by AnonYMous
With the Tapioca less than half full but due to get busy in the very near future, Sanchez and Mukka found a whole new cause for concern when the first two of their unwelcome guests arrived. They came in the shape of Carlito and Miguel. The two goons, both dressed as cowboys, strutted up to the bar as though they owned the place.
‘Who are you guys supposed to be?’ Sanchez asked.
‘We’re the Lone Rangers,’ Miguel replied, for once taking the lead from Carlito.
‘The Lone Rangers?’ a baffled Mukka mocked from behind Sanchez. ‘That’s meant to be a joke, right?’
‘No. Why?’ Miguel looked slightly confused.
‘Well,’ said Mukka. ‘Clearly the whole point of the Lone Ranger is that there was only one of him. Hence “the Lone Ranger”.’
Miguel still looked baffled. Carlito, on the other hand, simply looked rather uninterested.
‘Look, asshole,’ said Miguel. ‘In the TV show he had Tonto with him, so he wasn’t exactly “Lone” then, either, was he?’
‘Tonto wasn’t a Ranger, though, was he? He was an Indian,’ Mukka pointed out. There was a moment’s silence.
‘Oh yeah,’ said Miguel, finally grasping the point Mukka was making. ‘I suppose not. Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.’
Winning the point had made the cook reckless. ‘Of course I’m fucking right,’ he crowed.
Miguel wasn’t used to being spoken to like this. Especially not by nobodies like Mukka. For a few painfully long seconds he seemed to be mulling over how to react. He stood motionless. Only his eyes moved. It was as if he could hear a voice in his head telling him to do something, and was looking around for the owner of that voice.
Sanchez’s stomach turned. He feared Miguel was about to react badly to Mukka’s comments. Normally banter like this would have livened things up in the bar, but right now he was seriously hoping Carlito and Miguel didn’t get too pissed and start killing anyone who joked about their costumes. It all depended on whether or not Jefe showed up and gave them the Eye of the Moon. If he didn’t, they were liable to go on a killing spree, and who better to wipe out first than Batman and Robin?
Fortunately, Miguel let the comments slide and ordered some drinks. ‘Two beers please, Batman,’ he called out as he leaned over the bar, checking out Sanchez’s and Mukka’s costumes. ‘Hey, Robin,’ he added, fondly. ‘Nice pants.’
There was a fair amount of sniggering from the other tenants of the bar at the mention of Robin’s pants. Not so much because it was a funny remark, but because Miguel was about the tenth consecutive customer to have commented on them in the last half-hour.
‘So, Batman. You seen our friend Jefe yet?’ Miguel asked as Sanchez began pouring the beers.
‘Nope. He ain’t showed his face in here this morning.’
‘Fucksakes. It’s ten to twelve now. Where is that prick? ‘
Carlito decided to take over the questioning, gesturing to Miguel to quieten down simply by tapping him on the arm.
‘So riddle me this, Batman,’ he said to Sanchez. ‘If Jefe doesn’t show up here in ten minutes, what do you think is going to happen?’
‘I don’t know … What?’ Sanchez was growing nervous at the intimidating tone of the questioning.
‘All hell is going to break loose, that’s what. El Santino will be here, and he’ll want to blame someone. I believe he offered you a large sum of money to find the stone, and you haven’t found it.’
‘Well … no. But I never promised anything. I was just askin’ around as a favour. There wasn’t no agreement that I would find it for definite. Besides, my man Elvis who was lookin’ for it went and got himself killed.’
‘Sure.’ Carlito winked at Sanchez in an intimidating manner. Then he and Miguel picked up their beers and made their way over to a table in the middle of the barroom. They both took up chairs on the same side of the table so that they were facing the entrance.
Then they sat and waited to see who would arrive first, Jefe or El Santino. By any reckoning, they wouldn’t have too long to wait.
Fifty-Three
Dante was absolutely shitting himself. The crazy with the Freddy Krueger mask and the stripey red-and-black jersey had forced him at gunpoint to drive his newly acquired yellow Cadillac to the Tapioca Bar. Now, although he was scared for himself, he was also concerned about Kacy. She was back at the motel and he had no way of contacting her. Not least of all because he had a gun pointed at him, but also because this Freddy Krueger nut had taken his cellphone.
When at last they arrived at the Tapioca, Dante was heavily disappointed to find that there was plenty of space to park the car in the street outside the bar. Not many people were driving on this particular day, which was hardly surprising. Most were celebrating the end of the Lunar Festival and looking forward to a drink. Or twelve. As soon as Dante killed the engine Freddy barked an order at him. ‘Get outta the car, Terminator boy. We’re goin’ in for a drink.’
Dante did as he was told and walked gingerly up to the entrance, followed by Jefe, who didn’t even need to press a gun into his prisoner’s back. The young thief was way too scared to try to make a break for it, and Jefe knew it.
He wasn’t too scared, though, to pick up immediately on the tense atmosphere in the Tapioca. There were quite a few people in the bar, but no one seemed to be speaking. They just stared at the pair of them as they walked in. To Dante, it seemed as if everyone was waiting for someone important to arrive. With one of them in a Terminator outfit and the other dressed as Freddy Krueger, no one recognized them to start with. That soon changed, however, after they had made their way up to the bar and Jefe made himself known.
‘Hey, Batman,’ he yelled at Sanchez. ‘Get me a beer. I got good news for you.’
‘Is that you, Jefe?’ Sanchez asked, peering closely at the eyes looking out from the Freddy Krueger mask.
‘Yeah, it’s me all right. I just found this guy drivin’ around in a yellow Cadillac on Elm Street.’
‘Is that right?’ The bartender’s tone was decidedly chilly.
Dante wasn’t sure of the significance of all of this, but he could tell it wasn’t good. It looked even worse when he saw two masked cowboys get up from a table near by. They looked like they had overheard what Jefe had said and were taking a keen interest. As they approached the bar Dante noticed that they were both armed, and that they were pointing their guns in the direction of him and his captor in nightmarish outfit.
‘So, Freddy Krueger, have you got something for us? Or are we gonna have to get nasty?’ one of the rangers asked Jefe.
The bounty hunter turned away from the bar to confront the two masked men approaching him. He looked calm and assured now, for even though his face wasn’t visible, his body language spoke volumes. This man had nothing to be afraid of.
‘Oh, I got the Eye. This Terminator punk was driving round town with it in his inside pocket. Thought we could all club together, and ask him exactly what the fuck he’s been doin’ with it. Reckon he killed Sanchez’s brother, too, an’ tried to kill my girl Jessica.’
‘You don’t say?’
It dawned on Dante that everyone in the bar seemed to have turned his or her attention upon him. And it wasn’t anything to do with being impressed by his outfit, either.
‘So who are you, Mr Terminator, and what the fuck did you want with our precious stone huh?’ the first ranger asked.
‘Nothing,’ Dante answered as confidently as he could. ‘A customer at the hotel I work in just gave it to me. His name was Jefe, I think. Yeah, Jefe.’
He was not sure exactly how much trouble he was in at this point, but it was definitely more than he had ever been in before. So it was definitely time for a little bit of half-truth telling. With any luck he might just get away with it, too.
Then again, maybe not. ‘That’s bullshit!’ yelled Jefe. ‘I’m Jefe and I sure as fuck didn’t give it to you! You better sit down and start talking, ‘fore I get angry.’
Dante sudden
ly found himself being frogmarched over to the large wooden table that the two Lone Rangers had occupied. Jefe forced him to sit down in one of the chairs with his back to the entrance. Sanchez made his way out from behind the bar, knocking a glass on to the floor with his long black Batman cape. He took a seat next to Dante. The two Lone Rangers and Jefe took up places around the other side of the table.
Sanchez placed one black-gloved hand firmly on Dante’s shoulder and began the interrogation. Being questioned in an intimidating fashion by Batman was a new and fairly unwelcome experience for Dante.
‘Why did you kill my brother and his wife? And what do you want with Jessica?’
‘What? I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. And I don’t know anyone called Jessica.’
The senior of the Lone Rangers, which was Carlito, was next in line with a question. He had just lit a cigarette and placed the shiny silver lighter back in the breast pocket of his shirt. He puffed on the cigarette and left it hanging from the corner of his mouth as he spoke.
‘What were you doing with the stone? How did you get it? And more to the point,’ he said, looking around, ‘where the fuck is it?’
‘I’ve got it now,’ Jefe intervened.
‘Well, give it here.’
‘No. I’m keeping it ’til El Santino gets here. I’ll give it to him myself. That was the deal and I’m sticking to it.’
‘Suit yourself. You can give it to him now. Here he comes,’ said Carlito, looking over Dante’s shoulder towards the entrance. ‘Bartender, you can get scarce now. This don’t concern you.’
Dante looked at what was happening in complete bewilderment. The guy in the Batman outfit got up from the table and headed back behind the bar. But who was this fellow El Santino who had supposedly arrived? Actually, it didn’t take a genius to work out who he was, which was just as well because Dante was no genius. Standing at the bar with a face covered in black-and-white make-up was El Santino. He had come dressed as Gene Simmons from the rock band Kiss. This wasn’t a great step out of normality for El Santino. In fact, it was not far off how he normally looked. He just had slightly more make-up on than usual. The long dark hair was all his own, and so were the muscles. And boy-oh-boy, did he have muscles. This was as big a man as Dante had ever seen, and he’d seen a few in recent times.
‘Hey, Batman. Get me a beer and a bottle of your best whisky,’ El Santino snarled at Sanchez. He turned from the counter and faced the table where all the action was taking place.
‘Now, which one of you sorry punks has got my Eye?’ he roared.
Fifty-Four
Scraggs had taken the call from Captain Rockwell and had reacted immediately. Rockwell’s instructions were precise, and he had made it very clear that they were to be followed to the letter. The last thing he had said remained imprinted on Scraggs’s brain. ‘Get there as soon as you can and take charge of the situation. Don’t under any circumstances touch anything, I mean ANYTHING, until you’ve spoken to me first.’
After a dramatic stoplight-running twenty-minute race in his squad car he had arrived at the House of the Mystic Lady and immediately realized that he had to act fast if Rockwell’s orders were to be followed. There were already four other squad cars parked outside and half a dozen uniformed officers milling around cordoning off the immediate area with orange crime-scene tape. Scraggs jumped out of his car and jogged over to the nearest cop, a tubby man leaning against one of the squad cars and speaking into a cellphone. Scraggs recognized him as Diesel Borthwick, a fairly lazy, underachieving foot-patrol officer.
‘Hey, Diesel, I’m in charge here now,’ he barked as he approached the paunchy, middle-aged officer. ‘What’s the current situation?’
Borthwick looked moderately irritated by the arrival of Lieutenant Scraggs, probably because it was interrupting his conversation. ‘I’ll call you back,’ he muttered into his phone before ending the call and turning his attention to Scraggs. ‘Well, Lieutenant,’ he said, ‘we have one dead body. A sixty-year-old female, or thereabouts. Her head’s on a coat hook behind the door, and the rest of the body is propped up in a chair behind a desk, with the exception of the eyes and tongue. Which are missing, sir.’
‘We got any leads yet?’
Borthwick stopped leaning against the car and stood up straight.
‘Yeah,’ he replied in a weary voice. ‘We got a witness who says she saw Freddy Krueger run out of here in a hurry this morning. Apparently he drove off in a silver Porsche. No licence plate, though.’
‘Freddy Krueger?’ said Scraggs quizzically.
‘Fancy-dress costume, sir. It’s Lunar Festival, remember … Detective?’
From over by the front entrance to the house Scraggs heard a banging sound. He turned to see where it was coming from. The door of the house was swinging back and forth in the wind.
‘Anything else?’ he asked, grimacing at the head that he had just noticed was impaled on the back of the door.
‘Yeah, I have a theory, sir.’
Scraggs looked back at Diesel Borthwick in surprise. The laid-back officer was not known for having much more than half a brain, so it was unusual to hear him voice any kind of opinion or suggestion.
‘Really? What is it?’ Scraggs asked.
‘I suspect suicide,’ said Borthwick, smirking.
‘You fucking idiot.’ Disgusted, Scraggs marched over to the house. Two other uniformed officers were standing at the bottom of the steps leading up to the door, guarding the entrance. Scraggs barged between them, brushing shoulders with both as neither bothered to move aside to give him any room. He stepped in through the front door, glancing only briefly at the misshapen head impaled on the coat hook. Inside he saw the shambles that had been made the night before. Blood everywhere, chairs overturned, the torso of the Mystic Lady in a chair at the table directly in front of him. And Officer Adam Quaid flicking through the pages of a large hardback book lying on the table.
‘Hey, Quaid! What the fuck are you doing?’ Scraggs snapped at him.
Quaid looked up, startled, for he hadn’t heard Scraggs walk in. Almost as a reflex, he saluted his superior officer, even though it wasn’t necessary. Saluting was old hat in Santa Mondega, and pretty much the only reason for doing it was as an instinctive reaction to being caught doing something improper by a senior officer.
‘I found this book on the table, Lieutenant. I really think you should take a look at it,’ Quaid mumbled nervously.
‘Leave the book and wait outside until I give you further instructions,’ Scraggs ordered. ‘The Captain is on his way, and he’ll be pretty pissed if he sees you flicking through the evidence. He’s specifically ordered that nothing is to be touched.’
‘But sir,’ said Quaid, pointing at the open book on the table. ‘I really think you should take a look at this.’
‘I SAID OUT!’ yelled Scraggs. ‘Leave the goddam book and wait outside!’
‘Yessir,’ mumbled the cop, apologetically.
Scraggs tried to stare at Quaid in an intimidating fashion as the overweight, doughnut-loving officer passed him sheepishly on his way out. It wasn’t possible to eyeball him, though, because Quaid was looking down at his feet like a naughty schoolboy. Scraggs watched him walk to the entrance, shaking his head as the mumbling fool shied away as far as he could from the Mystic Lady’s head on his way out of the door.
Nothing to do now but wait, then? Scraggs thought to himself. The Captain should be here within twenty minutes. Should I tell him that one of the officers has been flicking through the book on the desk? Hmm, maybe not. It’ll only piss him off.
It took only five minutes of indecision about whether to stare at the Mystic Lady’s head or the rest of her corpse for Scraggs to become restless and impatient for the Captain to arrive. So what is in this goddam book? he mused. Surely it won’t hurt to look at the pages that are open on the desk, just so long as I don’t touch them?
He sidestepped gingerly over to the table, all the while lo
oking out of the front door in case Captain Rockwell appeared and caught him nosing. His hip touched the side of the table and he looked down at the book, which was at such an angle relative to his position that it was all but upside down. Something on the open page caught his eye immediately. He turned to get a better look. Could that be …? Surely not? With one finger he edged the book round on the table so that he could look at it the right way up. Sure enough, his eyes had not deceived him. He had just seen what Officer Quaid had been looking at.
Oh fucking hell!
Fifty-Five
Peto had very little idea what the whole fancy-dress thing was about, but Kyle had convinced him that they should be joining in with the festivities. The previous morning they had hired a couple of outfits. Although they didn’t know who the Cobra Kai were, both of them took quite a shine to the costumes. They had been informed by the owner of the fancy-dress store that the Cobra Kai were a gang of martial-arts experts from a film called The Karate Kid. The outfits were made of a rugged thick black material. The pants were baggy and comfortable, while the sleeveless wraparound jackets had a rather artistic depiction of a yellow cobra sewn on to the back. For the first time in their lives, Kyle and Peto had an idea of what it felt like to look cool.
They had waited outside the Nightjar for about twenty minutes before they were forced to accept that Dante wasn’t going to show. Peto was disappointed by this because he had warmed to the young man, and considered him to be one of the more pleasant people they had encountered during their time in Santa Mondega. It seemed that one of two things might have happened. Either Dante hadn’t shown up and had never intended to, or he had shown up early, seen the Nightjar had been closed down, and had therefore gone on somewhere else. It was the second option that led Kyle and Peto to try their luck in the Tapioca. They needed to hurry, though, because time was running short. A glance at the sky suggested that the moon and the sun would intersect very soon.