Motor Mouth

Rodriguez got behind the wheel and horse-wanger Lucca returned to the mall.
    “Divide and conquer,” Hooker said. “It’ll be easier to snag just one of them. Let’s move.”
    We got out and walked over to the Taurus. Hooker had his gun in one hand and his other hand on the Taurus door handle. He yanked the door open and pointed the gun at Rodriguez.
    “Get out,” Hooker said.
    Rodriguez looked at Hooker, and then he looked at the gun.
    “No,” Rodriguez said.
    “What do you mean, no?”
    “I’m not getting out.”
    “If you don’t get out, I’ll shoot you.”
    Rodriguez stared Hooker down. “I don’t think so. You’re not a shooter. I bet you never shot anything.”
    “I hunt,” Hooker said.
    “Oh yeah? What do you hunt, bunnies?”
    “Sometimes.”
    I tried not to grimace. “That’s disgusting.”
    “Women don’t understand about hunting,” Rodriguez said to Hooker. “You gotta have cojones to hunt.”
    I did an eye roll. “Now that you two big-game hunters have bonded, how about getting out of the car.”
    “Forget it,” Rodriguez said.
    “Okay,” I said to Hooker. “Shoot him.”
    Hooker’s eyes opened wide. “Now? Here?”
    “Now! Just friggin’ shoot him.”
    Hooker looked around the lot. “There are people…”
    “For crying out loud,” I said. “Give me the gun.”
    “No!” Rodriguez said. “Don’t give her the gun. I’ll get out. Christ, she almost killed Lucca with that six-pack.”
    Hooker and I took a step back and Rodriguez got out.
    “Hands on the car,” Hooker said.
    Rodriguez turned and put his hands on the car, and I did a pat down. I took a gun from a side holster and a gun from an ankle holster and his cell phone.
    Hooker’s phone rang. “Yeah?” Hooker said. “Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.” He shifted from side to side. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. No problem. I’ll be there. I’m ready to get on the plane.”
    “Who was that?” I asked Hooker when he disconnected.
    “Skippy. He wanted to make sure I remembered about the banquet. He said murder charges wouldn’t exempt me.”
    It was Sunday, and Skippy was probably already in New York preparing for an entire week of NASCAR promotion with the top-ten winning drivers. And he was justifiably worried that he’d have only nine guys safely tucked away in their rooms at the Waldorf. Probably at this very moment his thumbs were flying over his BlackBerry, composing a damage-control article on Hooker and me that could be shipped out to the media at a moment’s notice.
    Hooker reached into the car and popped the trunk. “Get in,” he said to Rodriguez.
    Rodriguez paled. “You’re kidding.”
    Rodriguez was thinking about Bernie Miller. Thinking about how easy it was to shoot a guy in a trunk. And I was thinking I liked seeing Rodriguez coming to terms with it. This wasn’t the movies. This was real life. And shooting people in real life wasn’t nice. Especially when you were the guy getting shot.
    “I could shoot you now,” I said. “Be easy to get you in the trunk with a couple bullets in your head.”
    I couldn’t believe I was saying this. I had to get somebody else to kill a spider. And I hated spiders. Not only was I saying all these dumb tough-cookie things…I was almost believing them.
    Rodriguez looked into the trunk. “I’ve never climbed into a trunk before. I’m gonna feel like an idiot.”
    Guess this was one of those situations where having cojones doesn’t do you a lot of good, eh?
    Hooker made an impatient sound and raised his gun, and Rodriguez went into the trunk headfirst. He had his ass up in the air, looking like Pooh Bear going into the rabbit hole, and I almost burst out laughing. Not because it was all that funny, but because I was borderline hysterical.
    A bunch of high school kids walked by on their way to the mall.
    “Hey, it’s Sam Hooker,” one of them said. “Dude!”
    “Hey, man, can I have your autograph?”
    “Sure,” Hooker said, handing me the gun. “You got a pen?” he asked the kid.
    “What’s with the guy in the trunk?” one of the kids wanted to know.
    “We’re kidnapping him,” Hooker said.
    “Way to go,” the kid said.
    The kids left, and we closed the lid on Rodriguez.
    “You drive the SUV, and I’ll take the Taurus,” Hooker said. “We’ll take him to the factory.”
    I reattached the hose and wires on the Taurus, jogged to the SUV, Hooker backed the Taurus out, and we took off.

ELEVEN
    It was late afternoon. We’d stopped at a