Colonel Rutherford's Colt (19 page)

Maybe she was ready.

She flicked the cigarette butt out into the road, exhaled a final stream of smoke, and thought about Dee. That angel had a couple of loose wires, for real, but Rita sure did admire the way they sparked. Crazy goes to college. She bet the Berkeley Theater Arts department had their hands full with sweet Denise. She probably put on a hell of a show whenever they asked her to do a sense memory exercise. Who could have put that crack in her? Daddy, maybe . . .

Rita noticed a blond guy in a red shirt crossing the lot toward her. Walter's friend. “Hi,” he said as he ambled up. “Walter's looking for you.”

“He must be looking in the wrong places.”

“Want me to tell him where you are?”

“That's what you want.”

This stumped him. He hovered, betwixt and between. He had, she saw, a good face. A little fleshy, but sound. A solid fundamental person. She wondered what he was doing hanging out with Walter.

“You really an actress?” he asked.

“Can't you tell?”

“Not really.” He laughed appreciatively. “I guess that means you are. You're good-looking enough, for sure.”

“I forget your name,” Rita said.

“Miles . . . Miles Ludwig.”

She imagined a ludwig, a khaki German bug goose-stepping on eight legs, carrying eight shiny rifles.

“Junior,” he added. “My dad's the Miles Ludwig Motors guy. Maybe you caught his commercials? Every other word he says is ‘miles.' ” He affected, presumably, his dad's bombastic delivery. “ ‘We're miles ahead in low prices, miles ahead in value, with miles and miles and miles of cars . . .' ”

“That what you do?” she asked. “You work for your daddy?”

“For now. I'm thinking about going back to grad school next year.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, drew a line in the dirt with the point of his loafer. “So what happened in the bathroom?”

“You're old enough to figure that out.”

Nonplussed, he said, “Maggie said something happened in the bathroom with you and Janine and Dee.”

“Maggie?”

“You were sitting next to her in the bar.”

“The blow-job queen,” said Rita.

“Wha-at?” Miles sort of laughed the word.

“I forgot her name. Probably not an accurate description.”

“Well, actually . . .” Miles laughed again.

Rita poked his arm. “Miles! You dog!”

“Hey, she never did it with me! I wasn't saying that.”

Rita scowled. “Why would I give a damn she sucked your dick? You think I believe oral sex is an impropriety?”

“Sorry,” he said.

A biker roared into the parking lot, sat gunning his engine in front of the entrance, checking things out. The fools by the door gave him a wide berth. When he left they resumed their pushing and shouting.

“Fucking bikers,” said Miles, and then, as if those words had been intelligence enough, he fell silent. With forced animation, he asked, “You ever work on a picture with bikers in it? Y'know . . . like as extras?”

“This the reason you're out here with me, Miles?” she asked in a syrupy voice. “To ask questions, to learn my opinion on various subjects?”

“No,” he said defensively. Then he caught her meaning and said, “No, I . . . I wanted to talk to you.”

“
Talk
to me?”

“Yeah,” he said, getting bashful. “Y'know.”

“That's what you been doing is it? Talking?”

Miles was at a loss.

“Whyn't you come a little closer?” Rita patted the fender. “I bet you can talk a whole lot better over here.”

She spread her knees so he could walk up between them, push himself against her. He went at it like he loved her. Careful with her mouth. Tasting the corners. Taking the tour before he stuck in his tongue. His dick fattened against her thigh. Miles, she thought. Good dog, good lad. When he broke for air, he appeared to be searching for something to say. A compliment, a suggestion as to change of venue. She pulled him back into a kiss. One hand squeezed her ass, another timidly settled on a breast. She writhed against him, a pretense. Dee had a better style, though she liked the hungriness that swept over Miles each time she responded . . . Then a furious yell and somebody ploughed into them. Rita toppled off the fender, landing on her belly. The fall took her wind. More yelling. Sounds of struggle. Gasping, she got herself turned and saw Walter standing over Miles, who was on his knees. Walter had him by the shirtfront and was punching down into his bloody face. Each blow made a flat smacking noise, and as he threw, Walter would let out a truncated scream and a spray of spittle. Miles looked to be borderline conscious, not defending himself. Rita came to her haunches, slid the hunting knife from her boot, held it hidden beneath her thigh.

“Hey, Walter!” she called sweetly.

His fist drawn back, he glanced sidelong at her. His mask had rotted way to reveal the unnatural Aryan motherfucker beneath. He released his hold. Miles sagged, slumped in the dirt. Walter squared up to Rita. His smile had gone on break. In his face was wormy loathing and the joy of violence. Blood dripped from his hand.

“Fucking Indian bitch!” he said.

“That's me.” Rita eased up into a crouch, backed toward the rear of the Buick.

Walter followed, not in a hurry. He seemed to feel he was on top of the situation. “Bitch! You think you can cocktease me?”

“Didn't I already do that, Walt?” Rita turned the corner of the Buick, kept on backing, one hand on the trunk for balance. When he turned after her, she showed him the knife, edge out, ready for business.

His smile resurfaced, and she took it as a good sign. The smile, she thought, was his hedge against insanity, the place he retreated to when his confidence dimmed. “You better mean that,” he said.

“Oh, I'm gonna bleed ya, Walt. Don't you worry. You just keep coming.”

He braced, legs wide. She could tell he was expecting it low . . . if he expected it at all. His knees were stiff, his torso canted forward. Bad move, Walt.

“Well, do it,” he said, his voice amped with repressed laughter.

“Please,” she said, whining, lowering the knife a little. “Please . . . just go away!”

He relaxed the slightest bit, the tension leaving his shoulders, and she slashed at his eyes. His weight was set all wrong, and when he tried to twist away, his heel caught and he went sprawling onto his back, falling behind the car parked beside the Buick. Before he could recover, she had straddled him, her knees pinning his arms and shoulders, back hunched to lower her center of gravity, the knife poised above his right eye.

“One twitch,” she said, “they be calling you Patch.”

He stared at the knife as if seeing God.

“Oh-oh!” she said blithely. “Guess you fucked up, huh?”

He licked his lips, said, “ . . . unh . . .”

She cocked an ear. “Say again.”

“Don't . . .” he said.

A groan from the front of the Buick. Sounded like the groaner was in miles and miles of pain.

“You did a job on your friend,” Rita said. “What was on your mind, Walt? What caused your outrage? Surely you didn't think I was gonna fuck you?”

A car passed on the road, headlights flashing over them. His eyes tracked after it.

“No hope there, man,” she said. “They saw us at all, they probably think you just giving me some sugar. And nobody can see us from the bar, so we got all kindsa time. We can get to know each other.”

She felt him tensing, brought the point of the knife closer to his eye, and said, “Relax.”

More groaning.

“I don't believe you gonna be getting a sweetheart deal at Ludwig Motors anytime soon.” Rita edged up higher on his chest, her crotch tight to his chin. “I know why you kicked his ass. 'Cause you could. I can relate to that.”

His glare weakened, and Rita could see inside him. The fear, the razors that had reshaped his reason. The mechanics of his stop-and-go cycle, the on buttons and off switches. Boy was damn near crazy mean enough to be a Senator. They saw the same things, but from different angles. He was God's invention, or maybe his parents', but she had come to her notion of the world through cold experience. What in him was madness, chaos, the erratic, was in her the product of a simple decision. He had nothing to tell her, but she had a few words for him.

“Anger management,” she said. “It'd be a real benefit to you, Walt. Teach ya to harness all that raw emotion.”

He seemed to flash forward behind his eyes, the thing that was most of him scooting up to his eyeball to take a peek, then scuttling back into the dark.

“You get that anger working for ya. Like it's a little engine inside your skull. Get it fitted with gears so you can wind 'er out and back 'er down . . . You do that, I see great things ahead for you.”

Walter, Rita realized, was not paying attention, no doubt rummaging his brain for some idiotic tactic and not listening to her words of wisdom. He was not a listener. It was the least of his crimes, but it made him worthless as a subject for instruction. She sliced a line straight across his forehead with the knife. He bucked against the pain, screeched, tried to grab her as she sprang away. She moved out of range, wiped the blade on some weeds growing behind the Buick. He rolled back and forth, holding his head and grunting. Blood spilled over his cheeks and nose.

“You ain't hurt,” Rita said. “You might need some work, but you ain't hurt. I marked you is all.”

He cursed her again, and threatened vengeance.

“Vengeance is easy when you don't give a shit,” Rita told him. “If you do, it's damn near impossible.”

“I'm going to kill you,” he said with admirable venom. “I am going to fucking kill you.”

“This might punch a dent in your self-esteem, but I ain't all that scared.” She sheathed the knife in her boot. “Let me tell ya what's gonna happen. I'm going back inside and hook up with Dee. I want you to sit here and figure out a story about how your head got sliced. One that don't involve me. You involve me, I'll say you tried to rape me and I cut your ass. I believe Miles might just back me up on that.”

His face was all over red. Hands, too. His eyes were shiny studs poking through a new kind of mask. Red clay and base metal.

“Maggie told me 'bout those girls you beat up,” said Rita. “Bet they'd make good witnesses.”

He wiped away blood that had pooled in the seam between his lips, his anger simmering. The mark she'd carved was straight and true. With stitches, he'd look like Frankenstein.

“Cops can't even bust me on a weapons charge,” she said. “I ain't no actress, Walt. I sell guns and knives. I'm licensed to carry.”

She heard voices, commotion, and peered over the roof of the car. Miles had tried to walk, gone about twenty-five feet before he collapsed. The doll people had found him and were on their knees beside him, squeaking. Rita dusted off her jeans.

“Make up a good story. A good story'll get you a long ways in life.” She laughed and tapped Walter's leg with her toe. “I was you, I'd take that for my motto.”

 

* * *

 

The fire in the great hearth dimmed, the room became a long shadow with a ball of orange light nestled at its center. Aaron slipped minute by minute from alertness, eyes fixed upon the stair, to near-stupefaction, gazing into the embers, his thoughts proceeding in a morose parade, like black riders coming on gloomy missions from one of the deserts that stretched beyond his mental horizon. He had no good sense of the passage of time. Hours might have elapsed since he had entered the lodge. He began to suspect that the colonel had retired for the evening, and since he had no knowledge of the layout of the second floor, he was hesitant to invade it. Then, too, the colonel might keep a weapon by his bed and wake to the creaking of a loose board. Nonetheless, Aaron did not think it wise to wait for morning. A disturbance, one that would summon the colonel to investigate—that might be the best tactic. Nothing that would alarm him overmuch. A noise that he would attribute to the bungling of his servant. He cast about for a suitable object and spotted a rack containing a number of rifles mounted on the wall of the entranceway. He crossed the room and saw that the rack was loosely affixed to the wall—it could be brought down without much effort.

Standing so near the door prompted Aaron to think that he could run out of the lodge and leave the colonel to explain the death of his servant. But he would find a way, surely, to explain it—that was no solution to the problem posed by his existence. And then there was the question of where Aaron might go. Havana? New York? He did not believe he could return to his life, his business. It was not that those things held no value to him, but rather he was about to take a step that would render them valueless, that would so transform him, he would no longer conform to the niche into which he had inserted himself, imprisoning the more turbulent aspects of his nature within an armor of serge and respectability. He had half-taken that step already, and perhaps, he thought, even half-a-step would be too much to retrace. He felt for an instant confused, the world of his purpose murkily defined, but then he imagined that in the glass panel of the front door he saw Susan at her window, her nightdress blowing around her like the ghost of a flame, the image of beauty and the anger that was destroying her. With a savage twist, he sent rifles and rack clattering to the floor and returned to his chair in the shadows.

Seconds later he heard footsteps overhead, a voice bellowing: “Randy!” He heard another shout, nearer to hand. Then the colonel's tread as he descended the stair. He wore a red-and-white checkered bathrobe and slippers. His beard had been shaved, leaving in place a set of mustaches and exposing a too-prominent jaw. Upon noticing the wreckage of the rack and the scattered rifles, he paused in his descent. “God damn it!” he said. He strode to the door and threw it open. “Randy!”