‘You want to look like the twenty-first-century version of a saddle bum,’ Bucky said while they were playing kick-the-barrels. ‘God knows there are plenty of them in the West Nine. They drift around, find a little work, then move on.’
Alice asked him what the West Nine were, and Bucky named them off: Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Idaho, Oregon, and – of course – Nevada. Billy thinks the truck is okay. It might be a needless precaution on their road trip, anyway; Bucky’s right, any bounty hunters will be concentrated in the Vegas metro area. Later, though, when it comes to Promontory Point, the way the truck looks could be vital.
‘This has been a good visit,’ Bucky says. He’s wearing biballs and an Old [97s] T-shirt. ‘I’m glad you came.’
Alice gives him a hug. Her new blonde hair looks good in the morning sun.
‘Billy?’ Bucky holds out his hand. ‘You be safe now.’
Billy almost hugs him, that’s the way things are done these days, but he doesn’t. He’s never been much for bro-hugs, even in the sand.
‘Thanks, Bucky.’ He takes Bucky’s hand in both of his and squeezes lightly, mindful of Bucky’s arthritis. ‘For everything.’
‘Welcome.’
They get in. Billy fires up the engine. It’s rough at first but smooths out. Bucky has agreed to find someone to drive the Fusion back to its home base, thus protecting the Dalton Smith name. Something else on my tab, Billy thinks.
He gets the old truck’s nose pointed down the road. Just as he puts it in first gear, Bucky makes a whoa, whoa gesture and comes over to the passenger side. Alice rolls down her window.
‘I want to see you back here,’ he tells her. ‘In the meantime, stay out of his business and stay clean, you hear?’
‘Yes,’ she says, but Billy thinks she may only be telling Bucky what Bucky wants to hear. Which is okay, Billy thinks. She’ll listen to me. I hope.
He gives a final blip of the horn and gets rolling. An hour and a half later they turn west on 1-70 toward Las Vegas.
2
They stop for the night in Beaver, Utah. It’s another motel of the no-tell variety, but not too bad. They get chicken baskets at the Crazy Cow and a couple of cans of Bud at Ray’s 66 on the way back. Later they sit outside their adjoining rooms, draw the obligatory lawn chairs close, and drink the cold beer.
‘I read the rest of your story while we were driving,’ Alice says. ‘It’s really good. I can’t wait to read more.’
Billy frowns. ‘I hadn’t planned on going on after Fallujah.’
‘Lalafallujah,’ she says, and smiles. Then: ‘But aren’t you going to write about how you got into the business of killing people for money?’
That makes him wince because it’s so bald. And of course so true. She sees it.
‘Bad people, I mean. And how you met Bucky, I’d like to know that.’
Yes, Billy thinks, I could write about that, and maybe I should. Because dig, if that muj hiding behind the door had shot Johnny Capps to death instead of just blowing his legs apart, Billy Summers wouldn’t be here now. Neither would Alice. It comes to him as sort of a revelation – although maybe it shouldn’t – that if Johnny Capps hadn’t lived, Alice Maxwell might well have died of shock and exposure on Pearson Street.
‘Maybe I will write it. If I get a chance. Tell me about you, Alice.’
She laughs, but it’s not the free and easy one he’s come to like so much. This one’s a warding-off laugh. ‘There isn’t much to tell. I’ve always been a fade-into-the-woodwork person. Being with you is the only interesting thing that’s ever happened to me. Other than getting gang raped, I guess.’ She utters a sad little snort.
But he’s not going to let it go at that. ‘You grew up in Kingston. Your mother raised you and your sister. What else? There must be more.’
Alice points to the darkening sky. ‘I’ve never seen so many stars in my life. Not even at Bucky’s place.’
‘Don’t change the subject.’
She shrugs. ‘Okay, just prepare to be bored. My father owned a furniture store and my mother was his bookkeeper. He died of a heart attack when I was eight and Gerry – she’s my sister – was nineteen and going to beauty school.’ Alice touches her hair. ‘She’d say I did this all wrong.’
‘Probably she would, but it looks fine. Go on.’
‘I was a B student in high school. Had a few dates but no boyfriend. There were popular kids, but I wasn’t one of them. There were unpopular kids – you know, the ones who always get pranked and laughed at – but I wasn’t one of them, either. Mostly I did what my mom and my sister said.’
‘Except about going to beauty school.’
‘I almost said yes to that too, because I sure wasn’t going to a smart-peoples’ college. I didn’t take many of the courses you need for that.’ She thinks about it. Billy lets her. ‘Then one night I was lying in bed, almost asleep, and I all at once came full awake. Snapped awake. Almost fell out of bed. Did that ever happen to you?’
Billy thinks about Iraq and says, ‘Many times.’
‘I thought, “If I do that, if I do what they want, it will never end. I’ll be doing what they want for the rest of my life and one day I’ll wake up old right here in little old Kingston.”’ She turns to him. ‘And do you know what my mom and Gerry would say if they knew what happened to me in Tripp’s apartment, and what I’m doing now, being here with you? They’d say “See what it got you.”’
Billy puts out a hand to touch her shoulder. She turns to him before he can and he sees the woman she might be, if time and fate are kind.
‘And do you know what I’d say? I’d say I don’t care, because this is my time, I deserve to have my time, and this is what I want.’
‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Okay, Alice. That’s fine.’
‘Yes. It is. You bet it is. As long as you don’t get killed.’
That’s something he can’t promise, so he says nothing. They look at the stars awhile longer and drink their beer and she says nothing until she tells him she thinks she’ll go to bed.
3
Billy doesn’t go to bed. He has a pair of texts from Bucky. The first says the landscaping company that does the work at Promontory Point is called Greens & Gardens. The man who runs the crew might be Kelton Freeman or Hector Martinez, but it might be someone else entirely. It’s a high-turnover business.
The following text says that Nick often stays at the Double during the week but always tries to get back to his estate in Paiute for the weekend. Especially for Sundays. Never misses the Giants during football season, Bucky adds. Everybody who knows him knows that.
You can take the boy out of New York, Billy thinks, but you can’t take New York out of the boy. He texts back, Any luck with the garage?
Bucky’s response is quick: No.
Billy has brought the pictures, both Google Earth and Zillow. He studies them for awhile. Then he opens his laptop and looks up a handful of Spanish phrases. He won’t have to say them when and if the time comes but he says them now, over and over, committing them to memory. He almost certainly won’t need all of them. He might need none of them. But it’s always best to be ready.
Me Ilamo Pablo Lopez.
Esta es mi hija.
Estos son para el jardín.
Mi es sordo y mudo: I am a deafmute.
4
They go back to the Crazy Cow for breakfast, then get on the road. Billy wouldn’t want to push the old truck, and he doesn’t have to. It’s only a couple of hundred miles to Vegas, and he won’t move against Nick until Sunday, when the pros play football and the compound at the end of Cherokee Drive is apt to be at its most quiet. No groundskeepers or landscapers and hopefully no hardballs. He checked the schedule and the Giants play the Cardinals at four P.M. eastern, which will be one P.M. in Nevada.