The Ten-Ounce Siesta

He almost had ended up that way. He wouldn’t now.

He needed to get out of sight. Just long enough to catch his breath. He stumbled into the shack. Jesus. Another dead guy. This one with his throat slit from ear to ear. It was some old guy. Not Harold. Tony wondered what had happened to his homeboy. But he couldn’t think about that now. He had to worry about his own ass.

Quickly he looked around. A knife lay on the floor. Yeah. Bloodstained and rusty, but at least it was something. And there was a jug of water in one corner. Tony took a deep drink and kept it close.

A bunch of shelves on one wall. Crazy labels on this shit. Dried leaves and herbs, mostly. . but there were some lotions, too. Tony unstoppered a few bottles and smelled the contents. Not bad. He oiled up his sunburned flesh, greasing his wounds. Oh, man, that felt good. Cool as ice. Oh, man. .

Some other bottles on a low shelf. Prescription bottles. Tony sorted through them. Shit. Some of this stuff was real nasty. He hoped the bitch hadn’t fed him any of it.

All right. There it was. His Percodan.

He’d just take one. Only one, and then he’d rest some. That cave on the back wall. . even if Eden noticed his escape, she wouldn’t look for him there. He’d sit in the dark, drink some more water. Drink it slow so it wouldn’t make him sick. Then get the hell out of here. There was a truck parked by the bunker, a couple cars, too. Maybe one of them had the keys in the ignition. If not, he’d find the keys. And if that meant going in the big concrete house and killing the bitch, so much the better.

He had to check out that house, anyway. Maybe the bitch had trapped Harold in there. His brother might still be alive. And Tony wouldn’t pussy out on him. He remembered Harold taking that bullet for him in the slams. So he needed to get up, get started, and he needed to do it right now. .

For a second Tony was back there in that cave, thinking these thoughts all over again. Like he hadn’t done any of it yet. But he knew he had. The bitch lay next to him on satin sheets, and she was dead.

Tony thought about getting up. Oh, man. He hadn’t seen any sign of Harold, but he had to look. His brother might be bound and gagged, might be suffocating this very minute. .

Maybe if he slept. Just a little. . No. Hell no. He wasn’t going to sleep with any dead bitch. He had to find Harold and get the hell out of here.

All he had to do was get up. Yeah. That was all he had to do. .

Tony lay on red satin sheets with a dead bitch at his side.

He couldn’t move at all.

Burned down, man. That’s what he was.

Cinders. Just cinders.

“This must be the place,” Angel said. “Here’s another one.”

Jack looked away from the redhead’s crucified corpse. Angel stood before another yucca tree. The old woman with the cantilevered breasts was tied to this one. Again, the killer had used barbed wire.

“She was one of the dognappers,” Jack said. “I think she was running the show. She had a voice like a drill sergeant.”

“She’s not going to be using it now.”

“Yeah.”

Jack held tight to his Colt. Angel was sweating, and so was he. They’d had a long walk. Nearly six miles separated the Celica from this spot.

Jack shook his head. As they humped the last two, Angel had complained of blisters. Vociferously. And she was wearing those Doc Martens. She wore hiking boots, but she’d never hiked a day in her life. Her boots weren’t even broken in.

The way Jack saw it, you just couldn’t figure people. There wasn’t any use trying. Like these corpses. Man. Who would do something like this? Murder was murder, but this was overkill. Some kind of rage killing. The killer wanted to make a point.

What that point was, Jack didn’t know. But he wasn’t going to figure it out by standing in the middle of nowhere.

The moon was large and white, and the desert was painted with an indigo glow. About a quarter mile distant stood a huge concrete bunker. There was a little shack off to one side of it. It looked like a place where a kidnapper might stow a kidnappee.

Jack nodded toward the shack. “Let’s check it out.”

Angel agreed. Moving quickly and quietly, they threaded a path through the yucca forest. But neither one of them noticed the tree with the broken limb as they passed by or the tangle of bloodstained barbed wire that clung to its trunk.

Angel went through the door first, holding her pistol in the style of a combat shooter. Jack followed her closely, clicking on a flashlight as he entered the shack.

A dead guy lay on some kind of altar. Jack recognized the stovepipe hat that rested on the old man’s chest.

“Jesus,” Angel said, pointing at the deep slice on the corpse’s throat. “Whoever did this nearly cut this guy’s head off.”

“He’s the rattlesnake man,” Jack said. “Another member of the gang.”

“Jack, what the hell is going on here?”

“I don’t know.” Jack sighed. “Do you think it might be a hit? Maybe Freddy’s bird dog tracked the gang, then had them killed without telling us about it.”

“No way, Jack.” Angel pointed to the corpse’s cupped hands, which were blackened with soot. “The Mafia doesn’t go in for satanic rites.”

Jack nodded. He played the flashlight beam along the walls of the shack. Harsh white light revealed bottles filled with powders and potions, aged spell books coated with Mojave dust, and stripped bones, both human and animal.

Finally the flashlight beam fell on Angel. She had a death grip on her.45. “I don’t know about this, Jack.”

“Yeah.” Jack thought it over. “Look,” he said finally. “We’ve got three corpses right here. And you killed the other redhead at the vet’s office. That leaves Pack O’ Weenies and the woman with the wrist braces. Our odds are better now than they were coming in.”

Angel nodded. “I guess you’re right.”

Jack ran his fingers through his hair. “Look, we don’t have to go through with this, Angel. No one has spotted us yet. We can probably walk out of here right now-”

“Fifty miles back to the road?” Angel laughed. “My fucking feet are killing me. Jack. We leave here, we’re taking a car. God knows there are enough dead bastards around this place who won’t be needing their wheels anymore.”

“Okay,” Jack said. “Who the fuck knows, anyway? Maybe we’re in the middle of Jonestown. Some kind of cult massacre. Maybe the whole gang is dead. Maybe the woman with the wrist braces did all the others and committed suicide.”

Angel examined the stash of prescription drugs. “Yeah. It looks like she’d have everything she needed for a one-way trip right here. Maybe she’s in that bunker, clutching a bottle of sleeping pills in her dead hand. Let’s find out.”

Favoring her left foot, Angel stepped through the doorway and started toward the concrete house.

Jack followed, his brain clicking away, turning the information over and over in his head.

But he wasn’t thinking rationally. His imagination had kicked into overdrive.

If Tony Katt was in the middle of this. . If the heavyweight champion of the world was chained to an altar in some big concrete snake pit, surrounded by guys in black hoods who mumbled satanic prayers. . if they were going to sacrifice Katt to the Devil himself. .

Shit. No. That was crazy.

Angel was getting ahead of him.

Jack hurried along.