36: A Novel by Dirk Patton Page B

gripped in his hand.  If he started to swing, I was going to fight.  The odds weren’t good that I’d be able to overpower him and make it out of the prison’s gate, but I wasn’t going to willfully submit to a beat down either.
    The air was hot and dusty and heavy with the stink of rotting garbage when I walked through the gate, but after being inside the prison it tasted as sweet as a mountain meadow in spring.  Behind me, I could hear the low roar of the prisoners going about their daily business within the high walls.  A voice rose above the babble, screaming in pain, and it took all of my self control to not turn and look.  I just wanted the fuck away from this place.
    Half a block from the prison I saw two ancient Chevy pickups parked at the curb.  Their drivers were sitting on the lowered tailgate of the one in back, smoking and talking.  The two trucks were as much rust as not, but all I cared about was that Taxi had been crudely hand lettered in black paint on their doors.
    “Pink Pussy,” I said, walking up to the two men and holding a single twenty up for them to see.
    One of them leapt down and dashed forward, smiling, reaching for the money.  I pulled it away from his grasping fingers and shook my head.
    “When we get there,” I said with little doubt he understood the meaning even if he didn’t understand the language.
    He nodded and smiled, chattering away in Spanish as he escorted me to the lead pickup.  Once I was seated, he slammed the door and ran around the hood to climb behind the wheel.  The engine wheezed to life and we were quickly rolling, a dense cloud of blue smoke hanging in the air behind us.
    “Pink Pussy!”  He said excitedly, smiling as he took his hands off the wheel and mimed masturbating with both of them.
    “Pink Pussy.”
    I smiled back at him and nodded.  He said something else in Spanish that I didn’t have a chance in hell of understanding, then remained quiet for the remainder of the drive across Nogales.
    The town isn’t large and it didn’t take us long.  Buildings were thinning out, replaced by tar paper shacks that lined the road.  Women were doing chores while children played in the dirt.  I didn’t see any men, and that was fine with me.  If someone was going to start a problem, odds were it would be a guy, not a woman who just wanted to get her work done.
    I wasn’t sure what to expect, but when we rounded a curve in the dirt road I was surprised to see a relatively new building with a paved parking lot.  A massive billboard fronted the street and I was amazed when I got a good look at it.  It was a full color photo of three naked women, each in a different pose that fully exposed their genitals. 
    Hell, not just exposed.  Their genitals were the focus of the camera.  Two of them were giving blow jobs, the men mostly cut out of the frame except for the important parts.  The third was smiling away as she lay on her back on top of a man who had his cock deep in her ass.  Across the top of the billboard, in six-foot high, neon pink lettering, were the words Pink Pussy . 
    I shook my head, frankly a little shocked.  Not that I’m a prude, by any stretch of the imagination.  No, not even close.  But my travels had been mostly limited to Arizona, then basic training in Kentucky followed by deployment to the middle east.  None of these places, especially the middle east, would have ever tolerated such a public display.
    Shaking my head, I pulled my eyes away from the sign and motioned for the driver to head around the side of the building.  He gave me a funny look, but did as I asked.  At the very back was the truck.  I breathed a sigh of relief that it was still there.  But then looking at it, even from a distance, I could tell why no one had taken it.  It made the rattletrap rust bucket I was riding in look like a shiny new Cadillac.
    Telling the driver to stop, I handed him the twenty, thanked him in my clumsy Spanish and stepped out