I Don't Like Where This Is Going (11 page)

“We won't get stopped.”

On the radio, Richie launched into an unprovoked rant about women who were ruining sports with their ridiculous emotions and their stupid opinions. Women, Richie said, had turned
professional sports into a world of sissies. I looked at Mike. “Really, Mike. We have to listen to this?”

Mike told the radio to call his bookie. And then he put $500 on the Heat in tonight's game. When we got back to Richie, he was talking about restraining orders and pepper spray and cock teasing, and he said he didn't care what the pussies calling in had to say. He told them to talk to Oprah. He was right, he said. He was very right.

Mike took out a cigarette and lit it.

I said, “What the hell, Mike? You trying to kill us?”

“I'm nowhere near the gas.”

“It's the fumes that burn, not the liquid.”

“I did not know that.” He held his cigarette outside the window and the wind blew sparks to the backseat. “I'll be careful.”

We stopped on 75. I bought some oranges at the roadside fruit stand while Mike refueled the tank and tossed the spent cans into the Dumpster. He smoked a cigarette before we hit the road. I thanked him for his courtesy. He said the courtesy would last forty minutes. I asked him when the car was due back at Enterprise.

“It's a disposable.”

“A what?”

“A burner. It's rented a to guy named Paul, D. for David, Reed, from Richardson, Texas, SS number 465-97-1224, who does not actually exist in our world as we know it. Mike showed me Paul's Texas driver's license with Mike's photo on it. Mike opened a second Red Bull and drank it in one swallow. “Time's a-wasting, amigo.”

I WOKE IN A FOG
. “What the hell is that?”

“The battleship
Alabama.”

“Are we at war?”

Mike swerved to avoid an armadillo, but the armadillo jumped up into the car's grille. Mike made the sign of the cross and asked me to grab him a sandwich from the cooler. We ate as we drove through Mobile. He asked me if I had noticed anything about all the perky weather girls on the news-at-noon shows in Miami. He told me they were all pregnant. All at once. “What do you suppose is going on?”

On the radio a pair of apoplectic dopes were screaming about a referee's missed call that cost the Mavericks a win, and they weren't surprised when irate fans started sending threatening e-mails to the ref's family.

We checked into the Ville Platte Night's Inn at eight-fifteen, and when I say
we
, I mean Paul Reed. No lifeguard on duty, no water in the pool. No soda in the vending machine. Mike had driven every mile of the way. I'd taken four naps totaling three hours of blessed sleep and relief from the nightmare of sports talk radio. Never was so much said by so many about so little. We'd passed dozens of state troopers, and I held my breath to still my heart at every pass. We'd seen the aftermath of three accidents, one of which was magnificent. A man driving a Ford F-150 pickup, towing a twenty-eight-foot travel trailer and towing a pop-up camper behind that, managed a three-vehicle pileup all on his own when one vehicle in his convoy jackknifed. The resulting triangular wreckage blocked all eastbound traffic on I-10 from Gulfport to the Louisiana state line.

Mike kicked off his loafers, collapsed onto his bed, and fell asleep fully dressed. My own body was still vibrating from the rhythm of the road. I sipped a glass of cognac to take the edge off. The image of my imminent arrest in Vegas had me jittery and semi-alert. The motel room wasn't helping my mood. The faucet
on the sink was installed at a ridiculous angle; the security chain door lock was missing the button-link that attached it to the track mounted to the wall. On the toilet lid in the bathroom I found a yellowed nap sack “for disposal of sanitary napkins” with a drawing on it of a vase with a sprig of blue flowers, a visual motif repeated in the framed art—screwed into the bathroom wall as if a woebegone traveler might want to steal it—a painting of a brown vase laden with large pink blossoms. The orange paint from a recent renovation dripped down the bathroom wall and over some of the tan tile. And I thought maybe I deserved to linger in this squalor.

I turned on the TV and imagined myself on the screen doing the perp walk from the squad car to the courthouse the way this guy in Opelousas who'd allegedly murdered his wife was doing. The perky weather girl on Channel 4 was pregnant. I caught myself nodding off, but I was unable to stay under, until I seduced myself with the idea that I was already asleep and none of this hellacious odyssey was happening, and then, unburdened of the truth, I drifted off to slumberland.

I woke up in my not-so-comfy chair with a sore back. The TV was off and Mike was gone, but he'd left his clothes in a pile on the floor. I shaved, showered, dressed, packed my overnight bag, gathered Mike's clothes, and headed out to the parking lot, where I saw Mike filling the Rogue's gas tank.

“You forgot these,” I said.

“I left them.”

“Why?”

“The stores are full of that shit. I don't need to be schlepping soiled clothes around with me. Just not very classy, my friend.”

He had used a room towel to wipe away the armadillo residue from the front bumper. He stuffed the towel, the clothes, and the empty cans into the trash receptacle. We bought leaden doughnuts
and washy coffee at a drive-thru called Sinkers, but not before I had hurried into Evangeline Drugs and bought Mike an electronic cigarette. I gave it to him and said, “Humor me.”

I almost had a heart attack somewhere in West Texas. I'd finally been lulled into tranquillity by the passing landscapes and the soothing music of tires on concrete. We were cruising along at eighty-five or ninety, keeping pace with the sparse traffic. Mike was drinking a beer, eating a sandwich, and listening to a baseball game when we heard a siren and felt, as much as we saw, the flashing lights from the cruiser behind us. Where the hell had that guy come from? Mike told me to relax and to let him do the talking, but if I had to say something, I was to call him Paul. Got it? Just as Mike eased the car to the shoulder, the trooper blew by and nabbed the car ahead of us. I breathed again. Mike said, “We are some lucky bastards, Coyote.”

I FOUND OUT
about our substantial arsenal in Moriarty, New Mexico. We'd stopped at a gas station/convenience store and parked on the side by the Dumpster. I noticed an apartment upstairs over the store. An open window, lacy curtains fluttering in the soft evening breeze.

Mike said. “Go in and get us ten lotto tickets while I top off the tank. We're on a lucky streak.”

“We are?”

“On fire.”

I gathered food wrappers, tissues, napkins, empty cans, and empty bottles from the car and tossed them into the Dumpster. Mike grabbed a gas can from the wayback and lit up an actual cigarette. He raised his eyebrows and gave me a look like a defiant adolescent would, like,
I can smoke if I want to.
I headed for the
store. I saw a young woman sitting in the apartment window, dandling a baby on her lap, and watching me. I smiled and nodded. I wondered what she was thinking about one more stranger passing through her life, and I tried to imagine her existence upstairs and imagined it noisy, cramped, and drab.

I bought ten Powerball quick picks. The ginger-haired clerk asked me where we were headed. I told him Vegas and asked him if he lived upstairs.

He did. “Short commute.”

“That your wife and baby in the window?”

“I'm just the baby's daddy. Not one to be tied down, you know.”

“Where you going?”

He smiled. “Places.”

Once I was back outside, I saw Mike holding a pistol at arm's length and aiming it at the Dumpster. And then I heard
pop!
He must have slipped a noise suppressor over the barrel. I looked up at the apartment window. Ginger's woman and child were gone—she to call the cops, I was certain. I said, “Let's get out of here.”

“I hate rats.”

“Is that rat bothering you?”

“Not anymore.”

“Rats don't want trouble; they want food.” I opened the passenger door.

“What animal do you hate?”

“You mean
hate
it so if I saw one, I'd kill it?”

“Right.”

“None.”

“Not even those fish that swim up your dick and stay there? Not them?”

“Fish?”

“Toothpick fish. Jesus, Coyote, your knowledge of the animal kingdom is pitiful.”

“Can we get a move on?”

“Now I have to pee.”

“So pee right here.”

“Like a dog? No, thank you.”

When Mike returned and drew out the pistol he'd tucked into the back of his slacks, he opened a storage space beneath the cargo deck where you might expect to find a spare tire and a jack. What we found were two rifles, a shotgun, another pistol, and an AK-47.

I said, “What if that cop had searched us?”

“All legal.”

“All necessary?”

“We'll see.”

WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN
a sweet and leisurely evening for Mike and me turned sour and turbulent in an Albuquerque minute. Mike had dozed off to sleep in our room at the Rodeway Inn Midtown while I watched the local news and learned that we had won $5,000 in the lottery. I couldn't help myself. I slapped the arm of the chair and said, “Goddamn!”

Mike stirred. “What?”

I told him what. He said we should celebrate.

We drove down Central Avenue looking for a bar that sang to us. Zinc Bar, nope. Kelley's Pub. Nope. Scalo's? Too grand. Two Fools Tavern? Too close to home. Something Brew Pub. Something Else Bistro. Cantina Lobo—that's it! We found a parking space across the street and down the block. And then we found a guy slapping a woman in the face down the alley beside the cantina. Strapping fellow, wispy woman. Then the asshole grabbed
her by the throat and shoved her against the brick wall. I looked at Mike and thought, We can't even go out for a drink without finding trouble. Mike grabbed the guy's shoulder, spun him around, and head-butted him. The goon's shattered nose gushed blood; he dropped to his knees and threw up. The woman cried.

I said, “Are you okay?”

Mike said, “He won't bother you again.”

I said, “We should call the cops.”

Mike said, “But we don't want to see the cops.”

“Right,” I said. I took the trembling woman's elbow. “Come with us.”

The assailant tried to speak. Mike planted a foot in the guy's ribs and rolled him over onto his back. His Duke City Gym T-shirt was soaked in blood and dribbled with vomit. The guy said, “You'll be sorry.”

Mike cupped his hand behind his ear. “I don't hear so well in the dark.”

I said, “We really need to go,” and we hurried to the car. I hopped in back with the remaining gas cans.

Mike opened the passenger door for the woman and said, “Pardon our appearance while we're remodeling.”

Her left cheek was swollen and bruised. She did not want to go to the ER, and she was afraid to go home, and she didn't want to get friends involved. She asked us to drop her off at the Best Western in Old Town.

I said, “I'm Wylie, and this is—”

“Paul,” Mike said.

“Tracy,” she said.

Mike said, “Here comes the cavalry.” Tracy's assailant and three other bald, tattooed, pinheaded prednisone freaks with bitch-tits were waddling toward us, one of them wielding a baseball bat.
There would be no reasoning with these four cock diesels in the throes of 'roid rage. Mike started the engine. The four jamokes surrounded the car. The batsman swung at the passenger window, sending Tracy into hysterics. The window shattered but did not break.

When Mike backed up, we heard a nightmarish scream. The dashboard monitor showed that we had pinned one bonehead against the car behind us, and that sent Barry Bonds into a frenzy of window-clubbing. Another lummox climbed up the hood and onto the roof and began stomping. Mike excused himself to Tracy, reached across her to the glove box, took out a pistol, and fired a bullet through the roof. The stomping ceased. Tracy's bloodied mugger stood in front of the car, pointing his finger at her, and slamming his mighty fists onto the hood. Mike ran him over, and we headed down Central away from the lights of the city center. I looked behind us and saw our flattened beast struggle to his feet. We made a right at the first dark street we saw, and the rooftop passenger slid off the car, onto the pavement, and rolled to the gutter.

At the Best Western, Tracy thanked us for saving her life. We told her she should give the cops a call. She said she would. We watched her walk to the lobby. I said, “Her name's not Tracy.”

“What I was thinking.”

“And Sluggo was her boyfriend.”

“She'll probably bring him soup at the hospital.”

Mike dropped me at the Rodeway, said we needed a new car, and I'd only be in the way. He'd see me in the morning. I thought I'd never sleep, given the violence we'd just endured—all very disturbing, of course, but I was relieved, if not elated, that we had survived. After a glass of cognac, I was out.

When I got out of the shower in the morning, Mike was sitting
at the desk reading the complimentary newspaper. He told me that Paul Reed's virtual cousin, Walter Becker, had rented a new car, and Mike led me out to the parking lot to see the sparkling silver Rogue, complete with fuel cans, arsenal, and beverages. I didn't ask. I did beg for coffee. We stopped at a drive-thru place in a dingy neighborhood near I-40 for breakfast burritos and coffee. Mike called my attention to a burned-out shell of a car that was still smoldering on the swale of a dead-end street. He shook his head. “Someone's having a worse day than we are.”

WE CRESTED A BARREN
hill at dusk, rounded a curve, and as we descended into Las Vegas Valley, there below us lay a sea of glistering light in the blank and pitiless expanse, and I agreed with Mike that the view was both exhilarating and miraculous, especially after driving so many hundreds of etherizing miles through empty and inhospitable desert.