The Ten-Ounce Siesta

TWO

Jack lowered the limo window. “There are easier ways to get a dog, you know. You could always call the SPCA.”

The woman in black ignored the wisecrack. “You look kind of familiar. Didn’t you used to be somebody?”

“My name’s Jack Baddalach. I used to be the light-heavyweight champion of the world.”

“You don’t look like you’re exactly in fighting trim, Jack.”

Now it was Jack’s turn to ignore her. He set the Chihuahua on the seat and opened the door. ‘Take it slow” was all the woman said, and she kept the machine gun barrel aimed at Jack’s chest as he stepped from the limo.

The desert heat hit him all at once. Jack instantly missed the limo’s air-conditioned cocoon. As he closed the door, he glimpsed Spike burrowing under his leather coat. Jesus. Maybe the pooch knew something that its bodyguard didn’t. Jack hoped he wasn’t witnessing a display of canine precognition.

Sweat beaded on Jack’s forehead, but the heat didn’t seem to bother the woman. She stood there as cool as a tall glass of lemonade, watching his every move.

Jack took a final glance at the gas station before turning to meet the woman head on. He was hoping to catch sight of Pack O’ Weenies, but his view was obstructed by a rusted tire rack heaped with tangles of twisted metal. Whatever or whoever was behind the station would remain a mystery. At least for now.

Jack wondered what had happened to the driver. He wondered if the Modesty Blaise clone standing before him had already taken Pack O’ Weenies down. Or maybe she had some help. Maybe there were a couple others just like her behind the building. Maybe they were aiming machine guns at Pack right now. Maybe he was down on his knees with a gun barrel to the back of his neck, ready to feel the sizzle of hot lead through those pink weenies. Or maybe Pack was-

“The Chihuahua,” the woman insisted. “I don’t want to drag this out. Hand it over.”

“It’s not my Chihuahua.” Jack stepped toward the woman. “Spike belongs to a friend of mine. And the fact is that Spike’s a very sick puppy. He’s got lung cancer.”

“C’mon. Dogs don’t get lung cancer.”

“Yes they do. Canine lung cancer. It’s the number three killer of Chihuahuas. See, Chihuahuas have a very small lung capacity. Once they get it, it’s adios muchacho, PDQ.” Jack shot a thumb over his shoulder in Spike’s direction. “And the muchacho in question is about two syllables into ad-i-os.”

The woman’s upper lip jerked as if she were about to laugh. Then she cocked her head to one side, just the way a dog does when it doesn’t understand something. Jack stared at her sunglasses but couldn’t glimpse her eyes through the black carrion beetle lenses, and when his gaze returned to her lips they had clamped into place once more, transforming her mouth into a determined line the color of blood oranges.

“I still want the dog,” she said.

“All right.” Jack took another step toward her. “Maybe we can work something out. You got a wallet in those tight leather pants? Make me an offer. You’ll be wasting your money, but hey, that’s your problem, not mine-”

“That’s close enough.”

Jack took another step.

The machine gun jerked in her hands. “I said stop.”

This time Jack did as he was told. He kept his eyes on the machine gun and the braces she wore on her wrists. Braces covered with black velvet and lace.

“Turn around,” she said.

“Uh-uh. Never turn your back on a lady with a gun. That’s what my mama always told me.”

“You’re not carrying, are you?”

“Carrying?”

“A gun.”

“Not the last time I looked.”

“Maybe I’d better look for you.”

As she one-handed the machine gun and reached for him with her left hand, her right wrist dipped under the weight of the weapon. The gun barrel dipped as well, and it didn’t rise for several seconds.

Yeah. The braces weren’t for show. There was something wrong with the woman’s wrists. She might look like an Amazon, but she had a weakness.

“Arms in the air, Baddalach.”

Jack raised his arms, and her left hand eased over chest and explored his lats.

It occurred to Jack that she was playing with him. Enjoying herself. He smiled at her. Shrugged. And she smiled back.

“Pretty good, Jack. Pretty firm. About a forty-four, huh? At least when you’ve sucked a lungful of air and you’re all flexed up.”

Jack didn’t say anything. Her hand drifted lower, to his waist, lingering just above his belt.

“Thirty-two,” Jack said.

“In your dreams, Baddalach. Thirty-six, at least.”

She was only touching him with one long finger now, and that finger dipped below his belt-line.

Jack took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

The woman laughed. Jack opened his eyes. In her free hand, the woman held his cellular phone.

“I guess you won’t be needing this, Jack.”

“C’mon.” Jack reached for the phone, but she pulled away.

“Hey. . you’re wasting your time here,” he said. “You should listen to me. I know what I’m talking about. You don’t want this Chihuahua. The poor little fella’s really sick.”

The woman shook her head. The machine gun weaved a little in her right hand, the barrel dipping from Jack’s belly to his knee.

Braces or no braces, the weight of the gun was getting to her. If he could catch her just right. She was about the same height, maybe just a hair taller. If he could knock the machine gun out of her hand by smacking her on the wrist, and then clip her on the jaw with his fist-

The cellular phone rang.

The woman in black looked at it, amused.

“You expecting a call, Jack?”

That question was the understatement of the century as far as Jack Baddalach was concerned, but he wasn’t up to answering it at the present moment.

Jack was busy doing something else. As the woman in black’s lips parted and she spoke the final word of her question, Jack chopped the heel of his left hand against her right wrist. Her hand opened reflexively and the machine gun toppled from her grip. The right hook Jack launched a split second later began at his waist, and by the time it connected with the woman’s jaw it was traveling at a felonious velocity. She was biting off the last letter of that last word when the punch hit her, and her jaw snapped closed and the word came out shorter and much less sarcastically than she had intended. Her sunglasses flew off just as her eyes rolled up in her head, and she went down like a femme fatale Halloween costume dropped off a hanger, and she did not move.

The machine gun lay on her left. The phone on her right.

The phone rang again.

Jack snatched it up, reaching for the machine gun almost as an afterthought.

Gunfire stitched the air above his head.

The voice that followed was somehow more intimidating.

“Drop the gun, you miserable cocksucker.”

Forty-five years worth of Marlboros, who the fuck cares how many packs, but certainly enough unfiltered cancer sticks to heap several ashtrays Mount Everest high. Cutty Sark on the side, shots consumed per night averaging in the low double digits. An upper denture plate that didn’t quite fit no matter how much Poligrip she globbed over it. Vocal chords that had suffered the strain of a lifetime’s worth of tantrums, cat fights, and other assorted trials and tribulations.

All those factors had combined to create the voice Jack Baddalach heard behind him, and that was why it was more intimidating than the sound of gunfire.

Jack dropped the machine gun and turned to face the voice’s owner. She had come around from the back side of the gas station while Jack faced off with the woman in black. And in the time it took Jack to dance his little dance with the weak-wristed machine gunner, this woman had entered the limo and swept Angel Gemignani’s Chihuahua into her hands.

Her hands were sheathed in black leather. So was the rest of her. In fact, she might have been a twin to her weak-wristed counterpart if not for three factors that Jack could not ignore.

First off, there was her voice.

Second, she was wearing a jacket over her bikini top. But the jacket was obviously mostly for show, because she wore it unzipped to her navel.

It was the view Jack spied through that unzippered opening which lead him to difference number three. And that was the simple fact that this woman was much older than the one Jack had punched out. While the younger woman’s bikini top was fashioned from nothing but leather, this woman’s top was equipped with subtle lengths of supportive wire. The top itself was without question a cantilevered wonder that worked an amazing magic with the woman’s breasts. The breasts themselves were deeply tanned globes marred only by a fine dusting of wrinkles- the price often paid by lifelong sunbathers. And while some might remark that the woman’s breasts looked like full round grapefruits kissed too long by the warm California sun, even the most jaded observer would be forced to admit that these twin wonders were forced up and out in a way that was in equal parts startling, amazing, and dramatic, and if the image of youth and vitality impressed upon the viewer was indeed an illusion-a mere result of engineering acumen-then, in Jack Baddalach’s opinion, the device which provided said illusion was certainly worth every penny the woman had paid.

Jack looked at her face. Tanned skin taut on a skull blessed with a sharply dramatic bone structure, crowned with a bubble of heavily sprayed white hair that from a certain distance might be mistaken for a motorcycle helmet.

Of course, the sight of a little old lady in black leather wouldn’t have slowed Jack down for an instant, no matter how amazing her breasts were. No. Not when he had a Chihuahua to protect. What slowed Jack down were the two women who bookended the woman with the cantilevered grapefruit breasts.

Both were redheads. Both held machine guns exactly like the one Jack had so recently possessed. And both were dressed in black leather as well. Together the three women comprised an outlaw gang that would warm the heart of any cattleman-a whole lot of bovine flesh had obviously been shed so they could look way past dangerous.

Three dangerous gringas, and one not-so-dangerous senorita in a horizontal position behind Jack. For a second he imagined the four of them not as a gang of criminals, but as a Phil Spector girl group driven to desperate measures.

Jack was about ready to toss up his hands and ask where the Candid Camera crew was hiding. In fact, he almost certainly would do just that, and do it soon. But first he had a bit of unfinished business to attend to.

Because the cellular phone in his hand was still ringing.

Ringing insistently.

Jack raised his free hand, smiling at the women as if he finally got the joke.

“Don’t do it, cocksucker,” the old woman said, and she didn’t sound at all like Alan Funt.

The two younger women pointed their weapons at him.

A chill traveled Jack’s spine, the kind of chill he couldn’t ignore. Still, his hand closed around the speaker panel. Flip it open and he’d know. He had to know.

“I’ve been waiting a long time for a phone call,” Jack explained. “Almost a year. I think this might be it. I’ve got to find out.”

The old woman barked laughter. “Answer that phone and you’ll never find out anything, ’cause you’ll be deader’n a paraplegic’s dick before you so much as say howdy-do.”

The phone rang again. Spike squirmed in the old woman’s grasp, barking sharply, worried puppy eyes trained on Jack.

Jack hesitated. It was weird. Like being in some old Lassie movie or something, like the moment when Lassie warns Timmy just before the idiot falls down a mine shaft-

But Jack had to know. He had to answer the call.

Spike stared at him. No. That wasn’t right. Not at him. Behind him.

Jack turned and came nose to nose with the woman in black, sans sunglasses.

Man, her eyes were something. A real surprise. Clear blue and-

“Don’t just stand there!” the old woman yelled. “Take care of him!”

The young woman’s irises flashed like chiseled ice as she smashed the butt of her machine gun against Jack’s forehead.

He didn’t hear the telephone anymore.

But he did hear bells. .

. . as if some crazy Quasimodo was ringing in the New Year up there in his head.

Jack knew it was an illusion. Just as he knew that he could get a grip on reality if he could only open his eyes.

Open his eyes and he’d see Freddy G laughing. Pack O’ Weenies, too. And the Phil Spector girl group gang singing, backup band chugging to a “He’s a Rebel” beat. Oh, we had you going, Jack, they’d sing. We had you going, and good! Yeah. That was how it would be.

Jack tried mightily. His brain listed starboard as he got his right eye open, then to port as he raised the lid of his left.

They stood above him like some imposing female forest. Blurry as watercolors running in the bright sunlight that washed them from behind, but Jack could see them just as surely as he could smell all that black leather. Black leather scented with jasmine perfume.

He heard their voices. The younger woman spoke first, the one he’d punched out. Her voice was as smooth as leather and jasmine-sweet.

“I don’t want him to suffer, Mama.”

“If you would have done your job right, he’d be dead by now.”

“But Mama-”

“Don’t Mama me, girl.”

“But-”

A hard slap ended the conversation. Defeated, the younger woman moved away. Another figure replaced her, this one taller. . rangier. .

The stranger leaned over him. A male smell burned Jack’s nostrils-the minty stink of Ben-Gay laced with the sickly sweet odor of ginger ale and bourbon.

The old woman’s voice again: “Should I do him, Daddy?”

“Don’t waste a bullet, sugar pop. I got a better idea.” The man hovered over Jack, wheezing heavy bourbon breaths. Jack worked to see him clearly. He blinked several times and a gaunt face covered with jerky skin came into focus above him. Icy blue eyes wild with frostbitten fire were set beneath the man’s heavy brow as if pounded there with a sledge hammer. He wore a top hat and a frock coat and-

Jack’s eyelids fluttered. Focus was going. He was fading again.

Something was draped around the man’s neck.

Jack fought to remain conscious.

Something shiny encircled the man’s neck. Something slick, ends hanging free, like lengths of garden hose-

Like-

The man reached out, shedding wriggling shadows, his scarecrow arms laying midnight stripes across Jack’s body. And then the stranger’s bony fingers reached into the heavens and closed around a black cloud, and he pulled it down. . down. . and further still. . down. . until finally the cloud slammed closed over Jack Baddalach’s head.