Lone Wolf #12: Phoenix Inferno by Mike Barry Page B

on the full prowl?
    Fuck it, Carlin thought. Fuck it, it isn’t worth it. He decided to travel light, that was the best way to do it. Anything he needed he could pick up en route or on the other end. He wouldn’t even call ahead because the lines might be tapped, you never knew. Not by the government—the government had had taps in for years—he couldn’t give less of a shit about the government. No, it might be Wulff. Wulff somehow might have gotten lines in. Anyway, it made sense not to take any chances on it. Say nothing, travel light, get into Mexico City and then laugh about what a fool he had been. That would be the proper way to manage it. Perhaps he wasn’t thinking too sanely, but then again what was sane about the Wolf Man? The only way to deal with a lunatic was to be as fast and cunning as the lunatic himself. Right? Carlin knew he was right. His judgments had carried him to a hundred acres on the irrigated desert and he wasn’t going to start losing faith in himself now.
    The only thing to do was to break the word to his mistress. He didn’t want to take her along. On the other hand, it was too risky to leave her behind, what with her knowledge of certain things and also—he had to admit it—that he wanted her along for the sex. He had been fucking her almost exclusively for a couple of years, had lost interest in most other stuff, and he could have had anything he wanted. He wasn’t sure he could perform with anyone else; in any event it was not a discovery that he wanted to make. There were certain things better off unknown; certainly by your forties you could stand as little new knowledge as possible. You had devised your life as a matter of fact for the purposes of keeping the knowledge out. Otherwise how could you live? Well, you could not live at all, that was the point. You simply could not live unless you set up certain barriers between yourself and your experience. To experience something twice was to come close to death. Carlin knew it. He knew everything that he had to know and wanted to know nothing else.
    “We’re going to get out of here,” he said to her. He had barged in on her in the bedroom, found her lying idly amidst the pillows, picking at her hair and looking at the ceiling. She was naked under the sheets, the sheets pulled half across her breasts, the breasts falling enormously to the side. Even under all the circumstances he felt a hard-on coming. Ridiculous. It was ridiculous to feel desire for her; yet he did, and maybe it was better that way then to feel nothing. “Right now,” he said. “We’re going to take a trip.”
    “Where?” she said without looking up, “take a trip where? What shit are you talking about?” She did not have a pleasant personality. In fact, aside from her skills at fucking, she was a nasty bitch. Surely she was not the kind of person who would have appealed to Carlin on any basis other than sexual. Not at all intellectual, with no appreciation of the basic and yet more refined areas of life. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “It doesn’t matter. I want you to get ready. We’re going really light; anything you need you can pick up on the way.”
    “Where are we going?”
    “Mexico City,” Carlin said.
    “I don’t like Mexico City,” she said, still not looking up. “I don’t want to go anywhere. I’ve seen enough places; I think I’d like to stay put for a while.”
    “Janice—”
    “Don’t Janice me,” she said, “don’t look at me that way, Joe. You got business, you want to take a trip, take it. It wouldn’t be the first time. Why do you need me? You never asked me anywhere before.”
    “I was never gone awhile either. I’m going to be gone awhile this time.”
    “No,” she said and shook her head, “no, I don’t think I want to go anywhere; I don’t really want to go anywhere at all. I think I’ll stay right here, as a matter of fact.”
    It was difficult to keep a lid on his temper when