Ever Onward (57 page)

Chapter 45
: ‘TRAIL’S END’

The Trail’s End Bar

Bakersfield, California

May
20
^th

“I don’t like this,” Gill
whispered.

Josh geared down and prepared to stop.
It was full dark now and the makeshift guard post was lit by a
single lantern. A man armed with a rifle stood by the lowered
barricade. Another sat just inside the small shack. A sheet of
paper with a complete description of Josh’s group lay unread on the
table beside him. Apparently the guard was more interested in where
the staples were placed in Miss September than in any ‘hurry up and
wait’ orders from on high.

“Just smile and keep quiet,” Josh
replied. “Flame knows what to do.”

Gill Sweetwater sat back, nervously
fingering the snub-nosed .38 in his belt. He’d gone to school in
Bakersfield and had willingly volunteered to come along as guide.
Now, however, he wished he had kept his big mouth shut.

A flashlight beam splashed through the
passenger window. Flame smiled sweetly, her Smith & Wesson
cocked and ready on her lap. The light flickered over the inside of
the van, then back to Flame.

“Hello there, Sweet Thing,” a voice
behind the light said. “Where have you been all my
life?”

Flame’s smile broadened. “Looking for
the right man.”

The light moved down to her ample
chest, then back up.

“Consider him found.”

Still smiling, Flame grabbed the man’s
wrist with her left hand and yanked. As his arm came inside the cab
she shoved the barrel of her .44 into his open mouth. “Consider
this, asshole!”

Cobb was out of the van and inside the
small shack before the second guard knew anything was wrong.
Slamming the heel of his hand under the man’s jaw, Cobb was
checking for a third party before the guard slumped to the floor.
He need not have bothered. Except for a plentiful supply of glossy
centerfolds, the tiny hut was empty.

Back at the van Jessie had the first
guard tied and gagged by the time a wide-eyed Gill Sweetwater
stepped out. “Kee-rist!”, he said in awe. “You white men don’t fool
around!”

Flame winked at him, shoving her S
& W back in her shoulder holster. Gill’s eyes followed her,
torn between watching the large gun and her equally large breasts.
“Stick around, sonny. You aint seen nothing yet.”

Gill’s tanned face
reddened.

Cobb returned, the unconscious guard
draped over his shoulder. Josh grinned at him, then spoke to Jess.
“Help Cobb drag those two into the bushes. Gill, lend a
hand.”

“You’re not going to kill them?”, the
young half-breed asked.

Josh smiled. “No, I’m not. And neither
are you. Now move it.”

“But,” Gill protested, “they would
have killed us.”

Jessie put his hand on Gill’s
shoulder, his smile a carbon copy of his father’s. “Only if we’d
given them the chance.”

Gill shook his head, bending over to
lift the legs of the first guard. Jessie had Duct taped him into a
living mummy. “Crazy whites,” he muttered.

Twenty minutes later Gill had them
turn into what was left of the East Hills Mall. Rusting cars
sitting lopsidedly on flats littered the once tidy parkinglot. Most
of the store windows were broken. Glass and unwanted loot sparkled
in the Westfalia’s headlights. Several of the buildings had been
burnt to the ground.

“Why here, Gill?”, Jessie
asked.

“There’s a bar. At least, there was a
few months ago.” The half-breed shrugged. “Good a place as any to
start nosing around.”

Flame slapped Gill on his
knee. “You’re learning fast, kid.”

The Trail’s End Bar was at the far end
of the mall. A lantern dimly lit the once proud neon sign. The
adjoining building was a burnt out hulk. Several vehicles still in
working order were parked outside. As they watched, a dented
pick-up pulled in beside them. Four men and two women poured out
and headed for the watering hole, though by the drunken laughter,
the Trail’s End hadn’t been their first stop.

“Who goes and who stays?”, Cobb
asked.

“Gill and I go in,” Josh replied. “You
follow three minutes later. Jess and Flame watch the
van.”

“Bullshit!”, Flame said, putting all
her considerable emotion into it. “Same old bullshit every time!
You get all the action and I get to mind the kids! Well, not this
time, Lover.” A second later she was out the van and striding
towards the bar.

Josh swore, then turned to Jessie.
“You and Gill stay here.” Then he was out of the van and heading
towards the bar. Cobb flowed along beside him like a second
shadow.

From his place behind the bar, a
balding man with thick glasses perched on a drinker’s nose stood
frowning at the four men and two women who had just entered his
humble establishment. Hairy Legg, born Harold Manny Legowitz some
fifty-two years ago in L.A.’s poor Jewish section, had both seen
and been many things in his life; chief among them were a stand-up
comedian and an alcoholic. The one thing he still was, however, was
an excellent judge of character. Handling twenty years of drunken
hecklers in hundreds of third-rate lounges had honed his
cutting-humor to a fine edge. The world, according to Hairy Legg,
was made up of two very uneven categories: one tenth assbusters and
nine tenths assholes. The four men and two women sitting before him
all fell into the latter category. Loud-mouthed, dangerous, sullen
or simply hangers-on they might be, each according to their own
bent, but assholes one and all.

Mage, Hairy’s
waitress-bookkeeper-bedwarmer had hurried over to them and was now
doing her best to ignore one of the men’s hand working its way up
her thigh. From his chair in the corner, Big Glen the bouncer
tightened his grip on the sawed-off 12 gage across his lap and
watched Hairy for a sign. Hairy’s own hand moved towards the Colt
Double Eagle beneath the counter, fluttered over the walnut grip,
then pulled away. ‘Fuck it!’, Hairy reasoned. He had never liked
guns much, and was a piss-poor shot at best. Besides, Mage could
take care of herself. If not, there was always Big Glen.

One of the men uttered some witticism
that sent the mousy broad with him into a fit of drunken
laughter.

‘Snorts like a sow!’, the comic inside
Hairy quipped. ‘Probably smells like one too!’ He signaled Big Glen
to relax.

The door opened and Flame stormed in,
her luxuriant hair flowing about her, her temper reaching even
further.

‘Now there’s a real assbuster!’, Hairy
thought. The comic inside him agreed wholeheartedly.

Flame marched up to the bar and fixed
Hairy with her emerald eyes. “A shot of your best, Baldy. Make it a
double.”

Hairy smiled, then dug out a dusty
bottle of Johnny Walker. As he poured the liquid fire into a clean
glass, two men followed the red-head through the door. The bearded
one in a faded jean jacket looked like he wouldn’t take too much
shit from anybody. The taller one with the crew-cut and the
ankle-length coat looked like he wouldn’t take any shit at
all.

“Hit me again,” Flame said, holding
out her empty glass.

Hairy looked at her over the rim of
his bifocals. They weren’t worth a pint of piss any more and he
badly needed a new pair. ‘Not much chance of that’, Hairy thought.
For once the other voice remained quiet. Poor glasses or not, there
was no mistaking the anger in the redhead’s eyes --- nor the large
gun snuggled against her equally large breasts. ‘Twin 45’s and a
big gun too!’, the comic quipped. Hairy forced the acid-tongued
little prick back into his corner and poured another drink. “I
suppose you got the coin for this?”

Flame dug into her tight jeans and
tossed two silver dollars on the polished wood.

“Christ, Red!”, Hairy exclaimed.
“What’d you want to do, buy the whole friggin’ bar?”

“Just leave the bottle,” Flame
said.

Hairy shrugged, scooped up the coins
and looked at the bearded man coming up behind her. The taller one
stayed by the door. “What’ll it be, friend?”

“A clean glass and a little privacy,
if you don’t mind.” The tone was warm and the smile was easy, but
the eyes were colder than a mortician’s convention.

“Sure,” Hairy muttered, then shuffled
off down the bar. Part of his attention shifted back to the six
noisy beer drinkers. Another part, the sharp-tongued comic part,
kept an eye on the new strangers.

The redhead and the guy with the
frosty eyes were talking in angry whispers. Red seemed real pissed
off about something. After another stiff belt however, she started
to come around. By the time she’d downed her third, she was hanging
all over the guy. All the while the mean looking bastard with the
crew-cut watched silently from the shadows.

Hairy’s ulcer suddenly started to act
up. He was reaching for the jumbo bottle of Pepto Bismo he kept
next to the Colt Double Eagle when the door opened again and a half
dozen of Jocco’s soldier-boys came in. That skinny little prick,
Rat, was with them. Hairy groaned inwardly. The last time Rat had
dropped in he’d knifed a whore and shot a paying customer. The
soldier-boys with him then had nearly died laughing. Hairy held out
little hope that tonight would be any better.

Rat, his hair and eyebrows just
starting to grow back from the firefight with the Desperadoes,
looked even more like his namesake than ever. The skin on his left
cheek was red and raw and his left ear had melted down to a charred
knob. His beady rodent eyes darted about the room, coming to rest
on Flame. Despite a limp, the blood-thirsty little bastard still
managed to swagger across the floor. Cradled in his arm was a
pump-action riot gun.

The room went silent. Even the six
assholes that had come in earlier kept quiet. Apparently even
true-blue assholes like them knew enough not to fuck with Jocco’s
boys. Big Glen, perhaps feeling not so ‘big’ after all, decided
that now was a great time to take five, or fifty , or just fuck off
altogether. Hairy couldn’t really blame him. A buck a week and all
of Mage you could eat wasn’t worth having that little psycho cut
your balls off. Part of Hairy felt like shuffling off with
Glenny-boy --- then again, part of him didn’t.

Glen was half way to the side door
when one of the soldiers turned his gun on him. The sound of the
slide chambering a shell made Big Glen halt in mid stide. “Go
ahead, asshole,” the soldier crooned. “Make my decade!”

The Comic inside Hairy giggled. ‘You
can run, Glenny-boy, but you can not hide.’

“Shut the fuck up!”, Hairy muttered
quietly.

Not, as luck would have it however,
quietly enough.

Private Leo Panelli, illegitimate
offspring of a Swedish ski instructor and an Italian air
stewardess, had just bellied-up to the bar when Hairy delivered the
unfortunate one liner. Private Leo not only heard Hairy, but, sadly
enough, had misconstrued his intent completely. Leo’s six foot two
frame leaned over the bar and grasped Hairy’s last remaining dress
shirt. Foul breath, the result of a root canal gone bad, washed
over the startled ex-comedian.

“You trying to be funny, four-eyes?”,
Leo growled.

The Comic in Hairy found this
hilarious. Hairy, however, was of a far different opinion. Leo,
impatient as his father had been to shove it into Miss Air Italia,
shoved Hairy hard into the back wall. Glass and bottles fell to the
floor, shattering into tiny fragments. Something in Hairy shattered
as well.

Sitting there in a growing puddle of
cheap wine and home-made rot-gut, Harold Manny Legowitz, born some
fifty-two years ago in L.A.’s poor Jewish section, had had just
about all he was going to take. The goddamn son-of-a-bitches had
already taken everything he cared about! His wife, his kids, his
career. When that wasn’t enough, they’d taken the whole fucking
world! All he had left was his memories and this shitty little bar,
and now, grinning blond whops and scab-faced little psychos were
trying to take that! Well, not this time, buddy! Not THIS
time!

Had Hairy been listening he might have
heard that familiar voice in his head screaming out a warning. But
Hairy was past listening, past caring as well. Mr. Saturday Night
of the Sleazy Lounge set was taking a rather sudden, yet, in many
ways, long overdue, walk on the wild side. A one way walk from
which there was no encore and certainly no return engagement. And
if the truth be told, Hairy didn’t give a shit. Smiling like the
fabled Cheshire Cat, Hairy in Wonderland slowly reached for the
Colt Double Eagle on the shelf beneath the counter.

Private Leo stood grinning on the far
side of the bar. As Hairy pulled himself to his feet, Leo’s grin
spread from ear to ear. It soon vanished however, when Hairy,
looking like a Jewish Clint Eastwood gone to seed, raised the
massive Colt. The ‘click’ of the hammer being pulled back acted
like a canter calling the faithful. All eyes swung to center
stage.

And now, ladies and germs, let’s all
give a rousing Trail’s End raspberry for the late, great Hairy
Legg!

Mage, the ex-disco queen turned
waitress, gave a startled squeak. Several soldiers managed warning
yells. The rest just managed to stand their with their jaws dropped
and their thumbs up their asses.