2

      “NEDERLANDER HIGHLANDER RANCH,” Louie repeated for the umpteenth time, rolling the words in his mouth as though tasting them.

      “Some Scottish guy?” asked Shorty, taking a last drag on his cigarette and flicking it out the window. The lighted stub seared a thin orange flame through the darkness.

      Louis slugged Shorty on the arm. “There’s an ashtray in here.”

      “Oh.” Shorty stared straight ahead, looking like a basset hound that had just been severely chastised. “Sorry, Lou.”

      Louie sighed. He hated guilt trips. Reminded him of his ex-wives. The first two, anyway. He also hated being stuck with an imbecile like Shorty on a critical job, but Shorty was the nephew of Clancy “The Neck” Venuchi and if Clancy said Shorty was working a job, only a bigger imbecile than Shorty said no.

      “Forget it,” said Louie. “We need to figure out where this Nederlander Highlander place is.”

      After a little boy hanging around outside the stock show had told them he’d seen a girl and her bull trot into a cluster of rundown nearby buildings, Louie and Shorty had driven around that area for several hours. They’d waved money in winos’ faces, until one swore he’d seen two people loading a buffalo into a big yellow truck with the words Nederlander Highlander Ranch on it.

      The buffalo had to be the bull.

      But Nederland Highlander?

      “Shorty, get the map book. Look up Nederlander.”

      Shorty reached underneath his seat and retrieved the thick Denver Regional Area guide they’d purchased at the Tattered Cover.

      “Right.” Shorty flipped open the book and stared at a page.

      “What’re you lookin’ at?”

      “A map.”

      Louie bunched his fist, fighting the urge to smack some sense into his partner. “There’s over a hundred pages in that thing. Check the frickin’ index.”

      “Right.” Shorty flipped to the back of the book. “Ned…er…lander,” he muttered under his breath. “Ned…er—”

      “N-e-d-e-r-l-a-n-d-e-r.” Louie loved books, especially detective novels, so he had an affinity for words and their spelling. But he had a feeling this street map was the first book Shorty had cracked open in years.

      Shorty made a smacking sound as his finger slid down a page. “Dere it is!” He brought the book to within inches of his face. “Ne…der…land.” He looked up. “No e-r.”

      “Good.” If it was in the book, it was close to Denver. So the girly and the bull had hopped a ride to a nearby town. Sweet. “Check which highway leads to it.”

      “Right.” After a pause filled with more smacking, Shorty announced, “Twenty-five north to thirty-six to one ninety-three to one nineteen.”

      “I said which highway, not how high can you count.” No sweat. They’d spent a chunk of today on the I-25 highway, and Louie remembered signs to highway 36. The rest was chump change.

      He started the engine.

      “Lou?”

      “Yeah?”

      “I’ll use da ashtray next time.”

      If Louie has his way, there’d be no next time with Shorty. Fortunately, this job would wrap up soon. All Louie had to do was steal the frickin’ bull and cart it to a rendezvous point outside Lubbock, Texas. There, they’d hook up with a go-between who’d pay them their dough and take the bull off their hands.

      Louie’d never messed with a bull before, but after being told his take would be a cool half a mil, he figured he could dance with the beast if he had to. Besides, he’d done some studying. Brahmans looked tough, but were for the most part temperate-like.

      Sorta like himself, he figured.

      Louie turned the wheel and steered down a side street. He could almost smell his cut of the loot, a scent sweeter than his mama’s spicy grilled sausages and peppers. With his take, Louie would fulfill his dream to escape Trenton and buy a boat in the Keys. Spend the rest of his days catching big fish, drinking strong whiskey and loving lusty women. Big, tanned, lusty women. The kind who overfilled a bikini and overloved a man…

      Feeling a rush of rare benevolence, Louie finally answered Shorty. “Yeah, just ‘member we got an ashtray.”

      A match sizzled as Shorty lit his cigarette, making a great show of tossing the blown-out match in the ashtray.

      Louis held out his hand for a cig.

      “Thought you’d quit.”

      “I did.”

      “Then why you want a cig?”

      “I need to chew something.”

      A bit too quickly, Shorty tossed a cigarette which Louie caught in midair. He ran his nose along the white cylinder, inhaling the pungent scent of tobacco. Squeezing the spongy filter between his teeth, he said, “We’re on our way to findin’ Mr. Money Bull.”

      “Mr. Money Bull,” Shorty repeated, blowing out a stream of smoke. “I won’t letcha down, Lou. We’ll get that bull to Texas, wrap up da deal and never have to work again for the rest of our lives.”

      Louie grinned, enjoying a whiff of secondhand smoke. Never have to work again. He could smell the sea breezes now. Could feel the hot sun on his skin, the sweet sting of whiskey on his tongue. And when he got tired of the tanned, lusty women, maybe he’d invite wifey number three down for a visit.

      Hell, if Shorty did good and helped pull off this job without any more glitches, maybe Louie’d give him visiting rights, too.

      “WELL, I’ll be dam—”

      “I didn’t hear that!” Mattie stuck her head out the kitchen door.

      Ida didn’t look. Being seventy-five years old had its prerogatives, and one of them was enjoying words of the bluer variety. But forget explaining that to her daughter Mattie. Hell, it was still a mystery to Ida how she’d raised such a rule-fixated puritan as Mattie. Good thing she lived next door and not under the same roof with Ida and her granddaughter Bree.

      “Hush!” Ida held up a gun barrel, motioning for silence. To the TV, she said, “All right, muffin, let’s have a dose of straight talk.”

      Mattie stepped into the living room, wiping a dinner plate with a dishrag. “You watch too many gangster flicks,” she continued. “You sound more like a gun moll than a respectable senior citizen. And how many times have I told you not to clean your pistols in the living room! What if company dropped by, saw weapons strewn all over and told the deputy sheriff? After that incident in the Buffalo Lodge, you swore you’d never again—”

      “Hush!” Ida waved the gun barrel again. “They’re talkin’ about my granbaby.”

      “My niece Bree’s on the news?” Mattie clutched the chipped china plate she’d been drying to her chest. “Did…Valentine…win?”

      The pert, auburn-haired newscaster talked earnestly to the camera. “…reportedly the bull was stolen after winning the grand champion prize, which is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to the seller—potentially