Fat Assassins (15 page)

Please don’t let it fall down and kill me. 

I silently prayed as a I counted the antlers. Twelve points. Twelve ways this deer’s gonna kill me. It stopped moving and I released a sigh of relief.

Oblivious to my temporary incapacitation, Ulyssa opened the backdoor creating a draft that lifted the horned beast and sent it plummeting towards me. My mouth was wide open and I was screaming in my head, but the trailer was silent as the antlers wedged on each side of my waist and the deer nose planted squarely in my crotch. I struggled to shove the deer off me, but it seemed to fight back, ripping my clothes each time I pushed it away. I finally found my voice and started squeaking out pleas to it. I continued to plead as I tried to dislodge his nose from my crotch asking, “Oh gawd. Why me? Why didn’t you go after Ulyssa? She was there too?” 

“Shasta! What in the hell are you doing?” Ulyssa asked, staring down at my tearstained face. “Is crazy catching in this trailer or something?” 

She reached down, grabbed the deer head and jerked it upwards. 

“I . . . ”
hiccup
“ran into . . . ”
hiccup
“the deer and he . . . ”
hiccup
“attacked me!”
hiccup
“you saved my life”
double hiccup
. 

I couldn’t take my eyes off the deer head she was holding. He seemed to be taunting me with shreds of my shirt dangling from his antlers. 

My eyes swiveled between the deer and Ulyssa. They were wearing the exact same annoyed expression. This sent me into hysterical laughter. 

“Shasta! I need you to pull it together, so we can get out of here without being gutted by crazy Ronnie!” 

I couldn’t stop laughing at her because the madder she got, the more she looked like the deer. Frustrated, Ulyssa ran at me holding the deer head low. I jumped up and she chased me out the backdoor. I didn’t realize there weren’t any steps on this side of the trailer until I fell forward and face planted into a wall of red clay. Ulyssa stopped at the edge of the door, throwing her hands forward to regain her balance. Freed from it’s captor, the deer head spiraled out the back door. 

Eleven of the antlers landed in the clay. The twelfth impaled into my right butt cheek. 

Ulyssa jumped to the ground and dragged the deer head off me, ripping a giant hole in the right butt cheek of my jeans.
Score: DEER 2 SHASTA 0.
 

I’m just happy I wore my pink polka dotted underwear since it seems that the world is going to get a good look at ‘em today.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! You have the worst luck when it comes to critters! Even dead ones! Are you okay?” 

I staggered to my feet saying, “I’ll be fine. Let’s go before Ronnie comes back to finish me off!” 

We jogged around the front of the trailer and stopped short. 

The delivery guy was trying to hit Ronnie with his Honda. His windows were down just enough he could hurl jibes at Ronnie as he chased him. 

“Ha! I watch Tokyo Drift! How you like me now?” he yelled, sliding the car sideways, slapping Ronnie on the hip. 

Ronnie jumped away from the car and lobbed a throwing star as he came out of a perfect combat roll. 

Ding. It lodged in the rear quarter panel of the car. 

“Ohhhhhhh!” the delivery guy grimaced, shaking his fist at Ronnie. “You gonna pay for that! $28.50 for food + car repairs.” He pulled the emergency brake and spun the car in circles spraying Ronnie with gravel and blinding him with dust. “Ha! You got star! I got car! Run redneck run!” 

Wham! The Honda came flying through the dust backwards and hit the edge of a wooden smokehouse. Ronnie was trapped between the porch posts and couldn’t work his arms free to retaliate. 

The delivery guy honked the horn and yelled. “Ammmmyyyy! Amy! I bring food. Crazy Ronnie home, try to kill me. Jack up my car!!! I take food back! You drive to restaurant for pork ribs. No more food til you pay for car. And start tipping. You too cheap!” 

Ronnie’s wife, Amy, exited the smoke shed swinging strips of meat in her hand. “What in tarnation . . . ? Ronnie!” she screamed. “Put those damn throwing stars down! This ain’t ‘Nam you damned ejit!” She turned towards the Honda apologizing, “Artie, I’m sorry! We’ll come down and pay after he cools off!” 

The delivery guy nodded at Amy and flipped Ronnie off as he sped away in his Honda. Ronnie lodged two throwing stars in the trunk before the tail lights turned the bend. Using the dust as cover, we snuck to the Pinto and followed the speeding Honda down the dirt road. 

We could hear Amy yelling at Ronnie as we drove away. 

“I cain’t even take care of the deer jerky because you’re too busy scaring off the only damned Chinese delivery guy in town. And I tell you what . . . you’re gonna go down to the restaurant and you’re agonna pay for the damage cause I want me some damned Spare Ribs and Moo Shoo Chicken!” 

I looked back at the farm in time to see her smack Ronnie in the head with the strips of meat she’d been carrying. That maniacal deer had sure found the perfect home. 

We made our way back to Cornnut’s to get my truck and get away from there before crazy Ronnie showed up. I wasn’t sure how long his wife was going to yell at him, but I didn’t want to take any chances seeing him until he was mentally back in the United States. 

“You girls okay?” Cornnut asked, as we squealed to a stop and ran up to the garage.

“Yeah, we’re fine. Just late. Gotta be somewhere,” I answered, sounding like the jittery rabbit from Wonderland. 

Ulyssa and I stood there covered head to toe in sweat and dirt looking like we’d just run a hillbilly marathon. But Cornnut didn’t ask us any more questions. We gave him a crisp hundred dollar bill to cover the charge of replacing the belts, fluids and spark plugs. 

He gave us another penetrating look and said, “Ya know times are pretty tough round here right now and y’all been giving me quite a bit of business these past couple of days. I sure appreciate ya.” 

Times had always been tough for Nitro, but the town was full of gritty hustlers who seemed to survive, if not thrive in adversity. Having the money from Nicolo certainly made it easier to pay for life’s little problems like vehicle maintenance. It even seemed like his mobster money was directly contributing to the economic stimulus of Nitro!

“No problem. We appreciate you helping us out. But we’ve got to go now,” I continued, in my jittery rabbit persona. 

He was still scratching his head as we waved to him speeding off in our convoy. Our timing was perfect. Ronnie was turning onto Cornnut’s street as we were leaving. We gave him a wave and kept driving. It looked like he had a couple jerky welts on his face from the beating his wife gave him. 

I listened to the radio and tried to relax on the ride home. It was starting to work until I saw a familiar black towncar parked on the street in front of our trailer. Looks like Nicolo sent his boys to check up on us. After parking the cars, we walked over and knocked on the window. Joey rolled the window down while the unnamed goon stared at us.

“Hey fellas! What’s up?”

“The boss sent us to check on yous. He heard about a suspicious NOS tank incident, wondering if maybe yous had somethin to do wit it.”

Wow. Is there a criminal Twitter or something? 

“Maybe, maybe not,” Ulyssa answered, noncommittally.

“Well it looked like a professional operation. If the NOS tanks had been launched 10 seconds later, it would have smashed into the rat’s head. Torching the car was brilliant too, so the cops couldn’t trace it. It was such a top notch job, we just assumed it was you girls,” Joey said, flipping open his cell phone to make a call. 

“Okay. It was us. Our timing was off and we weren’t happy about missing,” I said. 

Joey kept looking at us as the phone rang on the other end. We pressed closer to the car so we could hear the conversation. But we could only hear something that sounded like the male version of Charlie Brown’s teacher on the other end.

“Wazzup, boss.”

Wanwanwaaannn.

“Yup. It wuz them.”

Wanwaanwanwanwannnwaaaaann.

“Um-hmm.”

Wawawan. Wanwaaaawanwanwann.

“Okay, I’ll makes sure and tell ‘em,” he said, closing the phone.

“Nicolo says while he appreciates the artistic technique of the NOS, yous need to finish the job.”

We nodded, expecting as much. 

“Alright then. Just remember, yous only got a little over one week to take care of the job ors else . . . ,” Joey paused, pointing his index finger at us. “Kapow! And that’s not good news for yous!” 

The unnamed goon chuckled at the threat. 

I’d had enough of deers and mobsters to last me a lifetime. 

“You guys are really a class act! We’re taking care of the rat and you’re doing security guard duty in a trailer park,” Ulyssa said, stopping their laughter. “Why don’t you boys go home and leave the hard work to us! C’mon, Shasta!” 

We stomped up the wooden stairs and into our living room, stopping short. The living room had been completely ransacked. We ran through every room in the trailer to assess the damage. Ulyssa emerged from the bathroom waving the blue box. 

“The money is okay. I think the tampon box is the only thing in the whole trailer that they didn’t check.”

The stress of being a hit woman was really taking a toll on my body. My body ached as I tried to peel off my shredded clothes and put on my pajamas. Ulyssa must have been feeling the same because she was stretched out on the couch when I walked back into the living room. I plopped down in the recliner chair across from her.

“Do you think the goons did it?” I asked.

“I’m sure it was them. I bet they were looking for the money cause we didn’t finish the job yet.” 

“Don’t you think it’s weird, they weren’t sure if it was us or not?”

Ulyssa bolted upright and spun to face me. “I bet he hired multiple exterminators to do the job. They paid us the money as a down payment which I’m sure they planned to reclaim if they had to ‘fire’ us. In fact . . . I bet they were going to ‘fire’ us tonight, but they couldn’t find the money.”

“By ‘fire’, you mean kill?” I asked.

“Exactly! So, as long as we keep the money hidden, we’ll be safe. At least for a few more days. We’ve got to figure out a way to kill him before the other hit-men finish the job,” she finished, falling back into the sofa rubbing her head. “JMJ! Being an assassin sucks! Hollywood totally glamorizes this job. I just want to get this over with so we can get back to our normal lives.”

“Me too,” I sighed. “So I guess shooting him is the only option we have left.”

We were both chugging blended mochas as the morning sun blasted through the gauzy living room curtains. 

“So, who do we know that could get us a gun? It’ll have to be untraceable, like the car,” I said, squinting at Ulyssa. My eyes were hurting from the sunlight and it felt like I hadn’t slept in months.

“I don’t know,” she replied slurping her mocha. “But I think we should stay away from Cornnut for a while. I think he’s really starting to get suspicious, plus I can’t deal with another Ronnie episode right now.” 

“I second that. If I could afford a therapist, I’d be sitting on a black couch talking about that damn deer right now.” I got up to fix us another round of mochas. “I was thinking that we should probably rent a couple good shoot ‘em up movies to get a feel for how to use a gun and maybe pick up a few good assassin techniques. Folks are always saying movies make people violent, so maybe it’ll help us.”

“That’s not a bad idea. We can stop by the video store after we pay the mortgage today.” 

We spent a few hours getting the house back in order and then drove the Sidekick over to Charleston to pay the mortgage. We left the Pinto at home just in case someone might recognize it from Bella’s or Hubba Hubba. It was a pretty memorable car and we didn’t want folks to start connecting our whereabouts in case they figured out what we were trying to do. We decided to pay six months worth of mortgage at once in case our money happened to go missing at least we wouldn’t be homeless. That left us with about $14,000 from our initial payment. 

The money was sure disappearing fast. 

The video store was empty expect for the lone employee working the register. Streaming video must be bad for business. If anybody in town got one of those movie vending machines, this place would probably go out of business. I waited until we were in the back corner browsing action movies before I whispered to Ulyssa, “That’s the girl Rob was doing on the produce.” 

Ulyssa leaned back to have a look and said, “Dang. She looks tough. I’m glad I don’t buy fruit at Wal-Mart.” 

Tamera was checking herself out in a compact mirror and teasing her dyed red hair. Her bangs were tightly rolled into a single downward facing curl that reminded me of Whitesnake’s lead singer during the early 80’s. Her makeup was a weird orange shade that looked like it was part of the Oompa Loompa color palate. She was wearing a tight fitting tank top that showed at least four tattoos. I could make out the rose and butterfly on her chest, but I wasn’t sure about the other ones. Here we stood looking like a couple of cream puffs bundled in plus size fuzzy sweaters with no skin art. While Tamera looked like the type of tough girl you’d expect to be an assassin.