Money, Guns and Lawyers - Chapt. 3

3
Nobody moved. The only sound I heard was the whooshing wheeze of my own breath, ragged in my throat and the pounding of my heart in my ears. I felt dizzy and nauseous. I wanted to puke but somehow I managed to talk myself out of doing so. Oddly, I didn’t really feel any pain at first. It seemed like an eternity before anyone did anything again. Struggling to keep my eyes open, I looked over at my family.

Josh was crouched over Daubwattle’s inert form, his hands and face covered in the vitreous debris of what used to be the man’ ugly mug. Shay, her face a mask of stone, stood frozen above the two of them, the muzzle of the gun still pointed at the faceless body. I could see Jay and Greg, standing slack-jawed at the side of road, staring at Shay with looks of utter amazement. I had lost track of Cat and the dog, but I knew they hadn’t gone far.

Suddenly, the merchandise started banging on the trunk again, its muffled voice breaking the silence that had lasted only a moment, but felt like an eternity. “Hey, what the hell… Please don’t leave me in here man, you gotta let me out! Hello? Fuck man, this isn’t funny…”

That seemed to be all the motivation Josh needed to get the family moving once again. “Shut the fuck up!” He shouted in the general direction of the trunk and he stood up. “Cat, find the fucking phone and call Mr. M, tell him there has been a slight delay, but we will be at the drop point before morning. Greg, you and Jay-Bo get rid of our little motherfucking problem. Shay, do something about Morgi, I think she’s about to pass out. I gotta think.”

With that, we suddenly became a hive of action. In situations like this, our family performs like a well oiled machine. Each one of us has a job, and we usually do that job without any thought to it. When a problem arises, we deal with it and move on in rapid motion. We don’t have time to screw around, and we can’t afford to get caught with our proverbial pants around our legs. It's not as if any of us had never been caught in that literal position before, but that’s a story best saved for a moment of levity.

As I said, we each had a job to do when things went south. I am happy to say that didn’t occur all that often; but as I mentioned before, we are always prepared. Jay and Greg, being good little henchmen (not to mention bad-asses in their own right during certain situations), were in charge of getting rid of the evidence of our problems, and today would be no different. After dragging the body back to the police cruiser, they put him in the back seat and covered him with an emergency blanket that Greg had found in its trunk. With a nod from Josh, and a quick look in my direction they got in the cruiser, started it up and drove away. I knew they boy’s would be alright. This wasn’t the first time they had to get rid of an errant vehicle, nor would it be the last. They would dispose of the car and meet up with us at home.

While the boys were busy dealing with the dead cop, Josh had “borrowed” the jack and spare from the cruiser, cursing under his breath about complications and being late. He put the police car’s doughnut spare on our car, silencing complaints from the merchandise with a quick punch to the trunk’s lid. When he was done changing the tire, he flung our old, blown out tire over the side of the embankment, and tossed the jack in the back seat.

Meanwhile, I was starting to feel a little cold and I was afraid to look at my arm. I was pretty sure I was sitting in a fairly large puddle of blood too. The urge to vomit had passed, but with each thump of my heart, a dagger of pain shot down my arm and through my shoulder. I was dangerously close to panic, and I don’t panic. I had broken out in a cold sweat, and all I really wanted was a shot of tequila. No, that’s not entirely true; I wanted the whole freaking bottle of tequila!

Shay, having finally found the med kit at the bottom of a pile of crap in the floorboard of the back seat, squatted down on the pavement beside me. She had helped me to sit up and lean against the front fender. She didn’t say anything, she didn’t have too. I knew exactly what she was thinking. That’s the thing about our relationship, it went deep. I’m not trying to say that the whole family wasn’t close, that we didn’t all know each other as well as we knew ourselves, I’m just saying that with me and Shay, things didn’t always have to take words to be said. I knew the only reason that cop was dead was because of me.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not as if Shay hadn’t ever offed a guy. We all had, at one time or another. This was different though, it was cop, and not only that, but it was the cop that shot me. I don’t mean to imply that I was more important than any other member of the family. I wasn’t, and yet I was. It’s hard to explain to people that don’t know us, that haven’t lived our lives with us. I’m not the youngest of the bunch, that spot is reserved for Jay and Cat. Nor am I the oldest. I’m sorta in the middle. In fact, that’s a great way to describe it, the middle; that protected place where the heart lives.

As long as I can remember, these guys have been protecting me. Even back before we got into the business, they were always looking out for me. That is not to say that they were keeping me out of trouble mind you, they helped me find my fare share of trouble. It was more like keeping me from harm’s way, especially Shay.

My thoughts seemed to ebb and flow like the tide as I watched her work on my arm. Flinching as she pulled my jacket off to get better access to the wound. I could smell the whiskey on her breath as she hissed upon the sight of it. “We got lucky…” she said to no one in particular “bullet went clean through her shoulder.”
For a moment, she turned her attention away from me and began to dig through the med kit. I took this as my opportunity to say what needed saying. While she wasn’t looking at me and wouldn’t see me cry. I swallowed hard first, then managed to croak out “Shay, that cocksucker had it coming…fucking shooting my ass.”

That’s when she started to laugh, and the tensions that had engulfed the family finally broke loose. “Damn girl, if you think he shot you in the ass, then we have a serious situation on our hands.” She said with a smile. “Your ass is way down here.” The twinkle in her blue eyes returned as she simultaneously swatted me hard on the ass and poured alcohol over the hole in my shoulder.

I jumped, and our heads collided with a loud crack. “Mother fuh….Damn that hurts…arrgghhhh….Bitch, what the hell did you do…shit…” That’s when the lights went out.

I woke up in the back seat with my arm in a sling, a lump on my head and a bottle in my hand. Sycamore was panting his foul doggie breath into my face, a thick rope of drool hanging from his overly large maw. “Damn dog, you need a breath mint.” I said with a laugh before turning my attention to Cat. “You get a hold of Mr. M yet Cat?”

“Nope, no service, maybe when we get to the top of the pass.” She shrugged, then handed me the phone. It was one of those cheep plastic models, the kind you just refill the minutes on. I had covered it in smiley face stickers and dollar bill signs out of some bizarre need to make it into our own warped version of the Bat Phone. Mr. M. was the only living person to actually know the phone’s number. We didn’t even know what it was. I suppose we could have figured it out if we really wanted to. But that’s the point, we didn’t really want to. For us, it would be like the Angels trying to chase down Charlie’s home number. We were curious, but we didn’t want to ruin a good thing.

I sighed, and took a swig from the bottle, staring at the little screen waiting for those tiny little bars to light up and let me know it was time to make the call. It wasn’t as if I dreaded making the call. Hell, I had made thousands of calls on that phone, often when in worse trouble than this. I knew he wouldn’t be mad either. Mr. M didn’t get mad, he just got even; which was exactly why we had been driving down the deserted New Mexico highway at 1:30 in the morning with Mr. M’s goods in our trunk; but he wasn’t going to be happy either.

I took another pull on the bottle and capped it. Wouldn’t do to use up all my pain relief before we even got across the state line; besides, I needed to have my head as clear as possible when I talked to Mr. M. Our delay may cause him to have to change his plans, and I needed to be able to come up with a plan if we had to divert to a new drop point.

Shay had used the last of our water to wash the blood stain off the highway and was climbing back into the car. “You doing ok hon?”

“Yeah, thank god for pain killers” I chuckled, holding up the bottle of tequila. “We ready to roll?”

“Yep, Josh found the bullet lodged in cement barrier. He’s digging it out and then we will be on our way.” She pushed Sycamore over and settled into a comfortable position. “Effin’ dog takes up more room than the two of us. Why the hell did you have to bring him home with us Morgi?”

Sycamore was a stray I had found the night before. He was wandering around all alone in the New Mexico desert. We had just met up with some business partners and Josh and Shay had stepped away from the car with them make a transaction. I had wondered off the other direction a few feet, thinking I would just spend a few quiet moments looking at the stars. That’s when I heard it, a high pitched puppy whine like a whisper on the wind. At first I thought it was a coyote or maybe a wolf so I started backing my way to the car. The whine kept following me, getting louder. Once I reached the pools of illumination from the headlights, I figured what ever it was would run off. I was wrong. Out of the darkness there appeared the biggest, mangiest looking mutt I ever saw. He padded right up to me, sat down at me feet and gave me this look I just couldn’t resist. That’s all it took. I was in love, and the dog was coming home with us.

I looked over Sycamore’s head at her and laughed. “Well, I guess he just looked like he needed me to take care of him. I think I was wrong though, I think I needed him today…”

The trunk lid slammed shut just then, Josh had resorted to silencing the merchandise manually, and by that I mean with his fist, before getting in the car turning the motor over. “Let’s get the fuck out of this fucking shit hole.” The car lurched forward as he slammed his foot down on the accelerator. “You get through to him yet?”

“Nope,” Cat was a woman of few words most days, unless you got her drunk. Give the girl a few drinks and good luck shutting her up though. “Gave the phone back to Morgi.”

“I’ll try him again when we get to the top of the pass” I said with a hiccup. “Josh…you gonna stop for gas in Trinidad? If we make it over the hill, I think we can coast in.”

“That’s the plan Sunshine, that is the plan.” With that, he turned the radio on and turned his attention back to the road. I caught him though, watching me in the rear-view mirror with a worried look. He only gets that look when he’s scared, and let me be the one to tell you, he doesn’t get scared. I don’t know if it was because we killed a cop, or because I had been shot. I figured I would find out sooner or later though, and decided not to worry about it at the moment.

Instead, I turned my head and watched the night fly past my window. I could hear Shay softly snoring next to me, her hand curled in the dog’s scruff. It always amazed me that she could sleep like that, any where, at any time, no matter what had just happened or was about to occur. I wish I could be like that. I envy all of them for that, for their ability to sleep. Me, I don’t sleep much. My nights are filled with nightmares so I spend most of them lying in bed fraught with worry about what would become of our family if something went really wrong. I still had that niggling feeling too, as though things were about to get worse.

4
We coasted into an all night gas station on the southern end of Trinidad, just as the service came back up on the phone. It was 3:30, and we were two hours behind schedule. Josh and Shay headed for the restrooms to wash up before anyone saw two wild eyed adults covered in blood hanging out at the local Diamond Shamrock. Cat was counting out the change she had scrounged from the floor boards of the car, trying to see how much gas we could get.

I took a deep breath, and pushed the speed dial for Mr. M. The phone, as usual, rang three times. There was silence on the line, but I could hear him breathing. “Mr. M, this is Morgi. We have the merchandise you ordered, but we had some mechanical trouble and I’m afraid your delivery is going to be delayed.”

I waited for his reply, pain lancing through my shoulder. I would have given anything to hand the phone off to Cat and drink myself into oblivion at this point, but I couldn’t. I had to do my job. I swallowed hard and closed my eyes. I could hear the clicking of his tongue against his teeth as he contemplated his response.

“Well then,” his voice startled me, and I jumped, sitting up a little straighter with a wince like some kid who had been caught falling asleep at school. “7 o’clock, at my warehouse.” He didn’t wait for a response from me. I heard the click as he disconnected the call and that was it. Not that I was surprised, like Cat, Mr. M didn’t talk much either.

I took a swig from my bottle and waited for the rest of the family to return to the car. Cat got out and started pumping the gas, and I did my best to rummage around the back seat and find something that resembled food for the dog. All I could come up with was a dried up old apple core and a single M&M. Since chocolate is bad for dogs, I ate the M&M and gave Sycamore the apple core. He actually ate it.

My arm was beginning to itch, and I really needed a hot bath. I was starting to get a bit worried about Shay and Josh to. They had been in the can a long time, and the clock was ticking. Cat was pacing nervously, having fed our last 5 bucks into the tank. We both knew it wouldn’t be enough to get us home.

“I’m going in.” She said, poking her head inside the door. “I would ask if I could get you anything, but well…” her voice trailed off as she turned and headed for the doors of the mini-mart. I nodded and watched her walk away, her prairie skirt flapping in the early morning breeze. We have all been called hippies in our time, but Cat, she was the embodiment of hippy. She definitely looked the part, with her long hair, ankle length prairie skirt, sandals and Grateful Dead t-shirt.

The night was silent with the exception of Sycamore’s soft whine. He didn’t like it when the family was split up. His hackles were up and he was leaning half out the window, sniffing the air in the direction Josh and Sharon had gone. I didn’t like it much either. Something was definitely wrong. I was just about to get out of the car and go look for them when all hell broke loose. This just wasn’t our night.

I had no sooner reached for the door handle, when Shay came running around from the back of the building and did a Luke Duke slide across the hood of the car. I could hear the wail of police sirens fast approaching. “What the hell happened” I asked as Shay climbed into the front seat and started the car.

“Some dumb-ass punk-bitch jumped Josh in the alley. Josh kicked his ass, and the kid’s friend ran inside the mini-mart. The clerk called the cops and here we are.” She paused for a breath “Where the hell is Cat?”

She had that wild eyed look she always gets when she really wants to kick ass and take names, one perfectly groomed eyebrow cocked over an ice blue eye, jaw tense and a vein throbbing in her temple. Josh may be the Jit Kun Do Master, but sometimes I think I’d rather be on the receiving end of his anger that meet up with this Amazon warrior in a dark alley when she’s having a bad day.

I was struggling into the nearest jacket in an attempt to cover up the blood on my shirt as the cruiser pulled into the mini-mart. I slid out of the car and walked around the back side of the building. I could hear Sycamore’s whine get louder as Shay murmured to him to be quite and stay in the car. The last thing I needed at the moment was a renegade dog trying to protect me; who knows what he would do to the cops I was going to have to deal with.

As I rounded the corner into the lot at the back of the store I could see Josh pressed face first against the hood of the police cruiser while a cop slapped a pair of handcuffs on him. “Shit” I said softly, “what the hell am I gonna do now?”

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Cat inside, leaning against a display to watch out the window. I could tell she was worried, Josh is her husband after all, but she didn’t look panicked…yet. I was going to have to think fast though, and come up with a whopper of a plan to get us out of this mess. I flashed Cat a grin, took a deep breath, and approached the nearest officer.

“Excuse me officer, but I think you have the wrong man.” I offered the short squat deputy my sweetest smile and blinked back what I hope looked like tears. I was going to have to play off the sweet and innocent look, and I prayed to every deity I could think of that the cops would buy it.

The cop looked up at me with a frustrated sigh. “Are you a witness?”
“Yes,” I lied, “and I’m also a victim. That little punk over there jumped me as I was coming out of the ladies room; that nice young man was just protecting me. He’s the one you want!” I pointed to a young Hispanic man that was lying on the ground, whimpering and holding his stomach. “He looks like a dirty wet-back and he probably doesn’t even speak English! I think you should call immigration and have him deported.”

I hated myself for even saying the words out loud, but I wasn’t going to just sit by and watch the cops haul Josh off to jail. There was too much riding on us getting to Denver on time. Besides, I was probably right; and if they were illegal aliens, I wouldn’t feel the least bit bad about getting them deported.

No sooner had the word immigration come out of my mouth than a look of panic crossed over the faces of the two teenagers who were being interviewed by another officer. Suddenly, they were in a big hurry to get going. The one on the ground, presumably the one that tried to jump Josh, crawled to his feet and started speaking excitedly in rapid Spanish to his friend.

“See,” I said, “he won’t even speak English to your partner. I’m telling you officer, that young man you have in handcuffs is a Good Samaritan and you should be arresting those two punks.” At this point my heart was racing and the pain in my shoulder was starting to intensify. I prayed the cop would buy my story and let us go before I passed out.

“Wait here.” He said in a brusque business like tone and walked over to confer with his partner.

While the cops were busy deciding our fate, I hazarded a glance at the store. Cat had moved away from the window and was taking full advantage of the commotion outside to do a little “shopping”. I was beginning to look like we could eat, as long as I could talk us out of the current situation. Cat waved at me while the clerk had his back turned and opened a refrigerator case, slipping two large bottles of water into her bag before heading for the candy isle.

I turned away from the store and stole a glance at Josh. He was leaning casually against the police cruiser, his hair in perpetual disarray, looking for all the world like an innocent bystander in some sort of mix-up one would see on TV. or in the movies. (Have I mentioned that my life was feeling more and more like some bizarre feature film?) Sometimes, I hate the way everything comes so naturally to him. Even in the worst, most stressful, demanding situations he always has an outward look of calm, cool and collected. That is of course, until someone mentions the name Raton. But as you all know by now, that’s another story. He flashed me a wink and flicked his eyes back toward the cops, shifting my attention back to them.

The two cops were huddled close to one another, heads bowed. Occasionally one or the other of them would look up and check to be sure we were all still there. The seconds ticked by and my focus began to get more and more fuzzy. “Hurry up!” I muttered, fighting back the gorge that had risen in my throat to accompany the horrific urge to pass out.

One of the cops finally got on the radio and made a call to H.Q., or whatever passes for the nearest cop shop in the outskirts of Pueblo, CO. I couldn’t make out exactly what was being said though, because about that same time a very large, very loud pick-up truck pulled into the mini mart and we were treated to a cocktail of noxious diesel fumes and heavy metal music. He pulled around to the front of the building, and I could already see Shay in my minds eye asking him to turn it up.

Whatever the guy on the other end of the radio said to the cop was a blessing for us though. Before I could really figure out what was happening, one cop was taking the handcuffs off of Josh and the other was putting some on the kid who jumped him. Josh thanked the officer for doing such a, and I quote, “fine job of upstanding job of upholding the law”, shook his hand and walked toward me.

“Thank you very much for sticking around to tell the truth miss.” He said as he walked toward me, the crooked little grin that he gets when he has gotten away with something causing his cheek to dimple. “Not many people in this world would have done something that nice for a stranger.”

“You’re very welcome,” I stammered “thank you for saving me from those boys.”

“No problem, I’m just glad I was here, and saw you struggling with him. You take care now, ok?” He smiled, flashed me a wink and walked off into the night. I wasn’t too worried, I knew he would be waiting for us a mile down the road. It wouldn’t have been a smart move for him to be seen getting into the same car as me, and there was no way in hell I was going to make a mile long walk down the highway. Hell, I wasn’t even sure I was going to make it back to the car.

The short, squat officer I had spoken with earlier came back over to me, took my name and address (fake of course) and asked me to come by the station to make a statement. Turns out I was right, the kids were illegal aliens and they had quite a rap sheet to boot. I assured the officer that I would be in to make my statement first thing in the morning, but that I felt shaky and wanted to go home and rest first. He bought the whole story, gave me his card and walked off to help his partner get their prisoners in the car.

By the time I got back to the car, my world was starting to go a little grey around the edges. I must have looked as bad as I felt too, ‘cause Shay didn’t even ask me what happened around the back of the mini mart. She simply opened the door for me, got into the driver’s seat next to Cat, started the car and drove off. Sycamore was lying next to me whining softly, his muzzle resting on my thigh, anxious brown eyes staring up at me with a look of concern from under his brow. It felt good to sit down.

I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to bring the world back into focus. I heard Cat shift around in her seat to peer anxiously over the seat-back at me. “I got some water,” she said”and some popcorn, chips and dip, candy…hell, I even got you some beef jerky.”

At this, I had to smile. An avid vegetarian buying, excuse me, stealing beef jerky for her friend with a bullet wound while said friend kept the vegetarian’s husband from being arrested before driving off down the highway in the middle of the night with a man tied up in the trunk. I’m telling you, somebody aught to make a movie about my life.

“Thanks Cat, you are the best.” I had noticed that the little low fuel indicator light on the dashboard had turned off when I leaned forward to take the bottle of water Cat had. “Hey, I thought you said we only had $5 for gas. I know that didn’t fill up the tank. You didn’t pump and dash did you Shay?”

“Hell no!” Shay exclaimed, “When you were busy farting around with the cops, I got that good old boy in the pick-up to buy me a tank of gas. That dumb redneck filled the tank on a promise whispered in his ear. Apparently, the idea of three girls alone on a road trip appealed to his, shall we say, nastier side.” She winked at me in the rear view mirror and laughed. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know what she promised him we would do for him, but I wasn’t going to argue with a full tank of gas either.

“Hey, check out the hot hippy hitchhiker.” Cat was laughing as she caught sight of Josh walking along the highway. “Maybe the redneck would like him too.”

All three of us were roaring with laughter as we pulled over to pick Josh up. Shay climbed into the back with the dog and me, Josh got behind the wheel and we moved on down the road.

I checked the time on the phone as we pulled out of the Diamond Shamrock. It was five in the morning, and we had two and a half hours to cover the last two hundred miles of our journey. Assuming we didn’t get pulled over, crash, blow another tire or get stuck in the morning rush hour traffic, we just might make it on time.