The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

THE MOJAVE TWO-STEP

The desert, just past midnight. A lone truck on a scorched black licorice strip, two men — Anshutes and Coker — inside.

Outside it’s one hundred and twenty-five degrees under a fat December moon. Frosty weather in the twilight days of global warming… and just in time for the holiday season.

Sure, driving across the desert was a risk, even in such balmy weather. Not many people owned cars anymore, and those who did avoided the wide white lonesome. Even roadcops were smart enough to leave the Mojave alone. It was too hot and too empty, and it could make you as crazy as a scorpion on a sizzling-hot skillet. If you broke down out here, you ended up cooked to a beautiful golden brown — just like Tiny Tim’s Christmas goose.

But that wasn’t going to happen to Coker. He was going to spend New Year’s Eve in Las Vegas. The town that Frank and Dean and Sammy had built all those years ago was still the place he wanted to be. Hell on earth outside, air-conditioned splendor within. If you had the long green, Vegas gave you everything a growing boy could desire. A/C to the max, frosty martinis… maybe even a woman with blue eyes that sparkled like icebergs.

Let the swells fly into town in air-conditioned jets, Coker figured. He’d take the hard road. The dangerous road. The real gambler’s road. He’d ride that scorched highway straight down the thermometer into double digits, and the A/C would frost everything but his dreams. A little business, a couple lucky rolls of the dice, and his life would change for good… then he’d leave town with a jet of his own. Slice it up like an Eskimo Pie and that was cool, any way you figured it.

It was all part of the gamble called life. Like always, Lady Luck was rolling the dice. Rattling the bones for Coker and for his partner, too, even though Anshutes would never admit to believing in any airy jazz like that.

Coker believed it. Lady Luck was calling him now. Just up the road in Vegas, she waited for him like a queen. God knew he’d dreamed about her long enough, imagining those iceberg eyes that sparkled like diamonds flashing just for him.

All his life, he’d been waiting for the Lady to give him a sign. Coker knew it was coming soon. Maybe with the next blink of his eyes. Or maybe the one after that.

Yeah. That was the way it was. It had to be.

Really, it was the only explanation.

Check it out. Just two days ago Coker and Anshutes had been on foot. Broiling in Bakersfield with maybe a gallon of water between them, seven bucks, and Anshutes’ .357 Magnum… which was down to three shells. But with that .357 they’d managed to steal five hundred and seventy-two bucks, a shotgun, and an ice cream truck tanked with enough juice to get them all the way to Vegas. Plus they still had the Magnum… and those three shells.

Now if that wasn’t luck, what was?

One-handing the steering wheel, Coker gave the ice cream truck a little juice. Doing seventy on the straightaway, and the electric engine purred quieter than a kitten. The rig wasn’t much more than a pick-up with a refrigeration unit mounted on the back, but it did all right. Coker’s only complaint was the lack of air-conditioning. Not that many automobiles had A/C anymore… these days, the licensing fees for luxuries which negatively impacted the sorry remains of the ozone layer cost more than the cars. But why anyone who could afford the major bucks for a freon-licensed vehicle would forgo the pleasure of A/C, Coker didn’t know.

The only guy who had the answer was the owner of the ice cream truck. If he was still alive… and Coker kind of doubted that he was. Because Anshutes had excavated the poor bastard’s bridgework with the butt of his .357 Magnum, emptied the guy’s wallet, and left him tied to a telephone pole on the outskirts of Bakersfield. By now, the ice cream man was either cooked like the ubiquitous Xmas goose or in a hospital somewhere sucking milkshakes through a straw.

Coker’s left hand rested on the sideview mirror, desert air blasting over his knuckles. Best to forget about the ice cream man. His thoughts returned to the Lady. Like always, those thoughts had a way of sliding over his tongue, no matter how dry it was. Like always, they had a way of parting his chapped lips and finding Anshutes’ perennially sunburnt ear.

“Know where I’m heading after Vegas?” Coker asked.

“No,” Anshutes said. “But I’m sure you’re gonna tell me.”

Coker smiled. “There’s this place called Lake Louise, see? It’s up north, in Canada. Fifty years ago it used to be a ski resort. Now the only skiing they do is on the water. They’ve got palm trees, papayas and mangoes, and girls with skin the color of cocoa butter. Days it’s usually about thirty-five Celsius, which is ninety-five degrees American. Some nights it gets as low as sixty.”

Anshutes chuckled. “Sounds like you’ll have to buy a coat.”

“Go ahead and laugh. I’m talking double-digit degrees, partner. Sixty. Six-oh. And girls with skin like cocoa butter. If that’s not a big slice of paradise, I don’t know what is.”

“Get real, amigo. A guy with your record isn’t exactly a prime candidate for immigration. And our dollar isn’t worth shit up north, anyway.”

“Drop some luck into that equation.”

“Oh, no. Here we go again — ”

“Seriously. I can feel it in my bones. Something big is just ahead, waiting for us. I’m gonna take my cut from the ice cream job and hit the tables. I’m not walking away until I have a million bucks in my pocket.”

“Even God isn’t that lucky” Anshutes snorted. “And luck had nothing to do with this, anyway Planning did. And hard work. And a little help from a .357 Magnum.”

“So what are you gonna do with your money?” Coker asked sarcastically. “Bury it in the ground?”

“Depends on how much we get.”

“The way I figure it, we’re looking at something large. Forty grand, maybe fifty.”

“Well, maybe thirty.” Anshutes gnawed on it a minute, doing some quick calculations. “I figure the Push Ups will go for about fifty a pop. We got five cases of those. The Fudgsicles’ll be about sixty-five. Figure seventy-five for the Drumsticks. And the Eskimo Pies — ”

“A hundred each, easy,” Coker said. “Maybe even a hundred and twenty-five. And don’t forget — we’ve got ten cases.”

“You sound pretty sure about the whole thing.”

“That’s because I believe in luck,” Coker said. “Like the song says, she’s a lady. And she’s smiling on us. Right now. Tonight. And she’s gonna keep on smiling for a long, long time.”

Coker smiled, too. Screw Anshutes if he wanted to be all sour. “You know what we ought to do,” Coker said. “We ought to pull over and celebrate a little. Have us a couple of Eskimo Pies. Toast Lady Luck, enjoy the moment. Live a little — ”

“I’ve lived a lot,” Anshutes said. “And I plan to live a lot longer. I’m not going to play the fool with my money. I’m not going to blow it on some pipe dream. I’m going to play it smart.”

“Hey, relax. All I’m saying is — ”

“No,” Anshutes said, and then he really went verbal. “You’ve said enough. We’re in this to make some real money for a change. And we’re not gonna make it by pulling over to the side of the road, and we’re not gonna make it by toasting Lady Luck with an Eskimo Pie in the middle of the Mojave Desert, and we’re not going to make it by blowing our swag in some casino… ”

Anshutes went on like that.

Coker swallowed hard.

He’d had just about enough.

“I’m pulling over,” he said. “I’m going to have an Eskimo Pie, and you’re goddamn well going to have one with me if you know what’s good for you.”

“The hell I am!” Anshutes yanked his pistol. “You goddamn fool! You take your foot off the brake right now or I’ll — ”

Suddenly, Anshutes’ complaints caught in his throat like a chicken bone. Ahead on the road, Coker saw the cause of his partner’s distress. Beneath the ripe moon, knee-deep in heatwaves that shimmered up from the asphalt, a big man wearing a ten-gallon cowboy hat walked the yellow center line of the highway. He only had one arm, and he was carrying a woman piggyback — her arms wrapped around his neck, her long slim legs scissored around his waist. But the woman wasn’t slowing the big guy down. His pace was brisk, and it was one hundred and twenty-five degrees and the rangy bastard didn’t even look like he’d broken a sweat —

Coker honked the horn, but the cowboy didn’t seem to notice. “Don’t hit him!” Anshutes yelled. “You’ll wreck the truck!”

Anshutes closed his eyes as Coker hit the brakes. Tires screamed as the ice cream truck veered right and bounded along the shoulder of the road. Gravel rattled in the wheel wells and slapped against the undercarriage like gunfire, and Coker downshifted from fourth gear to third, from third to second, ice cream visions dancing in his head, visions of Drumsticks and Push Ups bashing around in the refrigeration unit, visions of broken Fudgsicles and mashed Eskimo Pies…

Visions of Lady Luck turning her back…

The electric engine whined as he shifted from second to first and yanked the emergency brake. The truck seized up like a gutshot horse, and the only thing that prevented Coker from doing a header through the windshield was his seat belt.

Coker unbuckled his belt. Anshutes set his pistol on the seat and fumbled with his seat belt. Coker grabbed the .357 and was out of the cab before his partner could complain.

The hot asphalt was like sponge cake beneath Coker’s boots as he hurried after the man in the ten-gallon hat. The cowboy didn’t turn. Neither did the woman who rode him. In fact, the woman didn’t move at all, and as Coker got closer he noticed a rope around her back. She was tied to the cowboy. Coker figured she was dead.

That was bad news. Two strangers. One alive, one dead. Snake eyes. A jinxed roll if ever he saw one.

Bad enough that the cowboy had nearly killed him. But if he’d put the jinx on Coker’s luck —

Coker aimed at the ripe moon and busted a round. “Turn around, cowboy,” he yelled. “Unless you want it in the back.”

The cowboy turned double-quick, like some marching band marionette. The one-armed man’s face was lost under the brim of his ten-gallon hat, but moonlight splashed across his torso and gleamed against his right hand.

Which was wrapped around a pistol.

“Shit!” Coker spit the word fast and fired another shot. The bullet caught the cowboy in the chest, but the big man didn’t even stumble. He didn’t return fire, either… and Coker wasn’t going to give him the chance.

Coker fired again, dead center, and this time the bullet made a sound like a marble rattling around in a tin can.

The cowboy’s chest lit up. Neon rattlesnakes slithered across it. Golden broncos bucked over his bulging pecs. Glowing Gila monsters hissed and spread their jaws.

Three broncos galloped into place.

The cowboy’s chest sprung open like the batwings on an old-fashioned saloon.

Silver dollars rained down on the highway.

And the cowboy kept on coming. Coker couldn’t even move now. Couldn’t breathe. Oh man, this wasn’t a jinx after all. This was the moment he’d been waiting for. This was the omen to end all omens. All of it happening in the blink of an eye.

One more blink and he’d see things clearly. One more blink and the future would turn up like a Blackjack dealt for high stakes —

But Coker couldn’t blink. He couldn’t even move —

Anshutes could. He stepped past his partner, scooped up a silver dollar as it rolled along the highway’s center line. The cowboy kept on coming, heading for Anshutes now, but Anshutes didn’t twitch. He waited until the big man was within spitting distance, and then he slipped the coin between the determined line of the advancing cowboy’s lips.

Immediately, the cowboy’s gunhand swept in an upward arc.

Then he stopped cold.

Anshutes scooped a handful of silver dollars off the road and tossed them at Coker.

“Guess you’ve never heard of a one-armed bandit,” he said.

Coker’s jaw dropped quicker than a bar of soap in a queer bathhouse. Anshutes sighed. Christ, being partnered up with this starry-eyed fool was something else.

“The cowboy here’s a robot,” Anshutes explained. “Comes from a casino called Johnny Ringo’s, named after the gangster who owns the place. Ringo himself came up with the concept for an ambulating slot machine, hired some ex-Disney imagineers to design the things. They walk around his joint twenty-four hours a day. You’d be surprised how many idiots feed dollars into them. I guess they all think they’re lucky… just like you.”

“This thing’s a robot?” Coker asked.

“That’s what I said.”

“Why’d it stop moving?”

“’Cause I fed it a dollar, genius.” Anshutes pointed at the machine’s lone arm, which was raised in the air. “The Cogwheel Kid here can’t do anything until I make my play. I have to pull his arm to set him in motion again. Then those neon wheels will spin, and either he’ll cough up some dough or start walking, looking for another mark. Unless, of course, your bullets dug a hole in his motherboard, in which case who knows what the hell he’ll do.”

Coker blinked several times but said nothing. To Anshutes, he looked like some stupid fish that had just figured out it lived in a tank. Blink-blink-blinking, checking out the big bad pet shop world that lurked beyond the glass.

“It’s an omen,” Coker said finally. “A sign — ”

“Uh-uh, buddy. It’s called the Mojave Two-Step.”

“The Mojave what?”

“The Mojave Two-Step.” Anshutes sighed. “Here’s what happened. This little lady crossed Johnny Ringo. Who knows what the hell she did, but it was bad enough that he wanted to kill her good and slow. So he tied her to one of his walking slots, and he pointed the damn thing west and turned it loose. It’s happened before. Just a couple months ago, one of these things trudged into Barstow with a dead midget tied to its back. Leastways, folks thought it was a midget. A couple weeks under the Mojave sun is liable to shrink anyone down to size.”

“Jesus!” Coker said. “How does Ringo get away with it?”

“He’s rich, idiot. And that means you don’t mess with him, or anything to do with him or he’ll kill you the same way he killed this girl — ”

Right on cue, the girl groaned. Annoyed, Anshutes grabbed her chin and got a look at her. Blue eyes, cold as glaciers. Surprisingly, she wasn’t even sunburned.

Anshutes huffed another sigh. There wasn’t any mystery to it, really. They weren’t that far from Vegas. Twenty, maybe thirty miles. Could be that Ringo had turned the robot loose after dark, that the girl hadn’t even been in the sun yet. Of course, if that was the case it would make sense to assume that the robot had followed the highway, taking the most direct route. Anshutes didn’t know what kind of directional devices Ringo had built into his walking slots, but he supposed it was possible. There wasn’t anything between Vegas and Barstow. Nobody traveled the desert highway unless they absolutely had to. Even if the robot stuck to the road, it was an odds on cinch that the girl would wind up dead before she encountered another human being.

The girl glanced at Anshutes, and it was like that one glance told her exactly what kind of guy he was. So she turned her gaze on Coker. “Help me,” she whispered.

“This is too weird,” Coker said. “A woman riding a slot machine… a slot machine that paid off on the road to Vegas. It is an omen. Or a miracle! Like Lady Luck come to life… like Lady Luck in the flesh — ”

“Like Lady Luck personified,” Anshutes dropped a hand on his partner’s shoulder. “Now you listen to me, boy — what we’ve got here is a little Vegas whore riding a walking scrap heap. She doesn’t have anything to do with luck, and she isn’t our business. Our business is over there in that truck. Our business is a load of ice cream. Our business is getting that ice cream to Vegas before it melts.”

Coker’s eyes flashed angrily, and Anshutes nearly laughed. Seeing his partner go badass was like watching a goldfish imitate a shark.

“You’d better back down, boy,” Anshutes warned.

Coker ignored him. He untied the young woman’s wrists and feet. He pulled her off of the Cogwheel Kid’s back and cradled her in his arms, and then he started toward the ice cream truck.

Anshutes cleared his throat. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Even if she’s not Lady Luck, this lady’s hurting,” Coker said. “I think she deserves an ice cream. Hell, maybe she deserves two. Maybe I’ll let her eat her fill.”

Anshutes didn’t answer.

Not with words, anyway.

He raised the sawed-off shotgun he’d stolen from the ice cream man, and he cocked both barrels.

Coker said, “You think you’re pretty cool, don’t you?”

“Cooler than Santa’s ass,” Anshutes said.

“And you’ll shoot me if I give the lady an ice cream?”

“Only way she gets any ice cream is if she pay for it.”

Coker turned around. “How about if I pay for it?”

“I don’t care who pays. You, the little whore, Lady Luck or Jesus Christ. As long as I get the money.”

“That’s fine.” Coker smiled. “You’ll find your money on the road, asshole.”

“What?”

“The jackpot. The money I shot out of the slot machine. It’s all yours.”

‘You’re crazy.”

“Maybe. But I’m gonna buy me a shitload of ice cream, and this little lady’s gonna eat it.”

Coker set the girl down at the side of the road, peeling off his shirt and rolling it into a pillow for her head. Then he walked over to the truck and opened the refrigerated compartment.

“No Eskimo Pies,” Anshutes said. “Let’s get that straight.”

“I’m getting what I paid for,” Coker said.

Anshutes shook his head. What a moron. Ponying up fistfuls of silver dollars, just so some little Vegas whore could lick a Push Up. If that was the way Coker wanted it, that was fine. In the meantime, Anshutes would make himself some money, and Lady Luck wouldn’t have jack to do with it. Hell, for once hard work wouldn’t have jack to do with it either. For once, all Anshutes had to do to make some money was bend over and pick it up.

Silver dollars gleamed in the moonlight. Anshutes put down the shotgun. Not that he was taking any chances — he made sure that the weapon was within reach as he got down to work, filling his pockets with coins.

Behind him, he heard the sound of the refrigerator compartment door slamming closed. Coker. Jesus, what an idiot. Believing that some Vegas slut was Lady Luck. Personified.

Anshutes had told the kid a thousand times that luck was an illusion. Now he realized that he could have explained it a million times, and he still wouldn’t have made a dent. The kid might as well be deaf. He just wouldn’t listen —

Anshutes listened. He heard everything.

The sound of silver dollars jingling in his pocket, like the sound of happiness.

But wait… there was another sound, too.

A quiet hum, hardly audible.

The sound of an electric engine accelerating.

Anshutes turned around fast, dropping coins on the roadway. The ice cream truck was coming fast. The shotgun was right there on the double yellow line. He made a grab for it.

Before he touched the gun, the ice cream truck’s bumper cracked his skull like a hard-boiled egg.

Kim felt better now.

A couple Eskimo Pies could do that for a girl.

“Want another?” the guy asked.

“Sure,” Kim said. “I could probably eat a whole box.”

“I guess it’s like they say: a walk in the desert does wonders for the appetite.”

The guy smiled and walked over to the ice cream truck. She watched him. He was kind of cute. Not as cute as Johnny Ringo, of course, but Johnny definitely had his downside.

She sat in the dirt and finished her third pie. You had to eat the suckers fast or else they’d melt right in your hand. It was funny — she’d left Vegas worse than flat broke, owing Johnny twenty grand, and now she had three hundred bucks worth of ice cream in her belly. Things were looking up. She kind of felt like a safe-deposit box on legs. Kind of a funny feeling. Kind of like she didn’t know whether she should laugh or cry.

The guy handed her another Eskimo Pie. “Thanks — ” she said, and she said it with a blank that he was sure to fill in.

“Coker,” he said. “My first name’s Dennis, but I don’t like it much.”

“It’s a nice name,” Kim said. Which was a lie, but there was no sense hurting the poor guy’s feelings. “Thanks, Dennis.”

“My pleasure. You’ve had a hell of a hard time.”

She smiled. Yeah. That was one way of putting it.

“So you’re heading for Vegas,” she said.

Coker nodded. “Me and my buddy… well, we ended up with this truckload of ice cream. We wanted a place where we could sell it without much trouble from the law.”

“Vegas is definitely the place.”

“You lived there awhile?”

She smiled. She guess you could call what she’d done in Vegas living. If you were imaginative enough.

“Kim?” he prodded. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she said. Man, it was tough. She should have been happy… because the guy had saved her life. She should have been sad… because Johnny Ringo had tried to kill her. But she couldn’t seem to hold onto any one emotion.

She had to get a grip.

“You ever been to Vegas?” she asked.

“No,” the guy said. “Going there was my partner’s idea.”

“It’s a tough place.”

“I don’t care how tough it is.” He laughed. “As long as it’s the kind of place you can sell an ice cream bar for a hundred bucks, I’m there.”

She nodded. Ice Cream was worth a lot in Vegas.

But other things came pretty cheap.

“It’s a rich town,” she said, because saying that was really like saying nothing. “It’s full of rich men and women. I read somewhere that the entire budget for law enforcement in the United States is about a third of what it costs to power Vegas’ air-conditioners for a month.”

“Wow. That’s amazing.”

“Not really. Vegas is a desert. It’s an empty place. Everything that’s there, someone put it there. Only the rich can afford a place like that. They come and go as they please, jetting in and out in their fancy planes. Everybody else — they’re pretty much stuck there. That’s what happened to me. I was a dancer. I made pretty good money that way. But every dime I made was already spent on my apartment, or A/C, or water or food. I kept waiting for my lucky break, but it never came. I just couldn’t get ahead. Before I knew it, I got behind. And then I got in trouble with my boss — ”

“Johnny Ringo?”

“You know about him?”

Coker nodded at the one-armed bandit. “I’ve heard of the Mojave Two-Step.”

Kim swallowed hard. ‘You never want to dance that one,” she said. “I’m here to tell you.”

The guy looked down at the road, kind of embarrassed. Like he wanted to know her story, but was too shy to ask for the details.

“Well, maybe your luck’s due to change,” he said. “It happened to me. Or it’s going to happen. It’s like I can see it coming.”

“Like a dream?”

“Or an omen.”

Kim smiled. “I like that word.”

“Me too. It’s kind of like a dream, only stronger.”

“I used to have this dream,” Kim said. “When I first came to Vegas. That I was going to hit it big. That I’d live in a penthouse suite with the A/C set at sixty-eight degrees. That the sun would never touch my skin and I’d be white as a pearl.”

The guy didn’t say anything. Still shy. Kim had forgotten about that particular emotion. She hadn’t run across it much in the last few years. Not with Johnny Ringo, and not with any of his friends. Not even with the two-legged slots that followed her around the casino night after night until she fed them dollars just so they’d leave her alone.

In Vegas, everyone wanted something. At least the walking slots came a lot cheaper than their flesh-and-blood counterparts.

Funny. She didn’t feel good about it, but she didn’t exactly feel bad, either.

That’s just the way it was in Vegas.

It was a rich man’s town.

Or a rich woman’s.

Kim finished her Eskimo Pie. She liked what the guy (what was his name again?) had said about omens. That they were dreams, only stronger.

She stared at the ice cream truck.

She thought: it’s not often you get a second chance.

“You want another?” the guy asked.

She laughed. “Just one more?”

Of course, he thought she was talking about an Eskimo Pie, when that really wasn’t what she wanted at all.

He went after the ice cream. She watched him go.

Past the dead guy on the highway

Past the second chance that lay there on the yellow line.

Kim really didn’t have a choice.

She had to pick it up.

She heard the freezer door close. Watched the guy (Dennis, that was his name) step from behind the truck.

He was all right about it. He kind of smiled when he saw the shotgun in her hands, like he already understood.

“I’m sorry, Dennis,” she said. “But dreams die hard. Especially strong ones.”

“Yeah.” he said. “Yeah.”

Coker stood in the middle of the road, eating an Eskimo Pie, listening to “Pop Goes the Weasel.”

The ice cream truck was gone from view, but he could still hear its little song. That meant she was up ahead somewhere, playing the tape.

Maybe she was playing it for him. The music drifted through the night like a sweet connection. Coker listened to the song while he finished his Eskimo Pie. Anshutes couldn’t stand the music the truck made. He wouldn’t let Coker play it at all.

Well, Anshutes didn’t have a say in anything anymore. Coker stared at his ex-partner. The big man lay dead on the highway like roadkill of old, his pockets stuffed with silver dollars.

Coker turned them out, filling his own pockets with the coins. Then he walked over to the one-armed bandit.

The Cogwheel Kid was primed for action — Anshutes’ coin between his lips, his lone robotic arm held high in the air. Coker pulled the slot machine’s arm. Ribbons of neon danced across the one-armed bandit’s chest. Bucking broncos, charging buffaloes, jackalopes that laughed in the desert night.

After awhile, the neon locked up.

Two tittering jackalopes with a snorting buffalo between them.

Hardly a jackpot.

Coker smiled as the neon flickered out. Losing wasn’t a big surprise, really. After all, Lady Luck was gone. She was up ahead, driving an ice cream truck, heading for the land of dreams.

The Cogwheel Kid started walking. He headed east, toward Vegas, looking for another mark.

Coker jumped on the robot’s back and held on tight.

He smiled, remembering the look of her frosty blue eyes. Lady Luck with a shotgun. He should have hated her. But he was surprised to find that he couldn’t do that.

She was chasing a dream, the same way he was.

He couldn’t help hoping she’d catch it.

The same way he hoped he’d catch her.

If he was lucky.