Norman Partridge - The Ten-Ounce Siesta

She closed the book and left the chapel, but she took the witch’s words with her.

The fat will fire and flare so bright.

Burn cinder and ash the center,

Satan’s hot breath rides the pale moonlight.

His strength, a demon, will enter.

The place was a warehouse filled with sets for porno movies. B amp; D stuff. . a trapeze. . lots of couches with peculiar stains. Jack didn’t even want to think about it.

The guy was holed up in a little office the size of a broom closet. He wore black Armani slacks and a shiny Lurex shirt, the kind you could use to wrap leftovers if you ran out of plastic wrap.

He didn’t even look up when Jack and Angel entered the room. “No more auditions today, Sheri,” he said. “Tell ’em I’m too tired.”

Jack said, “I think Sheri went home early.”

Angel nodded. “She looked kind of tired herself”

The guy looked up and saw their guns.

“Oh, Jesus. Whatever it is, I didn’t do it.”

Jack tossed the Little Bitches video onto the guy’s desk. “Jo, Amy, and Beth. We want to know where they live, and we want to know right now.”

The guy stared at the box. “I made this one last year. The girls have moved since then. They’re sisters. I know that much.”

Angel laughed. “You’re telling us that you don’t know where they went?”

“Yeah. . that’s what I’m saying. Jesus, they were a weird bunch. It wasn’t like I was going to send them Christmas cards or anything.”

“Weird how?” Jack asked.

“Every which way. The two older sisters were gun nuts. Real Soldier of Fortune centerfold girls. The younger one was okay, but she had problems, too. Carpal tunnel syndrome. It got so bad that she could hardly give a guy a hand job without whimpering, so I had to let her go-”

Jack laughed, and so did Angel. She said, “Do you believe this?”

“Not hardly,” Jack said.

The guy threw up his hands. “It’s true! I swear to God! Every word!”

“I don’t know.” Angel looked at Jack. He hardly recognized her with that stocking pulled over her head. Her features were all mashed up. She kind of looked like Ellen Barkin.

Angel said, “I guess we’re wasting our time. You want to go?”

“No.” Jack shook his head. “We’d better kill him first.”

“You want to do it?” Angel asked.

“No. I killed the last one.”

“No, you didn’t,” Angel insisted. “You killed a Komodo dragon. That doesn’t count. I killed the redhead.”

They looked at the guy. He was all thawed out under that plastic-wrap shirt, sweating like he’d just stepped out of a microwave.

Angel pointed her gun at the guy’s head. Jack aimed for the heart.

The guy nearly sprang out of his chair. “They live out in the fucking desert, okay? I’ve never been there, okay?”

“Never?” Jack cocked his Colt Python. “You sure about that?”

“Okay!” The guy sputtered. “Okay! I took Eden’s boyfriend some money one time. His name is Harold Ticks. I met him at this highway off-ramp. I got there early. He drove down this dirt road. He said that Eden and her sisters lived on some kind of ranch or something about forty miles out. Maybe fifty. But he didn’t invite me for a fucking visit. . Okay? I’ll draw you a fucking map if you want.”

Jack turned to Angel. “What do you think, partner?”

She smiled. “A map would be good.”

The sun was down, and the woman was gone.

And Tony Katt was conscious again. The doped-up feeling was almost gone. He had sweated it out or bled it out.

But that was dangerous, because Tony was beginning to feel the pain.

He knew he couldn’t take it once it hit him full force. He pulled at his bonds. Barbed wire tore his skin and he grunted but made himself pull again. Yucca leaves scratched his flesh and broke loose, skittering down the tree trunk. The great yucca groaned. . and pain seared Tony’s flesh. . pain he could feel. .

He eased off, sweating hard now, bleeding from fresh wounds. He sucked a deep breath through his mouth.

That was when he saw it. The canteen. His captor had left it by the tumbledown shack.

Maybe it was empty. Probably it was. But if it wasn’t. And if he could get to it. . oh, how he wanted a drink right now.

Tony closed his eyes. He could do this. He was the heavyweight champion of the world. Despite the broken nose, despite the tortures he had suffered while lashed to the tree, he was strong. He’d been training for six weeks. Running six or seven miles a day in the desert sun. Sparring with guys who could take your head off with a single punch. Pounding the bags, doing drills for speed and endurance. .

During that time, he thought he was training for a fight. Now he knew that he had been training for something else.

This was the main event. In this corner: Tony Katt. And across the ring, in the opposite comer: a fucking yucca tree.

And to the winner? Why, a canteen that might very well be empty.

Tony closed his eyes. In just a minute, he’d hear the bell, and he’d come out for round one.

But he didn’t hear a bell. He heard something else.

Some kind of screech.

Tony opened his eyes.

Above him, circling in the red sky, screeching. .

. . circling lower. . and lower still. .

Vultures.

By the time Jack and Angel reached the highway off-ramp, the sky was electric with colors usually only seen in tropical fish tanks.

Jack braked as the Celica reached the spot where pavement gave way to dirt. The windshield was dotted with dead insects, but the sunset was something to see. It painted the hood of the Celica in mirrored tones. The rust spots shone the way they sometimes did under the neon lights of Vegas, like deep pools of Captain Morgan’s spiced rum.

“Beautiful,” Jack said.

“Not now it isn’t,” Angel said. “But it will be later.”

“Later it will be gone.”

Jack punched the trip meter odometer and it registered at zero. The dirt road angled off in a straight line, spearing the great white nowhere called the Mojave Desert. The guy in the plastic-wrap shirt had said that the Lynch sisters lived forty or fifty miles out. Jack wanted to know when he was getting close to the place. He didn’t want the gang to know that he was coming. He didn’t want to stumble in with headlights blazing. If the moon cooperated, he might even drive the last five or ten miles without lights.

Jack shifted into first gear and started out. The first five miles were pretty smooth. Jack accelerated and cruised along in fourth gear, the tac running just a little bit lower than he would have liked.

Then the potholes started.

They weren’t bad at first-Jack held steady in third gear-but as sunset gave way to night the potholes became harder to see. Eleven miles from the highway. Jack took one hard. The front left shock screamed bloody murder, and Angel said, “Slow down, Jack. We’ll get there.”

“Okay,” Jack said. And then it was the low end of third or the high end of second, dodging potholes as they came.

Twenty miles of that and he had a stiff neck from gripping the wheel while the potholes bounced him around. The Celica sure didn’t have four-wheel drive. Not even close. Jack began to feel pretty stupid for bringing it.

“Maybe we should have brought your car, Angel.”

“Uh-uh. I’ve got a rental. Mazda Miata. It’s built low to the ground-a real highway hugger. We wouldn’t have made it this far.”

Five more miles and Jack abandoned third gear altogether. He remembered the Jeep Cherokee parked outside the porno guy’s studio. He wished he’d stolen the damn thing.