Six Bad Things

PART TWO DECEMBER 11-14, 2003 Two Regular Season Games Remaining

– Henry.

My name.

– Henry.

Hearing my name from my father’s mouth almost starts me crying again.

– Henry!

– Yeah, Dad.

– What the hell do you think you’re doing?

What I’m doing is standing on the back patio, lighting a cigarette.

– I was just gonna have a smoke.

– When the hell did you start smoking?

– I don’t know. Couple years ago.

I light up.

– Look at that, you have a great meal and now you’re going to ruin it by killing your taste buds and filling your lungs with that poison.

– OK, Dad.

– Look at the pack, it tells you right there.

– Got it, Dad.

I stub the smoke out in an empty flowerpot.

– They just about tell you that you have to be a suicidal idiot to smoke the things and people keep smoking them.

I’ve been here for maybe two hours.

– It’s out.

– And you, you wait over thirty years and now you start?

And already it’s like I never left home at all.

– Dad, it’s out. OK?

– Yeah, sorry. I just. I just don’t want you to get hurt or anything.

He turns his head as tears start to well up in his eyes again. Well, almost like I never left home.

– I don’t want to get hurt, Dad.

Mom opens the back door.

– Come inside, it’s cold out.

THERE WERE steaks in the fridge. Dad grilled them for us, standing by the propane barbeque out on the cold patio, watching me through the windows as I helped Mom set the table.

He had been at the shop, working late just like he always did when I was a kid, unless I had a game. When he came home, Mom met him at the door. But she started crying before she could say anything. By the look he had on his face when I walked out of the kitchen, I think he was assuming the worst. One second he thinks his wife is trying to tell him their son is dead, and the next I’m standing in front of him.

After that there wasn’t much to do except decide what everyone wanted for dinner.

NOW DAD and me come in and sit down at the kitchen table with Mom. She’s sipping a glass of red wine and Dad is drinking some brandy he got from a bottle that was buried at the back of one of the cupboards over the sink. He pours himself another and looks at me.

– Sure you don’t want one?

– No. I had a drinking thing there, Dad. In New York. I was drinking too much, so I had to stop.

– Yeah, we heard something about that.

Mom moves her hand so that it covers mine.

– People said a lot of things, Henry. We didn’t know what to believe. Except about the killing. We knew they were wrong about that, we knew you couldn’t kill anyone.

My left forearm is lying there on the table, the six hash marks exposed. I open my mouth, close it. Dad sets his glass down and covers my hand and Mom’s with his own. He has big hands, nicked and cut and bruised from the shop, a thin rim of grease permanently tattooed under his fingernails.

– Why are you here, Hank?

Someone threatened to kill you and I came home to make sure it doesn’t happen.

– There’s just some more trouble, Dad, and I need to take care of it.

– But why, what did you do?

– I.

I helped a friend. I tried to protect people. I did everything I was supposed to and the only thing that worked was killing the people who were trying to kill me.

And then I took their money.

– Dad, I just tried to do the right thing.

He pours himself another drink. His fifth. I’ve never seen him drink this much before.

– So what now?

– I’m gonna take care of it.

– How?

– I’m gonna give these people what they want.

THEY GO to bed a short while later, and I page Tim. And wait. And then I page him again. And again. And again. And again. I page him ten times and he doesn’t call back, and finally I’m just too tired to care.

AFTER MY leg was shattered and I couldn’t play baseball anymore I took all my old trophies and plaques down, boxed them up, and stuck them in the attic. Sometime in the last three years Mom or Dad must have gotten those boxes down to look through them, because all the old trophies are in my old bedroom. My bed is still in there too. Other than that, it’s a different room. Mom uses it for her sewing and crocheting and the several other crafts she’s thrown herself into since she retired last year.

I lie in the too-small bed in the darkness and watch light from a street lamp glinting off of all the fake gold and silver. Outside, it’s silent except for the occasional bark of a dog, quieter even than my beach in Mexico, where there is at least the sound of the surf.

On the nightstand is a small, framed picture of me. I’m sixteen, my hair is almost white from years under the California sun, my face is golden brown and unlined, and I’m wearing a cap from my high school team, the Tigers. I remember the day the photo was taken. I had pitched a shutout for the varsity squad, hit a homer, and had five RBI. I was six feet tall, a hundred and sixty pounds and still growing, working out every day and eating anything I could get my hands on, trying to build muscle for the inevitable day when I would be a Major League player. To this day, it is the face I expect to see when I look in the mirror.

NORMALLY DAD would take the truck parked in the driveway to work, but today he fires up the tiny MGB in the garage. He hits the automatic opener, the door flips up, and he pulls into the street.

– Where did you park?

– Over on Traina.

There’s been a lot of turnover on Dale Road in three years. A lot of people I used to know moved out during the year of constant attention from media, police, and sightseers that followed my adventures. But even the newcomers know who my parents are, know that they have a mass murderer for a son. I stay squished down in the footwell until we get a couple blocks away.

– A BMW 1600?

– Yeah.

– Oh, Hank, not this piece of crap?

I scoot up into the seat. Dad has stopped where my car is parked.

– Yeah.

– How much did you pay for that?

– Four.

– And you drove it from San Diego?

– Yeah.

– You’re lucky you didn’t kill yourself in that thing.

– It’s not that bad.

– Like hell it isn’t.

He sits behind the wheel of his perfectly restored 1962 British racing green MGB and stares in horror at my wreck.

– Well, let’s get it over to the shop and out of sight.

I get out, start my car, and follow him over to Custom Specialty Motors.

CSM SERVICES and restores classic, exotic, and performance automobiles. Says so right on the sign. This is the business Dad dreamed of owning his whole life, the one he created and built over the last twenty years after he threw in the towel as hotshot mechanic for a series of high-end dealerships. His customers are mostly middle-aged men who finally have the money to buy the toys they craved in their youth, but who lack the mechanical aptitude to keep them running.

He unlocks the big rolling garage door and I drive into the shop. He pulls the MG in behind me, closes and locks the door, and switches on the overheads. Fluorescent light bounces off of some very expensive paint jobs. I get out of my crappy car and go look at a 1953 Corvette Roadster, cream with red interior.

– Wow.

– Look at this mess.

I look over my shoulder. Dad has the hood of the BMW up and is peering into the disordered engine compartment.

– Jeez, Hank, your plugs are filthy, there’s corrosion on the battery cables, the gaskets on the carb are rotting, there’s oil everywhere.

He grabs a socket wrench from one of the big rolling tool cabinets and starts pulling the plugs.

– Dad, you don’t have to do that.

– There is no way you are driving this car anywhere without a complete tune-up.

– Dad.

– No way. Now, you go home and get out of sight.

He’s right. His customers may not know how to change the oil on all this steel candy, but most are retired and they love to come around and get underfoot while Dad is working. He goes into the office and comes back with a CSM cap and windbreaker.

– Here.

I slip them on, get into the MGB, grab his sunglasses off the dash, and put those on as well.

He stands next to the car, not moving to open the door for me.

– Hey! Hey, we haven’t talked about the Giants yet. Can you believe the season they had?

I know. I know they dominated the National League West, and won their first World Series since they moved to San Francisco. I didn’t get to watch or listen to a single game, but I know.

– Yeah, I haven’t seen much baseball, Dad.

– Oh.

– But maybe you can tell me about it later.

– Yeah, sure. At the house maybe.

He goes over to the door and pushes the big black button that rolls it up.

– Well, take it easy in that thing.

– No problem, Dad.

I drive home, this town’s most infamous son, dressed as my father.

MOM WANTED to skip her volunteer day at the elementary school where she tutors special-ed kids. I told her it would be better if she and Dad did everything as normally as possible until I left. The specter of my departure made her start to cry again, but she went. Now I’m alone.

When the landlord cleared out my apartment in New York, he sent the stuff to my folks. Mom donated some things to Goodwill, but I’m able to find a couple boxes of my old clothes. The jeans and thermal top I pull on are snug, but they’ll do while the clothes I was wearing go through the washer. In the meantime I page Tim some more and try to distract myself by watching Monday Quarterback.

The guys on TV are breaking down just how bad Miami is without Miles Taylor when the phone rings. I reach for it. Stop myself. I’ll let the machine pick up. If it’s Tim he’ll let me know. The machine picks up and whoever is calling hangs up.

OK, not Tim.

The phone rings again. The machine picks up. The caller disconnects. Maybe it is Tim and he doesn’t want to talk into the machine in case… In case what? God, who knows what that pothead could be thinking? The phone rings again. Christ! The machine picks up. The caller hangs up.

Jesus F. Christ.

The phone rings. It has to be Tim, who else would do this? The machine picks up. Caller hangs up.

Goddamn it, Timmy, you know I can’t answer the fucking phone. Just talk to the machine, you burnout.

The phone rings.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

The machine picks up. The caller does not hang up.

– Mr. Thompson.

A voice I don’t know, a caller for Mr. Thompson: my dad.

– Mr. Thompson? Are you there?

I stop holding my breath.

– Mr. Henry Thompson, please pick up.

Oh.

So yeah, turns out the call is for me after all.

MILL’S CAFE is the oldest restaurant in town. When I was in high school, Patterson was so small there wasn’t anywhere else to go. Now there’s a McDonald’s and a Taco Bell and a Pizza Hut and God knows what else, all thanks to the Silicon Valley real-estate boom that sent people scurrying farther and farther east of San Francisco in search of affordable housing. We could have gone to one of those new places where all the employees are kids that I’ve never seen, but he wanted to try this place, where the waitress serving us is the same one who used to bring me burgers and Cokes after baseball games. I keep my shoulders slumped, Dad’s sunglasses on my face, and try not to look around too much.

He takes another bite of his egg-white omelet and keeps talking.

– Honestly, it’s easier to explain in terms of political science rather than business.

He pauses, gathers his thoughts.

– OK, OK, I got it, it’s like this. When a country gets a nuclear weapon, the first thing they do is to test it. Publicly. They don’t do this because they want to know if the weapon works, but because they want everyone else to know that it works. For a country, having nuclear weapons isn’t so much about being able to blow up your enemies, it’s about letting your enemies know that you can blow them up. You test your new A-bomb where it can be seen and heard so that you can be sure that your enemies know what’s coming if they piss you off. Now Russians understand this kind of thinking because they pretty much invented it when they tested their first hydrogen bomb after the war. That’s why your particular Russians never sent anyone to kill your parents. What would be the point? They kill your folks and it removes the biggest weapon from their arsenal and they don’t get anything in return. What they wanted was for you to surface so that they could threaten to kill your parents unless you gave them back the money. Now, after that, they would have killed them, and then you of course.

A couple old-timers are at the counter reading the Patterson Irrigator. Other than that, it’s just us. I’m drinking coffee, but I was only able to eat a bite of the English muffin I ordered. When he mentions my parents, that one bite of muffin flops over in my stomach.

– That was a sound strategy, and it was clear to me that it was one I should stick with. Except the part about killing your folks and you once the money is returned. That’s just pure revenge. The Russians had their reasons for wanting revenge, but I could care less about what you did or who you killed. For me this is purely a business proposition, and revenge is a poor business strategy at best. If I get my money, that’s all I care about. And I want no confusion about this: it is my money now. I paid for it.

He’s just a few years older than me, and everything about him screams Manhattan. He’s got one of those two-hundred-dollar haircuts that’s engineered to look like he paid thirteen for it at Astor Place Hair, and the flecks of premature gray at his temples set off the titanium frames of the rectangular glasses he’s wearing. His Levis look worn, but I’m certain they are a pair of phenomenally expensive historical replicas of a pair owned by some prospector in 1849. His feet are tucked into bright blue-and-yellow vintage Pumas, and over a designer T-shirt of some extra-clingy material that super-defines his razor-edged pecs he’s sporting a black leather jacket of such ethereal smoothness that it almost feels like fur when I brush up against it. He’s charming and affable, has bottle green eyes and a toothy Tom Cruise grin. I’d hate him even if he wasn’t threatening my family.

– That’s one of the things I need to be certain you understand. Whoever the money might have belonged to, and, believe me, I’ve done quite a bit of research on this, it is mine now. Sure, you could argue that ultimately it belongs to the depositors at the banks that the DuRantes robbed in the first place, but the insurance companies took care of those people long ago. After that, the most legitimate claim is the Russians, and for awhile they were committed to recouping, but after three years they pretty much gave up. They were ready to call it a day, write the money off, and kill your mom and dad out of principle. If you ever turned up later that would be great, but they were done looking. That’s when I knew it was time for me to get involved. See, what you do is, you look at other businesses for assets you can pick up cheaply, especially from businesses that are struggling, and, believe me, the Russian mob is not what it once was. They had their heyday in the nineties. I mean, who didn’t? But they’re just not cutting-edge anymore, not sharp, and the market wants you to be sharp. So I saw that they had this great asset, which is essentially ownership of a four and a half million dollar IOU, but no real plan for collecting on it. See what I’m saying? Great asset, but they don’t know how to make it work for them. I do. So, what I do is, I go to a guy I know and I make an offer. I’ll buy your IOU for one hundred thousand dollars. Well, they balk of course, but then, I give them the kicker: one hundred grand to secure the IOU, which means that I become the sole agent licensed to pursue it, and, if I recover the money, a guarantee that they’ll receive ten percent of whatever I recover, less the hundred they already have. But they keep that hundred no matter what I get my hands on. Well, hell, at that point they have nothing, so it becomes a no-brainer. And trust me, when dealing with the Russian mob, a no-brainer is the only kind of deal you can make. So they take the 100K, and take the guys who had been looking for you and put them to work making money again. And I put my plan into action.

The waitress brings the pot over again. He covers his cup with his hand.

– No more for me, sweetheart, I’m about to float away. You want anything else?

I shake my head. He smiles up at her.

– Guess that’s it, just the check when you have a sec.

– Got it right here, hon.

She scribbles on her pad, tears off the check, sets it on the table, and walks back to the register.

He looks at the check.

– Unreal. You know how much that omelet would be in New York?

He takes out a twenty and drops it on the table. Leeann comes to pick it up.

– Be right back with your change.

– It’s good like that, sweetie.

– Thanks.

– It OK if we hang out here just a little?

– Sure, long as you like.

She leaves. He smiles after her.

– Sweet lady. Where was I?

– Assets.

– Right. So now I have this asset, this IOU, but, and here’s the rub, no way to collect. Well, I’ve already spent a hundred thousand on this project, I’m not about to sink more capital into sending a bunch of headhunters out to find you. So what do I do? Do you know what I did?

– You had my parents’ house staked out until I came home.

– No. Because I had looked into that, and do you know what I found out? Stakeouts, a real stakeout in a suburban neighborhood, that is both constant and imperceptible, is very difficult and expensive. So that’s not it. Any other guesses?

– No.

– OK, here it is, this was my multimillion-dollar idea: I paid one of your parents’ neighbors to watch the house and call me when you turned up. Brilliant, right? I mean, not to blow my own horn, but this is a recurring expense of five hundred dollars a month with a possible, if not likely, return in the millions.

There’s no smoking in Mill’s, there’s no smoking anywhere in California these days, so I’ve been fiddling with an unlit cigarette for about half an hour. I snap the filter off and break the rest into little quarter-inch pieces.

– Which neighbor?

– Hey now, that would be telling.

WE SIT in his rental car in front of my parents’ house. I look at the other houses on the street and watch for someone peeking from behind a curtain or over a fence, someone advertising their guilt. No luck. The car is a nonsmoker, which should really come as no surprise. He hands me a cell phone and a recharge cable.

– We could do this a lot of ways. I could have someone sit in the house with your mom and dad while you go and get the money or arrange to have it sent from wherever it is. I mean, assuming it’s not here. It’s not here, is it?

– No.

– I figured not. The thing is, that’s not my style of business. I really prefer to manage in a hands-off kind of way. Keep my distance until my presence is required. What I want to do is back off. Let you get the money together and give me a call when you have it. That phone has my number programmed into it, and I’m talking about my personal number here, so please don’t go giving it out. Just to be clear, there will be people here, employees of mine, and they will be watching your mom and dad. And I’m not talking about neighbors this time, I mean professionals. Understand? I do need an answer on this, Hank. Understand?

– Yeah.

– If my employees see your parents try to leave town, etc? Well, to return to my metaphor, if they leave, they can no longer be detonated, and they are no longer of value to me. I need them here where they can be watched, where I can get to them in case you fail to bring me my money. So if my employees see any indication that your parents are trying to leave or to seek shelter, I’ll have no choice but to detonate my “weapon.” You understand all of this?

– Yes.

– Good. So, you go get the money in what we will simply call a reasonable amount of time, and call me. After that, you pay off your IOU and I disassemble my arms, so to speak.

He sticks out his hand.

– Deal?

I look at his soft, well-manicured hand.

– What’s your name?

– Jeez, did I do that again? Sorry. I’m Dylan, Dylan Lane.

His hand is still sticking out.

– Dylan?

– Yes?

– Keep my parents safe.

– Trust me, that’s in my best interest, too. And hey, I won’t even bring up the police, because they would be in no one’s best interest.

I shake his hand, it’s almost as soft as his jacket, and he drives off.

I stand on the curb and imagine all the things I could do to make myself dead. I remember all the drunken times in Mexico that I thought about trying to swim to Cozumel, knowing that I would drown long before I got there. And I never did it. I sobered up and stayed alive long enough to kill a man who threatened my folks. And then I ran home to protect them. And by doing those things I have put their lives at greater risk than they ever were before.

Looks like it’s a good thing Dad is tuning up the BMW, because I can’t wait around here any longer for Timmy’s call.

But I do have something I’d like to do before I go.

– SO, MOM, how have the neighbors been, any of them come around?

She looks up from the pasta Dad made for dinner.

– Pat and Charley used to check in on us, that first year, when it was especially hard. But, then they moved last year to… Oh, where did they go?

Dad is over at the stove, serving himself seconds from the big pot.

– Vacaville.

– Vacaville, they moved to Vacaville.

– Anyone else, what about the new people?

– I don’t know, Henry, they know about us, but I don’t think. It’s not the kind of thing that comes up in conversation. A couple of my friends at the school, they ask, if we’ve heard anything, if we know how you are. But.

She sighs. Little Dog wanders into the kitchen and starts snuffling at her feet.

– Oh, get away from there. You know you’re not supposed to be in here.

But she scratches Little Dog behind the ear. Dad sits back down at the table and gently kicks at Little Dog.

– Don’t encourage her.

Now Big Dog comes over to see if any treats are being handed out. Dad shrugs his shoulders in surrender.

– See, now they’re both in here.

He turns to me.

– We try to keep them out at meals, but your mom.

– Now don’t start that, you feed them from the table all the time.

– I? I feed them?

As he says this, he’s sneaking a scrap of bolognese from his plate and slipping it to Big Dog. Mom slaps his shoulder.

– See, see, there, now you have to give some to both of them.

– See what? I didn’t do anything.

And he tosses a bit of meat to Little Dog. Mom throws her hands up in the air.

– You, you encourage them and.

Dad’s laughing now.

– I don’t encourage anything, you’re seeing things. See, Hank, your mom is seeing things.

He leans over and kisses her on the cheek. She shoves him away.

– Pest.

– You like it.

– I do not.

He leans over to me and stage whispers.

– She likes it.

I shove my linguine around the plate and think about Dylan Lane threatening these people.

– But no one else asks about me?

Mom stops playing with the dogs and goes back to her dinner. Dad sets his fork down.

– We don’t talk about you, Hank. We don’t talk about you to anyone. We don’t talk about you with each other anymore. We had to stop.

He picks up his fork and takes a bite and chews it hard. Mom looks up at me, tears floating in her eyes.

– It hurt too much, Henry. We. And there was nothing to talk about. We didn’t know anything.

I smile at her, at my dad.

– It’s OK, I understand.

We all eat for a minute. Mom wipes some sauce from her lips.

– Wade calls sometimes.

– Wade?

– Your friend from high school.

– I know. Last I heard he was in San Jose.

– Yes, he moved there, and then a few years ago. You remember his mom died so young?

– Yeah.

– Well, his father passed a few years ago and Wade moved back here with his family. They’re living in his old house.

– Right around the block?

– Uh-huh. And he was so sweet right after all the trouble. He came over, and I hadn’t seen him since I don’t know when, and he’s such a grown-up I didn’t recognize him. And then we didn’t hear from him for awhile and then I ran into him at the market and he started stopping by every now and then to see how we are, if we need anything, if we’ve heard anything.

Wade, my old housebreaking partner, the guy who liked to go into houses where people were still at home and awake. He always was a sneaky fucker.

BIG DOG and Little Dog sleep upstairs with Mom and Dad and, both being half-deaf and half-senile, they don’t raise a fuss as I slip out the back door. I walk over to the fence and boost myself over into the yard behind ours. I edge along the fence until I get to the next fence down, and boost over again. If I’m remembering this right, it should be the third house down after this one. I hop another fence.

Dog.

It’s a big fucker. It runs up to me out of the darkness, skids to a stop a foot away, and starts barking like hell. I sprint to the next fence; halfway there I get clotheslined by a clothesline. Who has a clothesline anymore? I scramble to my feet, the dog barking at my heels, run to the fence, and vault over into the next yard.

Dog.

It’s a terrier. The first dog is still on the other side of the fence going apeshit. All the other dogs on the block are starting to join in. The terrier yaps at me as I make for the next fence, then it leaps forward, bites at my ankles, and gets a mouthful of my pants cuff. I hop across the yard, trying to shake it loose, but the little ratter has a good grip and isn’t letting go. I make it to the fence and a light pops on inside the house. I cock my afflicted leg back, kick out with all my might, and hear the cuff tear. The terrier flies off and I jump the fence before he can scramble back at me.

I fall into some bushes. I can hear the terrier raising hell and bouncing off the fence as he tries to get through it to kill me. The porch light comes on in the terrier’s yard. I hear a sliding glass door open and then a woman’s voice.

– Digby! Digby, shut up. Shut up! Come here and shut up.

And so on. I lie in the dirt while she collects Digby and takes him inside, and then wait while the other dogs on the block settle down. By the time I crawl out of the bushes to see if I’m in the right yard, the night’s chill has gone through the thin CSM jacket I’m wearing, straight into my bones, and the front of my jeans are soaked through from the damp earth. There’s plenty of light spilling into the backyard from the street lamp and the Christmas lights strung across the front of the house. I’m in the right place. The paint job is different and the yard has been relandscaped, but I recognize the house and the big redwood deck.

I can’t see any lights on in the house. I squint and scan the roofline, looking for one of those motion-detector security lights. No sign. I scuttle to the side of the house where I remember the side door to the garage being. I edge past a stacked cord of firewood. No helpful warning sticker left by an alarm company on the door. None of the alarm tape you would expect to see on the window in the door if it had been rigged. I put my hand on the knob, twist it slowly. Someone jams a gun into the back of my neck.

– Don’t you even breathe, fucker.

I don’t.

– Open the door.

I do.

– Now crawl inside. Stay on your hands and knees.

I do. The barrel of the gun stays pressed against my neck and I hear the door close behind us, then the lights come on.

– Turn around.

I shuffle around on my hands and knees, and look up at Wade and the huge revolver he’s pointing at me.

His brow furrows. Air hisses out between his teeth.

– Hank?

He lowers the gun.

– Your mom and dad are really worried about you.

And that’s how I know he’s not the one who sold me out to Dylan.

THE GARAGE is stocked with a particularly large supply of suburban toys: a couple of Jet Skis; a small powerboat on a trailer; two golf bags stuffed in a corner; a massive tool bench running down one side, with every imaginable power tool displayed on the peg wall behind it; snow skis laid out on the rafters; two Honda motocrossers, a massive 420 and a matching 125; and five mountain bikes dangling from overhead hooks.

– Beer?

– I don’t drink.

– Why not?

Because I got drunk and forgot something one time and a bunch of people died.

– It was bad for me.

– Soda?

– Sure.

Wade gets off the stool he’s sitting on and opens the garage fridge.

– Sprite or Coke?

– Sprite.

He tucks the Colt Anaconda into his armpit and grabs a can of Sprite and a bottle of Miller High Life. He hands me the can, twists the cap off his beer, tosses it into a waste can under the workbench, and takes a drink. Then he digs a key from the pocket of his Carhartt jacket, opens a drawer on the bench, takes the gun from his armpit, and drops it inside.

– Stacy would shit if she knew I had that thing, but I always keep it locked up.

I get a good look at the chambers in the cylinder before he closes and locks the drawer.

– It’s not loaded.

He looks at me like I’m an asshole.

– With three kids in the house? No, it’s not fucking loaded.

I open my Sprite, take a sip, and huddle a little closer to the space heater he fired up for me. I point at the side door.

– How did you?

– I was out here sneaking a cig before going up. Stace won’t let me smoke in the house. I heard all that barking, switched off the light to take a peek, and saw someone hop the fence. Went out and hid behind the woodpile. Stupid shit, should have called the cops, but I was pissed.

He fingers a gouge in the surface of the workbench, looks at me.

– You any warmer?

– Yeah.

– Good, let’s take a walk, I don’t want you in here if Stace wakes up.

WE STROLL around the block, our faces illuminated by streetlamps and the colored lights flashing on the rooflines of the houses. Wade left his smokes back in the garage and has to bum one of mine.

– Benson & Hedges?

– Uh-huh.

– Kind of an old lady cigarette. How’d you get started on those?

– Long story.

We pause while I light his cigarette, continue. Walking past houses I remember from my childhood. We stand in front of one with a particularly elaborate display: a mini Santa’s Village built on the lawn and spilling onto the driveway.

Wade looks down, sees something, bends, and picks up a pigeon feather. He tucks it into the zippered breast pocket of his jacket, sees the look on my face.

– I use them for work.

– What for?

– Marbling paint. You dip them in your dark color and run them over the base color while it’s still wet. Have to be real gentle, but you get a great effect. I save them in a little box.

He points at the display.

– Remember stealing Christmas lights?

– Yeah.

– What were we thinking?

– God knows.

We start walking again.

– What were you doing in my backyard, Hank?

WADE HILLER was the toughest guy I knew. The lead burnout in school. The kid in PE class who never dressed out. The guy with the mouth on him, who never wanted anyone else to have the last word. Corkscrew hair past his shoulders, thick arms and chest from hours of bench presses in his dad’s garage, a box of Marlboro Reds always rolled up in the sleeve of his T-shirt. He grew up around the block from me, went to all the same schools, but it wasn’t until I broke my leg that we had anything to do with each other. Jocks and burnouts: do not mix.

I couldn’t participate in PE and ended up sitting around with Wade and his pals Steve and Rich. And it turned out they were OK guys. Steve was really fucking smart, Rich was as mellow a person as I’d ever met. And Wade. High-strung, quickly violent, but just exciting and fun to be around. And then they got me into the whole burglary thing and me and Wade got busted, and I thought it was time for me to forget my new friends. Last I heard about Wade, he was well on his way to spending his life hanging out in Santa Rita County Jail.

I sit on the back bumper of one of his three trucks. Each of them with the words HILLER INTERIOR CONTRACTING painted on the side. Wade comes back out of the garage, a fresh beer in his hand.

– It’s cold, let’s get in.

He unlocks the truck and we climb into the cab. He hasn’t said much since I told him I thought he might have been spying on my folks for someone trying to find me. He sips at the beer.

– You know, I didn’t graduate from our school. I was way short on credits, had to go over to the continuation school where your mom worked. This would have been the year after you went off to college. She tell you about that?

– I guess I heard about it.

– She was great to me. I was a real fuckup. You know. She took me seriously, didn’t just write me off as a lost cause. And that was after we got arrested together. I figured she’d blame that shit on me, but she never even brought it up. I would never have graduated without her.

Mom always had a soft spot for the troublemakers, that’s why she took the job as principal at the continuation school in the first place.

– And after I graduated she was the one who convinced me to take some classes over at Modesto City. My dad did OK with me, but after my mom died.

I’m digging another smoke out of the pack and he reaches over and takes one for himself. I pass him my matches and he lights up.

– I’m gonna reek when I go in. Stace is gonna shit.

– Will she be worried where you are?

– I have insomnia, she’s used to me taking walks late. Besides, she sleeps like a rock.

We smoke.

– Yeah, Dad was a great guy, but he drank a lot after Mom died.

I remember raiding his dad’s booze after school. The handle-bottles of Jack Daniels, cases of Coors stacked in the garage.

– I remember that. Not your mom.

– Yeah she was gone before we were hanging out.

– Your dad drinking.

– He wasn’t mean or anything.

– I know.

– Just wasn’t there.

His dad, passed out on the couch by midday on the weekends.

– Yeah.

– Didn’t have much left over for me. Anyway. For a couple years, after I moved to San Jose, when I’d come home to visit him, I’d stop by the school to see your mom. She ever tell you that?

– No.

– Well, I did. And she was always encouraging me, always happy for me. Even when I got Stace pregnant and she was only eighteen and I was nineteen and we weren’t married yet. She sent us a card and a baby gift.

– I didn’t know about that.

– A little teddy bear.

– Yeah, that’s Mom.

– She kind of saved me, made a real difference in my life. I have my contractor’s license, my own business, been married for fourteen years. I have three great kids. Honestly, I don’t think I would have any of that if not for your mom.

He opens the window and flicks his butt out.

– So when that stuff happened in New York with you, I knew two things. I knew I’d do just about anything for your mom, and I knew there was no way that woman raised a killer. And I would have believed that even if I didn’t know you myself.

Wade takes the last swallow of his beer.

– So what did you think you were gonna do, coming over here in the middle of the night?

Kill you.

I finish my own smoke and toss it.

– I don’t know. I was pissed. Beat you up. Maybe.

He grunts.

– What now?

– I need to get out of town, take care of something.

He nods.

– I’d help, but. I have Stace and the kids to. I can’t.

– I understand.

– Maybe there’s something. Something small?

– Don’t suppose you know anyone in Vegas, someone could help me find someone else? Someone lost or hiding.

He laughs a little.

– You know, you know who’s in Vegas? Remember T?

T? Oh shit, T.

– The dealer we scored off? The spaz?

– Yeah.

– I thought he got three-striked and put away.

– No, no way. He had two convictions and was on parole when they busted him the third time. Somehow his lawyer got him bail, and he jumped it. Went to Vegas.

– I don’t know, man, he was such a…

– Such a fuckup?

– Yeah.

– Well, I guess that’s why we all got along.

I laugh.

– Yeah.

– You know what? He sends me, you’ll love this, he sends me Christmas cards, every year.

– No way.

– Yeah, complete, the guy is wanted here, and he sends me Christmas cards complete with a return address.

We’re both laughing.

– I just got this year’s, like, yesterday. Want me to go get it?

He puts his hand on the door.

– No, no, I don’t think T is the guy I need for this.

– No, you should see, you should see this, it’s a riot.

He’s really laughing now, and I can’t help but join in.

– Yeah, OK, OK, I want to see it.

– Hang on.

He opens the door and steps out just as the black Toyota pickup squeals around the corner and plows into the front of the truck, sending Wade flying to crash against the front of his house.

I OPEN my eyes. Where am I? I’ve been in an accident. I was driving my Mustang and something happened and. Oh, God. I think I killed Rich. Oh, God.

I’m lying on my back, looking up at the stars. I’m not in the Mustang. It’s not then, it’s now. I’m lying on my back in a driveway looking up at the stars. I’ve been in another accident. I’m lying next to a huge, long-bed pickup with the driver’s door hanging open. There’s a black pickup that looks like it tried to occupy the same parking space as the long-bed. Bad call. I must have been thrown out of the long-bed when… When what?

My head is lodged in a cone of silence. I shake it and the sounds start to penetrate: dogs barking, car alarms set off by the crash, someone crying. Someone crying. I should see if I can help. I move my arms: check. I move my legs: check. Here goes. I roll onto my stomach and get myself up on my hands and knees. I won’t say it feels good, but nothing screams too loudly. OK, let’s go for broke: I stand up. My head does a little spin and tumble, the world spins the opposite way, trying to catch up, they crash together, and everything stops moving around. Safe to say I have some dings and bruises, but I’m better off than the guy with the mullet who’s lodged in the windshield of the long-bed. Mullet. When was the last time I saw someone with a mullet? Oh, right. The puzzle pieces in my head fall back together into the shape of my brain.

Fat Guy and Mullet Head must have been riding in the truck bed. Mullet Head is jammed into an indentation in the long-bed’s windshield that is shaped exactly like his body. Fat Guy is sprawled on the hood of the Toyota, just now propping himself up on his elbows to look around. Ponytail Boy is behind the wheel, trying to get his door open, but it looks like both of his arms are broken so he’s not doing a very good job of it. Leslie is the one who’s crying, except it’s more like screaming. She looks OK (has her seat belt on and everything), but she’s clutching something limp and dollish. Her door is hanging open. As I walk over, I hear a rustling sound, and turn to see a pair of feet sticking out of a bush, which tells me where Danny is.

I reach into the truck cab. Leslie stops screaming, lets me take Cassidy out of her arms and sits there holding herself, rocking back and forth.

I lay Cassidy on the pavement. There’s blood covering her face, and her long, honey hair is stuck in it. I take off the CSM jacket and wipe at the blood with the cotton lining. There’s a gash in her forehead where it must have slapped the dash. It’s bloody like all head wounds, but not too big. I press the jacket against her head and feel her pulse. Good, her pulse is good, her chest is rising and falling regularly, there’s no blood coming from her mouth, and none of her limbs are obviously broken. She was probably sleeping in her mom’s lap, her body limp and relaxed for the crash. That’s good.

– Leslie.

She’s staring at her daughter. Lights have come on in the houses on the street, people are standing on their porches in nightclothes.

– Leslie!

She looks at me.

– Come here and help.

She unbuckles and climbs down out of the truck.

– Take this.

I put her hand on top of the jacket over her daughter’s forehead.

– Just hold it here, keep pressure on it.

Patterson doesn’t have its own police force; it’s served by the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department. Last I knew they had two cars working the whole west side of the county. With a bit of luck, they’ll have to send one from Newman. The nearest hospital and ambulance service is in Turlock. So the siren that raises up now is probably the fire department.

I take my hand off of Leslie’s. She looks from her daughter’s face to mine.

– I think she’s OK. Just keep the pressure on and someone will be here real fast.

She nods.

– I have to go.

I walk up the driveway to Wade. His body is a tangled jumble. I touch his face, pocked with acne scars, the crazed hair clipped short and thinning. Oh shit, Wade.

– Wade?

I turn my head at the voice. A woman my age is standing at the top of the drive. She’s wearing flannel boxers, a too-large jacket she must have grabbed on her way out the door, and little booty socks on her feet. Her face is pillow-creased and her short dark hair is severely bedheaded. I recognize her from high school. Stacy Wilder. Wow, Wade hooked up with Stacy “The Wild One” Wilder. Way to go, buddy.

– Wade?

I stand up. Point at him.

– He.

And Danny shoots me in the back.

IT’S THE back of my leg, really.

My left leg flies out from underneath me and I fall on my back. Beyond the sound of the shot echoing in my ears, I hear doors slamming shut up and down the street as the rubberneckers dive back inside. The siren is coming closer.

– Got you, fucker.

I tilt my head and see Danny behind me.

– Got you good, wanted man.

Wanted man? Now how in hell does he know that? He takes a step closer. He’s bleeding from his mouth. Something to my left moves. I look and see a boy coming up behind Stacy, where she stands frozen, staring at Wade.

The boy is about thirteen, has Wade’s hair and flat nose. He’s wearing a San Jose Sharks jersey and carrying a hockey stick. He’s sees me and Danny. And then he sees his dad. His eyes go big and his mouth opens. I lift a hand.

– Stacy.

She looks from her husband to me. Danny nudges my head with his sneaker.

– Shut up.

I point at the boy.

– Stacy, get your boy inside.

Her eyes move from me to Wade, to me again, to Danny’s cheap Korean Glock knockoff. She turns, finds her gaping boy there, grabs him, and pulls him toward the front door.

– Shut the fuck up.

He’s right over me now. Perspective has him flipped upside down.

Upside down.

That’s a good idea.

– Danny, shouldn’t you be taking care of your daughter?

He turns his head to look over his shoulder and I reach up, grab his ankles, and pull his feet out from under him. The gun goes off and a bullet pokes a hole in the garage door. Danny hits the ground flat on his back, makes a woofing noise, and the gun jars out of his hand and skips down the driveway. I stand up, take a step to go after the gun, and my left leg folds under me.

Oh yeah, I’m shot.

Danny rolls onto his stomach and is crawling for the gun before I can try to stand again. I look at my leg. It’s bleeding, but it looks like it’s just the obligatory flesh wound, a shallow gash on the side of my thigh. Ready for the pain this time, I get to my feet and start limping around the side of Wade’s house, running from Danny and his shitty gun and the siren that is now very close.

The gate is unlatched from when Wade and I came out for our walk. I swing it open and pull it closed behind me, hearing the latch click as it locks. I limp toward the woodpile.

– Freeze, fucker.

Danny is climbing over the gate, gun waving in my general direction. He slips at the top of the fence, lands roughly on his side, and the gun goes off again, splintering firewood. I dive through the side door into the dark garage, close it and lock it, and limp toward the workbench.

I grab the drawer and yank. It’s locked. Well, of course it’s locked, you watched him lock it, asshole. There’s a crowbar mounted on the pegboard over the bench. I shove it into the crack between the drawer and the benchtop and heave. Grinding and a small snapping noise, but the drawer holds. Danny is banging on the door. I can see him framed there in the window. The siren sounds like it’s right up the street. I heave again, the drawer flies open, off its tracks and onto the floor. Danny presses his face against the glass, trying to see through the darkness inside.

– Open up, fucker. Fucking open up!

I grab the gun, flip the empty cylinder open, and squat painfully, digging through the mess that fell from the drawer, looking for ammo. Nothing.

Danny hits the window with a piece of firewood and it shatters.

I stand, and right there at eye level, on a shelf above the bench, is a black plastic box with MAGNUM written across the top in big red letters. I grab the box, pop the lid, and a handful of feathers flutters out.

Wade Hiller on the subject of pigeon feathers: “I save them in a little box.”

The siren screams close and stops right out front. For a moment a red and blue light pulses through the hole Danny shot in the garage door. Then he turns on the overheads and everything goes bright.

I flip the empty cylinder closed and turn. Danny squints at me and I squint back. He’s raising his gun. I bring up the .357 he has no idea I’m holding, and point it at his face. His eyes turn into Frisbees. He freezes, his gun hand wavering.

Before he can decide to shoot me, I do what Jimmy Cagney would do, and throw my empty gun at him.

AT SIXTEEN, my fastball was in the mid-eighties and frequently grazed ninety. I used to stand in the backyard and throw pitch after pitch from the mound Dad and I had made, through the tire he had hung from the limb of a tree exactly sixty feet and six inches away, Major League distance. Once, with a bunch of teammates watching and egging me on, I threw a hundred and four in a row, right through the center. All fastballs. My shoulder blew up like a pumpkin and Dad was pissed at me for risking my arm, but the kids talked about it for weeks, and it made me feel so cool.

A BASEBALL weighs about five ounces. The gun in my hand feels like it’s two or three pounds. Fortunately, Danny isn’t sixty and a half feet away. More like eight. The Anaconda clocks him in the forehead and he goes down.

I can hear voices outside yelling. I walk over to Danny. He’s out. I stuff the Anaconda in my jeans and grab his pistol. There’s blood all over his face from the mouth wound and a new cut I’ve opened on his forehead.

Over a black leather jacket, he’s wearing a blue-jean vest covered in patches: Insane Clown Posse, Slipknot, Godflesh, etc. The jacket has fallen open; underneath is a bloodstained concert T-shirt, the same one he had on the other day.

Except it’s not a concert shirt.

I tug his jacket open the rest of the way and expose the big America’s Most Wanted logo. I remember Robert Cramer mentioning my episode of that show in his book, and the expression on Danny’s face when I looked him in the eye after I beat him up, and the way he pointed at me.

Danny knows who I am.

Which means his friends know who I am.

Which means, just as soon as the cops get here, they’ll be telling them that I’m alive and in town.

Glass crunches under a shoe. The firefighter standing in the door is a woman around twenty-five, she’s carrying a big EMT kit. She sees me, sees the gun. Freezes.

Too late, Henry. Too late to do anything now but run.

I tilt my head toward the street.

– The sheriffs out there yet?

She licks her lips.

– Not yet.

– How long?

– Couple minutes maybe.

I point at my leg.

– I need you to wrap this up. Quick.

She doesn’t move.

– It’s OK, you’re gonna be OK, I just need you to do your job.

She nods, walks over, kneels, and opens her kit. I reach down, grab the edges of the hole in my pant leg, and rip so she can get to the wound. She tears open a sterile pack and starts wiping blood away. I whine a little and grit my teeth. She stops and looks up at me.

– It’s OK, just hurry.

She looks at the wound.

– It needs stitches.

– Just bandage it, for Christ sake.

She starts wrapping my leg, going over the wound, and around the pant leg.

– The guy outside, next to the garage?

She’s concentrating on her work.

– Yeah?

– He alive?

– I don’t know, my partner’s on him. One of the neighbors said someone in the garage might be hurt. I came in here.

The wrap is done.

– Got any penicillin in there?

– Yeah.

– Better give me a shot.

She pulls out an ampoule, rips it out of its pack, and stabs me in the leg. I can hear another siren. The sheriffs. Time to go.

– Thanks.

I point at Danny.

– Why don’t you work on him and we’ll skip all the lying-on-the-floor-and-counting-to-a-hundred crap.

– OK.

She turns to Danny and takes his pulse. I open the door to the house.

STACY WAS a year behind me and Wade. She was a real good girl; honor roll, student government, extracurricular this and that. She was also the hottest chick in school. Being a star jock at school, I crossed paths with her brainy-but-popular crowd. I remember flirting with her once, not really trying to get anywhere except in the way teenage boys are always trying to get somewhere. But I didn’t try that hard. I didn’t have to try hard with any of the other chicks, so why bother with one who wanted me to work for it? What I thought. Wade’s crew of burnouts wouldn’t have crossed paths with her clique, wouldn’t have even had classes together, let alone social interaction. But I remember being baked with him in PE and watching her run track with the girls and him saying that if he could nail any chick in school she’d be the one. Man, I’d love to hear the story of how they hooked up in the first place. But Wade can’t tell me, and I can’t ask Stacy because she’s too busy right now beating me with her son’s hockey stick.

I STEP inside, close the door, and get one upside the head. I take a couple more weak blows before I get a grip on the stick and rip it out of her hands, and she comes at my face with her fingernails. I get my forearm in front of my face and shove her off as I run toward the back of the house. She keeps after me, beating on my back. I duck into the kitchen. Down the hall I catch a glimpse of her kids; the boy I saw before, another a few years younger, and a tiny little girl who’s going to grow up to look like her mom.

Stacy shoves me hard and I stumble into the kitchen as she runs toward her children.

– Get upstairs! Get to your rooms!

And that’s the last I see of her, herding the kids upstairs, away from the scary man. I head for the patio door at the back of the kitchen. Stop. There’s a pile of mail on the kitchen table. I flip through until I find what I want, and cram it in my back pocket. I go out the back, close the door behind me, and pause for a moment, staring back into the house. The Christmas tree and decorations, the Nativity scene, the mess of kids’ toys. Then the sheriff’s car sirens up in front of the house.

THEY’RE UP. With all the noise, how could they not be up? I come over the fence into the backyard, see the lights on inside, walk to the side of the house, and dump the guns over the gate into a bush in the front yard. I won’t carry a gun into my mother’s house. When I open the back door and come in limping, Mom starts to cry.

– Henry. Henry.

– It’s OK, I’m OK.

She’s shaking her head.

– Something woke us up, a crash and then, then, then.

She can’t talk, she’s crying too hard. Dad holds her.

– It sounded like guns out there, Hank.

I’m turning off the lights.

– I’m going to go away.

Mom buries her face in Dad’s chest. It sounds like she’s saying no over and over, but I’m not sure.

– The police are gonna know I’m here. I have to.

Dad is shaking his head.

– We can talk to the police, Hank, it’s time to stop this. It’s time to fix this.

– Dad.

– We can, we know people here, we can fix this and you can stop.

– Dad, listen.

He grabs me by the shoulders and looks into my eyes.

– You listen, son. Enough of this. It’s time for you to stop running from this trouble and do something about it.

I’ve never said no to my father, always done what he told me to do. I look back into his eyes.

– I killed people.

Whatever was going to come out of his mouth freezes in there, and dies.

– Some of the people they said I killed. I killed them. I’m a killer.

I go upstairs to my old room. I grab my money and the clothes I washed earlier and the phone Dylan gave me and I go back down. Dad is at the foot of the stairs, Mom next to him. Dad reaches for my hand as I come down, I pull it back.

– I need the keys to the shop.

He points at the table next to the front door. I grab the keys. I feel Mom’s hand on my back.

– Henry, oh my poor baby. Oh, baby.

She wraps her arms around me, and I feel Dad grab us both in his big arms and squeeze us together, trying to compress us into the one flesh we once were. But we are no longer. I am different. I pull myself free.

– Don’t try to protect me anymore. It’s not. I’m not worth it. Just.

Mom tries to hug me again, I look at Dad, he stops her.

– The police will be coming, tonight I think. You can’t lie about hiding me. Tell them you tried to get me to give up and I ran. It’s the truth. Tell the truth.

I reach for the doorknob. Stop. Turn and grab Mom and kiss her cheek.

– I love you, Mom. I won’t be back. I’m sorry. I love you, Dad.

I open the door and the dogs come barking down the stairs. Blow up the world and they won’t notice, fuck with the front door and they go berserk. I step outside. Over the barking dogs I hear Mom.

– We love you, Henry, no matter what.

I pull the door closed, and I’m running again.

THE SHOP is in the middle of town, about a ten-minute walk. I can’t move very fast with my leg, but I know a shortcut. I dig the guns out of the bushes, huddle there for a second as a van drives past on the street, then walk up to the corner, take a right, and climb a short chain-link fence. It’s not easy with one leg to work with, but I make do. On the other side, I sit down on the edge of the dry culvert, push off, and slide to the bottom. I hit bottom and get a shock of pain up my left leg.

I’m lucky it’s been a dry winter so far; there are only a couple inches of water down here. I splash through the darkness for a couple hundred yards till I get to the spot where steps are carved into the south wall of the culvert. They’re steep, like Kulkukan. I shake that vision from my head. No time for that.

At the top some kids have clipped a hole in the chain-link. I squeeze through and pop up under the bleachers of Patterson High’s football field. I weave through the lattice of struts, come out from the west end of the stands, cross the track that circles the football field, cross the field itself, and stop. Right in front of me are the baseball diamonds. I trot as quickly as I can between the diamonds, glancing at the spot where I broke my leg and U-turned my life.

Get over it, Henry.

The campus is pretty much like it was back in my day. I cross the quad with the big red P painted in the middle. This is where we used to grab unsuspecting freshmen and dump them facedown in trash cans for showing insufficient Tiger Pride, and then I’m on the street in front of the school looking at downtown Patterson in all its after-midnight glory.

CSM is tucked between a John Deere dealership and a U-Haul. I unlock the office door, go in, close it behind me, head into the shop, and flick on the lights. And there’s my car, wheels removed, up on jack stands. Right where Dad left it so he could start replacing the brake pads first thing in the morning. Thanks, Dad. Then the alarm goes off because I didn’t enter the code within thirty seconds of opening the door.

DANNY WAS wearing an America’s Most Wanted shirt, which means he’s a fan, which means he recognized me when I beat him up, because, according to The Man Who Got Away, I have my very own episode of America’s Most Wanted. Even a dildo like him could hop online and do enough research to find out where my parents live and come here looking for me. He probably thinks catching me will earn him a reward and make him some kind of hero. And it would, it would.

The sheriff and his deputies know who my folks are. They know Mom because they frequently dealt with her students at the continuation school and, after my shit went down, they spent a fair amount of time staked out in front of the house, helping to deal with the media and such. Danny or Leslie or one of their cronies are going to pop out with my name. How long till that happens? How long after that till one of the deputies remembers how close my folks live to Wade? How long till they get a report on the alarm at CSM and remember my dad owns it? How long will it take for these podunk cops to connect the dots and really be after me? And how long after that before the state cops and the FBI are involved?

Leslie is hysterical. Danny was unconscious when I last saw him. Ponytail Boy had two broken limbs and is probably in shock. Mullet Head? He didn’t look like he’d be talking to anyone soon. Fat Guy. Will he talk? Will he say, “Yeah, we spun up here after a wanted murderer instead of calling the cops because he beat up my friend and we crashed our truck here and…”? He’ll keep his mouth shut. That’s what he’ll do. That’s what he has to do for me to have a chance.

I’M PULLING tarps off of cars while the alarm continues to ring, calling to deputies who are otherwise engaged. The ’53 ’Vette is way too visible. Likewise the ’73 Jaguar XLS. The 1970 Mercedes 280 SL has no engine. The ’50 Studebaker Commander is buried at the back of the row. But the ’85 Monte Carlo SS is just right. I grab the keys from the rack on the wall and hit the ignition. Nothing. Of course, because no one has driven it lately and the battery is dead. I wheel the charger over, pop the hood, and stare at the big block 502; 450 horses and over 500 lbs of torque. I hook up the charger.

While the car is juicing I go back in the office and dig around the shelves until I find a greasy road atlas. I limp back toward the shop and trip over something. A box of CSM jackets, each one wrapped in plastic. My jacket! The jacket that Leslie had pressed to her daughter’s forehead. That’s the kind of clue that will get the cops here in a hurry.

I try the key again and the Monte Carlo rumbles to life, almost as loud as the alarm. I disconnect the charger, drop the hood, and hit the button to roll up the garage door. It’s almost one in the morning. Outside, the heavy San Joaquin fog is starting to muffle the valley. I ease between the other cars, hoping that Dad’s insurance is up-to-date. I stop the car just outside, go back, reach in, and hit the button, dropping the door. No reason to invite trouble. I’m behind the wheel, seat belt on. I take a right out of the drive directly onto Highway 33, and gun the engine, popping from first to second to third. The fucker is so loud I don’t hear the siren of the sheriff’s car until it bursts off of Poppy Avenue, right in front of me.

My left foot jacks the clutch while my right heel-toes the brake and the gas. I crank the wheel over. The rear of the Monte Carlo whips out and around and keeps whipping. Instead of pulling a nice neat one-eighty, I doughnut all the way around and end in a dead stop. The sheriff’s car swerves around me and streaks into the CSM driveway, out for bigger fish than a late-night joyrider like me. Cool. I pop into first and roll. The sheriff backs out of the driveway, pivots, and comes after me. I hit it, heading west, straight toward… Newman and the sheriff’s headquarters. Not cool. Let’s try that one-eighty again.

Clutch, heel-toe, crank wheel (not too much this time), come off the brake, into the gas, clutch coming out straight into second gear, rear wheels catching, sheriff’s car whirling into view through the windshield, jolting forward, teasing wheel to right as sheriff brakes and jerks left, correcting wheel for fishtail, left rear quarter panel banging sheriff’s left rear quarter panel as we pass, correcting again, and blasting back north on 33. Just like Jim fucking Rockford. The sheriff’s car gets turned around and is on me with full sirens and lights as I brake hard, take a right off of 33, and ease over the train tracks onto Las Palmas.

EAST LAS Palmas Avenue shoots northeast out of the center of Patterson and straight into ranch country until it bends due east and becomes West Main Avenue around the almond orchards, then turns into West Main Street as it passes through Hatch, and finally crosses the 99 just outside Turlock. It’s a fifteen-mile shot all the way out, but the first mile and a quarter is the tricky part, the stretch where the avenue is lined with huge palm trees, one every ten yards. You hit 100 mph there? The trees look like a wall. When I was a kid, we’d drag here when we thought we could get away with it. Right before getting into your car, you always said the same thing to your opponent: “Don’t fuck up.”

The Monte Carlo was clearly put together with an eye toward on-track drag racing, but it’s currently geared for street use. That slows down the acceleration a bit, taking your 0-60 sprint time from a flat six seconds to something around seven. Ho-hum. I lead-foot the pedal to the floor.

The dual carbs make a huge sucking sound as they fly wide open, the rear end bites down hard, smoke spews out from under the tires as I leave fifteen-foot twin stripes. The animal under the hood screams and I explode forward, the cop lost in the cloud of wheel-smoke behind me. I’m still in third when the speedometer hits 100.

I am not prepared to control something like this. No one is prepared to control something like this. I’m just trying to keep straight. If I waver I’ll lose traction and spin into the wall of massive palm trees flipping by on either side. I ease off the gas. The needle peaks at 110 and starts to drop. I want to check the rearview for the sheriff, but don’t dare move my eyes from the road. The last of the trees blinks away behind me and an ounce of tension leaves my shoulders. The sign in front of me announces that my lane must merge left due to road construction.

I take my foot off the gas and tap the brake. It works just fine. I scrub a couple mph off, down to about 90. There’s the lane shift. I tap again, again, blip the steering wheel left. Too much, I’m headed for the center divider. Tap, blip right to keep from slamming the divider, and shoot into the left lane too sharply. Orange traffic cones hammer off my right fender, and rocket, wheeling into the sky. I keep my feet off all pedals as the Monte Carlo scrapes past the five-hundred-yard gouge on my right where the tarmac has been carved away. I’m down to 70 by the time the road widens back out. I hear the siren behind me again.

The sheriff’s car is entering the construction lane. What the fuck am I doing? This isn’t a monster, it’s a car. I get back on the gas, pop into fourth, and the engine rumbles happily back up to 80. The last of the streetlights disappear behind me as our chase clears the town line. I see the next sign, the one that warns about the sharp turn up ahead that you should take at 30 mph.

It starts as a bend, swooping to the right between a fallow strawberry field and a windbreak of trees. I tap, tap, tap and get down to about 65 for the bend. Rubber screeches, but the tires stay firm on the road. Then I hit the hard angle of the turn. I can take it. This huge mother will stay on the road. I know it will.

There’s a little bump. It startles me, and I jerk the wheel a fraction to the left, overcorrect to the right, and the rear end slips and starts to carry me toward the trees. I dart the wheel into the skid, feel the tires grab, take it right, into the angle of the curve, lose traction again. And the road takes control.

The rear end spins around, I spin around, the trees reel in front of me, traveling from right to left a foot from the hood of the car, and disappear. Something crunches and jerks the car and bounces it back to the center of the road, spinning in the opposite direction now. I keep my hands clear of the wheel as it flings itself around, not wanting to break a wrist by trying to control it. I see the trees again, traveling left to right this time and much farther away. The car falls out from underneath me as it skitters off the road, then it jumps up to catch me, crashing into the field, still spinning, plowing the field into a storm of dust that screens me from the world as the Monte finally grinds to a halt.

In all the skidding and screeching and crashing, the radio has clicked on. I loll on rubber muscles, unable to move. My brain is a flat horizonless plain. I can sense, but not make sense of the siren screaming close by and the red and blue lights fluorescing the dust cloud outside the windows. Closer by, I recognize a voice. Yeah, that’s The Warrior, the late night DJ for 104.1. The Hawk. I loved that station when I was a kid. The siren stops, and through the blue and red haze, a shape starts to emerge. The deputy opens my door and points his gun at me. The Warrior stops talking and a song comes on the radio. Thin Lizzy. “The Boys Are Back in Town.”

THE DEPUTY seems to have been trained well. I mean, sure, maybe he should have ordered me out of the car before he ran over here and opened the door, but other than that I’d say he’s doing a pretty good job for a kid whose most serious calls are probably knife fights at local roadhouse bars.

He takes one look at my limp body and knows not to move me. Thank you. He talks to me, tells me to put my hands on the wheel where he can see them, but my hands seem way too far away to really have anything to do with me, so I just leave them in my lap. He talks some more and I don’t move some more so he keeps the gun pointed at me as he reaches in and pats me down for weapons. I have none because both Danny’s pistol and Wade’s revolver have banged around the inside of the car and are on the floor somewhere. I’m just grateful neither of them hit me in the head. Wait a second. Did one hit me in the head? I concentrate on how my head feels. It feels bad. Maybe one of the guns hit me on the head. Not that I really care. About anything.

Now he circles around to the passenger-side door. It grinds open. He looks in the glove compartment, finds nothing, feels under the seat and comes up with the pistol. He tucks that in his belt, folds the front seat down, and checks out the backseat. When he comes back to me, I can see he now has the revolver as well. Good for him. He asks me again if I can move and takes my immobility as an answer. Now, just for good measure, he tells me not to move, that he’s gonna go call for backup and an ambulance, and he disappears into the dust cloud.

The Monte Carlo’s engine ticks. The dust is fading now and I can see an outline of the deputy standing next to his car, watching me while he talks on his radio. My eyelids start to flutter and droop. I force them back open. Concussion. I most certainly have a concussion and need to stay awake. My eyes close. I hear an engine buzz up the road and stop, a couple doors opening and closing. Voices.

– You OK? Need help?

– Just stay up there on the road.

– What?

– Don’t walk in the tracks there.

– I said, do you need help?

– Stay out of the wheel marks!

– What?

– Just get back up on the road.

– Sorry, just trying to help.

– Get out of the tracks and get back up on the road.

– Yeah, sorry. Dude.

And a pop.

And another pop.

And another.

And feet scrunching through the dirt. And hands unbuckling my seat belt and pulling me from the car as a new song comes on the radio. Led Zeppelin: “When the Levee Breaks.” Now this is rock ’n’ roll. But I just can’t stay awake to enjoy it. So I don’t.

– WAKE HIM up.

– Huh?

– Don’t let him sleep.

Someone is shaking me.

– No go.

– Slap him.

SLAP!

– Dude, not so hard, just a little smack.

Smack.

– He’s out, dude.

– Try some water.

My head is tilted. Something is in my mouth, filling it.

– Choke! Cough! Choke!

– On his face, on his face!

– Dude, you come back here and try.

My eyes open.

– No, wait, he’s awake.

I’m on my back. Lights swirl above me. I’m moving. No, I’m on my back inside something that’s moving.

– You OK?

Something dark looms over me. Someone.

– Sid, take the wheel.

The someone disappears. I hear shuffling.

– Got the wheel?

– Yeah.

The moving thing lurches, then straightens out. Someone new looms.

– You OK?

There’s that question. Am I OK? Well, honestly, that’s just a little too deep for me to handle. So I don’t handle it.

– Are you hurt?

That’s much less ambiguous, I can handle that one.

– Yeah.

– Where?

Also an easy one.

– All over.

A little laugh. Wait, do I know that laugh?

– Where ya headed, where do we take you?

Jesus, that’s a mind-bender. I’m headed… home? No, that’s not right. I was already home and that didn’t work out. I close my eyes and see a sunny place next to the ocean. That’s nice. That’s where I want to go.

– OPEN YOUR eyes, dude, got to stay awake.

I open my eyes. Where am I?

– I want to go to the beach.

Whew, that just about took it all out of me. I close my eyes.

– WAKE UP.

Water splashes my face. I open my eyes. I’m moving. Someone is looming. What am I doing? I’m moving. Moving? Oh right, I was going somewhere. It was real important.

– Are we there?

– Where, dude?

Well, how do I know? Oh, wait, I do know!

– Vegas.

– Vegas?

– Are we?

– Is that where?

– Vegas.

Mom and Dad snapshot into my brain, fade, disappear. A Polaroid developed in reverse. I try to sit up.

– Vegas, I have to get to Vegas.

Someone pushes me back down.

– It’s cool, dude, we’re on our way. Sid.

– Yeah?

– Head for Vegas.

I close my eyes. Someone shakes me, but it’s too late, I’m chasing myself down a long dark tunnel, away from all the things I know are waiting to hurt me when I finally wake up.

If I wake up.

– I’M TELLIN’ ya, dude, they ain’t shit without Taylor. We ain’t getting any help.

– Yeah, but.

– No “yeah, but” about it, dude.

– They’re at home.

– They’re choke artists. Everyone knows you never take the Dolphins in December.

My mouth is gunky and my throat is a dry rasp, but I still manage to get in my two cents.

– He’s right.

Silence.

– Was that him?

– Get some water.

Footsteps. Water running. Footsteps.

Water splashes my face. It feels good.

– You in there, dude?

More water. I open my eyes, see someone I know.

– Hey, Rolf.

– How you feeling, dude?

He’s sitting on the edge of the bed I’m lying on. I turn my head to look at the room. My eyes aren’t focused yet, but I don’t really need them. Motel. Cheap. Anywhere. I turn back to Rolf.

– Let me have some of that water.

The blurry guy behind him hands him a plastic cup and Rolf holds it to my lips and I guzzle it down.

– More.

Rolf gives the cup back to the blurry guy and he leaves and I hear water running in a sink.

– Where are we?

– The Downtown Motel.

– Where?

– The Downtown Motel.

– Where?

– Oh, Barstow.

Barstow. Have I ever heard anything positive about Barstow? No. Just a town in the desert that sounds like a good place to dump a dead body. The blurry guy comes back with more water. He comes into focus as I drink it. Younger than me and Rolf. A short, bleached Mohawk; a bare torso of lean, flat muscle; a small, blue Ocean Pacific logo tattooed over his left breast, just where it would be if he was wearing one of their shirts.

I pass the empty cup back.

– Thanks.

He takes the cup, grinning.

– No prob, dude.

Rolf points at him.

– This is Sid. Sid, this is my friend, Henry Thompson.

– Cool, right, I know. Cool to meet you, dude.

He sticks out his hand. I manage to lift mine off the bed and shake. Rolf reaches in his pocket, takes out some money, and hands it to Sid.

– Why don’t you run over to the IHOP and grab a grilled cheese for Henry? I’ll take a chef salad.

– Cool.

He backs away, eyes locked on me, then turns suddenly, unlocks the door, and dashes out. Rolf smiles at me.

– I think he has a crush on you.

I try to push myself up in the bed and get hit with a sack of cramps and aches. Rolf helps to get me sitting and puts an extra pillow behind my back.

– So, Rolf?

– Yeah.

– Funny seeing you here.

– Yeah.

– What’s it about?

He digs in the back pocket of his shorts, pulls out a piece of paper, unfolds it, and hands it to me.

– It’s about this.

I take the paper. It’s a photocopy of my NYPD wanted poster, the Spanish language version. It has blood on it.

CANDITO HAD the wanted poster in his pocket. Rolf found it when he was looking for the Bronco keys so he could meet me and Leo back at the highway. But he had to kill Candito first.

– Dude, was that nasty. I was thinking bushwhack: get back in the tequilaria and hide behind the bar and blast him when he came back in. No go. You took off and I went in and he was just coming in through the back door with the town medico. Old guy, fat, with a big old mostacho. The real deal, right out of a Sergio Leone flick. I come through the door and the Federale goes for his gun and I raise my hands and start babbling about how I dropped the car keys and I just need to get them and I’ll be gone and, dude, just be cool. He tells the doc to get to work on the other cop, the one without a face, right?

I’m sitting on the side of the bed now, drinking more water. My head feels like it’s been cut off and stuck on a pike. I keep having little moments where I suddenly get dizzy and my vision blurs. It’s a safe bet that I have a mid-level concussion. Which would explain why I don’t remember much after I got in the Monte Carlo. A chase. A crash. A cop. The back of Rolf’s bus. This room.

– The Federale covers me while I walk over to that table I was hiding behind. I point at the floor and go all, Hey, there’s my keys, and I duck down like I’m grabbing my keys just as the doc walks around the bar and sees the dead cop.

Dead cop. A deputy was calling for help on his radio, and then I heard gunshots, and then Rolf and Sid were pulling me out of my car. Dead cop.

– So now the doc is telling the Federale that he can’t do anything for his friend and the Federale is all, Que? Que? Que? So that’s it, the jig’s up. I pop up to do one of those gangsta moves with the dead cop’s piece in one hand and my revolver in the other and, dude, there’s the doc and the Federale standing over the dead guy, I’m totally forgotten. I pull the trigger on that cheap cop gun and it goes off and jams right away. So now, dude, the live cop is drawing a bead on me and I got just three round in my piece and the one shot I got off hit the doc in the gut and he’s lying on his side on the floor scooting around in a circle like one of the Three Stooges with a hot rivet in his pants. No shit.

My head spins some more and I lie back with my knees bent over the edge of the bed, feet on the floor.

– You OK, dude?

I keep my eyes closed and wave my hand.

– You sure?

I breathe deeply a few times.

– Yeah.

– OK. So, the Federale is bringing up his piece and I have this moment where I blank. I, seriously, I panic. It’s like surfing. I’m all over a wave and then it just surges and becomes like something else, like a beast, and I realize I’m totally in over my head and I’m just gonna get wiped out if I don’t hold my shit, but it’s too late, just taking the time to think makes it too late and next thing I know I’m plowed because what’s happened is, I’ve totally panicked. Choked in the clutch. And that’s what I did. The Federale is taking aim and I got my gun up and ready, and I freeze ’cause I don’t know if I should blast my three bullets and, if I miss, hope he misses so I’ll have time to duck and un-jam the cop piece, or duck without shooting before he has me in his sights, and by then it’s too late to do anything, dude, ’cause he’s pulling the trigger and I’m gonna get plowed. And then the doc freaking out on the floor kicks him in the back of the leg and he falls down and I shoot him.

I open my eyes. Nope, the world is still blurry and out of focus.

– Dude, it was one of those freaky moments where everything just works out for you. He’s still alive, so I have to put another one in him before I come out from cover, but then that’s it. All over.

All over.

– What about the doctor?

– Oh, dude, bummer. That was fucked up, but the way it worked out for me, I kind of figure it was meant to happen. I mean, I wanted to thank the guy and all, but there he is, gutshot. I got him flipped over and shot him in the back of the head. Total drag. So, then I go looking for the Bronco keys and find the wanted poster, and you know what’s really weird, dude?

– No.

– Like a year ago, I saw the Henry Thompson America’s Most Wanted.

There it is again.

– And I totally thought he looked like you, but it just seems too far-fetched, right? So that was that. But the second I looked at the poster? Bang! Just like that I got it. Then I motored out to the highway and found Leo, and you were gone. That sealed the deal.

– How is Leo?

– OK, last I saw. I took him back to Pedro’s and he was awake and could talk a little. Said the Federales caught him in the jungle and beat it out of him about where I was taking you. He felt real bad about that. Anyway, Pedro called Doc Sanchez and I took off. Looked like a good time to return to the States for a vacation. Also, I wanted to look you up.

– Why?

Not that I need to ask.

– Dude, way I figure it, I’m owed some money. Leo may be one of those cats who will do anything for a friend. But me? I like to get paid. And there is no fucking way that if I’d known who you were I would have helped out for the standard fee. I mean, if I’d known I was gonna have to kill three guys, I probably would have said, like, double. But now? Shit. Way I figure, I know you have money ’cause you gave the Federales 70 Gs and they thought you should have more.

Something occurs to me.

– What happened to the seventy?

– Shit, dude, I got it.

He pulls up his shirt and I see my money belt wrapped around his stomach. Bloodstained just like the wanted poster. He drops the shirt.

– But, dude, that’s besides the point. I mean, that’s like salvage and has nothing to do with you owing me for services rendered.

I open my eyes. The world has stopped spinning and has come back into focus. Money.

– How much?

– Well, I’m willing to listen to an offer, dude.

– Hundred thousand?

– Shit, dude, if you can rattle off 100 Gs just like that, you can probably do two.

– Yeah, I probably can.

– Dude! How much do you have?

– A lot.

– OK, OK, that’s cool, I’m not greedy. Two! Two is cool. But hey, that only stands as long as things don’t get any harder, OK?

– Yeah.

I sit back up and my stomach lurches. More concussion symptoms.

– Rolf?

– Dude?

– Did you kill a deputy after I crashed?

– Yeah. Didn’t know what else to do there.

I stand up and stumble. Rolf catches me.

– Easy.

I clamp my mouth shut and point at the bathroom and he helps me to the toilet. He stands in the open door as I spill my guts. The water I drank comes up, and then it’s dry heaves. I finish and slump on the floor. Dry heaves suck. Dry? Didn’t I just eat with Mom and Dad?

– How long have I been out?

– Almost twenty-four hours, dude.

Shit, oh shit.

– Phone! Phone! Did I have a cell phone?

– Yeah.

– I need it right now.

MOM AND Dad are in police custody, and Dylan wants to explain to me why he’s not happy about it.

– Is this how you do business, Hank? Because if it is, if this is what I have to look forward to, I may just have to back out of this deal right now.

I’m sitting on the bathroom floor talking on the cell phone Dylan gave me. Sid has come back from the IHOP and is sitting out in the room, eating a stack of banana pancakes. Rolf is standing next to the open door so he can listen in.

– I had some trouble.

– Is that what you call trouble, Hank? Because if it is…

He breathes deeply.

– OK, this isn’t doing either of us any good. It does nobody any good for me to lose my temper. What we need to do here is evaluate the situation. Our problem is that as long as your parents are with the police, my employees cannot reach them. I can see where this might give you comfort, but what you need to remember is that it also removes my leverage with you. Which increases my legal and economic exposure. Which makes me nervous and more inclined to take aggressive action once your parents are released. Now, why don’t you tell me what happened and we’ll come up with some strategies to fix our problem?

How much to tell him?

– I went to see a friend. These guys I scrapped with in San Diego showed up. I think they figured out who I am and were looking for some reward money or something.

– I know that, Hank, I can get that information from the TV at this point. They most certainly do know who you are, and now the police and the FBI and the national media know that you are still alive and at large.

Oh, God.

– We can solve this, Hank, we can. Where are you now?

– I’m on my way to get the money.

– Where? The police said they found your car, so where are you?

I look at Rolf looking at me, listening to my end of the conversation.

– I got out of town, Dylan, that’s all you need.

– Hank! Hank, are you now telling me what I need to know? Because if you are… If you are trying to tell me what I need to know, then I have to tell you that you are very much mistaken. The police have not charged your parents and even if they do, it seems unlikely that they will have any trouble making bail, seeing as they are such pillars of the community. Trust me Hank, they will not be safely in police custody for long. Now, I would rather not do so, but if I do not have some assurances soon I will be forced to secure my leverage at the earliest possible opportunity, Hank. I will be forced to take custody of your parents until our business is concluded one way or another.

I close my eyes.

Mom and Dad.

I open my eyes.

– Dylan, I’m out of Patterson. I’m on the road and undercover and on my way to get the money. All you need to do is sit tight and I will take care of everything. I have some experience in this, after all.

He’s quiet for a moment.

– That’s a good point, Hank. Very well put. Experience is invaluable when the rubber hits the road. OK. OK. This is me, this is my weakness. I try to micromanage. You just can’t do that and expect your people to do their job properly. But now, now I do need to establish a timeline. I was willing to work without a clock before this, but now… we need some targets.

– Like what?

– It’s… eight forty-seven PM, Tuesday night. Let’s call it nine PM. I want my money in five days. And, so there is no confusion, that means in my hands no later than nine PM this coming Sunday. Understood?

– Yes.

– And, I’m sorry to ask for this, but I’ll also want progress reports. That means at least one call every twenty-four hours. Understood?

– Yes.

– OK. Well, that looks like it. Hank, I want to thank you for being patient while I blew off steam and I want to thank you for your problem-solving skills. Thank you.

– Sure.

– And… I’ll talk to you tomorrow.

He hangs up. Rolf points at the phone.

– Dude?

– This guy is keeping an eye on my folks for me. I owe him some money for it.

He nods his head.

– Money.

– Yeah.

– There gonna be enough for both of us?

– Yeah, there’ll be enough.

But there isn’t. Dylan wants it all, and Rolf will want it all, too, when he finds out how much there is. The difference is that Dylan has Mom and Dad. Rolf just has Henry Thompson, and I don’t care much what happens to him.

I get myself to my feet. I wobble and Rolf puts a hand on my arm.

– What now?

What now? I could try calling Tim again. But who’s fooling who here? Something’s gone wrong in Vegas and Tim is not going to be returning my calls. So what now?

I point into the room where Sid is watching the Winter X Games.

– TV.

The story isn’t getting full-blown, nonstop coverage, but CNN has given it a title: Henry Thompson: The Return. I am a sequel.

When we tune in, they’re showing tape shot earlier in the day in front of Wade’s house. The two trucks are being untangled, yellow tape is strung everywhere, sheriff’s deputies and State Police and guys in dark suits are walking around. I catch a glimpse of a chalk outline at the base of the garage door. They cut to more tape from the strawberry field off of Las Palmas: the wrecked Monte Carlo, a sheriff’s car parked next to it, cops combing the ground for evidence. Cut to an earlier shot at the same scene: a covered body on a gurney being loaded into the back of an ambulance. On the bottom of the screen, a name: Deputy Theodore T. Fischer.

Sid points at the screen.

– That’s him, that’s him.

Rolf puts his hand up, hushing him.

– Cool it.

– Dude, that’s my guy.

I look at him.

– You shot the deputy?

– Yeah. My first.

– Your first?

– My first kill.

He’s staring at the screen, eyes sparkling. I give Rolf a look. He shrugs. Kids these days. Great, Sid the Junior Psycho is stoked because he just earned his Murder Merit Badge.

More tape: the outside of Emanuel Medical Center in Turlock, three ambulances unloading, and the back of a head between two state cops. Danny. The reporter is listing names and injuries and legal statuses.

Hector Barnes (aka Fat Guy): lacerations, abrasions, contusions; in good condition. “No charges as yet.” Kenneth Pitlanske (aka Ponytail Boy): abrasions, contusions, multiple fractures; in stable condition. “No charges as yet.” Willis Doniker (aka Mullet Head): DOA. Unidentified female eighteen (aka Leslie): abrasions, contusions; released from hospital. “In police custody.” Daniel Lester (aka Danny): facial lacerations, contusions, abrasions; released from hospital. “In police custody.” Unidentified female minor, six (aka Cassidy): facial laceration, minor concussion; in fair condition. Wade Hiller: DOA.

And more tape: the front of my home, cops, Mom and Dad being led to a sheriff’s car by two deputies, reporters shouting and shoving cameras into the air to get a shot. They’re in custody, uncharged, but being questioned.

The punch line comes last, a statement from the San Joaquin County Sheriff taped a few hours ago.

– We are still investigating the incidents in Patterson that occurred early this morning, but we do have some information. Um, there have been three deaths, two in an apparent automobile collision and the other a shooting. Deputies responding to the collision were informed that shots had been fired at that location and, and, wait, I’m sorry, and T. T., uh, Deputy Fischer was responding to that call when he was redirected to an alarm call that we had reason to believe might be, uh, connected with the earlier, uh, earlier call. The collision and shots fired. He, uh, gave pursuit. He gave pursuit to a vehicle fleeing the scene of the alarm call, and the suspect vehicle, uh, crashed, and while the deputy was, we believe at this point, that while the deputy was apprehending the suspect in the, uh, suspect vehicle, another vehicle arrived at the scene and one or more people shot T. T., shot Deputy Fischer at that time and fled with the suspect, the first suspect. Uh. Just give me a…

He turns from the microphones and wipes at his tearing eyes.

– Um, at this time, we believe that the suspect that fled, the second scene, the alarm call? We believe that suspect had already fled the scene of the collision and shots fired and that, we have eyewitness testimony at this time that this suspect is Henry Thompson, the suspect wanted for several murders in New York, uh, three years ago.

There is a great deal of hubbub from the reporters. Sheriff Reyes, a man clearly out of his depth, raises his hands for silence.

– I’m not, we’re not going to answer any questions, no questions. We do have, we do have some pictures we want to show and a number for information that we want to give out.

Reyes holds up a sheet of paper and the camera zooms in on it. It’s my booking photo from New York.

– This is a photo of Henry Thompson as he looked three years ago. Based on our, uh, witness, this is what we think Henry Thompson may look like now.

He holds up the other paper. It’s a sketch based on the photo, a few pounds and years added, along with more hair and a beard.

– We have copies for the press and the number is there at the bottom and we’d like you to run that number at the bottom, the bottom of the TV screen. And, this man is armed and very, very dangerous and we, as I said, we do believe at this stage that he has at least one accomplice and.

I turn it off. Sid jumps off the bed.

– Cool! Cool! Dude, is this what it was like in New York, is this what it was like?

– Yeah, this is pretty much what it was like.

– Cool!

He starts jumping around the room, punching the air. I turn away. Rolf picks up the remains of the grilled cheese I took three bites of, and tosses it in the trash.

– Sorry ’bout your folks, that’s harsh.

I don’t answer. Instead I point at Sid. He’s standing in front of the bathroom mirror, unaware of us, doing his best Taxi Driver.

– You talkin’ ta me?

I shake my head.

– What the hell, Rolf?

Rolf shrugs.

– Yeah, he’s a handful.

Sid catches us looking at him and points at me.

– Well, I don’t see anyone else here, so you must be talkin’ ta me.

He laughs, quick-draws pistol-fingers, and shoots them at me.

– You the man! You. The. Man.

Then he closes the bathroom door and we can hear him pissing. Rolf laughs.

– And like I said, dude, he kind of has a crush on you.

I want to leave right away, but Sid insists that we sweep the room to leave the fewest possible clues.

– Dudes, I can tell you right now, the cops are all over your mom and dad’s neighborhood asking about suspicious vehicles and shit. And someone always sees something. Sooner or later, someone’s gonna say something about my camper being parked on the street. They’re gonna look into it, and dudes on the block are gonna be all, nope not mine. Next, they lift a tire track from the field where I kacked that deputy.

He’s going around the room with the liner from one of the wastebaskets, filling it with every scrap of trash he can find, along with strands of my hair that were on the pillow and any other bodily effluvia laying about.

– Where we get lucky, dudes, is that I have some custom Pirellis on my ride. So the tracks won’t really point at the funky ’72 Westy people saw around your folk’s place. ’Course, that only plays if we didn’t leave a track in a oil puddle in front of their house or something. Which is why I’m doing this shit, ’cause if the cops start telling people to keep their eyes peeled for my ride, the guy up at the desk might remember it. Next thing ya know, this room is wrapped in plastic, vacuum-sealed, and they’re running swabs over the rim of the toilet looking for our DNA.

Rolf and me help him clean up.

SID HAS a copy of The Man Who Got Away that he wants me to sign. It’s in a milk crate full of true crime books in one of the cabinets in his Westphalia.

The Westphalia rings a bell somewhere in my scrambled brain.

– Rolf, how did you find me?

Turns out Rolf, not being wanted by the police, flew back to the States on a commercial flight, took a bet that I’d try to cross at the busiest port of entry on the border, and started hanging out in T.J. And he found me. Motherfucker actually saw me walk out of the border station, jumped into Sid’s Westphalia, followed me into San Diego, where they almost ran me over, and then tracked me up the I-5. And can you believe that shit?

– Can you believe that shit, dude?

No.

– I mean, I hopped online at the airport before I flew out of Cancun. Got all kinds of stuff about you, like where your folks live and all. You being a novice at border hopping and probably headed for Cali, I figured T.J. was a no-brainer. But the stakeout at the border? That was Sid.

Rolf is driving, Sid is in the passenger seat and I’m on the bench-seat behind them. Sid raises his hand.

– The stakeout was mine.

– Yeah, ’cause I was all about heading for Patterson and looking for you there, ’cause there was no way I figured we’d spot you coming across.

– And I was all, Dude, what if he doesn’t go to see his rents? Then what?

– Turns out we were both right.

– Yeah, but come on, give me props.

Sid holds out his fist and Rolf punches it lightly.

– Props.

The lighter on the dash pops out, Rolf hands it to me. I light the cigarette I’m holding, hand the lighter back, and he clicks it back into its slot.

– Then we just kind of hung back to see what was up.

Sid turns to face me.

– We didn’t want to freak you out, and Rolf was all, Dude, we need to wait till he makes a move for whatever ducats he has stashed.

– We drove by the house every hour or so. Hung out at the Mickey D’s by the highway and then parked up the street after dark.

– We had the beds down and our bags out when we heard that crash, and then the shots. I was all, Hit it!

– Took us a couple turns to find the scene. By then the fire department was there, so we cruised by and went around the block to your folks’ place.

– And, dude, there you are, comin’ out the front door. Like, total kismet.

– We lost you when you hopped the fence, but we had seen you take your car to the garage, so we went there.

– And there you are blastin’ away from that cop. Damn! Wicked!

– So we followed.

– And I took care of that deputy dog and here we is. More props.

He sticks out his fist and Rolf props him. He offers his fist to me. I look at it.

In the cabinet with the true crime books, Sid also has some of the most rancid and violent porn I have ever seen, a stack of Soldier of Fortune back issues, the boxed Faces of Death DVD set, and some other shit that makes me suspect central casting called and requested a potential serial killer. He’s waiting, his fist held out for props. I give him props. Now is not the time to get squeamish. I just have to make sure to kill him before he can hurt anyone else. That should be easy. Look at how much more experience I have at it than him.

IT’S ABOUT a hundred and fifty miles through the Mojave to Vegas. Even at the Westphalia’s putt-putt top speed, we should be able to do it in three hours. After that? We go to Tim’s, I pay off Rolf, and he and Sid disappear. I take the rest to Dylan, and he accepts it even though it’s a bit light. I walk into a police station and turn myself in, and my folks stop getting hassled. And I begin what will end up being years and years of trials and appeals and…

But it won’t work out like that. It will never work out like that.

For now I focus on getting a step closer to the money, and keep smoking cigarette after cigarette because they seem to help just slightly with the massive headache I’ve had since Rolf and Sid started talking football.

They’re both San Diego Charger fans and are looking for help this week from my precious Fins. Rolf is still behind the wheel, Sid is in the living space of the van, stripping and stuffing all his clothes into a plastic garbage bag.

– Dude, if they can just beat the Raiders, and we take the Broncos, we clinch the AFC West. That’s all I’m asking for, one win.

As he drives, Rolf is taking hits off a sneak-a-toke that’s camouflaged to look like a stubby cigarette.

– Ain’t gonna happen, dude. And you shouldn’t be thinking like that anyway. It’s so negative. Our destiny is in our own hands: win the last two games and take the West. Don’t be looking for help from other teams, especially not the Fish, and, dude, not without Miles. Without Miles they’re rank.

I keep my eyes closed and pinch the bridge of my nose, which also seems to help a bit with the pain.

– Actually, Sid, he’s right. The Dolphins have a long history of choking in December. Win your own division and let me worry about mine. I mean, after we lose this week, we have to go to New York and get really humiliated by the Jets to finish the season.

– Dude, losing to the Jets sucks.

– Yes, it does.

Sid climbs back up front. He’s changed into bright red hemp jeans tucked into fringed moccasin boots, and a short-sleeved, blue Lycra rash guard.

– Your turn.

– Right.

I climb around him into the back and start taking off my tattered clothes. I’m still in the thermal top and ragged jeans I had on at Wade’s. The clothes I cleaned at Mom and Dad’s got left in the Monte Carlo. Now Sid wants us all to change and bury the stuff we’re wearing so we don’t “leave a chain of physical evidence.” I drop my dirty clothes into the plastic bag.

The bandage the EMT put on my leg is expert and still holding firm. It has a large red stain on it. The wound throbs in time with my heartbeat, but it’s a much more manageable pain than the rods of agony that shoot through my concussed head. There’s not much I can do about that right now. The only real treatment for a concussion is rest, and that’s not an option.

I look through Sid’s duffel bag and cabinets for something to wear, but, at five nine and about a buck sixty, Sid is five inches shorter than me and forty pounds lighter.

– None of this is gonna fit.

– It’s all baggy shit, try it on.

I end up decked out in a pair of drawstring pants that just go over my waist, the cuffs dropping to the middle of my calves, and one of those hooded surf tops with the kangaroo pocket in front. There’s no way his shoes are gonna work for me, so I stick with the trail sneakers I put on way back at the bungalow.

I stop, pull my Levis out of the bag, and go through the pockets. Nothing.

– Rolf?

– Dude?

– Do you have my cash and stuff?

– Yeah, sorry, man, kind of went through your pockets while you were out. Look in the zipper pouch on my day pack under the sink.

I open the sink cabinet and take out Rolf’s red, white, and blue day pack. In the pouch I find the cash, the Carlysle ID, and the Christmas card I took from Wade’s kitchen table. I also find the Anaconda and Danny’s pistol. I stuff the card and money in my pocket. I look at the ID. I don’t recall the border guard making any record of my name when I crossed, but with my face all over the TV who knows what he’ll remember. I dump the useless ID in the garbage bag and leave the guns in Rolf’s pack.

– You’re up, Rolf.

He scoots out of the driver’s seat and Sid scoots in under him, a smooth and practiced move. He comes back and I sit on the floor while he strips naked except for the money belt. Up front, Sid slips System of a Down into the stereo and cranks it up.

Rolf dumps his clothes and finds Sid’s black leather pants.

– Haven’t worn a pair of these since I moved to Mexico.

He’s Sid’s height, but a couple pounds heavier. He has to lie on his back, kick his way into the pants, and suck in his stomach to button them.

– Sweet.

He shrugs on a yellow long-sleeved T-shirt with black stripes running down the arms, and gets his feet into a pair of Red Wing work boots.

– Kinda metalish for my taste, but fuck it, we’re incognito, right?

I don’t say anything, just tilt my head toward Sid. Rolph looks over his shoulder toward the front of the van. Sid is singing along to “Chop Suey!” Rolf looks back at me.

– What’s up, dude?

– Where did you get him?

– He’s the kid brother of this chick I used to hook up with in San Diego. Couple years ago he came to Mexico on a surf trip and looked me up. We stayed in touch. I needed a ride and some help here, so I called him.

– You know he’s a psycho.

– Dude. I knew he could get pretty violent. I mean, his pop kicked him and his sister around pretty fuckin’ hard, so that’s like his socialization, right?

I don’t say anything. He licks his lips, nods.

– OK. Yeah, dude, I know. He’s psycho. Why do you think I brought him along?

– What?

– Dude, no way I’m gonna go bustin’ a cap in any more people. I most especially don’t intend to be doin’ it now that I am north of the border. That would be unwise. But there may be killin’ to be done.

– So you brought Sid.

– So I brought Sid. Killin’ time is hard time. And, if we get caught? Hard time is not in my plans. Sid can take that heat.

I don’t say anything to the man in front of me, the man I used to go fishing with in Mexico.

– Dudes!

Rolf looks over the seat into the front of the bus.

– What’s up?

– We need gas. Baker’s right up here. I’m gonna pull off. And, dudes, we can check out the World’s Tallest Thermometer.

I stay in the back and look at Rolf’s day pack and think about the guns in it.

SID PULLS off the I-5 onto Baker Boulevard, into the heart and soul of Baker. That heart and soul is an expanse of tarmac that hosts the Mad Greek, the “Original” Bun Boy, the Country Store (“the Luckiest Lotto Dealer in California”), and the Will’s Fargo, Bun Boy, and Arne’s Royal Hawaiian motels. All have a great view of the thermometer. Then again, all of Baker has a view of the hundred-and-thirty-four-foot thermometer.

– Sid?

– Dude?

– Isn’t this stop playing against the plan to keep moving?

– Dude, we need gas. Oh, man, check it out!

He’s pointing at the thermometer.

– I’m gonna get a picture.

He grabs a disposable camera from the glove box and jumps out of the VW. We watch as he runs to the base of the thermometer, stands with his back to it, holds the camera at waist level, pointing it up at himself, and clicks a picture. Then he runs back and jumps in.

– That is gonna be rad.

He pulls the bus under the brightly lighted awning of a Shell station.

– Uh, dudes, I could kinda use some gas money.

Rolf pats his pockets, ignoring the seventy-five grand wrapped around his middle.

– Yeah, dude, I’m kinda tapped too.

I reach in my pocket. After buying the BMW, I have just under four thousand left. I take five hundred off the roll and hold the cash out to Sid.

– For travel expenses.

– Dude, you sure?

– Yeah.

– You are so cool. Thanks, dude.

He hops out to fill that tank and climbs back in a couple minutes later.

– Dude in the station says we got to have a strawberry shake at that Mad Greek place. How ’bout it? My treat, seein’ as I’m flush.

He parks at the far end of the lot, away from the lights, and goes in for the shakes. I get out and stand, stretching my cramped limbs and trying to walk the stiffness out of the wound in my left thigh. My head is still goofy. If I turn it too quickly everything blurs and I have to wait for all the ghost images to catch up with the real world. But my stomach has settled and I’m looking forward to my shake.

Sid comes back. I slide the side door of the bus open, sit on the floor with my feet hanging out, and sip my shake. Rolf stays in the front seat, sucking hard on his straw. Sid is pacing back and forth in front of me, drinking his shake and trying not to look like he’s watching me, but he is.

I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want to talk to him. But I need him to like me. I need it to be harder for him to kill me, if it comes to that. When it comes to that.

– Sid, why don’t you sit down?

– That’s cool, dude, I’m OK.

– You’re making me a little nervous, have a seat.

He shrugs and sits next to me, leaving as much room as possible between us. He kicks his feet against the tarmac, takes a sip, and lifts his shake.

– Good, huh?

– Yeah.

– Yeah.

There’s a loud gurgling slurp as Rolf hits the bottom of his shake. He climbs out of the bus and points at the Mad Greek.

– I’m gonna piss, dudes. Then we roll.

Sid bobs his head.

– Dude, yeah, we, like, still have to find a spot to bury the clothes and shit. I mean, that’s cool right, Hank? That’s the way to do it?

– Yeah, sure.

Rolf walks toward the restaurant. Sid watches him disappear inside. He sucks some shake into his straw, pulls the straw from the waxed paper cup, and shoots a stream of shake onto the ground. He looks at me out of the corner of his eye.

– It’s OK, dude.

– What’s that?

– If you think I’m a freak. Like the story of my life. Whatever.

He leans forward and puts his elbows on his knees, fills his straw with shake again, and starts Pollocking little abstracts on the ground between his feet.

– I don’t think you’re a freak, Sid. I just don’t know what you’re doing here.

He shrugs.

– I don’t know.

– Is it the money?

Thinking about his cabinet of fetishes, knowing already it is not about the money for this guy. He shakes his head, hard.

– No, dude, I don’t want your money, man. I mean, like, I like money. I’m not that big a freak, but.

He takes another sip of his shake, then pulls the top off and dumps the rest of it on the ground, obliterating his design.

– What, Sid?

He crumples up the cup, throws it in some bushes alongside the parking lot, stands up and faces me.

– I don’t want your money, dude. I want to be a part of something. I just, like. Like, when Rolf told me he needed help finding someone, and there was cashish in it, I was all, Totally, I’m in. But then, when I found out it was you? Dude! I was, like, all, No way! I’m… I am such a freak, and I’ve never done anything. I mean, if I told you, if I told you just how fucked up, how stupid my life is, dude, you just wouldn’t fucking believe. But you? You’re this totally famous dude! You’ve done so much with your life. When I found out Rolf knew you and all, I just wanted, I just wanted to meet you and. I just wanted to help out, do my part and be a part of something for once. Be a part of something important, dude. Like when, dude, when I shot that cop? That was, that was, it was so ir-fucking-revocable. That was real. I was all, This is me now doing this and I can’t take it back. And I totally felt it. In the moment. More than anything I’ve ever done in my life. More than fucking or getting high or holding up a gas station or even catching a monster wave, dude. I mean, I’ve been dreaming about a feeling that real my whole life. And I got to feel that because of you.

He kicks at nothing, hard.

– Dude! I’m sorry. I’m not trying to freak you out, but I am like such a fan and I just think you are so cool and I can’t change that, you know? And this is just such an amazing experience for me. Shaaaw! I am such a geek.

He stands there in front of me, staring at the ground, too embarrassed to look up. Behind him, through the windows of the Mad Greek, I can see Rolf coming out of the bathroom.

I can do this.

Mom and Dad.

I can do this.

– Actually, man.

Sid looks up a little.

– Actually. I think that’s pretty cool, Sid.

A smile cracks across his face.

– Dude?

– I think it’s pretty cool that you want to be a part of something, that you have ambition. And, you know, I’ve never had a fan before.

He comes over and sits back down, close to me this time.

– Never had a fan? Oh, dude, you have no idea! Online? There are, like, sites just for you, just for people to chat about you. Like, never had a fan? Uh-uh. Huge fan base, dude.

Rolf exits the restaurant.

– That’s cool, maybe you can show me sometime.

– Dude!

– Let’s chill for now. Rolf’s gonna give us both a hard time if he hears this shit. Call us fags.

– No worries, dude.

He looks from my face to where Rolf is approaching, and back at me.

– But, dude, you know I’m totally not.

– What?

– A fag.

Rolf walks up and stands in front of us. Sid spurts out a nervous laugh. Rolf looks at him.

– What?

Sid shakes his head.

– Nothing, dude.

He laughs again.

– Dude, what up?

Still laughing, Sid nods, waves his hand, climbs into the bus, gets behind the wheel, and starts the engine. Rolf leans close to me.

– Dude, I like the little dude, but he is kinda freaky, ain’t he?

THERE’S A checkpoint at the state line. The lights appear on the horizon and we figure what it must be before we get there. Sid slows down, but keeps driving toward it. Rolf climbs in the back, pulls the foam pad off of the bench/bed at the back of the bus. There’s a shallow depression underneath and the underside of the pad has been carved out to create extra storage space. Rolf grabs the sleeping bags currently occupying this space and tosses them on the floor.

– Dude, can you fit in here?

I peek in the cramped space.

– Uh, maybe I should just stay up here, put on a hat and.

– They have your picture, dude.

– They’re not looking for three guys in a.

– You been listening to Sid? We don’t know what they’re looking for.

Sid is nodding.

– Dude is right. If they’re looking for a Westy, we’re fucked no matter what. Otherwise, you’re the wanted man.

Rolf tosses the guns from his day pack into the stash space.

– Even if they search us, there’s a good chance they won’t find you in there.

– Let’s just turn around.

The lights are bright now. Sid’s shaking his head.

– Too late for that, dude. They see us flip a bitch here and we’ll have to pull a Smokey and the Bandit in this thing. No way.

Rolf is holding the pad up.

– In, dude.

– Maaan.

– Dude, who’s the professional people smuggler?

I climb in, kick the guns to the bottom of the space, and try to make myself flat. Rolf stuffs a couple sweatshirts around my head.

– What the hell are those for?

– In case a cop decides to sit on you.

– Oh, fuck you, man.

He laughs and drops the pad.

I’M NOT claustrophobic, but I do a pretty good impersonation of someone who is. It’s not so much small places that I’m afraid of as being restrained. I wasn’t born with this fear, it’s just that it reminds me of being gagged with a dirty sock, pinned to a bed, and tortured. That is something I have experience with, and I don’t expect to be getting over it. Ever. I looked it up once. There’s no name for my specific association, but there’s something called merinthophobia: the fear of being bound or tied. Being packed into a shallow depression and having a foam pad stuffed on top of you may not count as binding or tying, but it will do in a pinch. So I think skinny thoughts, try not to breathe too much, and eke what oxygen I can through the foam.

I HEAR the engine vibrating right under me and the squeak of the brakes as we stop. There are some sounds that might be voices, and then the bus is moving again, pulling forward. Fuckin’ A, that wasn’t too bad. We’re through.

The bus swings to the right, stops, and the engine cuts out.

My heart starts trying to slam a hole in my chest. I suck air, oxygenating my blood like a diver, knowing what’s coming.

The weight in the bus shifts. I hear two bangs: Sid and Rolf climbing out and slamming the doors. A gliding shiver, another bang, another lurch of the bus: the side door being pulled open and a cop climbing in. I stop breathing.

One. Two. Three. Four.

I’m counting. That’s a bad idea. Counting will just make me think about how long I’m holding my breath. I should think about something else. Calm thoughts. The beach. I picture my place at the beach. Palm trees waving, waves lapping. One wave. Two waves. Three waves.

Stop it.

Voices now.

– Mumble mumble in that cabinet?

Has to be a cop.

– Mumble here.

Rolf.

How close are they if I can tell what they’re saying? One foot? Two feet? Three feet? Stop it!

– In that bag mumble?

– Mumble laundry mumble mumble.

– Under mumble there mumble?

Under? Under what? The rug? Are these guys looking for a fugitive or just hassling Rolf and Sid? Under? Fuck! The bench/bed is the top of a low cabinet.

– Mumble look mumble in there?

– Sure, dude.

Fuck you, Rolf.

I can hear it, I can feel it: the cop kneeling on the floor inches from me, popping open the cabinet doors, shining his flashlight inside, digging around right under me, trying to find something that will make his evening more interesting.

He’s digging and digging. One. Two. Three. I need to breathe. I have to move. I can’t be held down like this. I shift a quarter inch to the left and something pokes me in the side. Pictures in my head: being forced facedown on my bed, a man sitting on my legs, pulling out surgical staples, digging holes in my back. One. Two. Three. Stop! Please stop!

I feel pressure on top of the pad. Two hands on my stomach as the cop uses the bed to push himself up. All the remaining air is forced from my lungs.

– Thanks mumble.

And I open my mouth wide and suck and gasp.

Out! I need out!

– No mumble worries.

I shove the pad off. It flops silently to the floor as the door slides shut and bangs tight behind the exiting officer. Rolf glances back at me as he climbs in the front seat and we drive away from the roadblock. The highway patrol cops wave us on.

Up front, Rolf and Sid slap hands and laugh while I hyperventilate and ask myself just what the fuck I think I’m doing with these two. When you get right down to it, are these guys anything but a pile of dead bodies waiting to happen?

We go around a bend, and the guns Rolf stashed in the hole with me slide across the wood and bang against my knee.

BETWEEN JEAN and Sloan, about twenty miles outside Vegas, Sid has Rolf pull a couple dozen yards off the highway, takes the garbage bag full of our clothes and a fold-up camping shovel, and gets out of the bus. Rolf sits in the driver’s seat. I sit behind him on the bench seat. We watch Sid, illuminated by one of those multipurpose emergency lights, as he digs his hole. The Westphalia screens the light from the drivers on the highway. I climb into the front passenger seat, roll down a window, and stick my head out to look up at the stars. Nothing, clouds. Rolf has put in an Allman Brothers tape. I pull my head back in and light a smoke and listen to “Melissa.”

– Rolf?

– Yeah?

He’s focused on his lap, where he has several roaches and scraps of shake spread out on a back issue of Rolling Stone. This is the last of his stash, he’s rolling a couple joints to get him through until he can score some more in Vegas.

– What about Leo and Pedro?

– Dude?

– Do you think they knew who I was? Who I am?

– Who knows what they know, dude? Those guys, are like the. That thing they have in the desert?

– What?

– The thing that doesn’t talk? Napoleon’s soldiers shot the nose off of it?

– The Sphinx?

– Yeah, dude, Pedro and Leo are like the Sphinx, who knows what they know?

He has half the grass scooped onto the cardboard flap of a pack of Zig-Zags. He dumps it into a creased rolling paper he’s holding in his other hand. I check on Sid: still digging.

– Think they’ll get hassled much? Over me?

– Hard to say, dude. Figure those Federales were working on their own, but sooner or later some dude that’s been at The Bucket’s gonna see your pic on TV and remember you. Then who knows what goes down?

I finish my smoke, toss it out the window, and reach in the kangaroo pocket of my pullover for another. My hand slides across cold steel. I feel the cigarette box, take it out, and look inside: three left. I light one and keep the box in my hand.

Rolf is right. My photo is on cable news along with the sketch. That means it will be seen all over the world. A Mexican cop will remember me from Chichen Itza, or somebody from the beach will see it and call the police. Sooner or later they’ll find the connection between the sergeants and me.

– Will they hook Leo to the dead Federales?

The joint is rolled, he’s scraping the rest of the grass together to make a second.

– Nah, I don’t see why they would, dude. I mean, dude, you’re Henry Thompson. After they trace your movements around and talk to people and investigate you for that Russian guy’s death? They’ll finger you for the Federales, and the doctor, too. Why make it harder than it has to be?

Once again, other people’s dead bodies piling up in my account.

– Sorry ’bout that, by the way. Not the way I planned it, dude. But whatever.

– Yeah. Whatever.

He has the second scoop of grass resting in a paper, and holds it while he presses a fingertip onto little flakes still on the magazine cover and flicks them into the unrolled joint. I drag off my cigarette.

– Dude, you need to, like chill out now. Leo and Pedro are total survivors. Their shit might get messed with, but it’s not like they’ll do any time or anything.

He rolls the second joint, tucks it behind his right ear, pulls the first one from behind his left ear, puts it in his mouth, and lights it.

– Want to mellow out?

– I’ll pass.

He tokes the joint and reads Rolling Stone by the light of his Bic. Sid has tossed the bag in the hole and is filling it in. I take a last drag, flick my butt out the window. I slip the cigarette box back in my pocket, and fill my hand.

– So, Rolf, what am I doing with you guys?

He’s still looking at the magazine.

– Dude?

– I mean, why should I stay with you?

He turns his head to look at me and sees Danny’s pistol in my hand, pointed at him.

– I mean, what is it you’re threatening me with?

Rolf starts to straighten up.

– Just stay the fuck where you are.

– Dude, this is so uncool, we have a deal.

– Screw you. I am so sick of that line. I’ve had deals with people like you, and they always get fucked up, and I always end up getting fucked.

– This is such a bad call, dude.

– Why? Tell me why? You can’t go to the cops. You can’t threaten my parents, because you can’t go anywhere near that town. The only thing you can do is kill me or hurt me, so why shouldn’t I just get away from you?

– Oh, dude! Threaten your parents? Like I would do that. That’s ill.

– Is that supposed to make me feel better? Is that supposed to reassure me? Oh, don’t worry, dude, I would never, like, hurt your folks. That shit is, like, totally out of bounds, duuuuuuude.

– Dude, you need to chill.

– Get out of the bus, Rolf.

– Dude.

– GETOUTOFTHEFUCKINGBUS!!!

Something changes outside. My eyes flick to the right. Sid’s light is off. I can’t see him. I can’t see where Sid is.

Rolf moves. He yanks the door handle and pushes backward, falling out of the bus.

My finger jerks on the trigger as Rolf, still in the line of fire, is dropping to the sand. Nothing happens. There is a thump as Rolf lands on the ground, out of view.

I look at the pistol. The safety is on.

The front passenger door opens right behind me. Sid! I fling myself to the floor between the front seats, twisting to land on my back, thumb groping for the safety. I land hard and my head whaps the driver’s seat and my vision rolls a couple times like a TV with the vertical hold out. Sid climbs into the passenger seat I’ve vacated, the stubby camping shovel in his right hand.

– Dude!

My thumb clicks the safety. I’m waving the pistol up and down like a conductor’s baton, trying to track Sid as he flips up my eyeballs over and over.

– Chill.

I pull the trigger and a bullet whangs through the roof of the bus, followed immediately by three or four more. Danny, the incredible asshole, has set the trigger weight at an insanely high sensitivity, and the pistol jumps in my hand, the recoil of each round triggering the next. The blips in my vision roll around once more, and stop as Sid pushes back, tumbling out the door like Rolf did. Time to go.

I crane my head around and reach for the steering wheel to pull myself up, and am just in time to see Rolf’s arm stretched through the open driver’s door, his hand snatching the keys from the ignition.

– No!

I grab at the keys, snag the cuff of his yellow shirt, and press the barrel of the gun against his wrist.

– I’ll blow your fucking hand off, Rolf. Drop the fucking keys.

The bus rocks. Sid again. I turn, bringing the gun around. Rolf pulls free, Sid brings the flat of his shovel down on my right foot and ducks back out of sight before I can get off another shot. This is not working. My little plan of kicking Rolf out of the bus and driving off is not working. I stay low and edge back until I hit the bench seat. The throbbing in my head and left thigh has been joined by one in my right foot.

I peek left and right through the open front doors. No sign of either of them.

– Rolf!

– Dude?

He’s still outside the driver’s side.

– Toss the keys in and then I want you both to walk over in front of the bus where I can see you.

– Dude, no fucking way.

– Rolf, I am going to come out there and just shoot you guys. Now throw in the keys and get where I can see you.

– Dude, you know we have a gun, right?

Uh?

– Like, Sid had to shoot that deputy with something, right, dude?

My stomach drops.

– Bullshit. Why didn’t he just shoot me?

– Dude, because I don’t want to.

Sid, still on the passenger side.

– Bullshit.

BANG!

I duck.

– That wasn’t at you, dude. Just to, like, prove it, you know.

Bad plan, Hank, very bad plan.

– So, dude, toss your piece out and we’ll all chill and get back with the program.

I get on my hands and knees and crawl around the bench seat, into the back of the bus. I find the Anaconda where I stashed it under a loose flap of carpet, and stick it in the pocket of my pullover.

– Dude?

I edge up onto the bed where I hid earlier, staying flat so I can’t be seen through the windows. I grab the handle that opens the rear window, push the little button at its center, and twist.

– Dude?

Is he a little closer? I shout.

– I need to think!

I push the window and it lifts up and out.

Sid calls.

– Brah, don’t do this, man, don’t fuck this up. You know, you so know how important this is to me. I’m all, I’m all… please, dude.

I let go of the window and springs draw it open. I lever myself up and over the window’s lip, roll out, and drop to the ground. The landing jars my squishy brain and blackness strobes at the edge of my vision, then recedes. I crawl the first few feet, the sand dragging at my clumsy limbs, then get into a low crouch, stumbling away from the bus, trying to keep it between me and them.

– DUUUUUDE!

I hear them behind me, climbing into the bus. I drop flat on the ground, worming around so I’m facing the VW. I hold the pistol out, line up the sights with the open rear window of the bus. Rolf’s dreadlocked head appears in the window. I have a shot. I drop the sights and pull the trigger. The bullet dimples the body of the bus and Rolf disappears.

– Dude! No good, man.

– You guys fuck off right now. It’s over.

– Dude. It is not over.

– Rolf, I got more than a few rounds left. You want to rush me? Wait me out till daylight when anyone can see us? It’s over. Take the bus and get going.

– We had a fucking deal.

– Not anymore.

Silence. Then the front doors shut and the bus’s engine starts. The running lights blip on, the bus moves forward a couple feet, stops, and the passenger door opens. Sid steps out.

I draw a bead on him.

– Get back in, Sid.

He walks to the back of the bus.

– I’m gonna shoot, Sid.

He stops, stands there, bathed in red from the taillights.

– This is wrong, Henry. We should all be, like, working together. We can do things together. It’s no good being alone, dude.

– Get back in the bus or I’m gonna shoot you.

– Dude, so ill.

He turns and shuffles back through the sand, head hung low. He’s climbing back into the bus.

– Sid!

– Dude?

– Try not to hurt any more people. It’s wrong.

– Whatever.

He gets in and slams his door. The bus heads for the highway. At the edge of the blacktop it pauses, the headlights come on, a blinker blinks, signaling a merge onto the empty road, and the Westphalia pulls away, the sound of the Allman Brothers spilling from the open back window. “Whipping Post” trailing into the distance.

I stand there, alone in the desert with two guns.

JUST TWENTY miles to Vegas, and I may not be able to make it.

Walking through loose sand in the dark with a gunshot wound in your left leg, a swelling right ankle, and a concussion, is an ordeal. Thirty minutes into the hike I’m exhausted and I’ve smoked my last two cigarettes. I stumble into an embankment, falling into loose rock, and jarring my head. Again. I wait a moment for my vision to clear.

I remember Russ, remember dragging him around, his head getting knocked over and over after I had already smacked it with a baseball bat. The way his speech started to slur, the way he silently died. I need to stop falling down.

I crawl up the short embankment, and grab onto a steel rail. I’ve tripped over the tracks of the Union Pacific.

I pick my way over the tracks and down the opposite embankment and find a two-lane local road. I look in both directions. The road is long and straight and has a culvert running parallel to it. I walk along the edge of the road, making better time, the aches in my foot and leg easing a bit. I pass a road sign. I’m on the County 6 East, six miles from Sloan. Great. Sloan. Not that I know what I’ll do when I get there.

I’m getting cold. I stuff my hands into the front pocket of the pullover along with the two cold hunks of steel. Then I hear a sound building behind me and look over my shoulder. No headlights, but it sounds like a diesel is back there. I edge down into the culvert and lie on my stomach. I can feel a vibration going through the ground. Oh. I flip over and see the headlight of the locomotive coming up the track. Train. I could hop a train. Do these tracks run into Vegas? Where else would they be going out here?

It’s hard to tell how far away the train is, but it must be pretty close for me to feel its vibrations. And it doesn’t look like it’s going all that fast. I climb out of the culvert, hustle as best I can to the tracks, and crouch there. Yeah, this should work. The light gets brighter. The train gets bigger and louder, taking its time, chugging closer. Bigger. Louder. Closer. Bigger. Bigger. Uh. A multiton, yellow and black monster of steel slams past at sixty, buffeting me in its diesel cloud, shaking the earth like a quake and leaving me clutching the rocks on the rail bed, in awe at my utter stupidity. I get to my feet, still shaking, and watch the train disappear in the night. Well, that was an interesting way to almost kill myself.

A mile later I come to a place called Erie, find the same train sitting on the siding, creep up to a car loaded with Nissans, and climb on. Sometimes, even I get lucky.

THE TRAIN pulls out five minutes later and I spend the next half hour huddled between the nose of one Pathfinder and the rear of another, and try to expose the least possible amount of my flesh to the wind of our passage. When I feel the landscape open up around me in the darkness, and the deafening thunder of the train rolls out across the desert, I stick my head out. Up ahead I can see the apocalyptic glow of Las Vegas, the spear of light from the top of the Luxor shooting into the underside of the cloud cover.

Soon, we are passing through the kind of gritty neighborhoods you expect to find bordering a rail line. I see street signs like Blue Diamond Road, West Warm Springs Road, West Sunset Road. None of them are on the very short list of Vegas place names I have in my head, most of which have been culled from Viva Las Vegas and the one trip I took out here when I was in college. Then it’s there, The Strip, a couple blocks off to the right. I can’t see much, but, even ten years after my only visit, I know that’s the place.

We pull into the Vegas rail yard. The train is slowing now, but not much. Doesn’t matter, I have to get off before I find myself in a locked yard patrolled by Union Pacific security.

The train can’t be moving faster than twenty as it pulls in to the yard and I fling myself from the edge of the railcar. I hit, bounce, flop to the ground, and roll over and over in the rocks, praying that the loaded guns in my pocket don’t go off. They don’t.

I sprawl on my back, watching the strange oyster glow of the sky swim around, wishing desperately that I could stay here until someone comes along from UP maintenance to scoop me up with a shovel and toss me into the bed of a truck with the rest of the rail-kill. But I have things to do. I creak to my feet, and limp away from the tracks and around the corner of the wall that surrounds the yard. The signs at the corner tell me I’m at East Charleston and Commerce Street. I close my eyes and collect my thoughts one by one and stack them up where I can look at them.

I need to get the money to keep Mom and Dad safe. I gave the money to Tim. Tim has gone missing. But I do know Tim’s address. Hey! I know Tim’s address! It hasn’t been beaned out of my brain. I can go to Tim’s and… do something! Great! OK. I need a map. I walk into the middle of the empty intersection and look up and down the streets, and see, several blocks away on Commerce, the bright sign of an ampm.

I LOOK like shit. I do not need to see myself to know this, but I take a look in the wing mirror of a parked car just to be sure. I have a cut over my right eye, sticky with clotted blood, my hair is matted with sand and soot, my clothes are torn and filthy, and my hands are scraped and black with the greasy dirt of the train. Wait a minute, what am I worried about? An ampm? In this neighborhood? I am far from the worst case they’ve ever seen in there. Hell, they’ve probably had worse tonight alone.

I walk into a land of fluorescent light and Muzak Christmas carols. The pimply kid behind the counter looks up from his comic book. He looks at me hard. Maybe I look even worse than I thought. Oh, fuck, Hank, you don’t care what you look like, you care about people recognizing you. How did I forget that? Oh, yeah, brain hurt bad. The zitty kid is still looking at me.

– Yeah?

I gape at him.

– You can’t use the bathroom. For customers only.

I don’t need the bathroom. I need. Oh, crap, what do I need? I look around the store. What did I want? No clue. I reach in my pocket and feel around. Guns: two. Check. Cigarettes: none. Check. Cigarettes! I need cigarettes. I take the empty Benson & Hedges box from my pocket, walk to the counter, and show it to the kid. He finishes the page he’s reading, puts down his comic, and looks at the crushed box.

– Benson & Hedges?

I hold up two fingers, and he reaches up to the rack above the counter, grabs two packs.

– Seven even.

I hand him a hundred. He takes it and holds it up to the light, then rings in the sale. I take my smokes and the change and he picks up his comic.

Cool, I’ve achieved something. He lowers his comic a bit and looks at me still standing there.

– What?

Huh?

– You need something else, hombre?

Uh?

– Yes? No?

I shrug.

– So get lost then.

Lost! I look around the store again, and see the maps on the magazine rack. I grab one of Vegas and hand it to the kid. He slaps his comic down on the counter.

– Fucking A. Three ninety-five.

I walk out of the store, map in one hand, cigarettes in the other, and get blinded by the headlights of a car as it pulls up to the pumps. I head for the light cast by a street lamp, and sit down on the curb. I open the map and run down the lists of street names, looking for Commerce. I find it and trace it until it runs into the intersection with West California where the gas station sits. OK, this is a start, I know where I am. I smudge some grease from my finger onto the spot so I won’t lose it. Now, what is Tim’s address? Shit! I had it before. I know where Tim lives, and his address is? Oh, fuck me!

I’m cold and tired and lost and I’ve had enough and I want, I want, I want to call home. I’ve got a phone. But I can’t call home. I can’t do that to them.

Sitting still isn’t good. It’s too easy to feel the pain. Pain spiking my head, throbbing in my thigh, and scratching at a hundred nicks and bruises. My head drops forward, my arms flop at my sides, the map held limply. I’m in bad shape. I know I’m in bad shape. I gotta get out of here, I gotta get up off the ground and go somewhere and get some sleep. I’ll be so much better if I can just get some sleep, give my brain a chance to shut down. Where? Where am I gonna go? What am I gonna do?

I dig a cigarette out of one of my fresh packs.

Where are my matches? I paw through my pockets looking for a match. Where are my goddamn matches? I empty everything from my pockets except for the guns, and dump it all on the cement between my legs. Map, cell phone, charger, cigarettes, Christmas card, empty matchbook, a crumpled pile of hundreds and twenties, a spill of change. Headlights blast me from behind and a car horn jolts me to my feet. I spin, the car from the pumps is a few feet from me, its horn blaring. The silhouette of a head emerges from the driver’s window.

– Get the fuck out of the way!

I look around. I’m right in the middle of the entrance to the station. The driver honks again, loud and long. I hold up a hand, palm out toward the car, bend down to pick up my stuff, and step out of the way as the car moves forward. It’s a taxi. The driver looks at me as he eases past, shakes his head in disgust. I stand there with my hands full of junk. Map, cell, charger, smokes, Christmas card, money.

Christmas card!

The cabby taps his brakes, halting for a moment as a bus drives past. I run up to his open window and stick the red Christmas envelope inside.

– Here, I need to go here.

He ducks back from me and pushes my hand away.

– Fuck off!

I have my head and right shoulder stuck in the window. He tries to shake me loose, and I stumble alongside the crawling cab. I shove the envelope in his face.

– Here!

He’s looking less pissed and more scared now as he slaps at his armrest, trying to roll up his window, but only succeeding in locking and unlocking the doors over and over. I get my other hand inside the window and shake a handful of cash at him. The taxi stops moving.

– A hundred bucks. I’ll give you a hundred.

He looks at the envelope I’m sticking in his face.

– That address is in California.

What? Oh, Christ.

– The other one, the return.

His eyes move to the return address and then to the money in my other hand.

– Two hundred.

– Two hundred.

I peel off two hundreds and hand them to him along with the card in its envelope, then I pull open the back door and flop across the seat.

– You puke or piss or anything back there and it’s gonna cost you another hundred.

The taxi starts to move. I close my eyes.

I OPEN my eyes.

Fuck me; oh fuck me, what am I doing? I look around. Taxi. Got it, I remember. I scooch up in the seat. The cabby is looking at me in the rearview.

– Too much tonight, buddy?

Way too much.

– Yeah.

He stops at a red light.

– In town for the rodeo?

Rodeo?

– Uh.

– Only guys I see as messed up as you are cowboys. You a cowboy?

I laugh.

– Yeah, yeah, I’m a cowboy.

– I figured. Couldn’t pay me enough. Crazy shit.

– Yeah, crazy-shit cowboy, that’s me.

He’s looking at me again in the mirror.

– It’s about a ten-minute ride. Go ahead and take a nap. I’ll wake you.

A nap. That sounds good. I close my eyes.

SOMEONE IS pulling on me. I open my eyes.

– OK, buddy, here we are.

The cabby is tugging me out of the back of his cab. I jerk free and get out, almost fall, and he catches me.

– I got ya.

He’s leading me toward a rust-streaked, white and turquoise trailer. We’re in a trailer park. He helps me up the steps to a small porch and plops me onto a beat-up couch, setting off an eruption of dust. I cough. He points at the trailer.

– OK, this is the place. Don’t look like anyone’s home.

He’s whispering.

– How can ya tell?

– I knocked.

He’s still whispering.

– Just lie down.

He pushes on my shoulder. I lie back on the couch and close my eyes.

– Here’s your Christmas card back.

Still whispering. I feel his hand shoving the card deep in my hip pocket. His hand grasping.

I grab his wrist and lurch up from the couch. He takes a step back, my hand locked on his wrist, his hand still deep in my pocket. I jerk it out and it comes free; the card and a litter of my cash dropping from his fingers. He yanks his hand away. Both of us standing now, he sees just how big I am, how big he is not. I take another step toward him. His eyes are huge. He’s appalled at what he’s tried to do: roll a crazed drunk.

– Easy, buddy.

But I don’t want to be easy. I’ve been easy, now I want to be hard. Instead, I trip over my own feet and fall onto the porch. The cabby seizes the moment, runs to his taxi, and speeds away toward the entrance of the trailer park.

I lower my head. The Astro Turf that covers the porch scruffs against my ear. I look across the flat plain of the porch at my scattered money, and the Christmas card a few inches from my face. I grab the card and roll onto my back. I take the card from its envelope and hold it up to catch the light from one of the lamps that illuminate the park.

It’s a homemade job, worked up on Photoshop or something. It’s a still from A Charlie Brown Christmas, the part where Lucy is flirting with Schroeder, bent over his piano trying to get him to play “Jingle Bells.” The still has been altered. Charlie Brown is standing next to his director’s chair shouting “Action” into his megaphone. Schroeder is playing the piano, he’s naked except for blinders and a red ball-gag. Snoopy is dancing on the piano in front of Lucy, his big dog dick stuck in her mouth. The caption reads “EUGH! DOG GERMS.” Inside is another altered still that features Charlie and Lucy engaged in an act of coprophilia with the caption “Of all the Charlie Browns, you’re the Charlie Browniest.” Charlie’s face has been removed from this one and T has superimposed his own.

Fucking T.

I close my eyes.