“You don’t want to go back to your silly show. Stay with us. Forever,” a voice hissed in my ear.
I stopped walking. It had felt good just before I jumped. Like I’d been on the brink of finding the same peace that the others who’d jumped had dreamed of.
A gust of wind blew across the plain and a raven landed on the grass a few feet away from me.
It’d be nice to find peace.
I looked back at the tower and bit down on my lip.
With a sharp crack the cue ball knocked the eight ball into the corner pocket and the game was over. “God damn it!” yelled the 300-pound slob the other bikers called “Fat Willie.” He’d waddled over and challenged me to a game out of the blue and if he wasn’t the worst pool player I’d ever seen he was pretty damn close.
“Double or nothing, big guy?” I asked.
Fat Willie shook his head and took his wallet out of a pair of jeans that Jabba the Hut would find too loose to wear. I rubbed my chin. That had to be one strong Harley he was riding around on.
“I’ll get ya next time,” Willie muttered as he tossed a hundred-dollar bill on the table.
“Anytime, fat man. But I don’t know when I’m going to be back through here again.”
Sunny, our bouncy little blonde waitress, appeared with a pitcher of beer and set it on the high-top table next to Fat Willie.
“Thanks darlin’,” Willie said as he grabbed the pitcher and took a long drink. When he set it back down a third of it was gone and I shook my head and took the hundred off the table.
“So you don’t know about this place then?” Willie asked.
“Know what?” I asked, slipping the money into my wallet while watching Sunny go up to the skinny bartender with short gray hair wearing sunglasses. Fast Eddie’s Bar was just another dive bar like the million or so I’d seen during my riding and I couldn’t imagine what there was to know.
Fat Willie smiled and looked over at the two leather-clad bikers that he’d been shooting pool with before he came over to me. The bronze-skinned one was around 5’6” and built like a power lifter while the other was his polar opposite: six-two or six-three, pale as snow, and looked like a good gust of wind would snap him in half. “Carlos! J.J.! Should I tell our new friend here about the robber who won’t quit?”
The power lifter—I was guessing he was Carlos—flashed a set of bright white teeth and set the bottom of his cue on the floor. “I don’t know; he looks the nervous type. What do you think J.J.?”
The other biker looked me up and down and shrugged. “Sure, why not? Ain’t like it’s a real secret.”
Eddie Money’s Shakin started to crank out of the jukebox and Fat Willie rubbed his thick hands together. I leaned against the pool table. “I’m listening.”
The giant man sucked down the rest of the pitcher and waved at Sunny. He looked at me. “A little over a year ago some guy comes in here to rob the place. He knocks out Fast Eddie’s son who was working the door that night with the butt of his gun, grabs one of the girls, cuts her face, and then tells Eddie to give him all the cash in the place.”
“Did he do it?” I asked.
Sunny brought over another pitcher and Willie took a giant gulp of it before she could even turn back around.
“Oh, he gave him the money,” Fat Willie said wiping beer foam off his chin. “And when that robber ran out of here, he gave him something else as he rode off on his hog.”
“What’s that?”
“Two shotgun blasts in the back.”
I nodded and checked my watch.
“They actually buried him out there in those woods somewhere and since then Mr. Robber has been prowling up and down this road like he’s waiting for his next big score. Terrorizing anyone who happens to cross his path,” J.J. said.
“Ah, hence ‘the robber who won’t quit,’” I said with a smirk I couldn’t keep down. “Very good. Got it.”
Fat Willie looked over at Carlos and J.J. and they walked towards me.
“You making fun of us, boy?” Carlos hissed rubbing his fist against his open hand.
I stood up from the pool table and walked up to him. “I don’t believe in ghosts and I sure as hell don’t fall for lies by back-road half-wits.”
Carlo’s eyes narrowed and his muscles tensed. “You want to try laughing at me outside?”
“Come on, Carlos. Let it go,” J.J. said.
Carlos glared at me like he was trying to see what my skull looked like and then his body relaxed and his mouth curved upward.
“You’re right, J.J.” He patted me on the shoulder and he grinned. “We got ourselves a smart boy here.”
Carlos turned around and went back to his table. He grabbed his jacket off the chair and put it on. “I’ll be seeing you, son,” he said. “You coming, boys?”
J.J. walked off with Carlos and Fat Willie stared at me. “I’d be careful out there if I were you. Six bikers been run off these roads ever since old Eddie put that boy down.” The side of the fat biker’s thin mouth curved into a half smile. “Be a shame for you to be number seven.” He pointed a finger at me and then walked over to where Carlos and J.J. were waiting at the exit.
“See you Eddie,” Fat Willie bellowed and the skinny bartender gave them a wave. They pushed through the door and were gone.
It was now a little after one in the morning and other than Fast Eddie, who was chatting with some woman over a bottle of scotch at the end of the bar, and
