Endless Night (38 page)

Ranch sure noticed how great I looked.

It took me about fifteen minutes to drive to his place after leaving Jody’s. When I got there and he opened his door, he said, “Oooo, honey.” Then he grabbed me and hauled me up against him and squeezed one of my tits through the T-shirt. Ranch weighed about three hundred and fifty pounds. A lot of it was fat, but he also worked out with weights so he had plenty of muscle. It’s a good thing I didn’t have a tit inside that bra, or he would’ve mashed it. “Well, shit,” he said when he noticed he was only squeezing tissue paper. “What happened to my dream girl?”

“She’s waiting for us in Indio,” I told him. “And we’re gonna miss her if we don’t get our asses in gear, so put me down and let’s go.”

He kidded around during the trip, pretending to flirt with me and reaching under my skirt. Actually, I’m not sure he was completely kidding. I think he sort of hoped or wished I’d somehow turn into the girl I looked like. You know how sometimes if you watch a movie that you’ve already seen, and maybe you don’t like the way it ended last time, you keep sort of hoping and wishing the end will turn out different? If you really get into it, you can almost convince yourself that it
will
change. It was probably like that with Ranch. He had himself half convinced that I’d change into a female.

I think, honestly, that I was getting him a little horny.

Must be weird to be a gal and have that sort of power over guys.

Every once in a while, I had to tell him to knock it off. I even had to remove his hand from me a couple of times.

Dusty was in the back seat. He spent most of his time staring out the windows, and didn’t notice the funny stuff. Or if he did, he ignored it. He was the sort of guy who never fooled around. He took every damn thing in the world seriously. In fact, he was basically a complete paranoid.

One of those survivalist nuts. He figured the world—or at least “civilization as we know it”—would come to an end pretty soon. Like next week, you know? And he planned to be ready for it.

He even had a hideout/bomb shelter somewhere. He used to talk about it, but never told any of us where it was. He planned to go there and live through the big thermonuclear holocaust.

He was really hoping for that holocaust.

According to him, it was
on its way.
He could hardly wait.

You’ve never seen a guy as disappointed in your life as when the Soviet Union went down the tubes a couple of years ago.

What a pisser for poor Dusty!

It pretty much ruined his chances of ever seeing a mushroom cloud, and he was crushed.

But then we had that Rodney King riot in L.A. last year, so Dusty got his hopes back. He’d probably never get to enjoy a massive exchange of nuclear warheads, but a race war might be almost as good. So he pinned his hopes on that.

He started looking forward to an uprising by the blacks with the same sort of enthusiasm he used to have about nuclear war.

I think he dreamed of fighting off assaults from his secret hideout—dressing up in his Kevlar vest and helmet and camouflage suit, arming himself to the teeth and mowing down hordes of rampaging crazies.

The only times I ever saw him laugh or smile were when he was nailing someone.

A nut case, that’s what Dusty was. But very good with his rifle, which was in the back seat with him.

Anyway, where was I?

The Texaco. Right. Pumping gas. In my nice brown wig and Jody clothes and all that. There were other people filling their tanks, and I got looks from a couple of guys, but nobody bothered me. Maybe because I had Ranch and Dusty in the car.

I was feeling sort of sick because we’d shown up too late.

Maybe if I hadn’t bothered to change my clothes, or if Ranch hadn’t wasted time hugging me on his front porch, or if we hadn’t stopped at the drugstore to buy that stuff, or ... Hell, maybe they left so early that none of that mattered.

What’s done is done, right?

What counts is how you handle what’s given to you.

Here’s the thing: I’d told Ranch and Dusty that I knew where we could lay our hands on Jody. And of course I’d said she was in Indio. But I hadn’t said a thing about any motel or what kind of car they were driving.

I left those things out just because I was playing the cards close to my vest, you know? I hadn’t been planning to trick the guys.

But suddenly I
had
to trick them.

I couldn’t just admit we’d shown up too late and blown our chance at Jody. Ranch might be okay about a thing like that, but there was no telling about Dusty. A very temperamental guy. He might flip his lid and kill me.

The nozzle clicked off, so I hung it up and capped the tank and went to the office to pay.

In L.A., you have to pay for your gas before you pump it. That’s because L.A. is full of assholes who’ll drive off without paying if you give them half a chance. You know you’ve reached a civilized place when they let you pump first and give them the money after you’re done.

I paid and went back to the car and got into the passenger seat. “Let’s go,” I said.

Then I gave Ranch directions just as if I actually had some kind of destination.

Every now and then, he’d ask where we were going. I’d say, “You’ll see.” Like it was a big secret.

A secret, all right. Even I wasn’t in on it.

Dusty kept his mouth shut and watched out the windows.

We drove through a business area with a lot of shops and restaurants and so on. I looked at the people in the cars that went by, and I looked at the people on the sidewalks.

No Jody, of course. Big surprise.

There were a lot of blue cars. I glanced at who was inside, but didn’t expect to spot Jody in any of them.

The truth is, I wasn’t looking for her.

What I wanted was a reasonable facsimile. Someone Jody’s age and size, with golden hair and a good short haircut. Someone who could pass for her.

Ranch had never even caught a glimpse of Jody. He’d missed his only chance, which was when she ran past the master bedroom on Friday night. Right then, Ranch had been monkeying around with his back to the door.

Tricking him would be a cinch.

Dusty would be the problem. He’d gotten a good look at Jody through his rifle scope—such a good look that he’d seen what a knockout she is and told Tom we should try to take her alive so we could really have a chance to enjoy her.

Maybe Dusty could be fooled, though. Maybe he’d only gotten an
impression
that Jody’s beautiful, and hadn’t really seen her features in detail.

Fat chance.

Unless I could find an awfully good duplicate, Dusty would probably catch on.

There were some girls around, riding in the back seats of passing cars, walking down sidewalks with their families or friends, going into stores, even some pedaling along on their bikes. Something was always wrong, though. If they looked about the right age, then they were too fat or had the wrong color hair or wore glasses or were as ugly as dirt.

“Are you
sure
you know where we’re going?” Ranch asked after a while.

“We’re almost there,” I told him.

Hope springs eternal.

“Make a left here,” I said.

Ranch did it.

A couple of blocks later, I said, “Take the next right.”

We were driving through a residential neighborhood with old stucco houses on both sides of the road. It was sunny and almost nobody seemed to be outside. Too hot, probably. We were fine in Ranch’s car, though, with the air conditioning at full blast.

“Okay, a left at the next corner,” I said.

Ranch made the turn. Up ahead, the neighborhood thinned out. There were a couple of mobile homes. The only houses were far apart and crummy. From the look of things, we were at the edge of town and about to meet the desert.

“What’re you trying to pull?” Dusty asked.

“Nothing.”

“So where the fuck is she? You don’t know, do you? You’re giving us some sort of fuckin’ run-around here.”

“See the house with the pickup in front?”

It was about a hundred yards ahead and off to the right. It had a rusty mailbox at the edge of the road. The pickup looked brand new—forty years ago. All its glass was smashed out and it didn’t have any wheels. The house didn’t look much better than the pickup truck, but at least its windows weren’t broken.

“You tellin’ me she’s in there?” Dusty asked. He didn’t sound at all inclined to believe it.

“I’m not telling you shit,” I said. “You’ll see for yourself.” I said to Ranch, “Stop by the mailbox.”

He gave me a funny look, like I’d lost my mind. “You sure about this?”

“Sure as I can be. I got the address from an old friend. An old friend who just happens to be the LAPD lieutenant in charge of witness protection.”

Ranch looked surprised, maybe even impressed.

Dusty said, “Gimme a break. A lieutenant with the ... ?”

“This is one of their safe houses. Wait here. I’ll go in first. They’ve been told to expect a woman from Child Welfare Services, and I’m it.”

With that, I jumped out of the car and went for the house. Sweat just popped out of me. It wasn’t only because of the heat, either. I could feel Ranch and Dusty watching me. My ticker was pounding like a hammer.

I didn’t know who was gonna be in the house.

Knew who
wouldn’t
be, though. Jody.

The place looked like it might be vacant. No vehicle except for the useless old pickup. No signs at all that anyone was occupying the property—or taking care of it. The yard was nothing but dust and cracked earth and rocks and a few scrubby bushes. The outside walls were cracked, and big patches of paint had peeled off. The windows were so dirty that I couldn’t see through them.

I stopped at the front door. It was shut and no sounds came from inside.

I knocked a couple of times, then stepped back and took a look around.

To the right, pretty far away, was an old mobile home up on blocks. It looked lived in, but there wasn’t any car so I figured its people had driven off somewhere. This being Sunday morning, maybe they’d gone to church.

To the left was desert.

The houses across the road looked almost as run down as this one.

No matter where I looked, I couldn’t see anyone watching me. That’s if you don’t count Ranch and Dusty in the car.

This was as good a place as any.

So I faced the door again, but just when I was about to knock some more, it swung open.

Which I wasn’t expecting at all.

My stomach did a flip-flop.

I was in luck, though. The door’d been opened by a guy, and I knew how fine I looked.

Better still, he was a teenager.

Fifteen or sixteen, a little goofy looking with his flat-top haircut and the way his upper teeth stuck out. He wore a faded pair of blue jeans, and no shirt. He had a good tan, but he was husky and looked soft.

He sure wasn’t what I’d expected to find in a place like this.

I’d expected it to be empty. Barring that, the likely inhabitant would’ve been a withered old hag or a filthy bearded hermit in bib overalls.

This kid was a pretty pleasant surprise.

And no doubt about it, I was a
great
surprise for him.

He stared out at me and blinked.

I said, “Good morning. I’m Simone.”

“Hi.”

“I’m afraid my friends and I have gotten ourselves lost.”

“Yuh?” He leaned sideways and gazed past me.

“My husband and brother-in-law,” I told him. “Men can be such dopes.”

He laughed once. It was more like a snort.

“Can you tell me how we might get back to the interstate?”

He squinted into space. “Where?”

“The big inter ... never mind. Maybe if I could have a word with your mother or father?”

“Ma’s off at work. Ya know the Safeway market ... ?”

“Is your father home?”

“Naw, he’s dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Aw, he was a shit. Just ask anyone.”

I smiled. “Would it be all right if I come in for just a moment and use your bathroom!”

He blushed and his mouth dropped open.

“It’s awfully embarrassing to ask, but this is a real emergency. We’ve been lost for a
long
time, and those two just got out a while ago and peed on some cactus. You fellas are so lucky that way.”

I gave his crotch a good, long look.

He cleared his throat. He rubbed his lips with the back of his hand. “I reckon it’s okay if ya wanta use the ...” He shrugged, then stepped backward. “C’mon in.”

I did.

In the immortal words of Bette Davis, What a dump!

Not only that, but it was hotter than blazes and it stank.

I shut the door. That took care of most of the light. Only a dim yellow glow came in through the filthy windows and curtains.

I set my purse on the floor and said, “Did your mother leave you all alone?”

“Yuh.”

“Sure is hot in here,” I said.

“Yuh.”

Then I peeled off my T-shirt so I was standing there in my bra and skirt. With the light so lousy, I figured he wouldn’t be able to tell that I was a fake.

“That’s a lot better,” I said.

He said, “Uhhh.”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Henry,” he said.

Same as that fucking dog.

He just stood there when I walked up to him. He was a couple of inches taller than me. I put my hands on his chest and rubbed him. He was slippery. And he was starting to breathe
really
hard. I wonder why.

He gasped out, “Didn’t ya . . . wanta use ... ?”

“You’re so handsome, Henry.”

I ran my hands up and down him. I even gave him a squeeze through the front of his jeans. He had a huge boner. Almost funny. I make a hell of a woman.

I pressed myself against him and hoped he couldn’t tell there was only paper in my bra.

He seemed just as thrilled as ever.

More so, in fact.

He put his arms around me. He was huffing and rubbing himself against me.

I kissed the side of his neck, then said, “I knew a dog named Henry.”

He didn’t say anything, but sort of raked up the back of my skirt and pushed his hands under the seat of my panties.