Merlot (25 page)

“Look, can’t you see I’m dying here. I’ve
been shot!” Merlot whined.

“Shit, that’s barely gonna leave an
interesting scar. What in the hell do you think you’re doing here?”
Mendel scoffed.

“Oh yeah, like I wanted to come along,”
Merlot gasped just as a wave of pain raced across his rear.

“He’s my boyfriend!” exclaimed Cindy, moving
in to get a closer look at Merlot’s wound.

“Hey, can you move that thing?” Merlot looked
up and crossed his eyes to focus on Mendel’s barrel as it bounced
off his forehead.

“Check and see what’s behind us. He ain’t
goin’ no where’s,” Mendel told Elvis. They could all feel the
armored car gaining speed after it turned and accelerated onto
Highway 280 and raced south.

“Oh God!” Merlot groaned as more searing pain
raced across his rear.

“Are you okay, Tony?” Cindy gasped, gently
tracing her finger along the puckered, bloody wound.

“Oh, please don’t do that,” Merlot gritted
his teeth.

“Nothing, back there but cars, no cops,”
Elvis said sounding a bit more relaxed.

“Good. Now if we can just get the hell out of
this thing we’ll be fine and dandy,” Mendel said.

Lucerne was just merging off 280 south onto
I-94, heading west across the Mississippi and into Minneapolis. He
was heading for the Riverside exit.

* * *

“I’m sorry, Ma’am,” the young officer said to
Daphne, more exasperated than sorry.

“We’ve asked you a number of times to please
leave the scene before you cause another incident. We have allowed
you to place five separate phone calls to this Lucerne individual.
Maybe she just doesn’t want to come and pick you up,” he said,
wondering who in their right mind would?

“Lucerne is a he,” Daphne exclaimed
defiantly.

That figures, he thought. Just his luck to
have a crowd of women in thongs jumping up and down while he dealt
with this three-hundred-and-fifty pound blob.

“You’ve failed to leave the area as we have
asked a number of times. Because of your actions I’m afraid we are
going to have to take you into custody.”

He was actually pleading with her, hoping he
wouldn’t end up booking her. Everyone else was hanging around with
hot chicks screeching and jumping while they drenched one another
with industrial-size squirt guns.

“Look,” he groveled, begging as he watched
Misty shriek and squeal after taking a full chest shot of cold
water.

“I’ll let you phone one more time, but if
Lucerne doesn’t answer, you’ll have to leave the area or you leave
me with no other choice but to place you under arrest.”

He just knew the way his luck was running,
this would be the one who sat down and refused to move unless she
was carried out. God, they’d have to get a forklift.

Daphne had been listening to Lucerne’s phone
ring on and on for some time while the cop was lost watching the
distant, full-breasted reverie.

“Hello? Lucerne? Oh, thank God! I’ve been
trying to reach you for the past ten minutes.”

Lucerne had absently answered his phone while
racing up the Riverside exit ramp, glancing nervously in his side
mirrors.

“Tracey? Angel, that you? Sorry baby, just a
little busy is all,” he replied, checking for police. He couldn’t
recall a time when she had sounded so eager to talk with him.

“You okay? You sound a little, I don’t know
not shitty or pissed off, but more like worked up, sort of,” doing
his best to sweet-talk her.

“No, I’m not okay. They’re asking me to
leave, telling me I’ll be arrested if I don’t go.”

“Arrested? They can do that to a vice
president?” He pictured Tracey wearing her shimmery dancing gown
working with all sorts of files open on her desk, not wanting to
dance or anything else except do her vice president’s job.

“Is it that God damn Osborne fella again,
making you do dancing and shit you don’t want to do?”

She was having a hard time hearing with all
the whistling and cheering from the crowd. But, she did hear the
words ‘Osborne’ and ‘dancing’.

“Exactly!” she said. “Look, I was wondering
if you weren’t too busy, maybe you could come and get me, give me a
ride out of here. Right away, before things get any worse.”

The young officer smiled coldly, checked his
handcuffs.

It sounded to Lucerne like Tracey was in one
hell of a fix and in need of his help. Now. Frankly, he couldn’t
think of a better way to deliver it than in an armored car, his
brothers armed and carrying more money than God. Just cruise on up
to Tracey standing innocently and sweetly on the corner. It would
make one hell of a big first impression.

“You at that Beaver Hut joint?”

“Yes,” she said, wedging her finger tighter
into her left ear, hoping it might help her hear. The crowd was
beginning to clap in unison, creating a beat. Two of the girls, she
couldn’t see who, were dancing, driving the crowd crazy. The cop
next to her began clapping with the rest of the crowd.

“I’ll be at the ice-cream truck, you can’t
miss it, right next to a big sign…”

She was suddenly hit by a misguided blast
from a water gun that immediately cut off her phone.

“Hunh, hey Tracey? You there, Tracey? Christ
on a cross,” he swore. He was only a few minutes from where she was
and he quickly diverted the armored car along a side street for
four blocks before turning onto Hennepin Avenue, making his way to
the Beaver Hut.

“Where in the hell is he going?” groaned
Elvis.

“Doing just what he should,” Mendel said
stretching out, watching as Cindy gently patted and examined
Merlot’s rear end.

“He’s got us off them freeways and into a
quiet area. We’ll ditch this ride, grab some other car, then get
the hell out of Dodge. Cops’ll all be guessing we’re on the highway
somewheres while we just drive off into the sunset with the money.
We’ll leave dumbass and his nurse here, locked in the back.”

“I’ll give you this son, you’re gonna have
one hell of a sore ass for a while. Best stay in that position for
a couple of days,” Mendel snickered.

* * *

“Come on, Milton, up, up, up you ingrate!”
Osborne continued to chide Milton in an effort to raise him off the
office couch. All the cheering and whistling from the crowd
assembled outside his front door, without one of them buying so
much as a bottle of water, had simply become too much to take.
Police or not, he was going to entice the assembled crowd inside
with the tantalizing offer of his suntan contest.

He pulled on Milton’s arm, slowly, gradually
forcing the delirious giant to accompany him downstairs.

“Arghhh!” Milton growled heavily with a thick
tongue, weaving back and forth unsteadily out the office door. He
drooled down his chin and stumbled, glassy eyed, to the staircase.
The stairway seemed to toss from side to side like a rowboat in a
storm. Milton grabbed the stair rail with his good arm, ran the
side of his head against the wall for added balance, and began his
descent.

“Quickly, Milton, hurry,” Osborne chided.

* * *

Lucerne could see some sort of crowd up ahead
on the right and figured that was where Tracey probably was waiting
for him. No wonder the poor little thing was frightened. From this
distance it looked to Lucerne like there was some sort of wrestling
match. People were jumping all around. His blood began to boil just
thinking what that son-of-a-bitch Osborne was doing.

“Damn traffic’s looking awfully busy,” Elvis
groaned nervously through the toilet paper stuffed in his nose,
still not recognizing where they were. Unhappy with the snail’s
pace they had suddenly adopted he turned and slid down the back of
the door. Merlot’s wounded, raised rear end pointed directly at
him.

“Take her easy, E. He knows what the hell
he’s doing. You want him to race down the street and bring all
sorts of attention and such on us? I’m telling ya, we’re just
blending in, that’s all, just blending in,” Mendel said.

“Mister, what in the hell is your deal? You
got an awful lot a clothes on for it to be close to a hundred
degrees. And what the hell was with that wig? You some sort a
pervert or something?” Elvis asked.

Mendel looked at Merlot for a moment, shot
Elvis a look, and then lowered the muzzle of his AK directly at
Merlot’s head.

“Tony?” Cindy asked, for the first time
noticing the powder blue shorts popping through the puckered seam
running across Merlot’s rear end.

“Ahh, God my ass is killing me,” Merlot
groaned.

* * *

Once she convinced the officers Lucerne was
really on his way they seemed only too glad to release Daphne on
her own recognizance, at least for the moment. Reminding her they
didn’t want to see her next time they checked.

After waiting for a half minute next to the
ice-cream truck Daphne decided one more treat couldn’t hurt,
although it had been a fight over an ice cream bar with one of the
dancers that had initially garnered all the police attention
earlier.

“Look, lady, I told you I’m not serving you.
So just go away!” Morris twitched before stepping away from the
window, arms folded, indicating she would not get any service.

Daphne steamed, remembering her last
encounter with Morris thirty minutes before. She had just purchased
an orange-flavored Creamsicle from him. He couldn’t take his eyes
off Thumper, the dancer waiting impatiently behind Daphne. Thumper
requested an orange-flavored Creamsicle, and Morris informed her
they were all gone.

“That fat broad just took the last one,
sweetheart,” he said, staring down into the Grand Canyon of
Thumper’s cleavage.

Then, Thumper calmly wiggled over to Daphne
and ripped the Creamsicle right out of her hand.

“Hey, what the hell do you think you’re
doing? Give it back!” Daphne screamed, reaching to snatch back her
melting treasure. Grabbing just as Thumper half turned and Daphne
pawed her top, unleashing a massive surgically enhanced breast
before recapturing the Creamsicle.

“Cat fight!” screamed Morris excitedly,
leaning forward on the counter enjoying his front row-seat.

“Eeek! Ahh, don’t touch me. How dare you!”
Thumper screamed making absolutely no attempt to cover herself,
catching the attention of two young officers who quickly handed
Daphne’s orange Creamsicle to Thumper, got her a glass of ice
water, and took down her side of the story while she remained
grateful, indignant, and exposed.

Daphne was told to stand at the rear of the
ice-cream truck. Within seconds she began to swelter, all the hot
exhaust from the cooling unit blew directly on her like a blast
furnace.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Morris had added,
twitching, hoping to win Thumper’s eternal gratitude.

“That fat broad over there stole her
Creamsicle and pushed her, assaulted her, tried to rip her top off,
too,” nodding in Thumper’s direction. “I saw the whole thing. You
okay, Honey? She didn’t hurt you or anything, did she? Christ, she
must be nuts. You guys should cart her off,” he twitched.

“Hey, buster, you know you sold that to me,
and…” Daphne yelled storming around the corner of the ice-cream
truck, flushed in the face, glistening with sweat.

“That’s enough, ma’am, I’m only going to tell
you once, I will arrest you. Please let me finish with this lady
then we’ll get to you. Now go around to the side there, please,”
the officer smiled briefly at Thumper, then glared at Daphne.

“But it’s hot back there,” Daphne
protested.

“Be a lot hotter in the back of a squad car
or a holding room. It’s hot everywhere. It’s 99 degrees out. Now,
please, I’m not going to tell you again, step around the corner,”
he said pointing to the rear of the ice-cream truck.

Thumper gave the Creamsicle a very healthy
lick in Daphne’s direction.

“You ain’t buying anything else here,” Morris
yelled as Daphne sullenly stepped around the corner to stand in the
heat of the blowing exhaust.

* * *

Now Daphne stepped away from the ice-cream
truck, wiped the sweat off her flushed face and looked longingly
down the street hoping she would find Lucerne. She couldn’t see
much past an armored car slowly working its way to the corner.

Lucerne scanned the crowd and wondered if
maybe one of the girls wearing a thong and standing up on top of
the air-conditioning unit might be Tracey. There were at least a
half dozen girls with light brown hair, and it suddenly dawned on
him that, except for her ad on TV, he had never really seen her. He
noticed a very large police presence.

* * *

There’s gonna be a lot more wrong with you
besides a new asshole if I don’t get some answers here pretty fast,
mister,” Mendel said, bouncing the muzzle of his AK off the top of
Merlot’s head.

“Now, I’m gonna ask you again, what in the
hell are you doing in this getup?”

Elvis raked the barrel across Merlot’s
wounded rear end.

“Ahh-ahh, God, please,” Merlot groaned.

“Hey, we’re stopping,” Elvis exclaimed,
quickly scrambling around to peer out the corner of the window.

“Jesus, cops, lots of ‘em!” he said ducking
down.

“The hell?” Mendel exclaimed, duck-walking
over Merlot, scraping a boot across his rear end before cautiously
peering out over the bottom edge of the oval window.

“Ahh-ahh-ahh, ahh,” Merlot groaned.

“God damn it, I told you I didn’t like this
one bit. I God damned told you!” Elvis yelled.

“Shut up! Just shut the hell up! Let me see
what Lucerne’s up to here,” Mendel shouted, duck-walking back over
Merlot, scrapping the same boot back across his rear end.

“Oh God, please,” Merlot pleaded.

“What are all them folks doing here? How in
the hell are we gonna get out of here? What are all those
cops…?”

“Will you please shut up, Elvis! I’m trying
to find all that shit out but I can’t even hear my own self think
with you babbling on and on. So, please, shut the fuck up so I can
figure this out!”