Sail Cat Road, the sequel to No Good End, continues below. It is being posted tweet-by-tweet daily on Twitter (http://twitter.com/ttaylordude). I will post each chapter here in chronological order. Thank you for your time.
Chapter 14
Upstairs in his room, Gus was gaining strength. He knew about Bren’s abduction. He was about to check himself out and leave the hospital.
“Mr. Gantt, You need to stay a few more days,” said the nurse. “You are still healing. You can’t just check yourself out of a hospital.”
“You can take out the IV’s or I will,” said Gus. “My stay is over. I appreciate all you have done. I have business to take care of.
“You need to take care of yourself,” she said. “You start bleeding and it may be the last business you ever do.”
“I can live with that option,” he said. “Unless you have a court order to keep me here, I’m leaving. Believe me, you want me out of here.”
The nurse took out the IV’s reluctantly. She was married to a man as stubborn as Gus, so she understood the behavior.
Gus knew that people who wanted to get Jimmy out in the open were holding Bren. They might keep her alive, but he was disposable.
In a hospital, he was also exposed. If they could come in and take Bren, they could come in and kill him just as easily.
He could live with that option as well as long as Bren safe. And he had a plan to make that happen. He just did not know what it was yet.
As it turned out, Gus did not need a plan. His plan showed up in a truck and parked behind the medical disposal building. It was deserted.
Gus picked up his belongings from the safe. His cell phone was dead. His .45 was empty. He had $46 in his wallet. He noticed the commotion.
“FBI agent killed in the ER,” said a patient pushing an IV stand trailing tubes into her arms. “Man dressed like a woman did it.”
Gus walked down the back stairs to avoid the gathering crowd. As he stepped out the door into the sunshine, he heard a familiar voice.
“Let’s go, son,” said Jimmy leaning against the brick wall behind a tall shrub. “Get out before the cameras show up. Truck’s out back.”
“They took Bren. Somebody shot an agent. Ritko was here earlier. Somebody’s got a hard-on for this place. I’m just glad to be outside.”
“They’d have been back for you soon. Probably tonight,” said Jimmy. “We got to be somewhere in the morning.”
Gus followed Jimmy to the truck. “I need to find Bren,” he said. “It’s my fault they took her. And I’m not really sure who ‘they’ are.”
“Maybe they took her because of you,” said Jimmy. “Maybe they took her because of me. Maybe they took her because of Jolene and the money.”
He ended the sentence on a tone that indicated her had one more reason. “Maybe they took her because of who her daddy is.”
Gus looked back at the deputies and emergency personnel thronging the ER door. Jimmy only looked straight ahead. That was their difference.
“After all of this, I’m not easy to surprise anymore,” said Gus. So lay it on me. Who is Bren’s father?” Gus felt heat nausea from the meds.
“Lemuel Zapata. Her brother is Zeke Zapata,” said Jimmy. “You know those names, don’t you? They’ve been busy boys for years. You okay?”
Gus nodded and vomited into the St. Augustine grass. “Bren’s name is Catton,” said Gus. “Not Zapata. You got it mixed up, pop.”
“Her name is Catton now. It wasn’t when she was born. I know. I was there. I worked with Lem. Bren was a good kid. Zeke, not so much.”
Gus eased up into the truck. “I need to charge my cell. Lay the story on me while we drive. Sounds like one I should have already heard.”
“It’s a short story,” said Jimmy, cranking the truck and heading west. “Zapata is Bren’s old man. That’s the story.”
“There’s a whole other world I’ve missed my entire life,” said Gus. “Like another dimension.” Clouds the color of old nickels hung low.’
Sparse rain dotted the windshield. Temperatures dropped ten degrees. Leaves turned light side up in the wind change. Gus’ nausea eased.
“I worked for him,” said Jimmy. “He has enemies. I have enemies. That means you have enemies. Bren falls in the middle. That’s how it is.
One name was left out of the conversation. “Where’s Jolene?” said Gus. ”Guess she got enough money to be doing alright.”
“Maybe not,” said Jimmy. His faced was tense. He kept his eyes on the double yellow line stretching towards Monroeville.
“We’re headed to Louisiana. Jolene is there. Some whackers near Texas/Mexico border beat her and took the money,” said Jimmy.
“Is she okay?” asked Gus. In an unfamiliar way, he was beginning to feel like her father. “Who were they?”
“Same ones who took Bren and would’ve killed you if you’d stayed in that hospital,” said Jimmy. “It’s a big crowd we pissed off.”
“I asked if Jolene was okay,” said Gus. “You seem to be avoiding the answer. You always have avoided answers. Did you avoid them with Ab?”
“Ab was killed by this same bunch. You were in the hospital because of them. They beat Jolene nearly dead. How’s that for answers.”
Gus stopped asking. He had heard what he wanted to know. Jolene was lucky to be alive. They were all facing tough odds. It felt familiar.
Rain veiled them, making the highway heading west look like a fresh polished shoe. The tires meeting pavement sounded like static.
“We got a tail,” said Jimmy. “Black SUV. Been back there for ten miles. Coming up fast.”
Gus reached instinctively for his .45. “Clip’s empty.” He looked into the mirror. The mist in their wake blurred the approaching headlights.
Jimmy quietly pulled his .45 and rolled down his window. A gush of Alabama rain poured into the truck’s cab with a roar.
“There’s another .45 in the glovebox,” said Jimmy. “Hold the wheel.”
Gus leaned over, pulling at his stitches and grabbed the wheel and held it steady in the lane. The SUV was beginning to pass them.
Jimmy turned almost 90 degrees in the seat. “Hold on to that thing tight.” He slammed the brakes. The SUV accelerated by them.
Gus saw through the passenger window, a glint of gray reflection shimmied off of a coffee cup. No on was shooting. They were just looking.
“Pop, I think it’s some agents,” said Gus above the sounds. “Hold off. They seem to be waving. Yeah FBI. See the badges. That’s R –”
Jimmy was already engaged. Once he felt threatened, he was going to finish the job. To him, Gus’ shout was humming nonsense.
Jimmy’s braking caught the SUV driver by surprise and he braked too hard in the oncoming lane. Jimmy began the methodical trigger squeezing.
He saw the badge a second too late. His brain was hardwired to respond to perception. Reflection was not his strength. He acted.
Gus was yelling silently into Jimmy’s right ear. Jimmy was in the zone that had kept him alive through wars, battles and business gone bad.
Round after round sparked through the SUV’s windows and doors. The badge fell out the window trailing a piece of the passenger’s hand.
“Stop!” yelled Gus. “Feds!” He may as well have been yelling in a dream. Jimmy kept shooting in a circular front to back pattern.
The driver was hit twice in the neck and jaw, bullets ricocheting around in his head and shattering the window. The back window rolled down.
Jimmy thumped four shots into the back door, then raised the angle to the lowering window, filling a fat man’s frown with metal.
Pink mist blew out the windows of the lurching SUV as it swerved and leaned in the lane. Jimmy braked his truck down and let the SUV go.
It seemed to accelerate, merging into the right lane, and kept going off the road and into a pecan orchard. Gus tried to see the plates.
Everything was in slow motion except the caroming SUV, which was in fast forward like on ESPN with the words, “they-could-go-all-the-way.”
The vehicle slammed a four-foot diameter pecan tree at 80 mph unleashing a dismantling commotion that sounded like hell vomiting.
Metal sheered wood. Glass vaporized. Plastic shattered. Soft tissue shredded. Pecans jumped off branches and landed fifty feet away.
“I think those guys were on our side,” said Gus, trying to stay calm. “It looked like FBI, even Ritko, maybe.”
“Then they should have known better than to pull up on a wanted man like that,” said Jimmy, expressionless. “I’m wanted by the FBI as well.”
Gus put the loaded .45 back in the glove box and kept his empty weapon. “Ritko’s not FBI, or so he said. Ritko said you sent him.”
“If I need something, I do it myself. I don’t send government agents,” said Jimmy. “My way leaves no witnesses.”
“That was definitely a government SUV,” said Gus. “Three guys inside. I doubt we’d find enough of any of them to match up with an ID.”
Jimmy slowed and pulled to the side of the road. Hundreds of pecans lay scattered around and over the wreckage. They were three inches deep.
“You like pecans?” said Jimmy. “Hate to see pecans wasted.” Jimmy picked up two and squeezed them in his hand, cracking and eating them.
“Pop, it’s a little morbid, don’t you think?” said Gus. “Eating pecans here? I’m not feeling too hungry.” He stepped on a finger.
“Just a few,” said Jimmy, chewing. “Look for wallets. And write the tag number down if it’s legible. We can run the plates later.”
It was difficult for Gus to tell if the object that hit the tree was made on earth. It stretched a hundred yards in a V shape.
“Pop, I don’t think we will find an inch of identifiable evidence over here,” said Gus. “They hit this tree doing at least 80.”
“Then we’ll burn it,’ said Jimmy. I’m surprised it didn’t go up on impact. Let’s light it up – after we get some pecans.”
“And if it was Ritko?” said Gus. As he finished his sentence, he saw part of an Uzi embedded into the tree trunk. “These guys were packing.”
Jimmy examined the weapon fragment, part of the barrel. He pried it out with his knife and smelled it. He has sniffed a lot of ballistics.
“Been fired recently,” said Jimmy. “Maybe yesterday. These boys were up to no good and they ran into somebody who was up to worse. Me.”
“Besides, Ritko travels alone,” said Jimmy. “The people we’re cat-mousing sent two cops to kill Jolene in a strip joint in Houston.”
Gus let out a sound that did not require words. “Is she okay?”
“She wasn’t stripping,” said Jimmy. “Just cleaning up in the back. She’s too beat up to strip. But not so bad that she can’t pull a mop.”
“I feel much better now,” said Gus with cynicism that was lost on Jimmy’s unsubtle ears.
Gus found a torn wallet under a piece of the dashboard. “Got something here,” he said. He pulled a license from the ripped leather.
Jimmy had cracked a dozen pecans and eaten them as he wandered around, kicking over broken parts, looking for clues to who these men were.
A chunk of metal fell from the limbs, nearly hitting Jimmy as he walked over to where Gus stood, vacant eyed and staring into the slate sky.
Gus held out the warped plastic card and turned away. Jimmy read the name: Zeke Zapata, Bren’s brother.
“We just made our lives a lot more complicated,” said Gus. “And I get to tell Bren we killed her brother.” He rubbed his unshaven jaw.
“If Lemuel Zapata was in that SUV as well, my life just got a whole lot easier,” said Jimmy. “He had a contract on me.”