Shotgun Opera

by Victor Gischler

  Mike watched her climb a moment, then turned his attention back to the Indians. They just stood on either side of the truck, looking at the wrapped body in the bed, neither of them moving or talking.

  Somebody should do something.

  He started playing Johnny Cash’s “Sunday Morning Sidewalk.” The mandolin sounded sweet and sad and nostalgic.

  Maybe somebody will.

  The Indians finally climbed into the truck’s cab, cranked it, and drove slowly away from the ruin and ash.

  * * *

  Lizzy and Nikki had argued off and on about it all night. Lizzy stuck to her guns. They couldn’t leave Middle Sister twisting in the wind.

  It pleased Lizzy to catch Big Sister in the web of her own argument. All that stuff about families sticking together. If Nikki didn’t let Lizzy go after Middle Sister, then Nikki’s words would be exposed as empty rhetoric and manipulation. If there was anything Nikki hated, it was being shown up. Throwing Nikki’s own words back in her face was the perfect way to get under Big Sister’s skin. Lizzy knew it was stupid, knew on some level that she was still so young and immature and silly to delight in the petty victory over her sister.

  Nevertheless, she felt smug and pleased as her Southwest Airlines flight touched down in Tulsa. She had only carry-on so bypassed baggage claim and picked up her rental car keys at the Avis counter. Nikki, in her annoyingly efficient way, had produced a false driver’s license and Visa card saying Nikki was twenty-five, so she could rent a car and handle expenses.

  When Lizzy walked out of the airport, the heat hit her like a punch in the face. Jesus H. Christ. I thought New Orleans was bad in summer. It must be over a hundred.

  She found her rental and followed the rental agent’s directions to Highway 75 going north. She recalled Big Sister’s instructions. Go find Meredith. Nothing else. She hadn’t come all the way to Oklahoma to pick a fight. She didn’t have any weapons anyway. Nikki knew how to contact people, pick up weapons in a hurry without the bother of a background check or a waiting period. Lizzy didn’t have that kind of experience. She’d have to make do with her natural viciousness.

  So she drove out to the wilds of Oklahoma. She would find her sister if possible. Nikki had sent her to find their sister. Sure. She’d do her best. What Nikki didn’t know was that Lizzy had absolutely no intention of returning home.

  * * *

  Jack Sprat picked up his twittering cell phone and hit the TALK button. “Yeah, love?”

  “The sister went to the airport,” Mavis said. They didn’t want to move in on the woman until he knew who else was in the house, so they’d been watching, waiting for the right circumstances.

  “Okay,” Jack said. “Go back to the house and keep watch.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Now, darling, you know you’re in training.”

  “I need protein. Bring me a Lucky Dog.” The French Quarter was lousy with bums pushing hot dog carts. Mavis had unfortunately fallen in love with the bloated tubes of rancid meat.

  “Darling, it’s not healthy to—”

  “LUCKY DOG!”

  “Okay, okay,” Jack said. “Give me thirty minutes, love.”

  “Jack.”

  “Yes, love.”

  “I want to go to Hollywood.”

  Jack sighed, but tried not to let her hear. “We’ve talked about this, darling love. We’re not movie people. We need a live audience. We need to hear the applause.”

  “I want to be in films, damn you.”

  “How about a nice holiday? We could go to Niagara Falls.”

  Mavis said, “I’m not going to Niagara Falls, you corny bastard.”

  “Anywhere you like, then.”

  “Hollywood!”

  “Right. Okay. Right.” It was no use. Her mind was set.

  “When this is done, I want to pack up and go west.”

  “As you say, my darling, but first we need to bugger that alarm,” Jack said. “We get paid and we head west.”

  “Okay then.”

  “Kiss kiss, love.” He hung up.

  He tried dialing Louis Ortega again. Still no answer. Where the fuck was this guy? Jack Sprat didn’t like being cut off from the man who was supposed to pay him. Jack didn’t like the idea of Mavis finding out.

  Sprat would make sure the job was finished, and woe be unto Ortega if he failed to pay.

  28

  The cup of coffee was bad. Bitter. The BLT wasn’t much better, soggy bacon and wilted lettuce. The potato chips were okay, but they were out of a bag and hard to screw up. So far, Mike Foley wasn’t too impressed with Maxine’s Diner just southeast of Oklahoma City.

  But Mike had bigger things to contemplate. Ortega worked for Meredith Cornwall-Jenkins and not the other way around. Mike was still trying to get his mind around that. Where did he go from here? He hadn’t gotten the information he needed from Ortega. He’d have to get it someplace else.

  The waitress took his plate away and refilled his rancid coffee.

  He’d brought in Meredith’s purse to the restaurant, spread the contents on the table. He took a few of the phone numbers and names and began to put some kind of half-ass plan together. Yeah, it just might work.

  He scooped the stuff back into the purse, left money on the table, and went back out to the Caddy. He pulled around to the back of Maxine’s Diner, where the noise from the highway wasn’t so bad. He had two numbers for John Jenkins. He checked his wristwatch and dialed the office number. A cool female voice answered and asked how she could direct Mike’s call.

  “I’m calling for John Jenkins.”

  “May I tell him who’s calling?” she asked.

  “Principal Resnick from his wife’s school.”

  “Hold just a moment, please.”

  When John Jenkins came on the line he said, “Hey, Larry, it’s been a long time. What can I do you for?” His voice sounded friendly and smooth, like a car salesman. No, classier. Like a folksy congressman from the South angling for votes.

  John had met the principal before. How long ago? Would he know the voice? Mike coughed, cleared his throat. “Sorry, Mr. Jenkins, I think I’m coming down with something.”

  “Sounds rough,” John said. “Better hit the fluids.”

  “Right, right. Good advice. Listen, I’m trying to track down Meredith. I know she went out of town, but we really got a thing going on here and I need to ask her some questions.” Mike crossed his fingers. Time to try out the story he’d prepared. “She mentioned she might be visiting her sister sometime. I thought I’d take a chance. See if you had a phone number.”

  “Yeah, she went down a couple days ago,” Jenkins said. “Her mother’s been having some health problems.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Mike said. “I sure hate to disturb them, but it’s important, and I’m up against a deadline.”

  “What’s the trouble?”

  Mike had a lie ready for that too. “Some assessment reports I had her working on. The state wants them yesterday.”

  “Let me look up the number,” Jenkins said.

  Mike exhaled. He was having some luck. The guy knew the principal but not enough to recognize it was the wrong voice. Also, it looked like Mike had made some good guesses about the situation. The husband didn’t know the wife was storming around Oklahoma blasting people with an army helicopter. Mike remembered this upper-class Jewish girl from Brooklyn. Back in the day, he and she had been a hot item. He’d told her he was an insurance salesman. And when he’d vanish for a week to kill somebody, he’d tell her he was visiting his brother or grandmother. Hired guns always found themselves lying to loved ones.

  Jenkins came back on the line and gave Mike the phone number. “If you talk to her, tell her to call home, will you? Her husband misses her.”

  “I’ll tell her. One more thing. Do you have an address?”

  A pause. “You need that?”

  “Sorry to trouble you, but I have to FedEx some things for her to sign and the guy is coming to pick up the envelope any minute.”

  Mike thought he heard Jenkins stifle a sigh. “Just a second.” Another pa
use and then he picked up the phone again and gave Mike an address.

  “New Orleans?”

  “Yeah. Her family is loaded,” Jenkins said. “Big house in the Garden District. Look, if there’s nothing else ”

  “I appreciate your time, Mr. Jenkins. I’ll tell Meredith to call home.” He hung up.

  * * *

  Mike drove down Interstate 35 toward Dallas, where he could catch I-20 east to Louisiana. It wasn’t long before his back and neck were sore again. He pulled into a rest stop, unbuttoned his shirt, and pulled his tie loose. He lathered some Bengay on his neck, massaged it in, but the real pain was along his spine, where he couldn’t reach. He got out of the car and walked around a bit, stretched. Too many hours in the car and still a long way to New Orleans. His back would get worse before it got better. He made a mental note to hit a drugstore for some pills.

  He got back in the car, determined to make time. When he got to Dallas he realized it was no use. The white-hot pain had spread from his lower back to a spot between his shoulder blades. He was almost dizzy with it. His knees hurt only when he tried to run or jump, but the back pain burned constantly and was getting worse.

  He found a Hilton, went in, and got a room. He wouldn’t be able to drive another mile until he worked out the knots in his back. At the check-in desk, he was bent almost in half.

  “Do you need help to your room, sir?” asked the clerk.

  “I can make it.”

  Mike took the key, went upstairs without any luggage, and flopped on the bed. He dozed off and dreamed. It was night and he was among the grapevines again, fog. It was cold. People stepped out from between the rows, emerged from the fog, men, women, children. All of them had guns, all coming for him, crowding in, sticking the guns in his face. Mike went for the gun in his belt, but his hands wouldn’t work, cramping. He couldn’t grip the butt of his pistol.

  All of his assailants fired at once, the vineyard exploding in fire.

  Mike’s eyes flickered open. It took him a second to remember where he was.

  He sat up, back still sore, clamped his mouth shut against a moan. He took a long shower as hot as he could stand it, and when he came out he put his boxers back on and grabbed the phone book. He flipped to the listings for escort services. One said classy & sassy, discreet and prompt.

  Mike dialed the phone.

  “Classy & Sassy.” The voice that answered was deep and rough, redneck accent. It sounded neither classy nor sassy.

  Mike said, “I need a girl over here as soon as possible.” Mike told him which hotel.

  “What you want? Blond, black girl, Mexican?”

  “Whatever you got. Just so she can get over here quick.”

  Mike finished with the guy and went back to the bed. Lying flat helped only a little. He sat up and took his wallet out of his pants. He put an appropriate amount of cash on the nightstand and stuck the rest of his money and wallet under the mattress. If he fell asleep, the hooker wouldn’t be able to snatch his wallet without waking him. She might have been “classy” according to the advertisement in the phone book, but she was still a hooker.

  Mike flipped on the television, sped through the channels, his thumb on the remote. A guy with a bad haircut was firing someone. On another station, a snotty woman explained to some frumpy gal why her clothes were all wrong but never fear because they had a plan to find her a whole new wardrobe. Mike couldn’t quite understand what had happened to television. It seemed like all they did was follow people around with a camera, recording them making asses out of themselves. He finally settled on a black-and-white Otto Preminger movie, John Wayne in the navy with some desk job because a Jap submarine had blasted his ship out from under him.

  Forty minutes later, a knock on the door.

  Mike grunted as he got out of bed, opened the door.

  She couldn’t have been more than eighteen. Platinum blond hair cut short and spiked out, too much green eye makeup contrasting with very white skin. She was tall and thin, slight and delicate features like an elf. Scandinavian. She wore a very conservative and elegant black dress and pumps. Mike stared a second too long, surprised by the dress.

  “Something wrong?” she asked. Her voice was high and slightly childlike.

  “No. Nothing. I just thought you’d be dressed differently.”

  “We need to dress differently for the nicer hotels,” she said. “A tube top and spandex would draw too much attention.” She looked him up and down. “You seem eager to go.”

  Mike remembered he wore only boxer shorts. He stepped aside to let her in and closed the door. He grabbed the tube of Bengay from his jacket pocket, and when he turned around again, she’d already dropped the dress. Black stockings. Black thong panties. No bra. Medium breasts standing up in youthful defiance of gravity. Pink nipples.

  Mike liked what he saw. Liked it just fine, but said, “I’m too old for you.”

  She giggled. “I’ve been with older men. What are you, fifty?”

  “More than that, but you’ve got the wrong idea.”

  He handed her the tube of Bengay, then sprawled across the bed on his belly, facing the television. “Start at the base of the spine and work your way up. Between my shoulders especially. Don’t be afraid to dig in with your thumbs.” He closed his eyes and waited.

  Two seconds later, Mike opened his eyes again. She was still standing there with the Bengay in her delicate hand, a confused look on her face, looking now even younger, like she should have been on her way to the prom instead of offering herself to some old man at the Hilton.

  “I’m not sure I get what you want,” she said.

  “My back,” Mike said. “I don’t have time to fool around looking for a chiropractor. Just do this for me, okay?”

  She still looked confused. “And then after I rub your back, we’ll do it?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Cricket.”

  “What’s your real name?”

  “We’re not supposed to tell clients our real ” She shrugged. “Patricia. My name is Patricia.”

  “I don’t want to have sex.” This wasn’t completely true. Patricia was attractive, something demure and vulnerable in her eyes. And she smelled nice, like lemons. But Mike didn’t think he could manage it. Sex would wreck him. “I just need help with the back, Patricia. Please.”

  “I’ll have to charge you the same.” She looked embarrassed.

  “It’s okay. The money’s near the lamp.” He motioned toward the nightstand.

  She squirted some Bengay into her palm and rubbed her hands together. Then she leaned over him on the bed, rubbed a layer of the ointment on his back. She began massaging along the spine.

  “Press down more firmly,” Mike said.

  “It’s hard to reach. Can I get on the bed?”

  “Go ahead.”

  She kicked off her shoes and climbed up next to him. “Can I sit on your butt?”