The Devil_s Workshop

Chapter 7

Hollywood Mike glowered. "My old man. What a prick!

Know what the worst day of that asshole's life was?"

"Whaaa?" Lucky slurred.

"The day Heidi Fleiss got busted."

Lucky took another pull on the half-empty bottle of Gallo Red Label.

It was seven A. M. Sunday morning. They were both drunk, sprawled against the wooden slats of an empty boxcar coupled in the middle of a manifest freight-a train with many different types of cars-that was making a slow climb up the face of the Black Hills of East Texas. The train creaked and groaned as the scenery drifted lazily past the open door, strobing fingers of pale sunlight into the boxcar and across both of them.

Somebody had recently done a job on Lucky. One of his front teeth had been knocked out; his lip was split and maybe needed stitches. He also had some open sun sores on his lips, caused by passing out in the park on a ninety-degree day. Most of the discoloration and swelling from the beating was hidden under his tangled blond beard. He was thirty-seven, but seemed ageless. Greasy, shoulder-length hair hung limp; his blue eyes were rimmed in red and remained unfocused as he rocked with the motion of the car.

Lucky didn't know who had beaten him up, because he'd been passed out in a hobo encampment, known as a jungle, when it happened. He woke up just in time to be knocked unconscious again. He'd lost five dollars that he'd earned in Waco, Texas, chopping wood, but more important, he'd lost his torn Nikes to the vicious unseen jungle buzzard who'd attacked him. Now his feet were wrapped and tied in black plastic garbage bags that he'd stolen from containers behind the Salvation Army mission, known as a "sally." The mission director had thrown both him and Hollywood Mike out after a two-day visit, two days being the limit you could stay in one of those preachy "ear-bangs."

They had gone to the switching yard in Waco and had "caught out" on this manifest train.

Hollywood Mike, at twenty-two, was fifteen years younger than Lucky, and he still had his shoes, but aside from these two advantages, there was little difference between them. He was just as scruffy, and almost as drunk. His curly hair was plastered on his head with just as much road muck. His one wardrobe statement, which was responsible for his nickname, he wore under torn coveralls. It was a movie premiere T-shirt that read: