The Brad West Files Page 4

  “Things don’t look good, Sully,” he began at once. “Brad West has just been expelled from the university.” He had visions of Brad moving to another town, far away from Tom’s covert research station.

  “Wait,” the voice said. “This could be a good thing.”

  “How so?” Tom asked. His long strides carried him away from the lights of campus. “What if he leaves town? We’ll never get a chance to perform our experiment.”

  “We’ll just have to speed things up. First, I’ll get the university to evict him immediately from campus housing. Have Brad’s roommate send Brad to stay with you.”

  “I know Earl from the Anthropology Department, but I don’t know him well enough to help his roommate.”

  “Use your innate charm,” Sullivan said. “And if I’m not far off the mark, Brad will be desperate. He’ll take anything he can get.”

  “It’s worth a try. I’ll call Earl now.”

  Tom jumped into his old Toyota and grabbed the campus directory from the back seat. Incredibly, there was only one Skitowsky in the phone book. Moments later, a voice answered speaking more through the nose than the mouth.

  “Hey Skeet man,” Tom said, attempting to regain his naturally laidback nature. “You wouldn’t know of anyone needing a place to hang out, would you? I’ve got a spare bedroom and could use the extra scratch.”

  “Yo, Cheno, you kidding? That’s great, ’cause have I got a candidate for you. You remember Brad West, now a former anthropology student?”

  Bingo. Tom had to keep the relief from creeping into his voice. “Yeah, sure. He’s cool. I could set him up over here. But what happened? He’s dropped out?”

  “Call it an extended sabbatical,” Earl said. “But here’s the deal. I happen to know he’s living off of poker chips right now, so I can pay the first month’s rent. Just let me know what I owe you.”

  “In that case, one-fifty is all I need. You can pay me when you see me. And tell Brad to come over whenever. You remember the place.”

  “Groovy. You’re a lifesaver. Later.”

  Tom turned off his phone and straightened up in his bucket seat. His man Sullivan kept the research money flowing from Washington, but things were moving faster than either of them had planned. Tom would have to summon his compadres back from the field in Mexico and Peru immediately.

  Chapter 4

  In a daze, Brad watched condensation run down the windows of the Sonora Bar & Grill. The line of thirsty customers stretched from the reception area out the front door and onto the sidewalk. Perspiring in the lingering heat, he and Earl welcomed the cool blast of air conditioning each time the door swung open.

  They finally made it to the hostess, who walked them through the crowded bar to an empty table. A honky-tonk band had just struck their first chord, and men in cowboy hats two-stepped with ladies across an illuminated dance floor.

  Brad surveyed the Friday crowd—a potent cocktail of cowhands in town for a good time, airmen tanking up on leave, upwardly mobile professionals unwinding at happy hour, and rowdy students and alumni gearing up for the next day’s baseball game.

  They ordered a pitcher of Tecate. When it arrived, his buddy Earl downed his mug in three smooth gulps, then poured another.

  “Hey, drink up,” Earl said. “You need this more than I do.”

  Instead, Brad stared philosophically into the deep golden pool in his mug. “What a contrast from this afternoon,” he mused aloud. “There we were exercising in splendid natural surroundings. I was a PhD candidate on full scholarship with nothing but blue skies and an exciting career in the high-paying field of anthropology ahead of me.”

  “Oh, could ya hold that thought for a sec?” Earl said with a slight slur. “I just wanna whip out my phone and call the ‘whaaaambulance.’ You’ve known all along your position at the university was as tenuous as your free climbing.”

  “I knew my step-dad was pissed at me. He’s always been that way. But what do you think sent him over the edge?”

  “He’s been ready to melt your shorts from the get-go. You just didn’t get with the program.”

  Earl was right, of course.

  “Now drink up. You’re behind.”

  He took a long, cool gulp of the draft beer and just stared ahead.

  And what a sight it was. Two Asian chicks were being schmoozed by the bartender. Their ultra tight jeans hugged their shapely hips and legs and their tube tops bulged pleasantly.

  One had a short and sassy haircut and body type that reminded him of a figure skater.

  The other was the very definition of petite, with silky henna-tinted hair down to her waist. She was dwarfed by her friend and couldn’t be more than five feet tall.

  He hadn’t seen them on campus before. He would have remembered.

  He took a second gulp. An outsider on campus now, he had no more sway with the coeds than the cowhands smoking and shooting pool. He was dirt.

  And then she turned around.

  Perched with her legs crossed, the smaller of the two girls pivoted on her stool to take in the room while her more athletic-looking friend cozied up to the bartender. She had a stunning oriental face with a perfect alabaster complexion, tiny chin and a self-confident expression in her beautiful oval eyes. She swished her long hair out of her face as her gaze landed on him.

  He clutched his mug in an involuntary, shock-induced reflex.

  The noise in the crowded bar grew muffled. The music’s volume decreased. Yet people still leaned together to shout into each other’s ears.

  He relaxed his grip on the mug. Her eyes were still on him, interested, yet impassive.

  Then suddenly the music stopped. The conversations ceased. But a loud blonde at the bar continued talking, and her voice carried across the room.

  “…he was hung like a bull mouse!”

  That brought down the house. Patrons erupted with whistles and laughter. The Asian girl closed her eyes. Perhaps she didn’t understand the meaning, but she could tell it was a matter of great embarrassment. Earl was nearly falling out of his chair unable to control his laughter.

  Brad couldn’t keep his eyes off the Asian. Maybe it was the high cheekbones that gave her such a regal air, but it was her impossibly long hair that attracted him as inexorably as a black hole sucked everything out of the space/time continuum.

  “And that’s some kind of sucking,” he said involuntarily.

  She turned back to the counter and resumed conversing with her friend.

  “What?” Earl asked.

  “Aw, nothing. I was distracted by something.”

  “So, how long were you going to go out with that bull mouse dame before telling me?” Earl asked, trying unsuccessfully to remain straight-faced.

  Brad was too absorbed with the posteriors of the two women to pay attention. They were both perfect in their own way. One definitely had more muscle, but the chick who had looked at him had a little more personality to her behind. Perhaps it was the contrast with her incredibly slender waist. He bet his two hands could clasp all the way around her. Maybe not right away. She’d have to exhale first, of course.

  He reached for his mug again, gauged the liquid volume left within and finished the draft completely in one decisive move.

  She was turning. The music had started again, and she watched people dancing in front of the band. The flashing stage lights caught her penetrating dark eyes. They were a little sad, but definitely sexy.

  “Look my way, baby,” Earl murmured.

  “No way, Skeeter,” Brad said. “She hasn’t taken her eyes off me all evening.”

  Earl snorted and spewed beer out his nose.

  “Just wait and see,” Brad said.

  “And I’m Oprah’s secret love child. You’ve really lost it this time, bud.”

  Yeah, maybe so. She didn’t look his way again. But she didn’t turn back to her friend, either.

  Oh no. Was she waiting for him to make a move? Well, he couldn’t ask her to dance. He couldn
’t ask any woman to dance, not since that horrible tango incident at the Spring Formal his sophomore year.

  Earl ordered a second pitcher, and they went to work on it.

  Brad drained another half-mug with one long, thirsty chug. That put away all fear. No problem now. He would be bold. “Why not?” he said aloud. “What do I have to lose? Certainly not my digity, dingaty, dig… Oh, whatever.”

  He got up with swift determination, knocked over his chair and nearly toppled the pitcher off the table. The bar was swimming with a blur of faces. The driving rhythm of the band seemed to pulsate in unison with his surging manhood. This would be his shining moment. Forget the tortured relationship with his stepfather, forget the failed academic career, for now only one thought dominated his consciousness. He wanted to have her baby. But when he finally focused on the bar, he noticed that the two girls had gone.

  He turned to Earl with a crazed look. “I, uh, gotta drain the snake.”

  He then wobbled through the smoky crowd toward the restroom facilities behind the pool table. A number of women were bunched up in the hallway. He squeezed through, and a few of them complained.

  “Coming through,” he said. “Gotta put out a fire.”

  When he finally reached the door, the hecklers were loud enough for the pool players to lower their cue sticks and glare at him angrily.

  Brad grunted and shoved the door open.

  In the restroom, May looked in the mirror and carefully picked tiny bits of taco chips out of her hair. What was she doing there? Her first night in the American Southwest, and she found herself making eyes at some dreamy hunk in a saloon.

  It was some beginning.

  She had just spent a quarter of an hour in a long line waiting just to use the restroom. Why was it that only women waited in line for the bathroom?

  She heard a scuffle out the door and quickly neatened up the lipstick around her round, pouty lips.

  “Please, the lavatory is occupated just now,” she said in a soft voice.

  Her breasts didn’t look the least bit inviting in that roomful of busty Americans. She was just reaching under her T-shirt to hitch up her bra when the door burst open.

  It was a guy.

  Without thinking, she spun 270 degrees and planted her extended foot smack into the middle of his chest, thrust forward with all her chi and forcibly exhaled.

  Oh my. It was the young man with the foxy brown eyes she had been checking out.

  He reeled backward and slammed into the line of women. They began falling down like dominos. The last in line landed on a pool table, nudging one of the balls with her hand.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean to…” she tried to apologize as a player threatened her with his pool cue. Another stepped forward to protect her.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Jade said from the head of the line. “If the colonel catches us, we’re fried bread.”

  “But I just—”

  Jade grabbed her by the hand and led her down the hallway into the bar.

  There, she saw a bouncer grab the threatening pool player from behind and put him in a full Nelson. The player lifted his feet and pushed off from the edge of the table.

  Both he and the bouncer stumbled backward against a waitress carrying a tray full of open bottles. The bottles sprayed beer everywhere before smashing on the floor.

  People backed up in panic and bumped into others. Somewhere in the stampede, a fist was thrown followed by another. Within seconds, the air was filled with ten-gallon hats, bottle fragments, flying pool balls, arms and a woman’s hair extension, which shot about the room like some crazed electrocuted weasel.

  The melee reached the band, but it continued to crank out music like the orchestra on the Titanic until the lead singer caught a beer mug on the forehead. That did it. The band members grabbed their instruments and retreated from the stage.

  In the confusion, May felt her friend’s hand slip away. She looked around in desperation. Jade was enmeshed in a tangle of swinging arms and legs.

  Pushed back by the crowd, May found herself once again in the hallway. This time it was nearly empty except for the prone body by the restroom door.

  “Oh, unfortunate young man,” she said, and knelt by his side.

  He was lying on his back in a state of semi-consciousness.

  “Watch out!” he said, suddenly startled. “There’s some wild woman in the john.” He grabbed the back of his head.

  May felt both pride and shame. Kung fu seemed like an unfair advantage in the land of Wild West showdowns.

  She indicated the restroom door with its dual male/female icons. “There is only one room for both man and woman,” and attempted an apologetic smile.

  He tore his gaze away from the markings on the door and tried to focus on her as if she were some beautiful mirage.

  Slowly the guy sat up with her help and got a chance to look at her up close.

  “Don’t I wish I knew you from somewhere?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, not really understanding the strange question.

  She inspected the pitiful, boyish hunk as he sat upon the floor like a child. She had to admit that he looked even tastier at close range.

  In fact, the young man had definite sex appeal, his shirt askew, his brown hair dangling before his gorgeous hazel eyes. What kind of chest lurked beneath that cowboy flannel? A sudden, irresistible urge to become a cowgirl clashed with her proper Chinese upbringing.

  “So tell me, any more at home like you?” he said dreamily.

  “I am an only child.” What was with the weird questions?

  “Hey, what’s going on?” he said, finally sensing the brawl behind them.

  She decided to take pity on him. “It looks like you started everyone to fighting.”

  “Fight? Meeeeee? I’m a lover, not a fighter,” he managed to say. Then a beer bottle smashed all over the floor next to him and drenched the seat of his jeans.

  If Colonel Philips learned that she had been involved in a public brawl, he would have just the excuse he needed to cancel her training mission in America. “How can we go someplace away from here?” she asked.

  “And be alone? Together? I warn you, madam, I’m not that kind of guy.”

  “Excuse, please? How do we get out?”

  “Kitchen.” He swung his head toward the corner of the hallway.

  “I am sorry. Please take advantage of me.”

  She began to hoist him to his feet. He was limp and heavy. That she could tolerate, if only he would just stop talking. They wound their way past the grease fryer and prep station to an open door.

  All the cooks were in the parking lot smoking cigarettes and waiting for the fight to die down. In the distance, she heard sirens.

  “I have to depart,” she said. “I must not let the base commander find me with drunk cowboys in a saloon.”

  “Face meander who?” he said slowly, with a look of profound concern.

  “Please help me. Do you have an automobile?”

  He reached uncertainly in his pocket. “Here are my keys. But you’d better drive, ’cause I think there might have been drinking involved.”

  He indicated a pickup truck nearby.

  “Skeeter will understand,” he continued, happily babbling to himself. “When there’s a chick involved, all plans between guys are off.”

  May helped him limp across the parking lot. She forced herself not to panic as she heard the police sirens close in. Her friend Jade was nowhere in sight.

  “Do your feet hurt?” he asked.

  “What?” She didn’t really have time for such incoherent nonsense. She certainly hoped he didn’t talk that way when sober.

  “’Cause, girl, you look like you just fell from heaven.”

  She had to get moving fast. The tailgate was open, so she leaned him against the back of the pickup and laid him down. He laughed and rolled into a ball.

  She slammed the tailgate, unintentionally hitting his knee.

  “Ouch. That
hurt.”

  She jumped into the cab and tried to compose herself. She looked into the rearview mirror at the dark hulk in the bed of the truck. Where was she going and what was she going to do with that guy?

  She could pull forward, circle back around the parked cars and head for the busy street. She was just about to turn over the ignition when three squad cars came barreling behind her into the parking lot. Their sirens wailed and their lights flashed.

  She ducked beneath the dashboard. It felt silly, like the day she had bought lipstick behind her father’s back.

  She took the opportunity to glance around the interior of the young man’s pickup. Road maps were scattered on the floor, a smudged paper cup that smelled of coffee sat in the cup holder, and a dog-eared copy of Scientific American lay on the passenger seat on top of a box of rocks, like a little boy’s rock collection.

  The young man was alternatively laughing then groaning in the back bay.

  A powerful searchlight lit up the pickup, then swung away. She peered through the back window. Police were running into the kitchen.

  She turned on the engine and jerked the truck forward. The young man practically somersaulted and banged into the tailgate.

  “So sorry,” she said with a wince.

  A second later, his body was pressed violently against the left sidewall wheel cover as she whipped into a tight right turn and onto the streets of Tucson.

  Brad hoisted his head off the bed of his pickup truck.

  The driver paid no heed to a red light and gunned through an intersection. A tractor-trailer had to swerve to avoid catching them in the tail.

  He gritted his teeth, got to his hands and knees, and inched forward to the cab.

  Who on God’s green earth was manhandling his pickup like that? He knocked on the window.

  The Asian beauty shook her head and pressed hurriedly onward.

  Okay, so he was in for a joyride.

  If they were stopped, she would get the ticket.

  He began to relax despite himself. He had no idea what was going on. All he could do was slide down onto his back and watch the stars. His alcohol-induced stupor began to wear off in the whipping wind, and he could look back over the evening with some perspective. The past hour of his life had been strange indeed, but it was a welcome break from the earlier spate of bad luck.