Passing Through the Flame (39 page)

“What are you thinking, lover?” Sandy said against his chest.

“Not thinking, just feeling good.”

“Mmmmm...”

“I think maybe we mean something to each other.”

“Mmmmm...”

“But I wonder what.”

She looked up across his chest at him, kissed him lightly on his chin. “For what it’s worth, I’d like to say I love you,” she said. “Can I say that? You won’t think it sounds unreal?”

“I won’t think it sounds unreal.”

“Okay, I love you.”

The words did something strange to Paul. They made him tingle, but they also made him feel uncomfortable, uncertain, and a little sad. Because now he knew that he had to say it, too, and he knew that he would say it, but some secret part of him did not want to say those three innocuous words.

“I love you,” he said, leaning down to kiss her on the neck. The words in his mouth sounded unreal.

“That means we are officially lovers,” Sandy said. “We have had had our first fight, and we’ve made up, and we’ve told each other I love you. Isn’t it romantic?”

“Fuckin’ romantic!” Paul said, feeling so weird, feeling close to her and distant, happy and unfair, and a little afraid. I don’t understand this, he thought fuzzily. I for sure as hell do not understand what is happening inside my very own self.

“Then how about some romantic fuckin’?” she said with a giggle. She picked up her champagne glass. “With this flat fruit of a California vine, I baptize thee my lover,” she said, and poured the sweet, sticky champagne onto his stomach. She rolled off him and onto her back on the other side of the bed, opening her arms wide, thrusting her breasts toward the ceiling. “Do it to me, Paul,” she said, and his internal confusion was whited out by a surge of lust, affection, yes, admit it, true sexual love.

He giggled, and he poured his champagne over her breasts. The sweet liquid flowed down her chest, pooled on her stomach, trickled down the inside of her soft thighs.

He rolled over onto her, and followed the champagne trail over her body with gentle tongue and lips, the sweetness of the liquid melding with the silkiness of her flesh, the tenderness of her soft sighs of pleasure, his own achingly delicious lust to please her to form a single sensation that made him forget everything but the unbearable sweetness of this moment. With his newfound lover.

The mountain sun beat down on Chris Sargent’s forehead, adding solar fuel to the fire of his rage. He drew his Luger from the holster at his waist and shoved it in the face of the fat patron. The Mexican trembled; sweat poured down his cheeks into his mustache.

“You gonna off him, Chris?” Bellows asked eagerly, his angular black face creased in a crocodile’s smile, his M-16 rising slowly and involuntarily into firing position like a hard-on.

Sargent looking around, trying to think, forcing himself to set off logic instead of emotion. Down below in the little valley, the fields were covered with the stubble of harvested pot plants. Here, halfway up the ridge, the three lean-tos hidden in the shrubbery were empty. The grass is gone, he thought, and nothing short of catching up with those guinea bastards is gonna bring it back. Atop the ridgeline, his four trucks were still half empty. Down at the margin of the harvested fields, McCracken, Browder, Coleman, Pulaski and Brown formed a circle of guns around a dozen terrified
pednes.

Is there anything to gain by killing this stupid fucker Montez or any of his flunkies? Who will it teach a lesson to? These pot farmers are scattered all over the mountains, and they don’t make a practice of talking to each other. Montez has been good for a lot of prime dope in the past; this is a good little plantation. The trick is to make sure this never happens again.

Sargent hand cocked his Luger with a conspicuous flourish.

“Madre de Dios!”
Montez muttered under his breath.
“En nombre de la Virgen,
Señor Chris....”

“Shoot the fucker, Chris?”

“Shut up, Frank!” Jesus Christ, Bellows’d rather kill than fuck. Used to take ears in the Nam.
“En inglés
,
Montez
, “Sargent said. “
Tu
sabes?”

Montez nodded frantically. “I have no choice, Señor Chris. They come here three days
pasado, muy malo gringos
with many guns, and they say I must sell them
la mota,
or they will take it and kill me.
For Dios
, Señor Chris, what am I to do, they say that no more will I sell my harvest to you, that you will never return. I am a poor man who knows only the growing of the marijuana, I want nothing of the
guerras
of
norteamericanos,
only for the living of myself and my people.”

“Kill the son of a bitch, Chris,” Bellows said. “We’ve got to teach these dinks a lesson. Let ‘em get away with this kind of shit, and they’ll end up walking all over you.”

Sargent whirled on Bellows. “I give the orders here, I decide who we teach a lesson and how. Now shut the fuck up before I decide that
you
need to be taught a lesson, dig?”

Bellows glared at him sullenly but wasn’t stupid enough to try anything. Man, the boys are getting antsy on this swing. We’ve got to catch up to those guineas and take it out on them before we start taking it out on each other.

He glared at Montez. “As you can see, we’ve returned,
verdad?”

“
Verdad
, Señor Chris.”

“And we’re going to continue returning,
tu sabes?
Until you and your
peones
are old men with white beards down to your
cojones.
If you should have the good fortune to live so long. And never again will we find you without a harvest to sell us. You will swear this on the name of the Virgin and the life of your mother?”

“
En nombre de la Virgen y la vida de mi madre! Si! Si!
” Montez bobbed and groveled in relief. Sargent found the spectacle nauseating, and he also realized that Montez’s oath was worth about as much as a one-centavo piece. This greaser has to be taught a lesson he’ll never forget. I’ve got to make sure that he’ll be more scared of us than of the organization soldiers if they come back, if
they
should live so long. Sargent stole a sidelong glance at Bellows, watching him through slitted eyes. And I’ve got to make it clear to the boys that I’m being smart, not soft, or I’m really gonna have discipline problems.

“Get those men up here!” Sargent shouted. “On the double!”

In a couple of minutes, the boys had Montez’s
peones
lined up in a row behind their
patron.
“Step back,” Sargent ordered. “Form a firing squad.”

The five men quickly formed a rank about ten feet in front of the prisoners. Bellows leered at Sargent, flipped his M-16 to rapid fire. Browder, Coleman, Pulaski, and Brown simply followed orders without showing emotion, the way proper troops should. Bart McCracken gave Sargent a small accusatory grimace and wiped sweat off his light-skinned face, but gave no lip. McCracken was smart; Sargent mentally noted to give him the next open group leadership. The Mexicans cowered and moaned.

“Ready....”

Safeties were flipped off, M-16’s switched to rapid fire and brought to quarter arms. Four of the
peones
dropped to their knees. Two of the others began to blubber. Montez stared at Sargent in uncomprehending terror.

“Aim....”

His six men brought their guns into firing position. Two more peons dropped to their knees. Montez began to tremble uncontrollably. A warm glow emanating from the regions of his loins and stomach suffused Sargent’s body. A word, a chop of my arm, and these cowardly puling bastards are meat. Stupid fuckers think they can screw around with us goddamn stinking guinea—

He brought himself up short. The organization soldiers, not these poor slobs, were the enemy; it was
their
ass that would be grass. These dinks just had to be taught a lesson in fear; there would be neither satisfaction nor profit in killing them.

Sargent held up his left hand. He walked over to Montez, knocked off his hat, grabbed him by the hair, yanked his head up, and smashed him across the mouth with the barrel of the Luger, Montez screamed, spat out a tooth, drooled blood. Sargent stuck the barrel of the Luger into his bleeding mouth. Montez’s eyes began to roll upward in a faint; Sargent yanked him back into full consciousness by painfully pulling his hair.

“Say thank you,” he said. “Thank me for sparing your worthless life.” He withdrew the pistol from Montez’s mouth.

“Muchisimas gracias,
“Montez muttered, through the pain and blood.

“Now I want the dinero those greasy guineas paid you. All of it. Pronto.”

Montez fumbled in his pockets and came up with a fat wad of high-denomination peso notes. Jesus Christ, they didn’t even pay the poor slob in dollars! Maybe we’ve been too kind to the Mexes.

“All right, I want you all to strip. Take off
tu camisas.
”

With some wild and terrified gesticulations from Montez and a little Luger waving from Sargent, the thirteen Mexicans got out of their clothes. The firing squad kept their weapons trained on them. Bellows got to looking sullen again. McCracken broke into a crooked shitkicker grin.

“Pile them together.”

Montez gathered up the clothes and piled them in a heap at Sargent’s feet. Sargent took out his Zippo.
“Me cago on
this crappy dinero,” he said, throwing the wad of peso notes onto the heap of homespun clothing. “I shit on this dirty money.” He leaned down and set the money and clothes on fire.

Montez moaned in anguish, and most of the peons let out wails—their share of the money must’ve been in their pockets, as Sargent had figured. This should teach them a lesson they won’t forget! The money and clothing burned rapidly and cleanly, with little smoke, like old newspapers.

Sargent’s men began muttering to themselves. Sargent laughed. After all, who
does
like to see bread bum? But the point had to be made.

“All right,” he said, “stop standing around pissing and moaning over a few thousand lousy pesos. I want these lean-tos burned. Bellows, you take Pulaski and Brown and go over the hill and burn the hootches. I want every fucking thing that these Mexes own burned into the goddamn-ground.”

“Man, you are getting soft,” Bellows said. “We should shoot these dinks and pin their ears to the nearest road marker.”

Bellows leered at Sargent disdainfully, almost threateningly. The other men halted in their tracks to watch the confrontation. Except for McCracken, who shook his head at Bellows’ stupidity or maybe at his color, they looked on neutrally.

“We’ll see how soft I’m getting when we catch up with those organization soldiers,” Sargent said. “And that’s exactly what we’re going to do. We’re going to load all the grass we’ve collected into two of the trucks, Browder and Brown are going to drive them down to the hydrofoil, and the rest of us are going after those damn guineas. McCracken, get your ass on the radio and order Baum’s and Smitty’s squads to do the same thing—send the dope they’ve collected back to the boats in as few trucks with as few men as possible, and prepare for a coordinated search-and-destroy mission.”

Sargent glared back at Bellows. “We’re going to catch up to those fuckers, and we’re going to send their ears and dicks back to the organization in a plain brown wrapper.”

Bellows broke into a wide grin. “Wow you’re talking like the real Chris Sargent!” he said. “Right-fucking-on!”

“Barry, Barry, sure I appreciate his style, but even I’m not putz enough to screw around in any
business
Jango Beck’s involved in.” Ivan Blue shookypical Ivan Blue chick, Barry Stein thought. Ivan is a male chauvinist pig, and a total bullshit artist—no wonder he appreciates Beck’s style! So why do I like the phony son of a bitch so much?

A waitress in blue jeans and a blue work shirt appeared with the food: steak and fried potatoes for Stein, steamed vegetables for Ivan’s lady-of-the-month, and Beef Stroganoff for Ivan. Ivan liked fancy food, and he had also insisted on ordering some expensive French red wine. For a revolutionary dedicated to the Movement, Ivan managed to be pretty flush most of the time. This place was really his style.

For his part, Stein felt like a fish out of water in the High Castle, and not just because the place was run by Jango Beck. All the weathered wood, soft lighting, and greenery were homey enough, and it was groovy to be able to smoke grass openly in a public place. And there were several chicks who certainly attracted him decorating the place, chicks who might even be impressed to meet the editor and publisher of the
Hash.
But the place Was too
show business.
Rock musicians and high-class groupies. Record company executives and coke-dealers-to-the-stars. The counterculture’s version of the Beautiful People. Definitely an elitist scene. And yet... and yet....

“What I don’t understand is how you let Jango sucker you into getting involved with a thug like Harry Marvin,” Ivan said through a mouthful of Stroganoff.

“A Movement superstar I know failed to bullshit John and Yoko into coming up with the bread I needed to keep the
Flash
alive.” Ivan shrugged, took a long drink of wine. “You know what that scene’s like,” he said.
“Everyone’s
asking them for bread. They’re doing the best they can.”

“So am I.”

“Sure you are, man,” Ivan said warmly. “I’m not putting you down. Look at it this way: if you hadn’t gotten hooked up with Marvin, things would be worse. The paper would be dead. At least you’re still in the ball game. If I didn’t believe in the
Flash,
would I have come down from San Francisco just to set up this meeting with Beck?”

Stein cut himself a piece of steak, chewed it absently. That’s what makes Ivan who he is. Sure, he’s on an ego trip, sure, he’s on a power trip, but that’s why he’s able to get on
Dick Cavett,
get news coverage, get inside doors that get shut in the faces of Movement people who don’t wear Superman suits, who don’t have the chutzpah to promote themselves. He’s got the power—but he’s willing to use it for the people.