Bobby Fix-It Sets A Trap: The Billy the Kid Chronicles Continues

So Bobby has just kidnapped a real estate agent and left her with his girlfriend Genna. He had to get a little rough with the woman, didn’t want to, but sometimes it’s the only way to get the information you need.

And now he has that information. Max Piceen is holed up in a motel just outside of Jackson and it’s time to take care of that dastardly fellow…..

As only Bobby Fix-It can do!

Shall we?

Human predators never consider for a moment that they are the prey. It’s not in their DNA. They have devoted their whole lives to stalking the jungle and taking what they want. They have taken advantage of the weak, ignored the suffering of their victims and continue to do what predators do until a bigger predator comes along and flicks the switch on their lights.

Max Piceen may have done his time in the state pen, but there was no way he was reformed, and there was no way he would ever be reformed.

It’s in his DNA, pure and simple.

I dropped the Porsche off at Matt Stair’s house and drove my pickup truck back towards town. It was six o’clock and I needed a couple things before I finished this once and for all. Max was not going to go quietly into the night and Genna didn’t want me to use violence. That meant I needed to be creative and a bit lucky.

If you’re in my old stomping grounds, the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City, making a drug buy is as easy as buying tomatoes at the local market. The sellers work certain areas and they’re consistent. They set up shop shortly after darkness falls and proceed to sell their own darkness until the inventory runs out, so it’s just a matter of knowing where they are, establishing trust and having the cash.

That’s in New York City, but what about the tourist mecca of Jackson, Wyoming?

Don’t kid yourself! Buying drugs is buying drugs is buying drugs. Find the market, establish trust and have the cash. Jackson may be a tourist town but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a healthy drug trade, and I knew from my months in this town that the market for such things was behind the A & P Grocery on Denver Boulevard.

I went into the A & P, bought some fried chicken and a soda, drove around to the back of the store and settled in for some fine cuisine and patient waiting. Never underestimate the value of patience when you’re doing a fix-it job. When you rub shoulders with the people I know, haste not only means waste but also could mean death, and I was in no hurry to die, not with my first child days away from arriving.

My patience was rewarded at eight p.m. A tall drink of water came strolling down the alleyway. He had the walk going for him, the prison yard shuffle, the one gained from countless hours of having leg shackles on. His mannerisms were relaxed but there was nothing relaxed about him. It was the eyes that needed watching. They never rested, looking left, right, straight ahead, always vigilant, always categorizing the normal around him and then potential for danger.

He got to the loading dock, boosted himself up on it, pulled out a cigarette and lit it with cupped hands providing a windbreak. He was open for business. I was about to be his first, and last, customer of the night.

I had my Glock tucked in my waistband but I wouldn’t be needing it. An acquaintance of mine from back in the Heights once gave me a custom-made expandable blackjack. It’s really a beautiful thing, perfect in its simplicity, admirable in its stopping power, six ounces of lead weight at the tip of a strong shaft. It’s small enough to conceal in your pocket but when opened with a swift flick of the wrist, it can deliver a blow from two feet away, and that blow will scramble the grits of whomever it hits.

I got out of my truck and slowly walked towards the loading dock. I had my hands at my sides, non-threatening, just a local ranch bum looking to dance with the white goddess. I was ten feet from him when he held up his hand.

“Don’t know you, fool,” he said. “What you want?”

His black hair was slicked back into a ducktail in the back, not a good look on him. He was trying for black street tough but it’s hard to carry off when you’re white and one-forty soaking wet with acne. This guy was not going to last long in this business despite the revolver I knew he had in his right pocket.

“I’m looking to fly with the angel tonight. Looking for a dime bag.”

“Don’t know you, fool. You just some white bread out for a stroll, could be a cop, could be damned near anything. What you coming into my alleyway talking about angels and such?”

This conversation had grown tiresome. I rehearsed the move in my mind. One step forward, extend blackjack, whip right to left, a matter of three seconds start to finish, and that’s exactly how it went down. The six ounces of lead caught him just below his left eye, right on the cheekbone. I heard it crunch and saw his left eye droop as it lost its supporting bone. He was out before he hit the cement.

He had fifty bags in his jacket pockets. Probably a street value of five-thousand, maybe a little more, depending on the local market prices. I took them all except for one. Figured he’d need it when he woke up.

The Beaver Creek Motel was two miles north of the city center on Highway Twenty-two, right where Patty said it would be. According to Patty, Max Piceen was in Room Nine, so I parked across the street with a good view of Nine and enjoyed the last piece of chicken while I waited. Darkness is predator time and I knew Piceen wasn’t the type to watch network television once the sun was down and the lambs were walking the streets.

At nine-eighteen the door opened at Nine and Piceen exited the room. I’d seen a picture of him from earlier research, but the picture didn’t do him justice. He was big. He was hard. Wide-shoulders, prison yard wide, wide from days of lifting free weights during rec time, so damned wide his neck seemed to shrink into them, giving him the appearance of head on shoulders, no in-between to support it. He had feral good looks, that hard look that some women like, or at least they like until they realize his looks aren’t the only thing hard about him, and his fist is disfiguring their faces, causing them pain because his mother abused him or his stepfather beat him or one of a hundred other manufactured reasons for his hate.

He lit a cigarette, looked around the way ex-cons do, got into his beat-up Nissan Altima and steered it back towards town.

I followed.

He led me to the Antler Bar on Sacramento Street. He parked in the lot. I followed suit. He walked into the bar. I took a look around and walked to his car. Worked it out in my mind as I approached, efficiency of motion, see it, do it, sap out, break left taillight, break right taillight, open door I knew would be unlocked, drop bags of drugs behind driver’s seat on floor, close door and back in my truck in ninety seconds.

Then I just had to wait for the fun to begin.

We will finish this up next week and when we do I suspect Max Piceen is going to have a very rough evening.

Thanks so much for following along. I’m getting close to wrapping up this series and then, if you want your Billy the Kid fix, you’ll have to purchase my novellas as they come out. I’ll keep you posted on their release dates.

2016 William D. Holland (aka billybuc)