Coker nodded at the one-armed bandit. “I’ve heard of the Mojave Two-Step.”
Kim swallowed hard. ‘You never want to dance that one,” she said. “I’m here to tell you.”
The guy looked down at the road, kind of embarrassed. Like he wanted to know her story, but was too shy to ask for the details.
“Well, maybe your luck’s due to change,” he said. “It happened to me. Or it’s going to happen. It’s like I can see it coming.”
“Like a dream?”
“Or an omen.”
Kim smiled. “I like that word.”
“Me too. It’s kind of like a dream, only stronger.”
“I used to have this dream,” Kim said. “When I first came to Vegas. That I was going to hit it big. That I’d live in a penthouse suite with the A/C set at sixty-eight degrees. That the sun would never touch my skin and I’d be white as a pearl.”
The guy didn’t say anything. Still shy. Kim had forgotten about that particular emotion. She hadn’t run across it much in the last few years. Not with Johnny Ringo, and not with any of his friends. Not even with the two-legged slots that followed her around the casino night after night until she fed them dollars just so they’d leave her alone.
In Vegas, everyone wanted something. At least the walking slots came a lot cheaper than their flesh-and-blood counterparts.
Funny. She didn’t feel good about it, but she didn’t exactly feel bad, either.
That’s just the way it was in Vegas.
It was a rich man’s town.
Or a rich woman’s.
Kim finished her Eskimo Pie. She liked what the guy (what was his name again?) had said about omens. That they were dreams, only stronger.
She stared at the ice cream truck.
She thought: it’s not often you get a second chance.
“You want another?” the guy asked.
She laughed. “Just one more?”
Of course, he thought she was talking about an Eskimo Pie, when that really wasn’t what she wanted at all.
He went after the ice cream. She watched him go.
Past the dead guy on the highway
Past the second chance that lay there on the yellow line.
Kim really didn’t have a choice.
She had to pick it up.
She heard the freezer door close. Watched the guy (Dennis, that was his name) step from behind the truck.
He was all right about it. He kind of smiled when he saw the shotgun in her hands, like he already understood.
“I’m sorry, Dennis,” she said. “But dreams die hard. Especially strong ones.”
“Yeah.” he said. “Yeah.”
Coker stood in the middle of the road, eating an Eskimo Pie, listening to “Pop Goes the Weasel.”
The ice cream truck was gone from view, but he could still hear its little song. That meant she was up ahead somewhere, playing the tape.
Maybe she was playing it for him. The music drifted through the night like a sweet connection. Coker listened to the song while he finished his Eskimo Pie. Anshutes couldn’t stand the music the truck made. He wouldn’t let Coker play it at all.
Well, Anshutes didn’t have a say in anything anymore. Coker stared at his ex-partner. The big man lay dead on the highway like roadkill of old, his pockets stuffed with silver dollars.
Coker turned them out, filling his own pockets with the coins. Then he walked over to the one-armed bandit.
The Cogwheel Kid was primed for action — Anshutes’ coin between his lips, his lone robotic arm held high in the air. Coker pulled the slot machine’s arm. Ribbons of neon danced across the one-armed bandit’s chest. Bucking broncos, charging buffaloes, jackalopes that laughed in the desert night.
After awhile, the neon locked up.
Two tittering jackalopes with a snorting buffalo between them.
Hardly a jackpot.
Coker smiled as the neon flickered out. Losing wasn’t a big surprise, really. After all, Lady Luck was gone. She was up ahead, driving an ice cream truck, heading for the land of dreams.
The Cogwheel Kid started walking. He headed east, toward Vegas, looking for another mark.
Coker jumped on the robot’s back and held on tight.
He smiled, remembering the look of her frosty blue eyes. Lady Luck with a shotgun. He should have hated her. But he was surprised to find that he couldn’t do that.
She was chasing a dream, the same way he was.
He couldn’t help hoping she’d catch it.
The same way he hoped he’d catch her.
If he was lucky.
CARNE MUERTA
Curtain tossed the canteen in the dirt, just beyond the reach of the man with the broken hands. Not out of pity or compassion, but as punctuation — a period against the red earth, big and round and implacable and unmoving.
Leaving the canteen was only a gesture. Curtain had broken Sanchez’s hands with a claw hammer while Kirby and Wyatt held the Mexican. Now Sanchez’s fingers were twisted and swollen like rotten sausages. Even so, Curtain had done a good job tightening the cap on the canteen. Sanchez would never be able to open it. Not in a month of Sundays.
Curtain watched as Sanchez reached for the canteen. Broken hands dripping blood on polished leather. Mouth open. Dry tongue on jerky lips. Swollen clown fingers smearing the cap with blood, then slipping off, slipping off… slipping off again.
Kirby kicked the canteen out of Sanchez’s hands. It skidded across the dirt at a slight angle, leaving a mark like an especially long comma.
No one said anything. Kirby and Wyatt paced the Mexican as he bellied across the floor of Apache Canyon like a crippled sidewinder. The canyon was deep here. There were many shadows. But it was August and this was Arizona, and shadows did not make a difference. It was hot.
Sanchez hooked the strap of the canteen with his forearm and pulled it to his chest.
“You’ve got to hand it to the little bastard,” Kirby said. “He doesn’t give up, does he?”
“Maybe he doesn’t know how,” Wyatt said.
“He’ll learn,” Curtain said.
Curtain’s first name was Walter. No one called him Walt. He had a lot of money, and he was very wise with it. As far as he was concerned, all that buyer beware stuff was a load of crap. He didn’t believe in it. He believed in getting what he paid for. He figured that was the least a man should expect out of life.
Kirby drew his Glock M22 and aimed at Sanchez’s face. “Want me to finish him?”
“No.” Curtain sighed. Normally, the question wouldn’t have bothered him, because — normally — Kirby would have been the one to handle someone like Jesus Sanchez. But there was nothing normal about this situation. Apart from some minor assistance, Curtain was handling this job himself. And when he handled a job personally, he handled it start to finish. His own way.
Consequently, Kirby’s question was insulting. If Curtain wanted to finish this particular job with a gun, well then, he had his own. But this wasn’t a gun kind of job. This was a claw hammer kind of job. And as far as Curtain was concerned, he’d finished it.
Curtain glanced at the hammer in his hand, wondering why he was still holding it.
He dropped it in the dirt.
It landed without a sound, a bloody exclamation point.
“Let’s go,” Curtain said.
Kirby looked astonished. “You sure you want to leave him like this?”
Curtain glared at the bigger man, nodding very slowly.
“What about the canteen?” Kirby asked. “It’s a long way back to the Mercedes, you know. And it’s fucking hot today.”
“It’s fucking hot everyday,” Wyatt said, as if sarcasm would defuse the simmering tension. “This is Arizona.”
“Yeah,” Kirby said. “This is fucking Arizo — ”
“We’re finished here,” Curtain said quickly, because he was the boss, and his word was the word.
If Curtain said they’d leave Jesus Sanchez, they’d l
eave him.
If Curtain said they’d leave the canteen, they’d leave it too.
Right or wrong didn’t matter. A cast iron non-negotiable don’t-fuck-with-me attitude did. And as far as Curtain was concerned, Kirby should fucking well know that.
Curtain turned his back on the whole mess and started up the shadow-choked throat of the canyon. A few steps and he realized that Kirby and Wyatt weren’t following him. He didn’t have to look back to know that. The rut that passed for a trail was thick with shale and gravel. Even an Apache couldn’t move quietly in Apache Canyon.
So his ears told him that the gunmen weren’t walking, but they were talking. Whispering, really. And nothing singed Walter Curtain’s bacon quite as thoroughly as employees whispering behind his back.
He was ready to lose his temper when he heard footsteps.
He glanced over his shoulder.
Wyatt was coming.
Kirby stood below, looking long and hard at Jesus Sanchez.
Curtain whistled loud and shrill, the same way he whistled at his dog.
Kirby looked up at him.
Just like an Irish Setter, he came right along.
The first part of the hike was the toughest. The canyon rose at a steep, straight angle for a quarter mile. Twenty feet and Curtain wanted to stop for a breather. But he couldn’t do that yet. He kept at it. Switchbacks would have made the climb easier. But while the canyon was on government land, no park service crew was going to cut a trail in a meandering gash that any sensible billy goat would avoid.
Rock and shale slipped beneath their boots. Two miles hard and they’d be at the Mercedes. Even then, twenty miles of desert separated them from the slightest rumor of a town.
But it would be good to get back to the Mercedes. The ride was a first class toy. An ML320 — king of the sports utility vehicles, these days known as SUV’s. Curtain figured he deserved the best.
Wyatt would ride in the back seat. In a bigger car, that spot was reserved for Curtain. But in the SUV, there wasn’t much leg-room in the back, and the air-conditioning was less effective. So Curtain would ride shotgun.
Kirby would drive. He always drove. In a way, it bothered Curtain, because the car was his. But Curtain was the boss. The only time he drove was when he was alone. Kirby was his employee, so it was only right that he play chauffeur. If that was the price of keeping up appearances, then —
Damn, Curtain wanted to stop and catch his breath.
Below, Jesus Sanchez screamed in Spanish. Still proclaiming his innocence. Now adding his curse.
Curtain had his excuse. “Hold up,” he said.
Looking down, Curtain experienced a little spin of vertigo. They’d climbed higher than he thought.
The Mexican was not where they had left him. He had crawled about ten feet, onto a forked tongue of rock. He had the canteen, but the cap was still in place.
“Will you look at the little bastard,” Kirby said.
“Yeah,” Wyatt said. “Seems like Jesus isn’t a very quick study.”
“Give him time,” Curtain said.
They stood there in silence. Curtain tried to control his breathing. He thought about taking a shot at Sanchez, just to shut him up. Curtain was packing a Glock M24, which was just a little larger than the M22’s he’d purchased for Kirby and Wyatt.
Chalk the selection up to Money magazine. Curtain had read an article about corporate hunting retreats. Tips for managers, that kind of thing. The gist of the article was that the boss should always carry the biggest gun as a symbol of his authority.
But when it came to guns, Curtain knew that size didn’t matter. Skill was what counted. And Curtain doubted that he could hit Sanchez from this distance. If he missed, he’d hear it from Kirby. Even at this range, the big Irishman could probably pick off the Mexican. He was damn good with a gun. Even Wyatt ran a distant second to Kirby when it came to small arms work.
But there wasn’t any need, because Wyatt was right about one thing. Jesus Sanchez wasn’t a quick study.
Still, Walter Curtain had faith in his teaching methods.
Sanchez would catch on sooner or later.
Eventually, he’d shut up. Eventually, he’d have to.
Eventually, he’d be dead.
Curtain sidled past Kirby and Wyatt and took the lead.
“Carne muerta,” he whispered.
“What?” Kirby asked.
Wyatt translated. “Dead meat.”
Curtain’s heart pounded in his chest. Leading was harder than following. He had to set the pace, and it was disheartening to find that the pace he set wasn’t anything the hired guns couldn’t handle. The way they dogged his heels — Wyatt in the middle and Kirby in the rear — you’d think that he’d grown a couple of shadows.
Curtain grinned. That’s how it is when you’re the boss, he thought. And he liked being the boss. He liked to see people jump when he snapped his fingers.
Wyatt had figured that out a long time ago. Kirby was still learning. Jesus Sanchez was another story completely. And so was Curtain’s wife.
Her name was Rita. Half Mex, half Irish, but she kept the Irish to herself. She called Curtain “patron.” The way she said it, you’d think she really wasn’t joking at all.
“Patron.” Wyatt had to translate that one for Kirby, too. Curtain still remembered laughing as he eavesdropped on their conversation, the one hardcase telling the other that “patron” was Spanish for “big daddy.”
That was the way Curtain saw it, too. When they met at a college fund-raiser, he was forty and Rita was twenty-two. Part of a mentoring program, someone’s bright idea to shake some extra scratch from the alumni. They kept it pretty quiet through her senior year, and Curtain really thought he’d been a perfect gentleman about the whole thing.
And he took the mentoring seriously. Rita finished with a 3.83 GPA and an MBA. Not that she was ever going to need her degree. Curtain didn’t want a business partner. He wanted a partner between the sheets.
For a couple years, it went just that way. Everything seemed okay. Rita was a little bored, sure. Sometimes she got on Curtain’s nerves, wanting to get involved in the business. He was tempted to develop a home study course, Corporate Wives 101. But instead he kept Rita happy with trips when he could steal a few days away from the business and expensive gifts when he couldn’t.
Then Curtain started noticing things. Rita would disappear for an afternoon, take off for a weekend.
With friends, she said. The old college gang.
He knew better. Rita had never been the type to have many friends. And as far as he knew, he was the old college gang.
Curtain told Wyatt to check things out. He didn’t have time to do it himself. Besides, he couldn’t do something like that. Surveillance wasn’t his game. What Curtain did was manage the Bahamian accounts, the holdings in the Pacific Rim.
What Wyatt did was something very different.
And Wyatt was good at what he did. He wasn’t a hothead like Kirby. Wyatt understood the way things worked. He knew when to talk and when to shut up.
Eventually, Wyatt told Curtain about Jesus Sanchez. Sanchez handled a few racehorses for Curtain and ran his private stable. There wasn’t much to it, really. The guy was a glorified stableboy. Of course, Wyatt didn’t say that. He knew what to say and what to leave out. He knew better than to rub his boss’s nose in it.
Curtain could do that job for himself. He imagined the stableboy doing Rita in the fucking barn. Right there in a stall, bent over a hay bale with her riding breeches down around her knees. Sanchez playing the show stud, Rita the brood mare —
No, Walter Curtain wasn’t going to start thinking those thoughts again. You thought like that, the next thing you knew you’d lose it all.
But that was the way it was when you were the front runner.
You always imagined what it was like to finish out of the money.
Curtain was sweating like a pig. He didn’t want to stop, but he needed a breather.<
br />
‘You all right?” Wyatt asked.
Curtain nodded. “Just give me a minute.”
“Shit, give me two,” Kirby said, and he slouched against a rock in a muted patch of shade.
Curtain stared ahead. At least they were done climbing. The trail had leveled out. They had another mile and a half to go.
Mile and a quarter, if they were lucky.
No matter how far it was, there wasn’t an inch of it in the shade.
“From here on out, we’re cookin’,” Kirby said.
“It could be worse,” Wyatt said. ‘You could be Jesus Sanchez.”
‘Yeah.” Kirby laughed, and it seemed his anger had dulled. “I’ve got to admit, the patron here knows his way around a hammer just like a Roman centurion on Easter Sunday. Fuck, ol’ Jesus sure lived up to his name, the way he got nailed.”
The big ox went on like that. Sweat dripped off Curtain’s nose. He was getting uncomfortable again. For the first time, he realized that using the hammer had been a mistake.
Sure, he wanted revenge. Sure, it felt good. But using a claw hammer. Jesus. That wasn’t his game. Not at all. That was why he had Kirby and Wyatt.
He’d definitely crossed a line that he didn’t want to cross. And Kirby and Wyatt knew it. Wyatt had the good sense to keep his trap shut, but he probably felt the same way as Kirby. They’d seen the boss try his hand at their work, seen he wasn’t nearly as efficient as they were, and now they were like a couple of seasoned old-timers slapping the new kid on the back while they demolished a six-pack.
The roles were reversed.
Curtain had to nip this one in the bud, and fast.
He glanced at Wyatt, and that was all it took.
“Shut up, Kirby,” Wyatt said.
“Hey!” The big man was offended all over again. “All I’m saying is the boss knows his business. In and out, over and around and — ”
“Yeah,” Wyatt said. “We know what you’re saying. But nobody wants to hear it.”
“Jesus.” Kirby grunted. “Pardon me all to hell.”
He stepped past Curtain without even looking at him.
The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists Page 29