Desert Flower, excerpt from the novel by Rex Sexton

Desert Flower

by Rex Sexton

Bio of Rex Sexton and synopsis of this novel

"I Am Alive and I Am Real", short story by Rex Sexton

Fiction and Painting of Rex Sexton on CD includes his novel Desert Flower, fvie short stories, poems/songs and images of 20 of his paintings, plus classic works of fiction by some of his favorite authors. His fiction introduces you to worlds that outwardly seem familiar, but that operate in accord with their own eerie rules and expectations. Once you get caught up in the characters, reading one of these tales is like watching your own recurrent nightmare -- you can't stop reading, and you'll never forget. Review in Large Print Reviews

Dusk, and once again, the dream-like grapple with death, as high winds howled across the South Dakota desert, and black rocks twisted in a devil dance against the sky.

"Where's your goons, Tonto?"

Greenleaf looked sharply at the girl. She stood, motionless, by the window, her arms folded.

"Relax, angel, it will all go down."

"It doesn't look like it."

"They're on their way."

She made an impatient gesture.

Shadows filled the room, as night came on. He sat at the table and studied the layout which the girl had drawn for him, the maze of rooms and hallways and staircases, while he chain smoked cigarettes. She remained restlessly watching, her eyes fixed on the road.

"I'm not waiting."

"That's too bad love."

"I'm not coming back."

"That's too bad too. But it will be a mistake."

"You're a mistake."

"Suit yourself, Cinderella, but there's still time."

"Your time, Geronimo. Small time."

Headlights swept the driveway. A dark late model car pulled in. Two shadows sat slumped in it. Greenleaf rose softly, slipping a revolver down his snakeskin belt, his gaunt Indian face expressionless.

"Your coach awaiteth."

"Your goons are drunk."

"They'll deliver."

"You're a joke."

"Fifty thousand dollars?" The Mexican asked again.

"Right, amigo," Greenleaf answered impatiently, "fifty grand."

"Fifty thousand dollars in cash?"

"Cash."

"In that haunted house?"

The wind rocked the black sedan. They sat parked near the entrance to the roadhouse, headlights extinguished, engine idling. Greenleaf watched the girl slip out of the car and run through the night. Her cheerleader's uniform fluttered with the gusts. Her long golden hair - something out of a fairytale - flared for an instant as she disappeared through the roadhouse doorway.

"You have seen this cash, my friend?"

It was still early. The parking lot was all but empty. There was a pickup truck parked by the roadhouse door. There was a late model station wagon next to it. Beyond the asphalt, under the waving trees, they could dimly make out the silhouette of a squad car. Inside the roadhouse, the girl was making her moves.

"This don't look so good, my friend."

The driver stared hard at the parked police car. His blunt fingers gripped the wheel. His partner was staring hard at it too. He shook his head and tilted his bottle.

"It looked good to you this afternoon, amigo."

Greenleaf leaned forward in the back seat. He tried to peer past the two petrified Mexicans. The roadhouse was a relic from another time - a high gabled ghost built during the brief mining boom which founded Black Water. Its wooden frame was warped and weatherbeaten, bordering on haunted oblivion. The gutters and drainpipes were dull with rust. Blinking neon food and drink signs stabbed through the first floor windows. The rest of the house was cloaked in darkness. Somewhere inside, the strange white girl was drifting through the rooms, cutting phone lines, unlocking doors.

"No, my friend, it sounded good to me this afternoon."

The driver took a long drink from the tequila bottle. He wiped his mouth, hesitated, and then took another.

"How does this sound to you?"

Greenleaf shoved the barrel of his revolver into the driver's neck. He cocked back the hammer until it clicked into place.

"It's going down soon, Pancho," Greenleaf whispered, "and you're going with it. So's your pal. In case you forgot, we're looking at a bag stuffed with cocaine in a safe in that house. We're looking at fifty thousand dollars on its way to claim it. We're looking at the advantage of surprise, and we're looking at the fact that we got someone inside to set things up."

Greenleaf sat back in the seat and closed his eyes. He listened to the wind howling through the night - across the bluffs and rocks and boulders of the Badlands. His shiny black hair was matted with sweat. His hands were shaking. The night seemed like a dream. Everything seemed like a dream since he had met the girl.

She had appeared that morning, like an apparition, standing suddenly before him in a Black Water tavern, where Greenleaf was playing the final shot in a high stakes pool game which began the day before and continued through the night.

His dark eyes heavy with smoke and the long night, his fingers stiffly wrapped around the cue, Greenleaf leaned across the table and fixed his gaze on the last bright colored ball which seemed to float there. He looked up suddenly - a flood of sunlight was streaming through a cathedral window. As he squinted, the stained glass dazzle slowly gave way to a strange white girl. Hair like spun gold, skin so pale it was almost translucent, she stood like a chimera at the end of the table, disturbingly beautiful, her candycane cheerleader's uniform sparkling under the light of the overhead lamp.

"Got a gun Cochise?"

She was looking down at him with undisguised disdain. Her eyes seemed to look through him, not at him, from some far away reality quite beyond him.

"I might have, princess. Why?"

Greenleaf had to gather himself together to just take a breath.

"Got a couple of these to go with it?"

She lifted the ball from the table and held it lightly in her hand.

"I might have those too, love. Cut to the chase."

She waited tables after school, she told him, at a roadhouse in the valley. The owner had a brother who was a crooked county cop. They were both crooks. Anyway, the cop got lucky. He scored a primo bag of cocaine in a routine traffic bust. He either snuffed the delivery boy, or let him go in a trade ... he was selling the stuff back to the delivery boy's boss ... or to someone else. She had overheard all this through a door in the storeroom and couldn't quite get it straight. But the score was stashed in the office safe. A deal was going down that night at eight o'clock.

"Big time wampum, Hiawatha." She made mock Indian signs with her hands. "You in or you out?"

Headlights swept across the roadhouse parking lot. A champagne colored Cadillac sped past them and parked by the neon-lit door. Two men in suede suits and Stetson hats climbed out. They looked around and went inside. One of the men was carrying a briefcase.

"It's game time, amigos."

Greenleaf pulled himself together and leaned forward. He jabbed the driver's partner with his gun.

"I'm not going to run this past you again, amigo. You know the set up. Make your way to the hall at the end of the bar and slip through that storeroom door. It will be unlocked. Inside the storeroom there's another door, also unlocked. That door opens to the back of the roadhouse office. It's unlocked too. Wait by the door till you hear my voice. Then bust in."

The Mexican looked long and hard at the parked police car. He studied the Cadillac. He turned and looked at his friend. The driver nodded gravely at him. He shook his head and slipped outside.

"Let's move." Greenleaf jabbed the driver. They drove to the end of the parking lot and braked by the swaying trees. Greenleaf hit the asphalt running, a flashlight flickering in his hand. It was all a matter of timing - to hit them hard in the middle of the deal. He imagined the play going down, right now, in the office: the safe open and the cocaine out, the briefcase open and the cash out, the four men clustered around the office desk, sampling the product, checking the bills. He imagined himself and the Mexican, guns drawn, busting in from different doors. Five times fifty thousand dollars, the coke would take in on the street. Greenleaf calculated breathlessly as he ran. Maybe more. Plus the cash. Eighty thousand dollars would be his share. In ten more minutes he would have eighty thousand dollars. Eighty thousand dollars plus.

The cellar door was open and Greenleaf bounded down the wooden stairs. The flashlight tossed off devil shapes in the darkness, igniting black flame shadows everywhere. Eighty thousand dollars, Greenleaf repeated to himself. He beamed his way, slowly, through the mountains of roadhouse rubbish, around crates and barrels and boxes and trash. He ducked under dripping pipes and waded through puddles of stench. The old house rocked and creaked above him, while the cellar floor was alive with frightened rats.

Murder. Gunplay. Prison. Death. Black thoughts ran round and round in his head. Round and round, they raced in his mind all day, as waves of fear and panic seized him. Drug dealers, crooked cops, crooked club owners, shotgun ready Badlands bartenders - Cinderella's castle was a booby trap. He had known that going in, but he could not stay out. Eighty thousand dollars. This was his first real crack at big-time dough. Maybe the only shot he'd ever get. This was the break he needed to blow off Black Water; to escape his dirt poor life in the South Dakota desert - shooting stick for meals and rent in Badlands dives.

Greenleaf stopped abruptly and held his breath. The long steep staircase that led up to the office suddenly loomed before him, climbing through the cobwebs and disappearing in the darkness. He lifted the light and shone its beam on the waiting door. His heartbeat raced and his legs felt wobbly. He had to grip the flashlight to keep it steady. The Mexicans were right. The play was crazy. They were pros upstairs - four armed, experienced, dangerous men. Those pros would never give up the Jack. Not without a bloodbath. Even if they gave it up to them tonight, they would get it back tomorrow. They would hunt them down, anywhere they went. The cop would see to that. How hard would it be to throw a net around Black Water? To find and break the Mexicans? to sniff him out? to get all of them? "Anything odd happen here lately, you ask? Well, yeah man, there was this high-school chick in here talking to this hustler Indian." They didn't have a chance. But he knew that coming in. Eighty thousand dollars. Maybe they weren't supposed to have a chance. There was something out there he couldn't quite see. Something crazy. He tried to see it, but the pills he popped all day to stay awake...

Greenleaf froze on the spot as the door opened suddenly and a flood of light came streaming down the staircase. Framed in the yellow haze at the top of the stairs, the silhouette of the girl appeared, standing motionless in the brightly lit doorway. Her eyes gazed down on him like holy mysteries - two huge, hypnotic, emerald-green gems. As always, her gaze went completely through him, hitting some mysterious target deep inside him, leaving him, as always, strangely stunned and spent.

Greenleaf felt himself falling as he mounted the stairs, sinking, dropping, drowning like a one- armed swimmer disappearing into some desolate unknown. Halfway up, he remembered the mask.

He slipped it over his head and face. An executioner's mask. A hit man's black hood. Someone would die tonight, Greenleaf knew, and he somehow knew, deep down, that it would be him.

He lumbered to the top and as he moved through the door the girl swiftly retreated. He followed her figure down a hallway lined on both sides with hulking doors. She was dressed in a bridal gown, a ghostly swirl of taffeta and silk. On her head was a crown of desert flowers. There were more garlands woven in her golden hair. She turned and smiled at him and beckoned. He lurked behind, his neck glistening with sweat, squinting through the slits in the black hood. At the end of the hall, she turned again. She lifted an ivory finger to her lips, slipped through the door and signaled him to follow.

He followed her in, but what he found inside the dingy office looked more like a hophead's hallucination than the slick doublecross he was expecting. Yes, all the players were there waiting for him. The cop was there. The owner - a big balding man - was there. The two Stetsoned drug dealers were there, as was the briefcase full of cash and the sack of coke. But everything was topsey turvey, upside down. The men were sprawled all over the tiny room - slumped in chairs, toppled over furniture, curled on the floor. No sound came from the bar. The girl stood like a dream shape in the midst of the petrified mayhem. Her emerald eyes were sparkling and there was a faint smile on her lips. She performed a little pantomime for him. She mixed an imaginary drink, tilted her head, and pretended to drink it down.

"Knock out drops." She whispered.

She leaned over and pulled the gun from the curled up cop. As she did Greenleaf saw the body of the Mexican behind her. He was sprawled out on the floor. There was blood seeping through the top of his thick black hood.

"Happy hunting, Hiawatha."

She smiled as she rose and extended her arms in front of her and pointed the policeman's thirty-eight caliber special at his chest.

The explosion sent him reeling back. He slammed against the wall and sagged slowly to the office floor. A ball of fire blazed in his chest. His head was spinning as he gasped for breath.

"You won't need this, my love."

The girl floated over him like a white-winged angel. She pulled the gun from his snake skin belt. Greenleaf lifted his eyes and watched her turn and fire his revolver into the unconscious cop's chest. She fired again into the face of the sleeping owner. And then she fired into the walls, desk, woodwork until the gun was empty.

Greenleaf tried to rise but he found that he could not move. It felt as if a great weight was pressing down upon him. He looked on as the girl took one of the drug dealers guns and shot the Mexican, and then used the Mexican's gun to shoot both the dealers. She moved around the room amidst the rustle of silk and the fragrance of desert flowers rearranging the bodies, shooting bullets into the walls and doors. He knew what she was up to but he couldn't imagine why. She floated past him and rustled down the hallway. There was the slamming of a door and the sound of a body being dragged back toward the office. Greenleaf knew it was the body of the getaway driver. A door opened across from the office. The sound of the barroom's jukebox filled the air. There were more explosions, more bullets ricocheting, the sound of more bodies being dragged and rearranged - the bartender, the cook, the few patrons. It was as if the roadhouse were her dollhouse. The bodies of the men her toys - all of them being arranged by the girl to create, for the police, the illusion of a robbery gone bad - and a survivor-less gunfight when it had.

A white silk suit, a diamond ring, a pocket full of money, his hair slicked back - Greenleaf was high rolling his way through the casinos of Las Vegas, a blonde on each arm. The bright lights glittered and the roulette wheel turned. He was winning big time, jackpot after jackpot, prince among the players ...

The girl sat in the dark and waited for her lover. Soon he would appear, to her, as he always did in the dark, in the antique barroom mirror. Tall, dark, handsome, elegant, he would be dressed for their wedding in that high style gold rush fashion which gentlemen wore for their ladies way back then. The roadhouse was theirs now, theirs alone. Her father was gone. Her uncle was gone. They were gone in the way they both deserved. There would be no more of that from them. There would be no more rooms with drunken men. There would be just her and her lover from now until forever.

"How's Sitting Bull?"

"Sitting Bull is lying flat."

"Lying and dying."

"And nobody crying."

"Hey Doc, what's the prognosis on Big Chief here?"

Grim and drawn, the gray-haired emergency room physician moved from body to body shaking his head. The corpses lay side by side on transport stretchers in a screened off section of Black Water General's crowded emergency ward, blue with rigor mortis and covered with blood. Men the doctor knew, had known for years, personally, professionally - Slim Clemens, Jack Stokes, Chester Owen - men he treated, joked with. He glanced angrily at the reporters clamoring in the hallway.

"We're moving the survivor to the ICU."

The spectacle disgusted him. It sickened and it saddened him. It brought back memories of Viet Nam - the young soldiers senselessly slaughtered.

He stood between the two tall, rangy Black Water policemen: sheriff Cole and deputy Tate. They all gazed thoughtfully at the Indian. His pallor was a ghostly gray. The slender IV's of blood and morphine flowing into his arm, seemed all that anchored him to existence.

"He gonna make it?" The sheriff demanded.

There had been no vital punctures, no complications. The bullet had come out smoothly and cleanly. There was shock, tissue damage, and that minor.

"Probably not." The doctor sighed. "He's lost a lot of blood."

"He took a lot of blood."

The big man shook with emotion as he spoke. His cold gray eyes shifted slowly to the IV bags which hung on a stanchion above the stretcher. A wave of panic passed over the physician.

"What happened?" He asked quietly.

"Hell happened, pure and simple. Hell, fire brimstone, damnation. The work of the devil." The sheriff's voice trailed off. He closed his eyes and clenched his fists. Maybe he was past it? The sheriff wondered of himself. Had he lost his mettle? Like a nightmare the roadhouse massacre replayed in his mind. Room after room of bullet-riddled bodies - anywhere and everywhere. Six bodies in the office, four bodies in the bar, another body in the kitchen, and yet another which he found later in a closet in a bedroom on the second floor. All good, solid Black Water citizens; men he had known since boyhood, men he had laughed with, fought with, struggled through life with.

"And this Indian is the devil?"

"Meet the devil." The sheriff smiled. He waved his hand at the screened off ward. "Welcome to hell."

Like a stiff, starched, dazed white ghost, nurse Hartfelt, as pale as her uniform, staggered unsteadily toward them through the antiseptic glare of hospital neon, a stack of medical forms clutched against her body. She averted her eyes from the horror show of bodies which still lay uncovered in a gory row along the wall, friends, neighbors, familiar faces. There was more to her grief than that, the doctor suspected as he watched her shock-stricken face draw close. Nurse Hartfelt, plump , plain, devoted to her profession, had remained unmarried. Maybe one of these men had taken her as a mistress? In any event, no one in the ward could face the situation. No one in the ward could look at one another. The orderly had gotten sick. The young nurse Ms. Hartfelt was training had fainted. They were all in a daze since the caravan of corpses arrived suddenly amidst a riot of sirens brought by ambulances drawn from all over the county.

"Looks like Big Chief here," the sheriff explained, swallowing hard as Nurse Hartfelt approached and the doctor delicately took the forms, "and Cisco and Pancho over there, tried to hold up Jake Flower's place down in the valley. Big time money Doc. Big for Black Water: 25 grand. Looked like ol' Jake finally decided to unload that rat trap, cash on the barrel-head. There were these two slicks laid out in his office, brand new Cadillac parked out front. Somehow, these three slime bags got wind of the deal. They busted in like Hollywood wiseguys - black hoods, gags and ropes stuffed in their pockets. Maybe someone panicked, or someone got trigger happy. You see the result."

The doctor nodded gravely as he filled out the forms. Dead on arrival. Death by gunshot wounds. Multiple gun shot wounds. Multiple morgue meat. The only thing that had saved the Indian was a slightly abnormal breast bone construction, rare at best, but peculiar to certain southwest Indian tribes.

"Now all of this is bad, doc," the sheriff went on flatly, "bad even for the Badlands. Of all the shootouts, holdups, bar brawls and feuds I've seen in my time this takes the cake. And it goes without saying that I don't look forward much to facing the wives and children of these men. Nor do I look forward much to our 'Black Water Bloodbath' being hashed and rehashed in the papers and on TV for all the blood junkies and gore guzzlers out there in tabloidville and boob tube land. But what gets me most, what hits me hardest - you may think this odd, doc, given everything, but not if you'd been there - was the sight of Big Jake's daughter trapped in the middle of that nightmare. Do you know what I mean, doc?" The sheriff asked softly.

The doctor nodded. He had forgotten about the girl, forgotten that she was connected with that old tumble- down roadhouse in the valley which housed Big Jake's Dinner. Jake Flower, a highschool football hero. He had lost track of him. Even though Nurse Hartfelt had taken care of the girl's mother -- a long time ago when the poor woman took a nasty fall and got so banged up she couldn't come to town -- he, himself, had never treated the family. But everyone knew the girl. He had just examined her a few months ago. He examined all the athletes and cheerleaders for Black Water High. Even in the aseptic sanctity of the hospital examining room, even at his age, her beauty took his breath away. She was a flower in the desert; a rare and beautiful lily blossoming in a dusty wasteland.

"Was she harmed?" The doctor's voice trembled.

"If only we had got there quicker, doc." The sheriff shook his head. "Orville Reed, who lives in the valley, gave us a call around nine o'clock. Said he thought he might have heard some gun shots when he passed Jake's place headin' for town. Said he didn't pay it much mind - figured it weren't none of his business no how - but this barmaid at the Crystal Palace where he was hoopin' it up started in on him when he mentioned it. She said he should of stopped and had a look see."

"We gave Jake's a call but it didn't seem to go through. We tried a little later and it was the same way. We decided we better drive out there and have a look. The bar room was still heavy with the smell of gunpowder. There was still a hint of gun smoke in the air. We saw the girl sitting alone in the dark in a corner of the room by the barroom mirror. She was all gussied up in a wedding gown. Doc, she had to be the right purtiest thing I ever saw - maybe that I ever will see. Then we started to see the bodies around her in the darkness: Slim Clemens slumped in a chair. Bill Ofrey sprawled across the bar. Jack Stokes laid out on the floor. They were already beginnin' to turn. The girl didn't pay us no mind doc, no mind at all. Even when we crossed the room and stood behind her, she didn't seem to know we were there with her. She was talking to herself in the mirror. Talkin', laughing, as pretty and happy as a bride could be. Just seeing her like that doc, seeing her alone in the dark with all those corpses turning. I dunno doc. It was like seeing...I dunno..."

"An angel in hell." The deputy flared.

"Yeah, and hell got more hellish. She's here now doc in the psycho ward. They said it was shock doc but I don't know."

"Poor kid." The doctor shook his head.

"Fix Big Chief here up for me doc. Someone's got to answer for this. Fix Big Chief up so's he can stand trial. Fix him up so's he can hang."

"I'll fix him Jim." The doctor shuddered. "Don't worry, Jim, I'll fix him."

"Better get the big boys down here boss, the hot shot anchors ... no I'm not exaggerating ... this is extra Extra, going electra ... didn't you get my Fax? Well check it out. There's this psycho Cinderella slant, blood and beauty, that's going put this story on the map ... just go look at this girl's picture, OK? You'll see what I mean."

The blurred white faces swam around him in the darkness, bloated, bloodless, bobbing like bone-gutted blobs above the pressed white collars of their black, wind snapping funeral suits, eyes bulging, mouths agape. They ran in a huddle across the lunar landscape, down the devil rock gorges and through the bottomless ravines, across the tumbleweed twirling wind-ravaged plains. The ghost hands pushed and pulled him forward while their blob-like bodies penned him in. He was trembling with fear, sucking the night air for breath. The coarse black suit he wore, with its ruffled white shirt and high buttoned vest, chaffed and scratched his sweat soaked skin. The tight starched collar choked his neck. Beyond the chasms, in the valley far below him, the roadhouse glittered in the darkness like a diaphanous dream dome - each window blazing with a blinding light, even the gables and garrets glistening with luster.

They ran through a cold rain which suddenly began to fall, dodging and turning across a parking lot crowded with hearses, while thunderclaps rumbled across the desolate wasteland and flashes of lightning lit the storm- blackened sky. The menace of the night closed in like a madness with the downpour, and, as they drew nearer to the roadhouse, the fear Greenleaf felt for the baleful white glow which blazed coldly and eerily from the half-open door began to fill him with a dread that bordered on delirium.

They tumbled across the threshold into an absolute blackness, knocking over tables and scattering chairs. The radiant white haze blazed, not in the barroom, but within the barroom inside the antique barroom mirror. They passed through the glass into its surreal luster. The room beyond was thronged with ghostly men and women crowded together in the nimbus like moon- shrouded mannequins. Dazed, shaken, shivering with cold, Greenleaf studied the ashen faces and the blank dead eyes of the hundred dead souls who stood white and silent around him dressed in their burial garments. A long black coffin lay before him. Its lid was open, its interior empty. On either side of the casket stood the two murdered Mexicans staring at him without expression. Greenleaf sensed that they were waiting for him to join them, waiting for him to take his place beside them among the dead.

" For as much as it is the ordination of the almighty God," intoned a strange, indistinct, figure who suddenly appeared behind the coffin, tall, pale, thin, grave, " that flesh hath soul and thereby is empowered with a spirit, so also is the spirit possessed of the powers of the flesh, even when it leaveth the flesh and liveth as a thing apart." Greenleaf's heart began to pound and his legs to weaken. This could not be real, he knew, and yet he was trapped in this gruesome unreality. He felt the heavy blob hands grip him tightly. The tall ghostly preacher gazed coldly in his direction. "And so forever as a thing apart, even from all thus parted, the damned must dwell in the world of the damned, neither flesh nor spirit, neither living nor dead."

He stifled a cry as he felt the sudden rough pull on his arms and shoulders and felt his body dragged forward through the white haze. The blob shapes wrestled him to the coffin and stuffed him inside, bending, lifting, stretching him across the satin-lined interior of the heavy lacquered box. He felt the weight of their hands on his head and throat, on his chest, wrists, legs, ankles. He fought weakly with the dead men, twisting, struggling, straining to break free. But the pale blob phantoms held him tightly and pressed him down into the soft, satin vortex of his new eternal cell.

"We surrender this soul to Satan." He heard the preacher say.

There was a sharp pain in his chest. There was an odd sensation of physical penetration and an oozing of something from somewhere deep inside him. He listened to the far-off tumult of thunder, to his own frantic breathing. He could not move and he was afraid.

"This body is the bounty of Satan."

They were draining him of blood. Greenleaf looked down to find a long glass funnel protruding from his chest. One by one the pallid blob shapes lapped greedily from the spout and swallowed the thickly oozing liquid.

"Damned be the body and the soul of the male bride of Satan."

Greenleaf let out a cry of horror and turned his head. He saw, standing in the center of the large black rectangle beyond the blinding radiance, the strange white girl staring at him without expression from the other side of the mirror.

"Blessed be our savior Satan. Blessed be the damned and the powers of the dark."

She stood a long time and looked down at the hospital bed where the Indian lay tied up and dying. His blue-gray body had taken on a faint flush of color since she had examined it last the night before. The flesh of his face looked less stony and ashen, and his chest moved perceptibly beneath his hospital gown.

She listened carefully to the sounds outside the door. The shift was changing. There were voices, footsteps, laughter in the distance, the sounds of a cart rolling slowly down the hall. She studied the high-tech tangle of wires and tubes, gauges and dials, which ran in a cris-cross pattern from the medical monitors to the nose, temples, arms of the Indian, enfolding his comatose figure like some alien spider.

"Tonto." She whispered.

Behind her in the darkness, special deputy Horace Camby sat slumped in a chair. His head was bowed and his arms hung loosely at his sides. His scalp, raggedly removed from the back of his neck to the front of his forehead, hung over his face like a fury black mask. His throat was cut and the dome of his head was covered with blood.

"Tonto."

Her hands moved swiftly and deftly over the pale sleeping figure, removing the clamps from his head, the oxygen tubes from his nostrils, the needles from his arms, and the bands from his wrists. She watched the lean muscled frame shiver and twitch, curl and recoil under the movements of her touch as the pallid face trembled and perspiration broke out across the ash-colored brow.

"Rise and shine, Tonto."

It was like surfacing from the depths of the bottom of the sea where monsters swam through murky waters and seaweed waved like witch hair across the ocean floor. Greenleaf awoke with a start bathed in sweat. He did not know where he was: the roadhouse floor? A cell in prison? A vision in white floated wordlessly above him. A radiant, motionless woman with a halo of gold.

"Sleep well, Tonto?"

Greenleaf's head was throbbing and he could scarcely breathe. His chest was a burning, pulsing cavity of pain. He rolled on his side and peered at the small white room, the medical monitors, the girl from the roadhouse whom he had last seen in a wedding gown now standing before him dressed in a nurse's uniform. He dropped his legs carefully over the side of the bed. He sat huddled in the darkness shivering with cold.

"Where's the money, Princess?"

He was not sure whether he was awake or still dreaming. Nothing made sense. Nothing seemed real. The girl's emerald eyes enveloped him like fathomless seas. Like the sea from which he just surfaced, filled with monsters and mysteries and treasures buried in its deeps.

"They're going to hang you, Tonto."

She laid a newspaper across his lap and spread its pages over his knees. ROADHOUSE MASSACRE... BADLANDS BLOODBATH ... the headlines leaped out at him in the wan window light from the rumpled pages. He saw his name mixed in with a jumble of words beneath a black and white photograph of a room crammed with corpses ... "red devil" "psychopath" "bandit leader ..."

A chill went up his spine as the girl moved across the room and the mutilated policeman suddenly appeared seated before him. Blood flowed freely from the burly man's throat, streaming down his shirt front and forming a long dark patch. Blood beaded on the scalped man's temples and dripped from his ears.

"They're going to try you and convict you, Tonto."

The girl reappeared before him in the darkness. She laid a shirt and trousers beside him on the bed.

"And then you will die."

Greenleaf rose carefully to his feet. He needed air. His head was spinning. He was not quite sure he wasn't still asleep - one grim nightmare followed by the next. He studied the golden haired girl with a mordant disbelief. He half expected her to disappear.

"There's a car outside." The girl said matter-of-factly. She glided to the window and leaned against the sill. "Its owner won't need it. He won't need this either." She touched the pocket of her starched white uniform where Greenleaf saw the pearl handled impression of an oversized gun.

"The night nurse will be here soon. It's time for your medicine. They want to make sure that you're fit, Tonto, for your execution. Doesn't that kill you?"

A cold blast of air blew across the room as the girl lifted the pane of glass and slipped outside. She turned and faced him, a wraith-like presence in the uncertain alley light.

"Run, Tonto. Run." She whispered.

The darkness rushed past them, a whirling black funnel which enfolded them like a predator in its deadening grip. Bent double, numb, and shivering with cold, Greenleaf sat huddled in the passenger seat of the unmarked squad car and stared at the road. He felt hollow inside. He had barely found the strength to get himself dressed, to climb out the window and to follow the girl. He probed the bulky medical bandage taped to his chest. The wound was tender but there was no infection. Over the dark custodian's uniform which the girl had given him, he wore a deep-pocketed desert long coat which belonged to the deputy. The coat was heavy and warm and it wrapped around him like a tent. In its pockets, Greenleaf found a thermos of soup and a package of cigarettes. He sipped the tepid broth and smoked the stale Kents while the police radio crackled and the bleak

Badlands moonscape hurtled by.

"... auto wreck on highway one ... stick up in progress, Amoco station, route 44 ..."

The girl sat rigidly beside him. Hands on the steering wheel, she stared straight ahead. Her mouth was set. Her foot was pressed against the speeding squad car's floorboard. She seemed pale, less sure of herself, somehow troubled and confused, but even more beautiful than she had been on the night of the robbery. Greenleaf studied her uncanny features with a wary fascination. Even after everything, even after all the murders, including his own, she had a way of drawing him into her hypnotic spell, that magical, insensible, mesmerizing aura.

"Craps out, Princess?"

Greenleaf drew on the cigarette and felt the smoke cut into his lungs. Something like a flinch briefly marred her face.

"The game's not over, Tonto."

"But it's a different game."

"No, it's a different deal."

"And I'm a different card."

"You're the same card. Tonto."

"What card, Princess?"

"Joker Tonto. You're still the Joker."

"Maybe the joke's on you, love. What did you lose?

"Lose? Everything. All of it. All of it in spite of everything. Too bad, too sad. I lost the roadhouse. They're going to tear down the roadhouse."

"So what?"

"It was my roadhouse."

"What happened to the take?"

"Safe and sound."

"What's my cut?"

"Your life, Tonto. For as long as it lasts."

"What else, Princess?"

"That's enough, Tonto. You won't last long."

"Because I'm the decoy."

"Yes, but you won't get far."

"But far enough."

"And not much farther."

Greenleaf grabbed for the gun, reaching across the seat and groping weakly for the handle in her pocket. She snatched his waxy, corpse-like hand, bending his fingers and twisting away his useless arm. She swung the steering wheel back and forth, swerving the car across the desert road, tossing his limp body until it slammed against the dashboard and hit the floor.

"You'll be asleep soon, Hiawatha." The girl said softly. "By the still clear shining waters. The soup was seasoned with sleeping powder. You'll wake up in Ringo at the railroad station. I'll send you a postcard while you rot in prison.

"It was a lucky break, after all, that you didn't die, with the roadhouse condemned and the way things shook out. I'm pregnant Big Chief. If I had stayed any longer in that Black Water booby hatch, Dr. Kildare and Florence Nightingale would have found that out. Especially the way that goody two-shoes nurse Hartfelt kept poking at me. That would have raised some questions; maybe suspicions, maybe even to rumors and investigations. Especially with you around shooting off your mouth. Here's a bedtime story for you, Tonto, to sleep with in your grave. I'm the under-aged expectant mother of my father's bastard son or daughter. Does that mean I'm my own wicked stepmother? You're a bright boy, Tonto, you figure it out. It's time to lose this town. Get out of this prison. Get rid of the devil's spawn. A quarter million dollars should spring my trap.

"You killed and scalped the deputy, Tonto. You escaped and took me hostage. In the dead of the night, when you had cleared Black Water, you took me to a mining shaft. You raped me, killed me, dropped my body down a hole. Tomorrow morning the good guys will find you in the car, or not far from it if you wake up with the early light and manage to crawl out. They'll dust out a death row cell for you if they don't skin you alive or shoot you first."

She swerved the car around a corner, braking and sliding and dropping off the road. Under a full-blown desert moon, Greenleaf saw the high gabled roadhouse slide past the windshield as she whipped the car in a circle and parked in front. He tried to rise but the numbness had taken over. She was a golden ray of radiance in a curling fog of sleep.

"See you in dreamland darling."

She leaned over him and brushed a strand of sweat soaked hair from his forehead. He breathed in her aroma as she kissed his lips.

"That her?"

"Bingo."

"Alone?"

"Looks it."

"Packing?"

"Big time."

"Don't make a play till she hunts the stuff out."

"Come to Papa."

They waited in the shadows, one on either side of the bolted barroom door, guns drawn, doused flashlights stuffed in their pockets. They listened to the scraping of the key in the lock to the click of the tumbler and to the creaking of the hinges as the door swung open.

She slipped silently past them; her lithe shadowy figure slipped quickly through the darkness and disappeared behind the bar. From the far corner of the room, they heard the clinking of bottles, the clatter of glass, the repeated crunch of ice cubes being scooped from the cooler and poured out on the floor.

Rocco had called it. Vinnie replayed the meeting in Chicago as he watched her. Rocco fingered the girl right off - not that anyone believed him - the instant he read the story in the Chicago Sun-Times and studied the girl's highschool photograph next to the picture of the massacre.

"They go together."

Rocco tapped the paper.

"Stake out the girl and you'll get back the snow."

The cops had it, the cowboys had it, the pompon girl had it, a survivor of the Indian's gang had it. Who had it? It went around the table like that in a circle all morning, jumbled, contradictory, confusing -- which really didn't matter to Salvatore Corso because everybody was going to get it unless somebody out there came up with the dope.

"Vinnie!" He raged. "You and Sully gonna go out there right now! I want that roadhouse torched! I want that jail bombed! I want the straight shit from that Indian and I want the same from that girl.!"

"Jesus Christ, Salvatore!" Marco exploded. "You gotta let this thing go! All you gonna do is get us in the shit! The cowboys don't got it! I just talked to the cowboys! It was a freak thing! Either the cops got it or one of those Indians got it! You don't really think that girl's got it? If the cops got it it's gone. If one of those Indians got it it's gone. That Indian they caught ain't gonna talk; he can't talk. That girl ain't gonna talk, she got nothing to say. You start shooting the cowboys all you gonna do is kill business! Besides, the place is crawling with cops! State cops, Federal cops, local cops! The place is a fucking zoo! Every junk show on TV is there with a camera! Hard Copy, Current Affair, Movie of the Week!"

"I don't care!" Salvatore stormed. "I ain't gonna be played for no chump! Whoever figured this heist figured it wrong! They figured it wrong because they didn't figure in me! Everybody's got it so nobody gets it! Nobody got it so everybody gets off! Bullshit! Nobody got it so everybody gets it! Vinnie, you and Sully start packing!"

"Just stall." Marco took them aside. "Go out there and look around. Toss the roadhouse if it's not a problem. I'll go out there too in a couple days . See the guys at the ranch. It's about 20 miles down the road. I'll give you directions and a phone number. We'll hook up later. Look, don't talk to no one. Don't do nothing. It'll be OK. I'll calm Salvatore down."

Vinnie waited in the shadows, pressed against the wall, his automatic handgun pointed at the darkness in the direction of the girl who seemed to be scooping ice invisibly in the far corner of the room. His face was shadowed by a scowl. Anger lit his eyes and a grimace twisted his features. He ought to take out Rapunzel right now, he knew. He ought to take her out before something happened, before Miss pretty freak turned the tables, got the drop on him. He ought to pull the trigger and start blasting if she was half as good as Rocco made her. And as unreal as it seemed, to his shock and his astonishment, it looked like Rocco was right and she probably was. The dope in the bar ice. Who would have looked there? He didn't. Jesus. Vinnie never would have made the girl, not for anything, not in a million years. He thought the swart greasy racketeering relic was off his rocker when he dropped his pompon girl theory - just more idiotic old man ramblings from the senile, has-been, moth-eaten mobster.

"Don't play with this kid, Vinnie." Rocco warned him. "She's smarter than you, Vinnie. Don't let her in the game. She don't play games, Vinnie. She got her own game going. She plays for keeps."

"I got to listen to this crap, Mr. Corso?" Vinnie had thrown up his hands in disgust and distain. He looked around the table in a raging disbelief, trying to see if he wasn't the only one who wasn't crazy. "I got to hear more

of this crap about the Crime Crazy Cheerleader?"

"You gotta listen to everything! Anything is something when nobody knows nothing, unless you think you know something nobody knows!"

You couldn't argue with Corso. Not when he was over the top. First the 50 g's ransom. Now this. Corso was raging with a personal vendetta against everyone in Black Water. Vinnie argued anyway.

"I know horseshit from bullshit! This is both! What? I'm gonna shadow some teenybopper around some tumbleweed town? I'm gonna stake out some sock hop? Look, Mr. Corso, the cowboys got it! It's as plain as my face! Those dude ranch deadbeats double-crossed each other!"

"The cowboys don't got it, God dammit!" Marco slammed his palm on the table. "Nobody double-crossed nobody! Give it up! What you gonna do, Sal, turn this thing into a ghetto drive-by?"

"Anybody could have double-crossed anybody."

Sully shrugged.

"And somebody did!" Vinnie raged. "The cowboys did!"

"Listen to me." Rocco rasped. "Marco, Sully, Vinnie, Mr. C. The girl did it. The girl got it. I can see it, feel it. She doped them, shot them, stashed the snow. It all adds up. It's the only thing that adds up. She served the drinks. She was the only survivor, or should have been. It was so clean, so logical, a bullet for every body, nothing out of place."

"So the cowboys lined everyone up and shot them with different guns! Big deal!" Vinnie stormed. "Besides, why is your 'chief suspect' sucking her thumb right now in a psycho ward!"

"It's a cover, Vinnie! That shock things an act!"

"You're an act old man. Vaudeville!"

Vinnie never would have made the girl. He could not figure out how Rocco did - what Rocco saw, how he saw it. Even after a day and a night of looking at the girl, looking at highschool photographs and homemade films of the girl - films of her cartwheeling across a gym floor with the Black Water highschool cheerleading squad, photos of her sitting, smiling, with her arms raised atop the shoulders of some hayseed highschool football hero in a snapshot from some local newspaper after a winning game - shown over and over again on every TV station, in every paper, in every tabloid everywhere they stopped along the long drive from Chicago to Black Water, he had seen nothing else in those films, photographs, snapshots, reports, but a drop dead movie star face with sculpted cheekbones and dewy eyes. If he saw anything else in that magnificent face, it was perhaps a certain mysterious sadness which made him feel sorry for her - sorry that Hell had thrown a party in her house one night, had killed her family, had left her damaged.

But that was before he saw with his own eyes her strange nocturnal visit to what the tabloids called this "Theater of Blood."

Now that the girl had suddenly made herself, now that she was standing alone in the dark digging out the dope from the last place they ever would have looked ( what else could she be doing?) Vinnie knew that even after all of this was settled, after the killer was killed and the snow returned, her freak roadhouse heist would firmly and definitely unmake him. His position with the mob would never be the same. He would never again be taken into Corso's confidence. Corso would never again confide in or consult with him. A "player" whose size-up couldn't be trusted? Only Corso's brother Marco could get away with that. Vinnie had been too wrong and he had made too much of it. He knew as he stood there that from now on he would be just another hired gun to Corso - another bone breaker, score settler, just another goon to be sent out to deal with the dregs of the outfits dirty work.

He ought to take her out right now. Vinnie brooded. His face puckered with rage. It was all that he could do not to pull the trigger. He ought to take her out instead of taking chances; blow her away in the dark just for the pleasure of blasting her. But that would be too easy. When she got it she was going to be alive to regret it. She was going to know she was getting it and who was giving it to her. She wanted to play Big Time? She was going to pay Big Time. She wanted to fuck up his life? It was going to cost. The price he would exact was going to be long, slow, brutal, satisfying.

The crunching stopped and the two men stiffened. They shifted their weight to the balls of their feet, lowered their shoulders and braced for the lunge. Vinnie's heart beat quickly and his palms were sweating. He searched the dark with a deadly deliberation, devouring the blackness for the outline of the girl. There was no chance she could grab for her gun. Her hands would be filled with the cash and the caine. There was no chance she would see them until they made their move. When she reached for the door the fun would begin. Underworld fun. Gumba time. Just what the little bitch asked for, what she deserved. The roadhouse massacre made his flesh crawl. Twelve men, doped, shot, used as pawns by some highschool princess. It was too bizarre even for him. Tossing the roadhouse had turned his stomach. It was a ramshackle relic straight from some grade Z movie, with its dust, cobwebs, groans and drafts. Bloodstains splashed the floor and there were police outlines everywhere like spastic ghosts. She was going to get what she gave in the place she had given it. She was going to get it in spades and Vinnie was going to grin while he gave it to her.

But in the back of his mind all that Vinnie really wanted from the girl was to hear from her a different plot to this roadhouse nightmare. He wanted the girl to tell him she wasn't in it on her own. He still couldn't believe it was only her play. It didn't make sense. He couldn't see it. He wanted to hear from the girl that she had been in it with the cowboys, or the cops, or the Indians, anyone. He wanted to hear anything from her that would take him off the hook, that would help him save face with Corso. Maybe she wasn't digging out the dope after all. Maybe she dropped an earing in the ice serving drinks or something. Maybe she was in shock like the papers said, wandering around in a stupor. But then why the 45? But after what happened why not a 45? In these cowboy towns guns ... besides Marco said ...

"Where is she?" Sully hissed in his ear. Sully was suddenly next to him. They crouched together in the darkness and stared in the direction of the night blackened bar. "Where is this bitch, man?"

Vinnie's heart began to pound and his legs to stiffen. A clammy sensation crawled across his skin. He peered dumbly at the darkness with a deadened expression, his breath stopped, his stomach sickened.

"Watch the car." He rasped, softly. "Keep an eye on her car."

He moved slowly through the stillness, crouched low in the shadows, his gun arm extended, pointing straight ahead - moving, yet not moving exactly, more like being moved, being propelled forward, a step at a time by some invisible force.

He could see nothing, hear nothing. No sound, no movement, no shadows shifting. For the first time in the killing game a charge of fear mingled in with the adrenalin rush he got from danger. He clenched his teeth trying to control his frenzy. The girl was hiding in the dark. The girl had heard them, sensed them. She was waiting in the shadows, ghostly, lethal.

His free hand groped blindly for the edge of the bar. Sweat gathered on the scars across his forehead.

"Don't play with this kid, Vinnie. She's smarter than you are, Vinnie."

He sensed her hovering presence all around him, in every fiber of his being, in every night-blackened pocket, every deep shadowed hole. Captor, captive, the girl suddenly reigned over both men now. The first shot would be her decision. If she got off a good one, Vinnie was gone. Sully would fire at her gun flash, she at his. Sully was out in the open.

How in the fuck did he fuck this up? Vinnie seethed. How did this happen? His legs brushed soundlessly against the bottom of the bar stool. He paused and lifted the giant flashlight from the pocket of his coat. He carefully widened the radius of its extinguished beam. She was buried somewhere in the back bar, he brooded, like a sniper in a bunker. He would draw her fire, then commence blasting. Two guns to her one, they were bound to take her out. They had better take her out.

With his torch hand extended far away from his body, Vinnie aimed at the cooler and lit the beam. The back bar was empty. The isle, the cooler, the shadowy recesses under the sink, all were empty, vacant, harmless in the whitewash of the flashlight's beam.

He dropped quickly to the floor and doused the torch. His heart was pounding and his gun hand shaking. She had hopped the bar. She was out there, somewhere, hidden amidst the tables. He clenched his teeth and edged his way slowly toward the center of the room, sliding silently on his haunches across the hardwood floor. They were both out in the open now, he and Sully. They were sitting ducks. He narrowed the beam and rolled on his stomach. He lay spread-eagled before the tables gun hand sweating. He lit the beam and swept the room: floor, tables, walls, window panes. He swept it again and doused the light. The barroom was empty. The girl was nowhere in sight. She had moved again. She could be anywhere. Behind him, next to him, back behind the bar. He looked quickly up and down the pitch black darkness. He looked over his shoulder. She was as agile as a cat, as quiet as a shadow. He recalled the gymnasium films of her running, tumbling, turning cartwheels.

Vinnie jumped to his feet and vaulted the bar. He swept the back bar wildly with the flashlight. He turned and swept the restaurant again. The walls, windows, tables, floor.

"She split man!" Sully hissed behind him. "The cunt made tracks!"

"Keep it down!" Vinnie rasped.

He crouched, panting, trying to think. He couldn't figure out what cat and mouse game the girl was playing. He shot the beam straight ahead toward the back of the room. At the end of the bar a door stood ajar. It was the stockroom door which led to the office, which led to the hallway, which opened to the back as well as the upper floors of the house.

"She went out the back, man!" Sully hissed. "She's getting away!"

"Shut up!" Vinnie rasped. "Go watch her fuckin' car!"

Vinnie knew her game now and he wasn't going to play it. She needed her car. She wanted to split them up, pick them off one at a time. She was in the stockroom, hidden, waiting.

"Move man!" Sully hissed. "You'll never catch her!"

"Shut up!" Vinnie rasped.

Death, fear, panic, stopping his blood, shutting off his breath. Vinnie felt like a fly caught in the web of a devious spider - like those twelve other flies who had flown into her trap. His prizefighter's face was covered with sweat as he crept cautiously toward the stockroom door.

"Don't play with this kid Vinnie. She's smarter than you are, Vinnie."

He crouched on the floor and braced his back against the wall. With the barrel of his gun, he pushed the door open. The darkness was even murkier than the restaurant and bar. He tried to remember the arrangement of shelves and boxes inside the cluttered room. He tried to imagine where she might be hiding amidst that jumble. He listened intently for the sound of her breathing, for her slightest movement.

To die like some bug. To die like some discarded doll in this crazy teeniebopper's haunted playhouse ....

Vinnie dove through the door and rolled across the room, torching the light sporadically as he tumbled, trying to draw her gunfire at the flashing beam. He slammed against a wall and twisted around. He ignited the wide beam and swept the shelves and crates.

The stockroom was empty. It was cold, still, silent except for the panting of his breath.

Goldilocks was gone. She had skipped out the back. She was halfway now to hide out land. Vinnie ran a shaky hand through his sweat soaked hair. He shook his head and fumbled for a cigarette. He had been chasing ghosts, fighting shadows. The girl hopped the bar and took off long ago. He watched a mental replay of his commando attack. What could be more ridiculous? He could hear Rocco's raspy laughter. He could see Salvatore's sidelong smirk. Vinnie laughed with them at the spectacle of himself. Vinnie the enforcer, king of the goons.

A sickish sensation swept dully over him and he lit the cigarette with a clammy hand. He would have to hunt the girl down in Black Water now. Hunt her down when he could have had her here - had her, had the dope. Hunt her down in a place which was swarming with cops. Cops and cameras. Cameras and more cameras. The media was buzzing around the town like flies in a dumpster. Buzzing and feeding. Eating Black Water's festering trash. He was part of that trash. Vinnie the ginny, Vinnie the ginny goon. Vincent Vincente, the garbage man of gangsterland.

He sat and he smoked and he reran the botched stakeout in his mind. It was so absurd he couldn't believe it. In an hour he would have to make a call to Corso. He knew he could not possibly call Corso. He knew that he would never get the girl. Not now, now that she knew they were after her. He may get her sometime, someday, but not now, and he knew now that he could never get the dope. He knew that there was only one thing he still could do. He didn't want to do it but he had to do it.

He had to kill Sully. It was either him or Sully. If word got back to Corso about the way he blew this job ... But if he killed Sully, he would have to have a cover for Sully's killing. He could think of no cover that would stand up, no bullet-proof story about cops, cowboys, Indians, accidents. Nothing that Rocco ...

Vinnie rose slowly to his feet and took a deep breath. His pulse quickened as he swallowed the air. Slowly and cautiously, he moved quietly across the stockroom toward the inner door of the roadhouse office. Like the other door, it had been left ajar, blown back by the drafts after the girl slipped through. He pushed it open and swept the beam inside. The office was empty, but the smell of incense was even stronger there. The odor was so strong it made him dizzy, and the eerie tape outlines there seemed to float like ghosts in the beacon's light. He shook his head clear and moved through the room. He opened the door to the hallway and peered out cautiously.

Light streamed into the center of the hallway from one of the oak doors which led to the lodgings on the second floor. The smell, and even the smoke, of the incense drifted down the stairway and filled the corridor.

He moved to the door and paused at the threshold.

It was candlelight that filtered down from the room at the top of the stairs. The soft, fluttering illumination, the dense, hypnotic pall of the incense, stirred memories of the Immaculate Conception when he was an altar boy. "Death's perfume." Vinnie remembered, almost with a smile, recalling an old priest's remark while making preparations for a funeral. The mysterious smell of the incense, reeking of ancient Catholic rituals and rites, made Vinnie think uneasily about the dark and impenetrable void.

The smell was overpowering as he mounted the stairs - enough incense burning to foul ten cathedrals. Torch tucked away in the pocket of his coat, automatic pistol lifted, pointed, firmly but tensely at the illuminated door, Vinnie gripped the banister to keep his feet under him.

Nuns, priests, crosses, crucifixions, angels, devils, holy ghosts, damnation ... his head was spinning as he climbed heavily to the top. His temples and forehead were beaded with sweat, his lungs were on fire, his eyes burned fiercely.

She stood with her back to him across the candle-lit room. She was staring at her own ghostly reflection in a full length, antique mirror. She was dressed in black - a gossamer black with lavish jet trimmings and lush midnight lace. Like frozen flames her golden hair fanned over her shoulders and flared down her back. She stood motionless, her arms at her sides - as rigid, straight and still as a statue.

She was talking to herself in the mirror, staring, speaking, whispering in a low almost inaudible voice like a ritual incantation or a mystic prayer. His own dark reflection appeared behind hers in the glass - a shape in the distant doorway which she somehow failed to notice.

Vinnie moved into the room and looked around. Glints of flame from dozens of candles, candelabrums, kerosene lamps, fluttered on bureaus, mantels, bed stands and dressers. Incense was burning everywhere. All the rooms were the same on the second floor. They were big, high ceilinged elaborately furnished rooms, lavishly appointed and garishly ornate. Fireplace, oval mirror, four poster bed, mock oriental carpets, plush sofas, plum colored walls and lush velvet drapes - all faded, tattered, mottled with age. They had tossed the house by torchlight focused on their work.

It was a revelation to Vinnie to see one of these rooms clean, lit up, without spiders and webs.

Bawdy-house boudoirs. Vinnie brooded as he looked around. He wiped a hand across his sweat-beaded face. The smoldering fumes were blurring his vision. A mausoleum for the ghosts of Black Water's long-dead ladies of the night.

He stepped closer to the girl. She remained motionless, staring, whispering to her own pale reflection in the mirror. She seemed hypnotized, a zombie, fixed, remote, rooted to the floor. Wacked, Vinnie thought, as he eyed the girl uneasily. He felt his scalp tighten and his throat constrict. He stared at the girl's motionless figure with that fascinated horror one reserves for the insane. Did this roadhouse creep show ever stop?

Dolls had been heaped in a huge pile on the carpeted floor. The pyramid of dolls which rose to the height of his waist. The pile stretched across the entire room, spreading from the andirons of the fireplace to the four poster bed. Enough dolls to choke a toy shop in Disneyland. They seemed to be part of the girl's crazy ritual, her weird black mass.

Vinnie spotted the big gun and moved quickly to it. It was lying on the top of a standing black suitcase which had been set at the foot of the four poster bed. He shoved the weapon in his pocket and grabbed the bag. It was stuffed, heavy, packed tight. Vinnie flipped it over and popped it open. He pulled out nightgowns, dresses, slips, panties. He dug through nylons, slippers, high heels, bras. He tossed the flimsy contents left and right as he dug for the bag of cocaine and the bundle of cash.

The whispering stopped and Vinnie froze in mid-motion. His scalp began to crawl as he watched the golden head turn slowly from the mirror and stare directly at him. Her eyes were the singing of sirens. They probed deep enchanted reaches where a man wander for days. She had the bearing of a goddess and the face of an angel. It seemed to shine in the candlelight with its own soft incandescence. She was the most exquisite creature he had ever seen.

"I've lost him." She whispered.

She gazed at Vinnie intensely for an instant and then she dropped her eyes.

"I know." Vinnie soothed.

"I've lost them all." She said softly.

"I know, kitten."

The suitcase was empty. Vinnie rose slowly to his feet and gazed at it dully. He felt like he was fighting a hobgoblin, struggling desperately to get out of a dream. Sticky with sweat, head spinning, he faced the girl woozily across the candle-lit room. Her head was bowed, her arms hung straight at her sides. She looked like a broken doll, a porcelain princess dressed in the world's dark vale.

"I didn't know he would do that."

She stood staring at her feet, her eyes vacant, a sleepwalker in a trance.

"Do what kitten?"

"Do what he did."

"Who kitten?"

"Bo. My boyfriend."

"Did you do it with him?"

"I did it for him."

"What did you do?"

"Spiked the drinks."

"Why kitten?"

"Because he told me to. Because I love him."

"So he could get the snow?"

"So he could get what was his."

"Does he have what he wanted?"

"He took something with him."

"Do you know what it was?"

"Money, I think. Something he said they owed him."

"What were you doing downstairs, angel? The bar? The ice?"

"Cleaning. Storing. I'm going away. I'm going far away. I'm going far away and forever after I kill him."

"I'll kill him for you kitten, if you take me to him."

"I'll kill him myself. I must kill him myself. I must kill him like he killed my father, my uncle, like he killed the others. I must kill him myself and then I must kill myself. But not here. Not in Black Water."

She was half in the room, half in a dream. She stared blankly at the floor, dazed, listless. Vinnie studied her with fascination, his back tensed, ready for motion. It was too nutty not to be real - the candles, the incense, the pyramid of dolls and the cryptic solo conversation. The girl was wacked, screwy from shock, guilt, probably a bit bolo to begin with - it really didn't matter. None of this mattered anymore to Vinnie. Rocco didn't matter. Getting back the dope didn't matter. Who did it, who had it, who didn't.

His legs were getting rubbery and his head was throbbing. He could feel the wings of fever-dream beating in his ears. He could blow the girl away right now and end it. Kill it. Stop it. He could shoot up the dude ranch. Torch a squad. That would calm down Corso, keep things even. He could get out of this rat trap before the roof fell in.

"You can forget about all that kitten." Vinnie said softly. Her face floated like a desert moon above the black mourning dress. "You can forget about killing and forget about dying. I'll take care of your boyfriend. Your boyfriend has something I want and you're going to take me to him. After we settle this score you're going to take care of yourself. I want that too. You're going back to the asylum. You're going to get your head together and tell your story. You're going to tell the cops and tell the papers your version of what happened. You leave out the part about spiking the drinks and you'll be alright."

"I can't tell my story!"

"You can and will kitten one way or another. If you don't I'll call the station and tell them for you."

He looked down into eyes which were fearful, pleading.

"You got scammed, kid. Your boyfriend took you in. He'll be dead in an hour. Whatever went down don't matter. Maybe there is no boyfriend. I don't care. Just talk up now. All I want is the dope and a certain story. You got both. Everything I'm after. I'll get you what you want. Doctor? Priest? Revenge? Rest up kid, if you're on the level. Get a new start. If you're not on the level I got the same advice. You don't need my money. More money than I'm looking for will come to you."

"What money?"

"Tabloid money. Boob tube money. "

"I don't understand."

"You don't watch TV?"

"I don't do anything. The doctors won't let me."

"You're the golden goose angel. The 'Bride of Bloodshed.' Cash in. With your looks it's a cinch."

She stared blankly at him.

"Dear Abby's over doll . Time to get down to business. If this is a stall it ain't worth it. I'll rip you apart if I have to. All I want is the dope. All I want is to get out of this loony bin. Work with me and we'll both make out."

He was dizzy now and her face was a pool of whiteness floating in haze.

"Would you like to sit down? I think you're sick."

"Save it for the car, kid. Let's get out of here and get it over. Let's get out of here before I get to like you. Let's get to the ranch before your boyfriend takes a powder."

"Get to the ranch?"

"The ranch, kitten! Your boyfriend! The ranch!!"

"Oh. My boyfriend. The ranch."

He was swaying on his feet. He needed to clear his head. He pointed his gun at the man in the mirror. The man disappeared. Vinnie ran his hand through his hair. He was really dizzy. She must be nuts, he thought, if she can suck in this stench. It was like a drug. Marco. Rocco. He'd show those assholes. The girl was wacked, just like he said. She'd tell her story right. He'd see to that. He'd stick it in their faces. Salvatore, that shrimp.

The room was filled with smoke.

He moved sluggishly through it. He yanked a tassel off the canopy of the four poster bed. He knew the cowboys were in it from the get go. Rocco, that bozo, trying to fuck with his head.

"Gotta tie you up kitten.

His fingers felt like rubber.

"Hold out your hands. Gotta toss the room again before we go. Look by this time tomorrow the worst will be over. By this time tomorrow you'll be rolling in dough."

It would be a long night.

"My dolls are asleep."

"Good for them."

"My dolls are going to heaven."

"Beats Black Water, kid."

"Are you going to heaven?"

"Can't say I am."

"Have fun in hell."

The explosion of flames was so sudden and fierce, that Vinnie never knew what hit him. There was a black swirl, a silver flash, a great conflagration in which he became swallowed by fire. A split second later his mind sorted it out - the girl turning a cartwheel, tossing a lit cigarette lighter.

She watched the big man run from the flames. He took the flames with him, a human torch. He slammed into a wall, fell, leaped to his feet and ran through the door.

The room was an inferno. Flames leaped wildly from the pyramid of dolls which she soaked heavily in kerosene before she lit the candles and incense. She would burn the house down before they tore it down. It was her farewell ritual to its history in Black Water. Her funeral pyre.

The night stands ignited. The four poster bed went up. The dressers, tables, sofas, drapes were swirling with flames. At the apex of the pyramid plumes lit the ceiling. A vortex erupted. It raged in a widening circle over her head.

She stood and watched until the heat drove her back. The walls began to crackle as she edged toward the window. She lifted the glass and sat on the sill. Beside her in the corner lay her black velvet bag. She studied it, hesitated, and then grabbed it off the floor and looked inside. Everything was there, the dope, the money both cold from the ice bin. She pulled it over her shoulder and hugged it to her side. She swung her legs up and over the ledge as the oval mirror shattered and the ceiling caved in.

"Cole to Cannon."

"Go Cole."

"Choppers coming?"

"Coming Jim."

"Call Ringo?"

"Stations covered."

"Blocks set?"

"Blocks in."

"Holler anyway."

"That's a ten."

"Black Water station to all units in Kane, Corbette and Macon counties ...."

(end of excerpt from the novel Desert Flower by Rex Sexton)

Bio of Rex Sexton and synopsis of this novel

Surrealist paintings by Rex Sexton

"I Am Alive and I Am Real", short story by Rex Sexton

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