Parts, anyone? It took a couple of months for the noise of the incident to settle enough so that Mark’s agent-and Tiffany’s-could sort through the offers and select the best ones. There were parts, all right. There were promises. There were contracts now, signed.
Tiffany could take them or leave them, she said. But she took them. Mark had his hands full too, but he shifted the obligations handily to spare the time for the wedding plans. No helicopters, gentlemen, please. But you can take as many pix of his replica-kit Dusey as you want, boys.
LIGHTNING RIDER by Rick Mofina
Jessie Scout tightened her grip on the wheel of the armored car when she spotted her crew members, Gask and Perez, emerging from the casino lobby. Their canvas bags were now empty of cash. Another delivery done.
Relax, she told herself.
Her utility belt and the holster cradling her Glock gave a leathery squeak as she ran a perimeter check of the mirrors around their truck. All clear. Wait. A stranger was getting way too close to her.
“Bobby? Hey Bob, check this out, buddy!” A man laughed.
Scout picked them up, distorted on the driver’s side convex mirror. A couple of all-night rollers. White guys. Forties. Midwesterners. Mid-management. Suburban. Wife and kids back home. Skip the buffet, Skippy. Bloody Marys for breakfast. Riding higher than the morning desert sun. Don’t come near the truck Don’t you dare.
“Hey Bob. Get this.” The first one is reaching into his pocket.
Scout’s right hand brushed the butt of her Glock. Her two crew members were still far off on her right side. They can’t see the guy or the flash of metal in his hand. He’s too close.
“What’s the pay off if I play a dollar here? Ha-ha.”
He starts to fiddle with a gunport. Jerk. Scout spanks the horn. He recoils, his reddening face contorting in anger aimed up at her as he passes by the front of the truck, hands up, palms open.
“What’s a matter? Can’t you take a joke?”
Scout eyeballs him hard and cold from behind her dark glasses.
He’s mesmerized. She’s a young goddess. Tanned, high cheekbones. Chestnut hair, long and braided. Her face betrays nothing. He concedes he is out of his league. No fun here. The rollers walk away.
She heard keys jingle, then the tap of metal on the steel passenger door. It was Gask and Perez, their faces moist, their shirts darkened with sweat under their armpits. “C’mon, Scout, we’re cookin’ here,” Gask shouted over the idling motor, air conditioner, and the truck’s sound-absorbing armor.
Scout unlocked the doors from the inside. Gask heaved himself into the passenger seat. Perez sprung up the step of the side delivery door, into the rear with the money. Both men locked their doors as Jessie eased the truck down the casino’s driveway and onto Las Vegas Boulevard.
“What’s the problem, you hittin’ the horn, Scout?” Gask studied his clipboard, then shouted through the sliding viewer window of the steel security wall separating the cab and the rear of the truck. “Next drop is ATMs, Perez. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“I asked you, what’s the problem, Scout?”
“No problem.”
“I think you still don’t know what you’re doing, do you?”
Scout didn’t answer. Gask’s face hardened.
“I swear to God, I don’t know why they hire you people.”
Scout said nothing.
“My last week on the job and this is what you give me?”
“I said it was no problem.”
“You sure? You seem a little tense today. Is it a woman thing?”
Scout rolled her eyes. What a pig. “A tourist was touching the truck. I scolded him. He backed off. No problem.”
“Fine. Put it in the log. Time. Place. Description. Incident. I’m retiring with a spotless record. Got it. Christ, you got a brain in there?”
“I know the procedure.”
“As long as you’re sure,” he grunted. “Call in the drop.”
Scout grabbed the radio handset and said: “Ten sixty-five.”
“Go sixty-five,” the radio responded.
“Six clear.”
“Ten four, sixty-five.”
Gask shifted in his seat. “Damn gun, digging into me.” He removed his uniform cap and dragged the back of his hairy forearm over his forehead. “You got the AC on full, Scout? You got it up full?”
“Full.”
“You sure you know how to operate that thing. Might be complicated for someone like you.”
Scout concentrated on the road. Gask had been her crew chief since she was hired as a driver for U.S. Forged Armored Inc., four months ago. Today was his first day back from a vacation and he was bursting to tell her and Perez about it that morning at the terminal while downing his ritual breakfast of chocolate glazed donuts. They were finishing up coffee, ready to head out on deliveries.
“Know where I went, Scout?” he’d asked.
As if she cared.
“Aryanfest,” he sucked on his teeth, working them over with a toothpick. “Up north, near your old reserve. Pretty country. Lots of white. On the mountaintops. We burned a cross,” Gask smiled. “Once I punch out of this job, I’m going to buy me a lake cabin near the border.”
Scout and Perez looked at each other, saying nothing. Gask did not keep his beliefs secret. Experience taught them to avoid trigger topics like Martin Luther King, the pope, Waco, Ruby Ridge, Oklahoma City, or civil rights. Scout could deal with his insults but despised the way Gask treated Perez, who had three years with the company.
Gil Perez was a quiet, soft-spoken father of two little girls. He was loyal, honest. Hard working. Dreamed of starting his own car wash business, but one day he made the mistake of telling Gask, who’d spit on his dream every chance he could.
“Ain’t gonna happen for you, Refried. You just don’t have what it takes. Trust me. I know you, your abilities. It exceeds the reach of your people. Scout’s too. In both cases, your folks generally lack the motivation, the dedication, the drive of red-blooded Americans like me to succeed. You’d best invest all your energy in your job here and maybe one day, if you’re real lucky, which I doubt, but maybe one day, you’ll have your own crew like me.”
Like you?
Scout shuddered at the notion of anyone making themselves in the image of Elmer Gask, Forged’s most senior guard and legendary asshole. According to the dinosaurs who knew Gask’s story, Elmer was Mississippi white trash, whose familymoved in the night to avoid debts. Gask’s granddaddy was a Grand Dragon who oversaw the firebombing of churches before he died of complications arising from syphilis. Gask was a former bull with the Nevada State prison system, fired for severely beating a black con.
Then he was hired at U.S. Forged where he earned mythic status. Over his twenty-two years on the job, Gask safely moved up to twenty million dollars daily among the casinos and banks of Las Vegas without a single dollar loss. Not a cent. There had been attempts. Three men had died in botched hits on Gask’s watch. Two drifters from Minnesota in ’88 when they jumped him and his partner making a two million dollar drop at the Nugget. In 1983, Gask shot dead a 24-year-old Brit named Fitz-something, who was AWOL and wired on LSD when he tried to run off with two bags of newly minted one-hundred-dollar bills outside Caesar’s Palace.
No one had, or would, win against Gask. He was the money mover king of Las Vegas. He kept the casinos lubricated, kept things humming. In this town, where every move was a gamble, Gask had the edge and he enlightened every newcomer that his greatness was the reason U.S. Forged entrusted him with the heaviest deliveries and rookie staff. He knew the business and its vulnerabilities, how to inventory a casino during a drop. How to scan faces and sense trouble like a county sheriff’s bloodhound. Gask had no family. No wife. No kids. He was the job. U.S. Forged profited by his intense dedication and bigoted intimidation. All packaged in a six-foot-two-inch, two-hundred-thirty-pound button-straining frame.