17 – Hot time in the city
"Now wasn't that queer," Lance said
as Dan banged the gear shift and putted back onto the highway.
"Queer, yes, and frightening," Dan
said, glancing into the driver's side mirror as Sweeny and the other cop shrank
against the back drop of sandy soil and dusty buildings. "Sweeny's a
hard-nosed bastard, a regular bulldog and for him to let us go means something big
is up."
"Big? Like what" Sarah asked, her
hands shaking as she struggled to open her purse. Lance's hands moved to close
around hers, but she pushed them away.
Dan dragged his attention away from the mirror
and towards the road ahead. The faces beside him on the front seat were grim.
There was something tragic in these two, their wide eyes a little too innocent
for the times, still bearing the expression of mid-west love children looking
for peace and flowers in the city.
"As much as I love Mike," Dan said.
"The boy does exaggerate a little. I mean, sure he's wanted by the
authorities. But not as much as he makes out. He bombed banks and stole his
kid, but none of that lately. Even the Weather Underground wouldn't warrant something
this strange."
"I don't understand," Lance said.
"Damn it," Dan grumbled, more to
himself and his own disbelief than at theirs. "They let us go. They knew
where we'd come from. They knew who we were. They should have dragged us off to
jail and their rubber hoses, and yet, they still let us go."
"Why?" asked Sarah.
"That, my dear," Dan said, hand falling
onto her thigh, "is the sixty-four thousand dollar question."
***********
"So where are they?" Mike asked,
pacing up and down the short stretch of sidewalk, downtown business district
building bulging on either side like an imitation New York-- though old Phoenix
still poked its ugly head out of the shadows at intervals. The city fathers
hadn't managed an even transition, living with the schizophrenia of two cities
exiting side by side. Indian art cluttered the center square like a last stand
with red skins inside the circled wagons rather than white settlers.
"I'm not a mind reader, Mike," Chris
said, sitting on the stoop of a closed store front, her hair pressed down by an
oil-stained bandanna. She might have been any of the local Indians in town for a
drink after a hard day in the citrus groves, or a run-away Chicano looking for
a place to sleep. "But if Dan said he'd meet you, he will."
Marie's heals clicked as she returned from the
corner store sipping soda pop. She stood out against the backdrop, as thickly painted
as local prostitutes get. More than one car had slowed for a peep, redneck
cowboys hooting. All Mike needed was a cop to catch a glimpse. He wanted to
hide her or force the make-up off of her.
He
could do neither. Something melted in him when he saw her.
Chris proved less kind, growling for her to
sit down. "You want to get us busted?" she asked.
Marie stared, something hard forming deep in
her eyes. "Why would I do that?"
"Because you look like a whore. Or a
billboard for your father's storm troopers."
"Leave my Daddy out of this."
"I wish we could," Chris grumbled.
"But God knows they infest places like insects. One word gets out about
you being in town, and they'll swarm all over us."
"Stop trying to scare her, Chris,"
Mike said. "They aren't on our trail."
"But they could be," Chris said.
"They could be sneaking up on us this very minute ready to...."
"I said stop!"
"Okay," Chris said with a shrug.
"But don't say I didn't warn you."
Good old Chris. She never let a chance to
swipe at Mike's lovers, always in competition, always trying to snatch him
back. Mike should have scolded her more strongly, telling her just how evil she'd
become. She persisted in believing she could win him back.
Yet
each time he looked too closely into her eyes; he saw his child being led away.
I ought to kill you for giving him up, Mike
had once screamed.
But I couldn't keep him, Mike, she'd
protested. The cops were at the door.
You could have fought.
The way she fought the white man now over land
rights and Indian privilege. She spoke about blood, and the need to protect it,
but the one true representative of her blood line she let drip through her
finger like polluted water.
She smiled at him, her eyes full of victory,
as if she had scored a point. Marie curled up under his arm, shuttering, like a
deeply wounded puppy.
"You father isn't out there, honey,"
he whispered softly.
Yet others were. Waiting and watching. He
could feel them. He could smell their breath. Cops and others who had become
part of the establishment here over the years. Any one of whom would know Mike
and scream the moment they saw him.
"There they are!" Chris yelped and
leaped to her feet, one of her two suitcases falling from her lap as she waved.
The battered red, white & blue van rumbled up to the square from the
direction of the highway, a curl of bluish smoke rising from its rear.
The machine looked about to die, though gave
Mike a pleasant thrill as it pulled up to the curb, Dan's gnarled face behind
the wheel.
"Get in, quick," Dan growled, a note
of anxiety in his voice.
"What happened?" Mike asked, his
elation diving into panic. "Something go wrong?"
"Just get in, I'll tell you while we're
moving."
Mike scrabbled in the side doors behind the
others. The smell of fresh pot lingered in the air, making him want a taste of
it for his nerves. The van started forward as Mike fell into the chair behind
the driver.
"Out with it, boy," he said.
"Did you find Gil or what?"
"We made contract, all right," Dan
said, slamming the gear shift into second. "But it took a lot to set up a
meeting. We're hot, Mike. Every cop in creation knows about this van. And
Demetre's in town. I'm sure of it."
Dan related his meeting with Sweeny. Mike's
long brows folded down towards his eyes as he stared at passing Phoenix,
feeling the trap closing around him. Chris called it instinct, but whatever it
was, it screamed for him to escape.
Where?
If Demetre wanted him badly enough, Demetre
would have him. He and Mike had come nose to nose before, always a chess game
of nerves from which Mike just barely escaped. With the onslaught of weariness,
Mike might not do so this time.
"But Gil agreed to meet us?" Mike
asked.
"Under certain conditions."
"Like what?"
"He set the time and place, and he
doesn't want us followed."
"Like we can help that in a van like
this!"
"That's what I told them. So, they've
made arrangements to pick up you and Chris on the South end tonight."
"Me and Chris?"
"That's what they said."
Mike caught a reflection of his own alarm in
Chris' eyes, her instincts reacting as his did.
"What about you?" Mike asked.
"You're the one who knows these people."
Dan shrugged. "I'm only telling you what
they told me."
"I don't like it. I want somebody
covering my back. Maybe we should just skip town and forget Gil."
"No," Chris said sharply.
"We've got things to tell him."
"Not like this, Chris," Mike protested.
"It smells like one big trap."
"Fine," Chris said. "Then work
around the details. But meeting Gil is important. He's big cheese in these
parts."
"Whoa there!," Dan said. "I'm
not sticking my neck in any noose. Gil's a big cheese, all right. And a careful
one. A lot of cops in this town would snatch him up as quick as you."
Mike pondered things for a moment, then
sighed. "What time did they want the meeting for?"
"Dusk," Dan said. "I guess that
would be around eight."
"Fine, then I'll meet you at six-- no,
five. Just where exactly did they say?"
Dan stared angrily into the rear-view mirror.
"Down where route ten turns south. It's an incomplete section near
Guadalupe. Are you going somewhere?"
"Yes," Mike said, recalling the area,
remembering vaguely a park and a jutting piece of red stone which marked the
south boundary of the city, a one-time holy place of his mother's people. Now
it gathered flocks of camping tourists.
“Where?"
"Never mind the details," Mike said.
"Just let me out."
Marie
gathered her purse, but Mike shook his head. "You stay with them."
"But Mikie...."
"Don't argue. What I have to do, I'll do
best alone."
He slipped out the side door as Dan slowed,
banging the rear of the van the moment he was free. It picked up speed and
vanished into the dust. Mike sagged, his legs aching from too many jumps.
But
it would be some time before he could truly rest. He stuck his thumb out and an
old green ford pulled over, its driver motioning
him
in.
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