The Best Bad Dream (10 page)

“That's the end,” Zollie yelled. “You're all done here, buddy!”

He reached down to a sheath on his belt and took out a big hunting knife. He came toward Jack, the blade thrust frontward. Jack waited until he stabbed at his midsection with an upward slice, then dodged to his left and caught the big man on his neck with a well-aimed forearm punch. Zollie fell hard against the fence, and Jack quickly reached down, grabbed his head, and rammed it into a fence post. Zollie collapsed at his feet. Jack quickly rid him of both knife and shotgun.

The hog, as if annoyed at all this commotion, backed off and fell into a mud hole. He emitted a great, long, contented fart and began a dream of sows.

Jack dragged Zollie into the cow pens and tied him up with the fat man's own shirt. For a gag, he pulled off Zollie's socks and stuck them in his mouth.

Jack looked up at the main house. There was a light on inside and someone was listening to the Rolling Stones song “Ruby Tuesday.”

He knew he should get out of here now, but he had to check the ranch first. The other backhouses were quiet. It seemed like everyone in the gang was gone for now. This might be the only chance he would get. He picked up Zollie's shotgun and moved toward the first house, running low.

In the next forty-five minutes, Jack picked the locks of five of the six cabins. Inside he found drugs (coke, pot, and pills, especially Vicodin and Percocet), guns, porno, all manners of knives, and even a few hand grenades, but not one thing that related to kidnapped girls, sex slaves, or Jennifer Wu.

Nor did he find any signs of a meth lab.

As he headed toward the sixth cabin he noticed a slight movement on his left, about fifty yards away. And it wasn't an animal because animals didn't glint in the sun. No, that little flash could only come from the barrel of a gun. So he was being watched now by someone who would probably be waiting for him when he came out of the last cabin.

Jack went inside, speedily looked through the cabin, found nothing, then waited, and waited some more. Waiting was one of his strongest attributes, just as it was one of the weakest in most criminals, who were usually people who acted on sheer impulse.

This time was no different. After waiting and watching for twenty-one minutes, whoever was outside lost his patience and headed for the door. He opened it slowly, poked his head inside, and Jack clubbed him with the stock of Zollie's gun.

The man fell to the ground, unconscious. Jack turned him over and was surprised to see that he wasn't a man at all but a mere kid.

At least Jack thought he was a kid. Though he appeared youthful, the boy's skin was crepe colored, like someone who has a terminal disease, and his eyes were bloodshot and yellowed, the pupil about as small as a period at the end of a sentence.

He looked wasted despite looking so young, an altogether disconcerting image.

Jack took the man/boy's rifle, then shook his shoulder and woke him up.

“What the hell?”

“I knocked you on the head, pal. But it looks like you survived,” Jack said.

“Shit,” the kid said. “I was supposed to take you up to the house. Now Lucky's gonna be all over me.”

Jack pulled him up and dusted him off.

“You make a lousy guard,” Jack said. “What's your name, son?”

“Tommy Wilson,” the kid said. “I didn't used to be so obvious. It's my nerves or something, they got all fucked up since I been here.”

Jack pulled out the picture of Jennifer Wu.

“You know who this is, Tommy? Look familiar?”

Tommy looked at it for a few seconds, then rubbed his lip.

“Seen her somewhere,” he said. “Maybe up at Blue Wolf once.”

“So you know her?”

“Yeah . . . not by name or nothing but I seen her.”

“When was the last time?”

“I don't know. Couple of weeks ago. My memory ain't too good ‘cause some fucking guy hit me in the head.”

He looked up at Jack and smiled in a clever way. Jack smiled back.

“You think about it, Tom. You think hard, okay?’ Cause this girl is in trouble, and anyone who helps is going to get a very nice reward.”

“Izzat right?” Tommy asked. “Hey, that would be great. Look, you do me a favor?”

“What's that?” Jack asked.

Tommy smiled again, and his facial skin was wrinkly, as if he were a human shar-pei. It made Jack wonder if he was a child or a coot.

“Gimme back my gun, okay?”

“How come?”

“So I can look like a successful guard. You can take the bullets out if you don't trust me.”

Jack laughed, unloaded, and handed him back his gun.

“This is a first,” he said.

Jack moved toward the main house with Tommy behind him, the empty gun in Jack's back.

“I sure appreciate this, Jack. This will keep me from getting demoted to latrine duty.”

“Anything to help the youth of America. By the way, how old are you, Tom?”

“I'm nineteen years old. If you're referring to my skin it's called Manlinger's Syndrome. My skin is aging before its time. It's weird, huh?”

“Yeah, a little,” Jack said.

“I might look like a rhino neck before long,” the kid said. “But it's okay. I'm drinking some good stuff now. D-35. Gonna shape me right up.”

“That's good,” Jack said. “They sell you that at Blue Wolf?”

“Yeah, and it works, too. I ain't half as wrinkly as I was when I started guzzling the juice.”

As they approached the house Jack could see Lucky through a side window. The bandito was sitting at his desk, writing something on his Vaio computer. It looked odd, the bandit with the bandage on his right ear, wearing his badass beard and hand-stitched boots, sitting in front of a laptop like a young professional.

Jack wondered what he was doing. Shipping drugs to some other part of the country? Keeping track of his sex slave market? Instant messaging with other perverts?

There was only one way to find out, so Jack and the kid cruised around to the back door, walked into the kitchen, and quickly moved through the hallway to Lucky's little den. He was only inches behind him when Lucky turned around.

“Hi, Lucky, working late?”

The biker pulled out his ear buds, and smiled.

“Jack? So you escaped Zollie's clutches, eh? But I see young Tom caught you. Nice work, T.”

“Thanks, Mr. Avila,” Tommy said. “I found him snooping through the cabins.”

“That right? You find any evidence of misdoings and malfeasance, Jack?”

“Plenty, but not what I was looking for.”

Lucky laughed and signaled for Jack to sit down on a cozy-looking couch on the other side of the room. It was covered with a colorful Indian blanket.

“I hope you didn't hurt ole Zollie too bad,” Lucky said.

Jack was starting for the couch when he saw Lucky reach under an Indian blanket that was spread over a kitchen chair. Before he could react Lucky had a large red gun trained on him.

He pulled the trigger and sprayed Jack with a shot of water.

Jack was stunned, confused. “A Super Soaker?” he questioned.

Lucky cracked up.

“I know it's juvenile, but when I was a kid I always wanted one. My mother was antigun, though, and wouldn't let me have it. I was in Target the other day and saw it and just couldn't resist. Guess I'm just trying to reach the old child-within, you know what I mean?”

Jack shook his head. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess so.”

“You think it's silly, huh? Guess it is. But the older I get the more I want to go back.”

Jack shook his head again.

“You ever heard the phrase, ‘You can't go home again'?”

“Sure,” Lucky said. “A great book by Thomas Wolfe, right?”

Jack was stunned that Lucky knew the novel.

“Yeah, right. And the title's the truth. Once childhood is over, the door is shut, pal.”

“For most people,” Lucky said. “But I've lived all my life like a child. A child with vision, though. Everyone knows the kid years are the best, so why not relive them,
pal?”

“If you so say so, Luck,” Jack said. He knew the motorcycle leader was used to having the final word, so why go any further with him on this dumb tangent? Lucky put the toy gun down and signaled for Tommy to leave.

“Go untie Zollie,” Lucky said.

“He's in the barn,” Jack said. “If his hog hasn't dined on him yet.”

The kid nodded, and when Lucky looked away he winked at Jack, then left.

“Truth is, Jack,” Lucky said, “I owe you one for bailing me out of that mess at the Red Sombrero. So why don't you just tell me what it is you're looking for?”

“Trying to find someone,” Jack said.

“And who might that be?”

“That would be Jennifer Wu, the sister of Michelle Wu.”

“Jennifer? Well, why didn't you just say so in the first place? I know Michelle and her sister. I just had a delightful lunch with them two days ago.”

“Not the way I heard it,” Jack said.

“Really?” Lucky asked. He arched his eyebrows as if surprised and troubled by this slur on his social graces.

“Really,” Jack said. “In fact, Michelle told me you were stoned on speed and that you suggested they both jump in the sack with you. And when they refused, you said you'd make them pay for their lack of interest.”

Lucky laughed as he took out a gold toothpick.

“I'd had a little too much to drink, I'm afraid. I might have to get back to AA. It's just damned embarrassing, though. A motorcycle gang leader, the scourge of the tristate area saying, ‘Hi, I'm Lucky and I'm an alcoholic.’ But wait a minute, here . . . what are you suggesting? That I got so darn infuriated that they wouldn't play house with me that I kidnapped Jennifer? Or that I'm using her for some kind of poke machine? After which I'll . . . let's see . . . kill her and bury her body in the desert?”

Jack felt an eerie chill. That was the exact scenario Kim Walker had laid out for him. Was Lucky just playing with him?

Before Jack could respond, Lucky cracked up and pounded his computer table.

“Really, man, that's too weird. I'm a businessman. Okay, I got a little wasted and overzealous. Santa Fe is kind of like a hipper version
of Vegas. People come down here for freedom, you know? They do wild things sexually under the name of ‘self-discovery,’ whereas in Vegas it's just out-and-out lechery. Personally, I like the more honest approach, but I couldn't live in Vegas.”

“Why not?”

“Too many guys with string ties,” Lucky said. “Also, girls with fake lips. I don't mind fake tits, but the big fake lips phenom is really too weird for me. Women who come to Santa Fe have kinder and gentler surgeons. The lips might be chemically aided but the doctors make it look organic. Anyway, I thought the girls might want to experience something cool. Sister ménage. I mean, that way you get two modes of self-discovery at once. Two-in-one, sex and incest. Anyway, that was my little rap, but they weren't buying.”

“When was the last time you saw Jennifer?”

“Right then. At the ill-fated lunch,” Lucky said.

“Where was this lunch held?” Jack asked.

“At the Red Sombrero. Right after we finished eating they said they were on their way to Taos to check out the Indian village.”

Now Lucky got up from his seat and began to walk around, like a professor lecturing a class.

“Wait a minute,” Lucky said. “Something just occurred to me. There were three other people at the Sombrero that day. Man, you should have come to me right away about this and I bet we could have solved the whole mystery in one fell swoop.”

“Who were they?”

“That's the thing. They were three members of the the Jesters. Mexican mothers who were seated only a few feet away. The thing about them that I remember is they were all eating salads of endive and sliced pear with a sprinkling of walnuts. Their leader, Pancho Flores, made them all take physicals last year so they could get cheaper bike insurance, and
most of them flunked. So now the whole gang is on a diet. Low carb, high fiber, and they drink white wine instead of tequila.”

“A Mexican biker gang drinking white wine and eating salads?” Jack questioned.

“Oh, yeah, and they talk about their public reach-out, how they give breakfast to the poor and indigent Indians down on the square, how they help Latino sculptors and artists sell their wares. They make themselves sound like Mother Teresa. But what they're really into is whores, dope, and sex slavery. They kidnap women and send them off to Mexico. Down to Juarez or Nuevo Laredo. To the Papagàyo. But I happen to know they only ship them three or four times a year. They keep the girls penned up somewhere. I'm not sure where their jail is but a good place to start would be the Jackalope Ranch. I hear tell that's their jumping-off point.”

The Jackalope. That was the name on the pack of matches Jack had found at Jennifer's place.

“Thanks for the tip,” Jack said. “But why are you being so helpful?”

“First of all, we don't kidnap people. We find that scumful. Second of all, the Jesters are a nuisance. They can't really compete with us but they can get in our way sometimes. I'd be less than honest if I said I wouldn't like to wipe them out.”

Lucky threw his head back and laughed out loud and a black tooth fell out of his head and into his hand. He tossed it into a candy dish on the coffee table.

“See, I have lots of businesses around here. Mainly the car biz.”

“Really?” Jack asked. “I heard your main business was meth.”

“You hear all kinds of things,” Lucky said. “Meth is so last year. The stuff I'm into now, it's twenty-first-century stuff. Lucky Avila is all about the future. I'm investing our bankroll in genetic meds. That and tourism are the future. Illegal, renegade shit is for losers.”

“I thought that's what you guys were,” Jack said.

“Again, so old school. See, what we, the third generation of bikers, realize is that we don't want to terrorize the street . . . well, a little bit, once in a while, for nostalgia's sake . . . but really, what we want now is to
own
it. All the rest—the bikes, the colors, the badass attitude— that's just show business.”

Lucky laughed happily, a black-leathered, scar-faced, soon-to-be-toothless entrepreneur.

Jack didn't quite buy it. That tooth falling out seemed very much like a symptom of rampant meth use, but the rest of it sounded pretty good. The mob, after all, did the same thing. And the ones who stayed in the dope business for too long ended up in prison for life, or wrapped in bailing wire.