Norman Partridge - The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

“This thing’s a robot ?” Coker asked.

“That’s what I said.”

“Why’d it stop moving?”

“’Cause I fed it a dollar, genius.” Anshutes pointed at the machine’s lone arm, which was raised in the air. “The Cogwheel Kid here can’t do anything until I make my play. I have to pull his arm to set him in motion again. Then those neon wheels will spin, and either he’ll cough up some dough or start walking, looking for another mark. Unless, of course, your bullets dug a hole in his motherboard, in which case who knows what the hell he’ll do.”

Coker blinked several times but said nothing. To Anshutes, he looked like some stupid fish that had just figured out it lived in a tank. Blink-blink-blinking, checking out the big bad pet shop world that lurked beyond the glass.

“It’s an omen,” Coker said finally. “A sign — ”

“Uh-uh, buddy. It’s called the Mojave Two-Step.”

“The Mojave what?”

“The Mojave Two-Step.” Anshutes sighed. “Here’s what happened. This little lady crossed Johnny Ringo. Who knows what the hell she did, but it was bad enough that he wanted to kill her good and slow. So he tied her to one of his walking slots, and he pointed the damn thing west and turned it loose. It’s happened before. Just a couple months ago, one of these things trudged into Barstow with a dead midget tied to its back. Leastways, folks thought it was a midget. A couple weeks under the Mojave sun is liable to shrink anyone down to size.”

“Jesus!” Coker said. “How does Ringo get away with it?”

“He’s rich, idiot. And that means you don’t mess with him, or anything to do with him or he’ll kill you the same way he killed this girl — ”

Right on cue, the girl groaned. Annoyed, Anshutes grabbed her chin and got a look at her. Blue eyes, cold as glaciers. Surprisingly, she wasn’t even sunburned.

Anshutes huffed another sigh. There wasn’t any mystery to it, really. They weren’t that far from Vegas. Twenty, maybe thirty miles. Could be that Ringo had turned the robot loose after dark, that the girl hadn’t even been in the sun yet. Of course, if that was the case it would make sense to assume that the robot had followed the highway, taking the most direct route. Anshutes didn’t know what kind of directional devices Ringo had built into his walking slots, but he supposed it was possible. There wasn’t anything between Vegas and Barstow. Nobody traveled the desert highway unless they absolutely had to. Even if the robot stuck to the road, it was an odds on cinch that the girl would wind up dead before she encountered another human being.

The girl glanced at Anshutes, and it was like that one glance told her exactly what kind of guy he was. So she turned her gaze on Coker. “Help me,” she whispered.

“This is too weird,” Coker said. “A woman riding a slot machine… a slot machine that paid off on the road to Vegas. It is an omen. Or a miracle! Like Lady Luck come to life… like Lady Luck in the flesh — ”

“Like Lady Luck personified,” Anshutes dropped a hand on his partner’s shoulder. “Now you listen to me, boy — what we’ve got here is a little Vegas whore riding a walking scrap heap. She doesn’t have anything to do with luck, and she isn’t our business. Our business is over there in that truck. Our business is a load of ice cream. Our business is getting that ice cream to Vegas before it melts.”

Coker’s eyes flashed angrily, and Anshutes nearly laughed. Seeing his partner go badass was like watching a goldfish imitate a shark.

“You’d better back down, boy,” Anshutes warned.

Coker ignored him. He untied the young woman’s wrists and feet. He pulled her off of the Cogwheel Kid’s back and cradled her in his arms, and then he started toward the ice cream truck.

Anshutes cleared his throat. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Even if she’s not Lady Luck, this lady’s hurting,” Coker said. “I think she deserves an ice cream. Hell, maybe she deserves two. Maybe I’ll let her eat her fill.”

Anshutes didn’t answer.

Not with words, anyway.

He raised the sawed-off shotgun he’d stolen from the ice cream man, and he cocked both barrels.

Coker said, “You think you’re pretty cool, don’t you?”

“Cooler than Santa’s ass,” Anshutes said.

“And you’ll shoot me if I give the lady an ice cream?”

“Only way she gets any ice cream is if she pay for it.”

Coker turned around. “How about if I pay for it?”

“I don’t care who pays. You, the little whore, Lady Luck or Jesus Christ. As long as I get the money.”

“That’s fine.” Coker smiled. “You’ll find your money on the road, asshole.”

“What?”

“The jackpot. The money I shot out of the slot machine. It’s all yours.”

‘You’re crazy.”

“Maybe. But I’m gonna buy me a shitload of ice cream, and this little lady’s gonna eat it.”

Coker set the girl down at the side of the road, peeling off his shirt and rolling it into a pillow for her head. Then he walked over to the truck and opened the refrigerated compartment.

“No Eskimo Pies,” Anshutes said. “Let’s get that straight.”

“I’m getting what I paid for,” Coker said.

Anshutes shook his head. What a moron. Ponying up fistfuls of silver dollars, just so some little Vegas whore could lick a Push Up. If that was the way Coker wanted it, that was fine. In the meantime, Anshutes would make himself some money, and Lady Luck wouldn’t have jack to do with it. Hell, for once hard work wouldn’t have jack to do with it either. For once, all Anshutes had to do to make some money was bend over and pick it up.

Silver dollars gleamed in the moonlight. Anshutes put down the shotgun. Not that he was taking any chances — he made sure that the weapon was within reach as he got down to work, filling his pockets with coins.

Behind him, he heard the sound of the refrigerator compartment door slamming closed. Coker. Jesus, what an idiot. Believing that some Vegas slut was Lady Luck. Personified.

Anshutes had told the kid a thousand times that luck was an illusion. Now he realized that he could have explained it a million times, and he still wouldn’t have made a dent. The kid might as well be deaf. He just wouldn’t listen —

Anshutes listened. He heard everything.

The sound of silver dollars jingling in his pocket, like the sound of happiness.

But wait… there was another sound, too.

A quiet hum, hardly audible.

The sound of an electric engine accelerating.

Anshutes turned around fast, dropping coins on the roadway. The ice cream truck was coming fast. The shotgun was right there on the double yellow line. He made a grab for it.

Before he touched the gun, the ice cream truck’s bumper cracked his skull like a hard-boiled egg.

Kim felt better now.

A couple Eskimo Pies could do that for a girl.

“Want another?” the guy asked.

“Sure,” Kim said. “I could probably eat a whole box.”

“I guess it’s like they say: a walk in the desert does wonders for the appetite.”

The guy smiled and walked over to the ice cream truck. She watched him. He was kind of cute. Not as cute as Johnny Ringo, of course, but Johnny definitely had his downside.

She sat in the dirt and finished her third pie. You had to eat the suckers fast or else they’d melt right in your hand. It was funny — she’d left Vegas worse than flat broke, owing Johnny twenty grand, and now she had three hundred bucks worth of ice cream in her belly. Things were looking up. She kind of felt like a safe-deposit box on legs. Kind of a funny feeling. Kind of like she didn’t know whether she should laugh or cry.