I lay down and looked under them to see what was happening. I pulled my Kimber .45 and kept it out, but I didn’t want to shoot at this range.
John Wesley walked to Shamu and glanced inside. He reached in and pulled out the Finding Nemo toy, looked at it, then down the street. His eyes lingered on the parked cars, but he didn’t walk over to check.
Maybe he figured I could be armed, too. He dropped the toy and crushed it with his heel, then looked along the street like he was hoping for one more shot at me.
The faint sound of sirens grew louder, and a few seconds later I heard John Wesley’s pickup start up and roar away in traffic. I rose and trotted over to where the girl had gone.
Nothing. She had vanished. I wiped the sweat from my forehead and for some reason looked at my watch. The entire incident had taken less than three minutes. I picked up the crushed Nemo toy and looked in the direction the gunman had gone.
“Well cowboy, you’ve pissed me off now,” I said.
**
Hondo arrived at the same time as the police, and so did Vick Best. Vick patted me on the shoulder, his hand shaking. He nodded, affirming to himself that I was all right. He returned to his grouchy self and said in a voice that broke a little, “You turd.”
The other witnesses and I finished our statements to the police, and as the crowd thinned, several of the pedestrians came over to shake my hand and tell the officers that I had risked my life to save the unknown girl.
Several crews from the local TV stations and the press got statements from them.
I was interviewed by each of them, and I made it a point to give it the old, “Aw shucks, it was nothing,” performance and to smile and use body language and to be as photogenic and charming as possible. After all, Hondo got a gig and he did a lot less… well, at least as far as talking to the cameras.
“You are shameless,” Hondo said.
“What?”
“You’re hoping a director or producer will see you and you can get an acting job.”
“I was just being my natural self.” I tried to look innocent.
Hondo laughed, “My ass,” He pointed at Shamu, “You want me to follow you to Gaylord’s shop?”
“Yeah,” I wasn’t eager to hear Gaylord Parker’s smart remarks, which he made every time I brought Shamu to him for repairs. Maybe this time he wouldn’t.
Fat chance.
We pulled up to Gaylord’s Magic Auto Repair and the owner and resident smartass walked out to meet us. Gaylord said, “Baca, what do you do, loan this truck to gun ranges for contests, like Shoot the Truck in Half, win a teddy bear? Thing outweighs a friggin’ tank, it’s got so much lead in it.”
“Har-har,” I said. “When can you have it ready?”
“Well, I’ll have to call the freight company, have ‘em send in a truckload of Bond-O.”
“Will it be ready tomorrow?”
He looked at me like I was crazy. “Look around. See all these other cars that were here before you?” There were a lot of cars. He said, “I’ll need it for a week, at least.”
“You have anything for a loaner?”
He grinned, “I might have, just for you. Wait here.” He went into his office and returned with a set of keys. He tossed them to me and said, “You’ve been so good for business this last year, thought I’d give you the honor of driving Matilda.”
Ohh, man, I thought as my heart sunk. Pictures of a rusty Yugo flashed through my mind. He walked me around the side of the paint shed and pointed. I was floored.
“She’s cherry, rebuilt from the wheels up,” he said.
It was a beautiful, dark green 1969 GTO convertible. He said, “Got the big engine, runs like a bat out of hell. I made one modification on it,” he waved me over to look in the interior and he pointed at the radio. “I rigged it without a
radio, but I put in an mp3 player. Got three thousand songs to choose from, all the good stuff from the fifties, sixties, seventies, and some eighties, but none of that disco crap. It’ll take you back, you drive this baby.”
“I wasn’t even born when those songs came out.”