So Juke leaned over me, smelling like beer and weed and body odor, picking at the edge of where the duct tape had left off, like it was a scab. He found the place, and got the tape going and unwrapped me. Gun in one hand, he yanked me up off the chair by an arm and hauled me back through the kitchen and into the warmth of the outdoors.
Day now.
Sunny sky.
Warm, dry.
Behind the diner, scrubby desert stretched endlessly with the occasional cactus popping up like a hitchhiker thumb.
We stood side by side and he said, “First me,” and-his back to the diner-pissed a yellow stream with admirable arching trajectory. He was on my left, the. 38 in his right hand, and was aiming his dick with his left. Ambidextrous pisser, Juke was.
“Now you,” he said.
And I was afraid he was going to stand there next to me, and make it hard if not impossible for me to get at the weapon.
But like most men, he felt uncomfortable watching another man relieve himself, and took several respectful steps back. Juke was just that kind of guy. I could hear him zipping up back there and I unzipped and reached my hand deep through my fly and what I brought back was not my penis.
The click of the retracted blade coming out to smile in the sun was a very small sound in a very large desert, but it might have been a cannon shot. Even Juke heard it, but he did not have time to raise the gun-in-hand before I swung around and jammed the knife point deep into his throat, right under the adam’s apple.
He froze there, with a deer-in-the-headlights expression, if that deer were a dunce, anyway, and I moved behind him, the handle of the knife still tight in my fist, and I brought that blade around like I was carving a lid in a jack o’ lantern, getting myself behind him, so that when I finally released the blade from his throat, the arterial spray wouldn’t get on me. Instead, it cut a wide glittery scarlet stream in the sunlight, little diamonds winking off it, making the brief life of that spray a thing of beauty.
Not Juke’s fuckin’ morning.
I didn’t fuck around with Skull.
With the revolver in hand, I moved quickly through the kitchen and into the diner, the pathway putting me behind the counter like I was about to deliver an order. Skull glanced up from shuffling, with eyes that could not have been dimmer if the bullet had already crashed through his skull.
Well, maybe those eyes were a little dimmer, in the aftermath of the gun’s crack, the bullet thudding into the wood wall, and he slammed his head sideways onto the tabletop, looking like a schoolboy napping at his desk, spilling blood onto the pills and the cards. Dying, he shit himself.
He would.
I decided to leave him there. I didn’t see any percentage in moving Juke, either. Nobody was around, and the blood would still be seeping for a while. Not a long while, but a while. We were far enough out of town that my gunshot was about as notable as a coyote howl.
All I did by way of clean-up, or for that matter preparation for my upcoming guest, was go out where I’d dropped the stiletto near Juke and wipe its blade off on his bandana. Some spatter on my hand, from holding the knife, I wiped off on his t-shirt. Then I got my nine millimeter from the car, if only to know where it was, with no intention of shifting from the. 38 to my more familiar weapon.
The. 38 was nice. Might be worth keeping as a souvenir, or maybe I would take Skull’s, since Juke’s had been used in a killing.
So I just sat in the booth to the right of the door-Skull was in the booth to its left, not at all talkative-and waited, doing my best to ignore the shit stench. I did not partake of the beers that the bikers had brought along-a cooler was in back of the counter-because the last thing I wanted was to really have to piss.
A little before six-thirty, a key worked in the locked front door.
Then James Kaufmann entered, and frowned at the empty chair. His nose twitched at the strong foul odor. It sent his gaze toward Skull, and the producer seemed about to duck out when I rose and got into his view and displayed the. 38.
“Have a seat, Bubba,” I said.
“What the hell happened here, Jack?” he asked. “I was just coming out to-”
“We’re going to skip the bullshit.”
With the snubby, I indicated the chair in the middle of an otherwise empty floor, where the abandoned strapstrands of duct tape lay near the chair legs like the Invisible Man had undressed himself and gone for a stroll.
Slowly the producer moved to the chair. I shut the door for him. He sat. He was in a light-blue polo shirt, darker blue slacks, and Italian loafers with no socks. He wore the puka necklace again and the pink-tinted aviators.
I sat on one of the diner stools, facing him. I told him to turn the chair so I could look at him, and added, “Take the fucking sunglasses off. I want to see your eyes.”
They were light blue, attractive but badly spider-webbed red.
“Where…” he began. “Where’s the other one?”
“Juke? Out back. With his throat cut.”
Here’s the funny part. Whether funny ha ha or funny ironic, I will leave to you and your individual tastes. He pissed himself.
And he started crying. Tears ran down his pockmarked cheeks. I figured he was probably a sociopath or at least a very, very selfish prick, and was fairly sure this was the only kind of instance that might summon real tears from him.
“I’m gonna make this quick,” I said, “because it stinks in here. Between you pissing yourself, and Skull over there shitting himself…well, I don’t figure the health inspector’s going to approve this place without some major effort.”
He swallowed. He wasn’t crying anymore, but he snuffled snot. “Who…who sent you?”
“That’s the question you wanted to ask me, isn’t it, Jimbo? Well, you don’t get it answered. You’re afraid maybe Licata got wind of your scheme, and sent me, right? Maybe. Maybe not. You’ll never know.”
“Why…why not tell me?”
“Why give you the satisfaction?” I shook my head. “He told you, didn’t he? Stockwell told you about me. Not in detail, just that somebody was trying to kill him and I was here to help. Right?”
Swallowed. Snuffled. Nodded.
“When-last night?”
Swallowed. Snuffled. Nodded.
I grunted a laugh. “Right after I told the bastard that I suspected you. I should leave here right now and let you hire somebody new and just kill the motherfucker. He could use a lesson in reality.”
“Artie…Artie didn’t believe I could do such a thing.”
“Because you went to school together. Because you were best friends, all these years. Best man at his wedding.”
More nodding. No more tears. “We were tight…we were like brothers. I was closer to him than…than his goddamn wife ever was. He never thought…never thought I could do that to him.”
“Most poor boobs never think the person they love would ever cheat on them,” I said. “Artie Baby just joined the biggest fucking club in the world.”
“…Are you going to tell him?”
I nodded over at Skull. “You should be more concerned about whether I’m going to kill your sorry ass.”
Now he looked like more tears might come. “Why… why did you do that? Why would you kill them?”
“They grabbed me at gunpoint and tied me to a chair. I would have killed them for just one of those. And you were the one who told them to do it.”
This time he swallowed very slow and hard. Then he held his head up high. Proud. “So just kill me. You might as well kill me. I’m finished anyway.”
