Bad Signs

by R.J. Ellory

  “I ain’t goin’ nowhere,” Clay said, and there must have been sufficient certainty and conviction in his voice because Earl leaned up and let him go. He sat there in the front of the pickup, right there ahead of the Pinal County Mercantile, and he knew that if Lester Cabot was in there then he wasn’t going to be alive for long. Clay figured some people killed to rob whereas Earl Sheridan seemed the kind of man who would rob only to kill. Like he’d said before, It’s the realest thing you’ll ever do, and that’s a fact.

  Earl Sheridan and Elliott Danziger did not cover their faces when they went into the Pinal County Mercantile. There was no reason to. Whoever might have been in there, whoever might have seen them, wasn’t going to be reporting any descriptions to any local or federal law enforcement officials. Only thing they were going to be reporting for was the afterlife.

  Earl had a thing on. He was horny and aggravated, and he hadn’t slept well, and he’d smoked too many cigarettes and there wasn’t no breakfast, and he was in a mood. He had Chester Bartlett’s sidearm, now fully loaded. He had the shotgun from Tom Young at Hesperia. He had the kitchen knife that he’d used to cut Clay Luckman’s shoulder. He had Digger as his sidekick, a good enough kid, good enough to have around until he made a nuisance of himself, and then Earl would shoot him and push him down a dry well or some such. He could stay as long as he wasn’t misbehaving. And he certainly had a good deal more balls than his candy-ass bullshit brother. On this job Digger would be able to keep an eye on the door while Earl terrorized the hell out of Lester and got all the money in the place. There had to be a good deal, a couple of hundred bucks, maybe more, and then there was always the possibility that Lester wasn’t a bank-trusting man and he kept a safe in the basement or something. Earl felt good about the deal. He felt like his luck was going to turn. He’d managed to break out of custody. He was on the run. He’d had an appointment down in San Bernardino State Penitentiary for a necktie party, but he was going to miss that by a Texas mile. Things were on the up-and-up. Things were cooking up good on the front burner.

  “You stay just inside the door,” he told Digger. “You keep an eye on the highway, and keep an eye on the pickup. Make sure that little shit doesn’t take off out of here, and if you see a car or a truck headed this way, don’t matter who the hell it is, then you holler up a storm, you understand?”

  “Sure thing,” Digger said, and in his own voice he heard some desperate plea to be accepted. He wanted to be liked. He wanted to be accepted on the same terms. He was caught between one place and somewhere else, and he didn’t know what he was doing. He was now in it up to his neck, and if he didn’t start fighting he was going to get drowned. Earl scared him, of course, but Earl challenged him and excited him and tested his mettle. Earl was the real deal, an outlaw, a desperado, and there was something wild and exciting and addictive just in the air around him. Everything Earl said had a sort of skewed common sense to it. Digger was electrified. And Clay would come around. Clay would see the sense of it all when they had some money in their pockets and some halfway-decent chow in their bellies. Then they would part company with Earl Sheridan—these wild brothers of the road—and he and Clay would make their way on down to Eldorado and start life with a clean slate.

  But there was one thing he had to know. One thing he had to ask Earl.

  “Are you gonna kill that guy in there?”

  “The guy in the store?” Earl asked.

  “Sure, the guy in the store. You gonna shoot that man, Earl?”

  “Gonna shoot you in the fucking head you don’t shut your fool mouth,” Earl said, and he cuffed Digger across the back of the neck.

  Digger wanted to take this as nothing more than a bit of camaraderie horseplay. He grinned like a fool. He bit his lip and willed, willed, willed himself not to show a tear.

  They went up the steps together and in through the door.

  Outside, Clay Luckman peered up at the sky through the windshield. He wondered if he might see the dark star that was following him. Dark stars—being dark—perhaps showed their faces in daylight. There was nothing but the bright sun, the clear blue sky, the fresh November air, the uncertainty of the future. Had he possessed someone or something to think of, he would have thought of them. There was nothing. There was no one. Whatever was out there had a natural kind of emptiness, an emptiness he had become accustomed to, and he wondered if the rest of his life was going to be this way. He remembered little of his mother, less of his father, nothing of his past before Barstow and Hesperia.

  He looked right and saw Digger watching him from the store doorway. Digger had made a choice. He was with Earl now. Sure, Clay was his brother, but Earl was his buddy, his mentor, his leader. His real buddy. If Clay ran now then Digger would tell Earl, and Earl would chase him down and kill him. Hell, he might even kill Digger for the sheer rush of it. Be good and done with his hostages, for they were nothing but distractions and deadweight. Clay didn’t doubt this for a second.

  Looking left, right, straight ahead, even over his shoulder, there was nothing but weather and distance every which way. There was no ravine, no gully, no wood, no forest, no outcrop of rocks, no river, no stream. There was no place to hide, no place to get lost. Out here he was a target, nothing more. He did not know how to hot-wire a car, and the keys were right inside the store with Earl. Hell, he didn’t know how to do half the things that he needed to do. He felt ignorant, impotent. All the books he’d read in Barstow and Hesperia hadn’t equipped him for this at all.

  Clay didn’t think Digger had it in him to kill anyone, least of all his own younger brother, but he sure as hell wouldn’t stop Earl from carrying through with his threat. No, Clay decided, he was not going to run. He was going to wait it out, see what happened, see if this was happening because of Earl, or if it was his own dark star that had brought these things to pass.

  Lester came through from in back and recognized Earl Sheridan.

  “Howdy there,” he said. “Thought you folks was all done and gone.”

  Then he saw the shotgun, the kitchen knife, the sidearm tucked into the waistband of Earl’s pants, and he said, “You gonna shoot me, son?”

  “May well do,” Earl replied.

  “Might I ask why?”

  “Well, hell, I don’t know. Maybe for no other reason than I figure to try everything at least once.”

  “You know what you get for murder down here?”

  “What? Aside from the satisfaction, you mean?”

  Lester shook his head. He closed his eyes for a moment as if in prayer, and then he said, “Well, it’s a shame and a sin.”

  “Tell you what’d be a shame, old man,” Earl said, “and that would be if you didn’t empty up all your cash tills and whatever you have in back, and if you’ve gotten a safe someplace then it’d be good to go fetch whatever you have out of there as well.”

  Lester nodded. He was philosophically resigned to the situation. He knew there was no purpose for argument or contradiction. He could see in Earl Sheridan’s eyes that this was a one-way deal.

  “I got maybe a hundred, hundred and fifty bucks all told,” Lester said. “I got but one cash till, nothing in back, no safe anywhere. Money goes right to the bank at the end of each day, ’cept weekends when we wait until close of business on a Monday …” Lester nodded understandingly. “But I guess you figured that one out, eh, son?”

  “A hundred and fifty bucks? You gotta be shittin’ me!”

  “No, sir, I ain’t. That’s what we got. A hundred and fifty if you’re lucky.”

  Earl lowered the knife. He stamped his foot just once like a spoiled brat kid having a tantrum. “And what the hell good is that gonna do me?” he asked. “Jesus Christ Almighty, fuck shit cocksucker! What the hell goddamned use is that to me?”

  Lester shook his head. “I don’t know, son. A hundred some-odd bucks more than you had when you came in here, I guess.”

  Earl looked pissed for a moment. His eyes flashed. Maybe he figured Leste
r was smart-mouthing him. He moved quickly, erratically, and before Lester could predict where Earl was going to go he was right there in front of him, right there ahead of the counter. Earl just dug that knife hard and sharp into Lester’s shoulder.

  Lester howled. Blood erupted. Some of it spattered the front of Earl’s shirt.

  “What the fu—” Earl started, and he backed up and looked at himself. He looked like he’d been the one that got stabbed.

  Lester seemed unsteady on his feet. He held his right hand to his left shoulder. There was no shortage of blood seeping out between his fingers. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t hardly look at Earl in case his gaze aggravated him further.

  “Fuck you!” Earl said.

  “Son …” Lester said.

  “Shut the fuck up!” Earl snapped. He put the shotgun down on a stack of seed bags and pulled Chester Bartlett’s sidearm from his waistband. He took a couple of steps toward Lester and pointed that gun right between the man’s eyes.

  “Get the fucking money,” Earl said.

  Lester looked away. Earl glanced back at Digger. Digger’s eyes were wide, his feet shifting backward and forward. He looked terrified and excited and overwhelmed and uncertain all at the same time. A wide patch of dark had spread across the lap of his pants.

  “You keep your fucking eyes on the road!” Earl barked.

  Digger blinked nervously, and then he looked back to the window.

  “Now get me the fucking money!” Earl said to Lester, and Lester, bleeding profusely from his shoulder, backed up a step and turned toward the cash register.

  He rung up, opened the drawer, lifted it with his good hand and took out a fan of tens and twenties. He took the ones from the drawer itself and put them on the counter.

  “Put them in a bag,” Earl said.

  Lester did as he’d been asked.

  Earl snatched the bag and stuffed it inside his shirt. He raised the revolver again and directed it at Lester’s face.

  “What else you got, old man?” Earl said.

  “You got everything I got, son, and that’s the truth.”

  Earl used his left and jabbed with the knife again. It caught the base of Lester’s throat, and though the wound was neither life-threatening nor fatal, it produced another jet of blood, which scattered across Earl’s shirt and hands.

  “Jesus … what the fuck!” Earl screamed.

  Lester seemed oblivious to the pain. Either that or the shock had rendered his system unfeeling. “It’s gonna happen if you cut people like that,” he said. His voice was measured and certain. Despite possessing no weapons, despite himself being the victim of this robbery, he was the one who appeared in control.

  “Asshole!” Earl said. He turned and started toward the door, and it was only when he reached it that he paused and looked back.

  He raised the revolver one more time, and this time he fired. Whether Lester was hit or not he did not know, for Lester just seemed to drop like a stone behind the counter.

  Digger was on his toes. “Car coming!” he yelped.

  “Fuck!” Earl said.

  Digger hauled the door open and the two of them went down the steps and across the dusty driveway to the pickup.

  Earl got in the driver’s side and gunned the engine.

  Lester appeared through the door with a double-barrel. The first shot punctured the fender a thousand times and burst the tire.

  He didn’t get a second shot.

  Digger instinctively dropped beneath the firing line behind the door. Earl leaned over him, and with the shotgun he unloaded both barrels into Lester from a range of twelve feet.

  Lester went backward, staggering, his arms flailing. He crashed through the doors of the store and didn’t come to rest until he was out on his back on the floor within. Some of the shot went through the walls of the cool box at the top of the steps. Bottles of soda went off like firecrackers.

  The car that Digger had seen was now no more than a hundred yards away.

  Earl dropped the guns into the well. He put his foot on the accelerator, and with three tires and a flat he screeched out of the store driveway like a mad thing.

  Dust and stones flew in a wide arc away from the edge of the highway, and when they hit the tarmac the sound of the collapsed tire rattled and rolled. Five hundred yards and the rim was already cutting through it. A mile and there was a cascade of sparks following them as they fled.

  “Gotta get a new car,” Earl said, and he didn’t look back, didn’t turn away from the road, his blood-spattered hands gripping the wheel as if his life depended on it, his teeth bared, his whole body tensed like a spring.

  Digger looked back at Clay. Clay didn’t meet his gaze. He tried to be invisible.

  “Shoulda been there,” Digger said, hurrying his words out excitedly. “Shoulda been there … he bled like a pig. Fat guy in there … he bled like a pig …” He laughed crazily, looked at Earl, looked back to the road. It was then that he became aware of the smell of himself, the urine that had soaked the front of his pants. He looked down, he looked at Clay, and there was something terrifying in Digger’s eyes. Almost as if he was now frightened of himself, but had gone too far to come back.

  Clay reached out his hand toward his brother.

  Digger slapped it away. “Leave me alone,” he said. “Leave me alone, Clay …”

  The look that Clay gave him said it all. You have a choice. It’s not too late. We can get through this. We have been through everything before this and survived. Let me help. Don’t do this, Digger … don’t do this …

  But there was nothing.

  Digger just glared at his younger brother, and there was something close to shame and hatred and … and evil in his eyes.

  Something had surfaced within Elliott Danziger, and Clay did not recognize it at all.

  The pickup was fighting to do thirty miles an hour. The sound was extraordinary. The sparks were flying out the back of the thing like a Fourth of July parade.

  As far as Digger was concerned things couldn’t have been more exciting.

  As far as Clay was concerned they couldn’t have been worse.

  But then they had yet to reach Marana.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Soon enough they would start out toward Scottsdale, and Frank Jacobs would begin to understand the degree to which life would never be the same again. Wondering what was to become of him, what would become of her—his daughter, Bailey Redman; marveling at the circuitous paths of fate and fortune that brought things to the doorstep that had been left behind. If he’d known all that the future was yet to bring them … well, he would have been dismayed.

  Earlier Bailey had said something. Her voice was quiet and gentle. She could have been speaking to anyone or no one, but he was there and thus he heard it.

  “I hope sometimes that my life is a dream.”

  Frank looked at her, her skin as pale and smooth as cream. She was so pretty. Hard to believe he’d had anything to do with the making of her. Sort of girl some other guy would steal before she had a chance to love you. Heartache in a box, all parceled up neat for a birthday, delivered punctual by the federal mail.

  “Yes,” she echoed. “Sometimes I hope that my life is a dream … and someday I’ll wake up and discover I’m an old lady, and that the life I’ve really had was extraordinary. A husband, a crowd of children, all of them loving me. A life of special memories …”

  He didn’t know what to say to that. Didn’t know how to reply. So sad when a little girl wanted to wish her own life away, but Frank could appreciate the sentiment.

  It was the old saw: Family and money—trouble when you got it, trouble when you ain’t.

  The motel room was quiet enough to hear his own blood. Then he got up and went out for food.

  As he walked he thought of her. Bailey’s mother. He remembered her, perhaps not as well as he would have wished, but he did remember her. Remembered the sound of her laugh. Remembered her smile.

  What he fe
lt then he could not understand. Some sense of relief? A burden of responsibility? No, not a burden, and not even responsibility. It was as if he had been all the while alone, and then he was not. How did it work? He had fathered a child, a girl, a beautiful girl, and he had never known. But was there something innate, something within him—almost preternatural—that knew there was some part of him alive in some other part of the world? And now, only now, as that part of himself was again reunited, did he feel whole once more? Was that the way it worked?

  Bailey meant the world to him. She was the world, a huge part of everything, and he could not now conceive of any decision he might make without taking into consideration her thoughts and feelings.

  She belonged to him. He belonged to her. They belonged together.

  It scared him, but it made him happy. It caused him a fleeting sense of anxiety—Would they be all right? Would they make it?—but that anxiety was overwhelmed by a strange power of excitement. He imagined her at school. He imagined her at college. He imagined her married. Grandchildren?

  And as he walked he found himself laughing, and there was a tear somewhere in his eye, and he let it go.

  Things were so different now. Good different.

  Frank Jacobs returned to the motel cabin with ham and cheese and milk and doughnuts and a sack of potato chips the size of a pillow.

  He and his teenage daughter sat on their respective beds, and they ate for a time in silence.

  After they’d eaten he smoked a cigarette. She asked for one, and though she was fifteen he couldn’t say no.

  “You smoked a long time?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Longer you do it the harder it is to stop.”

  She shrugged. She smiled. She didn’t care.

  “So what are you going to do with me?” she said.