by Paul Blades
There were only two or three cars left. More overheads had gone out. They were down to a few around the outside of the stores. It was about 8:45 and he was about 40 miles outside of Albuquerque. He had spotted the shopping center from the road and knew that it was just what he was looking for. The wedding ring meant that she had a hubby at home, but he probably wouldn’t report her missing for 3 or 4 hours at least. By the time a report was taken, and if he could convince the cops that she hadn’t gone out bar hopping or was shacked up with a lover somewhere, it would take another few hours for reports to get out. A patrol car would be sent to the shopping center to scope out if her car was there, if the hubby hadn’t checked that out already, and the cop might or might not spot the Merc. Even then, he might not make the connection. And by then, Jack expected to be safe.
He eased the luxury car into drive. He had been waiting in another dark, shaded area of the lot, in a position where he could keep an eye on the Merc. If anybody had gone snooping around it, he could have just taken off and left the girl behind. Having the two cars next to each other while he waited would have been too suspicious. And he didn’t want to make the transfer of the girl and his goods until the possibility of witnesses had been reduced to about zero.
Lights out, he cruised slowly over to the Merc and backed in next to it. This way the transfer of the girl from trunk to trunk and would take place behind the cars where it would be harder for any onlookers to see what was going on. He turned off the engine. He had a longer length of rope in his pocket and he used it now to connect the unhappy woman’s ankles with about 18” of lead between them. Before getting out of the car, he carefully removed her glittery earrings, the diamond wedding ring and the necklace and pendant. On her left wrist was a band of gold with a cameo silhouette of an elegant young girl embedded in it. It looked valuable so he took that too.
He popped the trunk and, grabbing the lady’s handbag, got out and walked to the back. He fished around in the bag for her cell phone and put it in his pocket. He would get rid of it somewhere down the road. He tossed the handbag into the trunk. It only took him a few seconds to unscrew the trunk light. Looking around, seeing nobody, he went to the passenger side and opened the door. He took hold of her arm and told her to get out. She struggled, sniffling and crying, but she managed to do it. He hustled her to the back of the car, as fast as her bound ankles would go. When she saw the open trunk, she put 2 and 2 together and started to whine and moan. He slapped her and told her to shut up.
Once he had her in the spacious trunk, he untied one ankle and then brought them both together, tying them off. He then bound them to her hands. Taking a hold of the woman’s chestnut brown hair, he pulled back her head. Her eyes were wide with terror.
“I’m only going to say this to you once,” he told her gruffly. “If you make any noise, I’ll stop the car and slit your throat. So if you want to live out the night, you’d better be quiet. Do you understand?”
The woman nodded her head up and down rapidly.
“Good,” he said.
He lowered the trunk lid but didn’t close it and then stepped over to the Merc. He didn’t have the key so he had to open the driver’s door and use the lever to open the trunk. He had turned the overhead light in the passenger compartment off. He shut the door and went around to the back of the car.
He had already taken out the trunk light for the Merc and he was just able to make out the girl inside. Her naked skin from her waist up gave off a slight reflected glow. After untying her ankles, he drew her out. Quickly, he brought her over to the Lexus and pushed her in. The Lexus’ trunk was spacious and there was plenty of room in there for them both. He reaffixed the girl’s ankles to her wrists and closed the lid. The girl had barely made a sound when he moved her. She was smart.
He had debated whether to bring the camping gear, but had decided against it. He brought the bag that held the chains he had been using on the girl, the bag of handguns he had stolen from the Army Navy store back in Wisconsin and the bags of clothes and the rest of his cigarettes. He put them all in the back seat of the Lexus.
There was an office park next door to the mall. He had thought about it and decided that it would be better if he parked the Merc somewhere else than in the mall parking lot. This would make it more difficult to link the woman’s disappearance with him and would delay the law having the knowledge that he had switched cars.
He got into the Merc, turned over the engine and drove it to the office park. The parking lot went all around the three identical, six storey buildings. He parked the Merc in the back near the dumpsters and then walked back the 300 yards to the shopping mall lot. The Lexus was where he had left it. He took the car key off of the large chain and tossed the rest of the keys in the back seat. He started the car. In the console between the front seats were a few CD’s. He picked out a Kenny Rankin album and put it in the player. As the perfectly balanced, quadraphonic sound filled the passenger compartment, he lit a smoke and resumed his journey.
Two hours later, he passed through the small town of Tularosa. There had been no sound from the females in the trunk. He had turned off the stereo from time to time just to make sure. The Lexus was sturdily built and they would have had to be shouting at the top of their lungs for any sound to escape. But it was best to be safe.
Tularosa was a quaint little town, with small shops along the main road and a few traffic lights. A cop was stationed in a cruiser at one corner. He looked warily at Jack as he pulled away from the light as it turned green, but he did not follow him. Jack had pulled the Walther from his pocket just in case. He remembered what the guy who called himself Moondog had told him. If he had to shoot it out with the cops, he should just keep going. Jack knew that if he had to shoot it out with the cops it was all over for him. Ten thousand cops would descend on the area. Eventually, he would be tracked down. Since he had already decided that he wasn’t going back to prison, that meant he would have to make a last stand. His run, as sweet as it had been, would be at an end. So he wanted to avoid an incident with the cops at all costs.
About a mile and a half outside of Tularosa he passed the bar called Pete’s. It was a small place with a well-lit sign like Moondog had said. Rather than pull in the parking lot, he drove past it. He tried to see if there were any cars with people in them watching who came in and out. He couldn’t see anyone, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t there.
This was the most dangerous part of his journey. If Moondog was dealing out of this bar, the cops might have a good idea about it. They might just be biding their time before they rolled him up. And if they knew that Moondog spent every night here and he was a Rogues member, they would have the place staked out.
But all of this must have entered Moondog’s calculations when he told Jack to meet him here. The guy wouldn’t voluntarily put himself in the soup. So maybe it was safe.
It was a tough decision to make. The problem was that he had no other strategy for getting over the border. He had over $20,000 now. Maybe he could go to San Diego and buy himself a ride on a fishing boat or something. But he would have to go there and make contact with someone to lead him to the right guys. There was an LA Rogues chapter, but that was probably being watched as closely as the one in Alamogordo.
He pulled to the side of the road. His hands were sweating. He lit a smoke. He turned off the stereo and leaned back in the plush seat. He had already gotten much more than he had ever thought he would as a result of his breakout. He had had three days of rockin’ and rollin’. He had breathed free air. He had decided where to go and when to go. He had cooked himself some great meals and had actual, fresh brewed coffee. And the girl had been magnificent. That went without saying.
This connection was his best bet for escape to Mexico. It was right here, less than a half mile away. He had to take a risk at some point. Even if he paid off some fisherman to drop him off in the Baja, the guys might just take his money and turn him in. Or he could find himself swimming in the
Pacific with a bullet in him several miles out to sea. No, this was where he would make his move. At least he could trust Moondog as a fellow Rogues member. All in all, that was the deciding factor.
There was hardly any traffic on the road. A tractor-trailer was coming northbound and Jack waited for it to pass before turning the Lexus around. He was tempted to drive by the bar again, but the red luxury car was so conspicuous it would look very suspicious to anyone who was watching. He pulled into the gravel lot and drove the car to a spot in the back of the parking lot. He backed the car into a spot on the very edge so he could make a quick getaway if he had to. Also, it would be less likely that someone would walk by the car and hear anything in case the females in the trunk somehow got their mouths loose and started screaming. He popped the trunk and went back to take a look at them just to make sure. They were both as he had left them. They were both alive and as well as they could be. The new woman looked up at him with doleful, hopeful eyes. She began a whine when she saw he was going to close the trunk again. It was cut short by the lowering of the lid.
The bar was a one story affair. It was constructed of red adobe bricks with narrow, horizontal windows in the front and had a wooden porch. There were a few choppers in the lot along with five or six pickups of varying age and condition and a few junker cars. Two couples dressed in denims and black t-shirts were drinking long necks on the porch. Jack nodded to them nonchalantly as he passed. They nodded suspiciously back.
He went through the solid, wooden door and stepped into the bar. There were a few ragged looking guys playing pool and a couple of people of similar mien sitting at the large, round, polished wooden tables that sat over to one side. The jukebox was playing something from ZZ Top. The bar was about 30’ long and several men and a few women were hunkered over it. There was a mirror in behind the bar, old and tarnished. Mounted above it was the pale white skull of a steer.
It was dark inside. Various stenciled signs on the walls established the rules of the place as it pertained to credit (none), spitting on the floor (not allowed), gambling (not allowed either) and fighting (take it outside). A poster on the wall near the pool table had a list of house rules. Four quarters were lined up on the table. The guy who had been shooting had stopped to watch Jack as he entered, but after a second or two went back to his game. He was a tall fellow with a bristly beard under his chin up to the end of his jawline. He was wearing a rolled up, red and white checkered bandana around his neck. Another fellow, shorter, with a bushy moustache was standing a few feet away from him leaning on his cue.
Jack bellied up to the bar. The bartender was a heavyset, tough looking chick who looked about 40 or so. She was wearing a faded red t-shirt with white lettering that spelled out in fancy script, “Pete’s Place”. Her oversized breasts pushed the letters out so far that it was hard to read them. She was wearing faded jeans and black cowboy boots. Her hair was stringy and yellowish. She had been leaning over the bar when Jack came in, talking to a man in the corner. He was just a little bit bigger and rounder than her and there were two 7 oz. glasses of draft and empty shot glasses in front of them. Jack figured the guy as a boyfriend. He slid onto a stool.
The bartender, after sharing a laugh with the fellow in the corner, strode lazily over to where Jack sat.
“What’ll it be?” she asked him when she finally arrived.
“Gimme a short draft and a double shot of Jim Beam,” Jack told her.
She went over to the beer taps and poured Jack a 7 oz. glass of Coors. She tossed a round, cardboard coaster on the bar in front of him and placed the beer on it. It had a 2 inch layer of foam on the top and the coldness made the glass start to sweat right away. She took an old fashioned glass and plunked it down next to the beer and filled it ¾ with Jim Beam. Jack threw a ten on the bar. She picked it up, giving Jack the once over and brought it to the register on the back bar. The register gave a little ‘ching!’ and the drawer popped out. She shoved in the ten and brought out 2 quarters, a single and a five and returned to Jack. She tossed the bills on the bar next to his drinks and placed the quarters on them one by one.
“How about you?” Jack asked.
She smiled. “Sure,” she answered. She brought her beer glass over to the tap, drained it off and poured herself a Coors. She placed it down on a coaster next to Jack’s and picked up a shot glass from a stack near the taps. From the back bar she brought over a bottle of Wild Turkey and poured herself a shot. After replacing the bottle, she ambled back to where Jack was sitting. She picked up the shot glass and proffered it to Jack as if making a toast. Jack picked up his Jim Beam and touched it to her glass. They both shot back their drinks. The woman picked up her chaser and downed it all in one swallow. “Thanks,” she said. She picked up the five and the coaster.
“Keep it,” Jack told her. She nodded and went back to the register. She rang up $2.75 and put the change in a shiny brass spittoon next to it.
“Another?” she asked Jack.
“Sure,” Jack answered.
She poured Jack another double shot of Jim Beam.
“On the house,” she said.
Jack expressed his thanks.
He nursed his drinks for a little while. There was a TV up in the corner with the sound off. It was showing some cops and robbers drama. The pool game ended. The tall guy with the beard won. The smaller guy came over to the bar and bought two Lone Star long necks and gave one to the winner. Another fellow, with curly, dirty blond hair and wearing a light yellow t-shirt under a denim vest picked up a quarter and placed it in the slot. The balls dropped and rolled noisily to the end of the table, clicking and clacking as they jumbled together there. The blond guy, he looked in his late thirties, racked up and the big fellow broke. The nine ball dropped in the corner.
“Big ones,” the blond man said. The tall one nodded and began to scope out vulnerable striped balls. Jack watched as he skillfully dropped four of them and then missed on a tough bank shot on the 15 to the side pocket.
Jack was getting nervous. It was a long time to leave the women untended in the trunk. The Walther and a spare clip were in the pocket of his green camouflaged pants. He kept eying the door as if he expected John Law to come rushing in, blazing away. He finished his draft and his Jim Beam and asked for another round. He placed a twenty on the bar. This time, when the woman came back, he asked her if Moondog was there.
She looked at Jack suspiciously. She paused as if trying to decide whether she should acknowledge the existence of anyone with that name. “He went out,” she told him finally.
“Do you know when he’ll be back,” Jack asked, trying to disguise his tension.
“By and by, I guess,” the woman replied. She went back to the corner and her boyfriend.
Jack bided his time nervously, splitting his attention between the pool table and the soundless TV screen. The jukebox was playing a variety of rocker and country tunes going from Led Zeppelin to Waylon Jennings. There was a strung out looking chick at the end of the bar opposite from where the bartender and her boyfriend were having their conference wearing a halter top and short-short cutoff jeans. She was drinking a mug of Coke in which the ice had melted long ago. Jack saw a guy go up to the tall pool player with the beard, hand him some cash and then disappear with the woman into the back room. They came back out in about 15 minutes, the man looking happy and relaxed and the girl just a tad more dismal.
A heavy despondency settled about Jack. He had been so elated to have been able to find the bar and enter it undiscovered by law enforcement and now it seemed that it had all been for naught. The west coast option started looking better and better, except now he had two women to worry about getting rid of and was driving a car that stuck out like a sore thumb. He started ruing having left the camping gear behind. If he got enough provisions, he could set out into the desert and try to hike to the border. If all these Mexicans managed to find a way in past the border guards, maybe he could find a way out.
Jack saw another guy w
ho had just come in go up to the tall, bearded guy, speak to him for a second and then hand him some cash. This time, the tall guy brought the guy into the back room himself. When they came out, the tall guy went back to his pool game and the new guy left without having a drink.
Jack was now on his third drink. He was starting to get a little woozy, not a good thing. He had just about decided to leave when the bearded guy, having finally lost a game by scratching on the eight ball, came up to the bar and ordered two long necks and a shot of tequila from the bartender. He gave one of the longnecks to the victor. Jack noted that he hadn’t paid for the drinks. The bartender went back to her corner. The big guy stayed standing next to Jack. The bartender had left a lime and a salt shaker with the tequila shot. The tall guy performed the ritual and downed his shot. He winced slightly as the liquor went down and then turned to Jack.
“I’m Moondog,” he said.
“I kinda figured,” Jack replied.
“I’m just trying to make this as subtle as possible. These people in here know who I am and where I come from, and most of ‘em know what would happen to them if they dimed me out, but on something big like you there’s no way to tell.”
“Sure,” Jack answered him. “But I’m getting kind of nervous here and I’ve got some goods in my car, if you know what I mean.”
“You mean the blond? I saw her on TV, she’s a hot little number. “
“And there’s another one too. I had to switch cars, and, well, you know.”
Moondog laughed. “You’re a one man recruiting agency,” he said. “We oughta let you drive around for the rest of the week and by then you’ll have collected a truckfull.”
“And maybe not,” Jack said. “Listen,” he added, “I’m as hot as a tin pistol out here. I need some sanctuary. I don’t mind kibitzin’, but maybe later, you know?”