I stopped at a pay phone outside the In-N-Out quickie mart out by the highway and called Ulysses Homeslice's pager.
While I waiting for his call-back, one of those old Ford Velociteers screeched to a halt alongside the curb. It was as big and black as a hearse. The store's plate glass windows shook with the lowdown idling of its souped-up engine.
Three punks in black sunglasses sat inside. Two greasy fuckups in the front. In back was a ghostly pale chick with short, raven-black hair and blood-red lipstick.
The girl got out of the freak mobile and sauntered into the store as I was dialing Homeslice. She wore big black army boots and a black slip for a skirt.
A slit up the side showed her white thigh. Pressed into it were bruises like fingerprints that made me think she liked it a little rough.
I read her skin tight T-shirt. A faded silk-screen of Jesus side-by-side with Satan. Above Jesus it said LOVES ME. Above the devil, LOVES ME NOT.
The cotton shirt was so threadbare it was translucent. She had her sleeves rolled up. A ring of thorny barbed wire was tattooed around her scrawny left bicep.
She went bra-less. I fell in love with her tits. They were fist-sized balls of flesh with dark brown nipples.
My dick got interested real quick. I watched her through the plate glass window as she lingered at the back of the store. She picked a comic book off the wire carousel and flipped through it, looking bored.
The passenger got out of the Velociteer. He swung a sawed-off at his side, clomping toward the door in his red-laced shitkickers. His shredded jeans flapping as he pulled open the door.
Goddamn armed robber. Not a careerist like me but an unprofessional punk doing it for thrills. Just another sucker at heart.
I watched the scene play itself out like I was watching a TV show I'd seen already. You know what's gonna happen but you look anyway cuz there's nothing else on.
The stickup man was pointing the shotgun at the skinny immigrant cliché behind the counter. He wore a bright yellow baseball cap with Have a Nice Day on it. A painful smile was frozen on his face as he pulled bills from the register.
He wasn't going fast enough. The punk was freaking out. Yelling and waving that sawed-off around.
Suddenly it went off. I thought the punk had shot the guy. But it wasn't like that. The barrel must've been blocked, cuz the shot had blown back in the shooter's face.
The blast threw him backward into a cardboard display of Fancee pastries. It was an avalanche of cupcakes, powdered donuts and sticky buns. The sap's legs buckled beneath him and he was dead before he hit the ground.
The Velociteer spun its wheels as it peeled outta there. I smelled the sharp odor of burnt rubber. Exhaust from the dual pipes breezed by.
Inside the store, the clerk was losing it. Laughing and crying at once. He picked up the shotgun and held it out at arm's length and was actually talking to it. Like it was gonna talk back and tell him why the world's so outta whack.
He finally bolted out the front door. Shit stained his white pants. He was booking across the lot like he wasn't gonna stop till he got back to wherever the hell he came from.
