Sandbagged: A Theo Ramage Thriller (Book 2)

by Edward J. McFadden III

  They? Three ass indentations on the beds, but no black straw-like chimp hair on the white pillowcases or on the peach bedspread.

  He grabbed the chair from under the writing desk by the door and mounted it. Using the tips of his fingers, he gingerly pushed the yellow smoke-stained ceiling tile upward, shifting it to the side and leaving a two foot by two-foot gap. He pulled his cellphone, tapped and swiped, and his light came on.

  The laptop was gone.

  Ramage didn’t yell or throw anything. Instead, he climbed off the chair and sagged to the bed, letting his head fall into a pillow. He lay the snubby on the bed beside him, set his mental alarm clock for three hours, and was asleep in minutes.

  His internal clock was normally very accurate. Ramage couldn’t tell you what time it was to the minute, but within five minutes he had a ninety-plus percent success rate. So it was that when he jerked awake four hours and twenty-three minutes later, a ray of sunlight sneaking through the curtains and falling across his face, he was startled, rubbing sleep from his eyes as he sat up. He rolled his shoulders and stretched, stomach grumbling, brain demanding coffee.

  Dust motes floated in shards of light that knifed through the room, and all the memories of the prior day took away any goodwill he may have found in the coming of the new day. He looked at his phone. No messages or texts. It was 7:19AM, still too early to call Anna, or Manny for that matter. He remembered the laptop and let his head fall back into the pillow. If the boys had disappeared, why had they taken his laptop? And if Butch and the others had returned and found them, why would they reveal its location? What did they have to gain? The computer was encoded and useless to Marie and her crew, but that didn’t mean the conversation with Rex wouldn’t be particularly difficult, and would most likely go places Ramage had no desire to go.

  He needed to find the boys, the chimps, and by extension, his laptop.

  Ramage got up and turned on all the lights. Nothing was out of place. He searched the dresser drawers, the closet, the bathroom, the cabinet beneath the sink, above the ceilings. There was only so many places to hide something in a standard hotel room. He splashed water on his face and stared into the mirror. Salt and pepper stubble covered his cheeks, deep black bags beneath each eye. He had a scratch on his left cheek, a thin trail of blood leaking down his face.

  As if on cue, his leg throbbed with pain and he cleaned the small wound, and tore up a washcloth and made a bandage. He was leaving the bathroom, frustration eating him, ideas spinning in his mind about how he might pick up the boys’ trail, when he spied the old school toilet with the square water tank behind the bowl. When he was a kid he hid things in the toilet tank all the time; toys, food, beers… He gently lifted the ceramic top, but the tank only contained water and the traditional floating flush mechanism.

  “Shit,” he mumbled as he looked under the beds, between the mattresses. Nothing.

  He was halfway out the door when he saw the garbage pail sitting next to the writing desk. There were food wrappers, empty Coors bottles, two mini-vodkas, and crumbled tissues and napkins. Ramage lifted one of the small empty bottles of Smirnoff, examining the thin coating of red lipstick around the bottle’s mouth.

  “Marie.” He let the bottle drop back into the trash.

  Ramage headed for the door again, then looked back. He sighed, loud and hard. “Do you really want to do that?” he asked himself out loud. Mom always said people who talked to themselves were smart. Ramage answered, “Not really, but…”

  He went back to the trash and dumped it on the floor, picking through the tissues and napkins as though they were radioactive. The tissues were mostly wet, but a few of the napkins looked like they hadn’t been used. He went through them one by one, finding nothing. Ramage was stuffing the trash back into the pail, when he noticed a slip of paper beneath the clear garbage bag that lined the can. He lifted it out.

  The scrap was a piece of hamburger wrapper, and it still smelled of onion and grease, but written in a white space between the patchwork of burger icons and the Burger Shack logos, Emery was written in blue ballpoint pen. He’d never seen Trevor or Spencer’s handwriting, but he guessed Spencer had written the message because of the fancy flourishes on the E and Y. He glanced at the desk and saw a blue pen with gold writing on it.

  Ramage pulled his phone. Emery was a hundred miles away as the crow flew, but UT-10 trailed southwest along the eastern edge of the mountains, cutting through pastures and desolate plains filled with sagebrush and devil grass. The road ran through a series of small cattle towns, and the information bubble that popped up for Emery said the place had a population of three hundred and forty-eight, and was part of Emery County.

  Sounded like the perfect place for the Zoo.

  Outside things were stirring, Price waking up, the morning frost burning off. He checked on Big Blue, which hadn’t moved, but that wasn’t surprising. Manny wouldn’t tie-up a bay until he had the parts.

  He was sick of power bars, so Ramage ate a breakfast of eggs and bacon at an unnamed restaurant up the street from the Red Rock Truck Stop, watching the road for the Tahoe, the joint buzzing.

  “Anything else, hon,” said Delores, the only waitress in the joint. She was working all eighteen tables, twelve of which had people sitting at them. She was taking orders, delivering food, and clearing and setting the tables after each use.

  “Looks like you need some help,” Ramage said.

  She smiled, but said nothing.

  “Do they pay you for the three jobs you do?” he said.

  Less of a smile, and she raised her eyebrows as if to say, “Can we get on with this?”

  Ramage said, “I was looking for some of my friends, and they—”

  “Lot a people come through here, hon.” She had a hand on a hip now, her smile gone.

  “A woman with a few men, maybe four… and…” He still couldn’t fully believe it himself.

  Her eyes grew wide, her lips forming a thin red line that sparkled with some type of glitter.

  “They had two chimpanzees with them.”

  Her head rocked back. “Apes?”

  “No, chimpanzees,” he said.

  “Monkeys?”

  He nodded.

  “Didn’t see anything like that,” Dolores said.

  He considered pressing the woman, but most waitresses already took so much shit, and for Ramage their work ethic set the bar for the labor class. Yet, he had so much to do and so little time, and in his experience, waitresses are the ultimate source of both new and old information. He said, “My name’s Rolly Pepper, and I’m looking…”

  She put both hands on her hips, her face going sour.

  “What?” he said. Dolores’s bullshit filter had stopped the flow of all information.

  “You ain’t Rolly Pepper. He was just in here,” she said as she fished out one of Rolly’s lame business cards.

  Ramage sighed in relief. Rolly hadn’t left town. He lifted his hands in the universal ‘got me’ gesture.

  “What are you trying to pull?” the waitress said. She glanced around, shifting on her feet as work piled up all around her.

  “Nothing. I’m actually looking for him. He’s a criminal,” Ramage said.

  “Now that it’s coming together you do look like the guy he described. He said you’re a criminal, Mr. Ramage.”

  “What do your eyes tell you?”

  “What do you want?” Dolores said.

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “No idea, but he said to call him if you showed up. Made all kinds of stupid promises, and then asked me out with strung-out Barbie sitting right next to him.”

  Ramage pocketed the card and said, “Well, thank you.” He ordered another coffee, and when he was done sipping, he dropped a twenty-dollar tip and left before Dolores had a chance to pick it up. Based on what the waitress had said, Ramage had to assume Rolly was hiding in or around Price, which was good news. The pressure squeezing his spine faded. He didn’t need to
worry about Anna.

  He got in the Charger and called her. She picked up on the first ring.

  “Morning,” Ramage said.

  “Not good?”

  “Not until I’m home with you, baby. How’s everything going?”

  “Meh. I have to…”

  Mumbled voices, then, “Mija, is that Ramage?”

  “Yeah, what is it?” Anna said.

  “Everything O.K.?” Ramage said.

  “Dad wants to talk to you. That alright?” Anna said.

  Willy retreated into Ramage’s stomach, but he said, “Of course. Would love to.”

  She said nothing.

  “Really. It’s fine. I want to.”

  “Bullshit, but here he is.”

  “Ramage, its Santino.”

  “All good there?”

  There was shuffling and scraping, and the Gutierrez’s kitchen screen door slapped against its frame. “No, not at all.”

  Ramage heard the old barn door close with a creek.

  “There’s a whole new crew forming. Picking up right where Carl Sr. left off. These are bad hombres, Ramage. Thugs and killers who don’t care about Prairie Home. At least the Sandman tried not to shit where he ate.”

  “True that,” Ramage said. “Anna said someone is stealing sand again?”

  “Yup,” Santino said. “They don’t even try and hide.”

  Ramage waited.

  “Grady says you’re due back here Sunday?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Hurry, because things are… we need you.”

  “Ouch,” Ramage said.

  “Yeah, well, get your ass back here.”

  The barn door creaked open, then the screen door, and Anna was back on the line, Ramage’s mind spinning with the possibility of more blood and bullets, and thinking of blood, made him think of Rex.

  “What did he want?” Anna said.

  “Wants to make sure I’m on my way home. Just looking out for you is all.”

  “Hmmmm,” she said. Without seeing her face Ramage couldn’t be sure, but based on the tone she hadn’t bought what he was selling, so he changed the subject.

  “Did you get your new blood donor card?” he asked.

  “Not yet, I only mailed it in last week,” she said.

  He asked her to run through the form with him, hoping there’d be some piece of requested information that would nudge his mind, but there was nothing. They talked for a few more minutes, mostly about the herd and the mountain of work she had to do because her father was holding a job for Ramage.

  “Maybe I’ll get myself a young ranch hand,” she joked.

  Ramage’s stomach knotted, and he smiled. “Hang in there. I’ll be home soon.”

  Chapter Twenty

  It was 10:14AM, the sun climbing toward noon, cold air pouring through the Charger’s broken window, when Ramage buzzed past the exit for Elmo. The two-lane faded blacktop of UT-10 cut due south through brown pasture, broken cattle fences lining the road. Tan hills studded with devil grass and juniper rose in the east, the peaks of the Wasatch Plateau climbing into the clouds in the background. To the west, frozen pasture rolled in an endless flat nothingness to the base of the mountains which were a dark line below the blue cloud-streaked horizon. He felt the tension ease from his shoulders, the angst dancing in his stomach taking five. The Dodge hummed, and the chilled air streaming into the car felt good on his face.

  The Charger didn’t shake or rattle like the pickup, and that made Ramage make a mental note. He needed to call Jasper up at Tito’s and tell him the pickup was stolen. The guy would probably be happy.

  He needed to work out some kind of plan. Something better than ‘hair-on-fire.’ He knew nothing of the Zoo, didn’t even know its exact location, but it was a ranch, so he could assume large open spaces, no cover to hide in, and utilizing a stealth approach would require waiting for darkness, which he might consider. Or, he could roll in head-on, drive through the gate, pull up to the front of the house with his guns blazing, making demands and shooting things. That could lead to an entire series of problems that would cascade into a pile of poo so large Rex would get involved. He was a guest in Utah, after all. Marie and her menagerie of dipshits were residents, who knew all the locals, the exact lay of the land, and it was only a matter of time before one of Rex’s digital tentacles attached to the abundance of gunshot victims in Carbon County in the last twenty-four hours.

  Maybe a middle of the road approach was in order. Marie may not even know the boys had his laptop. They may have taken it as insurance when Marie showed up at the hotel to drag them and the monkey’s back to the zoo. He knew Marie had been at the hotel because of the lipstick on the vodka bottles, and what better way to ensure that Ramage helped? Take something they knew he needed, and he’d follow. His mind was turning over the possibilities as a road sign appeared for UT-155, Huntington.

  The Charger growled as Ramage pushed the gas pedal to the floor, the engine racing, cold air chanting through the broken window. Bricks of hay lined the eastern side of the road, work trucks scattered around large metal industrial buildings. Power lines on wood poles leaned over the road, and no other vehicles moved along the highway. Felt like a holiday, but it was only a Friday in the lowlands during ski season.

  UT-155 turned into Main Street, and Ramage slowed the Charger as he glided through Huntington. He passed a Church of Ladder-day Saints, a Family Dollar, and did a doubletake when he drove by a convenience store called Maverik. He made a fast right into the parking lot of a place called Buckles N Lace, spun the car around, and headed back north toward Maverik.

  As sure as Anna was smarter than him, he wasn’t going crazy. His eyes hadn’t failed him.

  A tall, slender, red haired woman in a yellow ski jacket was walking Ralph and Alice around the convenience store’s lot. These two chimps were toothaches, or was he simply a karmic shit-magnet?

  He pulled into a parking space, watching the woman in the reflection of the store’s large front windows. The lipstick-skier led the monkeys around like dogs, like she was waiting for them to take a dump. Alice had on her pink tutu, but her bow was missing, and Ralph stared vacantly south, stumbling along as though ill.

  Ramage’s stomach turned. This wasn’t his mess to clean, and he had more pressing business. Still, when had he ever left well enough alone? And who knew? Maybe he’d been right when he’d told Marie the chimps were better off with whoever she was selling them to.

  He could spare a little time to see if Ralph and Alice’s new owners were worthy of owning the chimpanzees. If not… best to cross that bridge when he got there. Ramage felt this way despite the memory of Alice’s warm pee seeping into his clothes.

  Maverik’s… Ramage wondered if Maverix knew about the place. It was a typical trading post: double ice machine out front next to a red soda machine—no blue anywhere to be seen. There was a stack of firewood, a pallet of window washing fluid, and proudly affixed to the wall between the entrance door and display windows was a sign that read We Support Coal in large yellow type. There were cameras mounted on each front corner of the building.

  The yellow lettering made Ramage shift his gaze back to the woman in the yellow jacket hauling the chimps around the lot. She appeared bored and kept looking back at the convenience store every few seconds, watching for someone to come out. There were four other vehicles in the lot, a blue Camaro that had seen better days, two pickups, one white, one blue, a new Nissan Rogue that was dude’d up with all kinds of plastic aftermarket accents, and a Lincoln Town Car with two sets of skis on its roof. Ramage always did badly when he gambled, and him making a buy was one sure way to make a stock price drop, but he was pretty certain his monkey purchaser was traveling in the Lincoln.

  Alice started to jump up and down, pointing toward the store.

  A man exited into the lot, shopping bag in hand, and strode toward the Lincoln, waving the woman over. The man was rail thin and perhaps the ugliest human Ramage had ever se
en, which meant he must be rich. Despite his pristine black one-piece ski suit, and his perfectly manicured gray hair, the man’s hawkish nose, deep set dark eyes, and slender frame made him look like one of the guys that hung off the back of trains holding round bombs with long fizzing fuses. All that was missing was a black pointed hat and a thin mustache for the guy to twist.

  Ramage’s first impression made his mind start asking questions. Like, what do chimps eat? How much sleep do they need? Could they stay in a locked car themselves without tearing the car apart? How much had Silver Fox paid for the chimps? Where had he gotten his money from?

  The woman in the yellow jacket jerked on Alice’s leash, but the monkey refused to move. Ralph stood watching, making no sign, his eyes focused on the faded black top.

  “Shit,” he mumbled, and gripped the Charger’s door handle, but didn’t open the door. What the hell was he doing? The guy could be a state senator for all he knew. And his car. It could’ve been reported stolen, had a broken window, and a sheriff could roll by at any moment and he could find himself in much bigger trouble than dealing with Silver Fox. Best to leave things be. He saw Anna’s scowling face in his mind’s eye. What would she say? She certainly wouldn’t vote for leaving Ralph and Alice to a life of who knew what.

  Yellow Jacket tapped at her phone, holding on to both leashes with one hand as her man worked his way across the lot toward her, hands moving like he was explaining something complicated.

  Alice lunged forward, pulling the leash from the woman’s hand. Yellow coat dropped her phone and screamed, letting go of Ralph’s leash as she bent to retrieve her lifeline. She screamed like she was being raped, and she threw the phone at the gray-haired guy, who ducked and let it smash onto the pavement.

  Both chimpanzees made a run for it, holding hands like they’d somehow planned the escape. Alice’s tutu bounced, bowed legs churning as they ran for the convenience store.

  The guy in the black snowsuit was practically jumping out of his skin, arms flying, feet stomping the ground. The woman stood looking at him like he had two heads, and neither of the new pet owners went after the chimps.