The Ten-Ounce Siesta

FIVE

Jack unscrewed the Celica’s license plates and tossed them in the back of the Chevy Apache.

Angel sat behind the wheel of the truck. “Sure your car will be okay?”

Jack nodded. They had pushed the Celica off the main road. Tomorrow he would borrow a tow truck from his mechanic buddy, Pablo Morales, and retrieve the Toy. If anyone showed up at Hell’s Half Acre in the meantime. Jack didn’t want them connecting him to the bloodbath at the Lynch family compound through a broken-down Celica. That’s why he was taking the license plates.

Hidden among the yucca trees, the Toy would be safe. From above, the root beer foam paint job blended with the light Mojave earth. And hell, those rust spots on the hood made good camouflage. A couple more excuses like that and Jack would never paint the Celica.

Jack climbed into the Chevy and Angel gunned the engine. “How much further?”

“A mile. Maybe two.”

They bumped along in silence. The sun was rising outside Angel’s window. Jack studied her profile as she drove, her features haloed by the glow of the coming day.

Sunny and hot. That’s what daylight would bring to the Mojave Desert. Pushing a hundred degrees and pushing it hard.

Just another day in hell.

They shadowed an arroyo for a quarter of a mile. On the other side of the dry creek bed, a coyote padded along with a jackrabbit clenched in its muzzle. Angel pulled to a stop and watched the predator.

The coyote glanced at them but didn’t hurry its pace.

“Want me to keep driving?” she asked.

“No,” Jack said. “This should do it.”

Jack grabbed a shovel from the truck bed. He started to dig. And he started to sweat, too. The morning heat was baking him good.

He peeled off his T-shirt and kept at it. Angel sat on the hood of the Apache and watched him, picking at a hole in her jeans.

“You think anyone will ever find him?”

Jack almost laughed. “It’s a big desert, Angel. You don’t even want to know how many guys your granddad buried out here in the old days.”

Angel was quiet for a minute. “I guess it’s really no different than that coyote. Not really. Everything dies sooner or later. Today that jackrabbit took it hard. But one of these days, it’ll be the coyote’s turn.” She smiled the same peculiar smile Jack had seen before, the one devoid of pleasure. “And one of these days it’ll be our turn, too.”

“There’s a cheery thought.”

“I said one of these days.” She laughed. “But not fuckin’ today.”

“Amen.”

They hauled Tony Katt’s corpse from the truck bed. The heels of his boots dug trenches in the dirt as they dragged him to the grave and dropped him in. Nobody was going to find Tony out here. He would always be the heavyweight champion of the world who disappeared without a trace.

“You want to say anything?” Angel asked.

“Are you kidding?”

“Let me do it then.” She took the shovel from Jack.

Angel looked down, into the grave.

She said, “See you later, Mr. Coyote.”

Then she heaped the shovel with loose dirt and flung it into Tony Katt’s tattered face. Angel worked hard, and soon sweat poured off her the way it had poured off Jack, and the scent of Calvin Klein’s Obsession was gone gone gone. .

Angel Gemignani was doing what she needed to do, and she didn’t need any help from Jack Baddalach. He wandered along the arroyo. Once in a while he’d turn and look at his footprints. It didn’t matter how many times he looked; he was always surprised to see them there, following along behind him.

The sky was way past blue, the flip side of the indigo night. A lone jet trail split the heavens. Another load of tourists headed for the land of the dollar slot.

Jack walked among the yucca trees, looping back toward Angel. He kept expecting to come upon Pack O’ Weenies, wired to a tree.

He didn’t, of course. Who knew what had become of Harold Ticks? Jack wondered why he should even care.

Still, he thought about the bald-headed son of a bitch. Harold Ticks, bound with barbed wire, watching the sun rise, feeling the heat.

Pack O’ Weenies, roasting in the Mojave Desert.

All alone.

But Harold wasn’t roasting. Not at all.

He lay at the bottom of a mine shaft, the one that began in the Hell’s Half Acre Church of Satan.

After stabbing Harold in the back and hacking off his left thumb, Eden lit a kerosene lantern and pushed Harold down the tunnel in an old mining cart. Harold wasn’t stupid. He saw the handwriting on the wall. He tried to talk Eden out of it. He tried to figure out what was wrong with her. But Eden dumped him down a deep shaft before he even had a chance to say that he was sorry.

What he could possibly be sorry for, he didn’t know. After all, Eden was the one who had fucked everything up and cost them half a million bucks. She was the goddamn tater queen in a family full of goddamn spuds. But, hell, Harold couldn’t tell her that when she was about to dump him down a mine shaft. He was a little bit smarter than that. He would have apologized for anything if only Eden would let him remain above ground.

Creak! Dump! Wham! Not a chance, Harold.

Harold was cold. He’d lost a lot of blood. He knew that. And his back was busted. At least he thought it was. He couldn’t move his legs at all.

He couldn’t see anything in the dark, but he knew that he wasn’t alone. Sometimes he heard a whispering hiss that seemed very near his ear. And now and then he heard a stuttering rattle.

Harold didn’t like those sounds.

He tried not to think about them, but that was pretty hard. Because he had to think of something. He couldn’t just. . well, wait to die.

So he lay there at the bottom of a mine shaft, and he tried to think.

But only one thought entered his head, over and over, again and again.

Eden. . Eden. . Why. . Why?