Vanilla Ride (24 page)

Next morning, Jim Bob joined us in our room for breakfast. Tonto was still out on the town. He hadn’t come in last night. We ate out on the deck. It was fun spending someone else’s money.

The lights were no longer on and the rain had gone, but the day was gray and the air was misty. Everything that had looked bright and amazing the night before now looked grim and sad, sort of sordid, like a used condom tossed in the gutter. Tim and Katie finished up eating and went back to the bedroom. They looked as glum as a couple of coffin carriers.

“Dumb kids,” Jim Bob said.

“Love is dumb,” I said, “and sometimes that’s what I like about it.”

Leonard tossed a thumb at me. “He’s so cute.”

“So Tonto’s out on the town?”

Jim Bob grinned, said, “Funny guy, that Tonto.”

“Yeah, ha, ha,” I said.

“He kills people and then goes gambling,” Jim Bob said. “Of course, I haven’t lost my appetite.”

“None of us have,” I said, and then I told everyone about the money.

“That’s a lot more money than your man said was missing,” Jim Bob said.

“Yep,” I said, “and I smell a rat about the size of a possum covered in slime.”

Jim Bob poured himself some coffee and looked out at the misty morning. “You know, I got a kind of idea about what’s going on here.”

“There’s a little something coming to me too,” Leonard said. “A guy tells us there’s three hundred thousand dollars and there’s more than that, you got to wonder if it’s that big of a miscount on his part—about what’s missing, I mean—or he’s just a goddamn liar.”

“Yeah,” Jim Bob said. “I think the thing is your man, Hirem, he made a special side deal with two FBI agents that doesn’t involve the agency. You two go out and do the dirty work, bring the money back, not having counted it, and they slice them off a nice piece, turn in the three hundred thousand Hirem said was missing, and they get as good a deal as they can find for him in the system, witness protection, and they promise to protect the kid, and you two get out from under your charges. If you two decide to keep the money, then you’re fugitives and you got this charge hanging over your head they could manipulate out of being self-defense and into being murder. You could go up for a long time.”

“They could pull that trick anyway,” Leonard said.

“Yeah,” Jim Bob said, “but the way they see it is it’d be better for everyone all around if they got their money and Hirem got his deal and you two went back to being you two, which is kind of a full-time job.”

Leonard and I touched fists. “Yeah, baby,” Leonard said.

About an hour later there was a knock at the door, and being paranoid, I carried my pistol with me and looked out the peephole. It was Tonto.

When I let him in he looked as fresh as he had the day before, and he was carrying a newspaper under his arm. He followed me out to the deck and sat in a chair and put the paper on the table, and poured himself a cup of coffee. He said, “You know that woman you rented the boat from?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You won’t have to pay for that boat sinking. She’s dead.”

He reached over and flipped the paper open, scanned it briefly, put his finger on an article. I picked it up and read it. It said the woman had been found dead in her store, shot through the forehead. One of her fingers had been amputated.

I read this aloud, and when I finished, Leonard said, “Damn. I think somehow this is our fault.”

“I think someone wanted to know where we went,” I said, “and she didn’t want to tell, and whoever wanted to know cut off a finger to show they were serious, and then when they got the information, they shot her as a cleanup procedure.”

“What I don’t understand,” Leonard said, “is why didn’t she just tell them? She didn’t owe us a thing.”

“Her own ethics, I suppose,” I said. “You can’t just let anyone come into a novelty shop and push you around. Next thing you know, you’ll be giving the plastic dog crap away because bullies want you to.”

“Damn,” Leonard said.

“I guess our friends in the brown Ford were watching us when we rented the boat,” I said.

“Hell,” Tonto said, “I’m glad those guys are dead. They were kind of spooky. I thought I was kind of spooky, but those guys—”

“You are spooky,” I said.

“But sweet around the eyes,” Leonard said.

“Thing is, boys, there might be another player,” Jim Bob said. “Reason we didn’t see a brown Ford all the time was because it wasn’t just a brown Ford following us.”

“You mean we were being double-teamed,” Leonard said. “That’s why they could keep up with us, why they could watch us and we didn’t see them. They decided to let us know about the Ford, put all our thinking there, but there was someone else watching.”

“Why didn’t they join with the Ford at the cabin?” I asked.

“Maybe they got their wires crossed, something as simple as that. Whatever, it didn’t go according to plan.”

“So whoever was the backup is on our tail now,” Leonard said. “Maybe the ninja Hirem warned us about.”

“There will be someone else,” Tonto said, “and maybe someone beyond that, but it won’t be quite so James Bond as all that. I’m going to get some sleep. I suggest we take another night to get it together, maybe go out and get a steak and have a little entertainment, find some poontang that don’t cost more than an arm and a leg and won’t give us the ball rot, then we head back.”

“Since the poontang isn’t USDA-inspected, I’ll pass on that,” Jim Bob said. “Come to think of it, these days, not so sure that inspection would mean much.”

“Brett doesn’t let me date,” I said.

“Battin’ for a different team,” Leonard said.

“Whatever,” Tonto said. “Me, I’m going to get some sleep.”

Tonto finished off his coffee and went out.

“He’s even more confident than me,” Jim Bob said, “and that’s a scary thing. I’ve been around, and I’ve seen some things too, just like you boys, and what I’ve learned the hard way is confidence is a lovely thing, but too much of it will get you cut a new asshole.”

It wasn’t that hard to convince Leonard and me to stay another day. We weren’t the type that got to spend nights in good hotels and eat hotel food on murdering scumbags’ money. I was also stiff and sore from our encounter with Big Guy and not exactly in the mood to deal with much.

That next night Tonto talked us into going to a karaoke bar he had found, and it wasn’t far from the strip and it was pretty nice, and purposely ill lit, except for the stage where karaoke took place. We all went: Tonto, Jim Bob, Tim and Katie, and Leonard and I. They had alcoholic drinks, and I had one Diet Coke after another. I had long ago given up liquor, at least for the most part, and felt better having done so. Still, on this night I was thinking maybe I might have a whiskey, but the closest I got to one was thinking about it.

We were in the front row near the stage and the karaoke was as painful as it usually is.

And then one fine-looking blond woman came up and set her little white purse on the stage in front of her. She wasn’t very big, looked to weigh about one-twenty, but was probably a little heavier because she was muscled in a lean sort of way that certainly gave her more weight, but it was weight carried in all the right places. She was young-looking, mid-twenties maybe, wearing white pedal pushers with white shoes with thick elevated heels, and she had on a white top. Her hair was gold as fresh wheat and she had a very fine face, and even from where we sat, we could see that her eyes were bright blue and she had a killer smile,
and in the lights from the stage she looked as if all she needed was wings on her back and a message from Zeus.

Way it worked was the singers picked their tunes, and they were supposed to get two songs if they wanted it, and she got up and sang, and the thing was, she was good, very good. The first song was “Driving Wheel,” and she did it justice. Her voice was strong and it kind of surprised some of the drinkers, who actually shut up and listened. A few couples began to dance, including Tim and Katie. When the song ended there was a lot of applause, and we, out there in the front row, were giving up a lot of it ourselves. While she had been singing, she had been looking at Tonto, and I glanced to see if he had noticed, and he had. He looked like a little kid that had just gotten attention from the best-looking girl in class.

The second song was Dion’s “The Wanderer,” and she knocked it out of the park, changing certain words to fit a woman’s point of view, which made it clear to me she had done the song before and had given it thought. She moved a little as she sang, not much but a little, and with this girl not much was plenty. There was a seductive quality to her moves without them being overdone, and she had her eyes locked on Tonto.

Jim Bob leaned over to me, said, “Lucky sonofabitch.”

“What’s he got that I haven’t got?” I said.

“No girlfriend that will kill him, and from the size of him, about two extra inches on his dick.”

“Oh yeah, there’s that,” I said.

When the song was over there was applause again, and she ended up doing a third song, “Jim Dandy,” and then she stepped down and a guy about half in the bag got up and sang a bad version of some tune I didn’t recognize. The girl walked by Tonto and smiled at him. He said, “Buy you a drink?”

“Come to my table?” she said.

He did just that, and though I was happy for him, and wouldn’t have bothered with her had she been interested in me because I loved Brett, I was also a little jealous. A woman like that could make a Baptist preacher kill his wife and set fire to his church. I glanced over and saw Tonto with her. He was helping her into a brown leather coat, and the way she stood she was out of the light and cloaked in shadow, and the light from the back door was on Tonto, and his dark face seemed oddly cherubic. I turned away and looked out at the dance floor.

Tim and Katie were still dancing, and the way they looked at each other, held each other tight, made me miss Brett something terrible. I was thinking about this when Leonard said, “I’m thinking of getting up there and singing.”

“Now or never,” I said.

Leonard caught a turn and got up and sang Charley Pride’s “Is Anybody Goin’ to San Antone,” and he was good. He got some applause, and when he climbed down, we exchanged a few words, and then I looked where Tonto and the girl had been. Gone.

I said to Leonard and Jim Bob, “I think Tonto is trying to round up the cattle, and here we sit. If he goes off all night and drags in tomorrow about noon, I’m going to be pissed. He said we were leaving in the morning.”

“Women will make you do crazy things,” Jim Bob said, pushing his hat back on his head. “You got a sane guy, goes about his business, and then that gets wagged in his face, sanity and business go out the window. And for all his professionalism, I get the feeling Tonto can be pulled around by his ying-yang.”

“But not us,” I said.

“No sir, not us,” Jim Bob said.

“Ha!” Leonard said.

“You know,” Jim Bob said, “maybe it’s a small thing, but the money, it’s hidden under the floorboard of the van, and Tonto decides he’s going to go off with missy, I don’t like the idea of it being there. No biggie, but I’m going to see if I can catch him. I’ll pretend it’s laundry or something so the gal won’t know.”

“Let’s all see if we can catch him,” I said. “I’m ready to go back to the hotel.”

Leonard went out on the floor and got the dancing kids, and as we were starting out, Jim Bob said, “You know, Tonto would probably have said something to us, he was leaving.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But we got two vehicles. He’s probably thinking we could ride tight we had to. In fact, he’s probably not thinking that much. Not with the good head.”

“Point,” Jim Bob said.

We were parked out back, so we went out the back way. The Escalade was next to the van in the lot, and when I looked at the van, I saw the interior light was on, but I didn’t see Tonto or the girl. The air was chilly, and our breath came out in clouds.

Jim Bob said, “This whole deal smells funny all of a sudden.”

We looked around the lot and didn’t see anybody, just cars. Pulling our guns, we put them by our sides and walked out to the van. Jim Bob went around the front and I stayed on the right-hand side, and Leonard went around back. I told the kids, “Stand back.”