The Boys from Santa Cruz

10

A dark green 1994 Jeep Cherokee with New Jersey plates pulled into an isolated rest stop off Highway 101 North between Geyserville and Cloverdale around 10:00 P.M. Saturday. Asmador, who’d nodded off in the driver’s seat of the BMW, was awakened by Sammael in time to see two humans climbing wearily out of the Cherokee, groaning and stretching. The male of the couple tweaked his crotch to relieve a wedgie, then they departed, bound for separate restrooms.

“You really think he looks like me?” Asmador said doubtfully.

“Near enough,” replied Sammael. “Nobody examines those driver’s license pictures closely anyway.”

“If you say so.”

“I just did.” Once again, the snarky Poison Angel got in the last word before vanishing.

Asmador climbed out of the BMW carrying the suitcase with the remainder of his cash and weed, leaving the Beemer unlocked behind him in the hope that someone would steal it. The male of the couple returned first and resumed his seat behind the wheel of the Cherokee. Asmador waited for the female to return and climb up into the passenger’s seat, then strode toward her with the suitcase in his left hand. “Excuse me,” he called, in a generic foreign accent. “Could you answer for me a qvestion?”

As he’d hoped, the woman rolled down her window, whereupon he drew his gun from inside his denim jacket and jammed it against the side of her head. “Don’t try anything stupid,” he told her husband. “All I need is a ride.”

Asmador was never sure whether they believed him or not, but in the end it didn’t matter. They followed orders with alacrity and died together, kneeling and holding hands, in a dark redwood grove three hundred yards off the side of Highway 128, somewhere between Boonville and Philo.