//------------------------------// // Last Chance // Story: Twilight In Plain Sight // by Mitch H //------------------------------// Dusk Shine sat in her Beetle under the floodlights of Silversmith Custom Motors' harshly lit parking lot and procrastinated. She hadn't thought this part through properly, and wasn't ready to see the one man who could make these things happen, or wreck her entire project right here and now. The flat fact was that Wind Rider had very few reasons in this world to save the fools who had fallen into Dusk Shine's lap, and every reason to let them drown. He was a misogynist, a misanthrope, in constant pain bordering on agony, and had very little time left to him. Dusk Shine's acquaintance with this minor drug lord and biker alpha-dog amounted to a contemptuous sentence-and-a-half tossed off in this very parking lot. She wasn't even sure exactly where the man lived these days. She'd had to guess at his location, since she'd expended all of his hair in the bloodstone ritual. Her 'memories' seemed to indicate that he had an apartment in the back of this brick building she'd seen him and Silver Back come out of the other day. The lights were on, and she had seen some movement through the dirty glass front door which sketchily declared the existence of an Easy Rider Mortgage, Title, and Loans. The biker girls weren't here. She'd left them in that fast food joint over beside the river, Butterscotch and Gilda competing to see how many dollar burgers and chicken sandwiches they could trick their too-skinny friend into eating. Dusk had taken Butterscotch aside at one point during their discussions, and they'd exchanged some words on the subject of fat layers and their role in gestation. They had proven to be on the same page as far as that was concerned, and Dusk thought she'd seen a heartening determination in the still-slightly-shocky pink-haired girl's eyes. Dusk Shine wasn't the only young woman who'd found a project that day. Some people only really blossom when they have purpose in their life. You best helped them by asking them to do something difficult, by offering them a challenge, an excuse to stretch and grow. Wind Rider wasn't one of those people. He had purpose, he had status, stature – the respect or fear of his peers and community. The one thing that loomed greatest in his world was the fact that he was leaving it. Dusk Shine couldn't save a dying man, nor was she inclined to do so, even if she could. The man filled his world with poisons. He was a polluter. His one good contribution to society had been his son, who had been better than he ought to have been, at least as far as Dusk could tell. The world would forget that Wind Rider existed as soon as it realized that it no longer had to fear him. When he was dead? His name would be an entry on a ledger. The world would continue to spin without him. The man's son had been the only guarantee that Wind Rider would be remembered after he died. That chance died with Soarin. Wind Rider's name had no future. Blitz didn't seem to realize it, but she could offer Wind Rider the only thing he truly needed. The dying old man and his yet-to-be-born grandchild were both blessed that the prospective mother wasn't the sort to think of an infant as an opportunity, as a tool. Blitz had Dusk Shine for that, it would appear. Dusk pocketed her keys, and got out of the car. Nobody was in the cluttered, filthy front of the title insurance office. Dusk could see the lights on in a back-office to her left, and she leaned forward across the counter to see if her target was in place. There didn't seem to be anyone in there now… A flushing noise from Dusk's right drew her attention to a door apparently hiding a restroom on the other side of the ancient, under-maintained office. Wind Rider came shuffling out of said toilet looking like a man twice his age, dead-eyed and shrunken in on himself. He hadn't washed his hands, the pig. Dusk Shine stuck out her hand, almost shoving it into the old man's face, but she couldn't keep the look of disgust from her own. "Mr. Wind Rider? We have business tonight. I am Dusk Shine." Dusk could see him gather himself, too self-collected to startle like a lesser man might have done. He seemed to gain a full foot in height as he pulled down her insistent hand, shaking it with a pressure that increased as he drew his masculinity around him like a cloak. "Very good to meet you, Missus Shine. I'm afraid my secretary is out this evening, you've caught me short-handed. We were handling your…?" "Somehow, I did not expect to find you selling mortgages, Mr. Rider. It doesn't really match your reputation." He grew somewhat sharper-eyed, truly focusing on Dusk's face for the first time. She really had caught him off guard. "Should I be asking to see a badge? You're too alone to be here officially. Should I extend greetings to Soft Eyes over the wire, or are you federal?" "Mr. Rider, I am not about to stand here and strip to reassure you that I am not wearing a wire. For one thing, I could have simply have hidden it in my hair, and I could stand here as skyclad as a heathen witch, and you'd never have been the wiser. No, you will simply have to take it on faith that when I discuss crimes and wickedness, we are not performing for an audience of law enforcement officers, but rather for we, ourselves, and that which sees every last act, cradle to grave. "Please, may we retire to your office? This is not a matter for counters and front offices. Because neither of us have time to waste. You especially. You look like you're about to fall over. Have you had your pills today?" "Who the fuck are you to- what pills? What are you talking about? Who have you been talking to?" "Please," repeated Dusk Shine, as she invaded his personal space without his permission, stepping around the counter and into the side-office. "As I said, we have no time. Since we're on the subject of surveillance, do you sweep this office?" The irritated biker followed Dusk into his office, and she darted back around him to slam the door shut. Dusk turned to examine the room. No cleaner than the front office, and full of ledgers, paperwork, and… hah, pill-bottle. She reached into a pocket, and grasped a special charm she kept in the glove-box of her Beetle. She pricked herself on the thorn on the side of the charm, and there was a brief flash. The laptop sitting on Wind Rider's desk suddenly dropped into sleep mode. Huh, no sparks. The police may have not bothered to get a bug in here. "Wait, what the fuck just happened? What was that flash? Who are you?" "Sit down before you fall down, Mr. Rider. Hmm, haven't had many visitors in here recently, have you? Sorry if this deranges your filing system, if you even have such a thing." Dusk grabbed a disordered pile of folders and stapled forms, and dumped them onto the floor, clearing enough room for her to sit on the office's couch. "Please, Mr. Rider, sit down, if you would be so kind. I will do no more damage to your office. We have much to talk about, and I don't have to tell you that you've no time at all. "Before we start, may I express my condolences for the loss of your son. From all that I have been able to uncover, he was a much better man than you have ever been, and the world justly mourns his loss." The old biker's impotent rage banked a bit in the face of this courtesy. He sat down heavily, and looked over at the pill-bottle sitting besides his inexplicably turned-off computer. Then he turned to look at this pushy young woman who'd invaded his place of business. "Thank you, Ma'am. We're having the funeral run tomorrow. I guess you didn't know him, then. Where do I know you from… wait. You're the twist that Silver Back had out in the dealership the other day. Were you casing us? Who sent you? Who are you with?" "Nobody sent me, Mr. Rider. I am with no-one but myself. I am, however, with you, right now, and that's the important point. Because as I said, time is not your friend. Your cancer will take you very, very soon if I am not mistaken. You've been carrying it through main strength, I think, and now that you're alone in this world? The collapse comes very soon now, I believe." The old man looked like he wanted to surge to his feet with righteous fury, but Dusk could tell he wasn't getting back up out of that chair without help. Yes, he's definitely been sampling heavily from that pill-bottle. Look at his eyes. "Mr. Rider. You've got nothing left in this world, now that your boy is gone. He was all that was good in you, all that was left of his mother, was he not? You poor, damned man. You just wanted to see his face, didn't you? And you got him killed." The stoned old man just stared at her, his face almost frozen between rage and heartbreak. It looked like he was working his way towards a stroke. "The one thing a parent desires, before all other things, is to never outlive their children. You fucked that up good, didn't you?" Kindness is cruelty to this man. "You called him home, and instead, he got himself killed, trying to be you. Why did he do that? Why did a good boy suddenly try to play the gangster?" "Thought… thought I needed him to be that, said the wrong thing to him… fuck you, lady, how long have you been bugging me? Where's the tap? I could have sworn…" "Mr. Rider, you could never find my 'bugs'. My sources of information are impossible to screen against. But I must walk back your self-incrimination on one particular. Soarin wasn't simply trying to impress you, I do not think. No, he was trying to act a role, play a part. The boy's tragedy was that his role-model was you, you fool. His conception of 'father' was a drug-dealing bully, the poor thing." The dazed old man's lips moved, echoing the word 'father' soundlessly. "Yes, I'm afraid so, although I cannot prove it, certainly not in a court of law. We have less of the angels in us, and more of the animal than we like to think. I believe that Soarin knew what nobody else, not even the mother knew yet. Something in her scent, something in what she smelled like. Something that made him go out and try to bring in one big score, to make a nest in the way you showed him, the way you've always provided. "She only really figured it out today, you know. Soarin wasn't the only one operating on sheer primal instinct, animal impulses." The narcotics slowed Wind Rider's reactions, but he eventually worked through the haze. "You're talking about the rainbow bitch. The one who keeps stalking me." "Yes, the rainbow bitch who keeps exchanging obscenities with you, as if you were two primitive savages whose only common tongue was profanity. Your boy's woman. The mother of his unborn child, if you two fools don't get the poor thing dead through mischance or miscarriage. A miscarriage, mind you, which I don't need to be a prophetess or a seeress to predict coming very soon now if someone doesn't take that girl in hand." "What are you talking-" "She's a biker, Wind Rider. A motorcycle is not the safest environ for gestation. For an expectant mother. I'd expect someone with your experience to know that. And her physique isn't helping matters. If that woman has an ounce of body fat to spare, I'd be astonished. Did you know she's a circus worker? Or she was, before she just took off to carry your boy home to you. Worked for some travelling festival down in central Texas, so I gather. Explains why she looks like an Olympic athlete, I imagine. But Olympic athletes aren't known for carrying babies to term, are they? "She's too strong for her own good, Mr Rider. She'll lose the baby if someone isn't there to help her be… a mother. That rainbow bitch is carrying your grandchild, if the two of you don't get it killed before it can make it through childbirth. Mr. Rider, I'm telling you that you have one last chance to leave something behind you besides drug addicts and a name on the wall of your clubhouse. You don't deserve it, God knows that, but you have it nonetheless. Do you have the strength to grab hold of this last chance, this very last chance that the world will offer you before the cancer liquefies your insides?" The old man started crying. That was how Dusk Shine knew it was over. She'd given him what he needed. She gave Wind Rider Blitz's cell phone number, and he called the biker girls where they'd been waiting at that fast-food joint. Blitz herself was kind of woozy and withdrawn when they showed up at the title insurance office, half-asleep and on the brink of a food coma. Gilda and Dusk Shine did most of the talking, with Wind Rider filling in the gaps when they didn't have the necessary information, or correcting their assumptions where Dusk didn't understand a particular point or Gilda was ignorant of local relationships between the police, the bikers, and the courts. After a half-hour, Wind Rider's pet lawyer showed up, having been imperiously summoned by the aging biker king. The lawyer had been about to go up to the county jail to talk to his other client, Hayseed Turniptruck when their call came. The lawyer, the girls, and Wind Rider moved the meeting from Rider's impossibly crowded office to his equally filthy, but more spacious living room in the attached apartment at the back of the building. They talked through scenarios, discussed where the physical evidence could be found, how they could be manipulated, what Hayseed's part in this would have to be, who could confuse matters with this alibi or that. Wind Rider broke out a separate set of pills from a cabinet part way through this discussion, and washed down a handful with a glass of water. His glassiness faded, and Dusk Shine began to see the sharp-eyed devil that had been hiding under all of that fatigue, misery, and defeat. The one thing during the planning that left Dusk Shine unsatisfied was that nobody saw any way to salvage Hayseed Turniptruck. Every other part fit with each other part as if they'd all been manufactured to the same tolerances, like they'd been made to fall into exactly this configuration. Only Hayseed laid against the pattern. He stuck out like a single broken piece of porcelain woven into the heart of a web of crystal, gemstones, and jewel-wire. The authorities had him dead to rights. The poor boy was going to have to 'ride the rap', as Wind Rider put it. The lawyer promised to get the best plea deal for the fool that he could get. After another hour of discussion and debate, Gilda and the old biker left on his personal Harley, roaring out into the autumn darkness to find the dead Salvaje's motorcycle, hidden in plain sight in some big-box parking lot west of Nashville. The lawyer left to give Hayseed Turniptruck his reassurances, and his instructions. Dusk Shine took the other two biker girls to their motel room out by the interstate, dropping off Blitz and Butterscotch to get their rest. Butterscotch promised with fire in her eyes to keep her friend in bed as long as she could. They'd left their motorcycles in Silver Back's parking lot, so Blitz couldn't be tempted by the prospect of a leisurely morning drive, not until Butterscotch could get her friend to slow down - to stop threatening the life of her unborn child with every wild, thoughtless ride on that rumbling abortifacient she called a motorcycle.