The whole deal was blown. Tony would be really pissed. Right now, Harold couldn’t even face his bro. Man, they’d planned it so good, and things had gotten fucked up, and on Harold’s end, too. Eden’s sisters had blown it, taking the dog to that vet. Obviously. But the dog was Harold’s responsibility. And so were Eden’s sisters.
Man, how was he going to break the news to Tony?
Maybe he should just keep driving. He’d end up somewhere. Get something going. Start over.
The odometer notched ten miles. Then twenty. Thirty coming right up. .
He passed the exit where he’d picked up Eden so long ago. Man, the way she looked that day. Sunburned, wearing nothing but a truck driver’s shirt and a pair of dirty white go-go boots, singing “Happy Trails” like everything was okeydokey.
God, but she wanted to please him. She did everything he told her. She never questioned him. It was still that way. Even when she fucked things up, it wasn’t like she did it intentionally. In fact, fucking things up nearly broke her heart, that’s how scared she was of upsetting Harold.
And who the hell knew what would happen to Eden now? Her family would be pissed. They wanted that ransom money as much as Harold did, and they were about to come up empty.
Harold knew what would happen. Daddy and Mama would blame Eden for bringing Harold into the fold in the first place. And Tura and Lorelei. . Christ, look what those crazy bitches did to Eden for stealing a bag of Fig Newtons. Harold couldn’t even imagine what kind of punishment they’d dish out for something like this.
He pulled over. Man, he couldn’t believe it. That fucking Randy Travis song was going round and round in his head.
He waited for a break in the traffic, and when one came he cut across the highway and headed toward the Radiation Ranch.
Harold nearly put his foot through the floorboards. That was how hard he hit the brakes.
The concrete bunker loomed before him, surrounded by a dry, stunted forest of yucca trees and scrub brush. Afternoon heat waves rolled across the desert and broke against the nuke-proof hacienda like ghostwaves of an ocean that had vanished a million years ago.
Harold pulled his.357 and got out of the car. He scanned the desert for a sign of trouble but saw nothing. No cars or trucks that didn’t belong there. No tire tracks in the dirt that seemed unusual. Not one glimmer on a distant rise that would indicate a sniper’s telescopic rifle sight reflecting the afternoon sun.
Fully aware of his surrounding, senses painfully acute, Harold started toward the thing that had made him stop the car so suddenly.
It was easy to miss her on first glance, because even a warped display of human flesh had a way of looking right at home in the Mojave Desert. Harold had never lived in such a weird place. In his view, every sunset looked like a bloodstain, and every empty well was a grave waiting to be filled, and every yucca tree looked strangely deformed, twisted as if it had been tortured by the Devil himself.
The woman was twisted too, but Harold figured the Devil hadn’t done it. Truth be told, he didn’t believe in the son of a bitch.
Mama stood against a dead yucca tree, her arms lashed to the twisted limbs with lengths of barbed wire. As usual, her mouth was open.
But she wasn’t going to say a word this time. She was all done talking.
And the vultures had started in on her face.
Harold swatted at the vultures with his pistol and they flapped away on lazy black wings. He eased Mama’s jacket to one side and saw the bullet wound drilled through the left cup of her black leather bikini. The blood hadn’t dried. In fact, a fresh scarlet gout pumped from the hole and streamed down Mama’s brown belly.
Harold stood hypnotized, watching the blood.
“Uhhhrrrhhh,” Mama groaned.
Harold nearly jumped out of his skin. He stumbled back.
Mama’s head bobbed, the length of barbed wire wrapped around her neck cutting a fresh trench in her suntanned flesh as she moved. Her eyelids flickered, eyes rolling blindly beneath them, eyes that were coated with a bleached-white sheen. .
“Hellllll. .” she groaned.
“Fuck!” Harold said. “Fuck!”
Mama gasped, a spike of barbed wire tearing her trachea. “Hellll. .” she whispered. “Helllllppp. .”
Then she was dead.
Harold’s gaze was everywhere at once. The concrete bunker. The tumbledown chapel. The shooting range. The cars and the surrounding ridges and the old dirt road that stretched forty miles to the highway.
But there was nothing. No movement at all except the vultures circling above, patient and black and hungry.
Sweat poured off Harold’s bald head and trickled down his neck. What the fuck had he been thinking, anyway? Angel Gemignani belonged to a Mafia family. He had fucked with them. Seriously. And he had come up short. And now they had found him. And when it came to blood vengeance and torture that made you pray for death, no one outdid the Mafia.
No one even came close.
The vultures circled lower and lower. Soon one landed, talons scrabbling as it balanced atop Mama’s head.
Harold turned away, his gut lurching. The bunker. He had to check it out. If Eden was still alive, that’s where she would be. And right now all Harold wanted was to be with her.
Even if the bunker was full of Mafia hit men. Even if Eden was already dead. He wanted to see her one last time.
He wanted to say that he was sorry before the end came.
But the bunker was empty. There was no sign of Eden or her Daddy. No sign of Tura or Lorelei. And not a single Mafia hit man, either.
Harold stepped through the front door. The sun beat down relentlessly. Man, today it was hot on top of hot. Harold couldn’t remember another day like this one.
He started toward his Chevy. Maybe the Mafia guys had taken Eden with them. Maybe they were going to use her for bait so they could round up the rest of the gang.
Harold didn’t know if he could rescue her. There probably wasn’t much of a chance. He wasn’t exactly a fucking knight in shining armor. But he had to try-
The creaking sound came from behind him. He whirled, pistol raised in his right hand just as the chapel door swung closed.
Maybe the door had been closed all along. Maybe the movement he’d seen out of the corner of his eye was just an illusion-a false image planted in his brain by rippling heat waves. With this heat, it looked like damn near everything was alive. Today had to be a real record-buster. If Harold stayed out in the sun much longer he would no doubt witness a first-class mirage-an oasis, camels, leaning palms, harem girls. .
Harold’s clothes were sticky with perspiration. The.357 was growing hot in his hand. The pistol grips were so slick with sweat he was sure he’d drop the gun any second.
No sign of movement from the chapel. The door didn’t budge. Harold stared at the sign above the door, the snakeskin letters on blistered black enamel that proclaimed: hell’s half acre church of SATAN.
Magnum held high, Harold walked toward the chapel. His feet were heavy, like he was wearing weighted diver’s boots. Walking through heat waves instead of ocean waves, kicking up little swirls of dust. .
He knew what he was going to do before he did it. And he knew how stupid it was. But he reached up and did it anyway, because at heart he was still a good Catholic boy.
Harold Ticks crossed himself and entered Satan’s church.
The place stunk of dead things. Old bones. Books bound in human flesh. Rattlesnakes frozen in threatening poses by the taxidermist’s art.
And then there was the sound. The lazy buzzing of fat black flies. The insects cut slow patterns through the musty air, never leaving the chapel, always returning to the same spot.
Daddy Deke lay on the altar. Unlit candles surrounded him, trickling lazy ebony droplets as they melted in the afternoon heat. The top hat with the rattlesnake band was balanced on his chest and his string tie was cinched up tight, but he did not look at all peaceful. His eyes were open and glazed, and his thin lips were drawn back over yellow teeth, and the fat black flies buzzed in and out of his open mouth.