Duke City Desperado

by Max Austin

  Dylan pressed a button on the side of the stun gun, making blue electricity dance between its chrome fangs.

  “Yikes,” she said.

  “Could come in handy.”

  Dylan set the duffel on the desk and unzipped it. He started moving the money into the bag, stashing it among the clothes.

  “Hey,” Katrina said, “give me that hoodie.”

  “Really? It’s pretty filthy.”

  “All the better.”

  He handed it over, then put the bottle of Jack Daniel’s in the duffel where the hoodie had been. While he zipped up the bag, she draped the soiled hoodie over her stepfather’s desk chair, the Dukes logo nice and straight.

  “You want to leave that for him?” Dylan asked.

  “It’ll drive him crazy to know that the most-wanted fugitive was right here in his house.”

  “Do I want him to know that?”

  “Your fingerprints are all over the place,” she said. “They’ll figure out it was you anyway. Why not tweak ’em a little? Make a statement.”

  “A calling card. Like the mark of Zorro.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “This says, ‘Dylan James was here, motherfuckers.’ ”

  “I like it.”

  She held up the car keys, jingling them.

  “You’ll like this even better,” she said. “Please note the Audi logo. You’ll be traveling in style.”

  They went through the modern kitchen to the garage and she flicked on the lights. The three-car garage was essentially one big room divided into bays. The nearest one was empty and its concrete floor was spotted with leaked oil. The farthest was used for storage, with cardboard boxes and old furniture stacked to the ceiling. In the middle bay, crouching like a black panther, was an Audi A8.

  “Oh, man.”

  “Biggest sedan Audi makes,” she said. “A hundred-thousand-dollar car. Eight-speed automatic transmission, eight cylinders, four hundred and twenty horsepower.”

  “How do you know all that?”

  “I’ve heard it all a dozen times.”

  “I’ve never even ridden in a car anywhere this nice.”

  “It’s all yours.”

  “Why isn’t your stepfather driving it tonight?”

  “He drives an old pickup truck around town all week. Wants everybody to think the chief of police is a good ole boy.”

  “A man of the people,” Dylan said.

  “Right. But on weekends, he likes to take this baby out on empty New Mexico highways. He drives a hundred, a hundred-twenty miles an hour, out there in the middle of nowhere. That’s his big secret thrill.”

  “I thought it was hookers and bimbos.”

  “He loves this car more,” she said.

  “Then we definitely should steal it.”

  She handed him the keys. “You take it. I’ll stick with my Prius.”

  “What about this money? Do you want part of it?”

  “You need it more than me. I’ll wait until he gets his insurance settlement, then demand a bigger allowance.”

  Dylan laughed, but Katrina’s face went solemn.

  “Get in the car,” she said. “You need to be far away when he gets home from his poker game. He’ll have every cop in the country looking for his beloved Audi.”

  “I’ll switch the plates,” Dylan said. “Stick to the speed limit. I’ll be okay.”

  Looking ever sadder, Katrina stepped close to him. He wrapped his arms around her.

  “Don’t say good-bye yet,” he said before she could get too worked up. “I’ve got one more thing I have to do here in town.”

  “You do?”

  “And you could help me with it.”

  She leaned back and looked up at him. Her dark eyes were shiny, but she was smiling.

  Chapter 68

  Antony Rocca and Jasper Johnson were led handcuffed to a van for the ride out west to the Metropolitan Detention Center. They were dressed in jailhouse orange and plastic shower shoes. Jasper’s jumpsuit was so tight, it threatened to explode its seams.

  “You look like an orange sausage,” Antony said. “That meat’s packed in there tight.”

  “I can barely breathe,” Jasper rumbled.

  “Shut up,” said the guard as he opened the back door of the van for them. “This is my last trip of the day, and I don’t want to hear a peep out of you two.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jasper said.

  “Starting now.”

  Soon as they were inside the van, he slammed the door behind them. The van had benches running down either side and a cage separating the driver from the cargo area.

  One other inmate was already inside, so Antony and Jasper took the opposite bench, facing him. He was a big Indian-looking fellow with lank hair and a broad face that wasn’t what it used to be. White adhesive tape held gauze plastered across his broken nose and bruised cheekbones. The whole assembly was covered by a clear plastic mask strapped into place over his smashed face.

  “What the fuck happened to you?” Antony blurted.

  The Indian looked at him with puffy, hooded eyes. He appeared to study Antony for a long time, then his mouth spread in a lazy smile.

  “What’s the matter with this guy?” Antony said to Jasper out the side of his mouth.

  “I don’t know, boss. He looks like somebody fucked him up.”

  “I can see that.”

  Doors slammed up front and they fell silent as the guards settled into their seats and started the engine.

  Once they were under way, Antony leaned toward the Indian and said, just above a whisper, “What’s your name?”

  The answer was slow to come, but finally the big man said, “Joe.”

  “Okay, Joe. Listen, I want to ask you something. These injuries of yours, did you get those out at MDC?”

  Joe nodded. “I was in the hospital. Now they’re sending me back.”

  His voice was surprisingly high for such a large man.

  “Somebody did that to you at the jail?”

  Another nod.

  “What did you do to him?”

  That slow smile again. It gave Antony the creeps.

  The van had reached a freeway ramp and its engine hummed louder as it got up to highway speed.

  “We see the guy who hurt you when we get out there, point him out to me, all right?”

  No response from the Indian. Antony wasn’t sure how much was getting through here. Maybe the injured man was pumped full of painkillers. Or maybe he was a fucking head case.

  Antony sat back. They waited awhile, but still got nothing from Joe. Finally, Jasper leaned over and muttered near Antony’s ear.

  “Why you asking him that stuff?”

  “Just getting the lay of the land,” Antony said. “If there’s somebody out there handing out beatdowns, I want to know who they are.”

  “And then what?”

  “I don’t know,” Antony said. “We watch ’em. Make sure they don’t try to fuck with us. Maybe even get the jump on ’em, you know, strike first.”

  Jasper let that hang there a minute, then he said, “And I suppose I’m the one s’pose to do the striking?”

  “Sure,” Antony said. “Part of the job description, right?”

  “Hey, boss, I hate to have to point this out, but we’re very likely to pull some serious time here, thanks to you.”

  “Yeah, so? I’ve been behind bars before.”

  “All right,” Jasper said. “Then you know, on the inside, I don’t work for you no more.”

  “What?”

  “How you gonna pay me, if we’re in jail? And what’s the money worth anyway, if I’m locked up for years?”

  “Hey, Jasper, we’ve got an arrangement—”

  “Sorry, boss. That ain’t the way it works. Once we’re inside, it’s every man for himself.”

  Jasper crossed his beefy arms and looked away, finished with the conversation.

  Antony huffed and whined, but couldn’t come up with a winning argument. Jasper s
at silent, and finally Antony gave up. He sat steaming while the van sped along, carrying him to jail. Without Jasper’s protection, he felt suddenly vulnerable.

  He glanced at Joe and caught the big Indian watching him from behind the plastic mask, that creepy smile on his face.

  Chapter 69

  Katrina smiled at her reflection in the tinted glass doors. She was dressed in the usual way—black leather jacket and cutoffs and fishnets and combat boots—but she’d changed two things: In place of her usual black lipstick, she’d gone with scarlet. And she wore red-framed sunglasses that she’d swiped from her roommate. What a difference they made! The rose-tinted lenses hid her mascara and the red lipstick drew the eye. Instead of looking like an angry Goth, she looked like a slutty girl who’d watched too many Madonna videos.

  The doors slid open, and Katrina strolled into the tiled lobby of University Hospital, carrying a bouquet of supermarket daisies.

  A round-faced black woman sat at a computer behind the information desk, which was decorated with a tile mosaic of mesas and blue skies. She greeted Katrina with a big smile.

  “Hi,” Katrina said. “I’m here to see a patient. My uncle. His name is Wilmer Burnett.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, but visiting hours were over long ago,” the receptionist said. “I could get someone to deliver those flowers for you, if you want, but you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see him.”

  “Okay.”

  “Let me see where we’ve put him. Burnett, you said?” The receptionist rattled away at the keyboard, then frowned at the screen. “He’s on Four East. That’s the secure wing where the police hold people.”

  “Yeah.” Katrina tried to look glum. “He got into a little trouble. Then somebody stabbed him in jail.”

  “Oh, that’s terrible. I’m sorry, honey, but no visitors are allowed on that wing, even during the daytime. But we can get those flowers to him.”

  “That would be great.”

  Katrina watched as the friendly woman wrote “415E” on a card and stuck it to the bouquet’s paper wrapping with a strip of transparent tape.

  “Don’t you worry about a thing,” she said. “I’ll make sure he gets these.”

  “Thanks a million.”

  Katrina went out the front door and turned right. She clumped along the sidewalk past evergreen shrubs and furtive cigarette smokers. The hospital was a hodgepodge of architectural styles and colors, much of it added on over the years. The main section went up several stories above her, topped by a multistory layer painted battleship gray. You could see this looming ship of a building from all over campus. Even at night, its rows of lit windows made the hospital look like a cruise liner.

  Around the corner, Dylan James waited near a side entrance, dressed like Al Capone.

  She gave him a hug, feeling the hard gun in his belt, and whispered in his ear, “Doc’s in room four-one-five. Right above us in this wing.”

  “Nice work,” he said. “Let’s go pay him a visit.”

  Chapter 70

  “I like the red lipstick,” Dylan said as he and Katrina rode up in the elevator together. The interior was polished steel and they were reflected all around.

  “Yeah?” she said. “I feel like Ronald McDonald.”

  “Better than Skeletor.”

  She jabbed him with a sharp elbow. Right in his bruised ribs.

  “Ouch.”

  The “4” above the door lit up green.

  “Last chance to back out,” he said.

  “Speak for yourself, Clyde.”

  As the elevator doors slid open, Dylan tucked himself into the front corner next to the door and pulled the pistol from his belt. He pressed the “Door Open” button with his thumb.

  Katrina looked straight ahead as she stepped off the elevator. Her leather jacket hung half off her narrow shoulders, the sleeves down past her hands.

  “Excuse me, miss. You’re not allowed on this floor.”

  A man’s deep voice. Dylan could see the black-uniformed cop reflected in the back wall of the elevator. Too wavy to make out details, but it was clearly a very large cop looming over Katrina.

  “This is a secure wing,” the officer said. “Only hospital personnel allowed.”

  “My mistake,” she said. “Wrong floor.”

  As she turned back toward the elevator, Dylan’s heart sank. Surely she wasn’t going to give up so easily—

  “Hey,” she said, turning back to the policeman. “Since I’m here, could I ask you a question?”

  “Yes?” he said. “What is it?”

  “It’s sort of embarrassing.”

  She leaned toward him, up on tiptoe, as if to whisper.

  The big cop went stiff all over as she zapped him with the stun gun. His arms gyrated as Katrina shocked him again, then he slumped to the floor, twitching.

  Dylan spun out of the elevator door, pointing the six-shooter at two nurses who stood behind a counter, gaping. One was tall and thin and blond. The other was dark and short and plump. Both seemed frozen in place, but Dylan said his lines anyway: “Hands up. Don’t press any alarms.”

  Katrina bent over the bulky cop and came up with the black Glock from his holster. The cop still twitched all over, but couldn’t make any move to stop her. Then she stepped away, her back against a wall, keeping them all covered with the Glock.

  “Which room is Burnett?” Dylan said.

  The plump nurse pointed her trembling hand at a door across the tiled hall from the nurses’ station.

  Two wheelchairs were parked against the wall, and Dylan rolled one of them over to Doc’s door. He looked back and saw that the nurses were watching him, their mouths still hanging open, hands in the air. Katrina had the Glock in two hands, pointed at the downed cop, who hadn’t moved.

  As Dylan pushed open the door, it occurred to him too late that another cop could be waiting inside. He lurched into the dark room, pushing the chair ahead of him, then pulled the gun from his belt.

  No one jumped him. He felt around until he found a light switch. Fluorescent bulbs flickered to life overhead.

  Dylan’s breath caught in his throat when he saw Doc. He was propped up in bed, bandages on his arms, tubes in him, one wrist cuffed to the bed rail. He looked pale and frail. The flesh around his eyes was deeply bruised. His eyelids fluttered.

  Was he in any shape to travel? Was this all a mistake?

  Chapter 71

  Doc struggled up from his morphine doze, trying to focus his eyes. A man was silhouetted in the doorway by the light from the hall. He wore a suit with padded shoulders and a wide-brimmed fedora like an old-time movie actor.

  The overhead light buzzed to life, and Doc closed his eyes against its brightness. Squinting and blinking, he found the gangster standing over him, a long pistol in his hand.

  “Shit!”

  “It’s okay,” the man said. “It’s me.”

  He leaned closer, and Doc could see the face shaded under the hat’s brim.

  “Dylan?”

  Dylan smiled. “What’s up, Doc?”

  Still hazy, Doc struggled to find words.

  “Tha fuck you doin’ here?”

  “I’m going on a road trip,” Dylan said. “Thought you’d like to come along.”

  “Sshure.”

  “Hang on. I’ve got to get the handcuff keys.”

  Doc drifted while he waited for Dylan to return. Why was the kid dressed up like that? It wasn’t Halloween yet, was it? And why had he come to the hospital, which was crawling with cops and eyewitnesses? Doc had taught him better than that.

  When he came to again, Dylan was removing the handcuffs.

  “That cop outside,” Doc managed to say.

  “It’s okay,” Dylan said. “We’ve got him under control,”

  “ ‘We’?”

  Dylan gently plucked the needle from Doc’s arm.

  “So long, morphine, my old friend.”

  “What?”

  Doc realized his speech was still
slurred, and he didn’t even try to repeat himself. Dylan helped him sit up, which hurt in all kinds of new ways.

  “Can you walk?”

  “Yer shittin’ me.”

  “It’s okay. Here.”

  Dylan rolled a wheelchair next to the bed and locked the wheels. He caught Doc under the armpits and hoisted him onto the chair, grunting under the strain. Doc moaned, but within a second or two he was situated in the chair and the worst was over.

  Dylan stripped a sheet off the bed and tucked it around Doc’s bare legs.

  “I’ve got extra clothes in the car.”

  “Okeydoke.”

  Dylan rolled him into the hallway. The scene there was so strange, Doc felt he might be hallucinating. The big uniformed cop was flat on his back on the tiled floor. Two nurses stood behind a counter with their hands in the air. To the right, over by the elevators, a young woman was keeping them covered with a black Glock. She was dressed in black with white makeup and red lips. Doc assumed she was a mime. It surprised him when she spoke.

  “Hurry! Get in the elevator.”

  Dylan rolled the wheelchair around the fallen officer. The cop’s eyes followed them as they passed, but he appeared to be otherwise immobilized.

  The wheelchair bumped its way into the elevator. Doc could see his bruised reflection on the shiny metal walls. He looked shrunken, as if the stab wounds had let all the air out of him.

  The mime girl backed into the elevator with them, saying to the nurses, “If you call the police before we’re clear of the hospital, we’re coming right back here and take you hostage.”

  There was a long, awkward moment while they waited for the elevator doors to slide shut, the nurses keeping their hands up the whole time. The doors finally closed, and Dylan and the girl whewed in relief.

  The elevator hummed downward, giving Doc such a head rush that he smiled at his reflection in the polished steel.

  Chapter 72

  Katrina led the way as they ran across the acre of dark parking lot to where they’d left their cars. Doc bobbed limply as the wheelchair juddered across the pavement. It took both of them to wrestle him into the passenger seat of the Audi, and as Doc was wearing only a hospital gown, Katrina got an unfortunate glimpse of his skinny arse that she knew she’d never forget.