“They got a motherfuckin reason,” moaned Walter. “They got one.”
“Just be cool,” East said. “Just get us out of here.”
Walter muttered and steered. East glanced back at the security crew spreading out across the pavement where they’d been. “They’re deciding do they want a piece of us.”
“Got our plates. Got our pictures. Everything,” mourned Walter.
“Drive, man,” East said wearily. To nobody in particular he added, “Who was the girl?”
“What girl?”
“The girl that kept screaming.”
“I don’t know,” Michael Wilson put in. “I didn’t hear no girl.”
“There was a girl,” Walter sighed. “But that ain’t had nothing to do with us.”
Past the buses, toward the street, the white blaze where each light now seemed aimed straight at them. A sign by the curb read: PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM!
—
The shining monuments slid away, but all the boys were watching was the road behind them. Walter ran yellows to get them back on the interstate. Cars and trucks flashed by on the left, roaring; Walter was too tense to speak. After three miles he took them off at an exit, picked out a gas station, and stopped at the pump. He closed his eyes for a long minute.
At last East remarked politely, “I’m beginning to feel you. About the cameras.”
“Got them here too,” sighed Walter. “Why we need to keep from doing stupid shit.”
East turned and shot a look at Michael Wilson. Michael saw East glaring and paused. “Mighty weird casino back there,” he began.
“You shut the fuck up.”
Walter bit his lips, looked sideways.
“Don’t freak out, Easy,” Michael Wilson said.
“Shit,” East said. “Lucky we ain’t facedown on a police car right now. You can’t even park without fucking up.”
Meticulously Michael Wilson wiped something from his brow. “What do you want?” he said. “You want a little note, I’m sorry? I’m a get you flowers? I’m sorry. But don’t say you didn’t want to go in too.”
“I didn’t want to go in.”
“But you went.” Michael Wilson opened the door and climbed out. He dabbed at his hairline. “This is when I go pay for things. Who’s pumping?”
East cursed. He climbed out and set the nozzle in, then stood waiting for the pump to click on. Just listening, the night sky starless, smeared pale by lights, by his pique. Unacceptable. He blamed Walter almost as much as Michael. But he was too mad to even begin with it.
At last the pump beeped and the orange numerals zeroed out. He began running the tank full of regular and banged on Walter’s window. It rolled down.
“We got problems with that one.”
Walter moaned, ghost-faced. “He’s right, man. We all did go in.”
“You first,” East insisted. “None of us would have gone if you didn’t.”
“If I didn’t,” Walter said, “we’d still be there. Outside, waiting. Wondering was he gonna stop before all the money was gone. You think he was just gonna come back out in five minutes?”
East slid dead bug crisps around with his feet. “All right. What happened outside, then? The tow guy?”
Walter’s face pinched shut. He shook his head.
“You best tell me. I need to know.”
The pump kicked off, and East hung up the nozzle. Inside the bright station he saw Michael Wilson waiting in line, his head bobbing to a song inside it.
Walter squeezed himself out of the van. He glanced at East and stepped to the other side of the pump, furtively. East glanced back at the van where Ty was and followed Walter.
“It said No Parking. Right? We didn’t see it. When I walked back out, the van was already hooked up. They probably keep that truck in the lot all the time. So. The law says you can’t tow when somebody’s in it.”
“Don’t give me law. This ain’t California.”
“It ain’t just California.”
“Stop with the truck,” East sighed. “What happened with the guy?”
“So I’m yelling at the guy,” Walter continued, “telling him stop. Then whoop, here comes your brother.”
Walter swung his arm once.
“What’d he do? Hit him?” East scoffed. “Boy weighs a hundred pounds.”
“Hit him with a gun,” Walter whispered. “That’s what I believe.”
East frowned. “But Johnny searched him. He’s clean. You saw.”
“I know,” said Walter. “Whatever it was, that guy changed his mind quick. And security, standing back watching like they did — explain that.”
East looked up and tried to swallow the bad taste in his mouth. Above them, a big plastic dinosaur spun on a wire. Cars rushed by out on the highway, and East had to keep himself from staring down each one. Things moving. At first, the ride had felt like getting out, like being set free. Into nothing. But since Vegas, this felt like being stuck back in it. Like every headlight that rolled past was pointed at him.
“That boy is trouble,” Walter said, looking away into nowhere.
“Which one?”
“Your brother.”
East’s back went up in spite of himself. “My brother is on the job. College boy is the problem.”
“You talk like you’re sure,” said Walter, “but you best be sure.”
East was not sure. What East didn’t know about his brother would fill the van. You heard stories. Things he’d done, scenes he’d been on, that he could get in anywhere, was too little to catch, too young for the police to bother with. Only stories, and nobody, least of all Ty, would say what was true.
Gloomily East glanced at the closed, smoky window where Ty lay listening to them talk. Or not. Then across the pavement came Michael Wilson, white shirt glowing, white teeth grinning, paid up and ready, his hands clean.
6
Then it was late and dark, the scenery switched off, somewhere in the flat, empty Nevada that lay past Las Vegas. “So this the Wild West, huh?” Michael Wilson said. “Like, if the sun was up, they’d be riding horses and shit.”
Walter rode beside Michael Wilson, who drove, and Ty slept, his video game switched off, across the back bench of the van. East sat tired and worried on his middle seat, crouched forward, hands uselessly figuring atop his knees, listening to the two boys in front telling lies.
“One time when I was at UCLA, man,” Michael Wilson remarked, “we had a horse.”
Walter said, “Horses don’t like black people.”
“Why don’t horses like black people?”
“Why you think?” Walter said. “Who owns them?”
“But black dudes train horses. That one horse, what’s his name, in the movie. Secretariat. Old nigger trained that horse.”
“Train him to what?”
“He was a racehorse, man.”
“Huh. He any good?”
“He won the Kentucky Derby.”
“Course he did,” said Walter. “All right, that’s one.”
“Anyways,” said Michael Wilson. “This horse liked me fine. He was a stolen horse.”
“What do you mean, a stolen horse?”
“Some dude stole the horse,” said Michael Wilson. “And he kept it on campus. The horse grazed the yard and shit on the sidewalk. Everybody giving it ice cream and pizza all the time.”
“Horses don’t eat ice cream.”
“This one did,” Michael Wilson said.
“Could you ride the horse?”
“Wasn’t that kind of horse.”
“What kind of horse was it?”
“I don’t know what kind of horse it was, fat boy. Just stayed put and made a mess.”