Austin scrambled through the shop door on his hands and knees, crawling across the greasy floor. He navigated by the grime -- lightly dusted with kitty litter beside the oil well, and metal shavings beside the welding bench. Spotlights through the front garage windows cast stark moving images against the back doors and spare parts walls. The front office seemed brilliantly lit. The security cameras looped into the front countertop computer screen were the only way to see what was out there without sticking his head up to get it shot off. He pushed blindly for the power buttons, waiting for the old computer to power up and run through the pop-ups. Moving the mouse on the countertop over his head, he clicked icons to find the security feed. Nine little boxes appeared; four showed the front lot full of dark SUVs, all headlights and spotlights pointing toward the front of the shop. The other four showed the side lot, the dark shop space, the back lot, and the fence behind the shed and used oil barrels.
Even with fancy cameras, there was no way that the trucks could have followed them through the drainage tunnels made of concrete, buried under sand and asphalt. Either someone at Sancho’s had somehow ratted them out, or someone had seen them crawling out of the drainpipe and up the embankment to the towing lot fence. Both seemed unlikely. But then, there they were in the front lot, every black SUV within a fifty-mile radius was parked at the Desert Sands, headlights aimed at the front windows.
“I can’t tell how many there are, Jynx.”
But Jynx wasn’t looking at the screen.
While Austin attempted to count vehicles, Jynx watched a lone shadow emerge from the trailer, pulling up his pants. The phantasm lurched through two frames, staggering across the back lot towards the shop door. Still pulling on a shirt and stumbling sideways, slightly, the tiny figure seemed to cuss and mutter soundlessly towards the garage. Even as a digital blur, it was obvious that Jeremiah was pissed.
His shadow materialized in the shop door, standing just outside of the spotlights. A languid, slender haunting, his face appeared in the flicker of a zippo flame. He vanished into a glowing ember as he blew a cloud into the spotlights to swirl and eddy in the still air. “What fresh hell have you brought me tonight, kids?”
Austin and Jynx huddled under the counter; dusty, disheveled, and frightened, they reminded Jeremiah of the starving kids in a charity fund commercial. Austin glanced up at the computer screen, split into nine little boxes, multiplying the number of vehicles in the front lot. “I don’t know. We snuck in the back. They didn’t follow us,” Austin said, still confused.
Jeremiah took another drag, counting cars in the video feed, trying to account for the various camera angles. There were at least eight of them out there, assuming that the distant shapes parked across the street were support vehicles of some sort. “Well, fuck.” he exhaled a swirling blue-silver cloud into the light. “There any coffee left?”
Austin seemed to rattle slightly, still trying to count cars on the screen from under the counter. “What?”
“Fuck it,” Jeremiah muttered, strolling into the spotlights. He raised a lazy-handed wave towards the audience outside, grabbed the coffee pot, and swirled the cold contents around to mix up the sediment. He pulled his dirty “World’s Greasiest Grandma” mug from the shelf beside the crusty powdered creamer canister.
“Jeremiah get down!” Austin hissed.
“Relax, Austin. If they were going to shoot me, it would have happened before I picked up the coffee pot.” He poured cold coffee into his mug, still shellacked with weeks’ worth of Folger's coffee stains. “Besides,” he muttered under his breath, “Only guilty people hide.”
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A bullhorn crackled out front. “Mr. Jiménez,”
Jeremiah paused at the uncommon address. The speaker paused as if he might answer. “This is the Department of Extraterrestrial Security, please exit the building with your hands on your head!”
“Ooooh,” Jeremiah cooed, swaying slightly. Jynx wondered if he might be a little drunk. “They sent the Space Force!” He waved and nodded, looking only mildly annoyed. He reached over the desktop above Austin and Jynx, picked up the old desk phone handset, and punched a few buttons on the keypad. The old P/A system crackled and whined throughout the shop and front lot. “We’re closed!” he waved at the officers hidden behind the halogen spotlight glare. “Come back around 9 tomorrow.” He set the phone back on the cradle and sipped his cold coffee, peering into the mug like his beverage had just insulted him. Without looking away from the front window he smiled apologetically at the collection of officers. There was a long pause as Jeremiah hoped, the feds presumably discussed giving up and just going away.
“We ditched the truck at the coffee shop and took the drainage tunnels.” Austin seemed to notice his greasy hands and knees finally, wiping his palms on his shins. Jynx regarded her own greasy hands.
Jeremiah pulled a red shop rag from the desk and handed it to her without taking his eyes off the starburst lights out front. “They’re not here for you,” he said. The way he had it figured, if they hadn’t called out the Tough Guy Club, there was a decent chance that they were there for the catalytic converters, and then they would get the saucer. They were going to find a way to make him go away. Either way, he wasn’t about to get the kids snatched.
That first handful of half-wit Feds would never fuck with him so long as he still had their rock and cruiser. These guys had to be something different. He wondered exactly what sort of parole violation it was to keep a flying saucer on his impound lot. Was that a slap on the wrist, or real jail time? Regardless, rules were rules, and impound storage cost a fair penny in collections cases. Anyone who wanted to take that thing off his lot owed him money.
“You’re surrounded, Jiménez. Just come out here so that we can talk,” the megaphone crackled. Jeremiah regarded the video feeds, assessing the situation. Of the nine screens, five of them were empty of Feds. They had a different definition of ‘surrounded.' Jeremiah regarded the last few drags of his cigarette, the glowing orange ember seeming to be the only color in a dusty room cast in stark shadows and blinding white light. Whoever these guys were, they were at least as dumb as the first guys. There was no way in Hell he was going out there to ‘talk’. A cop’s a cop. He stabbed his smoke out in an old clutch cover that sat beside the keyboard and picked up the telephone handset. “I’ve got these guys.”
Pulling another cigarette from the pack he placed it to his lips, mumbling under his breath. “Get out back but keep out of sight.” He flicked his Zippo, temporarily glowing in the warm dancing flame, his face hung weary, a colorized mask in the monochromatic scene. He took a drag off his cigarette, speaking behind his hand. “Be cool, Jynx.” He smiled at her. “Feds don’t shoot little girls.” He offered her a fist to bump as she crawled past him. As he watched them both scurry out of sight, he punched the buttons on the keypad to activate the intercom and cradled the handset against his shoulder.
“If this is a vehicular emergency,” The P/A drawled lazily, mimicking the Desert Sands outgoing answering machine message, “please hang up and call Triple-A for emergency roadside assistance.” Jeremiah glanced down at the dangling laces of his boot, grunting to himself. He placed one up on the stool, still cradling the phone against his shoulder as he tied his boot and adjusted his jeans over the double-knotted laces. “Hey, are O’Connor and Martinez out there?”
Behind the wall of lights and armored SUVs, a dozen black-clad special ops agents discussed O’Connor and Martinez as if it were a ransom demand in a hostage situation. Most people, upon discovering a division of well-armed black ops troops outside their front door in the middle of the night, tended to shit themselves trying to claw their way to the curb rather than provoke a confrontation. “Yes, sir. No, sir.” They didn’t give a shout-out to agents in the breach team.
Finishing the knot on his other boot, Jeremiah stood up straight, tucking his tank top into his belt line like an executive adjusting his tie for a particularly important presentation. “Because those fuckers still owe me beer.”
Across the street, well outside the line of sight, but still within hearing, O’Connor and Martinez cringed slightly at the mention of their names. Mr. Paulson chuckled softly, clearly amused with the entire situation. For obvious reasons, they decided that it might be better to flex their jurisdiction elsewhere.
