Desert Angel (16 page)

*   *   *

…
A
T NIGHT
, the amusement park had great colors, the brightest neon and flashing lights outlining the shapes of rides. She was up in the sky, everything laid out below her, and then she was passing through the front gate in a crowd of people headed to the double roller coaster. She had seen this place several times from the freeway and always wanted to go there … but now the nearby roller coaster was creaking, so maybe it wasn’t safe. Maybe it was going to break and—

Angel’s eyes popped open. Noise. Creaking. Wood groaning … the door frame … She reached to the floor for the purse but couldn’t find it. When she leaned over, there was enough light to see, but it wasn’t there. Just the phone and water bottle. She grabbed the phone, twisted it open, but the screen was dark again and she couldn’t get a dial tone.

“Angel!” A bang on the door rattled the windows.

She jumped and hoped she hadn’t yelled. The kitchen. She’d set the purse by the sink while she tested whether the water worked.

“Angel!” The doorknob shook. “Hey, it’s Momo.”

My god,
he really is going to get himself killed
.

“Wait a sec,” she said, struggling to remember how to get the front door open. A deadbolt. Had she locked it with a key? No, there was a small knob and a little button thing on the door. She glanced out the window to see if there was anyone else in the street, anyone else watching. Another noise froze her again. A whine? Was Scotty twisting Momo’s arm? Hurting him so he would talk and get Angel to open the door?

“Easy, easy.” Momo’s voice.

What if she ran for the purse and he shot Momo? She couldn’t live with that. She had to open the door. She made herself undo the catches and pull, braced herself for a punch or a shot. But she had trouble making sense of what she saw. Momo. Bent over. Holding a cord in one hand and petting a dog with the other. She stepped back and the dog tugged the young man inside.

Momo was too busy with the animal to notice Angel yet, so she, too, focused on the dog. Light brown coat with a white horseshoe shape under its neck. A little over two feet tall with chest maybe twice as thick as its hips. Long, curved tail that swung and bounced. Big dark eyes and a thick pink tongue sliding out of its mouth, making a dopey grin. Excited, but quiet. Angel hadn’t been around many dogs, but no barking seemed unusual.

“Uh, I brought this for you,” Momo was saying. “He’s yours, you want him.”

Want a dog? Angel couldn’t even feed herself, let alone take care of a dog. What was he thinking? Was he just plain dumb?

Momo hadn’t stopped talking. “… so he’s a little injured. Sore, but he’s getting better. Right side, shoulder, and uh, I guess you call it the elbow, kind of skinned up. I think maybe he fell off one of the work trucks on the highway. No collar or tag. Nobody stopped or was looking. I didn’t see any signs on the road or posted at the store. He’s real good. I think he’ll get used to you quick. He already likes me and I got you a pack of baloney. I bet you feed him, he’s yours. And you can name him … I been calling him ‘Guy’ and he comes right up and he’s real stro—”

“Whoa!” Angel said it loud enough to penetrate Momo’s enthusiasm. “What am I supposed to do with a…” but she got it before she reached the end of the question. “Guard dog?”

“You bet,” Momo said, practically breathless. “They’re great! They use guys like him to watchdog those huge microwave towers you see around here. They’re sweet as can be until you try to mess with their home or their master. Then it’s back off or get bit, and this kind don’t never let go.”

“Isn’t it a girl?”

“Whatever.”

*   *   *

T
HE DOG
, Angel named her Xena, settled down as soon as Momo left. Angel opened the pack of baloney and the dog swallowed it in one gulp and promptly went to sleep. In the morning, Angel saw that sometime during the night Xena had joined her on the couch and was now sleeping across her feet.

From yesterday’s exploration Angel knew the lights and water had been turned off. To pee, she’d been using the toilet even though it wouldn’t flush. She washed her mouth out from the bottle and poured Xena a drink in a bowl she’d found in the kitchen. She’d slept in her clothes and didn’t have anything to change into, so all she had to grab was the purse. She thought again about a different way to carry the gun. Did the Flores family leave anything she could use? In a bedroom she found a CD case but it wasn’t big enough. In back, in what used to be the laundry room, there were a couple of old sheets on the floor. She ripped a foot-wide strip from one, wrapped the pistol in it, and wound it around her waist with the gun at her back like a fanny pack. A wrinkled men’s dress shirt from a closet floor worked like a jacket to cover it.

She wasn’t sure how the dog would react to the kids, so she left it in the fenced yard and walked the back route to school.

Momo was in front of the building sitting in his truck when she arrived. “Hey,” he called to her, “I talk to you for a sec?”

She walked to the passenger side and leaned in the open window.

“We friends again?” he asked. “I want to know, ’cause this is the last day I can take you to Brawley. I got to ride up home tonight and check in with Ramón, do some chores for my folks. Got to be working again before the weekend.”

Had she forgiven him? What had she been so mad about? That he didn’t want her for a girlfriend? She could feel her face reddening. He was grown up and working and she was practically a child.
He must think I’m such a freak.
Like he’s gonna want a … a what? Maybe he thought she was a tramp like her mother … somebody who came on to every guy she sat in a truck with.

“Yeah,” she said, not ready to meet his eyes. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I’m just weird. You know. Uh, the dog was really cool. Thanks.”

“So you want to go to town this afternoon? There’s a couple of clubs, a couple of motels you might want to scope out.”

“Sure,” she said. She glanced up to find him smiling. “So honk a couple of times. I’ll come out, but I got to go now and help set up.” She left for the school door without looking at him again. Thinking instead that, once inside, she would figure out how to recharge the cell phone. She hoped that was its only problem.

Intent on Momo and the cell phone, she missed the very warning she had tried to prepare for just two days ago in her neighborhood car survey. Another man she’d never met, stocky, black-haired, middle-aged, was parked near the end of the block, watching her from the driver’s seat of a white commercial van that had not been there previously.

24

Momo handed her a photocopy as she climbed in the truck. “That’s his license on top, feds’ mug shots on the bottom.”

“This from TJ?” she asked.

He nodded. “He gave it to Rita.” Momo poked his thumb at the pictures. “Your guy still look like that?”

Angel was focused on the picture and trying to get comfortable again with Momo. She didn’t pay attention to the white van as they drove past it and on out toward the highway, didn’t see the man inside pick up a cell phone as he put his truck in gear and followed them at a distance.

“Scotty’s hair’s longer. Like the bottom one,” Angel said, “but he would cut it or color it if he needed to. He probably won’t change what he wears. Maybe keep a cap on.”

“He thin like that?”

“Pretty much, but he’s strong and he’s quick like you wouldn’t believe. He knocked a beer off the table and caught it before it hit the floor. And when he’s drinking he gets mad real fast. The remote pissed him off and he kicked in the television before Mom or me could even yell.”

“Hair-trigger?”

Angel didn’t answer. While he turned south on the highway, she was busy searching under the pickup seat.

“What you doing?” Momo gave her a quick glance and reached down and pulled the lever, slid the seat back so she’d have an easier time looking.

“I shouldn’t be like this,” Angel said, on her knees now, peering underneath. “You got a hat or anything? Sweatshirt?” She glanced up and caught him looking down her top. Blushed. Ignored it and bent lower to cut off his view.

“You want a get-up? Fool him?”

“I can’t let him know I’m looking. He sees me and I’m not sure what he’d do … even with you there.”

“Yeah, but I can’t take you in places looking funny. You gotta blend or my story don’t make sense.”

He was right. Angel stopped burrowing and crawled into the seat again. “So how can I change?”

Their conversation was interrupted the first time by the glitzy Red Desert Casino a few miles south of Salt Shores. Angel thought it was too close and looked too expensive for Scotty, but maybe it would be a good place to meet women. The parking lot was full of the kind of trucks he might buy. They parked by the front door and watched the customers enter. Older people mostly, smokers, several pale like they never got outside, and some beefy trucker types. The women, at least during the afternoon, were too fat or too worn out, sadly unattractive. Angel and Momo decided to give it another look when they came back by that evening.

Next, a few miles south, they checked the tiny town that materialized out of the desert, Westmorland. It couldn’t hold more than a couple thousand people. Probably too small and exposed for Scotty to choose it. There were two good-looking motels right on the highway, pickups in each parking lot. Again they decided to give it a closer look on the way back home. In the late afternoon they could watch people leave the motel rooms and head out to dinner.

*   *   *

B
RAWLEY’S BUSINESS DISTRICT
was a long straight street with fast food and chain stores at the west end. Maybe a half mile down they passed a big grassy plaza with red-tile-roofed buildings and, shortly after, the commercial center, a block-long stucco arcade full of shops and small businesses. Auto repair and service storefronts stretched beyond them to the east.

Sociedad Thrift Store was on this Main Street, near the middle, across from the Celebration Outreach Church. It didn’t look open, but the door pushed easily. They didn’t have any lights on. The large cluttered room was dimly lit by sunlight through the front windows. Probably helped sales. If the clerk thought anything strange was going on, she didn’t let it show in her face. Angel left wearing a short brown shaggy wig, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and a ratty denim vest that made her look almost like a boy. A fake-leather tote bag hung at her side by a shoulder strap. She had to clamp it with her elbow to keep the gun from banging her hip.

When they drove off, the man in the commercial van got on his phone again before turning and heading back north where he’d come from.

*   *   *

A
NGEL AND
M
OMO CRUISED THE PARKING
lots at the Brawley Gardens and the Travel Palms looking for big pickups with dealer paper on the windows or remnants of advertising paint on the windshields. Nothing. They drove through lots at fast-food joints and pizza places while Angel stared through the plate glass windows.

Midway along the downtown stucco storefronts, they saw their first bar, Rosie’s. Momo parked and, when the sidewalks were empty, they went in. A tall, heavy woman stood behind the bar washing glasses, shaking the water off, and setting them on the counter to dry. No customers on the stools, a couple of old guys at a side table. When they got close Angel could see the woman was wearing a ton of makeup, cakeface, and had dyed her hair an unrealistic gold.

“Want someding stronger dan seltzer, I need ta I.D.,” the woman said, drying her hands on her pants.

Russian? German? Angel had no idea.

“No, hey, I’m just looking for my buddy,” Momo said, handing her the photocopy. “Job opened up at the plant if I can find him.”

The woman didn’t take the sheet of paper, gave the pictures a look. “Dey give da convicts now a job?” she asked, flat expression.

“No. No, this is the only picture I got is all.”

The woman shook her head. Began washing more glasses.

“What they want, honey?” This from the thin, wrinkled old man with a feed-store cap and a striped uniform shirt like a mechanic might wear. His buddy at the table craned around to make eye contact. “I might know him,” he said. “What’s his name?”

“Scotty,” Angel said.

“You’re cute.” The wrinkled man was bracing himself to stand. “Come over here and lemme get a look at you.”

“Siddown, Rudy.” The gold-haired woman had both hands on the counter, scowling. “You don know nobody. An’ you two, ged out,” she said.

*   *   *

T
HE SECOND BAR THEY ENTERED
, the Imperial Club, was dimly lit and they paused just inside the door while their eyes adjusted. Angel was startled by a loud crack and rattle.

“Dice cup,” Momo whispered. “I been here. They don’t never check I.D.”

Angel had been wondering how old Momo was. She guessed that put him at nineteen or twenty. “We’re not going to get anything, right?” she asked. Men had tried to get her drunk before. After what happened the first time, she was wary.

“No way.” Momo smiled. “Just be cool.”

She followed him to the polished wooden bar, where a couple sat talking to each other and two men in straw hats sat a stool apart. The bartender, a slender man with a closely trimmed beard and tight black snap-button shirt, turned to face them, frowning as he studied Angel.

“Hey, I think I got a job for a buddy of mine, if I can find him,” Momo said, stepping up to the rail.

The man put a napkin out.

“Coke,” Momo said, laying the photo sheet flat next to it. “My sister don’t want nothing.”