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 One form of lawlessness had only been replaced by another form of lawlessness, and this would go on as long as there was a stain on the map called the Gadsden Purchase.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."

NEXT >>


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

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.

NEXT >>

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