by T. S. Hill
“I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry, seems so small, and inappropriately useless. Anything I say, can’t be enough to give recognition to such great loss. To say that your story breaks my heart, would be saying the least, even though it does. I can’t begin to imagine the pain of those losses, Lori.”
“Just hold me close Cowboy.”, she replied. “Like I said, it’s been a while, so none of this hurts as bad as it used to. But, when you put it all together in one place, well that’s a lot of hurt is all, and let’s just say, unexpected.” Tears were rolling down her face again and she dried her tears once again, with her dress hem.
“I want to finish telling you this Cowboy. It’s the first time that I have ever told the whole of this, and now that I’ve started, I need to finish getting it out.”
“Sure.”, I replied, “Take your time. Like I said, we’ve got a gazillion miles of highway in this country. We will need to get gasoline again in, I’m estimating here, an hour and a half? Maybe?”
“No problem, Cowboy.” she replied, looking up at me and smiling through the tears. Then she began again, “The first job I had was as a secretary at a seafood wholesaler. I answered phones, and fended off fishermen’s flirts, and did a little data entry. I got paid okay, and would go home at five o’clock. I had a few boyfriends during that time, but just never got close to anyone.”
“Well then, this one guy that used to buy seafood for his three restaurants, he also owned a little beer distributorship, and he offered me a job working in his office. Well, that didn’t work out too good, because even though he paid me a lot more, there were no fringe benefits, but he was always trying to get fringe benefits from me.”
“I got the hell out of there pretty quick. When, I threatened to tell his wife about his indecent proposals, I got a really good recommendation from him, and landed the business office manager’s job at a trucking company.”
“I thought trucking was a legitimate business, but evidently around New Orleans, it’s something different. I hadn’t been there but about two weeks, when one day, who walks in with the boss, but that murdering, son of a bitch, wannabe gangster, that fucking raped me, and killed my Mama!”
“I was angry, and scared as hell, all at the same time. The dick head didn’t recognize me at all. As a Cajun, I looked nothing like the little, innocent blonde, seventeen-year-old that he had raped. And, I didn’t sound or act like her either.”
“Well, to make a long story short, it turned out that he had the controlling interest in the trucking company. And, the trucking company was involved in supporting all kinds of illegal shit connected to that low life’s other legitimate, and illegitimate, businesses, and the businesses, of other dick head gangsters, from all over the southeast.”
“I set my target high. I planned on ruining that fucking ass hole, by gathering enough information, documentation, and general evidence as I could, and then turning it all over to cops. What cops, I didn’t know, but figured when the time came, just grab a cop, right? Boy was I naïve!”
“Then, I planned on killing the dick headed, bastard. I even took my first paycheck and bought a nice little pearl handled three eighty to do it with. Where were you Cowboy, when I needed you? That’s where you would have come in real handy, because I sure as hell didn’t know what the fuck I was doing!”
“But, I did know what I was doing with managing shit for these people. Five fucking years into this shit, and I had worked into supervising other operations in addition to that big assed trucking company. There was a wholesale tobacco distributorship, a salvage yard, a loan company, two restaurants, and a funeral home. You wouldn’t believe all the crazy shit that went through these businesses, not just from Louisiana, but from all over the whole fucking United States!”
“This guy didn’t have controlling interest in all of them, like the trucking company, but he had a substantial vested interest in most of them.” The under boss that I answered to was Louie Dupeux. He was a really nice guy, but still, a gangster, and from what I learned, had a pretty murderous, ruthless, side.”
“Anyway, I was able to document, and gather a ton of evidence just within those operations. And, this is hard to confess, but during most of those five years, I hadn’t had a boyfriend, and had taken to watching a lot of porn, which if you don’t know, makes you horny. Eventually, you wanna try out some of that wild shit that you’re seeing. I know this sounds all jumbled up Cowboy, but hang with me, and I’ll all come together. I promise.”
“Sweetheart, you’re doing fine. I’m following you.”, I quipped.
“Anyway.”, she continued, “There was this really nice insurance salesman that used to call on the office. I wasn’t interested in him really, but he was a real nice guy, nice looking, and kept pestering me to go out with him. So, one thing led to another, and we went out a few times, and I got all horny, and started fucking him.”
“Anyway, we started trying out all of the stuff that I had seen in the porn vids. By the way, let me tell you, normal people can’t do some of that crazy shit that they portray in those vids! Some of that shit will fucking hurt you! Serious!”
“Anyway, all that sex went to his head and he thought that he was in love with me. Hell, he may have been. I don’t know. I think it was just lust, but what the fuck do I know, eh? I definitely wasn’t in love with him! I was just horny as hell.”
“Well, he slept over, one Friday night, and I got called in to work for an emergency the next morning. He got to rambling in my apartment and found some of the evidence, narrations, and cataloging, of all of the illegal shit that I had encountered, and sniffed out at work. He didn’t tell me, but took some of it, and like a total dumb fucking ass, tried to blackmail Louie Dupeux.”
“Louie took the problem up line, and as you hear in the movies, bada bing, bada boom, next thing, he was dead. His body was left in a very public place to send a message. By then, my stash of evidence had outgrown my apartment, so I had rented a storage room and moved it. That particular morning, I saw the early morning news about the guy. His name was Andy Amouson.”
“Then, I got an anonymous phone call, from someone, who for God knows what reason, didn’t want me to get hit. Maybe it was one of the goons, that I had been nice to, or maybe just not treated him like shit. I have no idea. But, I got the hell out of New Orleans fast, cleaned my bank account out, from ATMs all over East Texas, paid cash for a used car, left everything, and headed west.”
“My Mama’s parents had a little ranch in Texas, and had left it to Mama, but she didn’t get to ever claim it. So, I thought I might go there, and maybe claim it, and hide there, until I figured out what to do from there. I was almost there, and got car jacked at a gas station, by some fucking lulu, who made me drive to Amarillo. There he took my car, my gun, all my fucking cash, and left me on foot, with nothing but the clothes I had on.”
“I didn’t dare call the police, because I had learned from my five years of working on the inside of gangster land, that in every operation, there may be as many cops on the take, as there are not. I figured calling a cop would be like signing my own death certificate. So, I was trying to hook, crook, and steal my way back to my grandparent’s place.”
“And that’s when we met. That hit on my head, that you gave me, just woke me up from my disappointing experience of losing my money, gun, and car. Most of my first evening with you, I was obsessing in the dark about getting back to New Orleans, to kill that dip shit, asshole that raped me, and killed my Mama.”
She went silent again for a minute, and then continued, “If I don’t get killed in the process, I may also turn in all of that evidence that I collected. I never did get any evidence, or info, to know for certain whether he killed Mama himself, or had it done. But, either way, he killed her. “
“So, Cowboy, that’s what brought me to where I am now. To answer your question of what’s the situation that I’m running from? I’m not running anymore. I’m going back to finish this shit!” I looked at her and
saw a look of fierce determination, that I knew was genuine. I believed everything that she had told me, and I knew that she meant what she said.
“There’s one last detail, Lori that you’ve left out. You haven’t named the man that raped you and killed your mother. That’s part of this. An important part. Now give it up.”
“Don’t try to help me or interfere with me on this Cowboy!”, she growled.
“We made a deal Lori!”, I growled back at her. Give up the name.”
“I don’t know if I can say it.”, she resisted.
“Give it!”, I literally snarled at her.
“Sam Milinni!”, she blurted out.
I almost destroyed the brake pedal on the truck. The tires began screeching and blue smoke boiled from their locking up against the road. The truck turned at a forty-five degree angle to the road and slid partially into the oncoming lane, all the while the tires were screaming.
There were horns blowing from the oncoming traffic, as well as the car behind us, that also was forced to lock up its brakes. It was ten seconds of mayhem, and finally we were off the shoulder, on the wrong side of the road, but stopped.
Traffic started moving again and people gawked at us as they went by. One of them yelled something, and Lori flipped them a finger.
“If I had known that you would have reacted like this, I wouldn’t have told you until we were stopped someplace”, she said., “or maybe not at all.”
I finally began to speak. “Do you still have that storage room full of evidence?”, I asked.
She looked at me and said, “Tell me that you’re not going to kill me.”
“Holy shit Lori! I’m not going to kill you.”, I responded.
“Yes. I still have it.”, she said matter-of-factly.
“Lori, I don’t think that I’m going to try to help you.”
She immediately responded, “That’s okay. I don’t expect you to.”
“But, Lori,”, I spoke again, “I’m going to need you to help me.”
“What?”, she asked.
“The man, that was at the barn, that I said I knew, whose own life depended on ending mine?” She snapped her head around and looked into my eyes coldly. Yeah, I saw the question in her eyes, and answered it,” Sam Milinni.” That’s the assignment that I’ve been working on.
“That’s impossible.”, She stated.
“Yeah. This is bizarre, huh? I’m surprised that I hadn’t ever seen you when I was around his operations in New Orleans.”
“I looked different.”, she reminded me, “I went blonde again when I got into Texas. But, you didn’t see me. I would have remembered a good-looking hunk like you. I may not have been interested in getting involved with someone, but I wasn’t dead.”
Then without missing a beat, her face lit up, and she pounded on the truck dash with every word, “Yes! Sam fucking Milinni! Yes!” She paused, and then with fire and grit in her voice, she spoke through clenched teeth, “We’re going to get him Cowboy! We’re going to fuck him up good! And then, I’m going to fucking kill him.” I had other plans for Sam Milinni, but I thought perhaps the hardest job that I had at hand, was to keep Lori from killing him first.
Lori flipped open the glove compartment and pulled out the presentation Colt that I had placed in there when we prepped for travel. “The extra mag from my old Colt is under the towel in there “, I informed her.
“What’s the capacity of these bad boys?”, she asked.
“Seven in the mag with one in the chamber “, I responded.
“You say you got extra ammo? How much?”, she questioned.
“I started with a box of fifty, hand loaded, high power, hollow points, designed to pretty much explode into some zillion fragments on impact. Not much on penetrating cover, but one hell of a “knock‘em down, and they don’t get up” feature. I had six left in the old Colt, that were transferred, and then loaded both new mags, and the eighth chamber round for the other Colt.”
“I don’t want a fucking math lesson!”, she whined, annoyed. “Just tell me the answer!”
“So, in summary “, I said in a louder voice, “we’ve got eighteen rounds left in the box, eight in what you’re holding, eight in the one I have, fourteen spread between each of the two extra mags, and I fired two. All total, forty-eight rounds.”
“Cowboy, she said solemnly, I know a little about Milinni’s organization, and we’re gonna need more ammo.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle and smile, when I replied, “And, just maybe a few more warm bodies with more guns.” She scowled at me, and I added, “But first, we’ll pick up that extra ammo, or gasoline. Whichever comes first. Probably gasoline.”
Chapter Ten
Coming off the Road
Where we do things is never as important as doing them.
We rode all day, making only two pit stops along highway sixty. The first stop was in Higgins, near the Oklahoma state line, where we bought gas and some snacks. I wanted to buy one of the pre-worn style baseball caps they were selling, but Lori insisted that I buy a brand new, straw, cowboy hat. I didn’t think that a new hat would help sell me as a rancher, but she promptly took the hat out on the porch of the little roadside café/filling station, and traded it to a teen for his stained and tattered hat.
He was resistant to the trade, but one flicker of her eyelashes and Lori’s bashful smile, and he suddenly seemed totally sold on the idea. He snatched the furled brim, straw, hat from his head, and shoved it at Lori.
When she placed the crisp new hat on his head, and placing her hand on his shoulder, told him that he looked handsome with it, his face turned blood red. When we were back on the road, I started chuckling, and told her, that I thought that kid pissed himself, when she touched him, and told him that he looked handsome wearing the hat.
“Oh, he did not!”, she replied, poohing my remark.
“If it had been me, when I was fifteen, standing there, and it was you, giving me that attention, I would have pissed myself!” I said. “His face turned as red as a stop sign!”, I talked while laughing, “If he didn’t piss himself, it was only because he had a hard on!” She slapped me on the arm, but glancing her way, I could see the sheepish smile at the corners of her lips.
Our other stop was at the middle of nowhere intersection with highway two seventy. Once again, we bought gasoline, grabbed a couple of sandwiches, and after finally getting Lori to go ahead and buy both of the pairs of sunglasses she was trying to decide between, we were back in the road.
The noon sun was high when we rolled into Oakwood, Oklahoma. We had put some distance between us and the burning barn, but needed to get further away. So, we continued on, but only after having a good sit-down meal at one of the restaurants. After we hit the road again, we drove on to Watonga without stopping.
At Watonga, we detoured off of two seventy, and visited the RealMart Super Center. There, we picked up a few more things we needed, like underwear, socks, toothpaste and other incidentals. I also picked up six boxes of forty-fives. The off the shelf hollow points, would be nothing like my hand loads, but I had no idea what we would be running into.
I always operated by the old soldier’s maxim, that you can, not have enough ammo, but that you can’t, have too much. I figured that if I bought too many boxes at one pop, that it might attract attention, or be something that someone would remember later as significant. So, six boxes, comprising three hundred rounds, seemed about right.
We killed a lot of time in Watonga and the RealMart, I figured that the more time passed, the larger the perimeter got, if Milinni somehow got on to the idea that one or both of us were still on the loose. I wasn’t sure which one of us he thought was in that barn, or if somehow, he had ID’ed us from the up line of those goons in Canadian, and thought we both were there. We couldn’t afford to assume anything about Milinni, except that he was cunning, ruthless, and had tentacles that reached where ever he needed them to.
It was near dusk when we hit the road again.
We traveled into the morning hours of the night, only stopping again for bathroom breaks, and one gasoline fill up. At Geary, we took highway two eighty-one toward I-40.
Nearing I-40 we started seeing the cheaper motels. I figured those would be the places that Milinni’s men would think to look for me, but not as likely at the fancier places. Harlton Hotels had a Sunnyfield Inn and Suites that seemed to be the top offering in that area, so we went there. I often wonder how people figured out and found hotels, before smart GPS’s. I parked around back, among what appeared to be the tattered cars of the staff.
After backing the truck in, and removing the tag, we took with us the emergency road kit from the Mustang, my survival bag, and the shopping bags from RealMart, to give us the appearance of having at least some kind of luggage and normalcy.
We walked around to the front entrance, and I went in while Lori sat on one of the benches in a little garden park, just off to the side. The only problem I had was that they didn’t accept cash after five in the evening. I have a series of five credit cards, with each in the name of a different front company. I sometimes use these when I don’t want my travel traced, and can’t carry a lot of cash, so I took a chance that it would continue to work for me, and used one here. By rotating the card usage in various sequences, the numbers aren’t likely to show up in a computer analysis for travel paths.
After a few uses, I get new cards issued with new numbers. Even if someone got into all of the credit card databases at once, there wouldn’t be much to show up. About the only people capable of that kind of access and analysis, are some of the various policing agencies, that I have infrequent contract with. But, there are always eyes and ears around, that are bought and paid for, from the outside. Even if you are accustomed to taking risks, in my line of work, you stay alive by being a disciple of paranoia.
At end, Lori and I finally shut, and locked, every lock and latch on the suite door, and after setting one of the courtesy cups on the latch lever as an additional alert, we simultaneously sighed with a deep breath.