Norman Partridge - The Ten-Ounce Siesta

Tura raised her hands, just slightly. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

She angled behind Doc Gooddoggy. He was squinting in Baddalach’s direction. Obviously, he couldn’t see a thing.

Tura sucked a deep breath. So far so good. Her heart was out of the line of fire. So was her left hand. She reached into her coat pocket and pulled the Walther PPK.

Lorelei saw her do it. She had a firm hold on Spike, cradling the dog over her heart. Baddalach and his bimbo wouldn’t shoot her. Not when they might hit the dog.

“I’m not going to wait forever,” Baddalach said. “Bring me the dog. Now.”

“Okay,” Lorelei said. “But don’t shoot.”

Quite suddenly, Tura grabbed Doc Gooddoggy by his prissy white hair. Using him as a shield, she aimed the Walther over his shoulder and started shooting as Lorelei dumped the mutt and yanked a Heckler from the shoulder holster concealed under her coat.

Baddalach and his bimbo dove behind a metal counter near the operating theater door.

They rose a moment later, guns blazing.

Warm blood splashed Dr. Newman’s face. He heard a few stumbling steps, and then something thumped to the floor in front of him.

He heard a dog barking, claws scrabbling over tile floor.

The pistol next to his ear barked several times, and then he couldn’t hear a thing.

“No,” Dr. Newman moaned. “Oh please God.

Tura yanked his hair. At least he thought it was Tura. He couldn’t see a thing without his glasses.

She pulled him backwards, hiding behind him, until they were on the far side of the Komodo dragon’s cage. Then she yanked his hair again, and he dropped to his knees behind the cage.

People were shouting. He knew they were. But his ears were ringing with the sound of gunfire.

He couldn’t hear a blessed thing.

“You killed my sister,” Tura shouted.

Jack and Angel crouched behind the metal counter. Angel was holding Spike. Her.45 lay on the ground. Suddenly, she had forgotten all about it.

“You blond bitch!” Tura screamed. “I’m going to make you pay!”

Angel glanced at Jack, her face creased with worry. He shrugged. “You did shoot her sister,” he said.

“Either I walk out of here,” Tura said, “or the vet dies.”

“Oh, man,” Jack said.

Spike coughed, and Angel held him tight. “What are we going to do?”

“We’ve got the dog,” Jack said. “The vet probably doesn’t have anything to do with any of this. I don’t want him to get hurt.”

“Yeah, but we can’t just let her go.”

“So what do you want to do? Shoot it out? That’s great. Maybe one of us will plug the vet by accident and save her the trouble of killing him.”

“Yeah. But if we let her go, do you really think this will be the end of it?”

On the other side of the room, a door slammed.

“Shit,” Jack said. “Shit!"

Dr. Newman couldn’t see a thing. The gunshots had rendered him as deaf as Beethoven, but at least Tura had stopped pulling his hair.

He undid his bow tie and wiped the blood from his face. Then, scooting along on his ass, he moved away from the Komodo dragon cage. He didn’t want to be too close to the bars. Bruce’s claws were sharp as a samurai’s blade. One slash and Medicare wouldn’t begin to cover all the reassembly Dr. Frank Newman would require.

There. That was better. Bruce couldn’t reach him now. And no one had grabbed his hair to stop him from moving. That was better still.

Dr. Newman reached out tentatively. He couldn’t remember where Tura had put his glasses. Maybe they were on the floor.

His fingers drifted across the tile and touched cold metal.

The door to the Komodo dragon’s cage. .

. . and it was open.

Dr. Newman couldn’t hear the scream that spilled over his own lips. But he could feel the dragon’s long slithering tongue as it slapped against the back of his hand.

And he could smell the stream of urine even as it spilled down the leg of his summer trousers.

The vet was scooting around the floor on his ass.

The redhead lay by an open door, half her skull splattered on the wall behind her.

The door swung shut slowly. And then Jack noticed the other door. The one to the big metal cage.

A fucking monster came out of the cage, moving fast, little black eyes gleaming like eight balls.

A Komodo dragon. Jesus. Jack had seen one of the big lizards on an old Johnny Quest cartoon. The damn thing had tried to devour Race Bannon, who had outsmarted it through good old American ingenuity.

The vet might be an American, but he wasn’t in Race Bannon’s league. He just sat there on his ass, looking kind of like Pa Kettle dressed up for the county fair. Jack couldn’t understand it. Even if the vet didn’t see the big lizard, he’d have to hear the thing’s claws clinking over the tiled floor-

The monster’s long yellow tongue flicked against the back of the vet’s right hand. Then its jaws opened wider.

Jack raised the Colt Python and opened fire.

Once again, blood splashed Dr. Newman’s face. Only this blood was colder.

He reached out and touched a long, slimy hunk of flesh. Bruce’s tongue. Only the tongue wasn’t attached to anything.

Bruce was dead.

Bruce had been shot in the head.

Along with an exotic dancer.

All of it had happened in Dr. Newman’s operating theater. Dr. Newman began to cry, because none of these events could possibly occur in a Norman Rockwell universe.

His career was over.

And, worse than that, he would probably never see Tura Lynch again.

The vet sat on the floor, holding the dead lizard’s tongue and crying.

“What’s wrong with him?” Jack asked.

“I think he’s deaf, for one thing. And blind, too.” Angel picked up the doctor’s Coke-bottle glasses and handed them to Jack. “He probably can’t see a thing without these.”

Jack dropped the glasses on the floor and stomped them hard.

“Why’d you do that?”

“Do you want him to be able to give the cops our descriptions, or what?”

“Oh. . yeah.”

“Let’s get out of here.”

“C’mon Spike,” Angel said, hoisting the Chihuahua. “We’re going home.”

After a while, Dr. Newman dropped Bruce’s tongue and stumbled out of the operating theater.

He felt his way along the wall and eventually found his office, where he bruised his thigh on the sharp corner of his desk before sinking into his plush leather chair.

Fright consumed him, but he persevered. He reached out tentatively, exploring his desktop even as his heart raced, afraid that his fingers would brush the severed tongue of a Komodo dragon.

They didn’t, of course. The dragon’s tongue was on the floor of the operating theater.

Eventually Dr. Newman found the telephone. He held the handset to his ear and could not hear a thing. Without his glasses, he couldn’t see the keypad, either, but he started pressing buttons anyway.

Three buttons each time. Then he would say he had an emergency, and give his address, and hang up and do it again.

Eventually, he’d hit 911.

Eventually.

It was simply the law of averages.

“God, I’m glad Spike’s okay.” Angel hugged the Chihuahua. “I’m glad this whole thing is over.”

Jack didn’t say anything. He just drove.

“Jack. . it is over, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know. The woman who got away. . she’s out there, somewhere. So is Harold Ticks. And the old lady and the guy with the rattlesnakes. They’re out there, too.”

Angel nodded. “Don’t forget Tony Katt. He probably the arranged the whole thing. And the woman with the wrist braces.”

“Yeah.”

“So what should we do?”