“Do it now,” the swarthy speaker reiterated impatiently. One of his companions gestured pointedly with the bulge in his jacket.
Ross complied, dropping the car keys into his pocket as he did so. There was an old Ruger stuffed under one of the backseat cushions and he tried to think how he might reach it without triggering a possibly fatal reaction.
He stopped by the rear right door and turned. “All right, what d’you want? I haven’t got much money.” He hoped they wouldn’t find the slim metal box shoved under the front passenger seat. It contained everything he’d saved from his sojourn in El Paso.
The younger man sniffed derisively. “Come on, man. We don’t want no trouble. We don’t want to hurt you. Just give us your wallet, man, and the keys, and you won’t see us no more, okay?” He stuck out an expectant hand, palm up.
“Hey now, wait a minute.” Ross raised and spread both arms. Given his impressive wingspan, it was a gesture sufficiently alarming to make his antagonists tense. “Take it easy. Look, you can have the wallet. There’s about a hundred and fifty bucks in there. Let me take my license out and leave me my car, okay? I’ve got to get to California. There’s a job waiting for me there,” he lied, “and if I don’t make it on time they’ll give it to somebody else. You take the car and I’ve got nothing.”
The leader of the pack shrugged indifferently. “I’m really sorry, man, but it’s such a nice car, you know? A classic.”
“Come on, I know what they like over the border.” Ross gestured at the Caddy. “This ain’t no Chevy Suburban or Camero. Besides, man, it sticks out like a beached whale. Where you gonna hide it?”
“Let us worry about that. Besides, who said anything about taking it across the border? I kind of thought we might keep it in the neighborhood, you know? Tell you what, man. We’re not bad guys.” Turning to his friends, he added something in Spanish. Ross Ed possessed a passable command of the language and caught the joke, but it didn’t make him smile the way it did the others.
“You say you got a hundred and fifty bucks in your wallet? We’ll leave you fifty. Me, I think that’s pretty generous of us. Greyhound comes through here twice a day, you can get a ticket back to someplace useful.”
“I’d rather keep my car. Got a lot of sentimental value, you know?”
“You’ll get over it, man. It’s not like it’s new.”
The one with his hand shoved inside his jacket stepped forward unsmilingly. “That’s enough talk. Give us the keys.”
Ross Ed nodded at the bulge. “You let that thing off and everybody in the restaurant will be out here in ten seconds.”
The young man pulled what he was holding and Ross saw that it was no screwdriver. “Don’t mess with me, man. These little twenty-twos hardly make any noise at all. Besides, they’ve got the jukebox going in the bar. Nobody in there can hear nothing.”
“A twenty-two’s not going to stop me,” Ross Ed replied, stalling as best he could.
“Maybe not one shot, but there’s eight in this clip. I put a couple in your face, man, and you won’t care. Is that worth an old car? Me, I don’t think it’s got that much sentimental value to you.”
“All right, all right, you can have it.” Slowly he turned toward the Caddy. “Can I just get a couple of personal things out?”
“Sure, man.” Now that the issue had been decided peaceably the first speaker could afford to be magnanimous. “Give me the keys first.” A reluctant Ross Ed tossed them over.
His tormentor moved past him to unlock the car, grinning as he did so. “Don’t want you pulling any surprises out of the glove compartment or from under the seat. You tell me what you got to have and I’ll get it for you.” He pulled the passenger door open. The little shit knew what he was doing, Ross Ed had to admit.
There was no way he could slip past him to get at the money box or the gun in the back.
“Hey, mira este, you guys!”
“Look at what?” The pistol holder strained to see without coming too close to Ross Ed. “I don’t see nothing. C’mon, man, I’m getting nervous. We been here a long time.”
“Relax,” the speaker snapped at his buddy. “Nobody’s coming out here.” Straightening, he looked back at the tall Texan. “What is this thing, man?” Reaching into the car, he put a hand on a cold alien shoulder.
Ross twitched, but nothing happened. The young hood gave no indication that anything out of the ordinary had occurred. He eyed his quarry expectantly.
“It’s a ventriloquist’s dummy,” Ross Ed heard himself saying. “It’s an act I do sometimes when I’m tending bar. Helps break the monotony. Good for a few extra tips.”
“No shit?” Reaching into the car, the speaker picked up the body. While Ross sweated, the figure of Jed was held out for all to see. “Look at this ugly sucker!”
A couple of the onlookers chortled. Others made rude remarks.
“Hey, man, you think those are all legs?”
“Shit, the dude that made that was on something!”
“And he didn’ stop in time. Made too many arms and legs.”
“Can I have him back?” Ross strove to sound both deferential and desperate. “I’d hate to lose the tips.” Every time the speaker swung the body around Ross flinched, envisioning fragile bits of suit and body snapping loose.
Smirking unpleasantly, the hood looked up at him. “Sure, you can have it, man. Here, catch!”
So saying, he held the corpse out in front of him with both hands and drew back his right leg.
“No!” When Ross took a step forward he abruptly found both guns aimed at his chest. There was nothing he could do. As attached as he’d become to the deceased alien, it wasn’t worth dying for.
Ross’s tormentor betrayed his North rather than Central or South American origins by bringing his right foot straight up and forward instead of sideways soccer-style. The expensive sneaker made solid contact in the vicinity of Jed’s posterior region. Ross Ed prepared to lunge at the alien to keep it from striking the ground, but something intervened.
Several somethings, in fact.
At the instant the grinning young man’s foot connected with the body there was a blinding flash of green light. It over-whelmed Ross’s vision. He felt a damp, stinging sensation, as though he’d been hit in the face by a gallon of electrified moss. A sharp burning smell filled his nostrils.
As his sight returned he saw that the would-be vandal’s body was encased in brilliant green. It twitched and jerked, as if under attack from a malevolent aurora. At the same time something struck Ross in the chest and he reflexively threw out his arms to catch it. A hasty examination revealed that Jed was undamaged and unchanged.
Precariously balanced on his left leg, each short black hair sticking straight out, eyes bulged and mouth wide in a soundless scream, the kicker vibrated and shimmied. Smoke rose from his hair and the tips of his fingers.
Then he toppled slowly over onto his right side, arms and legs frozen in position. Smoke continued to rise from his extremities as if from dozens of incense sticks.
