A Wanted Man

They gathered in Cliff’s hotel room, first capitalizing on the need for sleep. It was a slim two hours. They couldn’t afford to indulge in more.

Room service brought coffee, two pots, and a couple platefuls of Danish after they woke. They meandered around, each taking turns at a quick shower, and as Art was toweling off, he heard Cliff shout out in grief, or anger. They sounded a lot alike.

“NO! No fucking way!” He turned the volume up on the local news. Art hustled out of the bathroom in his skivvies. Johnny and Cliff were glaring at the television as the reporter spoke over a photo of Donnie Yankovich, a stiff driver’s license or a business license shot.

“The Ohio resident had been entertaining at one of Nevada’s more notorious gentleman’s clubs in Pahrump, near the California border. It has been reported a debate had broken out between the suspect and two employees of The Zanzibar Club, and information sources suggest the patron drew a weapon and killed one of the employees. The Nye County Sheriff is speaking on the matter. We’ll go to Sheriff Coyle now.” The shot segued to a matronly woman with plenty of heft in her uniform, drawn-up red-auburn hair, well managed under her law enforcement cap. Beneath the image was “Sheriff Darlene Coyle.”

“Good afternoon. We have an APB out for a Donald Yankovich…” Cliff again, wanting to interrupt what he was hearing, “No, fucking way… no way. He’s been set up.” Then silent again. “…was being entertained when he reportedly became belligerent with the employees, and a gun was drawn; we have one deceased, and another girl sort of roughed up by the assailant… The suspect had escaped out a window and has been running since the early hours. We think around 3:00 AM. He stands six-feet tall, has brown eyes and a lean build. He was last seen in… boxer shorts and boots. I’ll take any questions.”

Cliff clicked off the television set still shaking his head “no.” Then contemptuously spit out, “Employees. Fucking-A. Those fucking idiots; they go out to a whorehouse! And the report says nothing about Laz or Mark! Shit, this is blown all-the-fuck-up.” Then Cliff realized the critical information in the report and blurted, “He was in his underwear… and his boots! What’s the first thing a grunt puts on when under fire?” His military friends knew the answer.

“So fucked! We have to get out there.” It was an alarmingly simple and sincere remark, but aimless as well. Johnny wasn’t weighing anything but friendship.

“Where do we go?”

Cliff shot back, “Art, they just said, The Zanzibar Club – that’s that fuck Jack Smart’s joint he was pushing. That’s where the fuck we go!”

“I know what Johnny meant, but do what out there? Look for him? The Sheriff’s office is looking for him. Maybe State Police at this point? You think they might have better resources than three jarheads with their dicks in their hands?” he never considered Johnny not “one of them” to the point he considered him a jarhead. “And we’re supposed to waltz into that fucking hornet’s nest? And do what? Sneak him out in a rental car?”

It wasn’t cruel disregard Art spoke with, it was the most logical brain in the room. Cliff was nodding.

“You’re right. We can’t be clumsy about it, but we do have to go. You know it and I know it.”

Then Art had a good idea in how to burrow down to the culprits rather than go around swinging weapons at any suspected bad guys. “Hey! They can’t know what we know!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Donnie! He hasn’t replied to your text messages, right?” Cliff acknowledged him, “Yea, five of them and three calls unanswered. Mark or Laz neither.”

“So, if Donnie doesn’t have his phone, who does? Same with Laz and Mark.” The two other marines were catching on. Johnny, in his reasoning, shared, “That doesn’t mean any of the creeps got their phones.”

“Maybe not, Johnny, but what if? Maybe the phones are lost, maybe broken, I don’t know. But whoever is out there, they can’t know we know about the APB, right?”

Cliff and Johnny now were seeing it clearly, and Cliff would finish the thoughts.

“So we keep contacting them, pretending we don’t know anything about this shit with Donnie, and see what they do. And if they reply? Then we can isolate the phone usage, get a read on where the phone is… and who it is that’s using it.”

“But if this news is going all over, they probably don’t answer. What would they have to gain by it?”

“Johnny’s got a good point, Cliff.”

Then Cliff hit the jackpot, “So we reach out to Mark and Laz only. Work those phones, like we want to come join them for some fun. Texts only.”

“There it is, Sarge! If the boys aren’t fit, and the dirtbags got their phones, I would bet they bite, to make a new client.” The three marines broke into heated readiness.

Johnny was already on the phone asking Siri for the nearest rental car location.

“We’re gonna have to come lethal if we do.”

“Yes, we will.”

That was packed with all sorts of uncertainty. But just as well a ton of promise.

“But first, let’s find Jack.” More promise.

**********************

Big Gal Sal and Susie 2-cents, aka, Susie Walker, were finishing their statements to the investigators, having been herded in with their three security roughnecks at 9:30 in the morning. Four hours later, they were finally heading out, having done their civic duty in helping catch a killer. They all came willingly, and why not, since it was their employee and friend that was shot and killed? And they all had their stories straight. Precisely coordinated.

And that’s what was making Sheriff Darlene Coyle just a little curious. The lines even sounded the same. Sure, a vivid event in front of that many people, it could be pretty tightly mirrored from one to the other… but the sheriff knew humans were failed creatures, prone to errors in attention span, detail sensitivity, adverse effects from fear and adrenaline. The odds of six people sounding exactly alike, even having seen precisely the same thing? Impossibly small chance. And how could all six know every detail… in a whore’s room?

Yet, Sheriff Coyle concluded, it was the only path on this murder so far, with much still to find out. She had a dead girl, 24 years-old, and in a place like The Zanzibar Club. She hated thinking it, but of all the places, it would be Big Sally Burrough’s joint. It tied the sheriff in fits. And there was nothing she could do for anybody unless she found this Yankovich character…

Sitting with the detective that would be handling the case, she spun some thoughts, “Whatcha think, Harry?”

“About what, Dar?”

“Call me Sheriff, Harry. Make me proud, will ya? I mean, Christ’s sakes, we got witnesses crawling the shop, news people in and out today. Now, I don’t give a rat’s ass on any normal day, but… look around ya, Harry.” She sat with her arms held wide.

“Sorry, Sheriff. But what should I be thinking about?”

“The case!” Her eyes grew big in disbelief of her detective’s poor attention span. “The witnesses. What d’ya think?”

“I think it’s sad, first of all. Pretty kid getting killed like that.”

“Okay, and…”

“Well, we gotta find the murderer.”

“Suspect, Harry. Suspect.”

“Yea, suspect.”

“That it? That all you got?” Darlene was rubbing her chin like she was trying to figure out Harry, but she was way past that. Listening to others talk on the subject of a crime caused her some interesting revelations time to time. It was like listening to what you never thought you’d expect to be listening to. A little something said, something remembered… So, no matter Harry’s lapses of observation, she was learning, and Harry’s gritty performance in the field made up for his unimpressive focus in the early stages of building a case. Like he was now exhibiting.

“Well, I guess not, Sheriff. I mean, we got a body, and we got a name of a possible suspect.”

“Harry, that suspect is a decorated marine…” Harry snapped his fingers like, “yea, that too!” Darlene wasn’t done making the appropriate observations for her first detective, “And he’s from Ohio?” She was trying to ignite his deductive reasoning, like priming an old, rusty water pump.

“Yea, the suspect’s from Ohio… yea.”

“An ex-military, Harry, from Ohio… all the way out here in Pahrump, Nevada… right?”

Harry knew Darlene was doing some of his work right now, so he listened carefully and just nodded, because Darlene was rolling.

“No doubt the boy came in from Vegas, right?”

Harry grunted, sounding like assent.

“One guy, Harry? Where are his friends?” Sheriff Darlene hung on this question, almost looking past Harry, through Harry. “Guys like that travel to a chicken ranch with friends... And we’re gonna have to go back out to Big Sally’s place and find out a little more… oh, and get the name of the limo driver. If it’s that Hopscotch dipshit again, he’ll claim he doesn’t remember… and we’ll have to cite him for not recording his travelers. Like usual.”

Harry was nodding, and jotting a couple notes. “You want I go find Hopscotch?”

“Yea, go interrogate Hopscotch. You probably get nothing, but…” she never finished the thought… because the idea of a lone traveler being the only one left to tell the story of why he just up and killed the whore he was buyin… but not the other one of the two… It caused her indigestion. And it began to piss her off.

Harry was still sitting, waiting for the sheriff’s send-off, and Darlene just adjusted in her office chair, leaning back to look out the window… east towards Las Vegas. And in her trance, she just muttered those three words she commonly spat out in anger.

“The Zanzibar Club.”

***********************

Donnie had been baking as the temperatures rose to a dry and torching 96 degrees; but it wasn’t the heat that bothered the veteran, it was his lily white Polack hide. Despite having trained his youthful skin to tan while serving in Iraq, his office and travel world gave little cause to work on a tan these days. And that sun was braising the wounded man as he darted from arroyo to bush, to rock clusters. He would be blistering by tomorrow…. If he lived to see it.

He had covered probably six or seven miles, hobbled by weariness, his years and a 9mm slug that passed through the triceps of his left arm. The blood had saturated his measly makeshift bandage, and was dripping and almost spritzing from his elbow as he walked, ran, ducked his way across the Mojave. But he was now perched at a small fence, just outside a ranch style home, with shutters with a bronco rider engraved on them. The first structure he had seen since the whorehouse. It was a cowboy’s cowboy dream. Two horses chewed the parched grass, looking up at Donnie in those big glass-brown eyes… it was almost an intellect, Donnie saw, a passionless observation the equines had of this mess of a man, all beat to hell. And if they spoke, they both would have said, in a most contemptuous tone, “You fucking idiot. Drunk and chasing poontang all the way out in Pahrump… No idea where Mark or Laz are, and surely running for your life… simply because you were drunk and looking for poontang.”

Then a shotgun blast broke his foolish reverie, and he dove into the dust, scrabbling for a cluster of small cacti.

“What the fuck you doin’ on my propahty? You din’t see the no tresspassin’ signs?”

“Don’t shoot! I ain’t doin’ no harm! I couldn’t hurt you, sir. I’m almost dead myself.”

The old man didn’t drop the shotgun, Donnie finally had eyes on the man. Well into his grey years, but sturdy, if you call holding a double-barreled shotgun, and a six-shooter on your hip “sturdy.”

“Ya say yer ahmost dead. Why is ya ahmost dead? And don’t move with speed, cuz I’ll make sure you is dead. Hear me?”

“Yessir, I hear you. And I respect you, protecting your property, sir. I fought for those rights.” It was a gamble, and Donnie was sure on a bad streak, but nearing death, you throw all in on the worst bet, when it’s the only one you got.

“How ya mean, boy?”

“Military, sir. Marines. Regimental Combat Team One, Third Battalion, First Marines, sir.” The barrel with one more shell just eager to go flying tilted down towards the dirt finally.

“Where’d ya serve, boy?”

“Iraq, sir. The entire two tours.” – he would leave out the two slugs in the back and his three-month’s recovery. There was a long silence, hearing nothing but wind whipping at the sand, with that curious patter as the sand slashed at everything… including his sunburn. Then the old man responded.

“So, you know deserts, eh?”

“I do, sir. I know ‘em well.”

“Well then, why in the fuck are you in your boxer undies and boots? You lose your goddamn sense or just your clothes?”

*************************

“Goddammit Carson, it’s him! I saw it on the news. Sheriff Coyle was talkin’, and they showed his picture. That man, right there, his picture!”

This time it wasn’t the old cowboy with the gun in Donnie’s face, but the man’s wife. Donnie fell from the frying pan alright… he held his hands out in total benign innocence, and a wild and ironic fear, after being chased by killers, taking a round and bleeding half to death, he might get killed by a grandma with brutal sass.

“Easy Mom, he ain’t all that, I’m sure of it.”

“How can you be so sure, Carson? You just pulled his ass out of the wind five-minutes ago.”

Donnie didn’t dare speak, certainly not move a muscle, but that arm was wanting to die… and he was sagging, aching over unfavorable possibilities. And above all of that, how in the fuck was he being accused of murder?

The old woman leaned into Donnie with a shiny old colt pointing right at his nose.

“Carson says you ain’t a killer. Make me believe you, mister.” That word “mister” seethed out almost a curse or a lethal accusation.

“Ma’am, I don’t know how I can convince you, but I did not kill anybody. I swear it!”

“And that’s supposed to satisfy me? All okay-dokey, you’re innocent as a baby pea. Is that what you think?” The old man was chuckling for the interrogation.

“No ma’am. I just don’t know what to tell you because I don’t even know who’s dead.”

“You mean you shot a plain stranger? Mean sonofabitch!” Carson’s head could be seen bobbing in humor just beyond the shiny colt and the crotchety woman swinging it.

“No, ma’am. No, I didn’t shoot anybody, and I don’t know who was shot dead… cause I was their target!” He held up his arm which had just been wrapped in a dishtowel by Carson, already tainted with new blood.

“Is that one of my dishtowels?” She was alarmed… pissed… and Donnie could see Carson was no longer chuckling, and he wasn’t looking this way either. The veteran just stayed quiet, fearing what might be the final straw on an itchy trigger finger.

“Oh, Babs, I’ll get you a new set. The boy’s tellin’ ya straight. He’s got a bullet wound in his upper arm. It was let him bleed all over, or I help him keep a cup or so of blood and maybe survive the trouble.”

“Carson! Are you dumb or crazy? The man is on the run, with a bullet hole in ‘im and there’s a sheriff search on for a killer…” in a grand finish, “…and this makes you sure he’s an innocent victim? My gawd, I might just shoot the both of yuz! Him for bein’ a killer, you for bein’ too stupid to ever trust again.”

Despite the angry, chaotic rhetoric, Donnie suddenly felt safe… maybe safer here than anywhere on Earth at the moment, because no one knew where he was – including the killers. But this still needed to deescalate.

“Ma’am, if I may, can I tell you what I know, and what I don’t know? Then you can decide to shoot me or not.” He instantly winced, because in being brash, he may have signed his death warrant, and his illusion of relative safety would be a fool’s epitaph.

“I’m all in favor of shootin’ ya right now. What you got to tell me?” There was a chance.

“Now I ain’t proud about this, but I was with my old war buddies, all of us were in Iraq, and we get together every year to celebrate our survival… three of us almost died there.”

Her expression softened, but the shiny Colt remained poised. “That’s too bad, son. But it might’ve been a better death than dying in shame a murderer.”

“Hear me out, ma’am, please. You don’t owe me, but I did fight for this nation. And I came back against long odds. I pay my taxes, and take care of two families.”

“Two families? How is that? You do charity work?”

“Well, I do some, Wounded Warriors program, but no… both families are mine, two wives.”

Outraged, Babs blared, “You mean you’re a two-timer to boot?” The Colt was wiggling with purpose again.

“No ma’am. Divorced. Still friends, but bad married partners. I have one child with her, he’s now 27. I got two with my present wife, 16 and 19. Doing our best each day.” Babs was easing up, she put the gun by her side with a warning.

“My arm’s just gittin’ tired, but it ain’t nothin’ and I could still draw on ya and shoot the hairs outta your moustache, so don’t do somethin’ foolish.” Carson was back to chuckling. “So finish convincin’ me mister.”

“Well, like I said, I’m not proud, but me and my buddies are in Vegas, and one of them is going through tough times…” he was nodding in that “ain’t it a damn coincidence” way, “… his wife is divorcing him. So, me and my buddies thought we would treat him to… well… you know…” He really did not want to say this part, especially she with the Colt still in her hand and finger on the trigger.

“No, I don’t know. That’s why I asked ya, son.” Carson had his head turned because this was new stuff to his hearing.

“Well, we brought him to Pahrump for a night at The Zanzibar Club…” He piously winced in penitent shame.

“Okay, go on. You ain’t the first roughhouser to be chasin’ in Pahrump. Ya think we is all pilgrims or somethin’?”

“No, ma’am, but nonetheless, I feel a little shame. And it’s how this all ended up going haywire, and I still don’t know why!”

Carson and Babs would hear him out, and towards the end of the epic story, she poured him some orange juice, and yelled at Carson to put out cookies… It ended with a warm smile, and a “I believe you, son.” A warming sensation overtook him, as he needed friends like never before. Then Babs laid back into him, “And that’s what ya get for fuckin’ strange pooty when yer already married!”

Donnie almost laughed… Carson did, and he took an open palm to the side of his head.

“Okay PFC Yanko…”

“Yankovich, ma’am. Polish”

“I know the damn name is polish. I ain’t stupid, just tongue-tied.” Then, looking at Carson, Babs finished with her verdict. “Okay, Carson. I believe the boy. But I sure ain’t gonna be stupid, and neither are you. If the boy is right, we will know soon enough. But until then, if we ain’t turnin’ him in to Darlene at the Sheriff’s, then we gotta keep him in the canning basement.” This was alarming to Donnie as every horror movie came to him, the dank, scary basement, the mystery of a vile death… “But don’t worry. Carson will set you up in comfort. A cot with lots of pillows and blankets. And it’s cooler down there. Nicer even than here, so you’ll be comfortable.”

It was not an invitation to a four-star hotel, and there was still a certain element of detention in it, but they had the guns, and he was half-bled-out, so he ate another cookie. “Thank you. But can we also do one or two things. It would help me to really know what’s going on. But I don’t have my cellphone… ran fast as I could dodging bullets… but can we call my buddies to find out what’s what? Who knows what?”

“Do you know your buddies’ numbers?” Carson asked, “These days of programmed numbers, no one even knows the most important numbers anymore. Damn fool world.”

“Ah shit! I didn’t think of that…”

Babs looked sternly at him, Carson already chuckling, “Watch your mouth, mister.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. Dirty habit.”

“Get a clean one then.”

They escorted Donnie down to the canning basement, only to be pleasantly surprised at the space and a lovely aromatic smell and a temperature that ran 10 to 15 degrees cooler than the upside temperature. Carson flipped the light on, then exited. Donnie sat on the cot. They locked the door tight, heavy wood-plank that would require a battery team. Carson and Babs agreed they would call the Treasure Island Hotel and Casino and ask for Cliff Polite, and another couple calls for Mark Denton and Lazlo Pentavo, Donnie hoping to heaven they got out of that hellhole. It was the best he could hope for as the sun was retreating on his first day of being a wanted man.