The Distant Echo of a Bright Sunny Day Read online

  “So…what do we do now?” Tony asked, feeling suddenly sober.

  Ralph put his arm around Misty and kissed her on the cheek. “I don’t know about the rest of you,” he said, “but I’m gonna take my little woman home and let her tuck me into bed. How does she feel about that, huh?”

  Misty smiled up at him and, leaning her head against his shoulder, closed her eyes. “I feel like I’m soaked in alcohol, anyway,” she murmured.

  The front door opened and closed; Jody came back into the room. Looking tired and drawn, she said, “I’m going home. Does anyone need a ride?”

  “You’re not still mad, are you?”

  “No, Tony, I’m not. And you’re a dear. But it’s late. And, yes, I’ve had quite enough to drink.”

  Ralph and Misty stood up.

  “That’s cue enough for me,” Ralph said.

  “Hell, we were just getting warmed up,” Carlos complained. But he, too, stood up.

  “I feel like a party pooper. Am I the odd man out here?”

  “You probably saved us from ourselves, Lisa,” said Heidi, with a laugh.

  “It’s inconceivable that our splendid little gathering should end on a high note of sobriety, especially considering the effort that went into making it jolly and convivial. But Lisa’s absolutely right…we must not lose sight of what really has brought us together in the first place…”

  Carlos rolled his eyes. “I’m outta here,” he said. He said good night to everyone and left the room.

  Ralph and Misty, saying their own good-byes, did the same.

  Mike looked at Tony. “Tony, can you walk?”

  “Of course I can walk. I’ve been doing it since I was a child. Why do you ask? Would you like a demonstration?”

  “Yes, please. And I’ll follow, just in case you need support.”

  “Support? Indeed.”

  Putting his hands on the table, Tony pushed himself to his feet. He looked at the others unsteadily, then said, “There, you see, that’s the first part. The rest follows.”

  “Lead the way.”

  “I intend to.”

  With Mike holding his waist, Tony weaved past the table and chairs and through the open doorway, into the adjoining room. A banging of something being knocked over was heard, followed by a mumbled apology; then the front door opened and closed.

  “Well, so here we are,” Jody said cheerily. “I guess I’ll be going too.”

  She held out her hand.

  “Lisa, it was a pleasure to meet you, and I hope we see you again. And you, Mitch, don’t go running off again without telling anyone. You never know who’s going to miss you.”

  She gave Heidi a hug, said she would her call her, then went out of the room.

  “Be careful going home,” Heidi called after her.

  The front door opened again and shut.

  “Would you like us to help clean up?” Lisa asked.

  “Yeah, it’d be no trouble,” Mitch said.

  “Conchita’s coming tomorrow. She and I can take care of it. I’m just gonna go up to bed now.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Mitch, would you like to stop somewhere for a nightcap?”

  “Uh…sure. But I’ll have to follow you.”

  “Will that be a problem?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Good. Well, then, Heidi, thank you for having me. And tell everyone that I hope to see them all again soon. Are you ready, Mitch?”

  Mitch looked at Heidi. “We’re not abandoning you, are we, Tip?”

  “Don’t be silly, Mitch. Lisa’s a nice girl…go out and get acquainted.”

  9

  Rick wheeled his Harley into a space next to a stripped-down, low-rider version of his own. With a final percussive rap of the exhaust, he shut the engine off and, securing the kickstand, removed his leather gloves and his black Nazi helmet with its white skull and crossbones insignia on the back. Stowing the gloves inside the helmet, he crossed the sidewalk and entered Sheckie’s Bar and Grill.

  Sheckie, a large, bearded man wearing an apron spattered with ketchup stains, mustard, and grease spots from the grill, looked up from reading a newspaper and greeted him. “Hey—there’s our man Rick! What’s up, amigo? You come for the fine cuisine or the cheap beer?”

  “How’s it goin’, Sheck?”

  “You know me, man…keepin’ things civilized. Keepin’ the punks at bay and the rockers happy. You wanna glass?”

  “A pitcher.”

  “Big spender tonight, huh?”

  Sheckie filled a glass pitcher with beer from the Budweiser tap and set it on the counter. They exchanged another round of small talk; then Rick paid for the beer and carried it to the back of the room.

  Leroy and Peewee were sitting in a booth just off a dark hallway leading to a pair of restrooms and ending at a door that opened onto an alleyway, where two garbage cans sat with their lids askew. As Rick walked up, both men raised their fists in a salute.

  “Here’s the man himself!” Leroy rumbled in a voice that smacked of too much raw whiskey interspersed with an endless succession of Pall Mall cigarettes. “You come beering a gift for your amigos?”

  Along with a glass for himself, Rick set the pitcher on the table.

  “I thought I’d bring you guys something to suck on besides each others dick.”

  “That’s damn nice of you, Rick, and your timing couldn’t be better. We were just talking about how we could go for a nice piece of ass right about now.”

  The three men laughed.

  Peewee made room on his side of the table, and Rick sat down.

  “So, where ya been, man?” Leroy asked. “We ain’t seen ya in a while. We thought maybe you left for places unknown, without sayin’ good-bye to your amigos.”

  The diagonal, three-inch scar sloping down the right side of Leroy’s face had faded over the years from an original welt-red to a straw-colored beige that made it stand out in contrast to a heavy black beard and a grayish-brown complexion, the result of a smoking habit started as a teenager. The black leather jacket he wore accentuated the thickness of his shoulders, and the inert, heavy structure of his face reinforced the impression of mass. As he raised his beer mug to his mouth, the sunny liquid served as a backdrop to a large silver skull-and-crossbones with two embedded ruby eyes, on his right hand.

  With lips parted slightly, he listened intently as Rick told the two men about Cleveland, then followed up with his encounter with the FBI. “Those fuckers are gonna keep their dick in me until I give them something,” Rick said, finishing up. “Ain’t no way they’re gonna let me live in peace if they don’t get what they want.”

  Leroy grunted sympathetically. “You got a problem, that’s for sure, amigo,” he said.

  “What happens if you don’t produce?” Peewee asked.

  In contrast to his much larger companion, Peewee probably didn’t top a hundred and forty pounds fully clothed, soaking wet, and wearing thick-soled motorcycle boots. But what he lacked in size he made up for in appearance. In this respect he could count on an intimidation factor that played into people’s primal fears. Having matted, jet-black hair that hung well below the turned-down collar of his biker’s jacket, he normally sported a two- or three-day growth of facial hair on a lean, wolfish face preternaturally lined and drawn with a combination of street smarts, the effects of alcohol-fueled binge parties, and a pack-a-day smoking habit. His deep-set, coffee-brown eyes had a glassed-over, medicinal quality and could instantly flare up with accusatory resentment. His habitual smile, unexpectedly white, was the kind that might be observed in one who more often than not takes grim enjoyment in someone else’s discomfort. A certain beguiling charm, of the on-and-off variety, characterized his interactions, though mostly in a tavern setting, while talking up a female prospect.

  “I don’t even want to think about the consequences,” Rick said. “They’ve got me between a rock and hard place. If I do what they want�
�who knows? They’re talkin’ about a deal. But I don’t trust the motherfuckers.”

  “I wouldn’t trust them either,” Leroy said judiciously. “Besides, any kind of deal you get is probably gonna carry some time. They’re not gonna let you walk Scot-free. You’d be doing a civic duty of sorts, but to them you’d still be a piece of shit.”

  “Tell me about it. You guys want more beer?”

  “If you’re buyin’…”

  Rick went to the bar, had the pitcher filled, and came back.

  “It’s not really your scene, though, is it?” Peewee commented, after Rick poured out a fresh round.

  “That’s what makes it a bitch. It never was my scene. This broad got in touch with me through Dalt—you know, the poet dude. He told me she needed somebody who knew about demolitions. I’d never met her before and thought it might be a bank job or something like that. But it turns out they were all a bunch of environmentalist out to ‘raise public consciousness,’ as she put it, by making a big splash. She talked about national news coverage, but the upshot was it barely made the local press.”

  “What was it like, bein’ with all them tree-huggers, man?”

  “To tell you the truth, Peewee, I felt like a pair of size twelve shoes in the kids section of a Payless Shoe store.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Yeah. But except for that, I truly enjoyed the sensation. It was like blowin’ a bridge or bringing down a building. For a little while there, I was back on my game. I almost thought about re-upping, just to get back in the groove.”

  “You miss them good ol’ days, huh?”

  “Lemme tell you, my brother…”

  “I know just what you mean—I miss them, too. But not for the same reason. The part I miss is blowin’ away the bad guys from half a mile out. Sort of like playin’ golf, you know what I mean?” Peewee said, waxing a bit nostalgic.

  Rick and Leroy laughed.

  “I gotcha there, brother.”

  “But what’re you gonna do now? How’re you gonna handle it?”

  “If it was me, man, I’d split,” Leroy said. “I’d go down to Mexico for a couple a years…lay on the beach and fuck señoritas. Then, when the heat was off, I’d come back. Those motherfuckers would have other shit to deal with. For something like that, you’re not gonna be on their radar forever.”

  “Señoritas cost money. So does Mexican beer.”

  “You got a skill, man. People are willing to pay good money for it. And I gotta few names. I could hook you up real easy.”

  Rick joggled a cigarette from a half-empty pack of Pall Malls lying on the table and used Leroy’s Zippo to light it.

  “It’s a thought. But I’d need seed money. Besides, you gotta remember, they could keep tabs on me through my VA disability. It goes right into the bank every month, and if I started using an ATM in Mexico, they’d pick up on it sooner or later.”

  “Yeah, that’s true. Nowadays, you gotta be Houdini to get away with just about anything. They got so many different ways of running you down, it’s not funny.”

  “And it ain’t like you wouldn’t stand out,” Peewee added. “I mean, you don’t look like no fuckin’ tourist, and them Mexican bastards ain’t stupid. Them Federales’d get your number quick, and then you’d have to bribe the motherfuckers just to use a public restroom.”

  “What it boils down to is, I gotta pick the worst of two evils…”

  Peewee grinned. “Which is?”

  “Whadda you think?”

  “You got no allegiance to them people, man. They’re not your scene. East is east and west is west, you dig?”

  Rick finished the last of his cigarette and stubbed it out in a tin ashtray. Filling everyone’s glass, he poured out the remainder of the beer and set the pitcher on the table.

  “I’ve thought of all that,” he said, sipping the foam from off his glass. “But that ain’t so much the problem. The problem is coming up with something that’ll work. I mean, I been racking my brain, trying to figure out a plan. So far—zilch. And, even if I do come up with something, it ain’t like I can waltz right over there and say, ‘Hey, I got this really neat idea and thought you guys might be interested.’ I mean, it can’t look like a set-up.”

  “You need a truly unique approach, man,” Peewee told him, “something that’ll strike their fancy.”

  “Right. But I also need an excuse. I mean, I don’t think I struck any one of those people as a tree-hugger or even anything close. I told the broad right up front that I was in it for kicks. It wouldn’t look right if I suddenly showed up and started talking about saving the planet.”

  “What about that one broad…the one you fucked?”

  “Jody?”

  “Is that her name?”

  “Yeah. What about her?”

  “Come up with an idea…take it to her. Let her do the rest.”

  “He’d hafta fuck her again,” Leroy said.

  They all laughed.

  “Hell, she wasn’t all that bad. A little green, maybe, a little neurotic, you know what I mean? But, yeah, I could spend time with her.”

  “There you go. Now all you gotta do is come up with an idea.” Rick withdrew another cigarette from the pack of Pall Malls and lit it. Leaning back in the booth, he puffed on it thoughtfully.

  “Put yourselves in my place,” he said. “If you were up against the wall, whadda ya think you’d come up with?”

  “What about the Patty Hearst gig, where they all robbed a bank?”

  “Nah, these guys aren’t into that kind of shit, Leroy. They consider themselves law-abiding folks. Robbing a bank would be a crime to them, but blowing up a logging truck to save a tree would be okay, because it’d be for a good cause.”

  “That’s what I tried to tell the judge—that I robbed that bank for a good cause. He asked me what the cause was, and I told him I was gonna buy a new car, thereby putting the money right back into the economy, where every dollar spent was gonna generate another three or four. For some strange reason, he didn’t buy into it.”

  Laughter.

  “I think he gave me an extra year for bein’ a smart ass.”

  More laughter.

  Rick lit another cigarette. “But you’re right,” he said “—they gotta think it’s for a good cause.”

  “The right cause.”

  “Like them animal activists…the ones that turn all them little critters loose.”

  “Yeah, where you got monkeys, chickens, mice, and minks runnin’ all over the place, wonderin’ what the hell’s goin’ on. That’s what you need, something like that.”

  “Yeah, but these people ain’t animal activists, Peewee.”

  “But they could be. What about that program I was watchin’ about some dude back in Montana that killed all them wolves, five or six of them? He’s a cattle rancher and he got really pissed off about losing so many cows, so he went out and started hunting wolves.”

  “Ain’t that illegal or somethin’?”

  “Hell, I don’t know, Rick. If it ain’t, I suppose it oughta be.”

  “Yeah, but what’s your point, Peewee?”

  “Well, ah, maybe they could teach the guy a lesson of some kind?”

  “You mean shoot him?”

  Laughter.

  “No, no, shoot some of his fuckin’ cows. Blow a few of them away. Reduce the herd.”

  Silence.

  “Man, are you serious?”

  “Well, hell, yes, I’m serious. Think about it, a night operation where ya sneak up on the guy’s ranch and start droppin’ the critters right and left. By the time he wakes up and figures out what the hell’s goin’ on, you’re outta there. A hit-n-run kinda thing, guerrilla warfare. Man, I can see it all now.”

  “What’re ya gonna use, a machine gun?”

  “No, no, Rick, those dudes paid for your trip out to Cleveland, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So they pay for everything this time. They give us some money, we buy a few old ri
fles, and they pay for the trip, just like before.”

  Rick screwed his face into a tight, head-shaking grimace.

  “Man, I can’t believe you’re fucking serious. I mean, dropping a chimney that nobody is gonna use anymore, it’s almost like we did somebody a favor. But blasting a bunch of fuckin’ cows—I don’t know.”

  “Yeah, that’d be some heavy shit, that’s for sure.” Leroy agreed.

  “It’d be a fucking kick in the ass, if you ask me.”

  Rick continued shaking his head back and forth.

  “Besides, we don’t know anything about Montana, except that it’s a big ass state.”

  “So we get a map…we go out there…we locate the guy’s ranch…we scout the area. Problem solved.”

  “‘We’—you’re sayin’ you wanna be part of this, Peewee?”

  “Hell, yes, man—I wouldn’t pass this shit up for nothin.’ It’d be the most fun I’ve had since I was droppin’ dudes from five hundred yards out. You get a taste for that kind of shit, and you miss the action. I even been thinking about becoming a mercenary. There’s a lotta hot spots in the world, and the time is ripe.”

  “What about you, Leroy? You up for something memorable?”

  Leroy crinkled his eyes into a mean smile: the thought of blasting away with a twelve gauge shotgun while standing in the middle of a herd of cows seemed to produce a gleam of contentment.

  “Yeah, it’d do me okay,” he said. “But I’m still on parole. Technically, I ain’t supposed to leave the state, and I gotta report to Corrections on a regular basis. I might be able to wrangle some kind of emergency waiver, though, if I tell ’em my mother’s dyin’, or some kind of shit like that.”

  “Didn’t your mother already die?”

  “Twice, actually. But I gotta new parole officer.”

  They all laughed.

  “But you’d wanna come, though, huh?”

  “If I can swing it, Rick.”

  Rick looked at his two compadres and smiled. He had to laugh at the audacity of a plan that, improbable just minutes before, now induced an adrenaline rush just thinking about it. Anticipating the possibility of putting together an operation that had the earmarks of a full-blown adventure, the prospect of rejuvenating rusty military skills, and the chance to get the bastards off his back aroused a sentiment every bit as good as being assigned to a war zone, where normal complications suddenly gave way to a simple formula: In order to stay alive, you kill the other guy first.