by Bob Sanchez
And then there they were: the orange pants lying on a soft gravel shoulder next to tire tracks and a scuffling of footprints. This was where he was supposed to leave the car and the urn. Mack slowed and looked around at the thick bushes on both sides of the road. Off to the right, a wooden sign nailed to a piñon tree marked the entrance to a dirt road. The paint had worn off long ago, the sign having turned completely gray. Here was a perfect spot for an ambush. He changed his mind about his agreement. Deals with homicidal psychopaths weren’t going to hold up in court. He wasn’t going to give up the car; his parents would need a fast ride to a clinic. Also, Dieter Kohl wasn’t getting the urn because that would disrespect George. Mack wasn’t giving up the ticket either unless he could stuff it up Kohl’s nose or down his throat. Mack slowly pulled onto the dirt road, which curved around a cluster of rocks and a palo verde tree and appeared to slope downward. There were tire tracks in the dusty road and plenty of brush for Dieter Kohl to hide behind.
Mack’s rear windshield shattered at the same time he heard a gunshot. Glass flew, and a tiny shard stung Mack’s neck like a scorpion bite. He stomped on the accelerator and rammed a piñon tree as he tried to make it around the bend. He shifted into reverse and stomped again. Tires spun, and the engine raced. A thick cloud of red dust billowed behind him as he heard three more gunshots and a loud curse. He rolled out of the car and onto the ground. Fat lot of good his .38 would do him where it sat in the glove compartment.
Kohl fired at the car, doing remarkably well for a right-handed man shooting left-handed. Mack guessed it was a nine-millimeter Beretta. Three shots seemed high, but one thwacked on the passenger-side door and passed right through it. Mack bet his life that Kohl couldn’t hit the door twice in the next couple of seconds. He scrambled back into the car on his stomach, unsure if Kohl had seen him through the space under the car. He popped open the glove compartment and grabbed his .38. Another round slammed through the door, right past Mack’s face. He slid backward out of the driver’s side and onto the ground, easing to his left as he looked for cover. A bullet ripped through a bush above his head. Mack lay prone in the dust and glimpsed Kohl; he squeezed off a round that went high and thwanged on a rock. He had only five rounds, so he had to make them count. Kohl’s Beretta might have a thirty-shot clip for all Mack knew.
“You cheating son of a bitch!” Diet Cola screamed. “You’re supposed to leave me the car! You’re supposed to leave me the ticket! “Your word isn’t worth shit, you know that? Your tombstone’s gonna say, ‘Here lies Mack Durgin. Lies, lies, lies!’”
Kohl had the Beretta in his left hand, and filthy bandage was wrapped around his right hand. He focused on the car and fired several shots at it. All missed. In the bushes, an animal squealed and ran, probably with a terrible wound in its flank. “This is my money, Durgin. I worked harder for it than anybody else. You guys are all too stupid to see what you’ve got, or you wouldn’t be here now. You’d be off in Vegas, Atlantic City, Foxwoods with the high rollers. You’d have three planes, a dozen whores and a Rolls-Royce. You wouldn’t fucking be here!”
Where were his parents? He listened for any sounds that might tell him. If possible, he wanted to get between his parents and that bastard Kohl. He heard heavy footsteps, apparently Kohl’s, and he saw his target through the needles of the piñon. He fired and missed. Damn it, he should have steadied himself for a clear shot. He had only three shots left to clean Kohl’s clock. Mack’s mouth was parched. A vision of a skeleton crossed his mind—it was definitely a dry heat. The sun seared the ground and glinted off the hood of his car. He circled to his left, suspecting that Kohl was doing the same. Mack’s car sat partially in view behind a shrub oak, and it was a mess. Broken glass, bullet holes in the trunk, and George Ashe still in the crossfire. The guys at Avis wouldn’t be renting out this car again.
Then Mack saw a sure thing as Kohl raced across an open space toward a manzanita bush. Mack fired two shots. Kohl went down behind the bush, out of sight but screaming. Mack guessed he’d hit him in the leg.
Maybe that was wishful thinking. Kohl peered through a small gap in a pile of rocks, but Mack didn’t want to waste his last shot. He ducked away from a volley.
A diamondback rattlesnake wriggled across the open space, on a mission having nothing to do with human beings and perhaps everything to do with finding a field mouse. Mack lobbed a few pebbles at the snake, and it stopped. He had to be careful not to expose himself to Kohl’s fire as he picked up a small, flat rock—the kind you skip on a lake—and winged it at the snake. Bulls-eye! The snake flinched and coiled, then sped toward the rocks. Mack felt relieved, as it could as easily have slithered in his direction. Kohl seemed to be getting impatient now, as he fired off five shots in quick succession. He didn’t seem to be paying any attention to the snake.
Mack dashed toward the cover of a mesquite bush, in the direction where he hoped to find his parents alive. He lay prone in the dirt and fixed his eyes on Kohl’s location. Kohl raised his head to look at Mack’s car, apparently thinking Mack was still there. Mack gripped his pistol with both hands and waited for the right moment. In the silence of the moment, Kohl’s expression looked puzzled, as though he didn’t think he had taken Mack down. Why was he so quiet all of a sudden? He rose slowly from his cover. Mack steadied himself with a deep breath as he aimed for Kohl’s chest.
Mack fired. Kohl screamed and fell.
Had he hit him? Being out of ammunition, Mack had no plans to hang around and find out. His ears still rang from the gunshot as he moved quickly on a diagonal, hoping to pick up the road beyond Kohl’s line of sight. He had to assume that Kohl was still in commission. A half dozen shots rang out, then Kohl moaned. He sounded like he was emptying his magazine.
Mack found the road again. Tire treads had left their imprints in the dust. He ran in the direction of an orange cliff that loomed in the distance. A vulture circled in the warm air currents, then drifted gently toward a treetop as though it smelled the promise of death.
Soon he found his parents and Zippy tied back to back, battered and bruised. Mack felt sick at the abuse that coward Kohl had handed out. Hell had a special place for people who abused older folks, and Kohl’s spot was guaranteed. “Mom? Dad? You’re going to be okay,” Mack said. “I’ll get you out of here.”
“I got a knife up my pant leg,” Zippy said. He had a bloody gash on his face. “You can cut us loose.”
“You don’t get the knife back.” Mack took the knife and severed the rope. Zippy rubbed his sore wrists.
Mack knelt next to his parents and felt his father’s rapid pulse. Then his mother touched Mack’s arm. She looked bruised and weak, but alive. “Doctor Mack,” she said, “I’m afraid we’re feeling indisposed.”
Chapter 48
Ace didn’t think the cop would have a sister who looked like Ursula Mensch. She had a scooped blouse exposing the tanned tops of breasts just begging to be stared at, jeans that fit over her ass like Turtle Wax on a Corvette’s bumper, and salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a pony tail and held in place with colored beads. She also wore scuffed leather boots, an unbuttoned denim shirt with a crumpled pouch of Red Man tobacco that stuck out of her breast pocket. A wide-brimmed Stetson shaded her eyes, and a strand of tobacco graced her upper lip. Ace guessed her age at between thirty and dirt.
“Hello, boys,” she said in a husky voice. “My brother says you need a place to stay.”
Ursula had an adobe house with a flat roof and a wide-open back door, with scattered patches of grass growing at the cracked foundation like the clusters of hair that grow out of old people’s ears. If there was an air conditioner inside, it was either off or damn quiet. A couple of old cars sat in the yard, one of them burned out, sitting on its rims in the sand. The hood lay on the car’s roof, wilted flowers drooped out of the radiator opening, and the windshield—well, what windshield? There was a large fenced-in area with ostriches and wild pigs like the one they’d just been chasing, though none
of these pigs wore funky jackets with sequins. A mangy dog pushed through a hole in the fence and snapped at one of the pigs, which swiped a tusk and grunted like it happened all the time. The dog yipped and ran away, its tail between its back legs. Chickens scratched and clucked at Ace’s feet. Frankly, the whole place smelled like Diet Cola. No way Ace was staying here tonight.
“I wish I was dead,” Frosty said.
“That’s doable, hon,” Ursula said. Then she eyeballed Elvis and gave him one of those sly hey-baby smiles that said he might not be flying coach tonight. “Mister Hornacre,” she said, “has anyone ever told you you’re a dead ringer for the King?”
Now Ace didn’t normally keep track of such things, but he was pretty sure that Elvis got an instant bulge in his pants. Elvis stammered, then said, “Oh, all the time. Except I’ve lost my good jacket, which is how they usually can tell.”
“Are you serious? I can see it in your eyes. For sure you’ve got his eyes.”
Elvis shuffled his feet, possibly not used to being on the receiving end of bullshit, especially from such a sexy, worldly woman. His voice got gravelly. “Well, I’ve been in contests. Elvis impersonations.”
“No! For real?”
“I’ve won prizes. Best Elvis in Show. But ever since a pig got my jacket…”
“I can still see the resemblance. It’s real strong.”
Elvis Hornacre couldn’t have landed in a better place. Ursula must’ve had one seriously vivid imagination, seeing the King in their companion. Or maybe she just thought him sexy-hot and would’ve agreed he looked like Santa Claus if that’s what he claimed. But holy crap, this woman was looking past Elvis’s wired-up purple jaw, his head-to-toe dirt and the sweat stains under his armpits. Here were Ace and Frosty, two handsome gentlemen if Ace didn’t mind saying so, with clean fingernails, no sign of perspiration or b.o. and hair nicely combed and in place. Speaking for himself, Ace wouldn’t mind spending an hour or two behind closed doors with this woman, though he frankly didn’t know how long such things were supposed to take with two people involved. So if he and Frosty were so attractive, how come Ursula’s eyes were popping at Elvis?
“If he looks like the King,” Frosty muttered, “then I must look like the Terminator.”
Ace hesitated to point out how wrong that comparison was. Maybe if you shrunk the Terminator, fattened up his butt and dipped him in bleach, then Ace could see a likeness. At least the two Elvises had more or less the same build.
“He’s sure not the King,” Ace admitted.
“We’ve got to find a way out of here.”
“What’s the rush?”
“Finding Officer Durgin’s treasure is the rush. Getting away from chicken blood is the rush.”
“She’s going to feed us, I think. I’m hungry.”
“Okay. But after we eat, we run.”
“You kidding me? After dinner, we might get lucky with Ursula.”
“She’s got a hairy eyeball on Elvis. We don’t have a chance.”
“Sloppy seconds, maybe?”
Frosty gave Ace a look. “Gross, man.”
“Yeah. We don’t even do neat firsts.”
“Have you noticed how far we are from home?”
“A thousand miles?”
“More like two thousand. It seems like every step we take, we get deeper into the crap. I am so wicked homesick, Ace.”
“Yeah, me too. We can borrow Ursula’s car.”
Ursula’s place had an overhead fan and no a/c. Next to the couch, a brown and white tabby cat played with a dead mouse. There was a kitchen sink full of dishes and pots, a gas stove and a fridge and a room divider made of multi-colored floor-to-ceiling beads that clacked together softly in the breeze from the fan. They looked like the same beads Ursula used to tie back her hair. Two walls were decked out with posters of Elvis and postcards from Graceland, though they were hard to see with the dim overhead bulb. There was a picture of him with screaming teenagers, and Ursula pointed herself out. “Long time ago I offered to have his baby, but I don’t suppose he heard me, five hundred girls saying the same thing at once.” She turned and looked at Elvis Hornacre. “You’ve got the look. You don’t need sequins. You don’t even need clothes.”
“Last woman I met didn’t see it that way.”
Ursula reached into her Red Man pouch and pinched a few shreds between her thumb and forefinger. She slipped it between her cheek and gum, and Ace’s own erection faded fast. “Last woman you met’s a fool. All the better for me.” Ursula turned to Ace and Frosty.
“Boys, you want to grab us a couple of chickens for dinner?” She pointed to a couple of birds scratching on the ground and pecking on kernels of corn. “Them two would be fine, Fred and Ethel. Wring their necks and bring ‘em in for me?”
Ace suddenly felt unwell. Chicken you ate came from the store, didn’t it? It came all cold and wrapped in plastic, didn’t it? Then what was this, killing innocent birds that even had names? The last thing Ace ever killed was a six-pack of Bud Lite—well, there was the squirrel, but that was entirely an accident. You know how they panic in the middle of the road. The floor started to do the Tilt-A-Whirl, but Frosty hit the boards first.
Ursula smiled. “Just kidding, city boys. Just relax and I’ll take care of it.” She doused Ace and Frosty with water and brought them around, then turned on a ceiling fan that brought a breeze that Ace thought saved his life.
That night they had deep-fried Fred and Ethel with mounds of slimy okra, refried beans and guacamole. Ugly but free, Ace reasoned as washed his meal down with beer and listened to the old Elvis vinyls, the small ones that looked like a .45 blew a hole in the middle—hence, Ace supposed, the name. Frosty ate with enthusiasm, like he’d quickly forgotten that the chickens had names just this afternoon. Ursula watched some TV show called Crotchfire where people yelled at each other and Ace couldn’t tell what the hell anybody was talking about. Rude people was all he knew.
Ace bunked out on the living room floor while Frosty got the ratty green couch. Ursula and Elvis pushed their way past the floor-to-ceiling beads, and the grunting started up practically right away. Ace’s heart began racing. He held his breath to calm himself.
“Frosty?” he said. “Do you think Elvis still wants to kill that woman he’s been chasing?”
“Hell, no. I’m guessing he forgets why he’s out here.”
Why he was here was a good question for Ace too, being thousands of miles from home. Could this whole experience be worth it? They came all the way out here, and for what? Ace and Frosty had no more idea what treasure Mack Durgin had than when they started, and now they were stuck with Elvis Hornacre, who was the worst imitator of anybody, ever. A couple of screams came out of the bedroom, a love duet that ended in giggles and silence.
Frosty looked at his watch. “Three minutes,” he said. “Man, they’re good.”
“You think we’ll ever find that treasure of Mack’s? Or do you think we’re stuck here listening to barnyard sounds and looking at big stupid red rocks forever?” Ace picked up the TV remote and turned up the volume. A woman was holding a microphone in front of a police station.
“—shot and wounded this afternoon by a retired Massachusetts policeman, reportedly rescuing his parents in a raging gun battle after an alleged kidnapping attempt by Mister Kohl.”
Frosty and Ace looked at each other, stunned. Ace was pretty sure that was Diet Cola they were talking about. The reporter went on to talk the alleged incident, as though maybe it might not have happened and the reporter had yet to check it out.
“Earlier we spoke with former Officer Mackenzie Durgin as he exited the station…” The reporter was trying to stick a microphone in Durgin’s face. “Officer Durgin, is it true that your victim fired ten shots at you?”
“Don’t call him that. He’s no one’s victim.”
“And that you rescued your parents from certain death? Do you feel like a hero?”