Here Comes the Night (2 page)

The O.K. Corral Café, across the street from the Cattlemen’s
Bank, provided the closest thing to gourmet food that Cowtown had ever wanted.
The cafe’s famous hand-breaded Lamb Fries were almost a rite of passage for the
dusty rural boys looking to make their future in livestock. The cafe’s
signature Chicken Fried Steak outsold everything else six to one.

Twenty-eight year old Erika Newton was one of the dozens of
waitresses who covered the cafe’s 24/7 shifts. Her electric burgundy hair
streaks freaked out some of the customers just in from the farm, but they made
her stand out. Regulars remembered her rough cuteness and good service. While
the tip percentages weren’t as high at the Corral as other places she had
worked, the volume was heavy with a fast turnover, so if she kept moving, there
was plenty of money to be had.

She had sought out this job a year ago, waited a long time
for a vacancy and finally gotten on. Now she worked her preferred 7-3 shift,
with its lucrative breakfast and lunch business patrons. This Friday, she was
exhausted as she finished up tickets for a last table of rowdy men. She was
covering until five for another girl and was counting the minutes.

Looking out through the cafe’s front window, she noticed
Buck Dearmore crossing the bank’s parking lot with a security guard and a woman—another
bank employee she recognized. Erika had waited on the celebrity before and
found him pretty hot for an old man. He was not only friendly, but his eyes
always flirted a little when he looked at her. More to the point, he never
tipped under 25%.

She turned back to the table and laid out their separate
checks. “You boys have a nice evening now.”

One of the green cowboys grabbed her arm as she was walking
away. “How ‘bout you join us? How’d that be?” Erika just smiled and pulled away
from him.

The other guys razzed him for trying. As Erika waited to
cash out, she saw her boyfriend walk past the front window and duck into the
side alley. She glanced at the clock. A few minutes after 5:00, too early for
him to be off. He worked til 7:00, when he worked.
That meant he had cut
work…again.

Tony Bonner, in his early 30's, walked like a 50's greaser
in his jeans and black teeshirt with rolled up sleeves. His muscular arms
fairly crawled with tattoos, which Erika didn’t really care for, and his face
was rough, bad boy handsome. Despite some misgivings, she found him hard to
resist.

Tony spotted Erika making change for the tableful of guys.
When she looked up at him, he tapped his watch. Erika flashed a quick five
fingers at him. He blew his breath out in a pout but leaned on the café’s front
window to wait.

Buck breathed a deep sigh as Johnny and Blanche took off in
their separate cars. Before getting into his own car, he walked to a public
garbage can at one corner of the lot, one he knew always got picked up at 6:00
on Fridays so it’d be clean for the weekend.

There wasn’t a soul in sight. Buck opened his briefcase and
dumped the bag with slicker and gloves into it, giving it a quick push to the
bottom. He closed the briefcase and walked to his Mustang.

After he climbed inside, Buck leaned back in the tan leather
driver’s seat. It was done. Over. Relief took the form of a nervous laugh. His
body was shaking, fingers trembling, and still a buzzing in his ears. He
breathed in deeply and whooshed it out.

“Okay,” he said aloud, inserting the key in the ignition.

A deep, raw voice from the back seat startled him. “What’s
okay, Buck?”

Buck jumped forward in his seat. A crude, enormous man with
a heavily pockmarked face rose up from the backseat.

Buck turned to look at him but was stopped by a cold gun
barrel pressed hard under his jaw. “Don’t you fuckin’ look at me,” the man
said, chuckling. “Remember that one?
Blue Velvet?
Huh? ‘Don’t you
fuckin’ look at me.’ Come on, it’s a classic. My man, Dennis Hopper.”

Buck’s mind raced. The guy sounded loopy, but his voice
wasn’t familiar. “What do you want?” he asked, still trying to sneak a glance
of him in the rearview.

“What do you think, big shot gambler?”

So it was about the money. How they could already know about
his last night’s winnings was beyond him. It had been an exclusive after hours
game, run by the city’s most infamous gambling host. Only a very few rich, with
an occasional invited celebrity such as himself, even knew how to find the
moving poker game.

He had won so big last night, with Angie at his side, you
could feel the hate-filled tension in the room when it broke up at five in the
morning. He had stashed his winnings in his office safe that morning, with the
plan of getting in touch with them in a few days. “Look, I’ve got—.”

The guy cut him off with, “Shut up,” then started to kid
around again. “I can’t believe you don’t remember that movie.” He muffled his
voice as he continued the impersonation. “‘Don’t you fuckin’ look at me’.”

“I guess I missed that one.”

Then all business. “Skip it. See that alley across the
street?”

“Yeah. Next to the O.K.?”

“Drive down there.”

Then Buck could hear the guy in the back seat giggling and
making sounds like he was breathing through an oxygen mask.

Watching Erika flirt with all those cowboy customers turned
Tony on. She was as clean and nice a girl as he’d ever hooked up with, and
there was something about her natural modesty that made him want to rip it
away. That was what she wanted, too, inside, he was pretty sure. Have someone
talk dirty to her, show her how it was done.

He considered himself an imaginative kind of guy, so when
she came out from work a few minutes later, he already had a plan in motion. He
pulled her into the restaurant’s alley and up against a wall before she could
say a word. He pushed himself close into her and put his hands on her breasts.

“Hey, take it easy. We can be seen,” Erika protested. But he
could hear the excitement in her voice. She would like doing it in public, he
knew, although that was a ways off. She’d need to be coaxed into it piece by
piece. But he was curious how far she’d let him go today. He tugged at the
buttons on her uniform.

She grabbed his hands and pulled them away. “Tony, for
cryin’ out loud.”

He leaned into her neck. “God,” he said. “I love it when you
smell like French fries.”

She giggled at that, but slipped away further down the
alley.

“Why aren’t you at work?” she asked.

He caught up with her and grabbed her around the shoulders.
“Fuck work.”

“You’ll get in trouble again. You’re already on thin ice.”

“Bunch of pussies.”

She pulled a little white box out of her purse and held it
up. “Got you something.”

“What is it?”

“Open it and see.”

“Come around here first,” he said, pulling her into a niche
next to a dumpster. He pulled up her skirt and slid one hand between her legs.

“Hey, watch it, cowboy.”

“I wanna do it right here,” Tony whispered, breathing hard.
“What do you say?”

“We’re right by a dumpster.”

“You’re just afraid someone’ll see,” he teased. “You got no
guts.”

“Guts are what’s in the dumpster, Tony.” Shaking her head in
disbelief, Erika pulled away from him.

At that moment, a car headed down the alley toward them.

As it drove past them, her eyes grew wide.

Buck’s hands shook as he steered the Mustang past a row of
dumpsters. The guy in back was still jabbering about Dennis Hopper.

“He had like this gas or something in this oxygen tank kinda
thing, got him high, and he’d breathe it while he did shit to her—can’t
remember her name—somethin’ Italian.” Then abruptly back to business. “Okay,
see that dark SUV at the end of the alley. We’re headed there.”

Buck thought he’d glimpsed somebody back by the dumpsters,
but it was too late now to get help. He drove the alley length to where a black
SUV with tinted windows waited.

“Okay, cut the engine.”

“Look, here’s my wallet,” Buck offered, going for his
pocket.

Laughter from the back seat. “They don’t want your wallet,
football boy. They want your ass.”

Buck lurched for the door handle. He felt a stinging jolt in
his neck as a stun gun zapped him. His head clunked against the window.

His kidnapper was still clowning around in the back seat.
“Don’t you fuckin’ look at me.”

Angie Wesner wasn’t quite as pulled together as she’d hoped.
Her nerves were all to pieces, and she hadn’t been able to eat a bite all day,
in spite of her bad hangover. Taking Buck to the poker game last night had not
been the best timing. Or probably the best idea, but not because anyone would
find out. Nobody, but nobody, talked about “Hankie” Hanks movable poker palace.

First, everyone there was an elite rich of the city who
understood the unbreakable rule of image management: you can do anything you
want as long as nobody finds out. Second, if any details were ever divulged
they would be permanently blackballed from the no limit stakes game. That’s how
“Hankie” had continued to escape the Oklahoma City Vice Squad’s efforts for
years on end.

Going had been a bad idea because she got home after
sunrise, and way too drunk. After it turned into an all nighter, Buck emerged
victorious but awfully haggard. She had a bad feeling about it. All this had
not hit her until the light of day, when it was too late to do anything about
it. She did not dare call him at the bank.

When Buck had confessed he owed some big time money a few
weeks ago, Hankie’s game was the first solution Angie thought of. She and
Hankie had grown up together in southeast Oklahoma, something few people in the
city knew. It was easy to make it happen. She just picked up the phone and
punched in his number.

He was delighted to hear from her. “Hey, Babycakes, I was
starting to think you’d got too big for your friends.”

“And here I was thinking it was your turn to call me.”

“I figured you’d blocked my number.”

She laughed. “Now you’re just flat out lying.”

“What’s on your mind?”

“Maybe a little poker? Anything going on?”

“You calling for yourself or your rich hubby?”

“Actually, a friend.” Angie paused a moment. “Buck
Dearmore.”

She heard Hankie whistle on the other end. “Sure, always
room for a aging local hero.”

“Thanks.”

“As long as you come with him. He knows the stakes? Or lack
thereof?”

“Oh yeah.”

He gave her the location and told her midnight.

It was fun watching Buck take his ride on the roller coaster
and come out sixty thousand richer. It was easy to think they were leading a charmed
life. They hadn’t even discussed calling off the plan for Friday afternoon.
Then it had felt like everything was clicking.

By 5:00 p.m. Angie was supposed to be shopping along a set
of storefronts she patronized on Exchange Avenue, the same street where the
bank was. After he killed Gordon, Buck would drive by slowly in his Mustang
after he left the bank, down Exchange, then turn toward the interstate. They
both understood there could be no contact under any circumstances. When she saw
his car, Angie would know it was done.

Antsy, she left earlier than she’d planned and drove her BMW
to the public parking lot close to Stockyards City. For over an hour, she
nervously moved from shop to shop, watching through the display windows.
Nothing.

She checked her watch for the umpteenth time. Almost 5:30.
She was sure he hadn’t driven by yet. She had barely glanced away from the
street, even though she was pretending to look at the shop displays.

The painful waiting reminded Angie of growing up. Never part
of the action itself. Just always waiting for her stepdad and stepbrothers to
come home from some two bit deal they’d dreamed up during the day. Maybe they’d
let the women in on what happened, maybe not. They might just want beer and to
slap your ass.

They were all penny-ante thieves. Stealing copper tubing, or
doing smash and grabs at businesses without alarms. But they swaggered around
like they were Dixie mafia while she and her mother waited, to hear and to
serve. Angie had grown to despise the helplessness of waiting.

She made her way down several more shops as a blood-orange
sun began to set itself down over the building tops. By nearly six o’clock.
Angie Wesner had a creeping sense that things had gone very wrong.

“Prick tease,” Tony threw at Erika.

“Screw you, Tony.” Erika straightened her blouse and skirt.
“You always do this to me. Coming on in grocery stores or in the park—now by a
dumpster, really? That’s supposed to turn me on?”

He knew that tone in her voice and backed off. “I’m sorry, baby.
I just want you all the time. I forget where we are. And when you throw
yourself at me…”

“The only thing I tried to throw at you was a present, which
you didn’t even both to look at.”

Tony quickly patted down his pockets. “I just…here it is.
What is it?” He opened up the little box and his mouth dropped in surprise.

It was a ring he’d stopped to admire when they were walking
back to her apartment last week. In a pawn shop window, just calling out to
him. A silver serpent design, with black onyx eyes.

He smiled his thanks then used the excuse to playfully grab
her butt again and pull her against him. “I can’t believe you did this for me,”
he whispered.

Tony noticed in his peripheral vision a couple of cars at
the other end of the alley, doors opening and slamming. But he was making one
last play for Erika, pulling her close and biting her ear, something she could
never resist. He felt her respond, in spite of pushing him away.

“Stop that until we get home,” she giggled. “Try it on.” He
kept looking at her as he slipped the ring on his finger. “It’s perfect,” he
said, finally admiring it.