Merlot (15 page)

A nervous moment passed while Mendel looked
at Elvis. “You are one dumb son-of-a-bitch,” he said. Then reeled
back and hit the kid squarely between the eyes. The kid dropped to
the floor. Mendel reached over the counter and began pushing
buttons on the register until the cash drawer popped open.

“Shit on a stick! Will ya look at this here?
Damn, hardly even worth our time,” he groaned, then quickly stuffed
the meager holdings in his hand.

“Grab them damn bottles and come on,” he said
to Elvis.

“How’d she go boys?” Lucerne asked, pulling
carefully away from the curb then turning right at the first
corner.

“Just one little mix-up, shit-for-brains here
forgot the Goddamned note!” Mendel glared into the backseat.

“What?” Lucerne half laughed.

“Here it is, found her right here on the car
floor,” Elvis said holding up the envelope.

“Lot a good that does us now,” Mendel said,
turning round to quickly count the cash.

“Thirty-seven bucks! How they expect us to
get anywheres on this kinda dough?”

* * *

At least the teasing had died down and Merlot
enjoyed a comparatively normal day. Of course Patti had given him a
framed copy of yesterday’s front-page photo. He was looking at it
just now, and shaking his head. He slid the frame into a desk
drawer, pushed away from his desk to go home and shower before his
dinner date with Cindy. Still no word from Dickie and that was just
fine. As if on cue the phone rang.

“Merlot,” Weiner said.

“Wiener, how’ve you been? I meant to call.
Yesterday was so shitty. I don’t know if you spoke with Victor or
Andrew but they were in deep shit, too. Goddamn Dickie!”

“Yeah, I know, isn’t it great?

“Great?”

“Jesus, Merlot, I was signing autographs down
at the job site yesterday. Couple of guys delivering pipe had me
autograph the front page of the paper, right under our picture.
They think it’s gonna be worth some dough. Hey, Thursday, we’re
still on for cards, right? We could sign a bunch of ‘em, papers, I
mean. I picked up fifty copies and, well, anyway we could autograph
these things and make some bucks.”

“Are you nuts? I’m trying to get this thing
as far behind me as possible. My mom told me she was gonna have to
leave town she was so embarrassed. That Chrissie at the coffee
shop…”

“The hot blond?”

“Right. She says she saw us and then
announces it to the whole place. From there the rest of the day
just sort of went into the toilet,” he said, remembering his
assault on Milton with the baseball bat.

“Man, sorry to hear that. It’s been great
with me. I got a couple of dates out of the deal, guy bought me
lunch yesterday, got a couple of beers from some guys last night. I
kinda like the fame deal.”

“Fame? You were sitting next to a fat guy who
went out of control and mooned all fifty states. How in the hell
does that make you famous? Or get you dates?”

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, you
know.”

“Are you telling me broads want to date you
just because some idiot you know has this gigantic fat ass? Gee, I
can’t wait to meet these women!”

“Well, there might have been a little bit of
embellishment on my part. You know broads, I just suggested there
might be the possibility of some sort of screen-test deal, national
contract, that sort of thing.”

“Screen-test! What the hell for?”

“You kidding, you don’t watch any of that
reality shit? Idiots like us are always getting these acting and
singing contracts. They’re making a mint, man. You think I’m not
gonna ride this lucky break for all it’s worth?”

“Lucky break?”

“Whatever. Listen, you hear anything from the
big man? I tried leaving a message at his office, on his cell, and
at home, couldn’t get through anywhere. I think I might have a date
lined up for him.”

“No I haven’t heard from him. A date? Please
tell me you’re kidding.”

“Maybe he’s just booked up with all sorts of
offers. You know screen tests and things. Man some guys have all
the luck, Goddamned Dickie.”

“Yeah, I’ve said something like that a couple
of thousand times in the last twenty-four hours.”

* * *

Merlot arrived at Vesco Vino early. Cindy
arrived a few minutes later, walking out onto the patio area
surprised to see him already there.

“Hey, Tony, gee I thought I was early, wow!”
she exclaimed, bending across the table and giving him a kiss. She
lingered a second or two longer than casual.

He lifted a bottle of chilled white wine
toward a glass.

“Oh, okay, but only one tonight. So,” she
said once he had finished pouring, “here’s to hoping your day went
better than yesterday.”

“It did, a lot better. I just can’t wait to
get another day away from Sunday, that’s all.”

“Yeah, kinda know that feeling.” She put her
glass down and looked at him seriously.

“Tony, I just really want to tell you how
very sorry I ‘am for my behavior Saturday night. It was
inexcusable. You don’t need to spend your Saturday night
babysitting some loser who had too much to drink and…”

He cut her off by shaking his head and taking
her hand. It was actually the first time he had really touched her
besides a hello or good-bye kiss, well and pulling her up out of
the chair in his office.

“Look, Cindy, I’d prefer not talking about
it, okay? It happened, just forget it, and let’s start over. But, I
will tell you that I have a hellish day tomorrow, and this is the
first and only bottle of wine we are going to have tonight,” he
lied.

“Sounds good to me.”

Then he moved toward her, pulled her hands
closer to him, and kissed her, on the lips.

“Wow,” she said only half to herself when she
pulled away.

They talked on about their day. She regaled
him with tales of a weirdo customer making different appearances
throughout the day with zinc oxide smeared across his face. She
described his hat, a handkerchief hanging from the back, the crusty
orange T-shirt, and of course the smell offending everyone within
range.

He told her about Wiener’s phone call. He
neglected to mention the Saab La Tondra and Celeste picked up, his
get away car. Or, the gun he was getting tomorrow to rob her
bank.

“Do you take breaks during your day?” he
asked, hoping she might have a schedule so he could plan
accordingly and miss her.

“Supposedly a morning and afternoon break,
but we get so busy, I sometimes forget to take them. When I look
up, you know, there’s just forty-five minutes left, so I figure,
why bother?”

The waitress came and took their order,
returned with a basket of bread, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar,
and set them on the table.

“You look really familiar, are you someone
famous?” she asked Merlot.

“No I don’t think so,” not picking up on the
potential danger.

“Gee, I’m sorry, it’s just that I think I’ve
seen you before. Are you with one of the local TV stations?”

“No,” he insisted.

“I bet you get that all the time,” Cindy said
teasingly.

“Only since Sunday.”

“You’re kidding, you think that’s where she
saw you?”

* * *

T.J. was attempting to finish
The Survivalist’s Field Manual
. He was sloughing his way
through the section on proper field sanitation having just finished
the first aid section dealing with sucking chest wounds.

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’.