Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 136, No. 5. Whole No. 831, November 2010
West of Nowhere
by Harry Hunsicker
Harry Hunsicker is a fourth-generation Dallas native who makes his living as a commercial real-estate appraiser. His Shamus-nominated, three-book series of mysteries starring P.I. Lee Henry Oswald (see Crosshairs, 2008) was said by PW to do “for Dallas what Loren Estleman’s Amos Walker novels have done for Detroit.” Mr. Hunsicker has also received praise for his short stories, one of which, “Iced,” is currently nominated for an International Thriller Writers award.
Danny the Dumb-ass fires once into the ceiling of the bar.
Plaster and slivers from a ruined fan shower the room, a slurry of dust and wood fragments.
I cringe, grip my pistol tighter, face hidden by a Ronald Reagan Halloween mask.
Rule One: The guns are for show only; don’t shoot unless absolutely necessary.
“N-n-n-nobody move.” Danny’s voice, muffled by his own rubber mask, sounds shrill, scared. “Ha-ha-hands where I can see them.”
Rule Two: Let me do the talking. Especially if you’re a stutterer.
In the middle of the room, a half-dozen men in overalls and work clothes sit around a felt-covered gaming surface. The table is between a bar on one wall and a shuffleboard game on the other. Nobody else in the place except for a scared-looking bartender by the beer taps.
In the middle of the table: a pile of chips and cash, and a spray of playing cards, trapped by a circular fence of long-neck bottles and ashtrays.
Danny the Dumb-ass moves to one side of the front door and unplugs the jukebox.
Toby Keith and Willie Nelson stop singing in mid-verse. “Whiskey for my hors—”
Silence. The bartender is shaking. A mug in one hand, beer slops over onto his fingers. Danny looks at me and nods, apparently now remembering to be quiet.
I resist the urge to slap him. Instead, I flip the deadbolt on the door, stride to the table.
Outside, it’s early afternoon and the sign on the bank around the corner reads ninety-three degrees. Inside it’s balmy, the narrow room thick with air-conditioning and smoke, lit only by a handful of neon beer signs.
“Put the cash in here.” I drop a canvas bag in the middle of the card pile. “All of it.”
The guy at the head of the table is about seventy. He has work-gnarled hands and a leathery face, evidence of a lifetime in the sun, most likely working the rocky soil of Central Texas.
“Boy, you are making a big mistake.” He exhales a plume of smoke from his nostrils.
“Less talk, more money.” I fire a round into a framed picture of John Wayne. The photo hangs next to a deer’s head with a dusty bra dangling from the antlers.
What the heck; the don’t-shoot rule has already been broken and my other wingman is a no-show. Time to crank this cash-and-dash up to eleven and get out.
Five of the six people at the table flinch and duck. The old man with the gnarled hands doesn’t move, not even a blink. He smiles instead.
Danny hobbles to the table, dragging his foot in the special shoe, the one he told me would allow him to walk normally but clearly doesn’t. He grabs a wad of currency and a manila envelope that sits in front of the old man. He stuffs both into the sack.
The old guy tenses, the tiniest movement in an otherwise still room. Losing that much cash hurts. Danny doesn’t notice. I do, and the old man knows it.
“The rest of it,” I say. “Get a move on.”
The other players shove money toward Danny.
“You know whose game this is?” the old man says.
“W-w-w-wouldja just shut the hell up.” Danny’s voice is louder than necessary. He jams the muzzle against the man’s temple. “It’s our ga-ga-game now.”
“You nervous or something?” The old guy raises one eyebrow. “People stutter when they get nervous.”
Danny’s gloved hands shake. He doesn’t handle stress well, not the best attribute for the sidecar on an armed robbery, even one as easy as this. Sometimes, however, you’ve got to run with whoever’s on the playground, even if he comes to school on the short bus and has one leg longer than the other.
The old man shrugs. He stares at me. His eyes seem to pierce my mask.
Danny scoops up the rest of the money with his free hand, shoves it in the bag.
Lots of high-denomination bills, a big game. The stopwatch in my head says we’ve been inside for about fifteen seconds. Another fifteen to wrap things up, and we’ll be in the stolen pickup just outside the front entrance.
Danny limps toward the door, sack in hand.
“Don’t anybody be stupid.” I back away, weapon pointing at the men. “It’s just money.”
Danny is at the entrance when the back door we’d locked earlier opens.
A woman in her mid thirties wearing a denim miniskirt and a halter top bounces in, cigarette dangling between her lips.
Everybody turns her way.
She stares at me and screams, a keening sound like the gates of hell just opened up for an instant or maybe American Idol has been canceled. The cigarette falls to the floor.
Danny startles. Fires his pistol again for no apparent reason. The bullet hits the floor.
Several of the men at the table jump up. The bartender reaches under the bar.
The old guy moves faster than everybody. A gun appears in his hand. An orange spit of flame. BOOM. The bullet hits the wall about a foot from my head.
In the same movement, I fire twice and turn to the door. I’m not really aiming, only pointing in the general direction of the table, hoping not to hit anybody, especially the girl, just trying to make the old man quit shooting.
Another round hits the wall near my face. Shouts from behind me. A grunt of pain, too, maybe.
I grab Danny, push him outside. Slam the door behind us.
The joint is on a side street in a little town in the Texas Hill Country, between an antique shop that’s always closed for lunch and an abandoned feed store. No traffic or people visible. Yet.
I rip off the mask and blink at the sun. From the cardboard box we’ve left sitting by the front of the bar, I grab a battery-powered nail gun.
Thwack-thwack-thwack. Three nails in the door and frame, almost as good as a deadbolt.
Danny takes off his mask too. Sweat drips down his nose. “S-s-sorry about that.”
“Get in the truck.” I walk as fast as possible to the driver’s side of the Chevy parked by the curb.
Inside, we buckle up, all legal. I head to Main Street, driving well under the speed limit.
“Don’t forget Chris.” Danny’s tone has returned to default, a whine somewhere between petulant and pathetic. “We g-g-gotta go to the rendezvous to get Chris.”
The urge to rip out a clump of Danny the Dumb-ass’s red hair rises in my gorge like week-old anchovy pizza eaten too quickly. I reach over. Danny backs away. I mutter, lean back, keep driving.
We’re in the clear so far. There looks to be enough money in the canvas bag to pay off a few debts with some left over to send to the kid and hopefully make the she-beast that is my ex-wife go away.
A sheriff’s car idles by in the other direction. The driver’s window is down and a uniformed guy who looks like Jabba the Hutt but bigger sits behind the wheel. He pays us no mind.
I don’t look at him either. I keep my hands at ten and two on the wheel. At the next stop sign, I turn toward the rendezvous point, the parking lot of the Baptist church. A few moments later, we stop by a Dumpster behind the sanctuary, windows down. The air stinks of grease from the trash and a charcoal fire nearby.