Chapter 32

Table of Contents

Cut und run.  The time had come.

The desert had grown deadly.  The heat had boiled the Gadsden Purchase to the point of spontaneous combustion.  From its lonely outpost between the Perseus and Orion belts of the Milky Way, the sun had looked down upon Michael Gasden scornfully, and meted out punishment, castigating him for his hubris in believing he could tame a place that had never been tamed. 

In the course of its untamable history, the raiding and marauding Indian bands here had been supplanted by outlaws. One form of lawlessness had only been replaced by another form of lawlessness, and this would go on as long as there was a stain on the map called the Gadsden Purchase.  Cut und run. Sure Mike could try, but he could only slice, he could never sever the umbilical that connected him to this steaming cesspool of brigands and outcasts.  You could run, but you could not cut.

Mike had upset the precarious balance of power that the place perched precariously upon, and it was clear that his defiance of the hierarchy would also be precarious, and have dire consequences.  He could see now that the Gadsden Purchase was divided up into fiefdoms, parceled out among different Lords.  You paid one or you paid another for protection, but you always paid somebody.  Mike had refused to hand over his tribute, and the penalty was either death or exile.  He had to pursue the latter before the former got him.

The final impetus for his decision of hasty, headlong flight was a phone call he had received from the Earl, just minutes earlier.  In his typical stiff upper lip, cheerio there's a good fellow style, the Earl had informed him of the roadblock outside Tombstone. He told Mike about those dangerous looking desperados, one wearing an enormous hat of John Wayne proportions who bore have you seen me leaflets with the likeness of the Little Fucker.  The Earl had inadvertently let it slip to the man in the hat that he had seen the boy, and told him where. So now Mike was sandwiched between the wrath of the Freedom Frontiersmen on one side, and the thuggery of Danny Valero on the other.  All of this spelled cut und run, in any language, or combinations thereof.

Mike's first reaction to the Earl's news was to ask himself why the FF would be looking for Little F.  Then it at last occurred to him, that aggravating buzzing fly of a thought he had not been able to snatch from the air. He knew what that human sized rolled taco he had seen in the back of one of the FF trucks was, the tarp that clearly belonged to Tony because of the shape and nature of its peculiar stains, wrapped around some heavy, bulky filler.  Holy crap it made sense!  Tony's fingerprints, as well as his unique genetic signature imprinted by certain bodily fluids, were all over that tarp.  That was why the police had tagged him as the killer of Little F's Mom.  They couldn't know that Eric and the FF had stolen the tarp out of the back of Mike's truck and used it to wrap up the victim, probably with the express idea of framing Tony for the crime.  Now the FF was looking for Little F because they feared the boy might be able to tag them as the killers.

This realization clinched Mike's decision.  If he didn't give a shit about his own safety, if he was willing to stay put and hold back Danny Valero, armed only with his extended middle finger, he couldn't exercise such folly where the safety of the boy was concerned.  The only remedy was the Herr's prescription to cut und run.   But therein lay the rub of where to cut und run to.

Going home was out of the question.  If Danny Valero was to be believed, Agent Smith and his sunglassed cronies were on his ass.  As such, home offered no sanctuary, and he didn't want to get his Dad involved in this shit anyway, more than he already was.

Flight to anywhere in the continental United States was probably also unadvisable.  Mike had the feeling that Agent Smith could see a long way through those shades.  Furthermore, Mike had pissed off the President.  However wrong the accusation may be, assaulting the Chief Executive was not something you could just hide from in Podunk, Iowa. Isolated as it was, most of the children of the corn there were probably Trumpsters who would not hide him.

The only solution was Mexico.  The Mexican government might be sympathetic to someone suspected of running afoul of a person, one Donald J. Trump, who was generally hated by the population.  Maybe they wouldn't officially give him asylum, but maybe they wouldn't go out of their way to track him down, either.  Furthermore, the inept, disorganized bureaucracy of a third world country would probably not be too efficient about investigating his custody of Little F.  If necessary, he could probably bribe a few officials.  Then, when he ran out of cash, his Dad could bring him more. 

The real problem with this plan was evading any cartel connections Danny might have in Mexico. But if that danger emerged, he could skip to another Latin American country, buying false passports for he and Little F if need be.  The part of this plan that made him happy was that he and Little F would be together.  There was no longer the specter of a New Jersey aunt to threaten their bond.

He loved the Little Fucker now.  He didn't have a problem admitting that to himself anymore.  It had been a long road from hating children and never wanting any in his life, to not wanting to live his life without this little waif who had crawled in from the desert.  The kid was family.  Biology had not forged their ties, but the desert heat had seared the weld that held them together. Such a connection could not be ripped asunder without an irresistible force acting upon it.

So the plan now was to flee that irresistible force.  With Little F holding Mike's hand, and lovingly clutching his Osama action figure to his chest with the other, the unlikely pair went into the office of the soon to be abandoned Gasden Motel.  What would become of the place? - Mike considered sadly.  He had spent a lot of time, energy and money fixing it up, turning a shithole into a beacon of comfort in the dreary desert.  Now he was abandoning the property to the forces of erosion.  Wind, sun, and human malice would soon wipe it from the face of the planet.  He looked up apologetically at his cherub-faced forebear, the haughty James Gadsden, hanging on the lobby wall.   "I tried," Mike told him.  It was not to be.

Black duffel bag in hand, Mike opened the safe and began emptying his squirreled-away cash from it.  When he was finished, all that remained there was the sealed envelope from the Herr to Tony.

Shit.  How important could that be, Mike wondered.

Mike didn't know if he would ever see Tony Vargas, or anybody else in Cornudo ever again.  If he left this letter here and it turned out to be a matter of life and death, he would be the one responsible.  A dark cloud of that good old Gasden guilt came over him.  The Gasden guilt could be deadly, he knew, but he couldn't help it.

After a spell of figurative hand wringing, Mike figured out how to appease his nagging conscience.  He would leave the letter with Linda at the cafe, with instructions to give it to Tony when he came back, which he was bound to do sooner or later.  As such, Mike would wash his hands of it.  Then he could wash the Cornudo dust off his body just as soon as he and Little F got to a safe spot. 

He had been played for a fool by everyone in this town.  First Tony had duped him into free rent by claiming he was the caretaker.  Then the Freedom Frontiersmen had duped him into free lodging by playing on the heartstrings of his patriotism.  Then Danny Valero had played him into hacking creeps on the dark web by playing on his sense of righteous indignation.  Finally, and most painfully, he had been tricked into falling in love with a tainted but beautiful women who played on his sense of loneliness and abandonment.  He didn't trust anybody here, anymore.  He couldn't wait to get out, now that he thought about it.  But first, he had this one last quick job to do.  Who would play him in the meantime, he wondered with a laugh.

Mike threw the duffel bag back into the safe, and shut the door.  "Fucker, hide!" he ordered.

"Fucker, hide!" the tyke responded with a crisp salute. Mike then smuggled him in the cleaning cart to the shelter of the critter room. Then he took the Herr's letter and crossed the asphalt to the Cornudo Café for the last time.

The Cornudo Café was in its usual state of post lunch torpor.  Like everything else in the desert, it estivated after gorging, conserving energy for prolonged periods of unfavorable environmental conditions.  Linda was literally snoozing, flat on her back on the front counter, but when she heard Mike she flopped to life, wriggling upward like a lungfish after years immersed in sand.

"I'm glad to see you, my little Zagnut" she said.  "And it has nothing to do with my cougar fantasies this time."

Zagnut? What the hell was Zagnut? Mike tried to crack a courtesy smile.  He couldn't help but feel sad that he may never see Linda again.  Most of the time she had been really sweet to him, but like with everyone else in the Gadsden Purchase, Mike just assumed she was playing him too.  Mike intended to keep this short, so as not to be hypnotized.  "I came to ask you a favor," he said.

"Good, because I need a favor too.  Since you don't want to swap bodily fluids, we can swap favors."

They stood there staring at each other for a moment, Mike hypnotized despite himself by her lovely, ageless eyes.  "You go first," Linda said.

It look Mike a minute to remember why he was here.  Linda had that effect on people, without trying.  Her magnetism was much stronger when she was 30, at the height of her powers, but even at 50 she could still snare men with her spell.  Mike had to command himself to focus.

"I'm going out of town for a few days," he said, handing her the letter.  "Tony might drop by and this is an important letter for him, from Herr Müeller."

Linda raised her lovely eyebrows.  "Josef?  What a sweetheart.  I miss him.  How is he?"

"He's doing good," Mike said.  "He's writing a book."

"He's finally writing that old book of his?  Good for him.  I sure will give this to Tony, butter cookie, but why didn't you just leave it in the critter room?"

"It's kind of cluttered," said Mike.  "He might not see it.  The kid has his little papers all over the place and he is very protective of them."

"I hear that.  Is it my turn for a favor?"

A bittersweet part of Mike's life was ending.  He would never again be called a Zagnut, a butter cookie, or any kind of empty calorie, sugary confection. Normally Mike was not a nostalgic guy.  He had done many a complete cut und run before and never looked back.  But butter cookie?  That was painful.  "Yeah, go ahead."

"Max's computer is busted again.  I know that doesn't sound like an emergency, but it's an emergency.  I wouldn't ask you to help if it wasn't an emergency.  If he can't take the edge off with his porn he gets really cranky.  When he gets cranky he can't concentrate on his work.  When he can't concentrate on his work customers get burned bacon and lumpy grits.  His bad attitude is going to put us out of business if somebody don't do something quick."

Mike looked back longingly toward his motel.  He tried to mentally calculate the driving time between here and Tombstone, but for a computer science guy who had been forced to take calculus and beyond, he sucked at math.  He really should beg out of this.  Little F was in danger and shouldn't be left alone.  But Linda looked so desperate, and Mike was thinking about the time she had hooked them up with a doctor in Yuma.  Did Max's inability to satisfy his porn addiction constitute a similar medical emergency?  Mike supposed this was a matter of perspective, and he was no doctor to be judging the medical merits of people's warped fetishes.  Besides, how hard could it be?  There was probably just a tiny corrupted file that had to be flushed out.  He could fix it in 15 minutes and be on his way.

Max's computer turned out to be a veritable cesspool of buffer overflow, registry errors, and deleted processes.  Mike immediately ascertained that the source of Max's woes were the hundreds, possibly thousands of files that progressively got worse in degree of sleaziness.  There were videos of women doing things with eels and other aquatic animals.  There were odd acts with livestock and family pets.  There were bodily fluids being used in ways that Mike had not thought possible.  Mike was no Puritan by any stretch, but there were things here that no human eyeball, or even the eyeballs of the goldfish swimming in the bowl next to the computer, should be subjected to.

A tormented Max had known that Mike was going to find weird stuff, and in shame he had locked himself in the bathroom, from where Linda was trying to coax him out.  "It's okay honey," she said softly through the door.  "He's a computer guy.  He's seen everything."

Mike nodded in solidarity from behind the corrupted computer - no, defiled would be a better word,  but in truth there were abominations here he had never seen, or even thought possible.

"Can you fix it?" Linda asked with the gravity of someone asking the odds of her 90 year old mother surviving heart surgery.

"Oh yeah," Mike said confidently, "it's just a little more complicated than I thought."

Meanwhile, as Mike Gasden furrowed his brow, then dug and uprooted and sterilized, falling into that zone from which the only return is a hard drive made spotless by a hacker's sweat, the shadows lengthened over the forgotten Gasden Motel.

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Photo by Vegas Scorpion via Wikimedia Commons

Chapter 31

Table of Contents

The dusty, rag tag, but steely eyed patriots of the Freedom Frontiersmen had set up an unofficial roadblock just outside Tombstone. It was in a place where the 80 and 82 merged to bring people together from one obscenely hot remote corner of the state into another obscenely hot remote corner of the state, but Catalina Eddy didn't seem to mind the heat at all.  While his sun-sensitive associates of the Freedom Frontiersmen hunkered in whatever miserable shade they could get in the lee of their dust caked transports, Eddy smiled and waved at the passing motorists he flagged down, to whom he distributed flyers.  The flyer featured a surprisingly accurate composite drawing of Little Fucker, who was of course not identified there as such, alongside a caption that read Help me to get home.  Beneath this was the logo of the Freedom Frontiersmen (A community service organization), and Eddy's personal cell phone number.

"I don't know what good this is going to do, boss," Costello grumbled from the side of his jeep. 

"Just keep quiet and lay low.  I don't want your ugly mugs out here scaring people away.  Keep your repugnant pusses where nobody can see them.  I'm the photogenic face of this shabby band of mongrels.  But write down their license plates, just in case."

"Honestly, boss, what do you think the odds are someone has seen that kid?  Most of these people are from out of town.  A lot of them are from some freezing arctic circle country where 50 above is a heat wave.  They think frying in the upper hundreds is some kind of eco-adventure.  Being in the capital of Arizona gunslingers here just increases the thrill.  If they have seen this kid, he looks like just one more non-descript blonde Swede that blends into thousands more they have seen in their sub-zero lives."

"I don't approve of your cynicism," said Eddy.  "I would appreciate it if you would let me make the speeches.  Now here comes a car.  Lower your ballcap.  Jeez that thing is filthy.  Don't you ever wash it?"

As predicted, a minivan full of Scandinavian eco-tourists pulled up, full of pink sunburned faces that had previously never known color.  Back in Stockholm, happy sunburned selfies from this group were going viral. 

"Howdy Folks!" Eddy said with a cheery smile.  "Welcome to Arizona, the land of eternal sunshine.  Carolina might claim to be the sunshine state, but their sun is swallowed by thunderclouds 90 percent of the time.  Our sun, however, is shamelessly, magnificently naked most of the time."

"Florida is the sunshine state, boss," Costello mumbled from behind the jeep.  ¨Carolina is two or three states North of it, just so you'll know."

"These people don't know that," Eddy whispered through his teeth.

"Chances are they do.  The geography literacy level in Northern European countries is extraordinarily high. Much higher than here.¨

"Don't embarrass me.¨

"You are real American Cowboy, Ja?" the driver said.  Everyone in the van lifted their cell phones to take pictures of this curiosity.

"Well, sir, the days of real cowboys and gunslingers are long gone, but I've lassoed a few doggies in my day."  He basked in the attention.  "Now folks, I hate to put a bummer on your happy sojourn, but we're looking for a lost little kid."  He handed them a flyer.  The five or six occupants of the van scrutinized it, chattered with incomprehension in their strange Nordic tongue, then took photos of the flyer too. They did this mechanically and without enthusiasm, as if compelled by some unwritten tourist code.

"Looks like my little cousin Günter," said the driver, handing the flyer back.

"Please keep that with our compliments," Eddy said.  "And call us at this number here if you happen to see anything."

"Told you," Costello said as the van drove away.

Eddy could not be dissuaded.  He remained standing at the junction, a curiosity in his tall cowboy hat and khaki shorts.  Dozens drove by, but nobody could recall having seen the little boy.  Eddy was about to admit defeat and go elsewhere, when a small rental car drove up. The back seat of the compact contraption was stuffed to the breaking point with books, telescopes, and a set of golf clubs.

"Good morning," said Eddy, leaning down to the car window to make one more try.  A tall, angular, thin man with a pronounced lack of chin sat there. Alongside him was a prim, taciturn, rather doughy looking lady in a big floral hat.  "Where you folks coming from?"

"Good day, my good fellow," replied the Earl of Easely.  "Between you and the Border Patrol a chap has to endure a lot of roadblocks around here.  We've been exploring the Dragoons and the St. David monastery today.  Lovely place, with all the peafowl running about.  Am I required to show some form of identification?"

"No sir," said Eddy.  "We're helping to search for a missing child.  Maybe you and your lovely missus have seen the little fellow."

The Earl took the flyer and immediately spoke up.  People are suckers for an official looking flyer.  A stalking serial killer who posts a slick looking Have You Seen Me flyer will get hundreds of tips within minutes to help him track down his victims.  "Egad!" exclaimed the Earl.  "This looks exactly like the little chap we saw back at the motel."

Eddy was jolted by this revelation, and had to struggle to suppress the excitement. "I beg your pardon, Sir?"

"Yes, I believe I have seen him."

"Just where, exactly?"  Eddy couldn't believe it.

"Back in Cornudo, at the motel."

Eddy threw his head back so hard he could have filed a whiplash claim.  "Cornudo, Arizona?"

"My dear fellow," said the Earl a bit testily, anxious to move on.  He had a report of a Black Rail near Yuma and was desperate to investigate.  "Just how many Cornudos are there, exactly, on this planet?  Driving across this fair land, one comes across a Madison or a Jackson at every turn of the highway.  On the other side of the Mississippi the name of that bloody anti-royalist Bolivar is splattered everywhere.  But I assure you, there is no other Cornudo but here."

"Wh...who did you see this child with, in Cornudo?"

"He was with the lady friend of the motel owner.  Mike, I believe his name is.  They were in a room on the southwest side.  But that was a while ago now."

That would be the critter room, Eddy realized.  They were hiding the kid in the critter room.  That made perfect sense, because no one sane wanted to go in there.

"This boy is missing you say? He looked pretty happy and at home to me. Shouldn't we contact the appropriate authorities?" He had his bony nose raised in Earlish displeasure at Eddy´s distasteful wardrobe.

"We certainly should sir," agreed Eddy.  "And that is exactly what I intend to do, right now.  I have the sheriff on speed dial.  He has sort of, you know, deputized us to help out."

The Earl had been surreptitiously watching shadows slinking around the parked jeeps, where from time to time the wretched, ruddy face of an unsavory, unwashed human specimen would peek out from amongst them.  Not from among, but amongst, as the British say and think, which is totally ridiculous and basically why we had to fight for independence.  Anyhow, the Earl was beginning to question the legitimacy of these concerned citizens, who looked more like brigands and cutthroats.

"I do say my good man," he said to Eddy.  "I must protest any sort of vigilantism that might be going on here.  I find that sort of thing reprehensible in a country that prides itself on law and order."

"No vigilantism, I assure you sir.  The sheriff will be notified to investigate your report.  Where are you folks headed next?"

The Earl was normally a pillar of truth, prevarication having been purged from his genes by several generations of careful inbreeding, but something about these ruffians didn't sit right.  "We're going to catch a plane in Phoenix," he said.  "We've had a jolly good time out here in the colonies, but duty calls, you know."

"Oh, don't I know," Eddy said with a broad grin that reached to the underside of his cowboy hat.  "You folks have a safe trip, and come back and see us sometime.  Thanks for the tip."

The Earl turned onto the highway 80 in a northwest direction.  "Oh dear I fear I put my foot in it," he addressed the Lady Easely.  "I don't like the smell of those chaps at all.  Perhaps I have gotten our friend Mike into some sort of trouble...Yes I know he's been such a good sport, he handled that embarrassing situation with the rejected credit card with such aplomb.  Fancy that - an Easely a pauper!  How was I to know that nose picking brute of a cashier in the petrol station in Safford, that, that cock eyed, six-toed mutant named Earl Easely, would hijack my identify?  How did that larcenous wretch ever chance upon such an honorable name? Nasty piece of business!  But Mike was a true gentleman about it.  I am of a mind to see he gets knighted, when we get home...What?  Can I do that?  Of course I can do that.  I'm an Easely!  But first things first.  We've got to call the young fellow and give him a warning.  Drive faster dear, there's no reception here."

Back at the junction, Eddy was busy rubbing their noses in it, pointing out to everyone this was why he was the boss, because he was the only one who could think up great ideas that seemed stupid to everyone else.  Once he had finished high-fiving himself, however, it was time for the FF to plot its next move.

"Danny said the motel was off limits," one of the non-descript goons reminded Eric.  "How are we going to grab the kid without him seeing us across the parking lot?"

"Easy," said Eddy.  "Roy at the filling station in Tacna has his wife's Camry parked in the back. It ain´t Sunday, so that woman ain´t driving. You couldn't ask for something more non-descript touristy than a silver Camry, and Roy owes me a lot of favors.  I'll take that car and go in pretending to be a tourist.  I'll put on some big sunglasses, a Hawaiian shirt and an under armor ballcap.  Nothing looks more California than that.  Then I´ll grab the kid and come right out. Nobody will recognize me without this big, stupid hat.  Only problem is, how do we get into that room once we are there?  I'm betting that Gasden boy changed the locks on us."

"He might not have changed this one," said Costello, holding up a single brass key that gleamed like the Holy Grail in the southern Arizona sunlight.

"What is that and where did you get it?"

Costello let out an exasperated sigh.  "While you boys were getting amorous with Tony up against the side of his car, I had the foresight to remove it from his keychain."

"You Sir, just got a promotion," said Eddy as he swiped the key from Costello´s unwashed hand.

"Promotion to what?" asked Costello, unimpressed.

"Chief knucklehead."

"Uh huh.  Seems like I've already been filling that job slot for years.  Tell me something.  Once we get this boy, what are we planning on doing with him?"

Eddy´s brow furrowed momentarily beneath his big cowboy hat.  Which begs the question, if your brow furrows and nobody sees it, did it really furrow?  And because the furrow was burrowed beneath the big hat, nobody could tell if it was a thinking furrow, or a crisis of conscience furrow, contemplating momentous moral or ethical issues.

"Well, as said Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, Fiddle-dee-dee I'll think about that tomorrow."

"I hate to break the news, but that was Scarlet O'hara in Gone With The Wind, boss," Costello noted.

Westward, beyond the Huachuca Mountains, Sheriff Dustin Diesel was rolling along a winding highway with his prisoner, Tony Vargas, handcuffed in the back.

"Where the hell are you taking me?" complained Tony, looking out the window to avoid the sight of Sheriff Diesel's fat head, which were basically his only two choices for scenery.  "Is this going to be one of those police brutality things, because you're taking a roundabout ass way to Nogales.  Is this the part where you bury a beaner in the woods after beating him to death?  I want a lawyer."

"The Sheriff respectfully requests that the prisoner keep his mouth shut," Dustin said from up front.

"You're not supposed to say that," Tony answered.  "You're supposed to read me my Miranda rights, named after another beaner you guys tried to railroad.  After you read my rights, then you get me to jabber so I incriminate myself.  See, you don't know shit about the law."

Despite Tony's best efforts, Dustin remained quiet as they turned off the highway and onto a reasonably well-maintained dirt road.  "Here we go," said Tony as they bumped along through oaken scrubland, mixed with pinyon trees.  "Don't I at least get a priest to give me the last rites?"

A sign by the road said Canelo Ranger Station.  They passed by a corral and a few irregularly placed buildings. A jaded horse munching a mouthful of hay peered at them indifferently.  Then Dustin moved down a small lane to a creek, where he parked by a squat adobe structure with a pitched roof.

"Hey, this is the ranger station," said Tony.  "Where the hell is Lindell?  I want to lodge a complaint that my civil rights have been violated."

"Just keep your mouth shut and I'll explain everything once we're inside."

"You gonna waterboard me in there?"

"Don't be stupid.  You know I don't waterboard people.  Just shut your yap for one minute, if you can manage."

Dustin led Tony by the cuffs into the building.  The cramped structure contained a small holding cell infrequently used by the rangers, more often by Dustin when he was going to hand over a prisoner across jurisdictions.  Dustin put Tony in the cell and removed his bindings.

"I'm putting you in this cell for your own protection, Tony," he said.  "I didn't call this in because I know you didn't kill that lady.  You're not guilty of any crimes other than first degree pain in the ass."

"Better your ass than mine," said Tony, stretching out on the small bunk.  "I almost had my booty popped today.  How about you, Sheriff?  Is your starfish still clinging to the reef or have they pried it loose already?"

"Let me finish, because this is serious business.  AZ DPS is turning over every rock between here and the New Mexico border looking for you.  You know the Colonel hates you since you were screwed his wife a few years ago."

"Hey, she threw herself at me.  I couldn't help it.  I was a victim of sexual assault. Just like I almost was today, except the Colonel´s wife was a lot more tolerable."

"Yeah right.  Anyhow, if Public Safety gets its hands on you they're going to arrange for you to resist arrest or assault an officer, and then your wise cracking days are over.  So we got to keep you here off the radar until we find some evidence to counteract the evidence they have on you."

"Evidence?  What evidence?" said Tony, putting his hands under his head for a pillow.  "They got nothing on me."

"They have your fingerprints and DNA on a tarp that was used to cover her body.  That's pretty damning evidence."

Tony sat straight up.  "Holy shit.  Wait a minute."  He squeezed his forehead as if that could concentrate his thoughts.  "The tarp was stolen out of the kid's truck. The kid told me later he saw it rolled up in the back of one of those Frontiersman's trucks.  Holy shit the body must have been in it!  They stopped for breakfast at the cafe carrying a corpse."

"Okay, that explains the fingerprints.  What about the DNA?"

"Well, that's a little complicated," Tony laughed, slightly embarrassed.  "The kid and I took the tarp to cover the groceries when we went to Costco in Tucson.  Afterwards, we went to Striggys.  Remember that cute little half-Asian, half-Mexican, half God knows what else waitress there?  Monica, Veronica, I forget.  I invited her out to the truck on her lunch break, we used the tarp to cover ourselves and..."

"I think I get it," said Dustin.  "Thanks for the clarification.  What I have to do then, is to get the investigators to check for prints for any of the Frontiersmen.  In the meantime I'll unload some food and water, and you stay here and reflect on your sins a while."

"I did that already.  There are way to many to reflect upon, so I gave up in like five seconds." 

As Dustin stood over him like father-confessor, Tony's mustache twisted in deep thought.  "Hey, what about that kid they were looking for?  The one that Hal was all obsessed about?  The one the Feds were pulling out all the stops to find?"

Dustin tensed up, because this subject was definitely a sore spot. "The Feds weren't involved in finding that boy.  That search had nothing to do with the kid.  Hal is wrong about that, he´s just chasing shadows, hoping for a promotion. Hey, what's with that cat swallowed the canary look?  What do you know?"

Tony smiled.  "I think I know what the search is for."

Dustin faced Tony dead on. "How the hell could you know? Me and my men have been combing the desert for months and they won't even tell us what we're looking for. You expect me to believe you have access to information so secret that the people assigned to protect it don't know what it is?"

Tony was sitting up on the bunk again. "Yes, I have special insights. That's the difference between me and you. You're so used to taking orders from some asswipe you don't know how to think for yourself anymore."

Dustin chewed on his own walrus-like mustache for a minute and decided Tony might have a point. "Let's hear it. What's this great revelation of yours?"

"Not so fast. We need to make a deal. As a matter of fact, since I'm a sweet, generous guy and you're an old friend, I'll trade you two secrets, and all you have to do is let me go."

"Let you go? You're crazy. That's not good for either one of us."

"Not exactly let me go, just let me out of here. I'll still be in your protective custody and I'll be a model prisoner, I promise. I won't even think about escaping. You just need to go where I tell you to."

Dustin stroked the bristly hair beneath his lip suspiciously. "Clue me in. Deliver the goods first."

"I'll clue you in on the way," said Tony. "We gotta get moving. Things are heating up now, I can sense it.¨ He got the feeling the kid is in some deep shit.

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Canelo ranger station image by Alison T. Otis, USDA Forest Service, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Chapter 30

Table of Contents

It was only June, but Mike was already melting in the cruel Cornudo sun.  It definitely wasn't the same sun he had grown up with in San Diego.  That sun had taken breaks.  That sun sometimes disappeared to take a nooner behind a thick layer of stratus clouds.  That sun was an easy-going beach bum that allowed a cool ocean breeze to tickle its feet.  It had no real work ethic.  But now, here in the Gadsden Purchase, it was like the planet had two stars.  There was the laid back beatnik west coast hipster sun of the beach regions, and over here dwelled his evil Nazi twin brother, governing his fiefdom like a concentration camp, coursing over the desert pissing fire on the tired, the poor, the huddled masses.

The Arizona Public Schools had officially released their hostages for the summer, so everyday Mike would stand in the parking lot and watch in scorn and disapproval as thousands of Zonies fled westward toward the ocean, where they would raise the temperature of the beaches by sheer friction.  Sometimes, due to one part boredom and three parts delirium, Mike would flip them the bird, but people rarely looked at him askance in their haste to flee the furnace.  If a passing motorist did deign to glance his way, their reaction was something along the lines of look at that delirious loser probing the weather with his finger, as if today could be any cooler than yesterday.  What a deluded jerk.

Mike called his Dad to wish him a happy father's day.  His Dad smugly asked Mike how the weather was, as he complained about the heat wave in Chula Vista, where it was 85 degrees.  He inquired if Mike had seen they were predicting 120 for Yuma by Tuesday.  The subtle message behind Mike's Dad's persistent meteorological theme was when would Mike seek professional help for his mental illness? 

At night Mike's dick would also give him grief.  "We were doing really good there for a while boss, what happened?  Couldn't you at least indulge me a little with a little fapping?"

"Shut up and go to sleep.  Don't you ever think about anything except sex?"

"Sometimes, when I have to pee really bad."

"Is that all women are to you, sex objects?"

"Hey, if the hole is big enough and wet enough, I'm good.  Listen to you, Mr. Sanctimonious.  Sometimes I have to ask myself if you really are gay, like everybody says."

Mike sat up in bed and looked straight down at his pecker, which was illuminated in the glow of the motel sign outside.  It's single eye popped out of Mike's shorts and looked at him accusingly.  "Really?" Mike said.  "This is coming from you?  Wouldn't you be the first one to know?  Tell me, have I ever dipped you in the fudge fondue?"

Mike's dick had to think about this for a minute but, as usual, it came up with a stinging rebuttal.  "True, but that doesn't mean anything.  You could be one of those celibate queers, like Morrissey.  Instead of going through the emotional and sociological trauma of being openly gay you just renounce sex altogether."

Mike slapped his dick hard with his pillow.  "Shut up!  I'm not gay.  But maybe I will go celibate, just to piss you off!  Maybe I'll join the priesthood!  How would you like that!  You're an animal!  Keep your mouth shut.  I can't sleep with all that chatter."

So it was that Mike mostly went sleepless through his endless round of days, coursing through the meaningless orbit of his life like that callous Cornudo sun that never seemed to set.  The heat weighed on him heavily, but his real burden was the realization that he was a complete and utter failure with women.  His only solace was watching Little Fucker get bigger, but the boy's growth was like that of the baby Springbok - the baby beast who knows it must get on its legs and start springing fast, or be eaten.  In other words, Mike went through the dreary motions of his life with the sad realization that he and the kid´s days of being together were numbered.

"Cut und run.  Cut und run," the Herr kept saying in his head, but Mike was too stubborn to listen.

Perhaps it was a mirage, perhaps it was but a dream, but one day there she was. As was his habit, Mike had risen out of bed early to enjoy the few cool moments allotted to Cornudo before the sun delivered its blazing vengeance. It was then that he saw Marisol, his own personal sun, rising above the southern horizon.

She came forward on foot, lugging a stuffed backpack. Her olive-green T-shirt was soaked with sweat, and her hair was piled atop her hair like the nest of some desert rodent. She looked like she had slept beneath a tree, but her dulled eyes showed no sign of the divine revelation these nocturnal interludes in the wastelands typically inspire. When she spotted Mike watching her from the parking lot she made a visible effort to skirt around him, but Mike rushed over to her side of the pavement.

"Marisol, what are you doing?" he beseeched.

"Backpacking, Mike. What does it look like?"

He crept up to her like a whipped pup, blocking her way. Still being cognizant of her right hook, however, he kept a safe distance. ¨Marisol I´m sorry. I swear to God I never looked at anything related to you on the Internet. Why don´t you come back? I love you.¨

A brief expression of tenderness flashed across her face, like a solar flare that soon sputters out. ¨I believe you Mike. But that incident served to point out the futility of our relationship. I´m no good for you. I´m damaged goods. You deserve a good woman.¨ Three goods in a row and none of them good, thought Mike.

She pushed past him, brushing him with a sweaty arm that felt as sweet and tender as ambrosia.¨

¨Why don´t you come over later?¨ he pleaded. ¨We can talk this over.¨

Marisol picked up her pace toward the gas station. "Forget about me Mike, for your own good.¨ A bad good again. I'm toxic. I’m man poison. I’m a used up sperm rag. Grow some dignity. You’re weirding me out, Mike.”

Mike thought about chasing her, but then he would have to deal with Danny over there at the gas station, into said sanctuary she had disappeared with her cargo. With helpless longing Mike kept his eyes focused that direction, until he watched her emerge from the gas station sans backpack, then walk home. Not once did she turn back and look his way. His jaw went stupidly slack, then he scurried into his own hole, to take refuge from the cruelty that was not limited to the sun, in this hell of a landscape he had exiled himself to, as if for penance.

Turned out he wasn´t going to get around dealing with Danny anyway. That same day, as it cooled down to a chilly 105, Mike was sitting in the office scrolling through his emails, dusting off the little cyber folders, trying not to think about anything. Because it was too early to drink, this was the only other way to numb his mind. Coincidentally or not, here came Danny Valero, walking proprietarily across his parking lot, holding his jacket collar shut as against an arctic wind.  In his free hand he carried another list.  "Hide,  Fucker!" Mike commanded, and Little F hid.

Well, at least this will ease my misery for a while, Mike thought.

Danny walked back into the office and sat down without being invited.  On each visit he acted more like he owned the place.  Mike didn't like it. 

Without even so much as a good morning or good afternoon, like there was any difference when it had already broken 100 by breakfast, Danny pushed the paper across Mike's desk.  "Get on it," he said.

Mike breathed in slowly through his nostrils, like an irritated rhinoceros.

"Excuse me?"

Danny laughed.  "What?  Am I supposed to say please?"

"It's a good place to start."  Mike picked up the paper.  "These are banks," he said.  "Sonoyta Savings and Loan.  Gila Valley Farmer's Trust.  Pima Consolidated Money Management.  One is an insurance company.  What the hell is this?"

Danny leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms.  "These creeps have to keep their money somewhere.  We need to go straight for the source."

"I'm not hacking any banks.  I'm not going to skim off innocent people's accounts.  Besides that, I don't like your attitude."

Danny pursed his lips and clenched his fists.  He became a different animal.  Mike saw him as he really was, a coiled ball of violence that could easily wreck this room and then wreck Mike's face. Cut und run.  He had been warned.

"I'm not going to work for you anymore," Mike announced.

Danny rocked on his heels. "You're in way too deep for that.  You're the computer guy who hacked those accounts.  I'm an old man who can barely operate email.  Everything leads to you."

Danny's reptilian eyes never shifted from Mike's face.  His pupils were the empty vacuum of space.  There was no starlight there.  "So now you're going to turn me in if I don't do what you want?  Go ahead, I can buy some pretty good lawyers.  As it is, my lawyers already have documentation of everything that has taken place between you and me."  That was a lie.  Mike's lawyer had nothing, but it sounded plausible.

Danny leaned back in his seat.  "I think you´re an ungrateful punk, after everything I've done for you.  I keep those Frontier assholes away from here. Now you got the Feds sniffing around here too.  Who do you think is throwing them cold trails?"  He pointed a finger at his own chest.  "They want to indict you.  If I didn´t have your back, they would have done it already.  You better be ready to run, when you don't have any more friends in the desert.  It can be a very cruel place, and you're going to find out."

"Nice speech," answered Mike.  It took a lot to piss him off, but once it happened he often did things that spat in the face of self-preservation.  "Personally, I think we are square for your so-called favors.  I'm not getting in any deeper with you.  Take your list and leave.  I'm done."

"You are dead and buried,"  Danny said as he rose slowly from his chair.  "And not by me.  Smith's Sonoran Safaris.  Think about it.  Hunting humans in the desert, for real?  We are savages out here, but only Hollywood could think of something like that.  You hacked a dummy Fed account.  You are big time in trouble now.  Only I can hide you."

Mike put a shaking hand on his desk to steady himself.  Danny pulled back the list and put it inside his thick jacket.  "You set me up, you asshole.  You let me do that on purpose."

Danny smiled.  His teeth were very clean, Mike noted, too clean to be real.  "Watch your language.  I don't like cursing.  Cursing makes me lose my patience.  My mother never allowed foul language in her presence.  Can you imagine my brother Tony, the most foul-mouthed knuckle-dragger in history, was as pure as an altar boy in her presence.  You better think hard, young man.  I'll be around."

"Oh, I've thought hard," Mike answered.  "I'm out.  Goodbye."

Danny gave a little wave with his right hand and walked out with deliberation, like he held all the cards.  He shut the door coolly behind, but inside he was boiling. He found it necessary to take off his jacket, for a change, but he did so casually, not exhibiting worry.  In the process, the hand-written note fell out and blew over toward the motel office. Danny did not see Mike scoop it up and stash it.

Danny needed to hit something, and hit something fast.

The cartel was hounding him about a shipment intercepted at Lukeville.  They blamed Danny, claiming he had been sloppy, that he had not vetted his people properly.  Ever since Trump, everyone was using that word vetted.  Danny hated it.  His driver had gotten nervous and the customs inspectors had found the drugs in his truck, but he had not talked.  To Danny, that was good vetting.  The cartel disagreed.  They wanted two million dollars from Danny to allow him to keep his exclusive franchise as a sub-contractor for Yuma and Pima counties.  Danny explained the bank hacking scheme to them, giving his guarantee that in time they would get their their two million, plus interest. Then there were the unauthorized activities of the Frontiersmen.  How was he going to pay for all these screw ups?  Well, if he couldn't get it skimming off the banks he would get it from the kid himself.  The kid was loaded.  Danny would find a way to milk it out of him. He certainly wouldn´t get all that cash from Marisol´s milk runs.

He had to hurry. When you pissed off the cartel, you just didn't quietly go out of business, you didn't just lower your shingle from the front door.  You got waxed. Damn, Danny needed to hit something.

The first something Danny saw was Marisol, laying on the couch in a skimpy pair of shorts.  The heat was oppressive in Danny's house because he never ran the air conditioner, saying it could give you throat cancer.  The only way to halfway tolerate the ponderous, soupy, sluggish air was to lie still and do nothing until nightfall.  Like other desert critters Marisol was in a state of torpor, reducing superfluous bodily functions to survive.  She had her eyes shut, little beads of moisture were dewing up on her brown skin.

Danny yanked Marisol off the couch by the hair with one hand, then flung her against the wall that had the fewest pictures of his mother.  A painting of a sailboat crashed to the floor.  A glass figurine fell from a side table and shattered.  Marisol squealed, but in the din of humming air conditioners everywhere, who would hear?  Going straight from feverish sleep to projectile hit her like a tsunami.

"Didn't I tell you to clean the house!" Danny roared.  "Look at this mess!  You're laying around here half naked and look at this pigsty!"

Marisol was huddled on her knees amid shattered glass, dizzy and nauseous from the blow she had taken against the wall.  Danny went in again, pulling her up by the neck like a mother cat and backhanding her hard in the cheek, in a way that wouldn't leave a mark.  She flew into the wall a second time with a dull thud, produced where wall met skull, then cut her bare feet on the shards on the floor.  Before she should get her balance, Danny struck her in the other cheek. But whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other Marisol thought, as if she was a disconnected observer watching her body, right before she collapsed in semi-consciousness to the jagged floor.

"Get up, you filthy whore!  Get up, we ain't done talking!"

Danny raised Marisol by the hair again, but she was too limp to bring to her feet.  All she could manage was a kneeling position, which could only be maintained by Danny pulling sharply on her lovely hair, which was thick and smooth and strong as a rope.  From her exalted place on the wall, Danny's sainted mother looked down, but did not intercede for the sinners.

"Tell me something," Danny snarled in Marisol's ear as he lowered himself to one knee.  "All that time you were whoring around with that kid next door you must have learned something, right?  You must have sucked some kind of information out of him with your filthy little lips, something I can use against him.  Otherwise, why did I waste my time sending you over there to spread your legs, which is all you are good at?"

Marisol's head was as light as the superheated thermals radiating up from the scorched earth of Cornudo.  "I...don't...know...anything," she moaned.  "I...swear."

Marisol had been on a few porno shoots where the dudes put their hands around her throat while fucking, as if they got their rocks off by pretending to strangle her.  She had always thought that whoever enjoyed watching this sort of thing must be a sick fuck, and she had always thought the guys doing this to her in the scenes were also sick fucks, capable of strangling a girl for real.  All the same she wasn´t overly concerned, because she knew they weren't going to snuff her right there on film.  Yet what her Uncle Danny Valero did next did freaked her out intensely, because she couldn´t be sure if he would kill her or not.

Danny yanked up on Marisol's hair so hard she let out a loud, lonely wail of pain.  Danny´s own anxiety merged with that scream and melted off into the amoeba heat bubble surrounding them.  That feels good.  That's just what I needed, he thought.  Then, using the crook of his elbow to clasp Marisol's neck between forearm and bicep, he began a boa constrictor squeeze.

"Tell me," he growled into her ear. "You've been spending all that time over there, letting him have his way with you like the little harlot you are. I can tell you know something, don't you?"

Danny released his chokehold just enough to allow Marisol to speak. "No Uncle no!" she coughed and gasped.

"Liar! Lying little slut!" He applied pressure again. He seemed to know exactly how much pressure would make her fade out without losing consciousness. He had actually studied the art, reading a book by a former Russian agent who tortured people in the infamous Lubyanka prison. Afterward, he practiced the techniques on people, because he didn´t believed in theoretical knowledge without practical application. "You know something, don't you!"

Marisol emerged from a black pit, over which she teetered on the brink. The hole was a cavern that went into the bowels of a place that had no bottom. It expanded and contracted like a living thing, and it smelled like her Uncle's breath.

"Yes Uncle," she wheezed.

"Yes Uncle what?"

"Yes, Uncle dear."

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Photo by NASA/SDO (AIA) courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, altered by blog author