That’s just the way it was in Vegas.
It was a rich man’s town.
Or a rich woman’s.
Kim finished her Eskimo Pie. She liked what the guy (what was his name again?) had said about omens. That they were dreams, only stronger.
She stared at the ice cream truck.
She thought: it’s not often you get a second chance.
“You want another?” the guy asked.
She laughed. “Just one more?”
Of course, he thought she was talking about an Eskimo Pie, when that really wasn’t what she wanted at all.
He went after the ice cream. She watched him go.
Past the dead guy on the highway
Past the second chance that lay there on the yellow line.
Kim really didn’t have a choice.
She had to pick it up.
She heard the freezer door close. Watched the guy (Dennis, that was his name) step from behind the truck.
He was all right about it. He kind of smiled when he saw the shotgun in her hands, like he already understood.
“I’m sorry, Dennis,” she said. “But dreams die hard. Especially strong ones.”
“Yeah.” he said. “Yeah.”
Coker stood in the middle of the road, eating an Eskimo Pie, listening to “Pop Goes the Weasel.”
The ice cream truck was gone from view, but he could still hear its little song. That meant she was up ahead somewhere, playing the tape.
Maybe she was playing it for him. The music drifted through the night like a sweet connection. Coker listened to the song while he finished his Eskimo Pie. Anshutes couldn’t stand the music the truck made. He wouldn’t let Coker play it at all.
Well, Anshutes didn’t have a say in anything anymore. Coker stared at his ex-partner. The big man lay dead on the highway like roadkill of old, his pockets stuffed with silver dollars.
Coker turned them out, filling his own pockets with the coins. Then he walked over to the one-armed bandit.
The Cogwheel Kid was primed for action — Anshutes’ coin between his lips, his lone robotic arm held high in the air. Coker pulled the slot machine’s arm. Ribbons of neon danced across the one-armed bandit’s chest. Bucking broncos, charging buffaloes, jackalopes that laughed in the desert night.
After awhile, the neon locked up.
Two tittering jackalopes with a snorting buffalo between them.
Hardly a jackpot.
Coker smiled as the neon flickered out. Losing wasn’t a big surprise, really. After all, Lady Luck was gone. She was up ahead, driving an ice cream truck, heading for the land of dreams.
The Cogwheel Kid started walking. He headed east, toward Vegas, looking for another mark.
Coker jumped on the robot’s back and held on tight.
He smiled, remembering the look of her frosty blue eyes. Lady Luck with a shotgun. He should have hated her. But he was surprised to find that he couldn’t do that.
She was chasing a dream, the same way he was.
He couldn’t help hoping she’d catch it.
The same way he hoped he’d catch her.
If he was lucky.
CARNE MUERTA
Curtain tossed the canteen in the dirt, just beyond the reach of the man with the broken hands. Not out of pity or compassion, but as punctuation — a period against the red earth, big and round and implacable and unmoving.
Leaving the canteen was only a gesture. Curtain had broken Sanchez’s hands with a claw hammer while Kirby and Wyatt held the Mexican. Now Sanchez’s fingers were twisted and swollen like rotten sausages. Even so, Curtain had done a good job tightening the cap on the canteen. Sanchez would never be able to open it. Not in a month of Sundays.
Curtain watched as Sanchez reached for the canteen. Broken hands dripping blood on polished leather. Mouth open. Dry tongue on jerky lips. Swollen clown fingers smearing the cap with blood, then slipping off, slipping off… slipping off again.
Kirby kicked the canteen out of Sanchez’s hands. It skidded across the dirt at a slight angle, leaving a mark like an especially long comma.
No one said anything. Kirby and Wyatt paced the Mexican as he bellied across the floor of Apache Canyon like a crippled sidewinder. The canyon was deep here. There were many shadows. But it was August and this was Arizona, and shadows did not make a difference. It was hot.
Sanchez hooked the strap of the canteen with his forearm and pulled it to his chest.
“You’ve got to hand it to the little bastard,” Kirby said. “He doesn’t give up, does he?”
“Maybe he doesn’t know how,” Wyatt said.
“He’ll learn,” Curtain said.
Curtain’s first name was Walter. No one called him Walt. He had a lot of money, and he was very wise with it. As far as he was concerned, all that buyer beware stuff was a load of crap. He didn’t believe in it. He believed in getting what he paid for. He figured that was the least a man should expect out of life.
Kirby drew his Glock M22 and aimed at Sanchez’s face. “Want me to finish him?”
“No.” Curtain sighed. Normally, the question wouldn’t have bothered him, because — normally — Kirby would have been the one to handle someone like Jesus Sanchez. But there was nothing normal about this situation. Apart from some minor assistance, Curtain was handling this job himself. And when he handled a job personally, he handled it start to finish. His own way.
Consequently, Kirby’s question was insulting. If Curtain wanted to finish this particular job with a gun, well then, he had his own. But this wasn’t a gun kind of job. This was a claw hammer kind of job. And as far as Curtain was concerned, he’d finished it.
Curtain glanced at the hammer in his hand, wondering why he was still holding it.
He dropped it in the dirt.
It landed without a sound, a bloody exclamation point.
“Let’s go,” Curtain said.
Kirby looked astonished. “You sure you want to leave him like this?”
Curtain glared at the bigger man, nodding very slowly.
“What about the canteen?” Kirby asked. “It’s a long way back to the Mercedes, you know. And it’s fucking hot today.”
“It’s fucking hot everyday,” Wyatt said, as if sarcasm would defuse the simmering tension. “This is Arizona.”
“Yeah,” Kirby said. “This is fucking Arizo — ”
“We’re finished here,” Curtain said quickly, because he was the boss, and his word was the word.
If Curtain said they’d leave Jesus Sanchez, they’d leave him.
If Curtain said they’d leave the canteen, they’d leave it too.
Right or wrong didn’t matter. A cast iron non-negotiable don’t-fuck-with-me attitude did. And as far as Curtain was concerned, Kirby should fucking well know that.
Curtain turned his back on the whole mess and started up the shadow-choked throat of the canyon. A few steps and he realized that Kirby and Wyatt weren’t following him. He didn’t have to look back to know that. The rut that passed for a trail was thick with shale and gravel. Even an Apache couldn’t move quietly in Apache Canyon.
So his ears told him that the gunmen weren’t walking, but they were talking. Whispering, really. And nothing singed Walter Curtain’s bacon quite as thoroughly as employees whispering behind his back.
He was ready to lose his temper when he heard footsteps.
He glanced over his shoulder.
Wyatt was coming.
Kirby stood below, looking long and hard at Jesus Sanchez.
Curtain whistled loud and shrill, the same way he whistled at his dog.
Kirby looked up at him.
Just like an Irish Setter, he came right along.