TREASURE KILLS (Legends of Tsalagee Book 1) (2 page)

The pair traded a few letters while in prison, which dwindled as time rolled on. The last letter from Squeaky had come about six months before she got out, with the somewhat vague promise to Goat that she’d be in touch. But he hadn’t heard from her again.

In the last letter—amid her usual ramblings about the astrologically controlled goings on in her life, her usual fascist-pigs-running-the-government rant, and so forth—she wrote about heading out to maybe Oregon or Santa Fe. But first she wanted to go see their daughter Sunflower, whom she’d traced on the Internet using the prison’s computers, and found that the girl lived in Oklahoma City. Squeaky had given Goat Sunny’s address, in case he wanted to write her.

That’d taken place over two years ago, and Goat had no idea on the whereabouts of Squeaky, or if his daughter still lived at that address. But he figured he’d head that way, anyway. Mooching a few meals and a place to stay for a few days seemed to be a good plan. Maybe Sunny would be willing to give her long lost old dad that much. The last time he’d seen her he was face down in the dirt with a federal agent’s knee in the middle of his back. Sunny had been crying and calling out to him as another agent ushered her away into the backseat of a black Ford sedan. She’d been eleven then. With both her parents in jail, the girl became a ward of the state, and they’d sent her to live with foster parents in a small town somewhere up in the eastern part. She’d written him a few times his first year in prison, telling him about her new life on a farm; then the letters stopped all together.

Goat knew Oklahoma City lay a couple hundred miles north and west of where he stood. The road in front of him ran east and west. He walked down the prison’s drive to where it met the road, and stopped. The morning sun hung above the road where it curved behind some trees off to his right. Goat let out a sigh, and turned left to walk down the road, heading west. That was about as much of a plan as he had at the time.

* * *

“Hey, Sunny,” Goat said when she finally opened her apartment door. He knew he looked a lot different than the twenty-nine year old man she’d last seen—the few scars and harsh lines in his face, the callousness in the eyes; all those things that two decades doing hard time put on a man.

He knocked twice before she’d responded. He figured somewhere between the first and second set of knocks she’d looked through the peephole in the door, and then gone to get some defensive weapon.

“Who is it?” she asked on the other side of the closed door. Goat stood back a step or two and looked straight at the peephole. The voice he heard sounded like a woman who would be about his daughter’s age.

“Is that you, Sunny?” he asked.

More silence from the other side. More peephole scrutiny he imagined, and puzzlement over who in the hell the lanky man with the receding hairline and graying ponytail was on the other side of her door. His five-day mustache and beard further masked his face... and the prison tats probably gave her pause—one of a large black widow spider on the side of his neck with two words in red below it which read “One Bite.” The other a cobra that encircled his right arm, the hooded head, fangs bared, at the shoulder. However, that part was concealed under the sleeve of the golf shirt he’d purchased at a Salvation Army store. Embroidered on the left breast of the shirt was a broad red leafy tree with the words “Comanche Creek Country Club” around it.

“What do you want?” she asked. Then quickly added, “How do you know my name?”

“It’s your daddy, babe. It’s Goat.” That brought a dead silence. A small dog barked aggressively behind the apartment door in back of him. A quarter minute or so ticked by.

“Sunny?” he called again. He heard the chain loosen and the bolt slide. The door opened a foot. The young woman stood half behind it, as if ready to slam it shut at the slightest provocation. He saw a woman in her early thirties; filled out, but not fat; attractive, but not pretty; appealing, but not wholesome. She had her mother’s dishwater blonde hair, strong chin, soft brown eyes, and a few of her freckles. Also, like her mother, she wore no make-up.

“So... How you been?” Goat asked. The woman didn’t answer. She just stared at him, looking at his tats and hair.

Goat cleared his throat and scratched the side of his whiskered face. “Look, I know this’s a shock. I would’ve called first, but I couldn’t find a number. Wasn’t even sure you still lived here. I just got out a few of days ago. It took me a while to find this place.”

“How did you know where I lived?” she asked. Sunny kept her position behind the door. She didn’t smile at him; her eyes remained clouded with suspicion. But at least she’d said something to him; it marked a start.

“Your mom wrote me. Said she found you on that intelnet thing on a computer. She got out a couple of years back. Said she was going to come see you. Did she show up?”

“Yes,” Sunny said. But she didn’t look happy about it.

Goat nodded. “Well... good. That’s good.” He scratched the top of his head, then grabbed his ponytail and pulled his hand down its twelve-inch length.

“So, I was wondering if I could come in for a minute. I’d just like to talk for a while. Not seeing my baby girl for twenty years, figured we had a lot of catching up to do.”

Sunny didn’t move.

“’Sides,” Goat continued. He looked at his feet. “I was hoping maybe I could get a little breakfast. I ain’t had much to eat in the last couple days.”

Sunny’s eyes and expression seemed to soften a little. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll fix you something to eat.”

Goat smiled and moved toward the door.

“But you can’t stay,” Sunny added quickly. “You’re going to have to find somewhere else to stay.”

Goat stopped and put his right palm on the partially opened door. “Oh no, babe, I wasn’t planning on staying,” he lied.

Sunny released the door and stepped back to let Goat enter. She folded her arms across her chest and watched him. Although she tried to conceal it, he could tell she held some kind of spray in her right hand. Smart girl, he thought.

* * *

“Best breakfast I’ve had in twenty years,” Goat said. He sopped the last of the egg yoke onto his toast and drank the last of a glass of milk. Sunny leaned against the sink; her arms still folded across her chest, watching him.

“Why’d you come here, Goat?” Sunny asked.

Goat wiped his mouth and facial hair with a paper napkin, and then leaned back in the chair. He smiled at Sunny and shrugged. “Same reason your mother did, I reckon. Guess I just wanted to re-connect with you.”

He hooked his left index finger through the mug of coffee on the table, and blew onto the surface; took a slurp, then another. “Is she still around here somewhere? In this town, I mean?”

“No,” Sunny answered.

“How long did she stay?”

“Just long enough to get a couple of free meals, and steal fifty bucks and my credit card.”

“Really?” Goat shook his head.

“Is that what you’re planning on doing too, Goat? Because if you want some money, just ask and I’ll give you some. No need to steal it.”

“Aw, Sunny, naw. I don’t aim to steal nothing from you. Honest, I just wanted to see you again. Just wanted to know how you was doin’. There wasn’t a day go by in prison I didn’t wonder how you was doin’.

“That’s about all that kept me going in that place. I never figured I’d get out alive, but they started running out of room. I figure the Man decided to boot out some of us old timers to make room for the next generation.”

Sunny’s posture loosened a little, but she still kept her distance. “What are you going to do now?” she asked.

“I ain’t planned much beyond seeing you this morning,” he said with a grin. “But I’m going to check out the job situation. Prison wasn’t a total waste. I was always a pretty fair mechanic, and they kept me doing a lot of that. I’d say, from the number of cars and trucks on the road these days, there’s bound to be plenty of mechanic jobs.”

* * *

It took a three week search before Goat finally found employment. The hiring person at every one of the places he went interviewed him briefly, and told him politely they didn’t currently have any openings, but that they’d keep his application on file.

“But your ad said you needed three mechanics,” he said at one car dealership he’d gone to at eight on Monday morning.

“Yes, well, we have several more candidates to interview. We’ll let you know,” the HR guy said. The man stood, stuck his hand out and smiled; indicating to Goat the interview had ended.

Sunny had relayed Goat’s plight to her co-worker Frankie in a lunch conversation, expressing her doubt anyone would want to hire her dad with his prison record and appearance. Frankie, a computer geek, could empathize, as he possessed some of the same personal styles as Goat both in hairdos and body art. Frankie preferred spiked hair with tips of yellow and red. A black tribal band tattoo weaved around his right forearm, and a small yin yang-ish thing, which seemed to involve fish, floated on his neck. But, unlike Goat, Frankie had the added enhancements of three eyebrow rings, a lip ring, multiple left ear piercings, and a speech impeding stainless steel tongue stud.

Frankie nodded knowingly. “Yeth.” He said. “Thelf expwethion ith fwond upon by moeth employouth.”

Sunny nodded. Where they worked, everyone considered Frankie a freak. He kept his job for only two reasons: he was brilliant at what he did, and his aunt sat in an executive office as a vice president and legal counsel.

“Doth yew dad know anything about motowcykelth?”

“Motorcycles? I don’t know. I guess so. Why?”

Frankie pulled out his overstuffed billfold, and started fishing for a card. Through his corrupted speech, Sunny translated him to say, “I don’t think your dad will scare this guy. Maybe he can use some help.”

The business card he handed Sunny had a stylized chopper for a logo and the name “Red Randy’s Bike Shop” in red letters, and an address.

The next day, Goat entered the unoccupied front office of a grayish white cinderblock building. A loud bell burred when he opened the door. Presently a short, wiry, grease monkey came through the open door from the shop, and asked Goat, none too cordially, “Whatcha need?”

“I’d like to speak to the boss man,” Goat said.

“Hang on,” the guy said, and returned to the shop. “Randy!” he hollered and motioned over his shoulder toward the office.

The man who ducked coming in through the shop door stood a head above Goat, which would have made him about six foot six or seven. Thick muscles knotted his neck and shoulders. A crooked scar ran from the right side of his forehead diagonally down across the bridge of his nose and left cheek stopping at his jaw line. His large brown head was shaved clean. He wore a gray sleeveless t-shirt with a Harley-Davidson logo across the front under which massive pectoral muscles bulged. Both his arms displayed a gallery of tattoos from wrist to shirt-line. By his features and skin color Goat took the man to be Native American.

“You wanna see me?” the big man said in a deep, menacing bass. Wiping his hands on a red shop rag, he looked at Goat with suspicion.

“You Red Randy Brown?” Goat asked.

“Could be.”

“Guy sent me out. Told me you might need a mechanic.” Goat said.

“What guy?”

“Didn’t really meet him. He works with my daughter. Guy named Frankie.”

Red Randy didn’t say anything for a while continuing to wipe his hands on the rag and looking at Goat.

“When did you get out?” Randy asked.

Goat looked surprised. “You mean it shows that much?”

Randy nodded. “Only to someone who’s been there,” he said. “They teach you anything about bikes inside?”

“Some,” Goat said. “I had a Honda 750 before I went up. Worked on it quite a bit.”

Red Randy didn’t seem impressed. “We do mostly Harley’s here,” he said.

“I just need work, man,” Goat continued. “If you got it, I’ll do it; if not, I’ll move on.”

“Okay,” Randy said after more thought. “I’ll give you a shot at it for a week. You work out, I’ll try you for another week. Payday is Saturday, in cash. It’ll be minimum wage. Rules around here are simple. We work Monday through Saturday. We start at eight; we quit when we quit. You get an hour for lunch. You miss a day’s work, I’ll fire you. You steal anything from me, I’ll kill you.” Red Randy looked at Goat and waited.

“Sounds good to me, Goat said. “When can I start?”

The man nodded slightly and turned on his heels heading back through the door to the shop. “Follow me,” he said. When they passed the grease monkey then lying on the floor, his head on the underside of a large bike, Randy said, “That’s Threebuck.” As if cued, Threebuck swore loudly at the machinery above him, banging it violently several times with the wrench he held.

Goat’s new boss stopped at a door to a small utility room at the back of the shop and opened it. He pulled out a broom and some clean shop rags and handed them to Goat. “You’ll start by cleaning this place up. Clean the floors, the racks, the benches, and the tools. Clean the office. Clean the John. Empty the trash, there and there,” he pointed to two overflowing drums on the shop floor. “There’s some plastic trash bags in here,” he indicated the utility closet. “There’s a dumpster out back.” With that Red Randy said no more, and walked back to the chopper he’d been working on.

At six that evening, Randy told Goat to call it a day. “You going to come back tomorrow?” Randy asked.

“Yeah, unless you fire me,” Goat answered.

“I will if you’re late,” Randy said. “How you plan on getting here tomorrow.”

“I ain’t figured that out yet. I’ll start by asking my daughter if she can bring me.”

The next morning at seven, when Red Randy swung his big chopper onto the gravel parking lot, Goat sat on the ground next to the office door, his back against the building, waiting.

Randy parked his bike next to the building and came to unlock the door. Goat stood, but Randy didn’t acknowledge Goat’s presence. The big man pulled a small chain that lead into his jeans pocket extracting a wad of keys at its end. He found the one he wanted, inserted it into the door lock, and opened the door. He walked into the shop and headed toward the back, flipping on lights as he went. Goat followed silently, hesitating uncertainly at a workbench, waiting to see what his boss wanted him to do.