Duncan Delaney and the Cadillac of Doom Read Online Free PDF Page A

Lincoln coming towards him. Woody was piloting, his arm around Fiona and her head against his shoulder. Fiona smiled as she slept and Woody smelled her hair. Neither spied him. Duncan watched the Lincoln in his rear view mirror until it sank behind a hill. Then he fixed his gaze on the road before him and drove on toward California.
       
    Benjamin parked in front of the Lazy Rancher Market right about the time Duncan passed Fiona and Woody. He sat in the Purgatory Truck and listened to a country station on the radio. He rolled a cigarette and let it hang unlit from his mouth. He had not smoked in years, but he found it easier to forsake the actual act than to give up the associated rituals. Through the window he watched Leroy Kern serve a woman. He waited until she left and Leroy Kern was alone. He got out and spit the cigarette onto the asphalt. He adjusted his hat and walked slowly inside.
    Leroy Kern, one hand beneath the counter, warily watched Benjamin lift a six-pack of beer out of the cooler. Benjamin selected a turkey with potatoes and gravy frozen dinner from the freezer. Microwavable, the package said. He resolved to one day get himself a microwave. He dropped the beer and the frozen dinner on the counter. Leroy Kern was pale and sweating and his hand remained beneath the counter.
    “How much white man?” Benjamin asked.
    “I got a gun.”
    “And I got a dick. Who do you think has the bigger balls?”
    “I ought to …”
    “Yes, but you won’t.” Benjamin was enjoying this. “Now get off your fat ass and ring me up.”
    Leroy Kern looked miserable but he punched the requisite buttons on the register with his free hand.
    “That’s eight ninety-five,” he said.
    Benjamin laid eight one-dollar bills on the counter. He took a handful of change from his pocket, counted out ninety-five cents, and dropped the coins on the counter a half a foot to the right of Leroy Kern’s outstretched hand. Quarters rolled off the edge and hit the linoleum with a sound like metal raindrops. Benjamin smiled.
    “Sorry,” he said. “Now bend over like a good boy and pick those up.”
    Leroy Kern pulled the gun. Benjamin knocked his arm aside and boxed him hard in the face. The gun went off and Leroy Kern went down. Glass fragmented in the dairy section as the bullet pierced the cooler and a one-gallon jug of skim milk before coming to rest in a quart carton of low-fat cherry yogurt. The discharge was deafening, and Benjamin’s ears commenced to ring. Leroy Kern shook his head and slowly stood. It was then Benjamin noted that he still held the gun.
    “Uh oh,” he said.
    Benjamin dove behind the chip display as Leroy Kern fired a second round. The bullet whispered a lethal song beside his ear and a Frito rain fell around him. Leroy Kern jumped the counter with adrenaline assisted agility. He fired again as Benjamin ducked around the magazine rack. A woman opened the door, screamed, and ran out. Leroy Kern chased Benjamin through the narrow aisles, firing a fourth and a fifth time as Benjamin ran through the frozen foods, only to discover he had reached a dead end. He reached into the freezer and grabbed something small and hard and cold. Leroy Kern came around the soap aisle and smiled when he saw Benjamin trapped beside the poultry.
    “Say goodbye, red-skin,” Leroy Kern said as he raised his gun.
    That’s when Benjamin threw the frozen Cornish game hen.
    Back when he and Duncan were growing up and playing ball, Benjamin was the Cheyenne Dodgers’ star pitcher, until he was thrown out of little league for beaning Whitey Carpenter, Danny’s brother, three out of three times at bat. Whitey was two years older than Benjamin and forty pounds heavier, and for no real reason had regularly trounced Benjamin. Benjamin always was deadly accurate, and even at that age he brushed back little leaguers with such skill that he could impart a greasy coat to the ball by running it through the part in the batter’s hair. So no one