Hush Money by Peter Israel

only it was the sun. I had a vague recollection of waking up sometime in the middle of the night and hearing the Chink guards bickering like mice. A familiar sound. I was cold, bone cold. The ache in my gut told me I was back home in Camp Number 5, since deep down inside I’ve always known that’s where I’ll wake up again some day.
    But with the sun already high over the hills, the one fence in sight was the green spiked job which guarded the swimming pool, and the only people I saw stirring outside didn’t have slanty eyes, and they were shuffling about on the terraces of Blue Pacific Villas in good old sunny California.
    I was scrunched up around the steering wheel of Jack Roland’s Dodge Polara. That was where they must have tucked me in. Mighty nice of them. I felt a little stiff in the joints but no more, and for a second there I was thinking I’d dreamt them too. But then I made the mistake of sitting up too fast, and the bugle started blasting again in my skull, and when I raised my hand to my forehead the muscle in my arm felt like the Peter Pain part of the commercials before the Ben-Gay showed up.
    At least I was alive, though, and I sat there awhile wondering how that could be when Garcia was already on his way to Quetzalcoatl. When the news got out, if it did, the aztecs up in the barrio would start screaming their heads off about racism again. I told them to calm down, they’d made a hash out of me whereas they’d done a nice clean job on him. If my they and his they were the same they.
    Then it occurred to me that one John R. Roland would have long since finished up his Crunchy Twinkies, kissed the Mrs. goodby and stepped out his front door, ready to slip on his ignition and beat his boss to the office for the 365th straight day. Then John R. Roland started screaming in my head, and I couldn’t think of a way to shut him up. On the one hand I couldn’t exactly drive up to 22 Acacia Drive, toss him his keys and thank him for the test drive. For one thing, I didn’t have the keys. But on the other, it wouldn’t have done to still be sitting there once the Polara made it onto the law’s stolen-car roster.
    Before I left, I stumbled over to Garage Number 63 and peeked inside. The mobile pharamacy was gone, naturally. I was tempted to check on Garcia’s whereabouts, but from the stare one of the neighbors gave me as she headed up the circle of garages, I figured I’d outstayed my welcome.
    So I plugged the Polara back together and drove it as far as the freeway. I parked it under a palm in front of a church. Then I pulled out my rusty thumb, and about a half hour later a northbound newspaper truck took a chance on me, and when he dropped me off I walked the rest of the way from the freeway exit, the exercise keeping my aches and pains down to a dull roar.
    My friend in the Firebird was long gone, and when I finally found Acacia Drive there was no law in sight, no John R. Roland tearing his hair, no little Rolands beating the bushes for the missing family treasure. Only my beat-up Mustang, looking as ugly as I must have with her jaw bashed in that way.
    I patted her on the snout, fished my keys out from the dashboard ashtray and listened to her grumble. And off we went, trading combat stories.
    I went back to the motel. The morning was mostly shot. There were no messages for me, none at all, which was passing strange because all of a sudden I had a lot of people I wanted to talk to. I wasn’t particular about the order. Twink Beydon would have done for a starter, and for a change I wanted his report more than he wanted mine. I mean, if he was paying me to get my nose spread all over my face, well, even a blocking back has to eat, but I wanted the plays chalked out on the blackboard with a big X across the guys I was supposed to hit.
    Maybe Garcia had felt the same way.
    I lay down on the bed, telling him all this in my mind and plenty more. He took it