Norman Partridge - The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

Anshutes chuckled. “Sounds like you’ll have to buy a coat.”

“Go ahead and laugh. I’m talking double-digit degrees, partner. Sixty. Six-oh. And girls with skin like cocoa butter. If that’s not a big slice of paradise, I don’t know what is.”

“Get real, amigo. A guy with your record isn’t exactly a prime candidate for immigration. And our dollar isn’t worth shit up north, anyway.”

“Drop some luck into that equation.”

“Oh, no. Here we go again — ”

“Seriously. I can feel it in my bones. Something big is just ahead, waiting for us. I’m gonna take my cut from the ice cream job and hit the tables. I’m not walking away until I have a million bucks in my pocket.”

“Even God isn’t that lucky” Anshutes snorted. “And luck had nothing to do with this, anyway Planning did. And hard work. And a little help from a .357 Magnum.”

“So what are you gonna do with your money?” Coker asked sarcastically. “Bury it in the ground?”

“Depends on how much we get.”

“The way I figure it, we’re looking at something large. Forty grand, maybe fifty.”

“Well, maybe thirty.” Anshutes gnawed on it a minute, doing some quick calculations. “I figure the Push Ups will go for about fifty a pop. We got five cases of those. The Fudgsicles’ll be about sixty-five. Figure seventy-five for the Drumsticks. And the Eskimo Pies — ”

“A hundred each, easy,” Coker said. “Maybe even a hundred and twenty-five. And don’t forget — we’ve got ten cases.”

“You sound pretty sure about the whole thing.”

“That’s because I believe in luck,” Coker said. “Like the song says, she’s a lady. And she’s smiling on us. Right now. Tonight. And she’s gonna keep on smiling for a long, long time.”

Coker smiled, too. Screw Anshutes if he wanted to be all sour. “You know what we ought to do,” Coker said. “We ought to pull over and celebrate a little. Have us a couple of Eskimo Pies. Toast Lady Luck, enjoy the moment. Live a little — ”

“I’ve lived a lot,” Anshutes said. “And I plan to live a lot longer. I’m not going to play the fool with my money. I’m not going to blow it on some pipe dream. I’m going to play it smart.”

“Hey, relax. All I’m saying is — ”

“No,” Anshutes said, and then he really went verbal. “You’ve said enough. We’re in this to make some real money for a change. And we’re not gonna make it by pulling over to the side of the road, and we’re not gonna make it by toasting Lady Luck with an Eskimo Pie in the middle of the Mojave Desert, and we’re not going to make it by blowing our swag in some casino… ”

Anshutes went on like that.

Coker swallowed hard.

He’d had just about enough.

“I’m pulling over,” he said. “I’m going to have an Eskimo Pie, and you’re goddamn well going to have one with me if you know what’s good for you.”

“The hell I am!” Anshutes yanked his pistol. “You goddamn fool! You take your foot off the brake right now or I’ll — ”

Suddenly, Anshutes’ complaints caught in his throat like a chicken bone. Ahead on the road, Coker saw the cause of his partner’s distress. Beneath the ripe moon, knee-deep in heatwaves that shimmered up from the asphalt, a big man wearing a ten-gallon cowboy hat walked the yellow center line of the highway. He only had one arm, and he was carrying a woman piggyback — her arms wrapped around his neck, her long slim legs scissored around his waist. But the woman wasn’t slowing the big guy down. His pace was brisk, and it was one hundred and twenty-five degrees and the rangy bastard didn’t even look like he’d broken a sweat —

Coker honked the horn, but the cowboy didn’t seem to notice. “Don’t hit him!” Anshutes yelled. “You’ll wreck the truck!”

Anshutes closed his eyes as Coker hit the brakes. Tires screamed as the ice cream truck veered right and bounded along the shoulder of the road. Gravel rattled in the wheel wells and slapped against the undercarriage like gunfire, and Coker downshifted from fourth gear to third, from third to second, ice cream visions dancing in his head, visions of Drumsticks and Push Ups bashing around in the refrigeration unit, visions of broken Fudgsicles and mashed Eskimo Pies…

Visions of Lady Luck turning her back…

The electric engine whined as he shifted from second to first and yanked the emergency brake. The truck seized up like a gutshot horse, and the only thing that prevented Coker from doing a header through the windshield was his seat belt.

Coker unbuckled his belt. Anshutes set his pistol on the seat and fumbled with his seat belt. Coker grabbed the .357 and was out of the cab before his partner could complain.

The hot asphalt was like sponge cake beneath Coker’s boots as he hurried after the man in the ten-gallon hat. The cowboy didn’t turn. Neither did the woman who rode him. In fact, the woman didn’t move at all, and as Coker got closer he noticed a rope around her back. She was tied to the cowboy. Coker figured she was dead.

That was bad news. Two strangers. One alive, one dead. Snake eyes. A jinxed roll if ever he saw one.

Bad enough that the cowboy had nearly killed him. But if he’d put the jinx on Coker’s luck —

Coker aimed at the ripe moon and busted a round. “Turn around, cowboy,” he yelled. “Unless you want it in the back.”

The cowboy turned double-quick, like some marching band marionette. The one-armed man’s face was lost under the brim of his ten-gallon hat, but moonlight splashed across his torso and gleamed against his right hand.

Which was wrapped around a pistol.

“Shit!” Coker spit the word fast and fired another shot. The bullet caught the cowboy in the chest, but the big man didn’t even stumble. He didn’t return fire, either… and Coker wasn’t going to give him the chance.

Coker fired again, dead center, and this time the bullet made a sound like a marble rattling around in a tin can.

The cowboy’s chest lit up. Neon rattlesnakes slithered across it. Golden broncos bucked over his bulging pecs. Glowing Gila monsters hissed and spread their jaws.

Three broncos galloped into place.

The cowboy’s chest sprung open like the batwings on an old-fashioned saloon.

Silver dollars rained down on the highway.

And the cowboy kept on coming. Coker couldn’t even move now. Couldn’t breathe. Oh man, this wasn’t a jinx after all. This was the moment he’d been waiting for. This was the omen to end all omens. All of it happening in the blink of an eye.

One more blink and he’d see things clearly. One more blink and the future would turn up like a Blackjack dealt for high stakes —

But Coker couldn’t blink. He couldn’t even move —

Anshutes could. He stepped past his partner, scooped up a silver dollar as it rolled along the highway’s center line. The cowboy kept on coming, heading for Anshutes now, but Anshutes didn’t twitch. He waited until the big man was within spitting distance, and then he slipped the coin between the determined line of the advancing cowboy’s lips.

Immediately, the cowboy’s gunhand swept in an upward arc.

Then he stopped cold.

Anshutes scooped a handful of silver dollars off the road and tossed them at Coker.

“Guess you’ve never heard of a one-armed bandit,” he said.

Coker’s jaw dropped quicker than a bar of soap in a queer bathhouse. Anshutes sighed. Christ, being partnered up with this starry-eyed fool was something else.

“The cowboy here’s a robot,” Anshutes explained. “Comes from a casino called Johnny Ringo’s, named after the gangster who owns the place. Ringo himself came up with the concept for an ambulating slot machine, hired some ex-Disney imagineers to design the things. They walk around his joint twenty-four hours a day. You’d be surprised how many idiots feed dollars into them. I guess they all think they’re lucky… just like you.”