To read this serial novel from the beginning, go here.
The Pickup Line
Damned blast scraped up my boots, Cardinal thought. I should know better than to wear lizard skins the first day out of jail.
The first day out of jail is score-settling day. Work boots are best. Day two is find-the-old-lady day. Day two you can wear lizard skins, unless of course the old lady is shacking up with your best friend, in which case it’s work boots again.
He walked away from the smoldering camp, following the dirt road. A desolate, dry place, with nothing but sand and shrubs all the way to the horizon. Why is it that when a guy is released from prison, it is always in the Texas desert? For once, he’d like to be released from a prison in Vegas. Doesn’t seem like too much to ask.
He climbed a sandy hill up to a ridge, and then saw the ridge was a road. A road that ran from nowhere to nowhere. The helicopter must have taken him further out than he thought. Then again, Texas nowhere is not always as boring as it looks. Maybe he could hook up with some Branch Davidians or something and have some fun, just like in old times.
Over his shoulder he heard the breathy hiss of an approaching car. A light blue '72 Cadillac convertible, and as it got closer he could see three oval faces behind the windshield, and flames of gold, brown, and red hair streaming from them. Either he was looking at three extremely hot women, or the kind of men no guy wants to get close to.
The car slowed, then stopped. Yeah, women. Legal, too.
“So whatcha doing out here?” a casual, youthful voice said.
“Waiting for you.”
“C’mon, really.”
“Oh, I can guarantee, as a certified Grade A American Male, I have been waiting for something like this to happen to me all my life. So where are you ladies headed?”
“Work,” they all said, almost together. Then the golden-headed one: “We work at Chester’s, a bar in Waco.”
Well, that explained the matching hot pants and tops that leave no tattoo to the imagination. “I wouldn’t mind spending the evening in Waco myself,” he said.
“Hop in,” the red-headed girl said. The golden-head motioned to open the car door, but Cardinal lightly leapt over it and slid in to the back seat next to the brown haired one. Brown-hair angled her tanned thighs toward him and leaned her shoulder against the opposite door. Her toned arm hung over the door in the open air, a half-dozen bracelets gathered at her wrist. “So where you are you coming from?”
Cardinal looked at these three perfect females. This was a hot streak, an incredible hot streak. He figured he was so lucky today he might as well be reckless.
“Prison.”
The girl laughed. “Cool.” He couldn’t tell if she believed him or not.
For the next few miles, the three girls said little, which was fine with Cardinal. It gave him time to check them out, to linger over cleavage, freckles, bare calves, and those delicate, ungathered hairs on the napes of their necks that danced in the wind. Strangely enough, the radio was tuned to the Bush Limburgher Show. Cardinal would have thought three chicks like this would be listening to Billy Ray Cyrus or something, but no. Conservative talk. Cardinal wondered if he should tell them that he met Limburgher during his recent adventure in the death chamber. He decided to skip it.
Looking down the road, he saw a 50s-style motor hotel off to the left. It was obviously a rest station in the old days when this road was the only path through central Texas, and forgotten now that the interstate was laid down. But it was still operating, probably through the donations of customers paying by the hour.
“You ladies got time before work? Because we could always stop at the hotel there.”
Redhead, driving: “Sure, no problem.”
Goldie: “I’m up for some fun.” Redhead eased her flip-flopped foot off the accelerator and pulled the car into the motel parking lot.
Cardinal was more than a little surprised — he had mostly intended the remark as a joke. Was this the luckiest day in his life? Nah, too easy, he thought. Something is wrong here. But he didn’t intend to find out what until somebody had taken off some clothing.