No Controlling Legal Authority Ch. 17

* * *

Later, after a few unsuccessful attempts to wake the girl, Archie and his mother cleaned her up a little, and Archie carried her out to her car and laid her in the passenger seat, before sliding behind the wheel.

"You drive her home, Archie, and I'll follow you and bring you home," Nancy said as she tossed the girl's clothes onto the back seat of her BMW.

"Don't you think we ought to put her clothes on her, mom?" the boy asked.

"What the hell for?" Nancy retorted.

"Duh, mom; somebody might see her neked, that's what for. Like her husband, maybe."

"Serves her right for not being able to hold her liquor better. But, if riding around with her naked ass in the seat next to you makes you nervous, you can throw her dress over her."

"That little ole thing she wore up here?" Archie replied skeptically.

"It'll do."

"We outta put it on her."

"Too much trouble."

"What if she don't wake up, and Rufus finds her like this in the driveway?"

"He won't."

"How do you know he won't?"

"`Cause, we ain't gonna leave her in the driveway. You're gonna park on the street, in front of her house, and that's where I'm gonna pick you up."

"On the street? Why?"

"`Cause her driveway is muddy, that's why, and I don't want to get the Jag dirty on her account."

"Jeez, mom, you'd let Rufus catch her neked and all fucked up, just to keep from getting your damn old car dirty?"

"Certainly," she replied with total assurance, considerably amused by the boy's understandable consideration for the young woman, who, she could see as they talked, continued to leak copious quantities of her son's cum onto the seat cushion. "You got to keep your priorities in order, son."

"Huh?"

"Just remember, Archie, it don't mean nothin. Fucking don't mean nothin at all, you hear me?"

"Yes'm, I guess so," he responded with little conviction. Imogene had been pretty spectacular, what with all her shaking and twitching and squeezing his cock with her pussy and begging him to fuck her asshole.

"It don't mean nothin, Archie. You just stick them with your peter, and it feels good while you're doin it, but then you cum, and it's over, and it don't mean nothin."

"But she felt really good, mom; better than them others."

"Don't be stupid, boy. You're just thinkin thata way cause your cock's still wet with her. Fuckin don't mean nothin, and a wet cock don't change than none."

"But, if she felt really good and I liked it a lot?"

"Still don't mean nothin. She'll feel just as good the next time, or, if there's not a next time with her, then the one after her or the one after that will feel just as good or even better. You remember, boy, the fuck you just had don't mean nothin; it's the one you're gonna get next that counts."

"Yeah?" he replied brightly, easily forgetting the woman passed out in the car beside him, "Who am I gonna fuck next, then?"

"Hell, Archie, I haven't thought that far ahead," she lied; she always tried to stay five or six moves ahead of everyone. "You're not getting tired of me, are you?" she continued reprovingly.

"I, uh, uh, no," he stammered, realizing that the ice under his feet was thinning dangerously.

"That's my good boy," she laughed and, leaning in the window, she patted his hand. "Always keep your mamma happy."

"Yes'm," he replied weakly; disappointment was written on his face as boldly as a Pearl Harbor sneak attack headline.

"OK, buster," she smiled and winked knowingly at the perplexed boy. "Who you got your eye on this time?"

"Miss Anne," the boy answered quickly.

"The new teacher; the one I did the cheerleading thing with?"

"Yes'm," the boy answered, bobbing his head eagerly.

"OK, tiger," she grinned at him, "I'll work on it."

"Really," he squealed happily, surprised at his unexpected good fortune.

"Really," she answered evenly. "But now we've got to go; I don't want Rufus meetin us in front of his house this evening. He might get the right idea."

The mention of Imogene's husband reminded the boy of where the conversation had begun, but his mind was already racing ahead to an encounter with the delectable new teacher and his concern for his most recent conquest was markedly diminished.

"What if Rufus finds her passed out in the car like this?" He gestured casually toward the unconscious girl's nude figure as he spoke.

"I guess we'll find out if she's as good at thinking on her feet as she is at fucking, won't we?" Nancy answered laughing so hard at the prospect of Imogene's compromise that the car shook.

"Yeah, right," the boy snickered. "We gonna hide and watch? I'd like to see the asshole's face, when he finds her."

"Nooooo, I don't think so," Nancy giggled, wiping the tears from her cheeks. "We'll just have to use our imagination this time. Maybe later, after she's broken in good, we'll let Rufus watch you fuck her in the ass, since she seems to want it so bad."

"No, shit, mom? That'd be really cool. I bet the bastard would bust a gut over that."

"He probably would. If he gets too uppity about it, I guess, I could let you fuck him in the ass, too," she replied serenely.

Archie jerked away from the window and shot a look of disapproval at his mother. His euphoria was dissipating quickly. "Wait a minute, mom, I don't know about that last part," he sputtered.

"Relax, son," she laughed. "I was just kidding. Let's get out of here before Rufus comes home and catches us dumping his slutty wife on the lawn."

"On the lawn?" Archie shrieked in disbelief.

"Joking," Nancy laughed again and turned to walk to her shiny, spotlessly clean Jaguar.

* * *

"You done?" Moon Dog croaked. The sky was ablaze with the colors of dawn. A small mountain of tapes was piled on the seat between the two men and Hunter had stopped speaking.

"Yeah," Hunter replied. "That's it."

"Good grief, man, can you believe that bitch?"

"Which one?"

"Right. You got me there."

"Not a hell of a lot of difference between the two of them, if you ask me."

"I see your point, but I think Mrs. Farber is the dangerous one."

"No doubt about it; and her friends too, don't forget Cletus and Nadeen."

"That's right! You just reminded me. You said earlier something about Cletus being dangerous. What was that about?"

"He showed up at the Farbers' while I was watching tapes. He damn near snuck up on me, but I heard him stumbling around in the den and had just enough time to turn everything off, close up the console and get hidden before he came in."

"Sounds like a close call."

"It was closer than that, Dog. He just glanced around the room, not really expecting to find anybody, I guess. He was packing a pretty serious looking 9mm, though, and I sure didn't want him to find me in there. I stayed quiet after he left and gave him a few minutes to get out of that part of the house, before trying to let myself out. I slipped out of the den and was tiptoeing down the hall as fast as I could go, and, just as I turned the corner and started up the steps into the living room, here that bastard came, quiet as a mouse, and with that damn gun pointed straight at my head. He said something like, "Wha?" and I think he was as surprised as I was, but I wasn't about to stand around while he figured it out, so I reached out and punched the action on his pistol back with the heel of my hand to eject the shell from the chamber, and, as soon as I figured the gun wasn't going to go off, I threw my shoulder into his gut and flipped that sucker back down the hall where I had just come from. He sailed a pretty good piece for a big guy, and then hit and bounced once or twice and his gun took off on him, and I excused myself and shagged it through the living room heading for the front door. Unfortunately, he had locked it back up, I guess intending to trap me inside, and it took me a while to open her up again, and by the time the door was opening, I could hear him huffing up the steps behind me. I figured I had taken just a mite too long, `cause I could feel him drawin' a bead on my back and my neck hairs started standing up just like they used to do on ambush back in Nam when the VC were just starting to move into the trap, and then I heard her screaming at him, "Shoot, you gutless son of a bitch, shoot him." I guessed it was Nadeen from the sound of her voice, but I couldn't see her, and all of a sudden there was a little pop, pop, like from a 32 cal. or something, it sure wasn't any 9mm, and the edge of the door beside my head splintered and a bullet whined past my head about two inches from my ear, and I jumped through the doorway and slammed the door closed behind me. I headed for the woods across the driveway from the front door as fast as I could go and I had just about made it when they came out and started shooting. All I could hear was my heart beating and the cracking and popping of their guns, and I started bobbing and weaving, like I used to do when I was running with the football in college only a hell of a lot slower, and I finally made it to a stand of trees and dove behind some cover with bullets whistling all around me. For a bit, I thought I was back in Nam, but there wasn't any helicopter coming to lift me out, so I just made a strategic retreat and got the hell out of there."

"You left your piece in the car, I guess," Moon Dog muttered almost absentmindedly; he was deep in thought, mulling the ramifications of Hunter's revelations.

"Of course, I did, Dog; burglary's bad enough, but burglary with a weapon'll get you twenty-five years to life just about everywhere I know of."

"Do you think they found you up there by luck, or did they know you were there?"

"Hard to say, Dog. I hid the car pretty good down at the bottom of the hill well off the road and it hadn't been bothered, as far as I could tell in the dark, but I didn't have long to inspect it. I could hear them in the woods crashing around behind me when I got to the car, so I left as quick as I could. I suppose they could have found old Jackson working at the school, same as I did, and they could have forced him to talk, but I doubt it."

"How come?"

"In the first place, he didn't impress me as being willing to help someone like Caruthers, who was out to harm Miss Anne. He had a lot of respect for the girl, affection, even, and I bet he'd take an awful lot of persuading to rat her out. Besides, they wouldn't have any way of knowing I had talked to the old guy."

"They wouldn't unless they had the school staked out and were watching when you got there. If they saw you go in, first thing they would do when you left is go looking for your man, Jackson." Moon Dog spoke softly but with authority; surveillance and counter-surveillance had been his life for forty years, and he knew his business well.

"Shit, Dog, I checked the parking lot good. I even drove around the school twice to be sure nobody was there but me and the janitor."

"Yeah, but there's no way you could check the woods and hills around the place; they could have been hiding anywhere."

"But why? I mean, why would they stake out the school? The girl's long gone; what's to gain?"

"`Cause, Hunter," Moon Dog began explaining patiently. "`Cause that's exactly what I would do under the circumstances."

"You would?"

"Sure, I would. I would do just like they did if I was looking to find her. I would hope she hadn't run too far at first and I would put out the word that I was looking for her, you know, at motels and gas stations, offer a little money for any information that might come along and then go wait for something to happen. I would give it a week or two, and if nothing turned up, I would figure she had skipped the country and that I would be wastin' my time looking close to home any further. Mean time, while I'm waiting to hear something, I would be sitting and watching the place she'd be most likely to come back to, and that, my friend, is good old Hardwick School."

"Christ, Dog, after all she'd been through at that place, it would be the last place I would expect to find her."

"I know, but you're forgetting that she's scared and desperate and that she probably needs help from somewhere. Where's she going to look? At school most likely, buddy, where she probably has some friends and maybe one or two even, who have some affection for her, like your Mr. Jackson."

"I suppose…" Hunter mused.

"Or, I might suspect that she still had some unfinished business with that Justice guy that could bring her back there," Moon Dog interrupted. "You can bet your last dollar that Nancy Farber tried to squeeze Justice for every bit of information he had on her, and that she didn't trust what he told her for a second. For all she knew, Justice was hanging on to the pictures and the girl. I got a pretty clear picture that he liked what he was getting off her and wouldn't be too happy about giving it up and you know the Farber woman was thinking the same thing. That's more than enough reason to stake out the school."

"Yeah, but…" Hunter protested.

"Not satisfied? Think about this, then; for the last week, we've been hopping around from motel to motel, town to town, like a flat stone skipping across a creek. By now, Caruthers is bound to have heard that some of his paid sources have been compromised, and he probably knows that somebody besides him and the Postal Service are looking for the girl. Hell, man, he might even know we've got her. If I were him, I would stake out the school just on the off chance that somebody, like you, for instance, would come sniffing around looking for information on her and would lead me right back to her, or, at the least, if I could get the jump on them, I could get enough information out of them to help me figure things out for myself."

"They sure as hell didn't act like they were in a talkative mood when they found me; they didn't even say `stop,' Dog; they were shootin' first and askin' questions later."

"They were out of their league, man, and probably scared shitless. Your friend Jackson might have told them you were a pretty bad dude, or they might have figured that out themselves from all the Judge's money we've been spreading around to turn their snitches. Whatever, buddy, you know how hard it is to lay the sights on some poor sombitch and squeeze off a round that'll go where you want to put it. They were probably shooting at your feet and had 'buck fever' so bad they couldn't hit the broad side of a barn."

"Oh boy, now that's reassuring," Hunter replied sarcastically.

"Where's your car now?"

"You don't think they followed me, do you?"

"Not if they were chasing you on foot through the woods, but, if they found your car before they came up to the house looking for you, they could have put a tracking device on it. You said you didn't have much time to check it over."

"Yeah, well, I dropped it at the Holiday Inn about a mile down the street and left the key with the desk clerk. I walked the rest of the way."

"Good man," Moon Dog declared with some relief in his voice. "I doubt anybody's going to pick up that trail for a while, even if there was a transmitter in the car, and, by the time they do, we'll be long gone. They'll play hell trailing us from here."

"Sometimes, Dog, you make me feel like a goddamn rookie," Hunter said with a sigh of resignation.

"It's not your fault, Hunter. What happened tonight could have been nothing but coincidence. But, even if it wasn't coincidental, there was no way we could have anticipated it. We started this mission a week ago, without planning, preparation or more than two minutes of reconnaissance; we were bound to make mistakes, buddy. Under circumstances like these, fuck ups are going to happen; they're part of the territory."

"Maybe we should have stayed out of it, Clarence," Hunter said softly; he didn't often use the old spook's given name, and, when he did, it usually meant that he was entertaining serious doubts.

"That would have meant breaking our word to the Colonel, Hunter, and you already said you weren't about to do that. You also have to figure that, fuck ups or no, things were going to turn out a whole lot worse without us being here."

"I hope you're right, Dog."

"I usually am, Hunter; now, you crawl into the back seat and get some sleep before the Judge gets here. I expect you'll be driving her car to Tennessee this afternoon."

"How long have I got?"

"It's eight now; four hours, five tops."

"Great; good night, then. I'd offer to spell you on watch, Dog, but I figure you slept most of the night already," Hunter joked; if he had been recognized for his feats of memory, Moon Dog had been legendary for his ability to endure sleep deprivation without apparent effects, and it was that remarkable capacity that had earned him his odd nickname.

"Go to sleep, Hunter," Moon Dog grunted with a smile.