“Is this Angel Gemignani?”
“No.” Except the way this chick said it, “no” had two syllables. Then there was a bunch of yelling for Angel, and the next voice Harold heard belonged to the rich bitch herself.
“H’lo?”
“Listen good, bitch. It’s time to pay the piper. I want you to get to your safe-deposit box. The one your grandfather gave you. Take out half a million bucks. There’s a pay phone outside the bank. Wait there and I’ll call you at-”
“Who is this?”
“This is the guy who’s got your dog.”
Harold couldn’t believe it. The little bitch was actually laughing at him.
She said, “I guess you haven’t been keeping up with current events.”
Harold said, “Huh?”
“Wait just a second.” Angel Gemignani yelled something, and someone yelled something back, followed by a chorus of laughter. Angel said, “Still there?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, listen to this.”
It was quiet for a second. And then the little fucking Chihuahua started barking, and Angel Gemignani slammed down the phone.
Harold started driving. He headed east. He had no idea where he was going. It really didn’t matter much.
The whole deal was blown. Tony would be really pissed. Right now, Harold couldn’t even face his bro. Man, they’d planned it so good, and things had gotten fucked up, and on Harold’s end, too. Eden’s sisters had blown it, taking the dog to that vet. Obviously. But the dog was Harold’s responsibility. And so were Eden’s sisters.
Man, how was he going to break the news to Tony?
Maybe he should just keep driving. He’d end up somewhere. Get something going. Start over.
The odometer notched ten miles. Then twenty. Thirty coming right up. .
He passed the exit where he’d picked up Eden so long ago. Man, the way she looked that day. Sunburned, wearing nothing but a truck driver’s shirt and a pair of dirty white go-go boots, singing “Happy Trails” like everything was okeydokey.
God, but she wanted to please him. She did everything he told her. She never questioned him. It was still that way. Even when she fucked things up, it wasn’t like she did it intentionally. In fact, fucking things up nearly broke her heart, that’s how scared she was of upsetting Harold.
And who the hell knew what would happen to Eden now? Her family would be pissed. They wanted that ransom money as much as Harold did, and they were about to come up empty.
Harold knew what would happen. Daddy and Mama would blame Eden for bringing Harold into the fold in the first place. And Tura and Lorelei. . Christ, look what those crazy bitches did to Eden for stealing a bag of Fig Newtons. Harold couldn’t even imagine what kind of punishment they’d dish out for something like this.
He pulled over. Man, he couldn’t believe it. That fucking Randy Travis song was going round and round in his head.
He waited for a break in the traffic, and when one came he cut across the highway and headed toward the Radiation Ranch.
Harold nearly put his foot through the floorboards. That was how hard he hit the brakes.
The concrete bunker loomed before him, surrounded by a dry, stunted forest of yucca trees and scrub brush. Afternoon heat waves rolled across the desert and broke against the nuke-proof hacienda like ghostwaves of an ocean that had vanished a million years ago.
Harold pulled his.357 and got out of the car. He scanned the desert for a sign of trouble but saw nothing. No cars or trucks that didn’t belong there. No tire tracks in the dirt that seemed unusual. Not one glimmer on a distant rise that would indicate a sniper’s telescopic rifle sight reflecting the afternoon sun.
Fully aware of his surrounding, senses painfully acute, Harold started toward the thing that had made him stop the car so suddenly.
It was easy to miss her on first glance, because even a warped display of human flesh had a way of looking right at home in the Mojave Desert. Harold had never lived in such a weird place. In his view, every sunset looked like a bloodstain, and every empty well was a grave waiting to be filled, and every yucca tree looked strangely deformed, twisted as if it had been tortured by the Devil himself.
The woman was twisted too, but Harold figured the Devil hadn’t done it. Truth be told, he didn’t believe in the son of a bitch.
Mama stood against a dead yucca tree, her arms lashed to the twisted limbs with lengths of barbed wire. As usual, her mouth was open.
But she wasn’t going to say a word this time. She was all done talking.
And the vultures had started in on her face.
Harold swatted at the vultures with his pistol and they flapped away on lazy black wings. He eased Mama’s jacket to one side and saw the bullet wound drilled through the left cup of her black leather bikini. The blood hadn’t dried. In fact, a fresh scarlet gout pumped from the hole and streamed down Mama’s brown belly.
Harold stood hypnotized, watching the blood.
“Uhhhrrrhhh,” Mama groaned.
Harold nearly jumped out of his skin. He stumbled back.
Mama’s head bobbed, the length of barbed wire wrapped around her neck cutting a fresh trench in her suntanned flesh as she moved. Her eyelids flickered, eyes rolling blindly beneath them, eyes that were coated with a bleached-white sheen. .
“Hellllll. .” she groaned.
“Fuck!” Harold said. “Fuck!”
Mama gasped, a spike of barbed wire tearing her trachea. “Hellll. .” she whispered. “Helllllppp. .”
Then she was dead.
Harold’s gaze was everywhere at once. The concrete bunker. The tumbledown chapel. The shooting range. The cars and the surrounding ridges and the old dirt road that stretched forty miles to the highway.
But there was nothing. No movement at all except the vultures circling above, patient and black and hungry.
Sweat poured off Harold’s bald head and trickled down his neck. What the fuck had he been thinking, anyway? Angel Gemignani belonged to a Mafia family. He had fucked with them. Seriously. And he had come up short. And now they had found him. And when it came to blood vengeance and torture that made you pray for death, no one outdid the Mafia.
No one even came close.
The vultures circled lower and lower. Soon one landed, talons scrabbling as it balanced atop Mama’s head.
Harold turned away, his gut lurching. The bunker. He had to check it out. If Eden was still alive, that’s where she would be. And right now all Harold wanted was to be with her.
Even if the bunker was full of Mafia hit men. Even if Eden was already dead. He wanted to see her one last time.
He wanted to say that he was sorry before the end came.
But the bunker was empty. There was no sign of Eden or her Daddy. No sign of Tura or Lorelei. And not a single Mafia hit man, either.
Harold stepped through the front door. The sun beat down relentlessly. Man, today it was hot on top of hot. Harold couldn’t remember another day like this one.
He started toward his Chevy. Maybe the Mafia guys had taken Eden with them. Maybe they were going to use her for bait so they could round up the rest of the gang.
Harold didn’t know if he could rescue her. There probably wasn’t much of a chance. He wasn’t exactly a
