Norman Partridge - The Ten-Ounce Siesta

Angel restarted the tape. She fast-forwarded through several phone sex advertisements and hit the pause button when a notice from the producer appeared on screen:

WARNING! ADULTS ONLY!

Not to be sold to or viewed by minors.

This videocassette contains adult viewing material and is rated X.

All actors and actresses are 18 years of age or older.

Proof of age is on file at:

EVIL EYE PRODUCTIONS

36 Arroyo Blanco Drive

Las Vegas, NV 89030

Jack headed for the door. Angel followed him. “Where are you going?”

“Thirty-six Arroyo Blanco Drive,” Jack said.

“Don’t you think it would be smarter to let Grandpa handle this?”

Jack stopped short and turned to face her, his voice registering exasperation when he spoke. “I haven’t always been a Chihuahua baby-sitter, Angel. In fact, when your granddad has a problem of this nature. I’m the guy who usually handles it.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-”

“You don’t need to apologize.” Jack put a hand on her shoulder. “You got your dog back, Angel. This really doesn’t have anything to do with you or your granddad anymore. It has to do with me.”

“Wait a minute.” Angel turned off the television. “God knows I’d love to see you knock out Tony Katt. God knows I’d love to see you break his nose all over again. But to risk your life for him? That’s crazy, Jack.”

“Yeah. I guess it is.” Jack looked at her long and hard. “Almost as crazy as risking your life for a consumptive Chihuahua.”

“You’re really going to go through with this.”

“Yeah.” Jack sighed. “It’s hard to explain, Angel. I guess it comes down to who I am and who I want to be. I don’t want to be the guy who lost the boss’s granddaughter’s puppy. I want to be the heavyweight champion of the world. I’ve got my reasons. . and, well, they’re my reasons. I want to win that belt, and I can’t do that without Tony Katt.”

“Okay, then. Let’s go.”

Jack shook his head. “I’m doing this alone.”

“No, you’re not. Like you said, you risked your life for a dog. My dog. I guess I can risk mine for your dream.”

“Forget it, Angel. You’re not coming with me.”

Her backbone turned to steel. “I guess that I should go ahead and call Grandpa Freddy, then. Maybe he’d like to know that Jack Baddalach is about to get his ass blown away.”

Angel shoved a brand new.45 into her purse. Her other gun-the one she’d used to kill the redhead-was now at the bottom of Lake Mead.

“Let’s go,” Jack said.

Angel opened the top dresser drawer and pulled out a pair of nylons. She tossed one of the stockings to Jack.

“What’s this for?” Jack asked.

“Trust me.” Angel laughed. “You’re gonna need it.”

Dry. . parched. . desiccated. . barren. .

Like the vast Sahara. Like a mummy baked in desert catacombs. Like a creature with peeling wallpaper skin hung by the Devil himself. Like something that had been dead, yet conscious, for a very long time.

Tony Katt tried to swallow. His Adam’s apple bobbed against a barbed-wire spike. He wanted to scream, but his parched throat wouldn’t allow more than a rattling whisper.

God, but he was thirsty. The woman had removed the bandages and cotton from his broken nose, but it didn’t do any good. He could get more air sucking on a crimped straw.

So Tony breathed through his mouth. . Every inhalation flared like wildfire in his tortured throat. . His mouth became a dry desert burrow, a trap-door spider’s hole. .

Tony could almost feel it. The spider. Crawling over his chest, along his neck, furry legs crossing the pulsing carotid artery and the SS lightning bolts tattoo, fat arachnid body squeezing between Tony’s cracked lips and over his tongue, down his throat until its fat body became stuck and he started to suffocate-

Sharp sliver cuts split Tony’s dry lips as he opened his mouth. This time, the scream had to come out, no matter how dry his throat. Hot air baked in his lungs tore his windpipe like a dull razor.

The scream was short, and not very loud.

Tony was awake again. So was his kidnapper.

She had been dozing in the shade by the tumbledown shack. She raised her chin and looked at him, eyes invisible behind dark sunglasses.

“Okay, Tiger,” she said. “Don’t get your shorts in a bunch.” Then she grabbed the canteen and walked in his direction.

Tony couldn’t move, of course. She’d tied him to a yucca tree with a length of barbed wire that speared him every time he so much as wriggled. His arms were bent at odd angles, mimicking the twisted branches. Thick, sharp leaves and gnarled scabs of bark dug into his naked back.

Tony heard water slosh in the canteen as the woman approached. Instinctively, he leaned forward, barbed-wire spikes tearing his flesh.

“Want another drink?” the woman asked.

Tony only moaned.

“You know the price.”

Tony remembered. He opened his mouth. Her gloved fingers brushed his dry tongue as she jammed several pills between his bleeding lips. He thought they were Percodans, the pain pills he was taking for his broken nose. But it seemed like he was hallucinating, too. All that shit with the spider. Maybe the heat was the cause of that. Or maybe his captor was feeding him world-class mind-benders, too.

She tilted the canteen and gave him a long drink. He swallowed thankfully. Then she returned to the shade. Leaning against one wall of the dilapidated shack, she unscrewed a dark bottle and oiled her pale skin with creamy white sunblock.

Tony’s tattoos flared like melting neon on sunburned flesh. The woman had stripped off his shirt while he was unconscious. He figured he was out of it for a good long while. She must have drugged him at his house, slipped something into the kamikaze she mixed soon after he invited her inside.

Tony didn’t regain consciousness until she peeled the Colonel Sanders tattoo off his shoulder with a combat knife, and by that time it was too late. He was already wired to the tree.

His kidnapper had placed some kind of mask over his head. The mask had openings for his mouth, his eyes, and his nose. It was terribly hot, tight as a second skin, but for the most part the mask kept the sun off of his face.

Other parts of his body were painfully exposed. His naked chest had begun to blister. His arms burned, biceps and triceps fiery slabs of useless meat. In a strange way, it was the barbed-wire cuts that saved him. Dried blood wasn’t the best sunblock in the world, but it was doing its job. Anything was better than flesh roasted by unforgiving Mojave Desert sunshine.

Anything was better. . anything. . because pride was useless here. Without strength, pride couldn’t exist.

It didn’t exist.

“More water,” Tony whispered. “Please.”

The woman sighed and capped the bottle of sunblock. “Okay, but not too much. I don’t want you getting any ideas.” She smiled, walking toward him, the canteen sloshing with every step. “After all, you are the baddest man on the planet, and I’m just a weak and frail woman. I certainly wouldn’t stand a chance if you managed to get loose. Right?”

The kidnapper held the canteen just short of Tony’s torn lips. He wanted to tell her exactly what he’d do to her if he got loose. He wanted to say that he’d rip her limb from limb and piss on her corpse.

But Tony couldn’t say that at all. All he could say was, “Unnngh. . Wattttterrrrr. .”

“First things first. I asked you a question, Tiger. A girl like me, I wouldn’t stand a chance against the heavyweight champion of the whole wide world. Right?”

“You. . you would.” Tony said those words, all the while telling himself. Pride doesn ’t exist.