over right now, but I don’t. “I specialize in antiquities.”
“You don’t say? What sorts of antiquities?” Hillary says. She looks me up and down. The bush jacket, jeans and steel-toe boots don’t lend any academic heft to my appearance, but the confidence in my voice should fill in the gaps in my résumé.
“The rarest of the rare,” I say with a wink. It’s cheesy, but it feels appropriate for a place like the Museum of the Bizarre.
“Is that a fact? Hmmm…,” Hillary says, tapping an index finger on her chin. “Wait right here. There’s someone I want you to talk to.”
So there’s something to this after all. Now I’ve got a good reason to stick around for some of that famous Texas barbecue.
I browse and re-browse the same row of the museum’s oddities, waiting on Hillary to come back. After 30 minutes, I start to think she forgot about me. Just when I’m ready to once again call this jaunt a bust, I spot her coming down a hallway toward me. She motions for me to follow her, explaining that “there’s someone you should talk to in my office.”
Her office ports over none of the kitschy charm from the rest of the museum. It’s hardly an office. It’s a sagging storage shed rusting in the dirt behind the museum. Hillary opens the metal door and hurries me inside. My gut instinct is too slow to warn me about going inside. I don’t like off-the-beaten-path places with only a single way in or out, but my feet lead me in anyway.
“This is your office?” I say, trying to make heads or tails of the dark interior. I smell old gasoline and paint.
Hillary says nothing. I hear her hands follow the shed wall and flick on a light switch.
No. This isn’t her office.
Once my eyes adjust, I make out dirt floors, a riding lawnmower, tools and several disassembled exhibits. Oh, and three bikers dressed in leather vests and scar tissue worthy of the Hell’s Angels page-a-day calendar. One-percenter types, the kind law enforcement actually gives a damn about watching.
I usually give the benefit of the doubt when meeting new people, but I make exceptions for storage sheds masquerading as office spaces behind sketchy museums. So I introduce myself the only way I know how.
“Howdy, gentleman, my name is Chase Baker,” I say and put my hands on my hips, brushing back the bush jacket so my shoulder holsters become visible. “Any friend of Hillary’s is a friend of mine.”
“We’re not friends,” Hillary says. Gone from her voice is the air of professionalism she exhibited in the museum. Here now is a malice that could cut me in half.
“You treat all your patrons this way?” I say.
“Don’t play coy with me. We know why you’re here, and we’re not about to play your games,” Hillary says.
“What do you want then?” I say.
“I want you to bring a message back to where you came from.”
“Albany?”
“If want to call it that, then yes,” Hillary says.
“What sort of message are we talking about here?” I say.
Hillary chooses sign language to close out our conversation. Which is to say she motions to the bikers to communicate with their hands. Whatever message I’m supposed to receive comes through loud and clear. I’m to have my ass beat. Thoroughly. And the bikers are excellent communicators.
7.
“What the hell was that for?” I say through the blood, spit and snot after the bikers pause to rest their knuckles. How considerate. I returned the favor by not unloading the .45 into each of them. I’m not one of those shoot-first-ask-questions-later people. Those are for the movies. I’m not afraid to pull the trigger or crack a skull, but I need to know what I’m dealing with first. Don’t want to poke a hornet’s nest and wind up in even more trouble just because I enjoy dropping baddies. Which, for the record, I do enjoy, sometimes a little too much.
“Fuckin’ Russian commie bastard,” one of the bikers says from behind a cigarette.
“What was that?”