Merlot Page 12

  For her part, Miss Suzie Q was curled up in her favorite corner of the couch, clutching a pillow, deeply involved with a reality show where families changed mom’s. The new mom would come in, get the bratty kids back in line, make them eat food they didn’t like, and get the dump cleaned up.

  “Well,” said T.J., looking up from the chart graphing latrine depth versus usage ratio. He stretched back in his recliner for a long moment before throwing the lever forward and catapulting out of the thing.

  “T.J. honey, I swear you are gonna launch yourself right into that damn aquarium some day,” she cautioned, then refocused on the forty-two inch screen.

  She was watching this suburban daddy with beginning love handles, nothing she couldn’t burn off. Looked to be a pretty sizeable guy, which appealed to her, but more importantly he was bringing the new mom coffee in bed. Yeah, this girl was doing more than just washing dishes.

  “Gonna just run down to the Corral and check on things,” he said, giving her a kiss on the forehead.

  “Mmm-mmm,” moving her head slightly so she didn’t miss any of the show. The daddy was cooking breakfast. He’d picked flowers from the garden and put them on the kitchen table. The little monsters, there were three, were nowhere to be seen and that had Suzie Q convinced that this was really just a reality show about swapping.

  “Careful, baby,” she called.

  He nodded, grabbed his Stetson, adjusted his gun belt and strode out the door.

  ***

  Elvis was more worried about screwing up than about being frightened, especially after losing the note at the liquor store that afternoon. He took a deep breath and concentrated on getting the job done. He was standing in the far back corner of a grocery-store parking lot, lurking around the Dumpsters where Lucerne and Mendel had dropped him off, licking residual root beer schnapps off his lips.

  He carried the brick he brought with him and calmly walked across the parking lot to the bank. Any window would work, and Elvis figured he would break one in the rear of the building.

  He glanced around for cameras, but didn’t see any except for the drive-up lanes. He checked his watch, waited until the second hand swept up to twelve, gave another quick glance around, then tossed the brick, and ran like hell. His ears, tuned for breaking glass, heard a loud thunk as his brick bounced off the window and into the shrubbery.

  With his one good eye it took him three agonizing minutes to find the brick in the dark. Eventually he spotted it wedged in the middle of a large thorny plant that scraped and scratched at his arms as he wrestled the brick out from underneath thick spiky branches. He looked around again for any pain-in-the-ass passersby, cocked his arm, and rifled the brick at the same window, at exactly the same spot, and met with exactly the same result, another dead thunk as the brick bounced back into the bushes.

  He panicked. He should have been back at the Dumpsters by now hiding in the shadows. He scrambled into the thorny patch again, his ankles and shins scratched and torn, took the brick in his raw scraped hand, stood in front of the window, and hammered on the large glass window. On his third try a web pattern rippled across the center of the window crackling like river ice close to the shore. The fourth effort left a fragile concave impression. Finally his fifth swing exploded the window, sending cubes of tempered glass showering over him.

  An alarm went off, too. Not a ringing bell alarm but an electronic whoop, whoop, whoop that was deafening. Elvis dropped the brick through the shattered window, stumbled back into the bushes, and fell. He somehow managed to crawl out, tearing his only pair of jeans on the thorny shrubs. Along with the deafening alarm whooping into the night, there was an explosion of lights around the building and across the parking lot, illuminating the half-acre site as if it were high noon.

  He had no option but to run, and run fast.

  * * *

  Lucerne and Mendel pulled into the gun-shop parking lot with their lights off and drove to a dark corner, out of sight in an overhanging tree line. Mendel sat in the front passenger seat, and stared at his illuminated watch as the second hand swept to twelve. Elvis would be smashing the window now. According to their plan they would wait an additional minute, allowing the police time to react to the bank alarm.

  They sat there in the front seat of the Fleetwood, silently waiting in the dark, hearts pounding. Lucerne reminded himself to breathe as he stared at the long wooden handle of the eight-pound maul resting between them.

  “Get ready,” Mendel paused dramatically for a few beats watching the second hand sweep up to twelve.

  “Now!” he shouted, forgetting for the moment that Elvis had never in his life accomplished anything in a timely manner.

  “Come on, now, God damn it!” Mendel yelled, looking over at Lucerne.

  The battery cranked as Lucerne in the excitement of the moment pushed the accelerator hard against the floor almost flooding the big engine. Suddenly the car sprang to life emitting a noxious blue cloud. The bald tires squealed and the muffler rattled against the chassis as the Fleetwood’s 260 horse-powered V-8 rocketed across the parking lot before screeching to a stop six feet from the front door. A dark blue cloud of fumes wafted up against the front of the building and hung there in the heavy night air. Mendel sailed out the door before the car stopped skidding, the momentum caused him to stumble and slide across the pavement, tearing knees, elbows and the palms of his outstretched hands.

  “Leave the doors open, leave the doors…!” Mendel shouted as he went down.

  “What?” called Lucerne. The loud creaking when he slammed his door made it impossible to hear.

  “Go, God damn it, go!” shouted Mendel.

  Lucerne carried the eight-pound maul across his chest and charged through the noxious blue cloud to where he thought the door might be. He swung the maul in a great arc crashing through the glass, striking the thick steel hand bar on the inside of the door with the wooden shaft. The eight-pound maul had just enough torque from his swing to snap the ancient wooden shaft, sailing the maul head into the darkness of the OK Corral.

  It was a night for alarms and this one was meant to sound like the dive warning on a submarine. A-ooo-ga! A-ooo-ga! A-ooo-ga! T.J.’s nod to the ‘Silent Service’.

  Dim emergency lights flashed on inside. The upper portion of the glass had shattered, but the lower three feet looked like a series of jagged glass fingers clawing up toward the center.

  “Knock it out! Knock that shit outta there!” screamed Mendel, limping back and forth in an attempt to get his legs functioning, pointing wildly at the damaged door.

  Lucerne began to swing the broken wooden shaft into the glass, three, four, five swings to clear the right side of the door.

  “Come on, hurry up, man! You’re taking too long,” Mendel screamed.

  “Damn it, will you just shut the fuck up!” Lucerne yelled, facing Mendel, bringing his swinging to a complete stop.

  “Just once, I want you to quit telling me what in the hell to do and let me think for myself. Lord save me, but sometimes I don’t think ya got the patience to save your soul. Hell, the way…”

  Mendel roughly pushed him aside, cleared most of the glass from the left side of the door with his boot, reached in and turned the dead-bolt lock, opening the door.

  “Now come on, and for God’s sake, shut up.”

  Lucerne’s eyes went wide, and he suddenly froze, covering his ears.

  “Come on, you big baby,” Mendel screamed, as he grabbed Lucerne.

  Lucerne shook himself free of Mendel’s grip.

  Unable to wait, Mendel stepped alone into the dimly lit store. He saw the rack from the day before, holding the AKs. What he had not seen the day before was the chain draped through each trigger housing with the heavy brass padlock at the end.

  He yanked viciously at the chain and knew in an instant they were royally screwed. He struggled to lift the rack only to discover it was bolted to the floor.

  “Lucerne, find the damn head from that maul,” he screa
med out the door where Lucerne had taken root, still wide eyed with his mouth gaping open. “Come on boy, move!”

  Lucerne gingerly stepped through the door.

  “Come on, damn it, help me find the head for that maul!” Mendel yelled over the alarm, frantically searching around in the dim light, moving shards of glass aside with the toe of his boot.

  “Got it, there it is!” Lucerne yelled after a long moment, spotting the maul head beneath a rack of Eastern block uniforms. He grabbed it off the floor and handed it to Mendel.

  Mendel began to hammer the brass padlock. The play in the chain provided just enough slack to neutralize his blows. He tightened the chain with his right hand, hammered with his left until the lock eventually sprung.

  “Pull that damn chain from the end,” he shouted, just as the first shot shattered one of the emergency lights on the wall above his head.

  * * *

  As was his custom, T.J. was monitoring the police frequency while driving to check on the OK Corral. The female dispatcher contacting squad 112 was professional as she dispatched the squad car to the bank to investigate an alarm.

  Probably just a mouse. He rounded the corner, even with the windows up, the AC on and all the static from his police scanner he could hear the distinctive submarine “A-ooo-ga” of the alarm. A moment latter he spotted a blue cloud hanging suspiciously across the front of his building, and he floored it.

  There was only one way in and out of the parking lot and T.J. fish tailed his GTO to effectively seal it off. He was shaking badly and lost his glasses as he tumbled out of the car. By pulling the corners of his eyes back he could detect a large blurry shadow that he guessed was the actual building and a hazy light that had to be the entryway. He rested the Sig Sauer on the hood of the GTO, pointed in the general direction of the light and squeezed the trigger.

  “What the hell!” Lucerne screamed as the light above him exploded. “Jesus, come on, let’s boogey, man!”

  Just then the remaining glass in the right side of the doorframe erupted and something zipped past Mendel slapping into the cinder-block wall.

  “Grab them boxes of ammunition behind the counter and fill this damn thing up.” Mendel screamed. He tossed a 30 round banana clip over the counter as Lucerne desperately pulled boxes of ammunition off a shelf.

  “You crazy? We ain’t got that kinda time!” Lucerne screamed as another round struck the outside of the building.

  “We ain’t getting oughta here lessen we shoot our way out so if you got a better idea you can just sing out with it anytime.”

  “Shit!” Lucerne screamed, shoving rounds into the banana clip.

  “All right now, we’re gonna get our asses outta here. You get behind the wheel while I keep ‘em down.” Mendel didn’t wait for an answer but limped straight out the door firing. Lucerne followed close behind, carrying an AK and boxes of ammunition.

  “Get in the damn car,” Mendel screamed, letting loose with another burst in the general direction of the GTO blocking their escape.

  Lucerne tossed his weapon and the ammunition in the rear, then slid behind the steering wheel just as a fist-sized hole erupted in the rear window. He threw the Fleetwood in reverse and sped off, the open passenger door swung wildly. He raced around and screeched to a stop at the rear of the building.

  “Get back here, you worthless son-of-a-bitch!” Mendel yelled. Another round pinged off the building and he quickly retreated inside.

  Lucerne hit the accelerator and screeched around the building, accelerating just as Mendel stepped out from the entryway and let go with a long burst in the direction of the GTO. Lucerne skidded to a stop. A pungent blue cloud engulfed the front of the building as Mendel jumped through the open passenger window.

  “Go, go, go damn it!”

  Mendel pointed the AK out the window and fired blindly as Lucerne raced back around the corner and screeched to a stop. He backed up slowly, keeping the building between them and the GTO. He carefully crossed a raised patch of grass, then quietly rolled into the parking lot next door.

  T.J. crouched behind the GTO with the Sig Sauer balanced on the hood, blinking from one side of the blurry building to the other, desperately trying to focus. He waited what seemed an eternity, then caught a blurry movement out of the corner of his left eye. A large car suddenly jumped to life, raced out of the lot and down the road behind him. He fired once just before he heard the unmistakable eruption of automatic fire.

  Mendel hung out the passenger window aiming across the roof of the Fleetwood. A “phhhut” sound streaked past his head at about the same time he saw the muzzle flash. He pointed his AK in that general direction and sprayed.

  T.J. dove to the ground covering his head with his arms, unaware his bladder had emptied. Rounds zinged through the air, pinging and tearing through twenty-two coats of lacquer and the diamond blue finish of his prized GTO. The two side windows exploded almost simultaneously, raining chunks of safety glass and still the rounds kept flying. The tires exploded, hissing as the car lurched heavily to one side. Rounds stitched their way across the length of the vehicle shattered his taillights and exploded the rear window.

  Then just as suddenly it all stopped. He lay still in a warm puddle, arms covering his head.

  * * *

  Otto had digressed from a foul mood to a very foul mood, right now he was homicidal. He’d had it with people pointing, snickering and holding their noses around him all day, and those had been the polite ones.

  A guy and his three buddies came up to him earlier in the evening. Otto had been minding his own business in the handicapped lot, about to climb into his truck when they cornered him.

  “Hey, buddy. No offense, but you smell like shit, man.” He had some design tattooed on his arm, wore a white strappy t-shirt, and baggy jean shorts about eight sizes too large hanging down to his mid-calves. A small silver ball pierced his lower lip and a larger silver ball pierced his tongue so that when he spoke they clacked back and forth.

  “What?” Otto asked.

  “Oh, come on, we picked up on it from ten feet away. Look, I’m not trying to be a hard-ass or anything, but if you’ve noticed people staying clear of you all day, it might be ‘cause you smell like shit. Maybe you got some sort of problem that should be checked out, man.” laughing, looking at his three pals, all of them thinking four against a pudgy, pink short guy.

  Come to think of it, Otto had noticed something. He remembered the two little kids in the bank this morning, that obnoxious woman when he walked past later in the afternoon, and a handful of others throughout the long day. He thought, maybe they were on to something. Then again, maybe they just didn’t have any manners.

  “Perhaps this is the problem,” Otto said, lifting his sweaty, salt encrusted T-shirt to display the crossed-hatch grips on the forty-five.

  “It kind of lets off a warning scent whenever I get too close to jerks. You know, like you idiots.”

  One of the three back-ups took a step closer.

  “Cool dude, chill,” pierced tongue clicked and clacked rapidly.

  “Look, sir, I think we made an awful mistake. I mean we apologize,” he said taking two steps backward, wide eyes focused on the pistol grip.

  “Get out of here,” Otto hissed through clenched teeth, enjoying himself for the first time today.

  They hurriedly began to walk in the direction of the fair lights.

  “Not that way. This way,” he said pointing to an exit gate.

  “But we just paid to get in. We just got here,” pierced tongue pleaded.

  “Good, now you can just leave,” he angled his head toward the exit gate, and the four quickly turned and walked in that direction.

  He wished Cindy had been here. He’d stroll up, maybe smile, “Evening ma’am, problem?”

  They’d challenge Otto, she’d attempt to calm them, frightened for his safety, the odds four to one.

  “No, Otto, there’s too many,” she’d whisper, somehow exposing a soft, suc
culent thigh, maybe a little tear running down her cheek.

  One of the punks would try and grab her, forcing him to pull his forty-five and crack him over the head with the barrel. Stick the pistol back in his camouflaged shorts, stare at the other three and ask something like, “Who’s next?”

  Ready to draw the forty-five if they tried anything, wait while they dragged their knocked-out pal off to wherever it was you dragged knocked-out pals. Then he’d turn, give her his two finger wave, nod and say, “sorry you had to see that, Ma’am.”

  “Oh, Otto, why don’t you come up for dinner.”

  He’d go to her place. Otto could tell her how he built his deep fat fried empire and then she would want to cook for him, wearing just her apron and a smile.

  A very large woman blared her horn, eyes bulging out of a neckless head. She honked again slowly moving her car into the space next to his truck.

  He left Cindy at the stove, climbed into his truck and roared off to make a night deposit.

  * * *

  Merlot and Cindy had a pleasant enough meal chatting about everything and anything. Merlot had the distinct impression that whenever he was about to broach a more personal subject with her, the waitress seemed to be hovering. Merlot finally told her he’d call if they needed anything.

  He was signing his receipt and had just placed the credit card back in his wallet when she returned with two other staff members in tow.

  “Sir, I’m really sorry, but we just know you’re someone,” she smiled, handing them an unordered glass of wine.

  He reflexively looked the other way attempting to shield his face.

  “Hey, wait a minute, I got it, you’re one of those guys.”

  Her two compatriots looked at her, wondering which guys?

  “Those guys, you know from the Vikings game, the fat guy that mooned everyone. You’re, you’re one of them,” she said.

  Disappointed recognition seemed to wash over the other two.

  “Sorry, ladies, too late,” he put the wine glass to his lips and drained most of it, pulled Cindy’s chair out, and made a hasty exit. Cindy left her glass untouched.