There was a gas station. The lights in the cold made the cars gleam like licked suckers. East pumped and paid, and Walter tried calling the number again. Nothing. Nothing had changed. Nobody knew anything more.
They bought hot dogs out of a steamer and drove off.
It seemed they were reaching the end of the world of people. No towns on this road to speak of, only points where the trees peeled away, the road bent, and suddenly there’d be a house on the land, a single light atop a garage; it blazed, filled the yard as they passed, then the trees snapped shut like a curtain behind them. Roads as dark as rivers, absorbent of everything, only the reflectors in their measured rhythm, here, here, here, on posts, and here, here, down the center stripe.
Scuttling eyes disappeared along the edges of the road.
But Walter, having warned East not to ask, was now conversing on how you tracked a man through his credit cards. “Ain’t hard to get someone’s number,” he rambled. “Any waiter can do it, any cashier at a store. If you don’t mess with it, if you aren’t trying to steal, then no one knows you’re watching.”
“So you doing this?” Ty put in. “On the judge?”
The judge. His name lay low in East’s memory.
“I set the account up. I maintained it. Some people never check their shit online. Sometimes you gotta work at it. Sometimes you set it up once, and it works forever.”
“How you learn?”
“Just learned,” said Walter. “Kids at school.”
East watched the inscrutable dark outside. Had to take this break, he reassured himself. It was necessary. Everyone needed to warm up. The night was even colder than the night before at the gun house, when it had snowed. This cold would freeze you. Everyone needed the heat. Everyone needed the food.
They ate the watery hot dogs and wadded the cartons up. No finding the trash bag anymore. East stuffed his into the crack of the seat.
Ty put his feet up on the back of Walter’s chair. “So you’re following the guy’s cards. How come the dude don’t know?”
“Know what?” said Walter.
“Somebody’s watching him.”
“How come he don’t know? Everybody suspects. Nowadays everybody thinks somebody’s on to their shit. But if you ain’t losing money,” he said, “if your money is still, you don’t do anything about it. And we ain’t taking his money.”
Ty said, “If we got a computer, say at a library, could you see him?”
“No.”
“I thought that was the point,” said Ty acidly.
“I know,” said Walter. “It’s complicated, man. We were tracking more than one guy. It ain’t like I had just one password. I don’t know what his was. I ain’t got these all memorized. And we was faking IP addresses, everything. We had a whole setup.”
“What computer did you use?” said Ty.
“At school.”
“No wonder you still in school,” laughed Ty. “Tell me how come Fin ever had you standing yard. You a smart boy.”
East opened his mouth, shut it again. It was more questions than he’d heard Ty ask in years.
Walter replied, “I stood yard so I’d know the job.”
He coasted to a stop. The highway ended at a stop sign. Ahead, a maze of road signs peppered a luminous guardrail that kept cars from hurtling into the woods. Walter had been running squares, East knew from watching the roof compass switching N, E, S, W. Just going around the block, keeping the lake in the middle. And they’d been riding almost two hours.
“We can decide whatever we want,” Walter said.
It was East they were waiting on.
He stirred. It had been easy to say go in the light of the pay phone, tethered some way, however, to LA, to The Boxes. But here in the dark, the van filled with the things he didn’t know.
Something about talking again seemed difficult. “Should we call them again and see what they know?”
Walter shook his head. “Maybe. But not till morning at best. School’s closed. And I don’t even know who’s watching things. I don’t know who’s in jail and who isn’t.”
The turn signal pulsed in the ditch, shotgun side.
“If we went back,” said Walter, “we could see if anything is going on.”
“Back in them pine trees,” East said hopelessly. “With nobody there.”
“Maybe we’d find something,” Walter said. “Maybe if we broke in. Something that would tell us.”
Ty said, “I did break in. At least, I popped a window up.”
Walter turned in his seat. “Why didn’t you say something? Was there any alarm?”
“If there was,” said Ty, “I didn’t hear it. If there was, cops already came and went.”
“You think we should go?” Walter said over his shoulder. “Ty?”
Ty said, “Me? I seen it already. Doing my job. You two make up your minds.” He lay down theatrically, retired.
“Yeah,” East decided. “Circle back.” He had been hugging his knees, and now that he let them go, his whole body hurt. Beaten up from inside. Heading back to the house did not make him happy. But Ty was right. You did your job.
—
Wilson Lake. Reflectors on every post, every driveway, eyeing them. The driveway of 445 Lake Shore empty but for the cold black truck.
Walter idled the van at the lake parking lot while once again they loaded up and got ready. They slipped on the thin, dark gloves. Once again they walked the back track off the road.
The grass had gone quiet, and the branches slapped back when Walter caught one in the dark. Ty led them through the field of pines to where they saw the yellow back porch light. A single moth clapped at it, ineffectual.
“There’s the phone box,” said Ty. A gray box below the kitchen windows.
“So?”
“If you got an alarm, it comes out in that.”
“Some alarms work cellular,” said Walter.
“Ain’t no signal up here,” Ty said.
“How do you know that?” Walter said. “How do you know that?”
Ty had Walter spooked now.
The phone box was cobwebbed. Ty pried the lid up and pinched free the plug.
“If we’re going in looking, what you want to find?”
Walter said, “Anything. Directions? Ticket receipt? A note? We’ll just look. But we ain’t going in there to break and fuck things up.”
“Of course,” said Ty.
“Take your shoes off,” said Walter.
The window Ty had popped was on the middle of the back side, over the sink. There was a security lock on the frame, but it left enough room for Ty to squirm his head and shoulders in.
“Maybe they’ll have a flashlight,” Walter said. “You’d think we’d have a flashlight.”
Ty kicked his shoes off. “Lift me up.”
Walter clucked his tongue at East, and East started. Together they made stirrups of their hands. Ty climbed them and got an arm inside and went moving things — a bottle of soap off the sill, two glasses away down the counter. Then he began wriggling in. It was tight. He yelped at something. East passed Walter Ty’s foot and went to help, felt at Ty, at the metal framing of the window. He found what was catching: his brother’s ear. He touched it, little stub of cartilage, strangely warm, and for a flash he thought of their mother’s face.
“Damn, that hurts,” Ty groaned from inside. East pressed the ear, flattened it, helped pass it without abrasion through the hard, slotlike opening. And let Ty’s head go. In. Ty’s head was in.
East threaded his other arm around and began keying Ty’s shoulders into the slot, feeding his body in, inch by inch, rib by rib. His waist and legs wriggled in midair.
“Fuck. Ouch. All right,” Ty said from inside.