This is where she asks me again to just give it up and come back to Colorado with her, Billy thinks. But she doesn’t. She tells him to get dressed in what she calls ‘your costume.’ Billy goes back to his room and puts on the dark wig, T-shirt, bib overalls, barn coat (work gloves stuffed in the pockets), and the battered cowboy hat Bucky and Alice bought in Boulder. It comes down to his ears and he reminds himself to raise it up a little when the time comes, to show that long black hair streaked with gray.
‘You look fine.’ All business, red-rimmed eyes notwithstanding. ‘Got your pad and pencil?’
He pats the front pocket of the biballs. It’s capacious, with plenty of room for the silenced Ruger as well as the writing stuff.
‘You’re getting darker already.’ She smiles wanly. ‘Good thing the PC Police aren’t here.’
‘Needs must,’ Billy says. He reaches into the side pocket of the biballs, the one that doesn’t hold the Glock 17, and brings out a roll of bills. It’s everything he has left except for a couple of twenties. ‘Take this. Call it insurance.’
Alice pockets it without argument.
‘If you don’t get a call from me this afternoon, wait. I have no idea what kind of cell coverage they have north of here. If I’m not back by eight tonight, nine at the outside, I’m not coming back. Stay the night, then check out and get a Greyhound to Golden or Estes Park. Call Bucky. He’ll pick you up. All right?’
‘That would not be all right, but I understand. Let me help you carry those bags of fertilizer out to the truck.’
They make two trips and then Billy slams the tailgate. They stand there looking at each other. A few sleepy-eyed people – a couple of salesmen, a family – are toting out their luggage and preparing to move on.
‘If you don’t need to be there until one, you can stay another hour,’ she says. ‘Two, even.’
‘I think I better go now.’
‘Yeah, maybe you better,’ Alice says. ‘Before I break down.’
He hugs her. Alice hugs back fiercely. He expects her to say be careful. He expects her to tell him again not to die. He expects her to ask him one more time, maybe plead with him, not to go. She doesn’t. She looks up at him and says, ‘Get what’s yours.’
She lets go of him and walks back toward the motel. When she gets there, she turns to him and holds up her phone. ‘Call me when you’re done. Don’t forget.’
‘I won’t.’
If I can, he thinks. I will if I can.
CHAPTER 20
1
An hour north of Vegas on Route 45, Billy comes to a Dougie’s Donuts mated to an ARCO gas station and a convenience store with the unlikely name of Terrible Herbst. It’s a truck stop surrounded by great expanses of parking, big rigs on one side snoring like sleeping beasts. Billy gasses up, grabs a bottle of orange juice and a cruller, then parks around back. He thinks about calling Alice, only because he’d like to hear her voice and thinks she might like to hear his. My hostage, he thinks. My Stockholm Syndrome hostage. Only that’s not what she is now, if she ever was. He remembers how she said Get what’s yours. Not fearless, she hasn’t morphed into some comic book warrior queen (at least not yet), but plenty fierce. He has his phone in his hand before remembering she got as little sleep as he did last night. If she’s gone back to bed with the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging on the door, he doesn’t want to wake her.
He drinks his juice and eats his cruller and lets the time pass. There’s enough of it for doubts to creep in. In some ways – many, actually – it’s like the Funhouse all over again, only with no squad to back him up. He can’t be sure Nick went to Promontory Point for the weekend. He has no idea how many men he may have brought back with him if he did. Some for sure, not bounty hunters from some other outfit but his own guys, and Billy has no idea where they might be placed. He has an idea of the interior layout from the Zillow photographs, but there might have been changes made after Nick bought the place. If Nick is there, rooting on the Giants, Billy doesn’t know where he’ll be watching. He doesn’t even know if he can get in through the service entrance. Maybe sí, maybe no.
There’s a line of Porta-Johns, and he uses one to offload his coffee and juice. When he comes out, a black chick in a halter and a denim skirt short enough to show the edges of her panties is standing nearby. She looks like she’s been up all night and the night was a hard one. The mascara around her eyes reminds Billy – dumb self Billy – of the Beagle Boys in the old Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comics he sometimes picks up at rummage and yard sales.
‘Hey, good-looking man,’ the lot lizard says. ‘Want to date me?’
This is as good a chance as any to try out his cover story. He takes his pad and pencil from the front pocket of his biballs and writes mi es sordo y mudo.
‘What the fuck does that mean?’
Billy touches his ears with both hands, then pats his mouth with the other.
‘Forget it,’ she says, turning away. ‘I ain’t sucking no wetback cock.’
Billy watches her go, delighted. No wetback cock, huh? he thinks. Doesn’t exactly make me John Howard Griffin, but I’ll take it.
2
He stays parked behind the donut shop until eleven. During that time he sees the black chick and a few of her co-workers chatting up truck drivers, but none of them come near him. Which is fine with Billy. Every now and then he gets out of the truck, pretending to check his goods, actually just wanting to stretch his legs and stay loose.
At quarter past eleven he starts up the truck (the starter doesn’t catch at first, giving him a scare) and continues north on 45. The Paiute Foothills draw closer. From five miles out he can see Promontory Point. It’s different from the house Nick rented in the city where Billy did his job, but every bit as ugly.
As his GPS is informing him that his turn onto Cherokee Drive is a mile ahead, Billy comes to another rest area, this one just a turnout. He parks in the shade and uses another Porta-John, thinking of Taco Bell’s dictum: Never neglect a chance to piss before a firefight.
When he comes out, he checks his watch. Twelve-thirty. In his big white hacienda, Nick is probably settling in to watch the pregame show with a couple of his hardballs. Maybe eating nachos and drinking Dos Equis. Billy punches up Siri, who tells him he’s forty minutes from his destination. He forces himself to wait a little longer and forces himself not to call Alice. Instead he gets out, grabs a crowbar from one of the dirty barrels, and punches a couple of holes in the Ram’s muffler, which is already distressed. If he comes up to the service entrance with his old truck farting and backing off, so much the more in character.
‘Okay,’ Billy says. He thinks of giving the Darkhorse chant and tells himself not to be ridiculous. Besides, the last time they all chanted that, their hands in the huddle, things didn’t work out so well. He turns the key. The starter spins and spins. When it starts to lag, he clicks it off, waits, gives the gas pedal a single pump, then tries again. The Dodge fires right up. It was loud before. It’s louder now.
Billy checks for traffic, merges onto 45, then turns off at Cherokee Drive. The grade grows steeper. For the first mile or so there are other, more modest houses on either side of the road, but then they’re gone and there’s only Promontory Point, looming ahead of him.
I was always coming here, Billy thinks, and tries to laugh at the thought, which is not just omenish but pretentious. The thought won’t go, and Billy understands that’s because it’s a true thought. He was always coming here. Yes.