Sleep in Chantal’s spare bedroom didn’t come easy. I tossed and turned and slept little in the four hours I allowed.

When I got up, Chantal was gone. On the kitchen table sat a note and a couple hundred dollars.

I’m not a total witch. I left you something. At least you can eat. You’re a survivor, Bruno. I know you’ll bounce back financially. I have to think of my own retirement. You understand. Please don’t hate me. Be out no later than five o’clock.

Love you, Babe.

Chan

She’d always talked about when her looks started to fade, how would she live in her old world after she’d become so accustomed to the “easy life,” how a nest egg was so important. I should’ve been mad about the money, but I wasn’t. I went over to the phone and dialed a number from memory.

The tin-hard voice of Crazy Ned Bressler said, “Yeah.”

“Let me speak to Jumbo.”

“You pissed in your Wheaties, pal. He doesn’t want nothin’ to do with yo sorry ass.”

I said nothing.

Bressler hesitated, then set the phone down with a clunk. Harsh rap music along with low murmurings in the background mixed and danced in my ear, then another voice on the phone. “What the hell’s this about? You said no more. Yesterday morning you said no more, that it was the last time. No if, ands, or buts, you said. Threw it right up in my face and laughed. You laughed at me. So, what am I hearing now, huh?”

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry, something’s come up.”

“You laughed at me, my man, when I asked you to do it one more time. Just one more.”

“I said I was sorry. What more do you want? A formal apology? You want me to say I was a fool that I wasn’t thinking clearly? Okay, I was a fool and I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

“Fool? More like an asshole. Say that you’re an asshole, and I’ll think about it.”

I let the silence hang, then, “You know I don’t hold with your obstreperous language.”

He paused. I knew it would get to him. He gave it a little chuckle.

“Obstreperous? What kind of word is that? You some kind of sissy-pole smoking asshole?”

“You want me or not?”

“You know I do. I told you that yesterday.”

“Man, yes or no?”

“Meet at the usual. No, make it at the Bun Boy in two hours. You know where that is?”

“Yes, but it’s way to hell and gone out in the desert and that’s too early. It’s twice as far out. You said yesterday morning that the gig wasn’t until—”

“Not on the phone, asshole. Just tell me now. You in or out?”

“I have to—”

“You going to punk me or you going to show some sack and—”

“I’ll be there.” I slammed down the phone.

Bun Boy was in Baker, the home of the world’s largest thermometer. With a fast car and no cops it was the better part of three hours away. No chance could Jumbo make it there that fast. I called him at his home in Downey. He was leery about my sudden change of heart. He smelled cops and a setup. I couldn’t blame him. But all I was going to do was get there before him and sit around and wait while he scoped the area, made sure everything was cool, and I wasn’t bringing the cops down around his neck. He already had two strikes. One more and it was twenty-five to life.

“Shit.” I was going to miss the visit I promised my grandson Alonzo.

I picked up the phone to dial Jumbo back to reset the deal in four hours, not two, so I could keep my promise with Alonzo. I slammed the phone down. Went to the closet, took out a pair of Chantal’s sugar daddy’s chinos and a blue chambray shirt, pure white-man-yuppie. The pants were too large and the shirt too tight through the shoulders and arms, the guy was a pear. I cinched the belt up tight and hung the shirt out over it. I searched the sock drawer for something other than the thin stretch nylon jobs he had tons of. My hand came across something cold and hard. I knew the make by feel without looking. I took it out. An H&K .40 caliber. Too much gun for a pear to hold up, let alone shoot. I’d held a gun my entire career and it felt as natural as if part of my hand. For a brief second I thought about taking it along to keep Jumbo honest. Only a gun was a misdemeanor for Joe Citizen and a felony for an ex-con. And if I took it, there might arise an occasion where I’d have to use it. If I didn’t have it, I’d have to run. I wiped off any fingerprints and put it back.

I still had to boost a car, a calculated risk that it wouldn’t be reported before I was done with it. I had to get on the road now. The Sunday traffic, everyone would be coming back from Vegas, opposite direction than I would be going. At least that much fell squarely in my favor.

Chapter Nine

I sat in the parking lot across the street from Bun Boy and waited. Just the way I’d figured it, Jumbo was late, although I hadn’t made him or any of his boys driving around the area. Baker was nothing more than a gas and food oasis in the middle of the desert, a “wide spot in the road” as Dad would call it, and easy to pick out a car that made more than one pass.

Finding the right car and the ride out took three and half hours. Another two put it at about four thirty. It wouldn’t be absolutely dark until five fifteen. I’d give him another forty-five minutes, then call it a day. Dad’s words about not telling Alonzo unless I was absolutely sure, echoed in my brain and hurt just a little bit more each time I thought about it. Anger started to rise up unbidden and soon I’d need an outlet. I tried to focus it on that shovel-faced Deputy Mack. He was the true reason why I was going to miss the meeting with my grandson. Mack was the reason why I’d lost the money, not Chantal. She just did what she needed to do to survive. Without her, I’d have been a lot worse off.

I had about fifteen hours to get the job done, make the drive back, and be in court.

Off, down the road by the ramp that dumped folks from the freeway onto the frontage road that led to the restaurant, came a sleek, 700 series BMW, black with tinted windows. Jumbo had arrived. He drove by and slowed, then accelerated on past. He wanted me to follow. I started up, pulled onto the frontage road and fell in behind. We drove five miles, then turned off onto a dirt road, that had Jumbo not turned on it, I would have missed for sure. This had to be something big. Jumbo wouldn’t get his car dusty or bang his suspension like this for small potatoes. I was tired, but the thought of the job made my pulse beat in my temples and behind my eyes. The prospect of a big job always got my blood up.

We headed across the desert toward a clump of rocks to the east that now looked like an island as the sun set behind us and shadowed the ground around it. The rocks grew larger and at the same time slowly sank into the gloom of dusk.

The other jobs had been closer to civilization. All of a sudden I thought maybe he was taking me out to “bumfuck Egypt,” a place he described when taking someone no longer useful off the board. I was a witness to his criminal activity, all felonies, and unlike me with one strike, he had two. I’d made him a lot of money in the last four weeks. Maybe it was time to clear the boards. What better place to do it than in the desert? Now I wished I’d taken the pear’s gun.

Just before we started to pass the large rocks, Jumbo stopped, the red brake lights overly bright in the gathering gloom.

We waited. He finally rolled his window down, stuck his arm out, and waved me forward. He wanted me to walk up and get in his car. I stayed put. After a time, he got out, a smile on his little ferret face. He stood six-foot tall and weighed a buck seventy. Thin, rail thin. John Ahern. They called him Jumbo because of his big floppy ears. The story goes that someone made the mistake of calling him Dumbo, a name he took exception to, not wise with a psychotic sociopath. The next time someone with any real balls called him Jumbo, he allowed it, and it stuck. He had on a black Tommy Bahama shirt, black slacks with a gold earring and matching bracelet, classy, unlike most thugs of his rank. He had little hands and held them open away from his body and said, “Hey?”