Red Thunder

5

IT WAS A week later, and it was the worst kind of day, for me. Low eighties, lots of sunshine. It was the start of spring break and every other car was a rental convertible full of college girls hurrying to get a Florida sunburn on their Minnesota skin in the few days they had. They were dressed minimally in bikinis and thongs. All of them on the lookout for handsome, suave beach bums like me and Dak.

Actually, the “bums” part was all we could manage so far. But there were wet T-shirt contests to attend, nightclubs to crash with our first-rate false ID, beers that needed chugging, gutters that needed to be puked in. Everything about the day cried out for me to be outside taking part.

Instead, Dak and I were holed up in room 201 with the drapes and the sliding glass patio doors closed and the air conditioner on in an attempt to block out all the distractions. It wasn’t working that well. Every time we heard a horn honk or a girl’s high-pitched laugh from just outside we both looked longingly at the curtains.

“We go out there,” Dak said, “we doomed. We’re just going to get faced and blow the whole day, and tomorrow with a hangover and maybe part of the next day.”

[39] “I know that,” I said, irritated. “Hell, I remember last year. Do you?”

“Not much,” he admitted.

Last year had not been anything to be proud of. Our friendship was new at the time, and both of us had been severely depressed at being turned down at half a dozen colleges. I knew a guy who produced Florida drivers’ licenses as good as the real ones, so we invested some money meant for tuition, then went barhopping for three days and nights. No need to get into too many sordid details. A lot of it will be hazy forever, and just as well. I was sick for days.

“Girls up here at Daytona mostly a bunch of second-raters, anyway,” Dak said.

“Right. All the pretty girls go to Lauderdale or Key West.”

“You got that right.”

Dak said a dirty word, then snapped his laptop computer shut.

“Look, no offense, but this place would depress that Crocodile Hunter guy.”

“Yeah, but…”

“No, let’s don’t open the curtains, we’d never be able to resist it. I know a place we can go and study and not be distracted. Well, not by babes, anyway.”

“Where’s that?”

“Have I ever led you astray, amigo? Don’t answer that. Come on, let’s go.”

What the hell. I closed my computer, too.

We left my room and the first thing we saw was my mother coming up the stairs at the other end, looking determined. She was carrying her long-barreled target pistol, checking the loads in the cylinder as she walked. She looked up and saw us, frowned, and looked even more determined.

“Jesus, Mom,” I whispered as she tried to pass between us and the maid’s cart Aunt Maria had left there on the walkway. I grabbed her arm and held on. “Didn’t you say you would-”

“No time for that now, Manuel.”

“It’s drugs again, right?” It had to be drugs. If it was prostitution she [40] wouldn’t have bothered with the artillery, just told them to get out. Johns don’t want any trouble.

But sometimes drug dealers just didn’t care.

“Let us call the cops, Mrs. Garcia,” Dak said. He already had his phone in his hand and had dialed 91. Mom pushed his hand away.

“I don’t want cops, Dak honey. They get too many calls like that, next thing you know they’re closing you down as a public nuisance. Don’t worry, Manuel, I’m not going to shoot them unless they want an argument.”

“Oh, great.” I saw Aunt Maria hurrying toward us, holding Mom’s fine old Mossburg gingerly. Maria doesn’t like guns. Mom loves guns, as long as she’s the one pointing and shooting them. I stepped around Mom and took the shotgun from Maria.

“Which room, Maria?” I asked.

“That one, 206. They’ve had six visitors in the last hour. I thought-”

“Yeah, it probably ain’t a Mary Kay convention. Maria, you and Dak stay back. Dak, you hear shooting, you press that last 1, okay?”

“Loud shooting,” Mom said, holding her pistol pointed at the sky. “This thing doesn’t make much more noise than a cork gun.”

She was downplaying it a little, but the revolver really wasn’t very noisy. It was only a.22 but it looked strange, being a match weapon saved from the days when Mom liked to shoot competitively, and had the time for it.

How good was she? If you asked her to shoot a mosquito in the air, she’d ask if you wanted a head shot, or one through the kneecap.

She looked at me, took a deep breath, and nodded. We’d done this sort of takedown before. It was that kind of neighborhood. I moved the maid cart off to one side so it wouldn’t get in our way. Mom rapped on the door with the gun barrel.

“This is the manager, Mr. Smeth. Open up, please.” Later I got out the check-in slips and saw he really had signed in with that name: Homer Smeth. We get an amazing number of Smiths, but this was the first one who didn’t know how to spell it.

“Buzz off. We’re busy.”

[41] Mom knocked once more, got more or less the same answer, and nodded to me. She slipped her master key into the lock.

I reached up into the brickwork and pulled the little hidden toggle there. It was connected to a bolt that held the inside chain-lock plate to the wall. When the bolt was pulled, it looked like the door was chained securely, but it wasn’t. I’d installed that little item on most of our rooms. Saves having to bust down the door. Lots cheaper.

I nodded at her, and she turned the handle. The door swung open and she stepped in, the gun held in front of her. I stepped around her and did my best to glower at them.

Homer Smeth was sitting at the desk, a baggie of white powder open in front of him. He had been busy measuring out doses with a razor blade and putting each dose into one of those tiny Ziplocs that, so far as I can tell, are not good for anything but dope.

Heroin? Probably coke. It made no difference. Neither were tolerated at the Blast-Off. Sitting on the bed partially dressed and watching television was Homer’s sidekick, the guy he had checked in with a few hours ago. With him was a girl who looked about fourteen except in the eyes, which were a lot older.

“Now we told you when you checked in we didn’t allow dealing in this place, Homer,” Mom said. She waved the gun, indicating the door. “Y’all better pack your things and go.”

Homer just stared at her with his mouth slightly open. It looked like he had about a pound of powder on the desk. He was mixing it with baby laxative. The couple on the bed didn’t move, either.

At last Homer seemed to work it all out. He smiled, showing the two missing teeth I remembered from when I checked him and his scumbag friend in. He held up one of the little bags of dope.

“Don’t get your panties in a twist, sister. How ’bout a couple snorts of this?”

Mom didn’t hesitate. The gun came up and barked once, and the tiny plastic bag between his fingertips vanished. Fine white powder floated in the air like chalk dust. He stared at the empty space, once more too stoned to quite realize what had happened. All three of them [42] were doing the stupidest thing a dope dealer can do, which is sample the product. At the Blast-Off, we didn’t even get a very good grade of narcotics trafficker. And that’s a good thing, because with those dudes we’d have been in a gunfight, and those dudes carried more firepower.

Still no motion from anybody. I racked a round and raised the muzzle so it pointed at Homer’s chest. That sound, of the slide being worked on a shotgun, has the amazing ability to clear your mind. It sure helped with this bunch. All six hands reached for the sky. I moved away from the door and motioned to the two on the bed. They got up slowly, the girl reaching down to get some of her clothes from the floor.

“Uh-uh!” I shouted, scaring her badly. “Kick ’em over here.” She did, and I could see there was no weapon in them. The guy did the same. I kicked the stuff back at them, and they started to dress.

In no more than thirty seconds they had their stuff together, which was just a little clothing, the pound of coke, and some free-basing equipment in a cardboard box. They slunk out the door, giving both of us a wide berth. We followed them out and watched them down to their car, an unbelievably rusty ’60s model Oldsmobile station wagon almost full of bald tires and packrat junk. Aunt Maria came out of room 206 with a pair of sneakers wrapped in a dirty shirt. She threw it over the railing and it landed on the hood of the car. Homer glared up at us and gave us the finger, then backed out recklessly, put it in forward and tried to burn rubber on the way out. The car was too old for that, but it did put out an impressive cloud of white smoke.

“Now can I have the gun, Mom?”

“Where are you boys… sorry, where are you young men going?”

“Somewhere else to study,” I told her.

“It better not be some bar full of snow bunnies.”

“No way, Mrs. Garcia.”

“I’m serious. You guys come home plastered and you can sleep it off in a pool chair, ’cause I ain’t letting you in.”

“We’ll be good.”

“Manny, you clean that desk and flush the paper towels before you go.”

“I was just about to suggest that myself.” She looked at me hard, [43] trying to tell if I was kidding her again. Mom doesn’t have the world’s greatest sense of humor. At last she snorted, reached up and tousled my hair-and I wish she’d stop doing that-then took the Mossburg and headed back for the office and the gun safe.

“Hang on just a minute, Dak.” I took a roll of paper towels from the nearby maid’s cart and entered 206.

It still smelled of Homer and friends. I swear, there is a junkie smell, and if you’d smelled it as often as I have you’d never mistake it for anything else. It happens when they’ve been dusting or spiking for several years. I don’t know if it’s from lack of washing or something in their sweat. I’d smelled it on Homer, but if we turned away every person who might be using the room to fix in, we’d lose half our income. We have to pretty much overlook personal drug use, unless you get violent behind it. No selling, and no refining, that was our rule.

Twice we’d had to take down meth labs after they’d been running a few days. That’s a total disaster to a motel operator. Both times we’d had to simply seal up the room and never use it again. After those chemicals soak into the walls for a bit, you need a permit from the Environmental Protection Agency to open the room again. It cost thousands of dollars in cleanup, which we just didn’t have.

I went into the bathroom-every towel and washcloth filthy, and to look at them, you’d never have guessed they ever used a shower at all-where I soaked a handful of paper towels. Dak was looking down at the powder-covered desk.

“Don’t even think about it,” I said.

“I wasn’t.” He pretended to be offended. “That was some shooting.”

“Don’t tell her that, I have enough work keeping her out of trouble without you telling her what a great vigilante she is.”

“No need to get snippy.”

He was right. But I was feeling pretty awful, as I usually do when a thing like that is over. Mom doesn’t seem to have any fear in her at all, but I sure do.

There was half a dozen baby Ziplocs scattered on the floor, what they called dime bags. All of them had a pinch of powder in them. I gathered them up and Dak helped me move the desk to be sure there [44] wasn’t anything illegal back there. I flushed the bags and the paper towels, waited to be sure it was all gone.

“You better make a note, you don’t want no drug-sniffing dogs in this room.”

“Not for at least a year,” I agreed. “Now, do I have to frisk you, or can I trust that you didn’t pick up any of those dimes when I wasn’t looking?”

“Trust me.”

“Okay.” I turned and looked around, spotted the bullet hole about six feet up the wall. With the.22 there had been no chance of it passing through the wall into the next room. I stuck the desk pen in the hole, but the slug had fallen into the space between walls. I’d plaster and paint it that evening. No need to alarm guests with bullet holes in the walls. That could endanger our half-star Michelin rating.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

“Suits me. Let’s go someplace we can do this free blow.”

I threw the roll of paper towels at him but he was already out the door.