyes, I thought.94 José was on the left end of the group, looking like... well, like the Full-Blown Bandito that he was. I wondered what Tom would think when he opened the door and saw us standing on his stoop. There was only one way to find out, so I pounded on the door and stepped back into my position in the aforementioned group portrait.

  Sausalito Banditos

  PART IV

  Nobody was home. For some reason I was unprepared for this scenario.

  Rafer, God bless him, took command immediately. He picked Tom’s front door lock in about four seconds. We ducked inside and locked up.

  I was impressed with Tom’s apartment. Furnished with mostly natural wood stuff (all sturdy and no-nonsense), it also boasted a reasonable number of healthy plants. The pictures and artwork also indicated that Tom had a normal masculine Worldview. I had worried that I might’ve caused some horrible psychological miscarriage in Tom, as I had in Gary, but his apartment indicated that he had weathered my literary bombardment from South and Central America relatively unscathed.

  “Wee-oow,” Rafer kept repeating as he inventoried Tom’s belongings. “Good thing we gots de bus. We take ever’thing but de shitter.” He had a pull of tequila. “I find some fools, mebbe we get dat, too.”

  José and High Pockets were pillaging the refrigerator. “Quieres comer ?” José inquired. I told him no, I wasn’t hungry. He tossed me his bottle of tequila, so I sat down and tried to relax. I turned on the TV with a remote control and attempted to gather my thoughts. José and High Pockets joined me on the couch and proceeded to stuff their faces with leftovers and improvised sandwiches.

  “Ahhh,” José said.

  “Wee-oow,” Rafer agreed from the bedroom.

  At this point the front door swung open and Tom breezed in, carrying a bag of groceries. He was halfway to the kitchen before he noticed he had problems. He looked at the couch and saw a Bandito pointing a .45 automatic at him, a strange-looking dog with his teeth bared and a slice of bologna hanging from his lower jowl and me with my 9mm and Subatomic Scowl. He looked toward the kitchen and saw a psychotic municipal bus driver holding a meat cleaver.

  I could tell by the look on Tom’s face that we could forget about a night on the town with the guys. He looked at each of us again, then settled on me.

  “It’s you, isn’t it?” he stammered. “The lunatic from South America.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Oh, God.”

  “Sit down.”

  “Yes, sir.” Tom put the groceries down and sat stiffly on a dining room chair. José, Rafer, High Pockets and I joined him at the table.

  “Mebbe we tie ’im up,” Rafer suggested.

  “Not yet,” I said. I was regaining control over my faculties.

  “Tom,” I said softly, “we have some things to go over, wouldn’t you say?”

  Tom was confused. “Uh, I ... I don’t know.”

  José cocked his .45 and put it to Tom’s head.

  “Where do we start?” Tom said quickly.

  “Let’s start with Tina, okay?”

  Sausalito Banditos

  PART V

  Tom cracked after four hours of intensive interrogation. He had sweated through his shirt and business suit and was trembling violently. José helped him into the bedroom so he could lie down for a while. He immediately slipped into a deep existential coma, however, and was unavailable for questioning for the remainder of the night.

  My fears proved to be well-founded. I had shaken up Tom in a fundamental psychological way, as well as Gary. Tom had taken my original note (explaining Tina’s treachery) in relative stride, and was only mildly curious about the origin of the missive.

  Tom claimed that the hundreds of other messages I had sent were thrown away unopened, but I think he is repressing painful memories. I think he read every note, possibly memorized them, then denied them when their cumulative impact showed Tom the utter uselessness of his life. When he was confronted by the harsh reality of me and my gang, it all came back to him in one nightmarish rush—hence the coma.

  Tom was an insurance salesman in his early thirties, and he fancied himself quite the man-about-town. He drove a vintage Porsche and played racquetball. He belonged to the local country club and was a competent tennis player. He shot a round of golf in the low 80s.

  He had met Tina at a country club function and banged her that night in a sand trap on the 12th hole. The next day she had left for her Caribbean vacation with her parents. Tom never saw her again and hardly remembered her at all. When I translated this admission to José he let out one of his “Ahhhs.” I knew exactly what he meant. This is what this particular “Ahhh” signified: Tom was an unwitting clown in our Subatomic Circus. By all rational logic, he didn’t deserve to be in the bizarre situation he found himself in. Tina had been a casual affair on the 12th hole fairway bunker, nothing more. For this flippant tryst, however, Tom paid dearly. He had been forced to cough up his Worldview.

  If he ever came out of his coma, his old perception of reality would have to be scrapped. It was woefully obsolete.

  José and I were in Tom’s bedroom discussing the implications of all this, José mopping Tom’s feverish brow, when we heard Rafer yell, “Wee-oow!” from the living room. We checked our weapons and beat cheeks out there, ready for trouble.

  It was the TV that caused Rafer’s outburst. Even José was taken aback. The broadcast showed a SWAT team surrounding Rafer’s municipal bus outside Tom’s apartment. It was a live report via a shaky, handheld minicam. I peeked out Tom’s front window. Yep, they were out there in real life, too.

  The reporter was explaining the facts of the hijacking, and flashed a head-and-shou
lders shot of Rafer.

  “Wee-oow,” Rafer said. Everyone on the tube was concerned about Rafer’s safety.

  They flashed mug shots of José, High Pockets and me, the voice-over accusing us of being bloodthirsty terrorists.

  “Ahh,” José said again.

  Several federal agents were interviewed. Each had a different theory as to why we had hijacked the bus. None even came close to the Subatomic Truth.

  Sausalito Banditos

  PART VI

  We were forced to keep a low profile that night. Eventually the Feds had Rafer’s bus towed to the FBI Crime Lab in San Francisco, presumably to be analyzed for clues or evidence or whatnot. 95

  I have to give the Feds credit. They were learning. All we had left in the bus was a half case of tequila and an empty box of Milk Bone Flavor Snacks for Large Dogs. They had figured out who we were by these meager clues. Possibly they had interviewed a few homosexuals from the Crisco Disco West. Maybe they interviewed Gary. Who knows? That would be an interesting concept. He never found out that we were responsible, José and I, for his fall to faggotry. God only knows what kind of breakdown he’d have if he did find out. His unrequited love for José would certainly complicate an already complex situation.

  Anyway, José, Rafer, High Pockets and I had a sitdown at about noon the next day. José was tired, having stayed up all night attending to Tom, who was still comatose.

  We cracked a fresh bottle of tequila and began planning our next move. As far as we could tell, the Feds had cleared out early in the morning after questioning a few neighbors.

  We had about eight hours until our dinner date with Tina’s father and everyone wanted to do something constructive. Rafer wanted to knock over a bank or armored car. José wanted to review Quantum Theory with me in case the subject came up at dinner. I needed some fresh air to clear my head and regroup my thoughts. We settled on a compromise. This was it: We would steal a car (thus keeping Rafer happy) and drive to the University of California at Berkeley (fresh air for me). Tom had remembered one vital detail about Tina’s family. Tina’s father was Full-Blown Professor of Physics at UCB. We would find him and audit one of his lectures. Since José wanted to study, this simple plan made everyone happy. And High Pockets would enjoy lifting his leg on the trees and bushes.