Read Online The Mysteries of Soldiers Grove by Paul Zimmer - Free Book Online

white toast, and you can bring the coffee pot over here and leave it while you’re cooking. Don’t press any buttons or go into your pocket for your cell phone. Don’t go into the back room. I’ll blow your fuckin’ head off, junior! Got that? Just cook on the grill. I’ll be watching.”
    “I ain’t going to do nothing but what you say,” the cook says. “Comin’ right up just the way you like them. Best eggs and bacon you ever had. I’m just going to reach to this shelf up here and get my big skillet down. Okay? Then I’m going to get the eggs and bacon out of the fridge. You can watch me all the way. Just take it easy . ”
    After eating, Balaclava feels better. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was. The food was good and it seemed to soothe him. He decided not to blow the cook’s head off.
    As he scarfs down the last of the eggs and potatoes, Balaclava thinks about taking a few winks in one of the beds in the motel. Maybe the storm would ease off a bit if he slept a few hours. But what the hell would he do with this simple-minded shit while he slept? Chain him to another bed? Somebody else might come in from the highway into the restaurant—if they could make it down the idiot’s driveway.
    He could blow the cook away and then take a room, but somebody else might come in. The guy was cooperating, cooked decent eggs. In the end Balaclava just rips the phone out, cuts the long chord off, and makes the guy give over his cell phone.
    “Now, your truck keys.”
    “They’re in my coat pocket over there on the hook,” the cook points.
    Balaclava levels his gun on the cook again. “You get ’em, friend. Don’t do anything funny when you reach in your pocket or they’ll be scraping your brains off the menu board.”
    The man jingles his keys out of the coat pocket and puts them into Balaclava’s extended hand.
    “Now, pal, you and me are going outside.” Balaclava buttons his heavy coat again and motions with his pistol for the cook to go out the door. At the curb there is a “Senior Citizens” parking sign on a metal post. He pushes the man down against it and cinches his legs and hands tight to the base of the post with the long phone cord. He considers gagging him, but figures he’ll just let the guy do his singing to the storm. It must be about zero degrees and the wind is up.
    Balaclava goes back into the café. There is a big display box of beef jerky packages on the register counter and he stuffs two huge handfuls into his coat pockets, takes the money and small revolver from under the cash drawer. He finds a container of cleanser spray and covers everything he’s touched while he’s been in the restaurant and mops a bit with a bar towel. He locates a toolbox under the counter and takes a hammer. He finds the main switchboard just inside a closet door and throws off all the lights indoors and out. No one will even know this place is here in the dark for a few days until the storm moves out. He takes the big flashlight from under the counter.
    As a last thought he removes the cook’s coat from the hook behind the counter and, on his way out, drops it over the guy’s shoulders. “That’s for the eggs and bacon,” he says. Already the cook, shivering in his sweater, is barely able to lift his head, but his eyes are wide and beseeching and his pupils focus on Balaclava. He tries to say something, but it doesn’t come out right. Children, wife—something.
    Hell with him. He should have plowed his fucking entry road.
    Balaclava tells him, “Maybe somebody else will come sliding down your road, shithead. At least I’m giving you that chance.”
    There is half a tank of gas in the Dodge and it starts right up with the key. While the truck is warming he slips out of the cab again, goes to the rear and bangs on the license plate with the hammer until it crumples and folds up under the chrome bumper like someone had accidentally bumped it hard backing up against something. Then he gives it a