Money, Guns, and Lawyers Chapter 1

We had been in the car for nearly sixteen hours, making our way home from the desolate New Mexico wastelands. Gas was low, and tempers were high. Well, at least one temper was high. We had all been pushed to our limits on this last job and one of us was dangerously close to the breaking point. Our fearless leader was slowly coming to the end of his rope, and some of us wanted to strangle him with it. The rest of us more or less just suffered in silence. The cramped condition of the vehicle, in no way designed for 6 adults and one stray dog the size of a small horse, wasn’t helping things either. We were running out of cash and out of time. There was a job to finish, and Josh was determined to get it done on time, whether it killed us or not; and it just might.

I can’t tell you how many times Josh’s pride and hubris had caused us no small amount of suffering (in silence or otherwise), not to mention the complications that would occasionally arise because of his insistence that our reputation was always the most important thing in this “business”. More than once our little familia has had disagreements over our priorities. I guess all families have some level of functional disfunctionality that way; we just seemed to have more than most.

Jay was the first one brave enough to break the silence. “Hey, Josh, there is a 7/11 in the next town. Maybe we should stop and get some food and gas.”

My stomach rumbled in agreement, feeling nearly as empty as the gas tank, but I sure as hell wasn’t about to speak up in agreement. I glanced over at Josh as his grip tightened on the steering wheel, each knuckle cracking in a sharp staccato burst that sounded like muffled gunfire, knuckles whitening until I thought for sure he would snap the wheel. His gaze shifted from the road to the rear-view mirror. His brown eyes had narrowed and a slight sneer was curled at the corner of his mouth. “Do you know what town is next Jay?” He said between clenched teeth, nostrils flaring slightly with anger, always the first sign that he was pissed.

“Sure, it’s…” began Jay.

“Nooooooo, don’t say it!” Cat and I yelled in unison, hoping to drown him out.

“Don’t ever say the name of that town, especially when we are in the car.” I finished for the both of us, eyes wide and flicking towards our quickly disintegrating driver, hoping that Jay had not forgotten (again) and I wouldn’t have to elaborate on the subject.

I was in the front seat with Josh at this point, shoe-horned in between him and Cat, and I noticed that the speedometer was slowly creeping upwards. This could be a problem. The whole reason we don’t ever say the word "Raton" is because Josh has been pulled over there far too many times to count, not to mention the ill-timed breakdowns and off road excursions our vehicles have taken due to adverse weather conditions. To make matters worse, we were on a return trip and the trunk was full of “merchandise”.

He glared at Jay's reflection in the mirror and hissed “You dumb-ass. You know we never speak the name of the place of evil while on a road trip. What in the hell are you thinking? We don’t stop there, we don’t even slow down there. Ever! In fact, don’t even think of the name…” at this point, Josh’s eyes had taken on that wide eyed glassy look that you associate with insane people or Jack Nickleson in that Steven King movie set up in Estes Park. “Clear your fucking mind of where the fuck we are right fucking now man,” he went on “ ‘cause I’ll be god dammed if I’m gonna spend one more motherfucking minute in this area than I fucking have to!”

“Umm, Josh.” I said, patting him gently on the arm” if you don’t slow down, we are going to have to stop and not of our own choosing” I said as quietly and calmly as I could all the while watching the speedometer, noting that we are now going upwards of 90mph. I realized, that despite what ever calming words I might try on Josh, he’d not eaten anything in over eight hours which likely meant that I was wasting my breath; he was going to be even more unreasonable that usual.

That’s pretty much when the proverbial shit decided to hit the fan. In rapid succession, the low fuel indicator turned on, sirens began to howl, red and blue lights began flashing behind us, Josh took to cursing a blue streak, Cat started throwing empty soda cans and beer bottles at Jay’s head, and the dog started to bark.

Then Greg woke up and all hell broke loose.

“Hey” He said, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes “We’re not stopping in Raton are we?”

The tires squealed as Josh slammed on the brakes and simultaneously turned around throwing punches at Greg. “Fuck! I told you that fucking word was fucking cursed! Now we got the fucking cops on our ass and a trunk load of fucking goods in the fucking trunk. Fuck!”

“For god’s sake Josh, knock it off, put your hands on the damm wheel, and pull the fuck over!” I said, my heart nearly pounding out of my chest. “All y’all need to just shut the fuck up and let me think. After all, that’s what I get paid for.”

I had been getting paid to be the brains of our little family operation for nearly ten years now. Josh, our leader, was in charge of the brawn. Cat and Shay were the beauties (distract and redirect if you know what I mean) of the group, not to mention the fact that Cat did most of the cooking and it was Shay’s job to keep us all looking fabulous. Most times, Jay and Greg were just along for the ride, and like all good henchmen, ready to back up whatever play was in motion. And what rides we had. Come to think of it, all of this…this operation, started with just a simple road trip that took us through Raton. God we were young back then, and stupid. We thought we were invincible.

It was just about ten years ago to the day, and the six of us were on our way home from an SCA event in Albuquerque. Greg, Shay and I were crashed out in the backseat, sleeping off one hell of a party. Josh, Cat and Jay were crammed into the front, radio blasting and a smoky haze filling the air. Josh was driving, and looking back I wonder what possessed us to let him drive, especially through this area. I think he was in a hurry to get home. If I remember right, Cat had to work the next morning. If only we had known that our lives were about to change forever. I still can’t yet say if it was for the better, or for the worse. All I know is, things sure as hell changed.

I can’t really blame the cop that pulled us over that day. I mean, if you had seen a car crammed full of bodies (granted, we were all still living…mostly), and filled with a bluish haze of smoke wouldn’t you have pulled us over? Especially when said car was flying up the mountain at about 95mph? What would you expect a fine, upstanding law enforcement officer to do when confronted with a speeding, banged up Geo Metro full of what looked like hippies on the run?

We could have lost everything that day, but we didn’t. We walked away from it without a scratch. Not even the tiniest blemish on any of our records. We also walked away with a new “career path”. It was the day we met Mr. “M”.

Mortimer Money, or Mr. “M” as we call him, was our lawyer, appointed to us by the State of New Mexico. Oddly enough, Mr. Money doesn’t live in New Mexico. How he came to be our lawyer is still a bit of a mystery to all of us. How he came to be our employer is another story all together.

At the moment though, our invincibility seemed about to be tested; or perhaps our dumb luck was running out. Cat would've argued karma over luck, but the fat lady hadn't hit the stage yet, and despite having everything go wrong that could go wrong there was still a slight chance that we could pull our butts out of the fire once again; hopefully, with a minimum of explanations, bloodshed or bodies to dispose of.

Explanations were easy. I'm pretty sure that I could come up with something plausible enough for the small town yokel driving the police cruiser behind us. Hell, I'd boggled enough redneck brain cells in my time to know their type, and this one hopefully wouldn't be any different. The main thing was to avoid any sort of "confrontation" that would lead to the other two less desirous outcomes. Bodies were an awkward but sometimes unfortunate part of our family trade. Out here in the wilderness, allot of mistakes get lost, if you know what I mean. The middle of nowhere is the middle of nowhere after all, and the local wildlife would probably enjoy the unexpected addition in their food chain.

Bloodshed was far more frequent than I would've liked sometimes, even if it wasn't mine. Bullet and knife wounds being hard to explain to the doctors at any given hospital, some of us had turned into rather good field medics out of necessity. Hell Shay could stitch up a knife wound as well as she could sew on an errant button. Personally, I tried to avoid the blood and other unpleasant aspects of our less than satisfactory jobs; which is why I was really going to have to come up with something good this time. I had "that feeling”, again.
Something was about to go very, very wrong...