Part 3
By: Ted Wallenius
Everyone left the Corner Bar. Janey left with her escort. Two-Cents and Stacy rode in Two-Cents’s black GMC, and Tim went with them, in the back seat. The peed-on man went home to take a shower. The bartender wiped down the counter and went home to his TV dinner.
After Stacy stepped inside without saying a word, Tim and Two-Cents sat together in Two-Cents’ driveway. Tim asked Two-Cents if he could buy a half gram of the Bolivian marching powder.
Two-Cents gave Tim the cocaine and Tim went back across the street to his own house, changed into a dark shirt and black jeans, and waited in front of his living room window.
After midnight Tim saw the black truck start up in his neighbor’s driveway. It was a cold, windy night and he knew Two-Cents liked to warm up the GMC before leaving. Tim did a quick snort, spooning it in with the baby spoon he’d never had any use for. Then, feeling fine, he walked across the street. He opened the rear side door of the GMC and lay down across the back seat. A few minutes later Two-Cents came out and got into the driver’s seat. He drove straight to the Broken Pony without ever realizing Tim was in the truck with him.
When Two-Cents stopped the truck and got out Tim lay still and flat for a few more minutes. He maneuvered the plastic bag and the baby spoon out of his pocket and did another snort. Then he opened the back door, stepped carefully out onto the gravel lot, and looked around to get his bearings. He could see the main building with the rearing stallion on the face of it and the illuminated signage for the brothel. Behind the main building there were three sheds. Janey told him the one he needed was the one in the middle.
The middle shed had a good, sturdy ramp and a keypad lock. Tim walked carefully up the ramp and pressed the numbers Janey had given him into the lock. He heard the latch release with a click. Now he’d have to be fast. She told him there were cameras, and he’d have to turn on the lights to see what he was doing. He opened the door and stepped into the shed.
The light switch was beside the door. Tim Whiting clicked it on, fearless. He knew he could do it. People stole motorcycles all the time. The storage shed flooded with light. Tim’s eyes widened and blood roared through his heart. There it was. He couldn’t believe it.
Janey wasn’t lying. It was an honest-to-God Vincent Black Lightning, right there in front of him.
It was up on an orange rear wheel stand, perpendicular to the raised platform, bathed in the lights like an angel’s chariot. The lights gleamed off the chrome in aerials and disappeared into its black sides.
Tim climbed on, feeling the frame and the leather beneath him. He scooped the last bit of white powder straight from the baggie into his nose and dropped his pewter baby spoon on the floor with a clatter. The keys were in the ignition. He thought that old kick starter would be a bitch to fire so he reared up off the saddle for it, but when he kicked it down with his boot, the engine, filled with a mix of high-octane gasoline and synthetic motor oil, turned over like a kitten purring.Tim pushed the bike off the stand, put it in gear, and let go the clutch. The Vincent jumped off the platform. He gave it a little gas to get the rear wheel spinning and turned it like a jungle cat in the small space, facing it out the door and down the ramp. Tim smiled so wide he felt like his face was going to split open. He saw them now, people running out of the Broken Pony, gathering open-mouthed in the gravel court. Tim Whiting gassed the Vincent and roared down the steps. He went right through them, watching them dive out of his way like tenpins.
With a swooping turn Tim was off the gravel and out on the highway, wind whipping through his hair. The feeling of exultation that poured through him seemed to come from deep inside the motorcycle, roaring up through his thighs to his chest and out his open mouth as he yelled out his triumph.
“I feel free,” Tim Whiting thought.
Behind him Tai Botman spread his legs on the blacktop, took aim with the Colt Python he’d grabbed up in his office when he saw the intruder in his shed on his security camera, and squeezed off a shot that rocked Tai backwards on his heels and set the night on fire.
Tai Botman slid down the berm from the highway and dusted off his hands. “Why’re you looking at me like that?” he demanded of the assembled persons standing in the gravel courtyard of the
Broken Pony. Since it was Friday night, there were two bouncers, both useless. There was a maid, a bartender, also useless, four johns, and six working girls who weren’t working. Tai wanted to shoot each and every one of them. His motorcycle had just disappeared down US 50, heading in the direction of Utah.
Tai said, “I didn’t hit him.” There was nothing out there. No cops, no emergency rooms, hardly even a gas station until Ely. No one who could catch a ‘52 Vincent Black Lightning.
Janey was in the doorway. She knew Tai had hit him. She’d heard Tim start the Vincent, put a robe on and made it to the door just in time to see the almost imperceptible wobble with the blast from the Colt as the taillights of the Vincent Black Lightning tore away into the darkness. Tai wouldn’t have seen it, not while he was trying to wrangle that elephant gun.
“You,” Tai said to her. “You did this.”
Now Two-Cents was in the doorway behind Janey, naked but for a purple towel wrapped around his midriff, his pimples red in the courtyard halogens.
“And you,” Tai menaced. He raised the Colt Python, six inches of stainless steel barrel, five more .357 magnum semiwadcutters ready to go in the wheel. He pointed the muzzle at Two-Cents’ face. Two-Cents raised his hands, knowing he was about to die.“Cut it out, Tai. That’s brandishing,” Janey told him.
“I don’t give a shit, Janey,” Tai said. “It’s not even a felony. You stole my motorcycle.”
“It’s my motorcycle,” Janey said, “and I didn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Bullshit,” Tai said, but he lowered the pistol, which was a good thing for everyone, because the cavalry pulled into the courtyard with their red and blue lights flashing.
While Tai talked to the two officers, who knew quite well who he was and how much money he paid them to keep his business operational, all on the up and up of course, Janey went back inside, ignoring Two-Cents in his towel even when he reached out to see if she was okay.
Janey worked the dial on the wall safe in Tai’s office. The easiest way to crack a safe is to watch someone else dial the combination. She got it right on the first try. She removed the title for the
Vincent Black Lightning and tucked it into her purse.
• • •
In the darkest part of the morning Two-Cents pulled his black truck into the driveway, crept into his house, went to the bathroom to wash his hands, and crept into bed beside his wife, Stacy. She didn’t wake, only mumbled a little at the shifting of the blankets and the mattress. Two-Cents pulled the covers up to his chin. It was cold in the house but under the blankets he felt the safety and security of his own bed and his own wife in a way he hadn’t before Tai Botman pointed that pistol right at his face.
He lay still, listening to Stacy sleep. When she coughed he turned towards her. Making sure his hands were warm enough, he put one on her stomach. After a moment he felt her hand come to rest on top of his, and then he rolled to her side and put both his arms around her.
Two-Cents had never had a gun pointed at him before. He was just a coke dealer. When people saw him they smiled. Still, he knew what business he was in, and he knew death was always a possibility. He thought about that movie Scarface, the Brian De Palma one, where Hector the
Toad handcuffs Tony’s associate Angel to the shower plumbing and then dismembers him with the chainsaw. Two-Cents thought how they don’t show the murder in the movie but watching it you still know what’s going on and how awful it is. Once he started thinking about it Two-Cents couldn’t go to sleep.
“Hello,” Stacy said into his shoulder. “Where’ve you been?”
“Nowhere,” Two-Cents answered. Stacy muttered a little bit, but she didn’t say anything out loud. She started to fall asleep again, held fast between his arms.“You know, Stacy,” Two-Cents said, “Maybe I don’t want to do the drug dealer thing anymore.”
“That’s okay,” she mumbled. “I think that would be a good idea, to quit doing that. What else would you do?”
“I don’t know,” Two-Cents said. He had transportation. He was an American citizen. He had a high school diploma. There were no convictions on his record. He didn’t mind washing dishes. It was kind of soothing, all that hot water and steam, the idea of reusing something, of making it new and useful again instead of just consuming it, up the nose, in it came in its bundles for the scale and out it went in tiny vials.
“Maybe get a straight job,” Two-Cents said. “Maybe just work and stay home for a while. We could make it, couldn’t we?”
“Yeah?” Stacy said. “Stay home? With me?”
“Yeah, maybe,” Two-Cents said.
He thought about what that meant, to have another person to listen to him groan when he put his socks on, another person to share a laugh with him when that cat fell out of the tree on TV, another person to cook spaghetti and put a ladle of the sauce into it and stir it all up to get it coated and tear up the lettuce nice and small. To go to bed and know that another person was going to be there too, nearby, undemanding in sleep. A companion.
Now Stacy shifted in the bed. She put her arms around him too and held him tight, there in the safe darkness under the covers. “I think I’d like that,” Stacy hummed. “I could switch into the bakery,” she hummed. “They’re looking for a full-time manager. It’s union. Better pay, and health insurance for both of us.”
“You know how to do that?” Two-Cents teased her. “Make all those curlicues and roses?”
“Yeah,” Stacy said. “I know how to do that.”
After a while, Two-Cents said, “Me too.”
“You know how to make flowers out of frosting?” Stacy teased.
“No,” Two-Cents said. “I mean I think I’d like it too.”
“There’s other things I can do for you, you know,” Stacy told him. “I’m good at it.”
“I know,” Two-Cents said. “It just . . . I just . . .”“It’s okay,” Stacy told him, and that’s how they fell asleep, warm, safe, and together.
The End
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