The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

The wind picked up, howling like something evil, something young and strong. Blasts of sand worried the anonymous tombstones. Black imagined the sound of hoofbeats — cloven hoofs racing sharp and fast over a stretch of blacktop somewhere south of the border.

He hurried to his car, wondering if he’d hear that sound.

Wondering if he knew what to listen for.

(For Tia Travis)

THE MOJAVE TWO-STEP

The desert, just past midnight. A lone truck on a scorched black licorice strip, two men — Anshutes and Coker — inside.

Outside it’s one hundred and twenty-five degrees under a fat December moon. Frosty weather in the twilight days of global warming… and just in time for the holiday season.

Sure, driving across the desert was a risk, even in such balmy weather. Not many people owned cars anymore, and those who did avoided the wide white lonesome. Even roadcops were smart enough to leave the Mojave alone. It was too hot and too empty, and it could make you as crazy as a scorpion on a sizzling-hot skillet. If you broke down out here, you ended up cooked to a beautiful golden brown — just like Tiny Tim’s Christmas goose.

But that wasn’t going to happen to Coker. He was going to spend New Year’s Eve in Las Vegas. The town that Frank and Dean and Sammy had built all those years ago was still the place he wanted to be. Hell on earth outside, air-conditioned splendor within. If you had the long green, Vegas gave you everything a growing boy could desire. A/C to the max, frosty martinis… maybe even a woman with blue eyes that sparkled like icebergs.

Let the swells fly into town in air-conditioned jets, Coker figured. He’d take the hard road. The dangerous road. The real gambler’s road. He’d ride that scorched highway straight down the thermometer into double digits, and the A/C would frost everything but his dreams. A little business, a couple lucky rolls of the dice, and his life would change for good… then he’d leave town with a jet of his own. Slice it up like an Eskimo Pie and that was cool, any way you figured it.

It was all part of the gamble called life. Like always, Lady Luck was rolling the dice. Rattling the bones for Coker and for his partner, too, even though Anshutes would never admit to believing in any airy jazz like that.

Coker believed it. Lady Luck was calling him now. Just up the road in Vegas, she waited for him like a queen. God knew he’d dreamed about her long enough, imagining those iceberg eyes that sparkled like diamonds flashing just for him.

All his life, he’d been waiting for the Lady to give him a sign. Coker knew it was coming soon. Maybe with the next blink of his eyes. Or maybe the one after that.

Yeah. That was the way it was. It had to be.

Really, it was the only explanation.

Check it out. Just two days ago Coker and Anshutes had been on foot. Broiling in Bakersfield with maybe a gallon of water between them, seven bucks, and Anshutes’ .357 Magnum… which was down to three shells. But with that .357 they’d managed to steal five hundred and seventy-two bucks, a shotgun, and an ice cream truck tanked with enough juice to get them all the way to Vegas. Plus they still had the Magnum… and those three shells.

Now if that wasn’t luck, what was?

One-handing the steering wheel, Coker gave the ice cream truck a little juice. Doing seventy on the straightaway, and the electric engine purred quieter than a kitten. The rig wasn’t much more than a pick-up with a refrigeration unit mounted on the back, but it did all right. Coker’s only complaint was the lack of air-conditioning. Not that many automobiles had A/C anymore… these days, the licensing fees for luxuries which negatively impacted the sorry remains of the ozone layer cost more than the cars. But why anyone who could afford the major bucks for a freon-licensed vehicle would forgo the pleasure of A/C, Coker didn’t know.

The only guy who had the answer was the owner of the ice cream truck. If he was still alive… and Coker kind of doubted that he was. Because Anshutes had excavated the poor bastard’s bridgework with the butt of his .357 Magnum, emptied the guy’s wallet, and left him tied to a telephone pole on the outskirts of Bakersfield. By now, the ice cream man was either cooked like the ubiquitous Xmas goose or in a hospital somewhere sucking milkshakes through a straw.

Coker’s left hand rested on the sideview mirror, desert air blasting over his knuckles. Best to forget about the ice cream man. His thoughts returned to the Lady. Like always, those thoughts had a way of sliding over his tongue, no matter how dry it was. Like always, they had a way of parting his chapped lips and finding Anshutes’ perennially sunburnt ear.

“Know where I’m heading after Vegas?” Coker asked.

“No,” Anshutes said. “But I’m sure you’re gonna tell me.”

Coker smiled. “There’s this place called Lake Louise, see? It’s up north, in Canada. Fifty years ago it used to be a ski resort. Now the only skiing they do is on the water. They’ve got palm trees, papayas and mangoes, and girls with skin the color of cocoa butter. Days it’s usually about thirty-five Celsius, which is ninety-five degrees American. Some nights it gets as low as sixty.”

Anshutes chuckled. “Sounds like you’ll have to buy a coat.”

“Go ahead and laugh. I’m talking double-digit degrees, partner. Sixty. Six-oh. And girls with skin like cocoa butter. If that’s not a big slice of paradise, I don’t know what is.”

“Get real, amigo. A guy with your record isn’t exactly a prime candidate for immigration. And our dollar isn’t worth shit up north, anyway.”

“Drop some luck into that equation.”

“Oh, no. Here we go again — ”

“Seriously. I can feel it in my bones. Something big is just ahead, waiting for us. I’m gonna take my cut from the ice cream job and hit the tables. I’m not walking away until I have a million bucks in my pocket.”

“Even God isn’t that lucky” Anshutes snorted. “And luck had nothing to do with this, anyway Planning did. And hard work. And a little help from a .357 Magnum.”

“So what are you gonna do with your money?” Coker asked sarcastically. “Bury it in the ground?”

“Depends on how much we get.”

“The way I figure it, we’re looking at something large. Forty grand, maybe fifty.”

“Well, maybe thirty.” Anshutes gnawed on it a minute, doing some quick calculations. “I figure the Push Ups will go for about fifty a pop. We got five cases of those. The Fudgsicles’ll be about sixty-five. Figure seventy-five for the Drumsticks. And the Eskimo Pies — ”

“A hundred each, easy,” Coker said. “Maybe even a hundred and twenty-five. And don’t forget — we’ve got ten cases.”

“You sound pretty sure about the whole thing.”

“That’s because I believe in luck,” Coker said. “Like the song says, she’s a lady. And she’s smiling on us. Right now. Tonight. And she’s gonna keep on smiling for a long, long time.”

Coker smiled, too. Screw Anshutes if he wanted to be all sour. “You know what we ought to do,” Coker said. “We ought to pull over and celebrate a little. Have us a couple of Eskimo Pies. Toast Lady Luck, enjoy the moment. Live a little — ”

“I’ve lived a lot,” Anshutes said. “And I plan to live a lot longer. I’m not going to play the fool with my money. I’m not going to blow it on some pipe dream. I’m going to play it smart.”

“Hey, relax. All I’m saying is — ”