Henchmen (17 page)

I remember hearing a story once about a Karate school owner who had some problems with a guy around town.  One day he comes across the guy, and beats the living shit out of him.  No provocation, nothing - just walks up and lays into him with a ton of witnesses around.  The school owner got a slap on the wrist, because he said it was all in self-defense, and the witnesses agreed with his story.  Now, how in the name of Holy Thor do you instigate a fight, beat up someone who wasn’t doing anything to you, and get off by claiming self-defense? 

Here’s how. The whole time the owner was knocking the snot out of this guy, he was busy yelling things like “please don’t hurt me!” and “oh, God, why are you doing this?”  The witnesses heard this, and their minds connected dots that weren’t there.  Voilà, a school owner got to thump someone with no repercussions.

Here, everyone saw me drinking before anyone else came in.  Saw me generally being an asshole with Jessica, saw her slug me, and connected the dots.  This guy pulls a knife in a bar, and suddenly
I’m
the bad guy.

Jacob pulls my arm behind my back and shoves me out the door.  The door slams behind me, and I hear faint clapping from inside.  All he did was push me out a door I wanted to go out anyway, and he’s suddenly a hero to everyone else in the bar, too.

It’ll be a while before they’re done in there, so I head over to the Route 66 Diner and grab a shake before wandering back to the motel.

About 8 or so Jacob and Frank make it back to the motel.  Frank is his usual unflustered self. Jacob is grinning ear to ear and flashing a wad of cash.

“How’s your jaw?” Frank asks me.

“Not bad.  Nothing’s broken and all my remaining teeth are still there,” I tell him.

Jacob said the place started to pick up around 7ish, and was still going strong when they left.  Brance was being treated like a hero, even though he didn’t do jack shit, and was apparently eating it up.  Jessica was still laying it on thick, and when Jacob and Frank left Brance had his arm around her waist and she was leaning into him.  I wonder if he even stopped to think about why this young lady was so busy asking him about his work.  I’ll bet you he just thought it meant she was interested in him.

I guess some guy decided to openly challenge anyone in the bar to arm wrestling, and took out Jacob and almost everyone else before Eve stepped in.  You know you’re in a great place when spontaneous arm wrestling matches start up.  I would’ve loved to be there for it.  If he could beat Jacob, he would’ve whooped me, but it still would’ve been fun.  Eve flattened the guy and he immediately decided he was completely, madly, totally in love with her. 

Good luck with that, dude.

Frank and Jacob played pool and eventually wound up challenging some guys to a game.  I had no idea about this, but Frank is a pool shark, and paid part of his way through college hustling people at various bars around town.  I had figured Jacob would play pool - he looks the part - but finding out Frank was a pool shark completely blind-sided me.  I imagine it blind-sided a bunch of other people, too.  That explains the straight razor: people tend to get pissed when they feel they’ve been hustled.  I imagine more than a few people got a nice scar in the parking lot of the Billiard Palace trying to take him on.

Jacob flashes a wad of about a grand or so.  “This guy’s amazing!   Seriously!”  Jacob slaps Frank on the back and Frank staggers forward a bit.  Jacob never did understand his own strength.

Frank smiles and, ever the gentleman, says “I couldn’t have done it without Jacob.  Anyway, when the ladies get back, dinner’s on us.”

Like we didn’t have a short ton of money squirreled away in a dozen different accounts.  It’s the thought that counts.

Jessica and Eve make it back about an hour later.  Jessica is pretty hammered, and Eve is glowing.

Jessica “walks” straight up to me, puts a finger in my face and says “If you ever call me a bitch again, I’ll cut your balls off.”

I stare her dead in the eye and tell her “If you ever punch me in the jaw again, I’ll give you paper cuts on your nipples.”

She backs up and wraps her arms around her breasts.

“How’d it go with Brance?” I ask her.

Jessica makes a face, shivers a bit and says “That guy was all hands.  I need a shower and I’ll tell you.”  She shudders again and heads back to her room to shower.

“Eve,” Frank says, “why are you glowing?”

Eve blushes a bit.  “I had a really good drink, that’s all.  And I won an arm wrestling match.”

“That’s not enough to make you glow,” Frank says.  “Who was he?”

She thinks for a bit and comes to a decision.  “That guy that was arm wrestling?  He had a very nice truck with a well-appointed camper.”

She looks around at us.  “What?  A girl can’t get laid anymore?” she asks.

I grin, Jacob laughs out loud.  “You got laid in the parking lot of the Copper Lounge!  Outrageous!”

“You go, girl!” Frank tells her.

Everyone else at the bar thought Brance was a hero, and people bought him drinks all night long.  Jessica stayed with him, constantly stroking his ego.  Somehow or another the story morphed from the truth - he pulled a knife and got chopped, and Jessica knocked me out, to: I pulled a knife on Jessica, and he saved her from the raving lunatic rapist.  People were howling for my blood.  Someone drew a composite sketch of me and they hung it behind the bar with a note that says “poison this guy’s drink.” 

Pity.  I really liked that bar.

About half an hour later (Jesus, how long does it take a take a quick shower?) Jessica comes back in wearing a tight gray shirt, a black skirt with suspenders and a pair of unlaced Vans.  I’ve never seen a skirt with suspenders, and I must say it’s a nice look.

“I’m hungry, guys.  Where can we eat?” she asks.

Street Food Asia on Central serves pretty much the food you expect it would serve, only a hell of a lot better than you expect it will be.  I once spent an entire dinner trying to convince the manager to invest in luminescent noodles so they could serve Glo Mein, but to no avail.  She felt things like the carcinogenic chemicals used in luminescent sticks might kill the flavor of the noodles and, possibly, the diners.  Like most of my great ideas, this one died on the vine.  Someday science will help me realize my dream of eating glow-in-the-dark noodles.  It has to happen sometime.

Eve gets a green curry with beef dish, Jessica gets a Bangkok street noodle bowl with chicken, Frank gets a Saigon rice bowl with beef and shrimp.  Jacob, never a huge fan of Asian food, gets Pad Thai, and I get a Tokyo street classic: tempura calamari.  We also have, of course, many appetizers: summer rolls from various countries, won tons, and various wraps.

While we’re waiting for dinner and drinking tea, Eve grills Jessica about Geoff Brance.

“He doesn’t know a damn thing about what he’s guarding.  All he does is show up every morning and make sure the elevator doesn’t move. No one comes in, no one talks.  He’s on guard duty with one other guard, name of Albert Mills, and their lead, who he only knows as Mr. Robinson.  Brance and Mills never really hang out. Apparently they had a political dispute of some kind,” Jessica says.

“How did he wind up with this job?” Frank asks.

“His assignment is a punishment of some sort or another.  Apparently a general accused Brance of groping his fifteen-year-old daughter.  They couldn’t prove anything, and she denied the incident, but he was reassigned to this dead-end position to get rid of him.  He’s only got five years left, and he’ll be able to retire with full benefits, so he just keeps his eyes on that brass ring,” Jessica says.

“Do you think he actually groped that girl?” Eve asks.

“Considering how many places his hands wandered on me, yeah, I bet he did,” Jessica says.  “He’s a pretty sad, pathetic guy.  If he wasn’t such a freak, I’d almost feel sorry for him.”

“Does he know anything about Robinson?” I ask.

Jessica pauses for a moment to take a drink of her Mai Tai.  “Not much.  Robinson is always there before either Brance or Mills show up, and he’s always there after they leave.  Hell, he may live in that room,” she tells us.

“If what they’re guarding is so important, you’d think there’d be more people,” Jacob says.

“That’s the thing.  They don’t know what they’re guarding.  They don’t have a damned clue.  They just show up at the appointed time and leave at the appointed time,” she says.

“If the place is really super-secret, he may just not have wanted to tell you,” Frank says.

“When I put my hand on his leg he admitted to liking midget porn.  He told me all about his previous posting guarding something up in Dulce.  He would’ve happily told me anything I wanted to know, if he knew it himself,” Jessica tells him.

“It’s possible that whatever they’re keeping an eye on fell through the cracks.  These things happen.  Look at Radula. That was some dark stuff, but the project wasn’t new and sexy and it just kind of got forgotten.  It’s also possible that place is so classified that the people guarding it don’t have the need to know,” I say.

“The only thing he knew for sure was that if the elevator came up, they were to immediately call a number and press a button on Robinson’s desk,” Jessica says.

“What does the button do?” Eve asks.  “Where does the number go?”

“He doesn’t know where the number goes, just that the number must be called from the phone on Robinson’s desk. He has no idea what the button does.  I got the impression from talking to him that they’re mostly concerned about that elevator coming up.  He’s been at that posting for five years, and the elevator hasn’t moved at all,” she says.

“Did you ask him what he thought was down there?  Usually there are rumors, or something,” I ask her.

“He suspects it’s some kind of nuclear or biological weapon, but doesn’t know and doesn’t want to know.  Apparently before Mills came in, Brance worked with another guy who asked Robinson what was down at the bottom of the elevator shaft.  The guy never came back, and no one ever saw him again.”

“So he’s into midget porn?” Jacob asks.

“He thinks of it more as a strange fetish, but yeah, he’s into midget porn,” Jessica says.

“I didn’t even realize there was such a thing as midget porn,” he tells her.

“So, where is this button on Robinson’s desk?” I ask.

“It’s right on top.  Should be easy to find, because Robinson’s desk is spotless.  His desk has a button and a phone on it, and that’s it.”

“Do we know anything at all about Robinson?” Frank asks.

“He never speaks, except to tell Brance and Mills what they’re doing wrong.  He always wears a black suit, white shirt and black tie.  He’s always immaculate, and he can sit absolutely still for hours at a time.  He once went three whole months without saying a word to anyone.  If Brance or Mills slouches at all, Robinson lets them both have an earful about respecting their positions.  He seems to believe whatever they’re guarding is the single most important thing on the planet.”

“Nice work,” Eve says.  “It sounds like Brance actually doesn’t have a clue.”

“Sounds like a lot of government employees I knew,” I say.  “I once worked here in New Mexico with a woman who used to go all the way back to California for her dentist, because she didn’t think her insurance would work in a foreign country.”

The waitress brings our food and the conversation stops for a bit.

I eventually ask Eve a question that’s been on my mind for a while.  “What are we going to do after all this is over?”

She ponders a bit while finishing chewing and says, “I don’t know.  I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

What does Lex Luthor do after he finally takes over?  What does the Joker do after everything’s rubble?  Move on to bigger and better villainy, or assume the mantle of ruler and move on to the day-to-day tasks to administering the new domain?

“What do you want out of life?” Jessica asks her.

Eve sighs.  “I want to see people free to make their own decisions, and to be responsible for those decisions.”

“Everyone is already free to make their own decisions,” I say.

“No, they’re not,” Eve says. “They’re free to make some decisions within a tiny range of acceptable decisions.  You can’t live outside the system, because the system is completely pervasive.  Look at it this way. What if you don’t want to buy new clothes all the time, or pay attention to religious fanatics, or make your own decisions about what you hold dear?  Everything about our world is tightly controlled and regimented for most people.  They do what they’re told, and tell themselves they’re free to stop doing that whenever they want.  But what happens when you decide to stop doing what you’re told?  What happens when you decide you don’t believe in what you’re told the majority believes?”

“You wind up tied to a fence in the middle of nowhere and beaten half to death?” Frank says.

“You see your friends killed, because they sold things the system doesn’t want them to sell?” Jacob asks.

“Exactly.  The system won’t tolerate gross differences,” Eve says.  “And that’s a terrible thing, because it forces people to live narrow lives and have narrow minds.”

“How is eliminating Congress going to change all that?” I ask her.  “Sure, they’re a bunch of corrupt bastards, but that won’t change basic human nature.”

“No, Congress is a symptom of the disease, but it’s not the disease itself.  Remember, Congress makes the laws of this country, and all laws are designed to tell you what you cannot do.  The one primary thing they don’t want you to do is think for yourself, and they’ve become experts at preventing you from looking up and realizing you’re slowly being squeezed to death.  Any time there’s even a hint of an uprising, they find things to make you afraid of.  Terrorism, gay marriage, abortion, taxes.  None of these are the root of any problem and, no offense to Frank, none of them are actually serious problems.  What is a serious problem? People have started to see these miniscule things they hold dear as the most important of problems, and have been trained over decades to never budge on what they hold dear.  People need enemies. They need something to rally behind that will let them get over their bigotry, and unite.  This country, as it stands now, is not a single entity.  We’re 300-plus-million special-interest groups, and we’ll all fight tooth and nail to make sure our special interests are carried out.

We want a way to force people to work together toward a common good.  Eliminate the government and it will have to be rebuilt.  People will have to do that.”

Serious talk for a serious night.

“Hey, Jess.  Did you ever serve food like this?” Jacob asks.

Leave it to the big man to break the mood.

“Spicy noodles would have been a little hot for Nyotaimori.  Also a little public.  I worked private affairs, not public restaurants,” she says.

“What if we paid?” Jacob asks.

“Still no,” Jessica says nonchalantly sucking up a noodle.

“Damn.” Jacob says.

“How long had you been working there, by the way?” I ask.

She looks at me curiously and takes a sip of water.  “A couple of years, why?”

“Sorry if this comes off wrong, it just seems like you’re smart and could have done anything you wanted.  Why get strapped to a table so people can eat sushi off you?” I ask.

“Not that he’s complaining about the view, am I right?” Jacob says and slaps me on the back.

Jessica blushes and I’m pretty sure I did, too, but she says, “It was work.  There’s not much in Vegas jobwise, so I could have been a cocktail waitress and gotten groped by drunken assholes or worked where I did.  It was pretty easy work; it’s not every job where you can lie around and get paid for it.”

“Lying around getting paid would be great experience for a government job,” Frank says.

“Well, that’s ultimately what I wanted and that’s why I studied what I did, but it takes forever to get into those positions so I was kind of stuck for the time being,” Jessica says.

“Literally,” Jacob adds.

“The straps came off every night, big guy,” she answers with a smile.  “What about you?  What did you do?”

Jacob puffs up his chest and says with great pride, “I was in an MC.”

“An MC?” Jessica asks.

“Motorcycle club,” Jacob responds.

“Yeah, I know.  I’ve seen
Sons of Anarchy
,” Jessica says.  “What do you do in a motorcycle gang?”

“Club,” Jacob says.  “It a motorcycle club.”

“Semantics.  What do you do in a motorcycle club, for reals?” Jessica asks.

“Ride bikes, of course.”

“That’s hardly a career,” she says.  “How do you make money riding motorcycles?”

“We, uh, sold stuff,” Jacob says, kind of sheepishly.

“Stuff?” she asks.

“Guns, among other things,” Eve says.

“It wasn’t that big of a deal,” Jacob says.

“The ATF appeared to disagree with you,” Frank says.

“Wait.  What?” Jessica asks.

“We were meeting up with his group to get hold of some weapons several months ago,” I say with a sigh.  “We had heard about him and his group of well-groomed miscreants from a friend of a friend.”

“Well groomed?” Jacob growls.  “I’ve never been well-groomed.”

“He thinks anything beyond shampoo means he’s a metrosexual,” Frank quips.

“Damn right,” Jacob says.

Jessica stifles a laugh and says, “Go on.”

“Anyway,” I say.  “We heard about these guys and we needed some guns, so Eve and I went to meet up with them.  Everything went smoothly until the ATF showed up and started shooting.  They picked the biggest target on the field and just opened up on her.”

Jessica looks at Eve and whistles.  “I imagine that didn’t go too well.”

“I ruined a shirt,” Eve says simply.

“Everything went to shit in a heartbeat.  One second we’re exchanging some money so we can exercise our Second Amendment rights and the next there’s lead everywhere.  I hit the dirt, Eve just stood there and took it, the bikers…” I say.