Page 49 of It Takes a Thief

I’d let Maddy down in so many ways. I was not going to blow this one.

She was the light of my life. I’d fucked a lot of girls before her—and of course some during our separation when we were kids, when I went into the armed forces—but none had ever grabbed at my heart the way Maddy did. I remembered watching her as a horny young teen. She’d walk around in panties, braless under a muscle shirt. What the hell, I was just her mother’s boyfriend’s son.

That had done me in, straight to the heart. I craved her like nothing I’d ever felt before. This was more powerful than any drug or food or sedative, more powerful than mbelonging to my father’s motorcycle club. It ruled my life.

Why didn’t it still? Why had I let my career take over? Was I going to be some surly Michael Corleone, heartlessly ordering hits on people he’d worked with for years? A cold man made of stone, not even recognized, much less loved by his own wife and kids?

Fuck no. I was here to save my love, to swoop in like a lovesick Galahad and save her from this Moss Empire peckerhead. This was what I was good at. I’d finish off Empire, then finish my highway job, bury Noodlum if it was the last thing I did, and then Maddy and I would go on that cruise. Where was it to? Alaska? No, Mazatlán? I had the paperwork somewhere. It was the least I could do, bidding way too high on that trip, after I’d pasted poor Santiago Slayer.

Ogden had given me the GPS coordinates of the slummy trailer. On that flat horizon, it stuck out like a gangsta at a Mormon funeral. And yup, right there was Maddy’s Jeep. Empty. She must be inside the trailer.

A piece of shit Fat Boy was parked haphazardly, as though the rider had thrashed it in there. I parked like a normal guy and leaped up the steps to the front door.

Not a peep inside when I knocked. Trying the door, I found it was open, so I went in.

Just one whiff and I could tell this Moss Empire was the lowdown sort, like a Cutlass maybe, who had dealt meth and cut it with vitamins. Bottles of Vita-Blend B Vitamins, B-12 and MSM told me he wasn’t a health enthusiast but an assmuncher who probably cut his product by as much as fifty percent.

I looked up at the wall and got the shock of my life. Toon porn. Sure enough, Bugs was dogging it with another ball-gagged bunny, and big-breasted Marge and Maggie Simpson got it on together. Toon porn. How did I know that phrase? Something Fox had told me?

Noodlum. Fox had told me something about Judy Jetson giving George a skull job. They had found this paraphernalia in Noodlum’s lair when he ran after finding out they were coming for him.

Did Moss Empire know Noodlum? I was getting closer to the source of all my pain.

Then there came a cry outside. Small, far away, like the caaa of a lazy hawk.

But it was a woman’s voice, so I shot out the door, whipping my piece from my belt.

I stood like The Hulk in the middle of the dusty parking lot, hands outspread, bellowing at the top of my lungs. “Hello!”

“Down here!” the little voice came, and I was sure I heard a thud afterward.

I hauled ass over to a sort of shitty creek full of trash. Right away I saw the maroon rape van the cops had been looking for. Pretty fucking sly to hide it from the road like that.

I wasn’t sure what happened next. It happened so fast. I might’ve yelled “Drop your piece!” actually before I saw this clown, ostensibly Moss Empire, holding a gun to my old lady’s head. I knew she looked terrified. I could practically see or even feel her knees knocking together. A petrified Galileo stood behind her, clinging to the side of the van. While I yelled, I ran down the steep bank. Past flash floods which had compacted the sand, and instead of sloshing around, I darted. “Drop your fucking piece, fucktard!”

Sort of to my surprise, he did. Small-time dealers such as him usually weren’t used to being on the business end of a barrel. I strode right up to him and jammed my barrel into his forehead. “Why are you threatening my old lady? She know too much about you? You killed that little Indian girl, you fucking perv?”

“He did,” said Maddy, gaining more confidence. “He raped that poor girl and bashed her head in.”

Galileo added, “He’s got eyeballs in his fridge.”

“Aw, cumon now—” Empire started to say, but I moved a few inches closer to him.

“That fucking true? You’ve got a bunch of eyeballs? Where they come from?”

“Oh, you know…” Empire tried to laugh, as though we were buddies. “Stray girls here and there. The ones that won’t listen.”

“Setting them up to go to Nevada,” I presumed.

“Well, yeah. I mean, that’s logical. That’s the logical place to—”

“Do you work for Noodlum?”

“Who?”

“Do. You. Work. For Noodlum. The Cutlasses.”

Again, he tried to chuckle. I knew how difficult that was with a gun barrel jammed into your skull. “Noodlum, now that’s a funny name. I wonder what it means? Could be that he’s a complete noodle, or it could refer to his brain—”