Pete turned off the television but continued to stare at the screen.
Theyre contract killers, arent they? she said.
They didnt follow you after you got off work. They didnt come around the motel, either. Maybe you were rightthey were just jerks trying to pick you up.
Theres something else.
He looked at her and waited.
I talked with the bartender before I got off tonight. I showed him the newspaper. He said, One of those bikers was talking about calling up some guy named Hugo.
Youre just telling me all this now? Pete said.
No, youre not listening. The bartender She gave up and sat down on the bed beside him, not touching him. I cant think straight. She pushed at her forehead with the heel of her hand. Maybe they did follow me home and I didnt see them. What if they found out where were living and they called up this guy Hugo and told him?
I dont get it, though. Who killed them? Pete said. The story doesnt say what kind of machine gun the shooter used. Theres a lot of illegal stuff available nowAKs, Uzis, semiautos with hell-triggers.
What difference does that make?
The story says there were shell casings all over the crime scene. If the guy had a Thompson with a drum on it
Pete, will you just spit it out? What are you saying? You talk in hieroglyphics.
The guy who killed all the women behind the church used a Thompson. Theyre hard to come by. They shoot forty-five-caliber ammunition. The ammo drum will hold fifty rounds. Maybe the guy who killed the women behind the church is the same guy who machine-gunned the bikers.
That doesnt make sense. Why would they be killing each other?
Maybe theyre not working together. Pete read more, running his thumb down to the last paragraph. He set the paper aside and rubbed his palms on his knees.
Say it, she said.
The shooter had a limp. Maybe he uses a walking cane. A trucker saw him from the highway.
Vikki got up from the bed. Her face was pale, the skin tight against the bone, as though she were staring into a cold wind. Hes the man I shot, isnt he?
Pete began putting on his trousers.
Where you going?
Out.
To do what?
Not to drink, if thats what youre asking.
Her eyes remained accusatory, locked on his.
I brought all this on us, Vikki. You dont have to say it.
Dont leave.
More of the same isnt gonna cut it.
Im not mad at you. Im just tired.
Ill be back.
When?
When you see me.
What are you going to do?
Boost a car. I wasnt just a crewman in a tank. I was a mechanic. See, theres an upside to getting french-fried in Baghdad.
Damn you, Pete.
HUGO CISTRANOS WAS sitting on a canvas chair on the beach in his Speedos, the waves capping and sliding in a yellow froth up on the sand. The air smelled like brass and iodine. It smelled of the crusted seaweed around his feet and the ruptured air sacs of the jellyfish that lay in a jagged line at the waters edge. It smelled of the fear that fouled his heart and pooled in his glands that no amount of suntan lotion could hide.
He tried Preachers cell phone again. He had already left six messages, then had listened to a recording tell him Preachers mailbox was full. But this time the cell phone not only rang, Preacher picked up. What do you want? he said.
Hey, Jack, where you been? Hugo said. I was worried sick, man.
About what?
About whatever has been going on over there. Where are you?
Looking for a new house.
Looking for
I had a fire, a propane explosion.
Youre kidding?
During the fire, somebody shot out my car tires, too. Maybe one of the firemen.
I read about that motel gig in the Houston Chronicle. Thats what brought it on? Those punks torched your place?
What motel?
Jack, Im your friend. Those guys worked for the Russian out on the coast. I dont know why they were after you, but Im glad they got clipped. I suspect they were sent out here to do a payback on Artie and everybody who works for him, including me.
I think you got it figured, Hugo.
Look, I called about a couple of other issues, even though I was worrying about you, not hearing from you and all. A red Frisbee sailed out of nowhere and hit Hugo on the side of the head. He picked it up and flung it savagely in a little boys direction. Artie wants to settle with you. He wants me to take care of the money transfer.
Settle? This isnt a suit.
Hes offering you two hundred thou. Thats all the cash hes got. Why not call it slick and put it behind you?
You said issues, in the plural.
We think we know where the broad is.
Try to use proper nouns. Thats the specific name of a person, place, or thing.
Vikki Gaddis. I dont know if the soldier is still with her or not. You want to handle it, or you want Bobby Lee and a couple of new guys to tune her up and maybe deliver her anywhere you want?
You dont put a hand on her.
Whatever you say.
Howd you find her?
Long story. What do you want me to tell Artie?
Ill get back to you with wire instructions for an offshore account.
That creates an electronic trail, Jack. We need to meet.
Ill drop by.
No, we need to get everybody together at one time and talk things out.
Wheres the Gaddis girl?
Hugos mind was racing. Why had he believed he could outthink a sociopath? His plated chest was heaving as though he had run up a hill. His skin felt encrusted with sand; sweat and sand seeped from his armpits. His mouth was dry, and the sun was burning through the top of his head. Jack, weve been in the game a long time together.
Im waiting.
You got it. Im on your team. You got to believe me on that.
He gave Preacher the name of the town and the name of the steak house where Vikki Gaddis had been seen, not revealing his source. Then he wiped his mouth. You got to tell me something. Howd you get to those bikers? Howd you set that up, man?
Whores sell information. They also sell out their johns if the price is right. Some of them take a high degree of pleasure in it, Preacher said.
As Hugos heart slowed, he realized an opportunity had just presented itself, one he had not thought about earlier. Im your friend, Jack. Ive always looked up to you. Be careful when youre down there on the border. That sheriff and his deputy, the ones who nailed Liam? They were here.
This fellow Holland?
Yeah, he was talking to Artie. About you, man. Artie told him he never heard of you, but this guy has you made for the deal behind the church. I think hes got political ambitions or something. He was asking ugly questions about your family, about your mother in particular. What the fuck does that guy care about your mother?
Hugo could hear the wind between his ear and the cell phone, then the connection went dead.
Got you, you crazy sonofabitch, he said to himself.
He slipped on his shades and watched the little boys red Frisbee sail gently aloft, out over the waves, seagulls cawing emptily around it.
PETE WALKED DOWN the road in the dark, under the pink stucco arch painted with roses, past the closed-down drive-in theater and the circular building with service windows constructed to resemble a bulging cheeseburger and the three Cadillacs that appeared to be buried nose-first in the hardpan. The wind was up, and the combination of dust and humidity it created felt like the
filings from damp sandpaper in his hair and on his skin. At the edge of town, he followed a train spur northeast, walking along the edge of the embankment onto a wide flat plain where the main track pointed miles into the distance, the night sky gleaming on the rails.
A half hour later, as he walked into a basin, he heard a double-header coming at low speed down the track, the flat-wheelers and empty grain cars rocking on the grade. He moved out into the scrub brush until the first locomotive passed, then began to run beside the open door of an empty flat-wheeler. Just before the car wobbled past a signal light mounted on a stanchion, he leaped inside the car, pushing his weight up on his hands, rolling onto a wood floor that smelled of chaff and the warm, musky odor of animal hides.
He lay on his back and watched the hills and stars slip by the open door. He did not remember when he had slept an entire night without dreaming or waking suddenly, the room filling with flashes that had nothing to do with car lights on a highway or electricity in the clouds. The dreams were inhabited by disparate elements and people and events, most of them seemingly disconnected but held together in one fashion or another by color and the nauseating images the color suggestedthe wet rainbow inside a bandage that had been peeled off an infected wound, a viscous red spray erupting from the hajjis who had been crawling on a disabled tank, trying to pry open the hatches, when Pete let off on them with Ma Deuce, a .50-caliber that could shred human beings into dog food. The victims in the dreams were many but not necessarily people he had known or seensoldiers, children, sunken-faced old women and men whose teeth were an atrocity to look at. Paradoxically, for Pete, sleeplessness was not the problem; it was the solution.
Except he couldnt hold a job. He daydreamed and dropped wrenches in machinery, couldnt concentrate on what others were saying, and sometimes could not count the change in the palm of his hand. In the meantime, Vikki Gaddis was not only financially supporting him but had become the target of a collection of killers because of his irresponsibility and bad judgment.
He found a piece of burlap on the boxcar floor and stuffed it under his head and fell asleep. For some reason he didnt understand, he felt himself rocking off to sleep, almost like an embryonic creature being carried safely inside its mothers womb.
When he woke, he could see the lights on the outskirts of Marathon. He rubbed the sleep out of his face and dropped from the flat-wheeler onto the ground. He waited for the train to pass him, then crossed the tracks and found the two-lane road that led into town and eventually to his cousins used-car lot.
It was located appropriately in a tattered neighborhood that seemed leached of its color. A high fence surrounded the lot and the sales office, topped by rolls of razor wire. Pete walked down a side street, away from the streetlights on the two-lane county road, glancing over his shoulder at an eighteen-wheeler shifting down at the intersection. The lot was filled with oversize pickup trucks and SUVs whose commercial value had plummeted during the price rise of gasoline to four dollars a gallon. Pete looked up and down the line of unsold and marked-down vehicles, wondering which would be easiest to hotwire. Between an Expedition and a Ford Excursion, he saw the gas-guzzling junker his cousin had sold him and whose crankshaft had fallen out on the highway. The cousin had wrecker-hauled it back onto the lot and placed a for-sale sign inside the windshield. What did that say about the quality of the other vehicles his cousin was offering for sale?
Pete found a break in the spirals of razor wire at the back of the property and laced his fingers in the fence, preparing to climb over. Down the aisle between two rows of vehicles, he saw the chain-locked gates he would have to exit with whatever truck or SUV or compact shitbox he managed to boost. He had a collapsible Schrade utility tool in his pocket, one that contained pliers and wire cutters and screwdrivers and small wrenches of every kind, but nothing approaching the strength and size needed to cut a chain or padlock.
Through the front fence, he saw a sheriffs cruiser pass on the county road and turn in to a diner at the intersection. How many blunders could one guy make in one night?
He sat down on a greasy hump of dirt out of which a cluster of pines grew and put his face in his hands. He watched the sheriffs cruiser drive away from the diner, then his attention focused on a lighted phone booth between the diner and the corner of the intersection.
It was time to call for the cavalry, although he was afraid of what the cavalry was about to tell him. He walked to the telephone booth and made a collect call to the residence of William Robert Holland in Lolo, Montana.
But Petes intuitions had been correct. Billy Bob told him his only recourse was to surrender himself to his cousin Hackberry Holland; he even gave Pete Hackberrys number. He also told Pete the FBI probably had a tap on his phone and that the clock was likely ticking on Pete.
Pete could hear the sorrow and pity in his friends voice, and it made his heart sink. In his minds eye, he saw the two of them years ago, cane-fishing under a tree on a green river, their cold drinks and bread-and-butter sandwiches lying on a blanket in the shade.
After Pete hung up, sweat was creaking in his ears, and the bodies of insects were thudding against the Plexiglas sides of the booth. He folded back the accordion door hard against the jamb and began walking down the two-lane toward the railroad tracks. Up ahead, he saw a lone compact car stopped at the traffic light, the driver waiting listlessly behind the steering wheel, his features lit by the glow from an AutoZone sign. The traffic light seemed to be stuck on red, but the driver waited patiently for it to change, although there were no other vehicles on the street.
The driver had a long nose and high cheekbones, the hair combed straight back, streaked with gel or grease. His facial structure could have been called skeletal except for the fact that the flesh was lumpy, as though it were covered with bee stings, suggesting carnality and decadence rather than deprivation. His gaze was focused on the traffic signal, like a modern parody of a Byzantine saint experiencing the dark night of the soul.
Pete started across the intersection, in front of the compacts high beams, just as the traffic signal changed. The driver of the compact had to slam on his brakes. But Pete did not move. He continued to stare into the brilliance of the headlights, red and yellowish-green circles burning into his eye sockets. He spread his arms against the air. Sorry for being on the planet, he said.
The driver pulled slowly around him, his window down. You have a problem of some kind?
Yes, sir, I do. See, the light was red when I started across the street. Because it turns from red to green doesnt mean the driver of a car can run over whatever is in front of him.
Thats interesting to know. Now, how about taking your hand off the roof of my car? I dont particularly enjoy looking into somebodys armpit.
I like your Support the Troops ribbons. You must have bought a shitpile of them. What dyou think about bringing back the draft so the rest of yall can kick some rag-head ass over in the Sandbox?
Move away, kid.
Yes, sir, Im very glad to, Pete said. He began picking up rocks from the asphalt. Let me hep you on your way. Is there a late-night pinochle game down at the AMVETS tonight?
The drivers eyes roamed over Petes face. His expression was one of curiosity rather than fear or apprehension. Get yourself some help. In the meantime, dont ever fuck with me again.
I thank you for straightening me out, sir. Happy motoring. God bless and Godspeed.
As the driver pulled away, Pete flung one rock after another at the compact, whanging them off the doors and roof and trunk. Then he picked up a half-brick and chased after the compact and threw the brick as hard as he could, pocking a hole in the rear window. But the driver never accelerated or touched the brake pedal. He simply drove steadily down the road toward the main highway that led out of town, leaving Pete in the middle of the street, wrapped in self-loathing and a level of impotent rage that sat on his brow like a crown of thorns.
AFTER PREACHER GOT back on the four-lane and resumed his journey, he looked in the rearview mirror at his broken window. Lunatic or drunken or drug-induced behavior had never been a source of worry or concern to him. Unhinged people like that kid back there flinging rocks at a strangers car were just a reminder that Preacher didnt have to validate himself, that moral imbeciles had taken over the institution a long time ago. Check out the French General Assembly under Robespierre, he thought. Check out the crowd at a televangelical rally. If they had their way, there would be an electric chair on every street corner in Texas, and half the population would be bars of soap.