"Jesus H. Christ, that was a close one! I mean, shit, I didn't want that bitch to take ol' Bertha here away from me, but that don't mean I want to go and wreck her!"
I turned toward the source of the statement to find a paunchy, denim-clad sixty-something sprawled across the back seat and fanning himself with a sweat-stained Stetson. A thin cotton blanket that had until moments ago no doubt covered him sat discarded on the seat beside him. He had a shock of white hair atop his head, and a dusting of stubble to match. Gin blossoms colored his nose and cheeks, and his eyes were rimmed with red. As I watched, those eyes widened, and he suddenly twisted around, hanging his head over the side of the car and puking.
Normally, in my world, that's a sure sign of possession, but if the smell coming off this dude was any indication, this time it was the result of way too much tequila. The odor of sick aside, I was relieved that the head-kicking portion of the program was apparently behind us. The shape our passenger was in, he didn't pose much of an immediate threat, so while he was busy purging the contents of his stomach, I wheeled on Gio and tried my best to conjure death-rays with my eyes.
"You have got to be fucking kidding me," I whispered. "You didn't check to see if the car was empty before you boosted it?"
"How was I supposed to know he was sleeping it off in back? With that blanket on, he looked like a pile of junk."
I touched my good hand to the back of my head. "That pile of junk almost took my fucking head off – and damn near got all three of us killed."
"Yeah, but look on the bright side," Gio said, smiling. "If he's here, there ain't nobody around gonna report this baby stolen."
The bright side. Right.
This day kept getting better and better.
Eventually, our cowboy friend's heaving ceased, and he flopped back onto the seat, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.
"Well, hell," he said. "I guess you boys are going to have to take me back now, aintcha?"
"Come again?" I asked, flummoxed. I suppose the more well-behaved among you might not know this, but in my experience, carjackings don't typically elicit such blasé responses.
The man saw my confusion and frowned. "Boy, I don't want to tell you how to do your job, but ain't you repo types just supposed to take the car? Jolene's made it pretty clear she wants her half of what I got, but she sure don't seem to want nothin' to do with me."
Gio opened his mouth to say something then, but I silenced him with a glance. Then I turned to our new friend and gave him my best not-a-car-thief smile. "Listen, Mr – I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name."
"That's because I didn't throw it, son. Name's Roscoe McRae. As in founder and CEO of McRae Oil, and soon-to-be-ex-husband of one Mrs Jolene McRae. But then, I would've expected you to know that."
"Of course, Mr McRae. Listen, Mr McRae, we're sorry to have troubled you, but we were only doing our job. The agency led us to believe the car would be unattended."
"You're sorry to have troubled me."
"Yes."
"You were only after the car."
"That's right."
"And you think taking the only thing that I got left in this world that brings me any joy wouldn't have troubled me?"
"Sir," said Gio, the word dropping unfamiliar from his lips, "if you don't mind my asking, what the hell were you even doing back there?"
Roscoe looked at Gio like he was the kid in class you had to keep away from the paste. Then he shook his head and laughed. "You a car guy, son?"
"A little," Gio admitted.
"Ain't no little about it – either you is or you ain't. Me, I been a gear-head since long before I could even reach the pedals, and I always told myself that when I made my fortune, I was gonna get myself a Cadillac – a real one, mind, not one of them silly SUVs all the NBA players cruise around in these days. Took me damn near forty years to manage it, too. So if you think I'd leave this beauty unattended in a strip club parking lot just 'cause I had a little too much to drink, you got another thing coming. Bertha here deserves better'n that – just like she deserves better'n getting auctioned off to the highest bidder so Jolene can buy herself another of them ugly stoles she never even wears. As if she ain't got useless crap to spare now that she's maxed out all my credit cards."
Gio looked chastened. Me, I felt too shitty about the whole affair to bother gloating. I told you so is all well and good, but it wasn't going to get us out of the predicament Gio's dumb-ass call had put us in. "For what it's worth," I said to Roscoe, "I'm sorry."
"Ah, hell, son, it ain't your fault. You been nothin' but nice to me since I woke up, and that's even granting that I kicked you in the head. You're so polite, it's almost hard to believe someone went and beat the snot out of you." Roscoe's gaze slipped from my bruised and swollen face to the rocket-ship lines of his beloved Bertha, and his eyes shone wet with tears. "Almost."
He shook his head as if to clear it, and when he met my gaze again, his eyes were dry. "Ain't no use crying, I suppose. You gotta take the hand the good Lord gave you, and do with it the best you can. Tell you what – how about the three of us go and grab a little breakfast, and then y'all can drop me at a bus station so I can head back home. That bitch can wait a spell to get her filthy mitts on Bertha, and I could use a little grease to soak up what's left of this tequila."
After a moment's consideration, I agreed. After what Gio and I had put him through, it seemed to me the least that we could do. And hell, if an hour or so of playing along meant that we could drive this baby free and clear a couple days, then it was time well spent.
So Gio pulled back into traffic, and we continued on our way. I was oddly cheered by Roscoe's presence, and I was heartened by the fact that he believed us to have a legitimate claim to take his car. This quest to recover Varela's soul had thus far proved to be quite the pain in my ass, so it was nice to finally catch a break.
Of course, the problem with being damned is there's no such thing as a lucky break. And as much as I liked Roscoe, I had no idea at the time what a lousy idea it was to let him tag along. If I knew then the cascade of awful that call would kick off, I swear I would've given the man his car back on the spot. Reunited with his precious Bertha, Roscoe could've been on his merry way, and me and Gio would've been free to hitch a ride the last twenty-odd miles into town – no harm, no foul.
But I didn't know. So instead of making the smart play, I carried blithely on – oblivious to the disaster that awaited.
16.
If it weren't for Rosita, none of this shit would've happened.
Don't get me wrong – I'm sure that she's a lovely person. And if she isn't, how the hell would I know? I've never even met the woman. But if she hadn't gone and plopped her diner smack in our fucking way, we wouldn't have wound up in such a goddamn mess.
I guess I should've known better, but at the time, all I was thinking of was getting rid of Roscoe without a hitch, and the hand-painted "Rosita's Diner – Nothing Finer!" billboard made the place look divey enough you just knew they could fry up a mean egg. Plus, the stretch of I-10 just south of Las Cruces was nothing but farmland and trailer parks, which at the time made Rosita's seem like a godsend. I figured we'd stop long enough to pour some coffee into Roscoe, get him a bite to eat, and call the guy a cab, and that would be the end of that. Hell, I was even going to pay. OK, fine, Ethan was – but still, a gesture's a gesture. The way I saw it, it was the least that I could do. But unfortunately, that's not how things shook out.
Just the sight of the place as we pulled up was enough to put a smile on my face. Rosita's was built around an old Valentine Industries lunch counter – those squat little red-and-white diners so common to the Southwest in the decades following the Second World War. Sure, the paint had faded a bit, now more rust-and-sand than red-and-white, and the original railroad car design had been expanded over the years with a series of squat cinderblock additions, painted white and wodged on here and there at random. But still, the sight of the old diner, and the salty-sweet s
cent of its well-tended griddle, brought me back – back to a time when Danny was a trusted friend, and every meeting with Ana crackled with the spark of possibility. Back when Quinn was a smiling, happy child who dreamed he'd one day be an engineer, building cities out of blocks in his mother's tidy Belfast garden.
I should've known right then Rosita's would be trouble. Those times are long gone now. Ain't nothing going to bring them back, and I'm a sentimental fool for wishing otherwise.
Our problems started in the parking lot. Two black-and-whites, parked nose to tail – their engines running, their drivers chatting amiably over paper cups of coffee. Another cruiser sitting vacant in the lot. We hadn't seen them before we pulled in because the bulk of the parking lot was tucked out of view around back of the rambling hodge-podge structure. In retrospect, I should've realized they'd be here – there wasn't anyplace else nearby for folks to go, and it's not like the cops along this stretch were all that busy. A little all-night place like Rosita's probably topped up their thermoses for free – a small price to pay for a guaranteed police presence in the wee hours of the morning. Helps to keep out the riff-raff – riff-raff who might otherwise be inclined to rob the place. Problem is, it also works on riff-raff like Gio and me, who are just looking for a bite to eat.
Gio was the first to spot them. He'd been regaling Roscoe with stories of car-thefts gone awry, repurposed – for the sake of conning Roscoe – as repossessions one and all. They'd been getting on like fast friends, laughing and cursing and bragging loudly to one another in the way that both cowboys and gangsters do. Then we rounded the corner of the building and Gio clammed up mid-sentence – his posture jerking ramrod straight, his hands suddenly at ten and two on the wheel. The Caddy rocked on its suspension as he slowed it to a crawl. The way he was acting, he may as well have lit a fucking flare.
"Uh, Sam?"
"I see them," I replied through gritted teeth. "Keep driving."
Gio had us rolling at about a half a mile an hour. Ants were zipping past us on the ground below. "A little faster than that," I snapped.
Roscoe glared at me through narrowed eyes. "You boys want to tell me what the hell is going on?"
"Nothing," I replied, perhaps a bit too quickly.
"Nothing – right. That why you're trying your damndest not to catch the cops' attention?"
"Roscoe," I said, my voice as calm and even as I could manage, "this is really not the time."
"But–"
"I said not now. I like you, Roscoe – I do. Which is why I'm going to ask you nicely to please shut your fucking mouth before I'm forced to do something we'll both regret. Sit tight and I promise you that everything will be just fine. Or don't, and see what happens."
At that, the color drained from Roscoe's face. He looked from the cops to me and back again as though wondering whether he should try to make a play, but my words must've had their intended effect, because a moment later his shoulders sagged, and suddenly he looked old and frail and deflated. Satisfied, I nodded at him and turned in my seat, facing once more forward. We're just three friends out for a drive, I thought as loudly as I could, hoping against hope the cops would pick up on the vibe.
"Gio," I said, "get us out of here – quietly."
Gio obliged, piloting the gigantic Caddy on an excruciating lap through the lot and heading out the way we came. I prayed they hadn't noticed us. I knew that in this parade float of a car, they couldn't not.
What I didn't know was whether they had traced the Fiesta back to Ethan yet, and if they had, whether the Feds had managed to distribute our descriptions. I told myself they couldn't possibly have worked that fast – that as far as these dudes knew, we were just a carload of guys who, on second thought, didn't want to brave the twenty minutes' wait it'd take for a table to open up.
Yeah, I didn't really believe it, either. And even if I did, it didn't matter. Eventually, the BOLO would go out on us, and when it did, there wasn't a question in my mind these boys would remember having seen us. Which meant soon enough, every copper in Las Cruces would have eyes out for us – and that would damn sure put a damper on my plan to track down Dumas.
After what felt like a freakin' hour, we cleared the diner's parking lot, the Caddy's whitewalls crunching as they gripped the gritty desert road. I set my jaw and forced myself not to hazard a glance back, so loath was I to meet the gaze of the officers who were almost surely staring after.
"Either of y'all feel like telling me what that was all about?"
We were weaving through the patchwork farmland on the outskirts of town, Gio turning left or right as I instructed. Fields of onions and green chilis raced by on either side, rustling gently in the morning breeze and filling the air with their vegetal scent. Gio hadn't said a word since we'd left the diner parking lot, and apart from the occasional directional command, neither had I. That was OK, though – Roscoe had been talking enough for the three of us, peppering Gio and me with question after fruitless question.
"You boys in some kind of trouble?"
"There," I said to Gio. "On the left."
Gio nodded. Coming up on our left was a massive, leaning barn, the wood bleached gray by sun and age. A pair of rutted tracks, overgrown with fragrant desert sage, led from the shoulder of the road to the place where the barn door once hung, though it didn't hang there any more. Now the entrance was a gaping maw that led into the darkness beyond – a darkness dappled here and there with narrow beams of sunlight, which streamed in where the roof had rotted through.
The Cadillac rocked along the dirt track and disappeared into the gloom. Inside, the air was close and thick and sickly sweet; a thin sheen of sweat sprung up across my borrowed skin, plastering my clothes to my frame. Gio cut the ignition, and I hopped out of the car, watching from the doorway of the barn to ensure we hadn't been followed. For a time, I heard nothing but the beating of my meat-suit's heart. Then Roscoe broke the silence – his voice low and quiet and full of fear.
"You boys ain't repo men, are you?"
"No," I said, "we're not."
"So you're what, then? Car thieves? Common criminals?"
"Something like that."
"Ah, come on, Sam – tell him!" This from Gio.
"No."
"Why the hell not?"
"For one, telling him won't go well. Believe me, it never does. And for another, it's not safe."
"Seems to me, he's involved now whether we fill him in or not – so what's the harm?"
"You're not getting me," I said. "I mean telling him isn't safe for us."
Gio blinked in disbelief. "After all you been through today, you're afraid of Roscoe here?"
"I'm afraid of a lot of things," I said. "Unnecessary complications, for example – which is exactly what Roscoe here would be if we told him. Simply put, he doesn't need to know."
Roscoe looked from me to Gio and back again, squinting against the darkness. "What? What aren't you telling me? What don't I need to know?"
"We're Grim Reapers," Gio blurted. "We're on a mission from God!"
"Excuse me?"
I sighed. "Ignore him, OK? Gio – shut the fuck up." But Roscoe wasn't about to take my advice. "Grim Reapers," he said. "Great. I fall asleep for a couple hours, and I'm abducted by a couple of goddamn loonies!"
"I'm being serious!" Gio insisted.
"Oh. Good. You're being serious. In that case, I believe you. Does that mean I can go?"
Gio bristled at Roscoe's sarcasm, but I just frowned and shook my head. "I'm sorry," I said, not unkindly. "But you've seen us. You know where we are. What we're driving. I can't let you walk out of here – there's too much at stake."
It was then that Roscoe noticed what I'd been doing. While we three had been talking, I'd popped the trunk, and riffled through it until I found what I was looking for – a length of yellow nylon rope of the kind used to tether the trunk closed when transporting oversized loads. Given the loft-like spaciousness of the Caddy's trunk, I'm guessing its use would be limite
d to packing up other, smaller cars.
"Sam, no," Gio said, his voice strained by sudden alarm.
"Gio, shut up and mind the door. The last thing we need now's another witness."
Gio's face twisted into a silent plea, visible even in the murky half-light. I held his gaze a moment, and with obvious reluctance, he did as I said, shuffling over to the doorway and standing guard.
I coiled the rope around both hands, and pulled taut a two-foot length of it between them. Roscoe's eyes widened in fear, and he tried to back away, but the Caddy blocked his path.
"Don't," he said. "Please."
"I wish I didn't have to, but there isn't any other way."
"I'm begging you, don't do this. Just take the car and go – I won't tell a soul, I swear!"
"I'd like to believe you, but right now, I can't take that risk."
"But I got grandkids."
"I'm sorry," I replied. "It's nothing personal."
I was on him in a flash. The whole time, Gio never turned around – unwilling or unable to, I'll never know. For a little while, old Roscoe put up quite a fight. But eventually, Roscoe wasn't fighting anymore.
The Wrong Goodbye Page 12
