Andy had quit smiling. His eyes searched the cafe until he spotted Sharon. She was standing beside Jack. They were both looking up at a painting of a moonlit desert.
“I think she’ll be very interested,” Jody said, “in your theories about the location of her tattoo.”
“Go ahead and tell.”
“I plan to.”
“I dare you.”
Jody grinned. The way her face felt, she was sure it must be a wonderfully mean grin. “Sharon probably already knows what a poon is, don’t you suppose? I mean, she’s a cop. She’s probably heard just about everything. But I bet you it isn’t one of her favorite words. We women aren’t usually very amused by dirty words about that particular place.”
Andy suddenly grimaced. “You won’t really tell, will you?”
“It’d serve you right.”
He was beginning to look desperate. “Come on, Jody. You won’t, will you?”
“Give me one good reason.”
“I don’t knowwww. Because we’re friends?”
When he said that, Jody’s throat went tight. She hadn’t expected that. She’d been angry, but she’d just started to enjoy taunting him. It came as a surprise to find herself suddenly on the verge of tears. “Yeah,” she said. “We’re ...” She couldn’t say more, so instead she reached down and patted his leg.
“You’re my best friend in the whole world,” he whispered.
She swallowed. “Shut up, okay?”
“I promise, I’ll never say peter or poon again.”
“Or fuck,” Jody muttered. And couldn’t believe that she’d said it.
“I didn’t say fuck,” Andy protested.
“You spelled it. Same difference.”
“Okay, I’ll never ...”
“Uh-oh, here comes breakfast. Cut out the dirty stuff.”
Bess walked toward them, carrying a huge tray loaded with plates and glasses of Pepsi.
“That’s a neat tattoo on your arm there,” Andy said as she set the tray on a fold-up stand.
“Well thanks, Sparkie.”
“Do you have any others?”
“You bet.”
“Can I see ’em?”
Jody groaned.
Bess let out a bark of laughter. She grinned at Jody. “Your brother here’s sure a little pistol, ain’t he?”
“Yeah.” Her face was burning. “A pistol, all right. And he keeps going off by accident.”
Dad and Sharon came back to the table, but stood aside and waited until Bess finished setting out the breakfast. Then they slid into their booth.
“Anything interesting happen while we were gone?” Dad asked.
Andy gave Jody a nervous glance.
“Not much,” she said. “How was the stuff?”
“Not bad.”
“You two should take a look around before we leave,” Sharon told them. “Some of it’s really neat.”
“I bet you’d really like the Apache squaw,” Dad said to Andy. “Her photo’s down at the far end near the restrooms.”
“Why would Andy like it so much?” Jody asked. “Is she naked or something?”
“She’s minus her nose.”
“She looks awful,” Sharon said.
“Lopping off a gal’s schnoz was an old Apache punishment for adultery.”
“Those Apaches must’ve been loads of fun,” Sharon said.
As Dad laughed, Jody asked him, “Why do you suppose Andy would think that’s so great? Have you turned into a psychic?”
Dad shrugged. “It’s one of those guy things.”
“Remind me never to marry one,” Sharon said, and shoved a forkful of burrito into her mouth.
“The Nazis used to make lampshades out of skin,” Andy said, leaning toward her. “Human skin.”
“I’m so glad you shared that with us, Andrew.”
“He’s so gross,” Jody said.
“Guys generally are,” Sharon told her. “But they do have other characteristics that compensate for it. Some do, anyway. I’m not so sure about Andy.”
Andy blushed and laughed as if he’d been paid a major compliment.
Jody nudged him. “That was an insult, you dork.”
“Language,” Dad told her.
“Language? Me? You should hear what ...”
“Superb French toast,” Andy interrupted. “I think it’s the cinnamon bread.”
He and Jody stared at each other for a few moments.
I almost told on him, she realized.
She was glad that he’d stopped her in time.
She picked up her knife and fork, and began to cut into her French toast. “So, what are we doing after breakfast?”
“I guess we’ll go back to the motel and check out,” Dad said.
“Should we try to find a store first? Andy needs some new clothes.”
Dad glanced at his wristwatch. “We’ll have to see how late it is when we get done here.”
Part Eight
Simon Says
Chapter Thirty-four
Here we go. When I left off, last time, I’d just hung up the phone after a chat with Ranch. A lot has happened since then. A lot of blood has been spilled. Now, I’ve finally got some free time to talk about it all, so here goes.
Quick as I could manage after hanging up, I drove over to Ranch’s. We took his Cadillac to Dusty’s place and from there we headed for Indio.
We made good time, too.
But not good enough.
When we got there, I told Ranch to pull into the Texaco. He needed the gas, anyway, so he stopped at the self-service pumps and I got out to fill the tank for him.
Pumping the gas gave me a good chance to scope out the parking lot of the Traveler’s Roost motel across the street. The bozo on the phone, Frank, had said he could see Fargo’s car and it was a blue Ford.
Over at the parking lot, most of the spaces were empty. Only a couple of vans, a Jeep and three regular cars were still there. Not one of them was blue.
Hardly any wonder, when you figure it was almost eleven o’clock by then. Eleven’s checkout time for most motels. So just about everyone had already hit the road—the Fargo clan included.
We’d missed them.
It made my stomach feel like hell.
But I had gas to finish pumping, so I stood there and kept at it.
I was still Simone, by the way. I wore my brown wig, since the platinum blond from last night seemed too flamboyant for daytime and I didn’t want to draw a lot of attention to myself. In the brown hair, I looked feminine but subdued.
My face had been horrid this morning (remember what that son-of a-bitch Henry the dog did to me last night?), so we stopped in Desert Hot Springs and I sent Ranch into a drugstore for Band-Aids and makeup. While we drove on, I fixed myself up. Just one large bandage was enough to cover the bites on my cheekbone (lucky for me that fucking Henry wasn’t a Doberman), and I used makeup to hide the bruising.
I’d already gotten out of my bloody sundress before leaving Jody’s house. I put on one of her T-shirts. Most of them looked like souvenirs from vacations or trips to Disneyland, but I managed to find a pink one that didn’t have any pictures or slogans on it. Then I found a white pleated skirt.
I looked great in the outfit. Fresh and innocent and a lot younger than twenty-four, which is my real age.
Ranch sure noticed how great I looked.
It took me about fifteen minutes to drive to his place after leaving Jody’s. When I got there and he opened his door, he said, “Oooo, honey.” Then he grabbed me and hauled me up against him and squeezed one of my tits through the T-shirt. Ranch weighed about three hundred and fifty pounds. A lot of it was fat, but he also worked out with weights so he had plenty of muscle. It’s a good thing I didn’t have a tit inside that bra, or he would’ve mashed it. “Well, shit,” he said when he noticed he was only squeezing tissue paper. “What happened to my dream girl?”
“She’s waiting for us in Indio,” I told him. “And we’
re gonna miss her if we don’t get our asses in gear, so put me down and let’s go.”
He kidded around during the trip, pretending to flirt with me and reaching under my skirt. Actually, I’m not sure he was completely kidding. I think he sort of hoped or wished I’d somehow turn into the girl I looked like. You know how sometimes if you watch a movie that you’ve already seen, and maybe you don’t like the way it ended last time, you keep sort of hoping and wishing the end will turn out different? If you really get into it, you can almost convince yourself that it will change. It was probably like that with Ranch. He had himself half convinced that I’d change into a female.
I think, honestly, that I was getting him a little horny.
Must be weird to be a gal and have that sort of power over guys.
Every once in a while, I had to tell him to knock it off. I even had to remove his hand from me a couple of times.
Dusty was in the back seat. He spent most of his time staring out the windows, and didn’t notice the funny stuff. Or if he did, he ignored it. He was the sort of guy who never fooled around. He took every damn thing in the world seriously. In fact, he was basically a complete paranoid.
One of those survivalist nuts. He figured the world—or at least “civilization as we know it”—would come to an end pretty soon. Like next week, you know? And he planned to be ready for it.
He even had a hideout/bomb shelter somewhere. He used to talk about it, but never told any of us where it was. He planned to go there and live through the big thermonuclear holocaust.
He was really hoping for that holocaust.
According to him, it was on its way. He could hardly wait.
You’ve never seen a guy as disappointed in your life as when the Soviet Union went down the tubes a couple of years ago.
What a pisser for poor Dusty!
It pretty much ruined his chances of ever seeing a mushroom cloud, and he was crushed.
But then we had that Rodney King riot in L.A. last year, so Dusty got his hopes back. He’d probably never get to enjoy a massive exchange of nuclear warheads, but a race war might be almost as good. So he pinned his hopes on that.
He started looking forward to an uprising by the blacks with the same sort of enthusiasm he used to have about nuclear war.
I think he dreamed of fighting off assaults from his secret hideout—dressing up in his Kevlar vest and helmet and camouflage suit, arming himself to the teeth and mowing down hordes of rampaging crazies.
The only times I ever saw him laugh or smile were when he was nailing someone.
A nut case, that’s what Dusty was. But very good with his rifle, which was in the back seat with him.
Anyway, where was I?
The Texaco. Right. Pumping gas. In my nice brown wig and Jody clothes and all that. There were other people filling their tanks, and I got looks from a couple of guys, but nobody bothered me. Maybe because I had Ranch and Dusty in the car.
I was feeling sort of sick because we’d shown up too late.
Maybe if I hadn’t bothered to change my clothes, or if Ranch hadn’t wasted time hugging me on his front porch, or if we hadn’t stopped at the drugstore to buy that stuff, or ... Hell, maybe they left so early that none of that mattered.
What’s done is done, right?
What counts is how you handle what’s given to you.
Here’s the thing: I’d told Ranch and Dusty that I knew where we could lay our hands on Jody. And of course I’d said she was in Indio. But I hadn’t said a thing about any motel or what kind of car they were driving.
I left those things out just because I was playing the cards close to my vest, you know? I hadn’t been planning to trick the guys.
But suddenly I had to trick them.
I couldn’t just admit we’d shown up too late and blown our chance at Jody. Ranch might be okay about a thing like that, but there was no telling about Dusty. A very temperamental guy. He might flip his lid and kill me.
The nozzle clicked off, so I hung it up and capped the tank and went to the office to pay.
In L.A., you have to pay for your gas before you pump it. That’s because L.A. is full of assholes who’ll drive off without paying if you give them half a chance. You know you’ve reached a civilized place when they let you pump first and give them the money after you’re done.
I paid and went back to the car and got into the passenger seat. “Let’s go,” I said.
Then I gave Ranch directions just as if I actually had some kind of destination.
Every now and then, he’d ask where we were going. I’d say, “You’ll see.” Like it was a big secret.
A secret, all right. Even I wasn’t in on it.
Dusty kept his mouth shut and watched out the windows.
We drove through a business area with a lot of shops and restaurants and so on. I looked at the people in the cars that went by, and I looked at the people on the sidewalks.
No Jody, of course. Big surprise.
There were a lot of blue cars. I glanced at who was inside, but didn’t expect to spot Jody in any of them.
The truth is, I wasn’t looking for her.
What I wanted was a reasonable facsimile. Someone Jody’s age and size, with golden hair and a good short haircut. Someone who could pass for her.
Ranch had never even caught a glimpse of Jody. He’d missed his only chance, which was when she ran past the master bedroom on Friday night. Right then, Ranch had been monkeying around with his back to the door.
Tricking him would be a cinch.
Dusty would be the problem. He’d gotten a good look at Jody through his rifle scope—such a good look that he’d seen what a knockout she is and told Tom we should try to take her alive so we could really have a chance to enjoy her.
Maybe Dusty could be fooled, though. Maybe he’d only gotten an impression that Jody’s beautiful, and hadn’t really seen her features in detail.
Fat chance.
Unless I could find an awfully good duplicate, Dusty would probably catch on.
There were some girls around, riding in the back seats of passing cars, walking down sidewalks with their families or friends, going into stores, even some pedaling along on their bikes. Something was always wrong, though. If they looked about the right age, then they were too fat or had the wrong color hair or wore glasses or were as ugly as dirt.
“Are you sure you know where we’re going?” Ranch asked after a while.
“We’re almost there,” I told him.
Hope springs eternal.
“Make a left here,” I said.
Ranch did it.
A couple of blocks later, I said, “Take the next right.”
We were driving through a residential neighborhood with old stucco houses on both sides of the road. It was sunny and almost nobody seemed to be outside. Too hot, probably. We were fine in Ranch’s car, though, with the air conditioning at full blast.
“Okay, a left at the next corner,” I said.
Ranch made the turn. Up ahead, the neighborhood thinned out. There were a couple of mobile homes. The only houses were far apart and crummy. From the look of things, we were at the edge of town and about to meet the desert.
“What’re you trying to pull?” Dusty asked.
“Nothing.”
“So where the fuck is she? You don’t know, do you? You’re giving us some sort of fuckin’ run-around here.”
“See the house with the pickup in front?”
It was about a hundred yards ahead and off to the right. It had a rusty mailbox at the edge of the road. The pickup looked brand new—forty years ago. All its glass was smashed out and it didn’t have any wheels. The house didn’t look much better than the pickup truck, but at least its windows weren’t broken.
“You tellin’ me she’s in there?” Dusty asked. He didn’t sound at all inclined to believe it.
“I’m not telling you shit,” I said. “You’ll see for yourself.” I said to Ranch, “Stop by the mailbox.”
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He gave me a funny look, like I’d lost my mind. “You sure about this?”
“Sure as I can be. I got the address from an old friend. An old friend who just happens to be the LAPD lieutenant in charge of witness protection.”
Ranch looked surprised, maybe even impressed.
Dusty said, “Gimme a break. A lieutenant with the ... ?”
“This is one of their safe houses. Wait here. I’ll go in first. They’ve been told to expect a woman from Child Welfare Services, and I’m it.”
With that, I jumped out of the car and went for the house. Sweat just popped out of me. It wasn’t only because of the heat, either. I could feel Ranch and Dusty watching me. My ticker was pounding like a hammer.
I didn’t know who was gonna be in the house.
Knew who wouldn’t be, though. Jody.
The place looked like it might be vacant. No vehicle except for the useless old pickup. No signs at all that anyone was occupying the property—or taking care of it. The yard was nothing but dust and cracked earth and rocks and a few scrubby bushes. The outside walls were cracked, and big patches of paint had peeled off. The windows were so dirty that I couldn’t see through them.
I stopped at the front door. It was shut and no sounds came from inside.
I knocked a couple of times, then stepped back and took a look around.
To the right, pretty far away, was an old mobile home up on blocks. It looked lived in, but there wasn’t any car so I figured its people had driven off somewhere. This being Sunday morning, maybe they’d gone to church.
To the left was desert.
The houses across the road looked almost as run down as this one.
No matter where I looked, I couldn’t see anyone watching me. That’s if you don’t count Ranch and Dusty in the car.
This was as good a place as any.
So I faced the door again, but just when I was about to knock some more, it swung open.
Which I wasn’t expecting at all.
My stomach did a flip-flop.
I was in luck, though. The door’d been opened by a guy, and I knew how fine I looked.
Better still, he was a teenager.
Fifteen or sixteen, a little goofy looking with his flat-top haircut and the way his upper teeth stuck out. He wore a faded pair of blue jeans, and no shirt. He had a good tan, but he was husky and looked soft.