“THIS IS THE PART that makes me nervous,” Larry said as he and Reuben weaved between concert-goers. “The deciding factor that lies between us and two-hundred grand each or twenty years in prison is Mr. and Mrs. Ding Dong being able to pull this off.”
“Exciting, isn’t it?” Reuben smiled.
“Not the word I was thinking of,” Larry replied.
About forty-five minutes passed by the time they made it back to their car and drove it around and through thousands of motorcycles until they were able to get within one-hundred yards of the employee gate on the other side of the campground. Fortunately for them, Kid Rock was in no hurry to take the stage, probably doing Lord knows what for pre-concert prep in his bus.
They parked again and moseyed about near the back staff entrance, where a half dozen hired guns in black leather jackets played rent-a-cop. They could see the busses and the back of the stage but were not able to make out Buster among the bustling concert-goers practically surrounding it.
“He’s back there somewhere isn’t he?” Larry groused as they paced in haphazard fashion, trying to look innocent and failing. But, really, if they did look innocent they would have stuck out even more as everybody else in a four-mile radius was probably doing something illegal or had been within the past twenty-four hours.
“He’ll figure out a way back there,” Reuben reassured Larry. “I think he was going to try crawling under the stage. He’s not as dumb as he looks.”
“That’s only because it’s not possible,” Larry added.
A slow rumble then began to emanate from the mountains of speakers and began to build into a crescendo of bass guitar announcing the coming of somebody important. Larry and Reuben couldn’t see him, but somebody had taken the stage and began playing the part of emcee.
“Ladieeeeees and gentlemen!” he bellowed over the bass riff. “From Detroit, Michigan, it’s the baddest-ass mother-fucking pimp in the god-damned nationnnnn! Kid Rock!”
Cannons exploded, flames erupted, guitars blasted and the Kid in bluejeans, wife-beater t-shirt and fedora sprang onto the stage and kicked into a rousing eruption of “Bawitdaba.”
“What’s he saying?” Larry screamed to Reuben.
“Bath water!”
“Bath water? You know this song?”
“No. But it’s what he’s saying.”
“I take it it’s not a Frank Sinatra song.”
“Hardly.”
“Let the show begin,” Larry added.
“Yup,” Reuben said, pulling out his cell phone and dialing Zeke.
Four rings later he picked up. “Ya!” he screamed into the phone.
“Do you see him in the wheelchair?!” Reuben screamed into his.
“Ya!”
“You got Candy?!”
“Ya!”
“See the briefcase?!”
“Ya! Under the chair!”
“Send her over to it. Keep behind her! Have her open it!”
“Don’t screw me!”
“Never! Just leave Buster there and Candy will wheel him out when the concert’s over.”
“Okay! We’re going!”
Since they couldn’t see anything but the back of the stage and a dense layer of smoke lingering around it, Larry and Reuben where at the mercy of the Lords now to unwittingly follow instructions.
Buster had indeed sneaked under the stage and was peering from under the front corner. With sweat dripping into his eyes he was able to make out Candy nudging her way toward the governor in the chair. Zeke was over her shoulder. Buster’s blood boiled at the sight of him.
As she reached the chair he could see her confusion in trying to figure out who was sitting in the chair. Still, she did as told and pulled the briefcase out from underneath. She knelt down behind the chair, fiddled with the latches and opened it. Zeke was trying to get a view but was sandwiched between a gyrating throng of rockers and unable to get a glimpse of its contents.
Candy closed the case and stood. Turning to face Zeke she nodded affirmatively to him and held the briefcase up to her chest with both hands. Zeke reached for it, and she slammed it into his face.
Having to choose between grabbing it or her, and with a bloody nose clouding his thinking, he chose the money. Candy chose to run towards the stage. She hopped up on it. A startled Kid Rock smiled. His bodyguards weren’t so enamored with her. One gave her a shoulder bump and she flew off the side of the stage and into the arms of Buster.
By now, Snake was at Zeke’s side and they both struggled to open the case. Finally succeeding, they were greeted with ten copies of the latest edition of the Rapid City Journal. Net worth: $5. About $99,995 less than they anticipated. Not being big readers, they were pissed. Zeke tipped the wheelchair over backwards. Both hopped on the Governor Formerly Known to Them as Buster and began pummeling him with their fists.
Now Kid Rock may be a bad-ass and his bodyguards doubly bad-asses and they may all appreciate watching a good fight, but nobody, absolutely nobody, is going to beat up a handicapped person in their presence! Seeing this monstrosity of behavior, Kid and three of his ilk leaped from the stage and began wrestling with Zeke and Snake, trying to pull them off their victim, who by now, had become mostly unraveled in the melee.
Other fine citizens untangled the governor from the chair. He was a bloody mess, standing in his Mickey Mouse underwear, bleeding from head to toe. Flash bulbs were flashing, video cameras were videoing and picture-phones were picturing and two nearby co-eds enjoying the last days of summer vacation lifted their tops for a moment of fame. Within five minutes they and the good governor of South Dakota were celebrities on You-Tube.
But the governor still wasn’t being treated like a celebrity among those around him.
On their stomachs with three-hundred-pound lugs sitting on each of them, arms bent groutesqly behind their backs, Zeke and Snake leered at the governor.
“You ain’t Buster!” Zeke screamed.
“Who the fuck are you!?” Snake screamed.
“The gubbenor,” Gov. Arnie McCall stammered between split puffy lips they’d given him.
“Oh, shit,” Zeke managed to eek before his head was stuck back into the dirt and real cops arrived on the scene.
Chapter 38
BUSTER CARRIED Candy in his arms, not because she was injured but because he wanted to. He jogged through the makeshift parking lot behind the stage, zig-zagging between the pimped out busses of the rock stars and semi trailers of their less-affluent roadies. He made it through the back entryway, now unguarded because all the security detail had been dispatched to the ruckus at the front of the stage.
Crossing the dirt road he saw the always punctual Reuben sitting behind the wheel of the get-away car, Larry in the passenger seat and the back door swung open and inviting. Buster set Candy inside and she scootched to the middle. He plopped in next to her.
“Howdy, sunshine,” Larry said.
“Up yours, Larry,” she said.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” he grinned.
“Boy, am I glad to see you guys,” Buster said.
“You’re all sweaty and smelly,” Larry added.
“You’re no petunia,” Buster said.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Larry grinned again.
Candy cuffed him on the back of the head, but he knew sometimes there is a price to pay for a good one-liner and accepted it.
As the car kicked up dust, Reuben said: “You done good Buster. You too Candy.”
“What the hell took you guys so long to rescue me?” Candy asked.
“We’re thieves, not commandos,” Reuben said. “They treat you okay?”
Buster seethed, waiting for the answer – a wrong one would have sent him over the edge.
“Not as good as my Buster does, but they didn’t hurt me,” she said.
Buster breathed a little easier, but still steamed.
“Where to from here?” Buster said.
“The Mine Shaft,” Reuben said. “Where else?”
“Good. I could use a beer or twelve,” Buster added.
“Heard from Selma?” Candy asked.
“She’s got the motorcycles and should be near Sioux Falls by now,” Reuben said. “She said she would call when she delivered the goods.”
“Are you sure these Black Lords won’t rat us out?” Candy said.
“I’m sure.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because they know we would then tell the cops they kidnapped you,” Reuben explained. “Then they will have to explain how they trained us to ride the motorcycles, which makes them accomplices to kidnapping the governor too. So they’d get two counts of kidnapping instead of one. But there is probably a bigger reason they won’t narc on us.”
“What’s that?” Buster asked.
“Mostly because they don’t want to be known as rat finks, PLUS they betrayed Slug. They’re probably safer in jail.”
“Wow, you thought of everything,” Candy said, perhaps the first compliment she had ever paid anyone.
“That’s my job,” Reuben said, proudly.
Chapter 39
“School starts in two weeks you know,” Larry said, sipping a beer at the Mine Shaft.
“Yep,” Reuben said. “After this, it will make those little monsters seem almost bearable.”
“How about you, Larry. I hear you are single again.”
“Yes, but I hear the VA hospital in Hot Springs just hired ten new nurses.”
“Well that ought to get you through the first semester anyway,” Buster said.
“And you, Buster?” Reuben said. “Anything special you’re going to do with this payday?”
“Gonna add on to the house – a rec room with flat screen TV and another bedroom.”
“Why?” Larry asked.
“The baby’s room.”
“Huh?” Reuben grunted, almost dropping his beer.
“Yep. I wasn’t going to tell you guys until this was over, but before we came out here Candy went to see an optician. She’s pregnant!”
“Congratulations!” Larry and Reuben said in concert, lifting their beers.
“When she due?”
“March 17. Saint Patrick’s Day.”
“Maybe it’ll be a leprechaun,” Larry grinned.
“Maybe he’ll come out with a golf club and kick your ass,” Buster was quick to retort.
“I guess that’ll take you out of action for any jobs next summer,” Reuben said.
“Think we’ll have something?” Larry asked.
“Nothing for sure, but it’ll give me something to think about during study halls.”
“Like what?” Buster asked.
“I don’t know. Nothing for sure, but I hear there might be something popping at the Corn Palace in Mitchell - supposedly a Smithsonian tour including the original Declaration of Independence.”
“I’ll bring the butter,” Larry chirped.
“I bet you will,” Reuben said. “I bet you will.”
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