by Layla Wolfe
We actually went out front and played Frisbee, if you can believe that. The moral hypocrisy of having a light game of physical exercise while plotting a man’s murder sat heavily on me. But the workout helped my pheromones flow. And when Fremont came out of the lab trailer triumphantly holding a vial above his head, I was ready for his moment of victory.
“Marie Curie 38!” he cried joyously. He could tell the exact house Joe Bloodgood had been murdered in from the levels of contamination under his fingernails as he scratched them bloody to save his life.
But the other three of us were more somber, giving each other some skeptical side-eye.
Fremont’s face dropped, and he slowly lowered the vial. “What?” he demanded to know.
More side-eye. I could tell my friends had elected me to tell Fremont. Not that it matters. We know it was him. “Ah, Fremont. Marie Curie 38 was used by U-238 Resources to house employees while you were gone.”
“While I was gone?”
“While you were . . . reassigned, up in Aurora. It was one of the least decrepit buildings, so they used the hell out of it until the tribe finally got rid of them.”
“Well.” Fremont shrugged. “Maybe it was Dragan’s lair. I’m going to grab some Luminal. Twinkletoes, you got your good SLR camera?”
That was how two Harleys wound up riding up the Salomé Valley as the sun sank slowly in the west, as they say. It was like we tore through the overhead bubble of a planetarium, lit from behind to display the crescent moon, bumblebee yellow smears of wispy clouds radiant, enveloping us.
Yet we were on a gruesome journey. Fremont sprayed the Luminal, which they used in the lab to detect iron, copper, and various cyanides. There weren’t giant blobs or splashes of fluorescent cobalt like on TV. But enough showed up, in particular ten bright stripes down one wall where Joe had slid while trying to cling to his last stand. I wondered how Dragan had lured him out to the house. Twinkletoes documented it all with his camera. Then Galileo made a chilling observation.
“Bro,” he said to no one in particular. “If Joe managed to take a photo of the demo site, he must’ve still been alive when that monster dragged him there.”
We all paused, looking at the floor. It was impossible not to think about the gruesome nature of the crime when behind Fremont’s head a spray of cobalt decorated one wall.
Our moment of prayer was shattered when Twinkletoes whispered loudly, “Someone’s coming!”
“Get our rides!” shouted Fremont, already in the swing of things with biker slang.
We leaped on our rides two up, as we had arrived at the Marie Curie house. But because the compact car was heading directly up the dirt road toward us, we had to blitz obliquely across the damned desert. It was getting so dark it was hard to tell what to avoid, and I fishtailed so heavily over a dry wash that I almost lost Fremont, clutching my hips. And Twinkletoes crushed a low-lying cactus at such a speed that Galileo went flying, fully a foot of daylight between his ass and the saddle.
Obviously, whoever it was would see us. They would see the Luminal, which lasted about an hour before dissipating. They would know four bikers had been spraying Luminal and were onto them, and I hoped to fuck it wasn’t Ozzie Avery himself. I doubted he’d do his own dirty work, though. And the brass knuckles indicated it was the equalizer, Dragan.
Once back to the highway, we parked behind a boulder where we could see the tiny car come back down the dirt road. Twinkletoes and I stayed in our saddles, while the other two dismounted, Galileo peeing behind the boulder.
“Fuck,” said Fremont, rubbing his face thoughtfully. “I think it’s pretty clear what we need to do.”
“Yeah,” said Twinkletoes hotly. “We can’t let motherfucking assmunchers get away with killing elders in the tribe. We’re here for protection. And Joe Bloodgood was one of the main people who made this all happen, getting the EPA in here, getting rid of that bloodsucking U-238. No disrespect intended, Fremont.”
“None taken. Listen, Noel, what make and model of car did Dragan have when you escorted him off the premises?”
“It was a Chevrolet Sonic, a bright blue, almost like the cobalt of your Luminal.”
“Aha,” said Twinkletoes, taking some kind of monocular from his inside leather jacket pocket. I didn’t know how he could see in the darkening desert, but now the car was coming back toward us, and he proclaimed, “Blue. Can’t tell make and model, but here, Father, you take a look.”
I did, and I could declare with a majority of certainty that that was indeed the giant Dragan driving that tiny car.
Fremont exhaled loudly. “Okay,” he said, getting back onto his bitch pad. His warm hand squeezed the back of my neck, an unbidden shiver racing down my spine. He put his lips close to my neck and said,
“You don’t have to come. But I need the ride.”
What was I to do? I followed Twinkletoes sedately back onto the highway, dangerously riding with no headlights, tracking the hitman. I did this for the love of my man, and for the love of my adopted tribe.
FREMONT
Having spent months now with the noble and all-knowing Father Moloney, you’d think I would’ve become more dogmatic, not less. But he had taught me there isn’t an absolute answer to everything. I’m fine living with doubts and questions. It keeps you on your toes, not knowing, not having potentially incorrect answers at your fingertips. Doesn’t scare me.
I was 99% certain Dragan had offed Joe Bloodgood. I was less certain about what we’d do about it, only that I didn’t want Noel involved. But I needed a ride. Could I tell him to stand off to one side while we took care of manly business? He needed plausible deniability and probably shouldn’t even witness anything. Being in the vicinity of a murder would taint his halo.
Ozzie Avery had forced my hand. Who would’ve thought I’d become involved in such cloak and dagger intrigue when I first started working on the rez? No, it was him sending Dragan to follow me around, perhaps bash me with his brass knuckles, that was what pushed me over the edge. Maybe I was next. Maybe he was going down the list of undesirables, people who were raising a big giant uranium stink, and eliminating them all. It was always hard to tell if Ozzie had gone off the deep end. His so-called “normal” behavior was so far beyond the pale.
As we followed the straight as a nail Highway 95 down to Quartzsite, I became aware of someone following us. This bike had its headlights on, so wasn’t afraid of being seen. That it was a bike was a good sign. When we hung a right onto West Main Street the bike caught up with us. None of my other men seemed to notice it. I couldn’t tell who it was due to the helmet, but it had to be a Zealot or other, so I wasn’t too worried. Dragan turned into the lot for the Stagecoach Motel and used his key to enter a ground-floor room.
It was funny seeing the blockheaded equalizer do something so mundane as to enter a hotel room. In a shitty motel, no less. Ozzie Avery had even cut loose for better motels for me. This one looked like the polyester bedspreads would pill up after not having been dry cleaned all year. There wouldn’t even be Magic Fingers from the 70s installed in the mattresses. Coffee Host wouldn’t even be plugged into the bathroom wall or a wall-mounted TV. So as not to be heard, we had to cut our engines on the other side of an empty parking lot and confer.
Twinkletoes said, “I say we just go in there, guns blazing. He’ll never know what hit him.”
I instantly looked at Noel with dread at the mention of guns. I’d taken him out into the desert to show him how to handle my Walther PPK, the same gun James Bond used from Dr. No through to Tomorrow Never Dies. I was proud of that kick-ass little gun, and Noel took to it like a gorilla to the jungle, squeezing off several bullseyes in a row before I had the chance to jealously take the piece from him. I remembered he used to be a thug, so I figured that explained it. But it sure displayed a fresh side of him, posing firmly in the isosceles stance with his robes flowing about his legs. It was so incongruous I had to take several photos, and still looked often at them to this day.
Galileo said, “I’m all for guns blazing, but I don’t have a gun. I hadn’t expected to be on a murder run tonight.”
Twinkletoes looked oddly at him. “Oh, but you expect it other nights?”
I said, “Look, Father Moloney doesn’t have a gun either. I vote we leave him out of this. Did anyone else see someone following us?”
“Yes,” said Twinkletoes firmly, looking over my shoulder, “but I think they rode right past us down Main Street. Just a coincidence, I suppose. Listen. I’m going around the back of this building, see if I can see in the other window.”
I almost gagged. “That’s probably the bathroom.”
“So? And it looks like there’s a gap in this curtain. Fremont, you check this window. Father, you guard the bikes.”
I peeked in the bedroom curtains, I saw some things I could never unsee. All in the name of getting even, I guess. Galileo and Twinkletoes went round the back while I had to view Dragan taking off his shirt. This was where he varied from a thriller bad guy. He might have worked out ten, fifteen years ago, and it had all fallen to shit. Sure, he still had the brute force, but the undersides of his triceps were riddled with wrinkles like baked corn husks. He stood in front of a mirror feeling his sagging chest all over. I knew bodybuilders had to maintain their muscle mass or it looked even worse than if they’d never worked out at all.
That was how my buddy Dragan looked. I almost felt sorry for the guy, collapsing into himself like a mummy. But when I remembered how Joe Bloodgood had resembled a mummy, anger stirred me up. Dragan went into the bathroom and came out rolling something around in his palm. He hit himself in the mouth with his palm, swallowing the pills with no water to chase it down with. He got into bed wearing only tighty whities, another thing I needed eye bleach for, and to my surprise reached for a book.
I strained to read the title. Twinkletoes had his monocular and I had nearsightedness. I wore computer glasses and that was all my vanity would allow. Waving at Noel, I went around back of the building too. I wasn’t too eager to see Dragan in his bathroom, but I wanted to borrow Twinkletoe’s monocular.
“What’d you see?” I whispered.
Galileo’s eyes were wide. “He took some Ambien,” he said, pointing to the window.
“That’s a sleeping pill, right?” I asked.
“Pretty strong one,” said Galileo. “I stole one from my foster mother once. I woke up in bed thinking I’d peed it. But when I noticed my feet were blue, I realized I’d been walking around in the snow barefoot. I took the same route I normally did to walk the dog, but the dog stayed inside all toasty and warm.”
“He took like three,” said Twinkletoes. “Maybe we can utilize this to our best advantage.”
I frowned. “Shoot a sleeping man?” Even though Dragan himself had stacked the odds against us, that didn’t seem fair.
“Well, at least we can maybe lure him out here somewhere when he’s not fully in charge of his faculties,” said Twinkletoes.
Galileo said, “I don’t think he’s normally in charge of his faculties. Just killing whomever you’re told to kill? What sort of a life is that?”
He had a point. Dragan was living such a pathetic life anyway. I knew I was starting to think like a Bent Zealot, but there was no joy in Dragan’s life. Where were his relatives? Back in Russia, most likely. Ozzie had probably met him there on one of his trips to find a new mail order trophy wife. He liked the Russian ladies, he always said, because they never complained. Everything was good enough for them. Then why was he on his fourth?
While Twinkletoes and Galileo went into the shabby diner to grab a bite, I took Twinkletoes’ monocular and peered in Dragan’s window just to see the title of his book. I was stunned. Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville. What the actual fuck? No Communist Manifesto for light bedtime reading? He put down the book and turned off his light, snug as a bug in a rug.
Not wanting this to make Dragan seem like an actual person, I went to stand with Noel. He leaned against his saddle and looked piously up at the Milky Way.
“I was just thinking,” he said, “that I’ve been so ignorant. I came here as penance, to find redemption through prayer and hard work. But just now, looking back in retrospect, I see that I was striving so hard to hear the holy voice in the hurricane that I didn’t see the sun rising with holy grandeur. I sat still waiting for this grand message while the entire planet around me was remade from scratch every morning. I felt that all my prayers I’d been shouting into a worthless vortex.”
“No, dearest. Your prayers are the most powerful I’ve ever seen, or felt.”
He shook his head. Maybe he was having an existential meltdown because he was about to participate in a murder. “Not really. Chance sent me you. Once I realized a spirit as broken as I had found you in the most unlikely place, I had to wonder. Are you a present? If so, is that a sign there is a giver?”
“Yes, yes,” I encouraged him. “Who else but God has given me to you?”
He shook his head bitterly. “You know what? I’m going to stop holding a knife to God’s throat and demanding a sign. The fact that you exist is good enough for me. I’m going to start living as though the gospel is genuine.”
I slipped my hand into his. I even started wondering where we could sneak off to so I could suck Noel’s juicy prick. He wore his “field uniform” of 501s and clerical shirt and collar, so no robes to hold aside, as in my greatest fantasy. To be sure, I’d done it enough times when he’s been wearing his field uniform. A dog collar and crucifix was good enough for me. But it was my overbearing fantasy to suck the juicy dong of a well-hung priest while he wore his robes. Just call me twisted.
We held each other, and kissed, and squeezed each other’s hands, and before long Twinkletoes and Galileo emerged from the diner, Twinkletoes still polishing a carton of waffle fries.
I took him aside and told him, “You got to let me have this, Twinkletoes. Noel is only here due to my twisted relationship with U-238. I have to be the one to revenge Bloodgood.”
Understandably, Twinkletoes frowned. “What you got?”
I assumed he meant gun-wise. I showed him the little gun stuck inside my waistband at the small of my back, Bent Zealots-style. He nodded soberly.
“Okay, that’ll do. But . . . you experienced in shooting? This guy’s a bruiser.”
I shrugged. “Shooting range. A couple of NRA classes. But how different can it be?”
He shrugged. “You’re right. It’s no different than shooting a paper target.” His face grew dark. “Except that you’re murdering a human being. You ready for that?”
I nodded, jaw set. “Sure, if it means defending you guys. Who knows if this guy isn’t off the grid? U-238 has been kicked off the rez for quite a while. Why’s he still stumbling around?”
“All right. We’ll go in. I’ll go in the front, you go in the back. These two citizens warm up our saddles.”
I didn’t have a chance to ask Twinkletoes what would happen on the seriously logical happenstance that the back door was locked. Nodding at Noel with a fake-happy grin plastered to my face, I went around the railroad train car of rooms.
Funny thing was, I didn’t feel any different than all the other times I’d gone around a corner of a motel. You’d think I’d be nervous. Panic-stricken even, like Don Knotts in The Shakiest Gun in the West. Almost a comic character as opposed to anyone who should be taken seriously.
But I felt serious. I was so damned serious, in fact, that I actually became calm. Was this some Zen type of deal?
I never got a chance to find out about the door, though. Before I even rounded the corner, there was a girlish shrieking. The girl wasn’t saying anything in particular, just those high-pitched squeals that sound like the proclamations of a shorebird. What the fuck? I was glad for the dim light of the crescent moon as I whipped my Walther from my jeans, professional-style.
In the middle of the parking lot wasteland, Dragan’s Herman Munster silhouette h
ad grabbed a girl from behind. She squirmed and kicked his kneecaps, but he seemed impervious to pain. She was really whaling on him with her boots and he just stood there like a tree trunk, one arm locked around her waist, and the other hand perversely on her boob. Oddly, he wasn’t still in his tighty whities. Well, he was, but he’d put on a T-shirt and a gun harness over that. He was wandering shoeless and pants less in a parking lot, but he’d remembered his gun.
I had no choice but to show my hand early. “Dragan, drop that girl!” I bellowed, training my sight on his forehead. He was so tall the top of her head only came up to his clavicle. Aim low at six o’clock due to recoil. But if I aimed low I risked blowing off her head. I slowly stepped closer, hoping he wouldn’t notice.
“Who’s dat?” he roared. He took his hand off the girl’s tit but only to whip his own piece from the holster. Strangely, he couldn’t seem to see me. He aimed here and there, hither and yon.
By this time Twinkletoes had figured it out and was at my side. “Holy shit!” he whispered loudly. “That’s Fredericka!”
“What?”
“Fredericka!” yelled Twinkletoes. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Twinkletoes! Help! I followed you guys out here to film. I was hiding behind that old drive-up wall when this guy comes stumbling out the back door with his arms straight out like some kind of zombie. Fuck you, you god damned douchebag!” And she kicked his kneecaps again. “Fremont, help!”
Dragan rattled her around until it seemed her eyeballs would roll from her skull. “Fremont? Fremont Zuckerman? You come here, and I’ll let this delightful little morsel go!”
