When they were both in the car and Armand looked at him again, the guy was holding the nickelplate on his thigh. It was a Model 27 Smith & Wesson with a four-inch barrel. Armand had used a blue-steel one like that one time and liked it, it was a good gun. The guy held it with his hand resting on his crotch. Armand dropped his left hand from the wheel to push a button. The front seat moved back with the hum of the electric motor and the guy said, “What’re you doing?”
Armand looked at him again as he turned on the ignition. “What’s the matter, you nervous? You gonna hold that thing pointing at me, I hope you not nervous. You want this car? Take it.”
The guy said, “I’ll tell you what I want. I’ll tell you my name too, in case you ever heard of me, Richie Nix, N-i-x, not like Stevie Nicks spells hers.”
Armand shook his head. He’d never heard of either one.
They drove through Algonac away from the river, the guy, Richie Nix, saying turn here, turn there, like he knew where he was going and maybe wasn’t so nervous, though he could still be a punk.
They passed lights in windows of houses, then pretty soon there were only trees, once in a while a house. They were going toward a road that would take them to the freeway. Armand began to think the guy wanted to go to Detroit. They’d get there and the guy would get out. That would be okay, it was the way you had to go to get to Florida. It was strange the way the guy said the word as Armand was thinking of it.
“I was driving up from Florida one time,” Richie said. “I picked up this hitchhiker coming onto Seventy-five from Valdosta. I’d spent the night there. The guy was kind of dark-skinned like you only he was Mexican, I think. You’re an Indian, right?”
Armand glanced at him. “No, I’m not Indian.”
“What are you then?”
“Quebecois,” Armand said, “French Canadien,” giving it an accent. Why not? Half of him was.
Richie said, “Don’t you wish. Anyway we’re driving along the interstate, this Mex tells me how he’s been picking oranges half the year and how he’s going up to Michigan to pick sugarbeets. We’re getting along pretty good, I bought him a Co’Cola we stopped for gas, so then pretty soon he’s telling me how much money he made picking oranges and how he saved a thousand bucks and is gonna send it home once he gets to Michigan and sees there’s work there. You believe it, telling a stranger he’s got all this money on him? Shit, I start looking for the next exit sign, get the guy off someplace on a back road. We’re moving along about eighty, I see this Georgia state trooper parked at the side of the road. Shit, it wasn’t even my car, I picked it up in West Palm ...a Buick Riviera, if I remember correctly. Anyway I go, ‘Hey, you want to drive?’ to the Mex, and got him to trade places with me while we’re moving, the guy laughing, having a good time. Till he looks at the rearview and goes, ‘Uh-oh,’ seeing that state trooper coming up on us with his gumballs flashing. We get pulled over, the guy tells the trooper it’s not his car, it’s mine. I go, ‘My car? This fella picked me up, Officer. I don’t even know him.’ It was funny there for a while and I almost made it, but we both got taken in. Shit, they find out there’s a detainer out on me and I’m fucked. Next thing, I get charged with attempted robbery and kidnapping. I go, ‘Kidnapping, you think I was gonna hold this fucking migrant for ransom?’ Here’s this Mex, he don’t even know what’s going on. Had no idea, or prob’ly even to this day, I was gonna take him out’n the woods and shoot a hole in him, it hadn’t been for that trooper sitting there at the side of the road. That’s what you call one lucky Mexican, huh?” Richie stared through the windshield and said, “This road coming up looks good. Take a left.”
So they weren’t going to Detroit, Armand decided. They turned onto a gravel road, white in the headlight beams, and could hear stones hitting under the car, no houses in sight. They’d be stopping pretty soon.
Armand said, “So you been to prison.”
“Three different ones,” Richie said. “After I got out of Reidsville they sent me back to Florida on the warrant, but I beat that one, an armed robbery, on account of they couldn’t locate any their witnesses. Then I got sent to a federal joint for one of the banks I did. That was where I killed a guy and then some guys tried to kill me, so I was put in this federal protection program where you change your name and was transferred to Huron Valley. But, shit, I still got made, even with a different name. Some guys I was working with in the kitchen tried to poison me to death, so I was taken out of the population till I got my release. That was about two years ago. ...Hey, this’s good. See? Where that road is, less it’s somebody’s drive. No, it’s an old wore-out dirt road. Pull in there a ways and stop.”
Armand slowed and made the turn, headlights sweeping the corner of a plowed field and coming
to rest in a tunnel of trees.
“Okay, now lemme have your wallet.”
Armand leaned against the steering wheel to dig it out of his hip pocket, brought the wallet along his thigh and let it drop on the floor. He reached for it with his head turned, seeing the guy past his shoulder. The guy wasn’t even looking. The guy was hunched over trying to get the glove compartment open.
“This thing locked?”
“Push the button,” Armand said, his hand finding the grip of the Browning automatic, right there with the seat pushed back. He brought the pistol up between his legs and was reaching down again when the guy looked at him.
“The hell you doing?”
“You want my wallet?” Armand came up with it. “Here.”
But Richie was holding the car registration in one hand and his revolver in the other. The glove compartment was open now, a light showing inside. He said, “Shit, this isn’t even your car. What’s L and M Distributing, Limited?”
“They sell pepperoni,” Armand said, “to places they make pizza.”
“Yeah? You work for them?”
“Sometimes, when I feel like it.”
“And they let you use this car?”
“They gave it to me. It’s mine.”
“Gave you a Cadillac, huh?”
Armand watched the guy take the wallet and try to open it with one hand. He watched the guy lay the revolver on his lap and hold the wallet with one hand and take the currency out with the other and then hunch over, holding the money close to the glove-compartment light, to look at it.
“What’s this, all Cannuck?”
“Most of it.”
“It’s pretty but, shit, what’s it worth?”
Armand laid both hands on his lap as he watched the guy riffle through the currency, counting numbers, getting an idea of how much was in the wad.
“Man, you got about a thousand here.”
“Same as that lucky Mexican, ’ey?”
The guy, still hunched over, said, “The hell you do they pay you this kind of dough?”
Armand felt himself changing back, no longer Armand Degas, dumb guy taken for a ride. He was the old pro again as he came up with the Browning auto and touched the muzzle to the side of the punk’s head.
“I shoot people,” the Blackbird said. “Sometimes for money, sometimes for nothing.”
Without moving his head or even his eyes, star
ing at that wad of cash, Richie Nix said, “Can I tell
you something?”
“What?”
“You’re just the guy I’m looking for.”
3
THE DAY THE REAL ESTATE SALESMAN showed the Col-sons the house, five years ago, he told them it was built in 1907 but was like new. It had vinyl siding you never had to paint covering the original tulip-wood. You had your own well, you had a Cyclone fence dog-run there, if the Colsons happened to have a dog.