Girl with the Flat Tire: A novel, She wasn't looking for trouble, but he was looking for her

By Leon Loy

One girl, two men, and a flat tire lead to a thrilling night of violence and danger in Flat Mountain, Texas.

A broken marriage and boredom sends independent Anna Nevin fleeing her hometown and heading west to California, where she plans to start a new life. But when her tire goes flat somewhere in the middle of Texas, young oil man Travis helps her get to the next town until she can decide what to do. Anna isn't looking for a love interest, but Travis is intriguing. Friends are made easily in Flat Mountain, and Anna just may have found a home for her wandering heart…

But when handsome, charming John Brookner drives into town, Anna is faced with a dilemma. Should she stay in Flat Mountain with Travis, who can promise her safety, security, and a good, if quiet, life? Or should she give in to John's dangerous charms and see where they take her? When a Houston drug dealer hell-bent on vengeance arrives in Flat Mountain, Anna finds herself trapped in a nightmare of seduction, violence and murder. Does Travis care enough to intervene? Or is she already doomed?

Over the span of 48 hours in the summer of 1975, the town of Flat Mountain will change forever, and its residents will never be the same.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543993196

Book preview

Copyright 2020

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN: 978-1-54399-318-9 (softcover)

ISBN: 978-1-54399-319-6 (eBook)

Table of Contents

A cloud of smoke and two lines of tire marks

Hurt people hurt people, too?

Tires popping on gravel

Fine hairs on the back of her neck stood on end

She was not a girl who often blushed

So, you are Travis’ flat tire, he said

What is a pump jack?

Even without looking, she could feel his eyes on her

Keep your mind on driving

The spirits of Na’ura and Ten Bears roam over the mountaintop

An unexpected wave of conflicting emotions surged within her

Like the Texas wind, she had flipped directions

What is wrong with you?

ZZ Top blasted through the speakers

I got something for you

But I know I shouldn’t

Just what kind of cop are you?

A shot rang out from the car

Crazy is my middle name

Two birds for the price of one.

She must be a little thing because that’s a small window

I am here on this mountain

She knew what she had to do

Well, it was a nice punt

Don’t worry, Travis, I’ve got your back

You ask too many questions

John Wayne to the rescue

Step on it, before that cow blows off both our heads

But first, a goodbye kiss

Two hacks with the machete

Not yet

1

"A cloud of smoke

and two lines of tire marks"

The policeman finished searching the house and approached the woman sitting on the sofa. From a few steps away he watched the paramedic inspect the wound on her head. Blood oozed from a three-inch-long gash over her left ear, which the paramedic carefully dabbed with a wad of cotton. One eye was already swelling and her nose had a nasty scrape running down one side. The victim appeared to be in her late twenties and might have been attractive at one time. That she wished the policeman wasn’t there was clear by the icy glare she gave him. But he was used to that.

What’s your name, miss? he asked, taking out a pen and notepad from his front pocket.

She mumbled something.

Sorry, I didn’t get that.

Louder, she repeated, Angel.

That’s your name?

Eyes rolling, she said, Yes.

Dilated pupils convinced him she was high even though he’d found no drugs in the house.

Sometimes Angel is short for Angela, or Angie, he said.

It’s Angel, like I told you.

When he asked for her last name, she told him it was Hopper.

Furnishings in the small house were sparse. Gaping cracks split apart the linoleum floor, and the walls were so smudged it was anyone’s guess as to the paint color. In the corner of the living room sat a worn brown recliner, ripped leather patched with gray duct tape. Underneath Angel and the paramedic, a soiled blanket covered the sofa, with a stained pillow propped at one end. On a small table next to the sofa, a low-watt bulb burned from a cheap shadeless lamp. Stacked beneath it were a variety of magazines and a packet of Zig-Zag cigarette rolling papers. He sniffed, but there was no tell-tale odor from marijuana. The room was stuffy and sour even though an oscillating fan on the floor hummed musically as it made rotations. It was all the policeman could do to keep from holding his nose.

What was his name, the man who did this to you?

She hesitated, before finally saying, John Brookner.

He wrote it down in his notepad. Your husband?

She scoffed. Hell, no. But he’s been sleeping here and eating my groceries, and . . . Eyes flitted about nervously as she left her statement unfinished. He knew what she meant.

With his pen he pointed at her head. How did he . . . ?

Beat me like a punching bag and hit me with that. She nodded toward a broken picture frame on the floor a few feet away. Shards of glass and a photo of Angel and a small child lay beside it.

He knelt to get a better look. Were there children in the house?

Angel tried to shake her head, but the paramedic was attempting to wrap a bandage over the wound. No, my daughter doesn’t stay here anymore. Lives with my parents.

The paramedic said, She needs stitches. We’ll have to take her to the hospital.

To show he understood, the policeman nodded and pocketed his notebook. Do you know where he might have gone? he asked the woman.

Staring at the floor, Angel said, No, and I don’t care.

If we fail to pick him up, he may return and do something worse. They usually do.

Oh, he won’t be back, she said.

How do you know?

Because he got what he wanted.

What’s that?

Having finished securing the bandage around her head, the paramedic stood. We need to move her now, officer.

A second paramedic entered the room, and they helped Angel to her feet and walked her toward the doorway. Outside, the rotating emergency lights on top of the ambulance pulsed red through the door and into the room.

Stepping in front of them, the policeman persisted. What did he want? Angel glowered at him, and he could tell she didn’t want to answer. Ma’am, what was it?

The paramedic pleaded, Officer . . .

Wait a minute. No one’s going anywhere until she answers me.

Exasperated, Angel blurted, The dope, man, that’s all he wanted—the dope.

John Brookner stomped the gas pedal of the black-and-gold Oldsmobile 442, spinning out of the 7-Eleven parking lot. A cloud of smoke and two lines of tire marks followed. On the seat next to him were the fistful of twenties and tens he’d taken from the cash drawer and a Smith & Wesson .38 Special.

In the rearview mirror, he could see the Vietnamese clerk run through the door of the 7-Eleven trying to get his license plate number. Thrusting his arm out the window, Brookner gave him the finger.

Write it down, gook, he sneered. The plate on the 442 was off a Mercury station wagon parked on 10th Street, and he had stolen an extra plate off a Chevy Impala.

Once he cleared the neighborhood, Brookner pulled into the back alley of a shopping center, away from the parking lot lamps. He opened the trunk and stuffed the cash in an olive colored duffel bag of clothes he’d hastily packed before leaving Angel’s house. Next to the bag was a grocery sack full of drugs: three ounces of weed and a dozen plastic sandwich bags of cocaine—everything they had in the house. Pleased with himself, Brookner tossed a strand of long blond hair out of his face and grinned. Without the coke, she would crash like a cheap Ford in a demolition derby. He only regretted he wouldn’t be around to see it.

Kneeling behind the car, he used his pocketknife to unscrew the license plate and then tossed it in a drainage ditch. Trace that, he said, snickering. A minute later he had the stolen plate from the Impala installed.

Before closing the trunk, he positioned the sack of drugs behind his duffel bag. Street value, he figured it was worth thirty thousand dollars, maybe more. Enough to get Julio’s shorts in a wad, if he wore shorts. Julio expected payment for the drugs at their scheduled meeting behind the Rice Food Market, a meeting Brookner had no intention of making. He didn’t have the dough and wasn’t giving the coke back to that wetback.

Julio worked with cousins for an uncle in Mexico. The family was connected to a drug-smuggling racket in Miami. The uncle avoided the risk of bringing marijuana across the Mexican border by diverting private planes en route to Miami to Houston. To gain more profit per pound, they had recently begun shipping cocaine from South America. That’s when the real money started rolling in. Their source was some dude in Columbia named Escobar. El hombre mal—the bad man—is what Julio called him. From what Brookner learned of Escobar, bad was bad. You don’t want to know how bad, Julio told him. Brookner tapped the trunk lid with a knuckle and snorted. Colombia was a long way from Texas.

Even at this late hour, the Houston skyline brightened half the night sky, towering skyscrapers clearly visible from where Brookner parked. Downtown was where he and Angel met, in a rotting turn-of-the-century hotel room with a bed so old the mattress sagged in the middle and the bath towels were worn smooth as paper. Julio introduced them there after a ZZ Top concert. What began as a drug-fueled one-nighter became a residency when Brookner followed Angel home in the morning and stayed.

Leaning against the door of the 442, he shook a cigarette from a red and white Marlboro pack in his shirt and dug out his lighter from his jeans pocket. With the top flipped open, he rubbed his thumb over the flint wheel and stared at the tiny yellow-white flame. Fumes from the shiny Zippo always reminded him of his old man, who used to light up a cigarette after giving him or his mom a beating. Maybe that’s why tonight the smell drew him in. As they say, like father like son.

Hurting Angel meant nothing to him. She had become a real drag—a has-been whore hooked on dope. Lost her kid because of it. And when she was fired from her job as cashier at Rice’s supermarket a month ago, Brookner knew his gravy train was ending. If arrested again, even for a misdemeanor, he’d be facing serious jail time, and after he busted her head open, he was sure Angel would have called an ambulance. Meddling paramedics were certain to call the cops, and soon there’d be an all-points bulletin on the radios. In an hour or two, when Julio figured out he’d taken off with his drugs, he’d come looking for Brookner, too.

A siren sounded in the distance, and Brookner slid back in the car, hid the .38 under the seat, and waited. Soon an ambulance zoomed by on West 11th Street followed by a blue and white police cruiser. He waited a few minutes longer before easing onto North Shepherd Avenue and drove toward the 610 Loop. After a few miles on the Loop, he exited onto Highway 290.

It was nearly dawn when Brookner pulled over for gas at a truck stop in Elgin, a small town east of Austin. After using the restroom, he opened the trunk and removed a bag of cocaine from the sack. Shaking a small pile on the top of his hand, he snorted it up his nose, licked off what was left, then pumped gas into the 442. As the drug kicked in, he threw his head back and made a face, suppressing an ecstatic squeal.

From across the bay, a truck driver filling the gas tank of a trailer rig watched. Under the mustard-yellow bay lights, Brookner couldn’t tell if the driver was black or Mexican. It didn’t matter; he despised both. When he said hey, the driver turned his head away. Even though the driver was clearly ignoring him, Brookner said, Like what you see? Sell you some, if you do.

When this failed to get a response, he continued. There’s a theory about you darkies. Want to hear it?

Still nothing from the driver.

Here, I’ll tell it to you anyway. I’ve been told schools now teach that everyone comes from monkeys—you know, that evolution crap. Did they teach that stuff where you went to school?

He hesitated, thinking this would prompt a response, but the driver refused to look at him.

Yeah, well, I bet you didn’t get much education in the ’hood, Brookner taunted. Like I said, schools teach everyone comes from apes. That’s what they want us to believe. But I say, hold on, you telling me I come from a monkey? It ain’t possible cause I’m white and white folks come from Adam, and that’s in the Bible. You read the Bible?

Still the driver refused to take the bait, so Brookner continued. "Preachers say God made us in His image. But that ain’t true for everyone. Now I ain’t ever seen God, though I did see that maharishi dude at the Astrodome few years ago. All them hippies staring at the backs of their eyeballs thought he was God, but he was just a little brown turd in fancy clothes, and everybody knows God ain’t no darkie. Now, back to evolution. It ain’t all crap because some folks do descend from apes. I mean if you ain’t white—well then, say hello to your brother, Mr. Chimpanzee."

As Brookner was talking, the driver docked the nozzle back in the pump and replaced his gas cap without saying a word. With one foot on the running board of his truck, he reached inside the cab and when he brought out his hand, it gripped an Adirondack Big Stick baseball bat. The driver hopped down and started toward him.

Oh, sh—! Brookner said, flinging the nozzle out of his tank. Gasoline sprayed over the pavement as he jumped into his car. He cranked the ignition and punched the accelerator, but before the 442 could get traction, the driver landed a solid blow on the trunk lid.

Brookner looked in his rearview mirror. You did not just hit my car!

The driver swung again but missed as the 442 sped away, screeching tires echoing loudly in the pump bay.

Brookner drove to the other side of the truck stop and parked out of view of the pump bay. Think you’re getting away with that? he muttered, lighting a cigarette. Under the seat he found the .38 and placed it in his lap.

When he drove back to the gas pumps, the driver had returned to the cab of his truck. An irate cashier wearing a turban, another darkie, emerged from the booth and started toward him, chattering some foreign language. Brookner showed him the .38, and the cashier turned and rushed back inside the booth. Then Brookner pulled alongside the trailer rig. When the driver saw the gun, his eyes went wide, and he ducked out of view.

That’s right, duck, you baboon, Brookner snarled.

Gasoline from the spewing nozzle had formed a puddle around the pumps. Brookner backed his car a few yards away and then leaned out of the window and flicked his cigarette in a wide arc toward the liquid. Sparks from the cigarette ignited the gasoline, and the floor of the pump bay erupted into a flaming pool. The truck driver backed his rig out seconds before the bay exploded in a ball of orange and blue flame. Brookner felt heat slam against his neck as he pulled onto the highway. Within minutes, a black column of smoke rose against the gray light of dawn behind him.

Heading south through Austin, Brookner kept his speed down, not wanting to attract police. To avoid the interstate, he took highways west through the hill country, passing through towns so small you forgot their names as soon as you left them—off-the-grid places where cops and Julio were less likely to look.

The sun had been up for several hours when he pulled into a restaurant parking lot in a small crossroads town. After splashing water on his face and combing his long hair in the restroom, Brookner got a table to order breakfast.

Waiting tables was a tall woman in her early thirties, with bleached blond hair, roots dark as coffee. Not a beauty queen by any stretch, but he tried to come on to her anyway. It was clear right off she wasn’t interested. Before turning in his order, she shot him a glance so icy it could freeze the tits off a frog.

From an old tube radio on the counter some crooner was singing a tear jerker about a honky-tonk angel. Brookner hated country music. The waitress returned carrying a pot of coffee, and as she filled his cup, he asked, Does that radio play something besides hick music?

Nope. Just plays what you hear.

What I hear is crap.

Crap is what he likes.

Who?

Him, she said, nodding toward a lanky dude in a ball cap who was bringing a plate of food from the kitchen to a table nearby. This is his restaurant, and that is his radio.

Brookner scoffed, Well, it’s still crap.

He gave up on the waitress.

While he ate, the place filled up: old couples with white hair and leathery skin and sunburned men in Western hats and cowboy boots who gave him curious looks. Geez, he thought, it’s like being in an episode of Hee Haw!

Then she walked in—a cute, dark-haired chick in bell-bottom jeans. A real looker. With piqued interest he watched as the waitress seated her across the room. The chick appeared uneasy and bantered nervously with the bitchy waitress. With an eye on the door, he grinned to himself when five minutes later no one else followed her.

Things were looking up; she was alone.

2

Hurt people hurt people, too?

Hurt people hurt people, too. That’s what Lance said to her.

Leaning under the faucet, Anna Nevin rinsed the toothpaste out of her mouth, gargled twice, and tossed the toothbrush into the cup by the sink.

He told her, hurt people hurt people, too, and he said it as if she were a threat to him, or anyone else.

Was she?

Anna stared in the mirror. The light green eyes beneath dark brows, the right one often arching higher than the left depending on her mood, were spaced evenly above a lightly freckled nose which she always considered a tad too long. Wavy black hair framed a heart-shaped face and fell over delicate neck and shoulders. This image she knew well. About the woman behind the face, she wasn’t so sure.

A frown creased her