Gone (Michael Bennett)

Juliana.
    “Nice service,” the guy said. “Are you guys new to the parish?”
    “No,” I answered for Seamus. “We’re just passing through.”
    “Passing through?” the hippie said. “In Aaron Cody’s station wagon?”
    “You ask a lot of questions,” I said. “I got one for you. You always carry in church?”
    “Carry?” the hippie said, his bleary eyes squinting. “Oh, you mean the ol’ pistola here,” he said, giggling as he patted the small of his back after a beat. “Oh, sure. All us rootin’ tootin’ cowboys up here like our Second Amendment rights. That goes without saying. How about you? You always carry in church?”
    “Get in the car, guys,” I said to Juliana and Seamus as I walked over to the still-giggling weirdo. Despite my initial paranoia and the guy’s roscoe, I could tell he was just a high California goofball.
    “It’s been really fun talking to you, bro,” I said, smiling as I stared into his red eyes, “but don’t you think it’s time for you to grab a bag of Doritos and go watch Jerry Springer ?”
    He burst out laughing at that.
    “I like you. You’re funny,” he said, going into his anorak pocket.
    “Tight-lipped, too,” he said, removing a fat joint and lighting it with a Zippo as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He blew some rancid smoke in my direction.
    “Around here, tight-lipped works just fine,” he said. “Actually, I was just trying to be neighborly. The priest’s accent reminds me of my grandpap. I’m Irish, too. They call me McMurphy. There’s a little bar down the road a bit called Buffalo Gil’s. Why don’t we meet up? I’ll buy you a Guinness.”
    I stared at the lit weirdo, wondering why this kind of crap always happened to me. I mean, talking to drugged crazy people was fun, but I had cows to milk.
    “Sounds like a plan, McMurphy, but I actually have a better idea,” I said as I turned to walk toward the car.
    “Yeah, what’s that?” my new dope-smoking hippie friend wanted to know.
    “How about we don’t meet up, but we just tell everyone we did?” I said as I climbed into the station wagon.
    He stared at me blankly as I started the engine, but just as I pulled past him, he suddenly got it.
    In my rearview mirror, I watched as the nut broke up, laughing in the empty parking lot, the joint in his hand falling to the gravel as he slapped at his greasy thigh.

CHAPTER 20
     
    VIDA GOMEZ KEPT THE stolen Cadillac Escalade at a steady sixty as they rolled east on the San Bernardino Expressway in El Monte, east of downtown LA.
    They were nearing their exit when a motorcycle gang roared past out of nowhere. Completely startled, she cursed violently as a dozen black-leather-clad motorcyclists on big Jap bikes screamed around both sides of her SUV like a fusillade of just-missing guided missiles.
    Assholes , she thought, seething, as one of the devil-may-care speeding bikers popped a wheelie. She could have shot one of them. All of them, in fact. The thing she hated most on this earth was to be snuck up on.
    Trying to roll the tension out of her neck, she glanced back at the six buzz-cut men seated behind her to see if any of them had witnessed her blow her cool. But they were calm, oblivious, half of them dozing as usual.
    Though all of Perrine’s handpicked cartel soldiers had obeyed her so far, she never once forgot that they were killers of distinction from a place where killers were a dime a dozen. Any sign of weakness, even the slightest hint of fear, could be fatal in her line of work.
    What was up with her today? she wondered. It definitely wasn’t like her to be so jumpy. This morning she’d woken up with a bad feeling. It was something in the air that wouldn’t quit, a brooding sensation that something unpleasant was about to occur.
    Or was she just being paranoid? Having a bout of stage fright? She didn’t know. The only thing she knew was, this was definitely the part she hated the most, the space between the plan and the execution.
    The latest task given to her elite squad was to deal with an Asian gang out of El Monte called the Triumph Dragons. The Vietnamese gang, though quite small, ran one of the busiest docks out at the Port of Los Angeles, down in Long Beach. Perrine had made a deal with them to let a large shipment through, but at the last second, the Dragons had reneged, causing the seizure by the US Coast Guard of an entire shipping container filled to the brim with premium Colombian