by Bob Sanchez
Just before impact, Mack recognized Zippy’s face in his mirror. The van crunched the left side of Mack’s car and pushed it through an old fence and into a patch of mesquite, churning up a cloud of sand and dust. His body slammed forward while the airbag slammed back and the seatbelt held him tightly.
Cal stopped safely in the breakdown lane and watched in terror as the van rolled over twice and came to rest on its roof. The hood of Mack’s car had folded into an inverted V, and a cloud of steam hissed from the engine. There was no movement from either vehicle. Cal ran toward Mack, who opened his door and staggered out, looking dazed.
“He tried to kill you,” she said.
“Zippy’s completely nuts.” Mack wished he had his damn gun as he picked up a broken mesquite branch and walked toward the upended vehicle. Zippy crawled out through the opening where the van’s windshield had shattered. Blood streamed from a cut on his scalp. He held a large knife as he stared at Mack, who whacked him in the wrist with the stick and knocked the knife to the ground. Zippy turned and ran. Mack only limped after him, so Zippy had an advantage in speed.
If running into the desert is any advantage, Cal thought. She looked inside Mack’s car. The urn had opened, and George had spilled onto the floor, bits of ashes, chips of bone and a folded paper. Shuddering at her invasion, Cal dropped the paper back into the urn and brushed the other contents back inside as well as she could. Such a sad, sad ending for a man. As far as she could see, Mack’s only cause was simple and noble: to say goodbye to a friend with dignity and respect. Meanwhile, crazy people were trying to kill them both. She re-capped the urn and brought it to her own car as Mack came back into view, his face and hair wild, his club still in hand like a caveman on a rampage. Cal ran to Mack and hugged him, then gently touched her fingertips next to a scratch on his face. He dropped the mesquite branch and let his arms hang loosely as though she were drawing poison from his spirit.
Zippy reappeared in the distance like an angry dog that knew its intended victim would bite back. He yelled something she couldn’t make out, shook his fist and approached a little closer.
“Do you think he’ll die out there in all that heat?” Cal asked Mack. She’d driven them to Pincushion so they could file their report with the police. She arranged for the tow truck to claim Mack’s car, and then they headed west to Tucson so he could find a rental. The drive would take an hour.
“One fondly hopes. Thanks for saving George’s ashes, by the way.”
“There was lottery ticket inside. I put it back. Is it worth anything?”
“Damn unlikely. Did you see anything else?”
“Inexpensive women’s jewelry. This colleague of yours wasn’t a cross-dresser or anything, was he? Not that I care, of course.”
“It’s my mom’s stuff. She can be absent-minded.”
“I feel like a grave robber.” Cal shuddered.
“Diet Cola and his other Merry Men are probably not far behind. Maybe Zippy was on an errand to track us down and he thought to run us down instead.”
“Do you think we’ve lost them? Because—”
Mack hesitated for a moment. “Depends. I couldn’t find the GPS locator in the van Zippy drove, so I assume it’s still in Elvis’s car.”
Cal smiled. “You don’t want to lose them, do you? We still have the other part of the locator.”
“Well, I figured if they put it in your car, then it must belong to you.”
“You never told the police about the GPS?”
“It slipped my mind. Yours too, as far as I can tell.”
“I saw you pick up my half of the unit. When you didn’t mention it to the cops, I thought you were up to something. What are you thinking?”
“When you drop me off for my car, I’ll bring it with me. You’ll be totally off the hook.”
“You’re setting a trap?”
“I won’t hurt them. Not if everything goes right.”
“They outnumber you five to one, and you expect everything to go right? You need to get rid of those ashes.”
“They’ll still chase me unless they know for sure I don’t have them anymore. Then they might come after me just for vengeance. But it’s only four to one with Zippy gone.”
“That four to one includes Diet Cola and Elvis. They’re two vicious guys.”
“It also includes Ace and Frosty, which pretty much evens the odds for me.”
“How so?”
“Major-league screw-ups. The last thing you want in a fight is for them to be on your side. They aren’t fighters and they aren’t smart.”
“Yes, I picked up on that.”
Once they arrived in Tucson, Cal pulled into an Avis parking lot. Mack thanked her for the ride and the company and then gave her a brotherly peck on the cheek. “And my apologies for all the excitement,” he said. He rented a Toyota Camry and placed George on the floor in front of the passenger seat. As he pulled away, Cal flagged him down. He stopped and let her in.
“I was thinking,” she said, “I love excitement, and California will always be there.”
Chapter 30
Mack Durgin’s parents were having a wonderful time. They had slept in, meaning the sun had risen before they put their teeth in. They had strolled past the morning sprinklers greening up the golf course, happy to be hit in the knees now and again by the descending arcs of water that created small and wondrous rainbows in the sunlight. Then a half hour on the putting green and they were eager to check out of the motel and move on to see desert and mountains, Phoenix and the great plateau to the north where the landscape offered up huge outcroppings of red rock. Sedona, Carrick had heard, was a special marvel.
They drove for a while, blithely traveling in the wrong direction, soon aware of their error but in no hurry to right it. Now and then, Carrick stopped to snap a picture with his digital camera. Brodie and the saguaro. Brodie and the old fence. Brodie and the mesquite.
He framed her carefully to fit into the green rectangle inside the lens. Brodie’s wrinkles and age spots seemed to disappear in the magic of the moment. Carrick only saw a straw hat set at a rakish angle, a lovely figure and smile, and a playful thumb pointing over her shoulder, saying get a load of this. He fumbled with the settings for another moment, and as he snapped the picture he noticed something different. For a split second he thought he’d messed it up and would have to ask Brodie for another shot. Then he realized what he had seen.
A large pair of tattooed arms reached up behind her.
Chapter 31
Diet Cola loved driving Cadillacs. Elvis rode shotgun while those morons Ace and Frosty rode in the back. Not a lot of roads left Tombstone, so Diet saw no problem in catching up with Zippy.
Traffic slowed a bit a few miles west of town, a half dozen cars bunched together in what must pass for a traffic jam around here. There were a couple of cop cruisers and a tow truck. A short distance off the road, a van lay on its roof like a dead beetle in the sun. There was also a car with a sprung hood. Mack Durgin’s car, Diet’s van. Diet Cola was pissed at this massive screw-up. Was an ambulance on the way? There was no sign of Zippy, Mack, or the girl. Were the ashes still in the car? Diet Cola doubted it—Mack would never let that kind of money out of his sight—but he wanted to be sure.
“Must have been a fatal, man.” Frosty rolled his window down and called out to one of the cops. “Anybody dead?” The cop ignored him.
“Shut up,” Diet said as they drove away. “We don’t need the cops’ attention.”
“I’ve been in worse wrecks than that,” Ace said. “Walked away, too. I remember one time I hotwired this GTO.”
“No war stories,” Elvis said, turning around in his seat. His sequined suit had oil smudges, the bruise on his jaw still a grayish purple, and his wig had lost its Brilliantine shine, like he’d fallen farther than the King.
Frosty began playing air guitar. “You ain’t nothin’ but a ground hog,” he sang.
Elvis reached around and slapped him. “S
ome things are sacred,” he said.
“Frosty and me were doing a hundred on this back road, and we’re whipping around this corner when—”
“Shut up,” Diet repeated.
“This asshole came the other way, and I had to fly through a guard rail, sailing in the air like Thelma and Louise.”
“Only bad part, you didn’t die,” Elvis said.
“You guys don’t shut up, you die now,” Diet said. “Now can it!”
Frosty strummed his air guitar, quietly mouthing the words to his song.
Chapter 32
Mack and Cal headed north from Tucson and bought lunch at a roadside diner. In a gift shop next door, Cal purchased a pair of hand-made earrings adorned with a web of bright colors. Mack called them dream catchers.
“Am I your dream, Mack?” There was a battered pickup truck in the sandy parking lot, and an old woman sat on a bench in the shade, smoking a pipe. Cal offered Mack an impish smile.
“You were in my dreams last night.”
“Uh-oh.”
“You were playing Mahjongg with Mary and this gal Juanita. George and I were cops in uniform, trying to keep you folks from betting. You were a nurse with one of those white hats. Mary was dressed quite properly—I think she was a schoolteacher. Juanita had a completely transparent t-shirt on and was looking for the worm at the bottom of a tequila bottle.”
“Of course we were betting, though. We sounded like bad girls.”
“Then Diet Cola crashed the party, dropped his pants and said ‘Kiss me, I’m Irish.’”
“Ugh. Tell me that’s not a typical dream guys have.”
“Mary shot Diet Cola, who crashed into the pile of tiles and then ran off with George because I didn’t protect her.”
“Which left you with Juanita and me. Which one did you pick?”
“I didn’t have a choice. Juanita threw herself on Diet Cola’s body. You lit a match to the mah-jongg tiles and burned them both in a funeral pyre.”
“That part sounds realistic. Mind if I toss in Elvis Hornacre?”
Mack and Cal passed miles of flat desert, with a purple haze of mountains on the horizon. George’s urn sat on the front seat between them. Off to Mack’s left, a vulture circled on an updraft, waiting for something to die. Out here, it probably wouldn’t have long to wait. At the intersection of a dusty road, he pulled over to trade places with Cal so he could make a call on his cell phone while they kept moving. He reached Captain Bryant in the Lowell Police Department back in Massachusetts and briefly explained his situation. “What can you tell me about Diet Cola?” Mack asked.
“Real name is Dieter Kohl,” Captain Bryant said. “Did a five-year stretch in Cedar Junction for assault, then another year for peddling coke.”
“Can we pick him up on a parole violation?”
“He’s not out on parole, because he took an anger management class. Part of his lawyer’s plea bargain.”
“Well, he wants something from me and seems willing to kill to get it.”
“Ask him about Elvis,” Cal whispered to Mack, and he did.
“Elvis Hornacre we don’t know,” Captain Bryant said. “Sounds like you and the lady are being chased by some dangerous circus clowns.”
Mack hung up after a few minutes, wishing he had learned more about Diet Cola. The highway was straight as an arrow and disappeared into the shimmering heat. Cal, George and Mack traveled for miles in silence, leaders of a circus parade. What was it all about? Maybe George would forgive Mack for invading his privacy, but Mack knew he had to open the urn. Why in hell did Diet Cola want it? All Mack could think of was the stupid lottery ticket, but his parents would have cashed it in long ago if it was worth anything. And how would Cola know anything about that, anyway?
Chapter 33
The truck sped past Carrick in a blur, and Brodie was no longer in his camera’s viewfinder. His heart pounded. Had she been hit? No, please. Dear God, no. Please, God, take me instead. His feet were rooted on the opposite edge of the highway as he looked in one direction at the truck shrinking in the distance and in the other where no help was in sight.
A strange head arose from the ground, purple hieroglyphs on its skull and blood on its face. Then Brodie arose beside him, the very picture of terror. Carrick hesitated for a split second before charging to her rescue with no better weapon than his digital Nikon. He held it in his fist like a rock, ready to dash it against the alien being.
And then he woke up in heaven, which to tell the truth was nothing like what he had expected. No angels or harps, only lingering exhaust fumes and shapes moving in a gauzy fog. One shape was certainly Brodie. Carrick felt sadness that she had died on the roadside just as he must have done, but the sadness melted into joy that now they were united forever. Mack’s sweet Mary must be here somewhere too.
Brodie moved closer to him, and her face gradually came into focus.
“You’re awake,” she said. His head was in her lap. They were in the back seat of their car, but he didn’t have the strength to look up and see the driver.
“You’re alive!” He had the kind of headache he thought you might get in the third circle of hell. “What’s going on?”
“This nice young man saved my life. Now he’s kidnapping us.”
Carrick didn’t know where to begin asking questions, so he said, “Huh?”
“I was going to be hit by a truck, but he pulled me into the ditch just in the nick of time! Isn’t that wonderful?”
“Kidnapped?” A bald monster held the steering wheel with one hand and gingerly touched his face with the other.
“The poor man has been lost in the desert. He has some awful scrapes and a terrible sunburn,” Brodie said.
“I’ll be okay, lady. I burn easy.”
“No, young fellow. You need treatment. Pull over.” The driver ignored her, which Carrick knew to be futile. She tapped the man on the shoulder. “This will be a good place right there. It will take only a few minutes. Oh, you missed it! Please pay attention. Wait. There, you can pull over there, can’t you?”
“You want a broken axle, I can stop there.”
“Are you threatening me?” Brodie grabbed the man’s shoulder. “Because if you’re threatening me, my husband is an intercollegiate wrestling champion.”
“That was sixty years ago, darling.” Carrick held his hand to his forehead.
“I’m wicked impressed,” the bald man said.
“As well you should be. Pull over there.” The driver ignored her again, and she kept tapping him on the shoulder. Carrick wondered if he and Brodie might be killed. Eventually they came to an abandoned Texaco station with a single pump and an ancient sign for Dr. Pepper—ten, two, four, the slogan said. They pulled in.
“What do you got for me?” The driver looked ugly and exasperated, a combination that Carrick found unnerving.
“Some aloe vera,” Brodie said, opening a small suitcase.
“You try to trick me, you’re dead. You flash a nail file and I’ll stick it in your throat.”
“I only use emery boards, young man. I hardly think they make a good weapon, especially against the likes of you. Now lean toward me. That’s a good fellow.” She touched the top of his head, and he winced. Then she gently applied a palm full of the lotion, stroking from his forehead to the base of his skull. He took a long, deep breath and let it out as she rubbed more aloe onto his temples.