When he turned back, Bobby saw with surprise that there were tears in his eyes. “After that, I didn’t give a shit. Fuck ’em all. I’ll arm everyone. The Jews, Hamas, the IRA, the Ulster Defense Force, both sides. Let ’em kill each other off. God can sort ’em out.” He smiled. “So you see, Bobby. I don’t give a shit who these guns are for, as long as they’re not for spies. Spies like to kill their own. They enjoy it.”
When Bobby and the huge man came out of the Quonset hut, pushing a dolly loaded with boxes, Sheila sighed with relief. Bobby signaled for her to back the van up to the hut. She did, and heard the van’s back doors open and the thud of boxes dropping. As she lit a cigarette, she saw the pit bull sitting outside her door, staring up. Hoshi climbed onto her lap, put his paws against the window and growled. “It’s all right, Hosh,” she said. “It’s all right.”
When the van was loaded with the boxes, the doors slammed and Sheila opened the window to hand Bobby the briefcase. Bobby counted out a wad of bills and handed it back to Sheila. He shook the man’s hand.
“Good to do business with you, Reverend.”
The reverend nodded. “You, too, Robert Redfeather.”
Bobby opened the driver’s side door and Hoshi leaped out. “Get back here,” Bobby yelled, but the dogs had already squared off. Before he could reach them, they sprang, snapping and snarling, their teeth flashing. The pit bull, less agile, lunged at Hoshi like a clumsy boxer, but Hoshi pranced sideways, avoiding the lunge and snapping at the pit bull’s rear haunch, drawing blood. The pit bull reared back, faked to the left and caught Hoshi by the scruff of his neck, also drawing blood. Three quick shots rang out, kicking up dirt at the dogs’ feet, and they separated, startled and whimpering. Both eyed Sheila, who now held her Seecamp steady at the pit bull. Bobby scooped Hoshi into his arms, while the reverend fell to his knees and hugged his scarred warrior, crying, “Dog-Dog, Dog-Dog, are you all right?”
Dog-Dog writhed in his grip, straining to get at Hoshi, but Bobby already had him in the van with the door closed, snarling at the open window. Sheila pulled Hoshi onto her lap and hugged him while Bobby started the engine and drove off.
“Is he all right?” Bobby said.
Sheila pressed a handkerchief against his neck. “I think so. It’s just the skin.”
Bobby glanced in his sideview mirror at the reverend, still on his knees and hugging his dog. “That poor old bastard.”
They drove in silence for a few minutes until they were back on State Road 84, heading east. Sheila inspected the bites on Hoshi’s neck. “The bleeding’s stopped. You’re OK, aren’t you, Hosh?” The dog licked her face.
“Tough guy, eh, Hosh?” Bobby smiled. “Bit off more than you could chew this time. Why didn’t you kill him, Sheila? The dog, I mean.”
“He’s a dog, Bobby. Only people deserve their own executions.”
“Yeah, well, a couple more minutes, maybe Hoshi would have had his own execution.”
“Then I would have killed the dog.”
At two A.M., they pulled into the diner parking lot, now crowded with cars. Cowboys filled the tables at the windows, having breakfast. Bobby drove around to the back and parked the van next to his SHO.
“The spic’s inside, Raoul,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
“I’m going in, too. I want to clean Hoshi in the ladies’ room.” Sheila looked down at her own shirt, soaked with blood. “And myself.”
Bobby grabbed the briefcase and Sheila hoisted Hoshi into her arms.
Inside the noisy diner, she brushed through the crowd back toward the ladies’ room. A waitress stopped her. “You can’t bring a dog in here, honey,” the waitress said.
“Watch me.”
Meanwhile, Bobby looked for the spic. I’ll never find that bastard with all these rednecks, he thought. They were all dressed up like cowboys, talking loud, letting out rebel yells and eating with their hats on. Some of the rednecks glanced at him, a big muscular guy with a briefcase and a ponytail. “Faggot,” one of them muttered.
“Honey,” Bobby said to one of the waitresses. She balanced a tray of eggs and grits on her arm. “Did you see a little Latin guy in here?”
The waitress blew a wisp of hair off her eyes. “I got time to look for spies?” She brushed past him.
Another waitress told him, “Baby, I ain’t seen or heard nothing since 1967. I thought I was deaf and blind till I seen you standing there.”
The third waitress remembered him. “A couple hours ago. Nervous little guy. Had a quick coffee, made a phone call and split.”
Bobby wondered if maybe the rednecks had scared him off. He decided to check for messages. “Where’s the phone, hon?” he said to the waitress.
She pointed to the end of the diner. “By the little boys’ room.”
The telephone was next to an open window that faced the back parking lot. He dialed his own number, and it began to ring. Through the window, Bobby saw his SHO, then the white van, the white van with all those guns in it, the white van with nobody watching it, no alarm turned on. “Shit,” he muttered. He dug the keys from his pocket while the phone still rang, found the remote with the red tape on it, held it out the window and pressed the button.
The van’s rear lights blinked twice, the alarm chirped and then the whole thing exploded. The rear doors blew off, the side panels blew off, the guns blew out of the van in pieces, engulfed by flames and black smoke, and scattered all over the lot. The van was in flames, twisted grotesquely out of shape, and the whole left side of his SHO was caved in. Glass was everywhere, metal gun parts, van doors and the bumper.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” said Bobby.
He dropped the phone, rushed out and almost bumped into Sheila, wide-eyed and scared, still holding Hoshi. “Bobby! What happened? Are you all right?”
He grabbed her hard by the arm and half-dragged her out of the diner. The cowboys and waitresses were already outside. Bobby led Sheila through the crowd toward the highway and started walking very fast along the side of the road. In the distance, he could already hear the sirens of police cars and fire engines. They walked in the darkness until Sheila jerked him to a stop. “Enough! What happened?” She put Hoshi down.
Bobby looked back at the smoke billowing above the diner. “It was a setup,” he said. He told her about the reverend’s story. “I should have figured it out. Medina knew who I was getting the guns from. He set us up. Medina didn’t give a shit about the guns. It was revenge he wanted. ‘Be my friend, Señor Esquared,’ yeah. Friends or enemies, it made no difference to him. The reverend was right. They kill their own.”
They started walking again, with Hoshi trotting at their feet. When they came to a pay phone, Bobby called a taxi. They waited, Bobby, Sheila and the dog. Bobby reached down and stroked the fur behind Hoshi’s ears. “I should have listened to you, Hosh,” he said. The dog’s tail wagged.
When the taxi arrived, Sheila got in first and Hoshi jumped in beside her. When Bobby got in and shut the door, the cabbie, a Pakistani, turned and said, “No dogs.”
Bobby looked at Sheila. “You see a dog in here, baby?” he said. “Nope.” She smiled and shook her head.
Bobby smiled at the cabbie in the rearview mirror. “We don’t see any dog, Mr. 7-Eleven. Just drive.”
Stuart M. Kaminsky
Find Miriam
from New Mystery
“How old would you say I am?”
I looked at the dark handsome man standing next to the railing of his penthouse balcony overlooking Sarasota Bay. He was just a bit bigger than I am, about six feet and somewhere in the range of one hundred and ninety pounds. His open blue shirt, which may have been silk, showed a well-muscled body with a chest of gray-brown hair. The hair on his head was the same color, plentiful, neat. And he was carefully and gently tanned. He had a glass of V-8 in his hand. He had offered me the same. I had settled for water. There was a slight accent, very slight when he spoke and I realized he reminded me of Ricardo Montalban.