“Holy shit,” Private said after we’d taken off the gal’s slicker.
“Man,” Clement whispered. “She’s hardly got anything on.”
“We’ll fix that,” I said.
It was pretty funny, the way they acted while Tom and I stripped her. Like the old saying goes, they didn’t know whether to shit or go blind. They just watched and kept their mouths shut. Actually, their mouths hung open. They didn’t say anything, though.
She was nothing at all like Hester. She was damn cute. In fact, she looked a little like my friend from last night. Older, though. This gal was probably in her early twenties. Cute and slim, and shiny all over from the rain. She had very short hair that was wet and matted down. She had firm little tits. I watched the raindrops splash them. Her nipples were puckered up hard.
Gets me horny just thinking about her.
The one last night looked like she was maybe fifteen or sixteen. Man, I wish I had her with me right now, right here.
Anyway, we started messing around with the bike gal. Clement and Private got right in with the program. Probably because of how everything had gone crazy, anyhow, with Tom popping Mustache Boy the way he’d done. When you’ve been part of a deal where a stranger gets shot dead in cold blood, you figure anything goes. You’ve done the worst and you’ve got nothing to lose.
And also we knew the gal would have to be finished off so she couldn’t tell on us. It was like she was dead already. But she wasn’t really.
We were just starting to feel her up and hadn’t even started getting drastic when she came to.
She was a hell of a scrapper.
Good thing she didn’t have a Louisville Slugger.
Private sat on her face.
Uh...
I think I’d better try giving Tom a call.
I’d rather not, but ...
Hell, we’ve been buddies forever. What’s he gonna do to me? It isn’t my fault those two got away. If Tom and the guys had helped instead of running away and leaving it all to me, we would’ve nailed ...
I mean, how can he blame me?
Anyway, the longer I wait the worse it’s gonna get.
And what if they go ahead without me and take care of the girl?
Chapter Twenty-two
I picked up the phone to call Tom, dialed 9 for an outside line, then chickened out and punched in Lisa’s number, instead. It was partly a way to procrastinate. Partly, too, I wanted to hear her voice. She loves me, which at times can be pretty annoying. On the other hand, though, it can sometimes be nice to know there’s at least one person who isn’t gonna turn on you, who’ll probably stick by you even if things get bad.
I figured that talking with her might cheer me up. Also, I was curious to find out if my recorder could pick up the other side of a phone conversation.
After a few rings, Lisa’s answering machine started talking to me. “I’m not available to answer your call right now, but if you’ll leave your name ...” All that. After the sound of the tone, I told her it was me—in case she was home, after all, and just usins the machine to screen her calls.
She still didn’t pick up.
All of a sudden, I got a very bad feeling about things.
It’s not that Lisa sits around her apartment all the time waiting for me to call or show up or something. But this is Saturday night. We always get together on Saturday nights. We don’t arrange anything, I just show up and we do stuff. We eat, maybe take in a show, or maybe we just stay at her place and watch a couple of movies on her VCR and mess around. Normally, I would’ve been there by about seven, and it was a little after nine when I phoned. She should’ve been there to answer.
I told myself to stay calm.
A lot of good that did.
Anyway, the tape recorder didn’t pick up shit. Oh, it got what I said. But Lisa’s voice didn’t come through at all, even though I’d held the thing right up tight against the phone’s earpiece. You’ve got to have special equipment, I guess.
I figured the Target store in Culver City might still be open. It had an electronics section. I could drive out there and maybe buy a speaker phone or an answering machine. Either of those might let me record Tom’s side of a conversation. But the last thing I needed, with nothing to wear except Hillary’s clothes and hair, was to go wandering around in a crowded store.
Besides, I didn’t have much confidence in my ability to hook up any sort of telephone equipment.
On top of which, anybody who isn’t deaf can tell by the sound of his own voice if there’s a speaker phone at the other end of the line. It sounds like you’re talking with a metal waste basket on top of your head.
It probably took me about one minute to think about all those angles and decide to forget trying to tape Tom’s side of our conversation.
I know his number by heart. I know it even better than Lisa’s. That’s because he lives in the same big old mansion where he’s always lived, and its phone number hasn’t changed in at least fifteen years.
He picked up after three rings.
Here goes the conversation. It isn’t exact, since I couldn’t tape his side of it, but it’s close. I’ve got a good memory for what people say, even when it happened years ago, and this was only a little after nine o’clock tonight.
“Hello?” Tom answered.
“Hey, man. It’s me.”
“Well, well.”
“I guess you’re pissed, huh?”
“We were counting on you, Si.” He sometimes calls me that. It’s short for Simon, of course. It sounds like sigh.
“I could’ve used some help,” 1 told him. “You all bugged out on me. There’s only so much one guy can do, you know?”
“They’re kids, Si.”
“Hey, I couldn’t find ’em.”
“Kids. And you let them get away.”
“I didn’t let them get away. You sound like I did it on purpose. Christ! I did everything I could to ...”
“They’re eyewitnesses.”
“I know. I know that.”
“They could foul up everything for us.”
“I know.”
“Do you also know they murdered Minnow?”
“What?”
“Minnow. They bashed in his head.”
“You’re kidding.”
“We found him in the boy’s bedroom.”
“Shit.” Minnow had been an okay guy, but I hadn’t loved him or anything. I didn’t like hearing he’d been nailed, though. It made things worse for me.
“And you let them get away,” Tom said. Which is how it made things worse for me.
“Which one did it?”
“Which one had the baseball bat?” Not as if Tom didn’t already know the answer. Even if he hadn’t seen her with it, himself, Mitch and Chuck must’ve already filled him in on our chase.
“The girl,” I said.
“Jody.”
“You know her name?”
“Jody Fargo.”
“How’d you find out? The news hasn’t been ...”
“The news is lying about everything. The girl is Jody Fargo. The boy is Andrew Clark. His sister’s the one that Ranch brought in, just before the shit hit.”
“Shish ka-sister.”
“Knock it off. If you think there’s anything funny about this situation, you’ll be changing your mind very soon.”
“Sorry,” I told him.
“Jody wasn’t part of the family. From the look of things, she was nothing but a friend of the Clark girl, spending the night. We found some of her things in the girl’s bedroom.”
“What sort of things?”
“Her clothes, her purse. And her driver’s license.”
“A driver’s license?”
“She turned sixteen last month.”
“It has her home address?”
“What do you think?”
“Shit! Let me have it!”
“You’ll get it.” He meant that both ways. I could tell by the tone of his voice.
“Look, give me her address. I’ll take care of everything. I’ll take care of her tonight.”
“You’re so full of shit.”
“I’ll nail her. You think I won’t?”
“I think you’d better.”
“So, where is she?”
“Safe at home. That’s 2840 Shadow Glen Lane.”
“Got it.”
“Do you know where that is?”
“Sure. Just below Castleview, right?”
“Right.”
“I can be there in twenty minutes.”
“Where are you calling from?”
Nice question. It felt like a hammer pounding me in the heart. “Nowhere,” I said. Great answer.
“Tell me.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“You don’t have a car, do you? I’ll have one of the guys pick you up.”
“I don’t think so. Thanks, anyway. I’ve got a car. I can get to the gal’s house on my own steam. Anything else?”
“I don’t want you fucking up again.”
“I won’t.”
“You’d better not. But when I said she was ‘safe’ at home, I meant it. You’d think she was the President, all the security she’s got. Dusty already put a try on her.”
I was shocked to hear they’d gone after the girl. It must’ve been a failure, though. “He missed? Dusty missed?”
“He missed, all right.”
“Shit,” I said. I’d never heard of Larry Rhodes missing a shot with that .30-30 Winchester of his. That’s why we called him Dusty. Anyone he ever shot at, he dusted. Except for Jody, obviously.
An omen, maybe.
Nothing short of a miracle could save a person from Dusty, but my Jody had survived him.
“Is Dusty okay?”
“He got away, if that’s what you mean. Which is very lucky for you.”
I didn’t want to ask why.
But Tom told me anyway.
“I wouldn’t be in any mood to give you a second chance if you’d gotten Dusty killed tonight.”
There was good news in with the bad.
“Thanks, Tom. I mean it. I’ll take care of everything.”
“Both of them.”
“What?”
“Jody and the boy, Andy.”
“Where’s he?”
“That’s for you to find out.”
“You don’t know, or you won’t tell me?”
“We don’t know. He might be on the way to Arizona. Someone with Arizona plates picked him up at the girl’s house...”
“She’ll know where he is,” I said.
“More than likely.”
“No problem. She’ll tell me.”
“You know your problem, Si?”
“You mean there’s only one?”
“Your main one.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“You don’t know your own limitations.”
“Magnum Force, right? The second Dirty Harry movie.”
“Fuck you and your movies.”
“Take it easy, huh Tom? My Christ, we’ve been pals since dinosaurs ruled the Earth. I screw up just one time—which by the way wasn’t even my fault, if you want to know the truth—and by the way, I’m lucky to even be alive after the way you guys ditched me last night—so I mess up just once, and it’s like I’m suddenly dirt. You’re talking to me like I’m some kind of worthless fucking loser. You don’t know your limitations? Man, that’s lousy. That stinks.” I knew I sounded whiny and pathetic, but I couldn’t stop it. “So maybe I missed those kids last night, I’d like to see you do any better. I’d like to see anyone do any better.”
“None of us could’ve done much worse.”
“Yeah, sure. Nobody else even got close to ’em.”
“Well, you didn’t get close enough.”
“I’ll take care of them. Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not worried, Si. Do you know who is worried?” He said, “Bring her over here,” to someone else.
“Hey,” I said.
My stomach was suddenly taking a nosedive. I’d half expected something like this, but expecting it and getting it are two different things.
“It’s Simon,” I heard Tom say.
Then he must’ve stuck the phone in Lisa’s face. “Simon?” she asked. She sounded pitiful.
“It’s me, babe.”
“Goddamn you!” she shrieked. More than once. She really sounded crazy and scared.
“Calm down,” I told her.
“Go to hell!”
“I’m on your side, babe.”
“Oh, really? Oh, really? I know these guys. I know all these guys. They’re all your good old buddies, you bastard! Why are they doing this to me?”
“Doing what?” I asked.
Instead of answering, she yelled, “Make them let me go!”
“I will,” I told her. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything.”
Tom’s voice came back. “We won’t hurt her if ...”
“Sounds like you’ve already hurt her.”
“Not much. But tomorrow night at ten we’re gonna start on her in earnest. Unless we’ve got the kids by then. You bring us Jody Fargo and Andy Clark, and they’ll get it instead of Lisa.”
“Hey.”
“We want them both alive. Right here, alive, ten tomorrow night. ”
“If you wanted them alive, how come you sent Dusty to ... ?”
“Good question, Simon. The answer’s simple. Dusty says the girl’s a fox.”
“What, that comes as a surprise?”
“Matter of fact. None of us saw much of her last night—unless maybe you did. So we didn’t know she was such a fox. Not till Dusty got back. He got a good, close look at her with his scope. Fact is, he’s the one suggested we try to get her alive. Said it’d be a waste of fabulous pussy just to pop her off at a distance.”
“What did he do, miss her on purpose?”
“Do you think he’d admit it, if he did?”
“Well, shit.”
“Looks like he’s got the hots for her. And now he’s got the rest of us interested. So bring her in alive, Si.”
“All by myself?”
“Hey, we already lost Minnow. I don’t want to risk anyone else.”
“Just me.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“It really sucks.”
“Tell you what. I’ll make things easier for you. I won’t insist you bring Andy in alive. Mitch and Chuck’ll be disappointed, but what the hell—I don’t want to make things impossible for you. So it’ll be enough to put Andy down. Do that and bring us Jody, and everything’ll be cool.”
“How about giving me a couple more days?”
“No way. You’ve got till ten tomorrow night. One minute after, we start working on Lisa.”
Just then, I almost told him about the tapes I’d been making all day. Something made me hold off, though.
“Any questions, comments, suggestions?”
“I’ll take care of it,” I said, and hung up.
Right after that, I turned my recorder on and started playing catch-up, telling about the calls. I’ve been talking into this thing for fifteen minutes or so, I guess. It’s given me a chance to calm down.
At least Tom’s giving me a second chance.
And he really did give me a break, allowing me to kill the boy, Andy. If I get a chance to take him alive, I will. It’ll earn me some Brownie points from Mitch and Chuck. But now I won’t have to worry about it. I’ll drop him at a distance if there’s no easy way to snatch him.
Everything might turn out fine, after all. If I take care of business, Lisa’ll get released and I’ll be back in everybody’s good graces. Probably.
Which makes it a smart play to keep quiet about these tapes. They’re like dynamite—they’ll blow up the bridges behind me. One mention of these things, there won’t be any going back. It’ll be them or me.
And there are a l
ot more of them.
I really want Jody for myself. That’s the problem.
One of the problems. Another might be getting my hands on her, if she’s “got more security than the President” like Tom says.
A guy could get hurt.
If I don’t get her, though, things will take a very nasty turn. The guys won’t stop with Lisa. They’ll go after my sisters, and so on. They’ll go after me, too.
Anyway, I want to get her.
Tom said I’ve got to deliver her alive, but he didn’t say she has to be in mint condition. So, basically, I’ll be able to do almost everything to Jody before turning her over tomorrow night.
I’d better quit gabbing, now, and get to work.
Man, I’m starting to get excited.
Ready or not, here I come.
Part Five
Missing in Indio
Chapter Twenty-three
The phone rang three times while Jody rushed to get it. She half expected the caller to be Rob. They hadn’t seen each other since the day before yesterday when they met at the mall, and she missed him. But what would she say? Should she tell him about the murders and everything? Probably better not to. Dad might not like it if she ...
“Hello?” she asked into the mouthpiece.
“Wilson Spaulding here. Let me speak to your father.” The odd little man’s bluster was missing. He sounded angry. Or scared.
“This is Jody, Mr. Spaulding. Is something the matter?”
“You’re double-damn right something’s the matter. Now, call your father to the phone.”
“What happened?”
“Do like I say, young lady.”
“Dad’s not here.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I don’t lie, Mr. Spaulding. Dad had to go out for a while. Is Andy all right?”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know. I can’t believe Jacko left you alone tonight. You’re supposed to be under guard. This doesn’t make any ...”