Colleen Collins - Let It Bree

“Good.” If it was in the book, it was close to Denver. So the girly and the bull had hopped a ride to a nearby town. Sweet. “Check which highway leads to it.”

“Right.” After a pause filled with more smacking, Shorty announced, “Twenty-five north to thirty-six to one ninety-three to one nineteen.”

“I said which highway, not how high can you count.” No sweat. They’d spent a chunk of today on the I-25 highway, and Louie remembered signs to highway 36. The rest was chump change.

He started the engine.

“Lou?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll use da ashtray next time.”

If Louie has his way, there’d be no next time with Shorty. Fortunately, this job would wrap up soon. All Louie had to do was steal the frickin’ bull and cart it to a rendezvous point outside Lubbock, Texas. There, they’d hook up with a go-between who’d pay them their dough and take the bull off their hands.

Louie’d never messed with a bull before, but after being told his take would be a cool half a mil, he figured he could dance with the beast if he had to. Besides, he’d done some studying. Brahmans looked tough, but were for the most part temperate-like.

Sorta like himself, he figured.

Louie turned the wheel and steered down a side street. He could almost smell his cut of the loot, a scent sweeter than his mama’s spicy grilled sausages and peppers. With his take, Louie would fulfill his dream to escape Trenton and buy a boat in the Keys. Spend the rest of his days catching big fish, drinking strong whiskey and loving lusty women. Big, tanned, lusty women. The kind who overfilled a bikini and overloved a man…

Feeling a rush of rare benevolence, Louie finally answered Shorty. “Yeah, just ‘member we got an ashtray.”

A match sizzled as Shorty lit his cigarette, making a great show of tossing the blown-out match in the ashtray.

Louis held out his hand for a cig.

“Thought you’d quit.”

“I did.”

“Then why you want a cig?”

“I need to chew something.”

A bit too quickly, Shorty tossed a cigarette which Louie caught in midair. He ran his nose along the white cylinder, inhaling the pungent scent of tobacco. Squeezing the spongy filter between his teeth, he said, “We’re on our way to findin’ Mr. Money Bull.”

“Mr. Money Bull,” Shorty repeated, blowing out a stream of smoke. “I won’t letcha down, Lou. We’ll get that bull to Texas, wrap up da deal and never have to work again for the rest of our lives.”

Louie grinned, enjoying a whiff of secondhand smoke. Never have to work again. He could smell the sea breezes now. Could feel the hot sun on his skin, the sweet sting of whiskey on his tongue. And when he got tired of the tanned, lusty women, maybe he’d invite wifey number three down for a visit.

Hell, if Shorty did good and helped pull off this job without any more glitches, maybe Louie’d give him visiting rights, too.

“WELL, I’ll be dam—”

“I didn’t hear that!” Mattie stuck her head out the kitchen door.

Ida didn’t look. Being seventy-five years old had its prerogatives, and one of them was enjoying words of the bluer variety. But forget explaining that to her daughter Mattie. Hell, it was still a mystery to Ida how she’d raised such a rule-fixated puritan as Mattie. Good thing she lived next door and not under the same roof with Ida and her granddaughter Bree.

“Hush!” Ida held up a gun barrel, motioning for silence. To the TV, she said, “All right, muffin, let’s have a dose of straight talk.”

Mattie stepped into the living room, wiping a dinner plate with a dishrag. “You watch too many gangster flicks,” she continued. “You sound more like a gun moll than a respectable senior citizen. And how many times have I told you not to clean your pistols in the living room! What if company dropped by, saw weapons strewn all over and told the deputy sheriff? After that incident in the Buffalo Lodge, you swore you’d never again—”

“Hush!” Ida waved the gun barrel again. “They’re talkin’ about my granbaby.”

“My niece Bree’s on the news?” Mattie clutched the chipped china plate she’d been drying to her chest. “Did…Valentine…win?”

The pert, auburn-haired newscaster talked earnestly to the camera. “…reportedly the bull was stolen after winning the grand champion prize, which is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to the seller—potentially millions to the buyer. This story is about more than a big bull. It’s about big money.”

The TV reporter checked something on a piece of paper. “Police say the alleged thief was wearing brown boots, blue jeans and a blue-and-white checkered shirt.”

Mattie gasped. “That sounds like the outfit Bree picked out for the competition—”

“Police have issued an all points bulletin,” continued the announcer, “for the alleged thief and the bull, which has a white heart on its right rear flank—”

“That’s our Valentine, all right!” Ida blurted, standing. “They think my granbaby stole Valentine! What’s wrong with those city slickers in Denver? Big-city smog go to their brains?” She mulled this over for a moment. “Ya know, Bree had a verbal agreement with that Bovine Best outfit…wonder if that implied contract is being misinterpreted by these media jerks. They’re conveniently forgetting the word implied and making it appear Bree broke a contract and stole Val.” After barking a few choice expletives at the TV, she said, “I gotta go find Bree—clear up this mess!”

Ida snapped the revolver chamber into place with a click. “Gotta grab my coat and boots—it’s butt-freezin’ cold this time of year.”

“What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?” asked Mattie, her face pinched with irritation.

“While I’m getting dressed, find my keys, wouldja?” She glanced around the room. “I’ll need my holster, too.”

“Mother! You’re not driving that…that death trap to Denver!”

“My pickup ain’t no death trap. Just fixed the brakes last year. Where’d I kick off my boots? Oh, there they are.”

“You can’t get the bull into the pickup—”

“Hell, I know that. Bree ’n’ I’ll figure out how to get the bull home.” Ida slipped her tiny feet into a pair of cream-colored boots with purple trim.

“I’d…I’d go with you, but I have three sons to look after.”

“I know, honey pie. Now stop frettin’ and help your sweet ol’ mama get ready.”

Mattie made an exasperated sound. “Does my sweet old mama have to carry a gun?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“To shoot people with, sweetheart.”

“We’re in a family crisis and you’re quoting from those…those bad-guy videos!”

“The Fallen Sparrow, 1943, John Garfield. Who wasn’t a ‘bad guy,’ just a lost soul.” Ida paused.

“And them’s not just ‘flicks.’ Them’s words to live by.” She headed down the hallway. “Grab that bag of chips and a few apples. Meet you at the pickup,” Ida yelled over her shoulder.

“VAN WON’T START,” Kirk said, trying to sound calm. One hell of a feat considering a beast’s massive, horned head nearly hung over the front seat, mere inches from the right side of Kirk’s face.

Kirk reminded himself, again, that the girl said this animal was “intelligent” and “sweet-tempered.”

“We’re stuck?” asked the cowgirl. “We just got in!”

The bull released a hefty snort as though seconding her comment.

Man, that bull had bad breath. “I thought we had enough gas to make it to the station, but I was wrong.”

Wind whistled past. Clouds were creeping across the night sky, blotting out part of the moon. Kirk swore a coarse bull whisker brushed the side of his face. Was this monstrous thing hungry?