John Varley - Red Thunder

“Now we told you when you checked in we didn’t allow dealing in this place, Homer,” Mom said. She waved the gun, indicating the door. “Y’all better pack your things and go.”

Homer just stared at her with his mouth slightly open. It looked like he had about a pound of powder on the desk. He was mixing it with baby laxative. The couple on the bed didn’t move, either.

At last Homer seemed to work it all out. He smiled, showing the two missing teeth I remembered from when I checked him and his scumbag friend in. He held up one of the little bags of dope.

“Don’t get your panties in a twist, sister. How ’bout a couple snorts of this?”

Mom didn’t hesitate. The gun came up and barked once, and the tiny plastic bag between his fingertips vanished. Fine white powder floated in the air like chalk dust. He stared at the empty space, once more too stoned to quite realize what had happened. All three of them [42] were doing the stupidest thing a dope dealer can do, which is sample the product. At the Blast-Off, we didn’t even get a very good grade of narcotics trafficker. And that’s a good thing, because with those dudes we’d have been in a gunfight, and those dudes carried more firepower.

Still no motion from anybody. I racked a round and raised the muzzle so it pointed at Homer’s chest. That sound, of the slide being worked on a shotgun, has the amazing ability to clear your mind. It sure helped with this bunch. All six hands reached for the sky. I moved away from the door and motioned to the two on the bed. They got up slowly, the girl reaching down to get some of her clothes from the floor.

“Uh-uh!” I shouted, scaring her badly. “Kick ’em over here.” She did, and I could see there was no weapon in them. The guy did the same. I kicked the stuff back at them, and they started to dress.

In no more than thirty seconds they had their stuff together, which was just a little clothing, the pound of coke, and some free-basing equipment in a cardboard box. They slunk out the door, giving both of us a wide berth. We followed them out and watched them down to their car, an unbelievably rusty ’60s model Oldsmobile station wagon almost full of bald tires and packrat junk. Aunt Maria came out of room 206 with a pair of sneakers wrapped in a dirty shirt. She threw it over the railing and it landed on the hood of the car. Homer glared up at us and gave us the finger, then backed out recklessly, put it in forward and tried to burn rubber on the way out. The car was too old for that, but it did put out an impressive cloud of white smoke.

“Now can I have the gun, Mom?”

“Where are you boys… sorry, where are you young men going?”

“Somewhere else to study,” I told her.

“It better not be some bar full of snow bunnies.”

“No way, Mrs. Garcia.”

“I’m serious. You guys come home plastered and you can sleep it off in a pool chair, ’cause I ain’t letting you in.”

“We’ll be good.”

“Manny, you clean that desk and flush the paper towels before you go.”

“I was just about to suggest that myself.” She looked at me hard, [43] trying to tell if I was kidding her again. Mom doesn’t have the world’s greatest sense of humor. At last she snorted, reached up and tousled my hair-and I wish she’d stop doing that-then took the Mossburg and headed back for the office and the gun safe.

“Hang on just a minute, Dak.” I took a roll of paper towels from the nearby maid’s cart and entered 206.

It still smelled of Homer and friends. I swear, there is a junkie smell, and if you’d smelled it as often as I have you’d never mistake it for anything else. It happens when they’ve been dusting or spiking for several years. I don’t know if it’s from lack of washing or something in their sweat. I’d smelled it on Homer, but if we turned away every person who might be using the room to fix in, we’d lose half our income. We have to pretty much overlook personal drug use, unless you get violent behind it. No selling, and no refining, that was our rule.

Twice we’d had to take down meth labs after they’d been running a few days. That’s a total disaster to a motel operator. Both times we’d had to simply seal up the room and never use it again. After those chemicals soak into the walls for a bit, you need a permit from the Environmental Protection Agency to open the room again. It cost thousands of dollars in cleanup, which we just didn’t have.

I went into the bathroom-every towel and washcloth filthy, and to look at them, you’d never have guessed they ever used a shower at all-where I soaked a handful of paper towels. Dak was looking down at the powder-covered desk.

“Don’t even think about it,” I said.

“I wasn’t.” He pretended to be offended. “That was some shooting.”

“Don’t tell her that, I have enough work keeping her out of trouble without you telling her what a great vigilante she is.”

“No need to get snippy.”

He was right. But I was feeling pretty awful, as I usually do when a thing like that is over. Mom doesn’t seem to have any fear in her at all, but I sure do.

There was half a dozen baby Ziplocs scattered on the floor, what they called dime bags. All of them had a pinch of powder in them. I gathered them up and Dak helped me move the desk to be sure there [44] wasn’t anything illegal back there. I flushed the bags and the paper towels, waited to be sure it was all gone.

“You better make a note, you don’t want no drug-sniffing dogs in this room.”

“Not for at least a year,” I agreed. “Now, do I have to frisk you, or can I trust that you didn’t pick up any of those dimes when I wasn’t looking?”

“Trust me.”

“Okay.” I turned and looked around, spotted the bullet hole about six feet up the wall. With the.22 there had been no chance of it passing through the wall into the next room. I stuck the desk pen in the hole, but the slug had fallen into the space between walls. I’d plaster and paint it that evening. No need to alarm guests with bullet holes in the walls. That could endanger our half-star Michelin rating.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

“Suits me. Let’s go someplace we can do this free blow.”

I threw the roll of paper towels at him but he was already out the door.

DAK’S FATHER OWNSa car repair business a mile down the road from us, four stalls with lifts. The big chains undercut him on lubes and oil changes and tune-ups, but his lot is always full because the people in the neighborhood know he can be persuaded to wait for full payment if you’re in a bind. He sells a lot of recap tires. He is considered to be a magician by the people at Motor Vehicles, who send him the cars nobody believes will ever pass the Florida emissions standards. He usually can patch them up enough to qualify for another year.

Behind the main repair shop there is a two-car garage that used to hold stacks of used tires but now sports a sign: DAKTARI’S CUSTOM SPEED SHOP. This was where Blue Thunder was conceived and born.

Dak turned down the narrow shell alleyway that ran beside the main building and we roared through it and stopped on the cracked concrete next to Blue. We were on a screaming red and yellow Honda trail bike with me perched uneasily behind him. I don’t know how girls can stand riding like that.

“See how you like that one,” Dak said, pointing to a nearly identical bike, but with different colors. It looked okay to me. I got on, started it, revved the engine, grinned at Dak. I had an old Suzuki for a few [46] months the previous summer until I sort of fell off and it wasn’t worth fixing. Okay, I totaled it, and it was a good thing I landed in a ditch or I might have been hurt bad.