Chapter 29

Table of Contents

The Love Machine clunked and clattered its way uphill toward the crusty caravan of off-road vehicles blocking the heavily rutted road ahead. The straining motor backfired and threw out a puff of noxious white smoke from the tailpipe, making Tony wonder how many other people, those making a pilgrimage up here to admire the pristine glory of mother earth, were gross polluters like him. Then he saw the size of the conclave ahead and wondered if he should be worrying instead about making a U turn back down the hill. He feared no man but hell, you had to pick your battles.

The decision came a little too late. He was getting old, he was losing his instincts. Just as he swung the wheel to begin heading in the opposite direction, in his rearview he saw that three other members of the Freedom Frontiersmen had already worked around behind him, blocking his retreat.

"Mother fuckers," he growled. Oh well, he would just have to bluff his way out. Wouldn't be the first time.

Of course,Eddy was standing on the roadside ahead, smiling and smacking his chewing gum open mouthed, revealing magnificent dental work. Tony pulled up along beside him and put on a fearless grin to match, then rolled down the window for a fist pump.

"Well, well, well." Eddy beamed. "Look who turned up. Fancy meeting you here."

"Yeah, fancy that. What up homey."

"You're a hard man to find when you want to be. Going camping?"

"What, are you the forest ranger now? Is this a convention for people trying to conserve water, let's save the planet by never taking a bath? Aren't you kiddies a little far from your usual playground?"

As usual, Eddy's smile was relentless and disarming. "Tony, Tony, Tony you always was the clever one, wasn't you. What I wouldn't give for your gift of gab. I would have been G Gordon Liddy or F Scott Fitzgerald, or whoever that famous lawyer is who only uses his initials."

"I think you mean F Lee Bailey," Costello said from the sidelines.

"That's it, that's the one, thank you for that," said Eddy, but his grin turned down its volume just a little. "So where were you going, Tony?"

"I was heading up north toward Nunya."

"Nunya? Whereś that?

"You know, Nunya fucking business!" They both laughed hysterically, all the while Tony thinking what a pendejo this guy was for falling for that tired joke about 30 years after it first came out. Then the laughter petered out, and Eddy stood there looking at him.

"Well?" he asked.

"Well what?"

"Well where were you going?"

"I told you. You want me to repeat the same stupid joke? What are you, the cops, pulling Mexican guys over just because they're out driving around, looking at the scenery? You guys aren't the only ones who get to go camping. You know who camped here first, right here in this same spot?"

Eddy grinned and popped his gum. "I give up. Who camped here?"

"Cochise," Tony said with dead seriousness. "Mother fucking Cochise."

Eddy put his hand on the Love Machine and leaned in closer. "You're telling me mother humping Cochise parked it right here to go camping?"

"Yeah, he parked his Winnebago right over there where that asshole is standing, defiling sacred ground. I'm half Apache, you know. I got a right to be here, but you mother fuckers are seriously pissing off the thunder gods by polluting their sacred mountain."

Eddy had no desire to be talked off point like this. "You're half Apache and I'm straight outta Compton. Look Tony, we got some things to discuss."

"Like what?"

"Like your critter collection, for starts."

"What, you a game warden now too? What do you care about my critters?"

"Oh, I am intensely interested in all the wonders of the natural world. And I overheard somewhere you added a new critter to your collection, recently."

Tony considered. "I did get a new critter, as a matter of fact. It's called a Catalina Eddy bug. It's a worm that shits out of its mouth then tries to crawl up your asshole."

Eddy took his hand off the Love Machine and leaned back. "Well, I imagine it's awful lonely in the desert for those Catalina Eddy bug, just looking for a cozy dark place where they can get out of the sun. Put yourself in their shoes, except they ain't got shoes because they're worms! But I'm thinking more along the lines of two-legged critters. Have any two-legged critters come crawling out of the desert around where you are?"

"Where I am? I'm here, in case you didn't notice. And if you don't mind, I think I'll be leaving. I'm not in the mood for camping anymore. You guys fuck up the scenery."

Eddy leaned in again. "How inhospitable, not to mention anti social, that you don't want to share these grand vistas of our lovely planet with these humble working people gathered here. But perhaps I should have been more specific. This two-legged critter would have crawled out of the desert a few months ago, while you were still a resident of Cornudo's newly remodeled hospitality establishment, the Gasden Motel. Come on Tony, tell us where the kid is. I think you’re hiding him somewhere with you.”

“I’m not into that sicko human trafficking shit. Why don’t you ask someone who is. Why don’t you ask your jefe Danny.”

Eddy grimaced. Any implication that he was not his own man rankled him.

“I have spoken to your brother about the matter, under the auspices of our mutual partnership. Mr. Valero assures me he knows nothing about any such child. He has his feelers everywhere around Cornudo, and the child is not there. Which means, he is probably under your tender care. Strikes me as odd that you would up and take a vacation, right about the time news of this kid comes out. Where is he?”

“Everything about you strikes me as odd. I don't know what you're talking about. I'm out of here." Tony grabbed the wheel of the Love Machine, but Eddy reached in and shut the engine off. Tony reared back and punched Eddy in the chin, but in the confined space couldn't get any extension. Eddy staggered but did not fall. His smile grew even broader.

"Well now we're going to have some fun. Get him out of there, boys!"

The militiamen of the Freedom Frontier stormed the Love Machine to do their patriotic duty. Tony bit, kicked, grabbed for testicles and poked at eyeballs, but was overwhelmed by sheer numbers. The Freedom Frontiersmen pulled Tony out by the legs, then stood him up with his face against the side of the Love Machine. Looking upon Tony in this helpless posture, Eddy once more began to pontificate.

"Such a shame we can't all be friends and help one another when need arises. I'm afraid the good Lord looks down upon his little children and weeps in times such as these, when we have to play rough to get results."

Tony's heavy breath drew little halos of condensation against the chassis of the Love Machine that instantly evaporated into the thirsty desert air. He continued to struggle and kick and curse, but there were at least five goons with a hand on him, and a dozen more forming a ring around his body, lest he should try to bite his way out, which he was known to do.

"Now let's see," said Eddy. "I believe we had some unfinished business to attend to, from the last time we were camping in this shady vale. Drop his britches, boys!"

"Get your hands off of me you fucking faggits!" Tony roared, but the Freedom Frontiersmen were already unfastening his belt and unsnapping his trousers, whooping in anticipation.

Eddy stood with a huge bulge in his khaki shorts, being clearly up for the occasion, but like the revival preacher he once had been, he had to fire up the faithful before the come to Jesus moment. "Let's see, what was that Star Wars movie where that smartest man in the world put some kind of alien bug in that dude's brain to get him to talk? I think we'll do something like that here, except we'll stick the bug up his butt. Then maybe he'll talk."

Eddy began to undo his belt. Costello rolled his eyes. "It was Star Trek Wrath of Khan. I think you're trying to say the most interesting man in the world, not the smartest man in the world, except it wasn't him either, it was Ricardo Montalban. Ricardo Montalban died in 2009. The most interesting man in the world is Johnathan Goldsmith. You got to be careful with that kind of stuff. You offend people and stereotype ethnic groups."

Eddy´s hands stalled on his zipper, which he had been in the process of pulling down. "Goldsmith? You mean to tell me the most interesting man in the world is a Jew? Hold him down good, boys."

"I'm going to chop off your testicles slowly, you goddam homo," Tony hissed through his clenched teeth.

"Now now Tony," Eddy said in a soothing voice. "I just want you to know we are strictly opposed to sodomy as a general rule, and only employ it as a last resort to punctuate a point. I think you will find that it only hurts the first time. If you have been going to the doctor for your annual finger wave, as recommended by current medical guidelines for men your age, that should ease the transition significantly. I don't think this will last long. There's something about you that gets me real excited."

The men of the FF screeched and hollered, waving their weapons like a band of mujaheddin atop a captured Soviet tank. Eddy finished pulling down his pants, and had just placed his member against Tony's bare cheeks when a warning rose from the throng.

"Border Patrol!" the cry sounded.

Three jeeps were driving up the hill, flashing lights.

"Where the hell did they come from?" Eddy grudgingly retracted his zipper. "Somebody tipped them off. Let him up!"

The Freedom Frontiersmen released their grip on Tony, who slid his own pants into place before turning a threatening scowl toward Eddy.

"Now Tony," said Eddy. "we don't have to get law enforcement involved in our misunderstandings.”

"Don't worry," Tony answered. He had murder in his eyes. "I'm going to kill all of you myself, one by one. Law enforcement will only get in the way. They will want me to respect your civil rights, and I don't plan on doing that. The more I violate your civil rights, the better it will be. You’ll wish it was just a butt fucking, when I get done.”

The three jeeps parked so they could block the escape of the FF. Six agents got out, wearing only sidearms. Their firepower looked pathetic alongside that of the Frontiersmen, but the FF wasn’t dumb enough to shoot at Federal agents.

"What's going on here?" asked Hal Owen, looking like Spud Webb playing point guard on the all undersized NBA first team.

"Morning, Hal," said Eddy, keeping his hands down in his pants to cover his persistent wood. "Funny how we keep meeting like this. You're an awful long way from Yuma, aren't you?"

Hal didn't answer. His grim face indicated that he would prefer to ask the questions. Eddy went on. “We were just having a little picnic, officer. A regular multicultural picnic with our friend Tony here. The Freedom Frontiersmen is all about multiculturalism.”

Hal rubbed his beard stubble and surveyed the unbathed riff raff around him. "It looks like more of a lynching to me. What happened?" he asked Tony.

"Oh, we really were having a fucking picnic," Tony said.

"Well gentlemen, I hate to rain on your little picnic, but as a Federal officer on Federal land, I am going to ask you all to leave. There’s a high fire danger today. No picnicking. Clear it out."

"You got it, big man," said Eddy, but he gave Tony a cross-eyed we'll talk later look.

As the militiamen groaned, cursed and spat their way into their various conveyances, Hal leaned into Tony, who was sitting on the front seat of the Love Machine with his legs hanging out the door. The word Love in the car's moniker had almost taken on a new meaning, but he was just glad these fuckers had not found the kid. The other kid, Mike, must be keeping him safe. Maybe the pussy-whipped bastard had more brains than he gave him credit for. "Don't get too close," Tony warned Hal. "I've had enough with dudes leaning all over me today. I don't want to throw up on your spit-shined shoes. But my asshole thanks you it is still a virgin."

"Listen Tony," Hal said softly. "I'm going to escort you down this hill, then I'm going to give you a head start to Mexico. You got to go down there and hide."

"What are you talking about? I ain't going to Mexico. I ain't done nothing wrong. Let that faggit baboon go to Mexico. Hopefully they'll butt rape him down there, just the way he likes."

The volume of Hal's voice lowered still more. "They've got your fingerprints on the tarp they took off the dead body of that woman they found in the desert. And your DNA is on it too."

Tony squinted - not from sunlight, but from bullshit.

"Dude, I was framed. Somebody stole that tarp out of the back of the kid's truck. It has my DNA because of, you know, reasons of personal intimacy. But I didn't kill nobody. You know that, or you wouldn’t give me a head start.”

"I do know that," said Hal. "That's why I'm giving you this chance to run. AZ Public Safety is going to railroad you. You've got to get out now."

"Well ain't that some shit," Tony complained. He pulled himself into the car completely and shut the door. "This sucks."

"Only for a little while. We'll clear your name."

"Fuck off," said Tony, smiling as he flipped his friend a good natured bird, before turning the vehicle back down the hill.

"That's the spirit," said Hal.

As he bumped and jostled his way back to the highway, Tony's mind raced with plans on how he was going to evade the law. The Love machine had good clearance, but a very weak suspension. Each violent rut ended with Tony coming down hard on his rear end, causing his outraged ssshole to pucker defensively.

Tony wallowed in a lukewarm pool of uncharacteristic self-pity. His whole life he had been kicked around from place to place, swept out at the point of a boot like a stray dog. Since his mother died he had only been half-ass accepted by her kinfolk, tolerated like a bastard waif that had crawled in from the desert. Had he, in fact, crawled in from the desert? People had told him, mostly drunken assholes in bars who had come out on the losing end of a battle of wits or fists, that his mother was not even his mother. She had found him wrapped up inside a clump of cactus. Or a coyote had dragged him in from the creosote by the scruff of the neck. The legends about him abounded, and he had never denied them, because they enhanced his mystique. Some of the older Mexican viejas even crossed themselves when he passed by, murmuring that he was a demon from the desert. Some of these busybody old women avered that a particularly hot southern wind had impregnated his mother, who was probably a witch.

These questions about his parentage, or lack thereof, had given Tony a fuck you attitude toward everybody.

He didn't have time to think about that now. Fiddle-dee-dee, he would think about that tomorrow. Right now, he had to come up with an escape plan. Sadly enough, he couldn't cross the border in the loveless Love Machine. Every law enforcement agency from here to Texas had his plates and would be looking for him. Luckily, he knew of an abandoned drug tunnel in Santa Cruz county, once used by his brother before the heat started spying on it. He would park the Love Machine in the rickety aluminum warehouse where the tunnel started, then crawl through to Mexico.

But shit, he just couldn't leave without warning Mike to be careful, could he? For some reason, Eddy was on the prowl for the Little Fucker. Why was that? Why should he care about the boy? Because he and his merry band of fudge-packing goons had killed the kid's mother, that's why. Rumors abounded surrounding the FF killing harmless folks. Immigrants had been found dead, literally in the shadow of aid stations. That's why the illegals called them lobos blancos, white wolves, because they would harry the heels of migrants, wolf pack style, until they collapsed of exhaustion. This incident with Little F's Mom confirmed it. Eddy suspected the boy had seen something and he wanted him gone, just in case he could communicate. The heartless bastards weren’t past killing a kid.

Tony was pondering all of these things, wondering whether to return to Cornudo to warn the kid or dash to Mexico to save his own hide, when flashing lights again showed up, this time in his rearview mirror.

"Shit, already?" he said.

Santa Cruz County Sheriff Dustin Diesel was so thoroughly tired of the whoop of helicopter blades that he heard them even when they weren't there. The resonating sound had been so completely battered into his brain that he feared it had been permanently planted into his brain, like tinnitus, but with helicopter whoop. Well, at least it drowned out the ringing in his ears caused by Doris's persistent, high pitched shrieks. Even so, he wished the Feds would find whatever they were looking for and wrap this up, because his job was hard enough already.

Dustin Diesel had been quite happy being Sheriff of sleepy Apache County, but Doris insisted he run for the top spot in Santa Cruz, because that's where the action is. How, she said, do you think Sheriff Joe in Maricopa started making national headlines, by hiding his head in the sand? Dustin didn't want to make any headlines. He didn't need any Rolling Stone reporters riding his ass about abusing drug-dealing, murderous, sociopath thugs that needed to be locked up. But Doris was nothing if not persistent. She constantly hung the threat of going back to mother over his head, even though her mother was 20 years in the tomb. That didn't deter Doris, she swore she would join Mama, one way or another, if Dustin shamed her by settling for a mediocre jobs.

All of this stress made Dustin's heart flutter. He reached over into the cruiser glove compartment for his vial of heart pills. His doctor told him he was 50 pounds overweight, a cardiac arrest waiting to happen. To increase the burden on Dustin's strained ticker even more, now he had this extra extra-curricular activity to contend with. He wished he had the temperament to tell the Feds to go straight to hell, and to tell Doris to go straight to her Mama, if she felt so inclined.

Dustin was cruising in a south westerly direction on highway 82, just northeast of Patagonia. The rolling brushland of the high desert whipped past his window. When he was a boy, he had liked to go on secret birdwatching expeditions in these hills. He had told his folks he was going quail hunting and taken his shotgun, but had never shot a thing. Instead, he spotted new birdies in his binoculars and scratched them off in his little book. Of course, he couldn't tell his folks that. They would have wrote him off as a queer. He sure did miss those days.

Up ahead in the distance, instead of a shimmering light, Dustin saw the slowly growing silhouette of an older model SUV, what one would call a gross polluter, spewing puffs of toxic smoke into the otherwise clean desert air. The vehicle was right about where Dustin had calculated it would be about this time. He turned on his flashers.

The driver put on a little burst of speed and then finally slowed down, apparently having realized his rusty, smoke spewing jalopy was no match for the sheriff's police cruiser.

The Ford Explorer pulled to the side of the road. Dustin pulled in behind, but he didn't call in the plates. As he got out he carried his shotgun along as a precaution because this was the Gadsden Purchase, after all.

"Hello, officer," a smiling Tony Vargas said. "Would you like to see my license and registration?"

"Sir, I would like you to get out of the car, and put your hands against the vehicle." Tony complied cheerfully, and Dustin put the handcuffs on him. "I am arresting you the murder of Rashil Babouk," Dustin said after he cuffed him.

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Photo by author, from harbor freight catalog

Chapter 28

Chapter 28

Table of Contents

The noose was tightening around the Gasden Motel like Grant around Vicksburg, like spandex around cellulite, like a plastic bag around the neck of an auto-erotic asphyxiation enthusiast. In the case of Mike Gasden, the latter may be the most pertinent comparison, for this slow strangulation was largely self-inflicted.

The little town of Cornudo, hardly bigger than a bug splat on the windshield for the motorists who buzzed by it, had never gotten this much attention. Choppers whirred by overhead several times a day, hovering over the resident's sand-filled swimming pools, monitoring their lack of phone calls, intruding upon their heat-induced apathy for anything resembling a clue. G-men tramped around the desert, cursing their luck for having pulled this bullshit assignment.

The epicenter of this half-hearted scrutiny, of course, was the Gasden Motel. These twin lumps of stucco, splattered atop the oven rack of the Sonoran Desert, were now the black hole at the center of the Universe. But Mike Gasden, the motel's proprietor, was too absorbed in his own affairs to notice it.

A day and a half absence from his air conditioned oasis had caused Mike to think happily ever after might be possible, even here. Little did he know the tectonic plates of his heart were about to shift again, causing little earthquakes of unhappiness along his ticker's fragile fault lines.

Mike returned to Cornudo, praying to the God of Thunder and Rock and Roll that the Herr was wrong, that the old fart was just a butt-hurt Nazi who could not get over losing the war. Now that he had found a peaceful place in the cool mountain meadow between Marisol’s majestic twin peaks, Mike did not want to believe he was being played. He did not want to accept that he should cut und run.

In this state of blissful denial, Mike now sat with Marisol on lawn chairs in front of the office, drinking beer and looking out over the scraggly expanse of creosote. Each twisted, skeletal plant had created a miniature sand dune at its base, grain of sand by grain of sand, over the course of an interminably long existence that numbed the mind and the eyeballs. Hypnotized by this bleak monotony, Mike decided to wax philosophical.

“My Dad once told me, when we were driving through here, that if you really fuck up in life you come back as a creosote bush.”

Marisol gave a cute little beer belch that only she could make charming. “I’m doomed,” she said.

“The thing is, they can live like 10,000 years, so you would have to spend 10,000 years staring at other ugly ass creosote bushes, waiting for a chance to be reincarnated as something better.”

“Holy fuck I hope that’s not true. I'm glad I'm Catholic, not Hindu.”

Mike turned toward her, finding the sight of her creamy tanned skin, slightly moistened by perspiration in the more forbidden spots, to be much more pleasant than the miserable gnarled clumps that stretched forever on the horizon.

“But even if you were, you my dear have nothing to worry about. You’re a candidate for sainthood. Look at how much that little boy loves you.”

“You mean the one we have locked up in his room now so we can have sex when we’re done looking at the creosote?” She cracked another cold one and squealed as it sprayed across her tight wife beater, stolen out of Mike’s underwear drawer after she soaked her own outer garment sweeping the parking lot. Marisol was definitely a minimalist when it came to clothing, and this electrified Mike in certain quarters, like when the TVA brought power out of nowhere to the hinterlands of Dixie. He thought he would never wash that T-shirt again.

“Which reminds me,” Mike said. “Now that we are on the subject of holiness, there is something I have been wanting to ask you, but you might think it’s a little pervy.”

“Oh please. How could you get too pervy for me, of all people. Ask away."

“Do you own a rosary?”

Marisol wrinkled her nose in a peculiar way. Mike was thinking it was because where the hell would she hide a rosary beneath that tight wife beater, or in the strangling cutoffs she wore.

“I’m Mexican, Captain Obvious,” she said.

“Do you have it on you?”

“I said I’m Mexican. Where is this going?”

Mike sunk his teeth into his upper lip, winding up. Even though she was always willing to act out his increasingly kinkier fantasies, for some reason he felt the need to tread lightly.

“I don’t know where you stand on blasphemy, but there’s a certain fantasy I’ve been having, ever since I met you.” He leaned in, just in case someone might hear him out there in the unpopulated 50 mile radius that separated them from civilization. A sanctimonious packrat in the creosote, maybe. “I want you to say the rosary while you’re riding on top of me.”

Marisol belted him. It wasn’t a ladylike slap of affronted female dignity, she reared back and slugged him in the cheek, striking so hard that Mike toppled off his patio chair into a puddle of his own beer, which hit the deck before he did.

“You pig! You lying pig!” Marisol shouted, poised with fist clinched above him to deliver another, while Mike cowered on his back, flopping in the dusty beer, which made a kind of fermented mud. At the same time he held his hands up, to shelter his face from further battery.

“What the fuck! Why did you have to do that!” Mike knew religious people, but most of the time they just wanted to pummel him with Bible verses, not with their fists.

“You know damn well why you lying bastard!” she said as she delivered a kick to his exposed ribs, then stuck a triumphant foot atop his chest. Lucky for Mike she was wearing flip flops not stilettos, but it still hurt.

“Since when are you so sensitive about your religion?”

“It’s got nothing to do with religion and you know it. You swore to me you wouldn’t look at any porn with me in it, and you did. How could…” She kicked him again.

"I didn’t! I swear I didn’t!”

“Oh come on Mr. Innocent! Then how could you know the exact scene I played out in Naughty Nunnery 3? Do you think I’m proud of that? You’re just like all the other dogs, taunting me, using me like a cheap piece of meat! I’m…”

She reared back to kick Mike again but her flip flop flew off. She scampered for it and put it on with as much dignity as the circumstances would permit, looked at Mike with outrage, then strode on two splendid long legs across the lot, toward the gas station.

Now safely out of range of fists and feet, Mike propped himself up on his elbows. “Marisol! Marisol!” he shouted, but he knew the rage of a scorned Mexican woman ran deep in the genes, and she wasn’t just going to shake this one off.

Mike sat stunned and empty, watching her go. He had never heard of Naughty Nunnery 3, much less watched it. Up until now his taste in skin flicks had been largely limited to Asians. He felt compelled to run to her to plead his case, but the scowling shadow of Danny Valero waited in the gas station doorway. Even from here Mike could feel the omnipotent penumbra of scrutiny he cast over all those in his thrall, including his niece. When Marisol reached him she tensed up like a dog who has been chewing up the newspaper and knows the slipper waits. Danny said something to her that made her flinch, then scamper quickly toward the house in back.

"Bastard," Mike growled. This girl had just beaten the bejesus out of him, and he still took her side.

Meanwhile, a helicopter rumbled overhead, but Mike didn't hear it.

He went to lick his wounds in Little F's room, which in the distance of time was losing its designation as Tony's room. At least the boy was happy to see him. Still dressed in his towel-head terrorist attire, and carrying his Osama action figure in his forbidden left hand, the boy embraced Mike's legs warmly.

"Mike," he said, looking up with wide, smiling blue eyes. Like a dog, the kid could smell when somebody needed love.

This show of affection reminded Mike that there was something he had to do for the boy, though it pained him. He and the kid had bonded in the crucible of mishaps and misfortunes, but this Union could not last forever. The child should not live in a closet the rest of his life. From a bunker to a vermin-infested motel room was no great improvement, even if the vermin were mostly in cages. The boy needed a legally sanctioned family where he could run around openly. The aunt in New Jersey, revealed by the Herr's translation, was the only way out. It was selfish of Mike to keep Little F around just to ease his loneliness in the desert, which had grown more painful in the few minutes since Marisol raged off.

One thing about Mike that was different from other young men his age, caught in the formless limbo between puberty and adulthood, was that he wasn’t a procrastinator. Once he decided on something, he did it. It was part of the reason for his wunderkind success story. So Mike didn't hesitate to dial the number translated from the postcards. As the phone rang he looked over at Little F in the corner, who was scattering a pile of toothpicks to simulate a suicide bombing, while shouting a series of curses against unbelievers. Yeah, Mike was going to miss this kid. He already felt an even deeper pang of loneliness in his heart.

A man with a thick accent picked up at the other end. The voice was so typically middle eastern Mike could hear camels clomping and goats bleating, in New Jersey of all places. "Hello," the man said with bearded swarthiness.

"May I speak to Kalisha Safar, please," said Mike.

A long pause ensued. Even in the silence Mike could hear the man's accent, it colored his heavy breathing. "Who is calling, please?" the man finally asked.

"A friend of her sister. I have important news about her sister."

Another protracted pause. "You are going to have to contact her in Syria. She went back for the funeral of her grandfather, and was detained.”

"Detained? What does that mean?"

"You tell me. It could mean anything."

Mike's gray matter sloshed audibly in his skull. "When do you expect her back?"

The man laughed, which produced a severe smokers hack. Mike wondered if he smoked Camels - how effin ironic that would be. If you wanted to cast a jaded, chain-smoking middle-eastern cab driver for a movie, you couldn't go wrong with this guy. "Sorry. We don't expect her back. In our country, detained doesn't mean you got pulled over for a traffic ticket. Who is this, really?"

"A friend," Mike repeated.

"A friend? As far as I know, she doesn't have any friends that sound like you."

Mike didn't know how to respond to that, so he ignored it. "Are you her husband?"

"No," he sighed, as if the question had stirred emotions. "I am only the roommate. There are many of us here. She has no husband anymore. Her husband is dead. Her husband died in the war. Funny you are a friend and don't know that."

Mike took a chance, because he didn't know what else to do. "I'm going to give you my number, in the off chance she comes back. Don't worry, I'm not from the government. The message I have for her in regard to her sister is very important, but I can only tell her. Do you understand?"

"Not really, but I've heard weirder things. Just don't hold your breath waiting for her to come back."

Mike gave the man his number and hung up. He had no idea if this roommate was being monitored by the NSA and FBI. Probably he was not a terrorist, but he sounded like what a five year old would produce if given crayons and asked to draw a picture of a terrorist. He probably really did drive a taxi to boot, because come on, what else?

Mike chilled there with Little F for a while. He rubbed the cheek where Marisol had slugged him but it wasn't pain he felt, it was love. It was going to leave a bump, and he did not want that bump to go away. "Looks like you and me a little while longer," Mike told the boy.

"You and me," Little F aped. Shit, could he make this any harder?

Mike wondered what Marisol was thinking right now. He thought about calling his Dad, but he already knew what his Dad would say. Shit son, most guys would be thrilled they got the chance to nail a certified porn star. Carve a notch in your bed post and move on.

His Dad liked to throw around the word certified a lot. Where was this review board that certified porn stars? He didn't call his Dad.

The next morning, as Mike buttered his misfortunes for breakfast, the Earl swung by the office. The Lord was attired in full golf regalia, including beret and knickerbockers. Out in the parking lot, the unflappable Lady Dumley sweated beneath the strain of his golf clubs, loading them in the car.

"I thought I would swing by and square up, my boy," the Earl said cheerily. "We've been taking in the local links. I must say, I thought the Royal Birkdale had some rather wicked sandtraps, but I've never fished a ball out of the rough there and found a centipede crawling over it. Well, off for another 9, my good lad. Charge us for another week. Afterward, we are heading to the mountains to take the air and chase broad-bills and blue-throats. I'll fetch my card after the game, good fellow."

Mike swiped the card and it came up declined. He swiped his own and faked a receipt to give the Earl later, because he liked having the accent around. It looked like even globe-trotting royalty fell on hard times.

Mike watched Lady Dumley strain to lift the Earl's clubs while his lordship perused a bird book. Immediately they left and Danny Valero arrived. It was as if people were lined up outside, waiting their turn at him. Danny looked cold, his mustache was so stiff it could have been frozen, and he had his hands shoved deep in the pockets of a wool overcoat. He was dressed for January on Lake Erie, not June in the Gadsden Purchase, where it was 106 degrees.

"Chilly today," said Danny. His serious mien changed to a wry smile as he spied Mike's swollen cheek. "I can't wait for summer."

"Just a couple more days," said Mike.

"I would like to talk for a minute," said Danny.

"Sure, come inside."

"Let's just chat out here. You probably got the air conditioner running. Big waste. Pollutes the planet."

Danny lit a cigarette without asking if Mike minded. He knew these California faggots were prissy about smoking. Truth was, Danny was in a foul mood, ever since yesterday when Marisol had screwed up, and he had to send her on an errand to remind her who she worked for. She had been getting too cozy here anyway. Danny had not intended for her to hang out at the hotel for days on end, he wanted her here just enough to keep Mike coralled. Furthermore, her eyes had turned dreamy and distant. He sent her out into the desert to refocus. Isn’t that why the prophets all went out into the desert, to refocus?

"You like that kid Mike, don't you?" He asked her when she ran back from the motel, after he had given himself a moment to cool off, because his temper could get carried away.

"No,” she said, but her words did not match her face.

"Don't be a pendeja, mija. Keep it business, and don't kid yourself. A rich guy like that doesn't want to get serious with a little hussy like you. He wants you for his plaything. Face it, you got nobody but me. Your own family threw you out when they found out what you were doing. Where is your loyalty?"

A strained smile had creased Marisol’s face. It was the same smile she used in the porn flicks, when she was supposed to fancy some well-equipped stud. "With you, dear Uncle."

"Don't forget that. I might have to put it to the test soon."

"So what’s going on?" Mike asked, turning Danny's thoughts back to the present.

"I have another list for you." He pulled a sheet of paper from his shirt pocket. Riding underneath his wool coat it should have been soaked, but there was not a drop of sweat on it. This man never perspires, Mike noted. It made him queasy.

"Get on it quick," Danny demanded. With each visit he was becoming more pushy and abrupt. Cut und run, he heard the Herr goosestepping in his head.

"Excuse me? I can't run a motel and do this ‘quick.’ Where's Marisol?"

Danny threw down his cigarette and snuffed it out. He made no effort to pick up the butt. He couldn't get his bones warm in the June heat, but Mike’s attitude heated him somewhat. Frankly it didn’t matter. Mike was well on the way to being his bitch.

"Marisol is my niece, and she works for me. She's running an important errand right now. If I can spare her, I'll send her over."

Mike unfolded the list in his hand, without taking his eyes off Danny. The man's desolate black eyes were as barren as the creosote flats, devoid of any June monsoon to make the grass grow and the arroyos flow.

"I need to remind you you're too deep into this to back out now," Danny growled. He raised both palms skyward, as if his power came from the heavens, like Moses against the Amalekites. "What are those helicopters doing anyway? You know something about it? Ever since you showed up here to run a motel, there they are."

"How should I know? They've been snooping around here for weeks."

Danny softened a little. He bowed his head slightly, hiding his hard eyes. He swept the cigarette butt toward himself with his foot and picked it up. Stick and carrot, in that order.

"Look Mike, I'm being rude. I apologize. I had a little fight with Solita. She's talking about going back."

"Going back?"

"To San Diego. That's where she's from. She's tired of taking care of her dear old Uncle. She's tired of helping me in my business. She hates it here. I don't let her run the air conditioner. She sleeps on the porch sometimes and the mosquitoes eat her alive. But believe me, Mike, you're doing the work of the work of the Lord by taking care of that list. It's strictly on the level. Nothing bad will happen. I was just in a pissed off mood."

Mike wanted to see the man's eyes before he accepted the apology, but Danny kept them to himself, lighting another smoke as pretext to look elsewhere.

"What exactly is your business anyway?"

Danny had the answer prepared in advance, because it wasn't the first time he had been asked such. "Outside of running my little gas station, you could say I'm in import-exports. I specialize in antique rosaries and icons that I bring up from Mexico. You'd be surprised. It's a lucrative business, and nobody does it here on the border except me."

"Who buys it?"

"Mostly churches, but there are a lot of individual collectors too. That's where the real money is, with the collectors. Take your time, see what you can do, Mike. I don’t mean to rush you."

Danny walked away, wrapping his wool coat tighter around him.

Cut und run, the Herr repeated.

Fact was, summer was not exactly the busy season in the Gasden Motel. The snowbirds in the surrounding trailer parks had long since packed up, flapped their tiny wings, and flown away. The Earl was off on the golf course, which was completely at his royal disposal. Mike was a little bored, so losing himself in Danny's hack list would take Marisol off his mind. But leaving? Would she really leave because of one stupid misunderstanding?

Mike peered down the list of victims, if you could call this collection of perverts and twisted psychopaths such. It was the same stomach turning array of child pornographers, sex traffickers, and assassins. Mike had no compunction about nailing these scoundrels, he just wished there was some variation.

Then he saw an item that didn't quite fit in with the rest. The Sesame Street jingle One of these things is not like the other, played in his head. Smith's Sonoran Safaris, it said. Mike opened his Tor browser to see what the hell they might be hunting on these desert safaris. Rattlesnakes?

It was a hunting website, all right, but not for pursuing whatever pack rats, jackrabbits, or other critters that might dare to raise their scalded heads above ground this time of year. It was for tracking and killing human beings, presumably illegal aliens. For a considerable fee, Mr. Smith would take his clients on a nighttime hunt, then dispose of the bodies for them. There was no bag limit. For an additional charge, taxidermy was also provided, in case the hunter wished to display his quarry's stuffed trophy head above the fireplace.

Righteous fervor flamed in Mike's belly. He thought about Little F, out in the desert, getting chased by these creeps. "These bastards are going down," he swore.

The time passed quickly as Mike hacked and Little F doodled in the corner on Motel stationery. Meanwhile, a bemused James Gadsden looked down from his perch on the wall. It was hard to say if there was any familial pride in his expression.

At one point Mike forced himself to go relieve his bladder. On his way to the bathroom he chanced a look down on Little F's writings. The series of swirls and dots did not appear to be the random scribbles of a child. Mike picked up a postcard from Little F’s neat stack to compare to the kid’s doodles.

"Holy shit he is really writing," Mike said out loud.

"Holy shit," Little F agreed. He was learning English quickly.

The next morning, as Mike slept off his hacking hangover, another visitor arrived, ringing his doorbell at the ungodly hour of 9 AM. Little F was already up, creating a mini-jihad in the corner with his action figures.

"Hide, Little Fucker," Mike commanded. Little F scooped up his toys and scrambled for his safe place.

Two men and a woman stood in the motel doorway, wearing blue windbreakers that read AZDPS Criminal Investigations. Mike thought these jackets, though not woolen like Danny's, were still ridiculously hot.

One man said "Good morning," then presented Mike with a warrant.

"What's going on?" Mike asked.

"We are not at liberty to discuss the particulars of the investigation at this time, sir. We are here to search the room of Tony Vargas. By the way, your sign is spelled wrong. It should be GADSDEN. Are you aware of the whereabouts of Mr. Vargas?"

"No," Mike said truthfully. "He quit and ran off weeks ago. I haven't seen him since."

The man in the windbreaker looked at Mike's enflamed cheek suspiciously, then handed him a business card.

"Were you involved in an altercation?"

"Some drunk at the bar last night."

The investigator shook his head. "Please contact us if Mr. Vargas shows up or you hear from him."

"Is he in trouble?"

"He is wanted for questioning."

The man held up a composite sketch of a gray-eyed lady in a veil, whose tragic mood had been captured by the artist. "Would you happen to know anything about this woman? Her name is Rashil Babouk."

"I've never seen her," Mike said, but he could see Little Fucker's sad mouth in that sketch.

"She was traveling with a small boy, about two years old. If you learn anything about the whereabouts of either one, please call. Also, do you remember any suspicious activity on Mr. Vargas's part, prior to his departure?"

"No.” Tony was a pain in the ass, but he made his mischief in broad daylight, for all to see. He had major character flaws, including being a malingering, manipulative, not to mention uncouth bastard, but Mike was certain he did not kill Little F's Mother. She had a name now, Rashil. Rachel, the shepherdess Jacob met tending her flocks, the beloved one who ministered to him beneath the Terebinth.

Mike opened Tony's room for the investigators. The hardened detectives had laid eyes on all manner of butchered people, and mapped blood splatter at multiple crime scenes, but they were positively freaked out by the critters. They bagged and labeled the bed sheets, the socks and underwear, even Tony's collection of porno mags, but they left the critters alone, tiptoeing about the room like they could unleash a Biblical plague with one misstep.

They missed the uncaged striped snake, red on yellow, lying curled up comfortably in a hidden orifice. They also missed the half-empty mayonnaise jar, because with their skins squirming from the thought of the ungodly crawling hosts, nobody wanted to look under the bed.

When the cops were gone, Mike rushed to the café. Linda was standing behind the register like a late-blooming desert flower, looking lovely in a tight fitting chiffon blouse.

"Well look at you little Romeo ginger snap. You finally came up for air. When is it going to be my turn? I feel cheated. Your lovely auntie Linda needs a good dusting, dearie."

It didn’t surprise Mike that Linda knew everything about him and Marisol. Maybe later he could come back and cry on her shoulder about it, but this was not the time. He took her arm and led her toward the kitchen. "Ooh you want to do it over the grill. How fun! I'm glad you turned out not to be a Homo, like everyone thought. Except me."

Then she turned to less pressing business. “What happened to your face? I saw the cops over there? Did they rough you up, my bit 'o honey?”

"I’ll tell you later. It’s not really important. Tony is in trouble," Mike said in low tones. "You have to get a message to him."

"Tony drove off the map. What did he do now?"

"The cops think he killed that Arab lady they found in the desert."

"That's ridiculous. Tony is a lot of things, most of them negative, but he isn’t any killer."

"We've got to find Tony before the cops do."

"Don't worry, gummy bear. I know who to call."

Somewhat more at ease now, but not completely placated, returned to the motel. He paced the office floor, under the shadow of his forebear on the wall, while Little F improvised makeshift IED devices. The boy planted cars or stacks of Legos under Mike’s shuffling feet, unrelenting in holy war against his infidel captor.

Without thinking about it, Mike cleared the traps from beneath his feet, then cleared them again after Little F reloaded, all while some worm gnawed at his brain. What manner of worm was it? Did it have to do with Tony? Was it something that could vindicate him? Mike wasn’t sure, but he couldn’t give form to the idea. Finally he stopped pacing and went back to hacking, to kill time, time that stretched out forever in the Gadsden Purchase, unchanged, like the creosote.

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Image of "King Clone" creosote by Klokeid, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Altered by author

Chapter 27

Table of Contents

It was with some trepidation that Mike entered the lobby of Viatica Manor, uncertain if Herr Müeller would receive him or not.  Mike thought about dumping the box of medals and running, but believed the Herr would refuse it, and rightly so, thinking it filled with dog turds or some other vile substance dredged out from the dens of trolls.

"I'm here to sssee Josef Müeller," Mike said meekly to the battle-hardened crone behind the desk, who looked at anyone below the age of 70 with great suspicion.

"Is he expecting you?" Brunehilde, warrior princess of the Visigoths asked.

"Probably not," said Mike.

"Then I'll have to call first.  Name, please."

"Michael Gasden of Cornudo, Arizona." That was the first time he had verbally identified himself with the place.

The rapidly fossilizing secretary called, but did not take her guilty until proven innocent eyes off of Mike at any time.  The Herr answered on the other end, and the secretary exchanged angry invective with him in what must have been multiple Viking-based languages.  Then she put the phone down, after which her watchdog scowl was replaced by a mask of sweetness.  "He says he will be most pleased to see you immediately.  Please sign in."

Mike moved with caution down the hallway toward the Herr's room, suspecting that the old Prussian warhorse had laid a minefield to get the last laugh on him. This was too easy, so far.  But somehow he survived the booby trapped hallway to make it to the Herr's door, where he knocked gently, not sure if the entryway was spring loaded to set off a bouncing Betty, or some other explosive device. 

The Herr opened the door.  "Mike! Come in mein Freund."  The elderly gentleman, looking a lot like the Grand Moff Tarkin, shook Mike's hand vigorously.  The old stormtrooper was slightly more stooped over than their last meeting, but had energy for another 15 years yet.  "Setzen Sie sich bitte.  Sit down.  Ver are my manners.  Vergib my lapses into Deutsch. Ha ha, 70 years later and I still slip into my mother tongue. Sit down."

Mike sat down after brushing the area beneath his britches with one hand, thinking there may be explosives rigged to the chair or, at least a whoopie cushion. 

"Forgive me the condition of my room," the Herr said, making a grand sweeping motion across the general untidiness, like a Panzer Division encircling a Russian army.  Mike noted there were papers and photographs scattered everywhere.  Even in the open bathroom he could see scraps of scribbled notes resting on the towel rack and toothbrush holder.  "I have been writing my memoirs.  I figure if that Nazi-loving Hans Rudel can do it, vy not me?  Ja?"

Mike nodded, not sure what he was nodding for, then held up the cigar box.  "That sort of reminds me, Herr Müeller, I brought something for you."

"You call me Joe.  Was?  Mein Gott!  Ist das...?

Mike handed him the cigar box. It read Weiße Garde on top.  The Herr snatched the box and opened it.  "Ver did you find this?  I vas looking for this for years."

The Herr took out the medal with the blue cross.  "My Blue Max!  The highest decoration in the German armed forces.  Und hier ist my Eiserness Kreuz, Iron Cross, und mein Pilot's Badge.  "Ver did you find these?"

"In the wall behind the office."

"Ach!" exclaimed the Herr.  "Of course.  I used to have a little hideout back there, a panic room I guess you could call it.  In those times after the var, guys like me were very vorried about the Israeli Mosad picking us up first und denn asking questions spater.  I never committed any var crimes, but some of my associates were in deep with the Nazis.  Anyvey, later on ven the coast was clear I had that room valled over.  I guess I must have left these little keepsakes in there.  How did you find it?"

"I was doing a little remodeling of my own," Mike said.  "Why were you vorried? - worried?  Weren't you just an ambulance driver or something?"

"Scheiße!" Swore the Herr.  "I just said that to those Arschlöcher in Cornudo so they would leave me alone.  "No my boy, I was a Luftwaffe flying ace.  A Stuka pilot, to be exact."

Mike thought that was hella bitchin.  The Herr was pretty impressed with it himself, because he kept going, puffed up like a rooster.

"Because I was not one of those Nazi bootlickers, I did not get credit for some of my kills, but I was the top tank killer of Vorld Var Two.  Ach!  Ver are my manners!  Vould you like some coffee?"

Mike was a little fidgety, wondering when the nice act ended and the Herr went Boys from Brazil, pulling out instruments of torture to use on him. But Mike said yes, even while looking back to make sure he knew exactly where the door was, in case he had to bolt.

"Ver vas I?" the Herr said when he came back with the coffee.  "Ah yes.  Throughout the war I was in a rivalry with that Schweinhünde, Hans Rudel.  He is credited with 519 tank kills, vile mein official toll is 518.  One tank short!  One tank short and he gets all the glory, all of the praise in the annals of the Luftwaffe.  But I was cheated by that Nazi bastard.  Cheated I tell you!"

The Herr pounded the table with his fist, and Mike's coffee sloshed and spilled. That was okay, he didn't plan on drinking it anyway. "Entschuldig," apologized the Herr.  "I still get so vorked up.  But there ve vere," he said while drawing an imaginary line with his hand in the air, "retreating across Europe as fast as the Russians could push us.  Ve knew the var was over, but Hans und Ich could not let our rivalry go.  Now was the time to lay low and save our skins but ve just couldn't do it."

"The rivalry was intense at that point, precisely because we could see the writing on the vall.  I had a comfortable lead on Hans and he couldn't stand it.  Whether Germany von or lost, he vas determined to end the war ahead of me in kills, at any cost.  One day toward the end he got his chance.  I was ordered that day to drop my bombs on a little village where some suspected partisans were supposed to be hiding.  Vat do ve care about partisans at that point?  We occupy a piece of ground one day, but it is gone tomorrow.  Let the partisans have it, I say."

"Besides, it had always been my personal policy not to fire on civilians, even ven ve vere at our high vater mark on the Russian front.  I don't mind killing Ivan ven he has a gun in his hand and is shooting at me, but shooting and bombing unarmed civilians goes against the vay I vas raised.  Hans Rudel knew this and up until now he alvays looked the other vay ven I shot my guns over the head of some donkey cart or dropped my bomb harmlessly beside a road packed mit fleeing vomen und children."

"So I got on the radio und said to Hans, flying on my ving - Look Hans, the var is over soon, vy do ve kill these innocent villagers, it vill just make us look bad after.  Hans says oh ja, I agree, so I dropped my bombs in a field, avay from the village."

"But Hans is obsessed mit beating my record for tank kills.  So that day he rats me out mit our commanding officer, and I find myself locked up for insubordination.  During that time Hans goes on a tank-killing spree, recklessly risking his own life and disobeying orders himself so he can beat me.  Meanvile, the var ended für mich in that cell.  Lucky for me, American paratroopers liberated the town I was held in before the Russians could get there.  I was taken prisoner and sent out here to the desert.  Ven I got out I married an American voman, my charming Elsie, but she died in childbirth.  But dat is another story. Vile I vas in jail that scoundrel Hans Rudel beat my kills record by one tank.  Ein verdammt tank!  Which is vy I have to write my story, to set the record straight about vat that cheating scoundrel did to beat me!"

For a moment Mike feared the Herr was going to topple over in cardiac arrest.  The withered warrior went red in the face, shuffled unsteadily on his feet, and held his hand over his heart. Then he took a series of prolonged breaths and regained his composure.

"Mike, do me ein favor." he said. “Ach! You have already done me a great favor my bringing me my momentos, but I ask you etwas mehr."

"Yeah, s-sure," Mike said.

"If I die before I finish my memoirs, because let's face it even Stuka pilots don't live forever, tell the Vurld my story.  Tell them how that Nazi bastard Rudel cheated me."

"Yeah, no problem.  Ssoo.."

The Herr spun his hawkish face toward Mike.  "Ja?  So vat?"

"So we're good, right?"

"Vat do you mean ve're gut?"

"Vell, er Well, what I mean is I did a lot of bad stuff to you.  I feel that I humiliated you.  It was wrong, and I'm sorry for it."

The Herr whisked his hand in the air, as if Mike's apology was only an annoying fly.  “Ach!  No need for that.  I enjoyed your little pranks.  You made life interesting in that verdammt Wuste, vondering vat your next move vas going to be."

"Yeah, but..."

"But vat!" snapped the Herr.  "Speak openly.  Quit pussy-footing around."

Mike lowered his head.  "I feel really scummy about what I was going to do at the end, when I bought the place from you."

"Ach! You did me a favor, taking that rathole auf meine Hande. Vat, Vas is it?"

"I was going to pee on your parking lot and make you watch, as a condition of buying.  But I chickened out because you were being so nice about everything."

The Herr laughed and clapped his hands.  "Ach that vould have been wunderbar!  I vould have agreed, smiling all the time.  Und denn I vould have stuck a firecracker up your arschloch!  Ha Ha!"

Mike laughed along with the Herr this time, then got up.  "It's been really nice talking to you Herr Müeller," he said, "but I've got an appointment at the University.  I'm going to get some Arabic documents translated."

"Arabisch?  Vat for?"  The Herr's interest had been aroused.

Mike hesitated.  How much could he trust this man?  They seemed to have put their feud behind them, but hiding a refugee baby that does not belong to you is a lot more serious than pissing in a parking lot.

"Vy don't you let me have a look?" said the Herr.  "Before the war mein Vater vas military attaché to Egypt.  I spent two years in Cairo, and learned to read and write fluently in Arabic.  I am as good as any professor.  Maybe I can save you the trip.  Let me see."

But you barely speak effin English, thought Mike, but forestalled himself with the Herr's definite Teutonic authoritarian streak.  When you flew Stukas and could bomb people into oblivion, it tended to make you not take no for an answer.

"Gib mir," said the Herr, holding out a hand. “Don’t vorry. If you are in some kind of trouble, I understand. In that verdammt desert trouble has a vay of slithering up to your doorstep on its belly. Your secret is safe with me. I am a military man, I keep secrets.”

Mike regretted now having brought along the envelope the postcards were in.  It was obvious to the still sharp eyes of the Herr that this was the container for said documents.  There was no getting around it.

The Herr put on tiny spectacles that teetered unsteadily on the tip of his nose.  He took the envelope and carefully removed the contents, his dive bomber hands surgically precise.  At the height of his powers he must have been feared by friend and foe alike, Mike thought.  With catlike attention the old warhorse first scrutinized the postcard photos, then read the Arabic scribbling on their backs.

"Mein Gott! Ver did you get these?"

"I found them in a room," said Mike.  It wasn't entirely a lie.

The Herr tapped his fingers on the table pensively.  "Striking scenes of the town of Aleppo.  I was there in my youth.  Ich glaube...I think that these belong to that little boy whose Muter vas killed in the desert.  You have heard of that, ja?"

"I think so," said Mike.

The Herr reexamined the postcards one by one. 

"What do they say?"

"They say - This is my boy ---.  There is a big smudge there.  I cannot see what his name is.  Then it says that bad men, vite volves, are chasing us across the desert."

"What are white wolves?"

The Herr shrugged and flipped to the second card.  "We are refugees of the civil war in Syria, from Aleppo.  My husband was a soldier in the Free Syrian Army.  He fought against Asad.  He was killed.  We will be killed also if we are sent back."

The third card came up.  "Please accept my son as a refugee from the conflict in Syria.  We are good people.  We are not terrorists.  The volves in the jeeps hunt us like bad people, but we are not bad people.  We are peaceful.  We just vant freedom."

The Herr flipped to the fourth and final card. Mike thought he saw a little tear in his eye, magnified by the spectacles.  "My sister is Kalisha Safar.  She lives in Voodland Park, New Jersey.  She has a refugee visa.  Her phone number is 1-973-345-4964. She will take care of him if something happens to me. Please save my son from the volves.  He is a good boy."

He is a good boy.  A damn good boy, thought Mike.

The Herr remained deep in thought.  "Volves, volves, who are these völfe?  Ach!"  He dashed over to Mike and put a hand on his shoulder.  "Michael, listen to me.  If this boy is still alive, he is in grave danger.  Gefahr!  Verstehst du?  Whatever you do, do not contact the local authorities.  Trust me on this.  This child might show up on your doorstep.  In Cornudo, lost or abandoned things have a vay of crawling out of the desert.  If he does, call the sister. I vill write the contact information for you, because you obviously cannot read the Arabic.  Vork it out mit her vat you are going to do.  Do not call the sheriff.  Do you understand?"

"Yes," nodded Mike.  He had not been in Cornudo long, but long enough to understand where the Herr was coming from.

"Good boy," said the Herr.  He put the stack of postcards back in the envelope and handed them back.  "Be careful, Michael.  I sense you are in some deep Scheiße.  Don't get in over your head."

“Oh. One more thing,” the Herr added. He rummaged around the table and found an envelope of his own, that he handed to Mike. “Give this to that schwein Tony Vargas if you see him, and you vill vether you vant to or not. It is a letter from my lawyer. Ve have unfinished business, he and I. Please do not read it. It is of a very sensitive, personlicher nature.”

Mike nodded and took the letter. He walked toward the door of the Herr's small habitation then turned back.  "Let me ask you one question before I go Herr- um Joe.  How did you get along with Tony being your groundskeeper?"

The Herr looked confused.  "Groundskeeper?  Vat groundskeeper?  Why vould I need a groundskeeper for that shitty little place?  And if I did, do you think I would pick Tony Vargas?  I vouldn't let that bum on the property, much less hire him as the groundskeeper."

The Herr could see Mike's startled expression.  "Mike, let me varn you about sometink. Tony Vargas is a harmless, lazy joker, aber vatch out fur his bruder Danny Valero.  That whole clan is bad news.  They vill play you.  They are already playing you, ja?"

Mike's face had gone wan, the approximate color of the blanched desert soil.  "Take my advice Mike.  Get out of there.  Cut und run.  Don't vorry about return on your investment.  Let it rot.  Let it return to dust.  Let it crumble into sand and blow avay.  Cornudo ist ein abomination.  It is someone's bad joke made real. I survived there so many years because they thought I vas a crazy Nazi with an army of SS stormtroopers hiding in the cactus.  There is nothing there for you.  Get aus."

Mike shook hands with the Herr after making solemn vows to come back soon, and other such empty formalities, the intensity and sincerity of which would fade in time then vanish. 

As he made his way out of the building, the dire warnings of Herr Müeller echoed in Mike's ears. Get aus.  Get aus.  Okay, it was only half English, but the meaning was clear.  If the words had been uttered in the Mok language, which at last report had seven speakers worldwide, Mike would have caught the drift.

The problem was that Mike didn't want to believe it.  The Herr was a grouchy recovering Nazi who hated Mexicans.  Yeah, that was it.  From now on, Mike would repeat that like a mantra whenever he doubted.

Mike passed Brunehilde at the front desk, who appeared to be suppressing a smirk and didn't look up.  What was that all about? thought Mike.

He found out what it was all about when he got to the parking lot. The tires, axle and entire undercarriage of Mike's truck were entwined in red duct tape.  It looked as if someone had emptied out the tape rack at Home Depot and enshrouded his wheel base in uncountable rolls of candy apple colored adhesive, while the warrior princess stood watch as a willing and amused accomplice.

Mike's mood improved immediately.  He felt the competitive gorge rise in his craw again and turned back toward the building. There he saw what he expected to see, the Herr looking out from his second story window, laughing and waving. Vaving.

Mike faced the faded Luftwaffe ace, put his heels together, and shot him a perfect Nazi salute.  The Herr came back with a rather impressive one-finger salute of his own.

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Image is a US Navy photo, in the public domain, taken from Wikimedia Commons

Chapter 26

Table of Contents

At the Gasden Motel in Cornudo, Arizona, management was in a festive mood.  Defying all hospitality industry decorum, Little Fucker was chasing Mike around the office in a scandalous fashion.  Just for fun, Mike had tied a towel around the kid's head and they were playing a game called terrorist vs. infidel.  Mike had given the kid a soccer ball left behind in one of the rooms, and he was pretending it was a bomb he was going to kill Mike with.

"Ugh!  Help!"  Mike screamed.  "Little towel-head terrorist fucker on the loose!"

"Towe-head tehwist fuckah!" Little F growled, and threw the ball at Mike.  He was catching up fast on his bombed-out childhood.

Strictly for lolz, while Mike was busy on the dark web he had ordered an Osama Bin-Laden playset for Little F off some sketchy middle eastern website.  The kit contained action figures of Osama and two of his bearded goons, all wearing broad grins and carrying AKs and rocket launchers.  It also had a jeep so Osama and his pals could race around the desert, blowing shit up and causing mayhem.  Little F really seemed to get into the toy.  "He's got it in his blood," Mike thought, wondering if he should be worried.

At this point Marisol let herself into the room, using the key that Mike had given her.  "This is really inappropriate in so many ways," she said, seeing Little F's disguise and the plastic mini-terrorists stationed around the room, hunting for plastic infidels to slaughter.  "I'm calling Homeland Security." 

Mike went over and kissed her like he had never kissed that cunt Lisa.  Little F turned his attention to his terrorist toys, because this usually meant the grown ups would disappear for a while.  But not today, because Mike had things to do in San Diego and had to get an early start.  "I guess I better get going," he said.  "You sure this is okay?"

"Absolutely. The Fatwa and I will have a great time while you are gone.”

“He might stone you. His holy book does not approve of unveiled females.”

“I’ll make sure he can’t go outside to collect rocks.”

"I won't be gone long.  I'll spend the night with my Dad and be back tomorrow.  Thanks again."

Marisol wrapped her arms around Mike's shoulders.  "Quit saying thanks, Mike.  We're kind of a family now, aren't we?"

"I hope so."  She kissed him again and he copped a discrete feel of her ass for the road.  Then he grabbed the Herr's medals and Little F's postcards, which he threw into an empty duffel bag, next to another that contained his change of clothes.

"By the way.  The Earl is in arrears by a week.  He's probably off chasing some rare bird up a dry creek and forgot to pay.  Just say it's jolly good and don't kick him out.  He gives this place a little dignity."

Traveling down the I-8 West, with its utter lack of sensory stimulation, Mike's mind was free to ponder many things.  Marisol mostly occupied his thoughts, filing him with a warm glow in more than one place.  The image of her smile shot beams of starlight through his heart.  Marisol didn't have what one would call a supernova smile, but its radiance was definitely somewhere along the main sequence.

Passing by El Centro, Mike's mood grew gloomier, in direct proportion to the increasing distance between he and the object of his affection.  Here he started thinking about the work he was doing for Danny, hacking the dark web credit card transactions of the crooks and creeps on the list.  Danny had not been lying that they were unsavory characters, both the vile vendors and their demented clients.  Mike had never been exposed to such unspeakable perversions in his life.  Yeah, he had jacked off to a little porn, what guy had not, but it was the kind featuring adults of the age of consent, not horrified children or women being tortured and sometimes killed after or during sexual abuse.  The problem for Mike was that he had to hack his way in through the URL bars of these sites, so sometimes his eyes and soul were scalded by the filth there.

"Just skim a little off each account, don't make it too noticeable," Danny warned him at the outset.

"I thought the idea was to destroy these bastards," Mike reminded him.

"Yeah but we don't want to scare them away just yet.  We have to build up a war chest first.  Then we'll use it to take them down."

This seemed like a satisfactory explanation, but Mike still couldn't help feeling a little sketched out.  What sketched him out the most is that he liked doing it.  It made him feel relevant again.  It made him feel that he was back in the game, but without the baggage the game entailed.  Mike had never liked being the boss.  He loved writing code, he loved the creative process of developing software, he was even had a fair hand for creative design, but he didn't like all the administrative and political bullshit.  He sucked at Marketing.  He didn't know shit about Finance.  Most significant, he didn't know how to deal with the sharks circling around, trying to tear off chunks from his intellectual property, and his soul.  He had finally said fuck it and sold.

Now he missed it, he might as well admit that he missed it. Well, parts of it.  Being retired at 28 was not turning out as planned.  Vacuuming floors, scrubbing toilets, painting then repainting walls was not what he thought he would be doing at 28. Was this why he was willing to do Danny Valero's bidding, even though there was a faint, rotten odor of sun-baked roadkill lingering around it?

Mike swirled into San Diego like the June gloom, then went onto his Dad’s condo in the older part of Chula Vista.  Dad was happy there and would not let Mike upgrade his residence.  The two greeted each other in nonchalant, unaffectionate Gasden fashion, like they had seen each other 10 minutes ago.

"So how are things with Lisa?" Dad asked.

"I dumped her Dad," said Mike.

"That's a relief.  You finally opened your eyes."

Mike grimaced.  He didn't appreciate the implication that he had been acting stupid, even when it was true.  "You could say my eyes were just shifted to someone else.”

Mike's Dad perked up.  "Oh, that's interesting.  Who is she, or dare I say, he?"

"I'm not gay Dad.  Why does everybody think I'm gay?"

"Because you act very androgynous.  You pluck your eyebrows for Christ's sakes.  Healthy heterosexual men don't pluck their eyebrows.  You want a beer?"

"S-Sure."

"That's encouraging.  That's a first.  You can't get Appletinis in the desert?  So tell me about this girl."

"You're not going to like it Dad.  After I tell you you're going to wish Lisa was back.  But I have to tell you sooner or later, because it might be serious."

"You haven't put a ring on her finger yet, have you?"

Mike hesitated, because although there was no physical ring yet, he felt a connecting loop to Marisol's soul, like the lasso the priest puts around the couple at a Catholic wedding, but in a metaphysical sense.

"Have you?" his Dad repeated.

"No," Mike said, sounding disappointed, as if this constituted some sort of moral failure on his part.

"Then you still have a chance to see what she's made of before you take the leap.  What's she like?"

"Dad, I have to be honest.  Brace yourself.  She used to be a porn star."

If this had been a father son scene written to formula, Mike’s Dad’s beer would have gone through his nose.  It was not a father-son scene written to formula, but beer really did go through his nose.

"I told you you wouldn't like it."

"Which one?" Mike's Dad said as he wiped his chin with the back of his hand.

"What?"

"Which porn star?"

“Does that matter? Are you going to Google her? I don’t want you to Google her.”

"I gotta know, in case I..."

"In case you what?  I am so going to hurl with this mental image forming in my head.  Don't look at porn. I don’t want you fapping to my fiancee.”

Mike's Dad took another swig of beer, to replace the one lost in his nostrils.  "Well I try not to but...you know, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.  Damn, my rockstar millionaire sun dates pornstars.  This is a proud moment."

"It's not supposed to be a proud moment. And she's not a porn star anymore. Let’s be clear.”

A semi-uncomfortable pause ensued, after which Mike's Dad said "Just tell me which one, so I can avoid her, just in case my willpower is flogging, flagging."

"Weird choice of words."

"Son, this is exactly the sort of thing you are going to be subjected to while dating a porn star. Did you think about that?”

"Former porn star."  Mike sat upright in his chair like he was getting ready to bolt.  "Okay, her porn name was Hannah Heat."

Mike's Dad's eyes bugged out, but he held his beer in.  "Wow!  You got great taste. I just can’t believe a girl that hot likes you."

"You know who she is?"

"Sure.  I'm not a monk cloistered away in the desert like you. Ha ha. I guess the devil really does send voluptuous women to tempt cloistered saints in the desert, like Saint Anthony. You ever heard the story of St. Anthony? I should have been a monk.”

Mike sat brooding, because his Dad wasn't taking this the way he expected him to.  Instead of trying to talk him out of a potentially dangerous affair, his Dad was applauding him for bagging a bodacious babe.  There was clearly a lack of parental concern on his Father’s part.

"Dad, I'm serious about her.  She's not the kind of girl you think.  She's not vapid, she's very smart.  She's loving too.  She regrets what she did, but she kind of got suckered into it.  But there's one more thing you have to know."

"It gets better?"

"Stop goofing around..  I'm trying to be serious.  She can't have kids."

Mike's Dad put his beer on the table so he could properly metabolize this news.  "You always said you never wanted kids anyway."

"I know Dad, but people change their minds.  You know I'm really stubborn, so I  always say never when you bug me about it. But the truth is, it's nice to have the option.  It's sort of disappointing."

Mike's Dad took a deep breath and turned his head away.  He tapped his fingers on the table. "You want to know something?  When you walked in here today you looked more alive than I've seen you in a long time. You had a spring in your step.  Admit it or not, that bitch Lisa had you fulminating about her fidelity all the time, but you didn't believe your own protests. Interesting that your pornstar girlfriend, ex pornstar girlfriend, does not cause you such doubt. Maybe you've got something good going there.  Anyhow, it is possible that dickless brother of yours will father a child someday by some miracle of immaculate conception and make me a grandfather.  I guess me and every other man wants to be a grandpa, except for a handful of androgynous narcissists like you, but the days of Fathers hand picking brides for their sons went out in the Middle Ages. I can deal with it."

Mike seemed pleased by this fatherly speech.  "Okay Dad, we have some work to do.  We have to go to the bank."

"What for?"

"I'm going to give you all my money.."

"Why?  Are you in trouble."

"In Cornudo trouble is always crawling out of the desert, on any number of legs. Or no legs. I've got to be ready. I’m not in any immediate danger but just in case.”

“You know I won’t touch it.”

“That’s why I’m picking you.”

Mike and his Dad went to a half dozen banks.  Mike carried along the duffel bag in the trunk of Mike’s Dad’s car. When they were finished, there were still a few hours until his appointment with the Arabic professor at San Diego State, so he decided to drop off the Herr's medals.

Herr Müeller had retired to a place called Viatica Manor.  The facility advertised Independent & Assisted Living, Memory Care & More.  Mike considered what more meant. Diaper change? He asked himself what sort of lewd and unspeakable acts were being committed against Senior Citizens behind the cheerful banner of & more, even while the old farts' bank accounts were steadily emptied.

He also wondered how the Herr would receive him.  The two didn't exactly have an amicable history, dating back to years before Mike had purchased the Herr's motel.  The feud started when Mike had been driving back to San Diego from Mesa, where his grandfather lived. As often happens on long, lonely, completely depopulated stretches of Arizona road, Mike had been overcome with the need to pee.  It was July, the monsoon season, when intense storms come out of the clear blue sky to fill the gullies in seconds.  Mike's bladder, just recently emptied in Gila Bend, experienced a 24 ounce Monster-energy monsoon that filled his own watershed with raging, torrential runoff.  He wasn't going to make it to Yuma.  He needed to pull over immediately.

Immediately came in the form of the Tachna-Cornudo exit.  With sweet surcease in sight Mike swerved left, toward Cornudo.  The café on his right, which had the outward appearance of serving the dozen or more varieties of roadkill that Arizona's Interstate System had to offer, meant stopping and buying something.  He had ten bucks in his pocket, with which he hoped to buy dinner. The gas station on the left had a CLOSED sign posted, and at any rate appeared to be just a front for the torture and dismemberment of wayward motorists, held in shackles behind the roll-down, ramshackle metal door of its garage.  The only hope for Mike's bursting bladder, its rusting rivets straining painfully under the intense weight of unbearable hydrostatic pressure, was a clump of bushes on the edge of a motel parking lot.  Mike aimed for it.

There were no cars in the large lot, which was reverting back to nature through the insidious advance of desert weeds that worked their way through untidy fault lines in the asphalt.  The paint of the establishment peeled like the bark of a Eucalyptus tree, and pieces of tar from the roof had crumbled down onto the walkway surrounding the habitations.  Mike was pretty sure the place was shut down and If not, whatever authority governed human activity in this backwater should condemn it immediately. If he left a puddle behind it would evaporate in seconds, leaving a crystalline residue that would blow into the alkali flats beyond. Who would care?

In the high, muggy heat of July, people were shuttered behind sun-blocking shades, the whir of their air conditioners muffling whatever audible intrusions might creep in from the desert. Mike felt pretty sure that if he stopped to piss in these weeds at the edge of the parking lot, no one would see or hear him.

High pressure liquid roared out of his bladder like the spring runoff from the Sierra snowpack after an El Niño winter.  Mike sighed orgasmically, but began to feel exposed as the flow continued unabated.  How was it possible for human tissue to dispense of such a vast reservoir of water without going into severe dehydration and causing seizures, brought on by a lack of electrolyte homeostasis? Enough already.

As the biological faucet flowed without cessation, the hills grew eyes.  Mike had the undeniable sensation that people were looking at him. Creepy desert people were eyeing his activity with murder and cannibalism in mind. Mike wanted to cut off the valve but his body protested with twin spasms of pain in the renal areas.  Then, like a mummified zombie arising from the ruins of this ghost town motel, a deranged, disheveled old man began to plod in Mike's direction, brandishing a broom as if it were a hunter's lance.

The angry, rampaging, undead being was dressed in a heavy woolen shirt tucked neatly into corduroy trousers, their wearer apparently having missed the memo about the extinction of the fabric.  As such, he was clad in a fossil that matched the fossilization of his biological being.   The man wasn't so much old as eroded by the heat and wind of the desert, because the energy with which he moved toward Mike proved he was still young enough to inflict him grave bodily injury.

"Vat are you doing on my property?  Getten Sie off my property!" the man yelled, then uttered what were obviously curses and imprecations in some Teutonic tongue.

"Hey calm down!" Mike shrieked, still not ready to reel it in.  "I'm just urinating in the weeds over here.  I'm not hurting anything!"

"Raus!  Raus!" the Herr commanded, as if he were still wearing the Schirmmütze cap of a Lüftwaffe officer.  Mike had no choice but to disobey his still submerged kidneys, and they protested the insubordination by delivering stabbing pain to his lower back.  He zipped it with drops spraying everywhere, then hopped in his car and started the engine, escaping just before the Herr could thrash him with the broom he wielded like a Field Marshall's baton.

"Geh zur Hölle!" the Herr yelled, shaking his fist in Mike's rearview mirror.  Out of impulse, Mike flipped him the bird out the window.  Later he kind of regretted this, realizing the Herr had only been defending his property.  But to Mike it was a severe overreaction to watering the weeds at the back of his dilapidated, squalid establishment, and he was sure the Herr had cursed him to several generations in his barbaric language.

Mike drove on to Yuma and finished draining his ravaged bladder in a gas station bathroom, while at the same time declaring undying phony war against the Herr.

From then on, whenever Mike just happened to be driving past Cornudo, and sometimes he took long detours to just happen to be there, he would pull a mostly harmless prank on the Herr.  He lit a bag of dog turds on the motel front door, the smell of which somewhat improving the fragrance of the place.  He smeared Nutella on the undersides of the Herr's car door handles.  At Christmas, Mike gift-wrapped the Herr’s old Mercedes. He rigged a bottle of Canola oil to dump on the proprietor when he went outside.  He threw a Febreeze bomb into the motel lobby while yelling Feuer!.  All of these were good, wholesome, harmless college trolling techniques.

But the ultimate troll came later, because Mike's offended and dialysis-bound kidneys demanded a more severe retribution for the insult visited upon them.  Even though he had not yet risen above the infantile mentality of troll and prankster, Mike somehow found himself the proprietor of his own software company.  From the Fortress of Solitude of his office, he would keep his cyber-eye peeled on the Herr so he could better plot his next attack.  He subscribed to the online Wellton newsletter, where he read that a bestiality suspect was arraigned in Wellton for having sex with a horse.  The Border Patrol had also seized drugs, fraudulent documents, and arrested seven illegal aliens.  Then somebody wrote a forum post asking if anybody knew the whereabouts of her long lost half sister, but apparently the half sister had left Wellton so long ago no one remembered, or, judging by the dullard personality of the comment author, paid off her friends to keep her incognito.  At any rate, no one answered the plea.

Then, about four or five items down, there was a post about Josef Müeller being unable to find a buyer for his famous Roadrunner Motor Inn.  The Herr wanted to go into retirement, but couldn't find any takers at his asking price.

"Serves that grouchy old Nazi right," somebody commented.

"Hitler's bones are probably buried underneath the motel," said another.

"I'll trade him a pot of Sauerkraut," from a third.

"Escaped from the Papago Park POW camp straight into the Roadrunner and never left," still a fourth.

The latter observation was not too far from the truth, but Mike couldn't know that.  Mike was content that the comments seemed to justify his trolling, on the basis of the Herr being a mean old crank that nobody loved.

Even better, the article pointed out the supreme opportunity for the ultimate troll.  The Mother of all Trolls.  The troll to end all Trolls.  He would buy the Roadrunner Motor Inn at full asking price, but first piss in the parking lot in broad daylight and make Herr Josef Müeller watch.

NEXT>>

Image - Thunderstorm over El Centro, CA by JacobSA2019, altered into black and white by the blog author