Norman Partridge - The Ten-Ounce Siesta

“I don’t know, Angel. I just don’t think they’ll leave it like this. You shot that woman back there. You killed her. And her sister isn’t going to forget that. She’ll probably come looking for us. God help us if she brings those other freaks with her.”

“You think they’ll come after us?”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “Unless we go after them first.”

There were seven Randy Travis records on the truck stop jukebox. Harold was sure about that. He’d heard every damn one of them, and more than once.

Still, anything was better than hanging out with Eden. Man, was she messed up. Harold didn’t know how to feel about that. Deep down, he really cared about her. But to see her all torn up like that, completely out of control. . man, it was scary. He just couldn’t handle it.

Maybe things would be okay after they collected the ransom. Harold figured he could stick it out that long. Hell, he had to. The drop site was already set up. No way he could make an end run around the entire Lynch family at this late hour, even if he wanted to.

And if things didn’t work out after that? Well, he’d said adios before. The word was definitely in his vocabulary.

But he’d never said adios to anyone like Eden Lynch. That would be a tough one. Of course, it was easy to say that now. Eden wasn’t having a nervous breakdown right before his eyes. If she started that shit again. . all that crying and making him feel guilty shit. . well, watch out. That’s when the rubber would meet the road.

A gear-jammer dropped a quarter in the jukebox and pressed B26. Randy Travis started singing about a love that was deeper than the holler and stronger than the river and higher than the pine trees growin’ tall upon the hill.

Enough of this weepy redneck shit. Harold chugged one last swallow from his coffee cup. It wasn’t quite time for the rubber to meet the road, but it was way past time for the shoe leather to hit the parquet tile.

Harold’s shoe leather did. He paid the waitress and headed for the pay phones at the gas station adjacent to the restaurant. It was almost noon. Time to goose Angel Gemignani. Get her to that safe-deposit box and then give her directions to the drop site.

Harold punched in the Casbah number and the operator transferred him to Angel Gemignani’s suite.

The phone rang a bunch of times. Harold was about to give up when someone answered. Some stupid Valley Girl voice. All whiny. Plus Harold could hardly hear the chick. It sounded like a party was going on or something.

“Is this Angel Gemignani?”

“No.” Except the way this chick said it, “no” had two syllables. Then there was a bunch of yelling for Angel, and the next voice Harold heard belonged to the rich bitch herself.

“H’lo?”

“Listen good, bitch. It’s time to pay the piper. I want you to get to your safe-deposit box. The one your grandfather gave you. Take out half a million bucks. There’s a pay phone outside the bank. Wait there and I’ll call you at-”

“Who is this?”

“This is the guy who’s got your dog.”

Harold couldn’t believe it. The little bitch was actually laughing at him.

She said, “I guess you haven’t been keeping up with current events.”

Harold said, “Huh?”

“Wait just a second.” Angel Gemignani yelled something, and someone yelled something back, followed by a chorus of laughter. Angel said, “Still there?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, listen to this.”

It was quiet for a second. And then the little fucking Chihuahua started barking, and Angel Gemignani slammed down the phone.

Harold started driving. He headed east. He had no idea where he was going. It really didn’t matter much.

The whole deal was blown. Tony would be really pissed. Right now, Harold couldn’t even face his bro. Man, they’d planned it so good, and things had gotten fucked up, and on Harold’s end, too. Eden’s sisters had blown it, taking the dog to that vet. Obviously. But the dog was Harold’s responsibility. And so were Eden’s sisters.

Man, how was he going to break the news to Tony?

Maybe he should just keep driving. He’d end up somewhere. Get something going. Start over.

The odometer notched ten miles. Then twenty. Thirty coming right up. .

He passed the exit where he’d picked up Eden so long ago. Man, the way she looked that day. Sunburned, wearing nothing but a truck driver’s shirt and a pair of dirty white go-go boots, singing “Happy Trails” like everything was okeydokey.

God, but she wanted to please him. She did everything he told her. She never questioned him. It was still that way. Even when she fucked things up, it wasn’t like she did it intentionally. In fact, fucking things up nearly broke her heart, that’s how scared she was of upsetting Harold.

And who the hell knew what would happen to Eden now? Her family would be pissed. They wanted that ransom money as much as Harold did, and they were about to come up empty.

Harold knew what would happen. Daddy and Mama would blame Eden for bringing Harold into the fold in the first place. And Tura and Lorelei. . Christ, look what those crazy bitches did to Eden for stealing a bag of Fig Newtons. Harold couldn’t even imagine what kind of punishment they’d dish out for something like this.

He pulled over. Man, he couldn’t believe it. That fucking Randy Travis song was going round and round in his head.

He waited for a break in the traffic, and when one came he cut across the highway and headed toward the Radiation Ranch.

Harold nearly put his foot through the floorboards. That was how hard he hit the brakes.

The concrete bunker loomed before him, surrounded by a dry, stunted forest of yucca trees and scrub brush. Afternoon heat waves rolled across the desert and broke against the nuke-proof hacienda like ghostwaves of an ocean that had vanished a million years ago.

Harold pulled his.357 and got out of the car. He scanned the desert for a sign of trouble but saw nothing. No cars or trucks that didn’t belong there. No tire tracks in the dirt that seemed unusual. Not one glimmer on a distant rise that would indicate a sniper’s telescopic rifle sight reflecting the afternoon sun.

Fully aware of his surrounding, senses painfully acute, Harold started toward the thing that had made him stop the car so suddenly.

It was easy to miss her on first glance, because even a warped display of human flesh had a way of looking right at home in the Mojave Desert. Harold had never lived in such a weird place. In his view, every sunset looked like a bloodstain, and every empty well was a grave waiting to be filled, and every yucca tree looked strangely deformed, twisted as if it had been tortured by the Devil himself.

The woman was twisted too, but Harold figured the Devil hadn’t done it. Truth be told, he didn’t believe in the son of a bitch.

Mama stood against a dead yucca tree, her arms lashed to the twisted limbs with lengths of barbed wire. As usual, her mouth was open.

But she wasn’t going to say a word this time. She was all done talking.

And the vultures had started in on her face.

Harold swatted at the vultures with his pistol and they flapped away on lazy black wings. He eased Mama’s jacket to one side and saw the bullet wound drilled through the left cup of her black leather bikini. The blood hadn’t dried. In fact, a fresh scarlet gout pumped from the hole and streamed down Mama’s brown belly.

Harold stood hypnotized, watching the blood.

“Uhhhrrrhhh,” Mama groaned.

Harold nearly jumped out of his skin. He stumbled back.

Mama’s head bobbed, the length of barbed wire wrapped around her neck cutting a fresh trench in her suntanned flesh as she moved. Her eyelids flickered, eyes rolling blindly beneath them, eyes that were coated with a bleached-white sheen. .