15.
We were twenty minutes from Las Cruces when I realized we were not alone.
The strip club was a good half hour behind us, though between the heated bickering, the withering silences, and the bouts of justifiable paranoia that flared up with every speed trap that we'd passed, it felt like twice that long. It was a good thing Gio got the Caddy running when he did – a fire engine and a couple of squad cars went screaming past us in the oncoming lane before we'd gone four blocks from the strip club parking lot, and by the time we reached the highway, a column of smoke a mile high cleaved the morning sky and no doubt drew the attention of every law-enforcement type the city over.
I'll admit, as near as I could tell from the passenger seat, the Cadillac handled like a dream, and as the sun crested overhead, sending the temperature into the seventies, cruising with the top down was a little slice of heaven. The stretch of highway leading upward from West Texas to Las Cruces runs alongside the Mesilla Valley – a fertile floodplain four miles wide, blanketed with lush green farmland and dotted here and there with fragrant pecan groves. It was a pleasant respite from the hostile no man's land we'd been driving through, but I was so damn furious at Gio for the attention he'd drawn our way – and so damn worried about getting snagged by the cops before we managed to track down Varela's soul – I couldn't properly enjoy it. So instead, I sat there needling him, oblivious to the danger lurking a couple feet behind us.
"Seriously, Gio, what the hell were you thinking?"
Gio said nothing. He just grit his teeth and drove, his fingers white-knuckled on the wheel. I wasn't surprised; I'd asked him that at least a dozen times in the past half hour.
"What, you're not talking now? Come on, Smart Guy – I'd
love
for you to fill me in on your master plan."
At that, he wheeled toward me, his eyes glinting with anger. "Fuck you, Sam. If it wasn't for me, you'd be bleeding to death in the fucking desert right now. And has it even occurred to you that if you hadn't decided to hold your impromptu little Q-andA back there instead of letting me do my thing, we'da been long gone by the time the Fiesta blew? So don't go crapping on my plan –
you're
the one who went and screwed it up."
"You think the fact that we were there when it happened was the only flaw in your otherwise genius plan? You're even dumber than I thought. Unless you somehow managed to vaporize the Fiesta, they're going to eventually get the VIN off of it, which means they'll be able to track it back to Ethan and to Illinois. Ethan's no doubt smart enough to leave out the whole walking-dead angle, but you can be damn sure he'll give them our descriptions, and once they know we crossed state lines, the Feds'll get involved. Next thing you know, every cop from here to California's got eyes out for us. And here we are, cruising around in a bright red stolen car the size of a fucking aircraft carrier. You know what? My bad. In retrospect, it was an
awesome
plan."
Gio's borrowed face went red with rage, and he lobbed back a profanity-laced retort, but I didn't pay him any mind. I was preoccupied by the strangest sensation at the nape of my neck – a sudden niggling intuition that something was not quite right.
At first, I had trouble putting my finger on exactly what it was. Not a tingle, to be sure, and not a sudden chill. But as a Collector, I've learned to trust my instincts, and in that moment, my instincts were insisting we were not alone. And in retrospect, that insistence felt not unlike a cowboy boot to the back of the head.
When the kick connected, I pitched forward, and smacked my face into the dash. It hurt like hell, and my vision went spotty, but at least I remained conscious, and my nose stayed where Gio'd put it.
I saw a blur of snake skin out of the corner of my eye, this time heading in Gio's direction. He yelped, and the Cadillac swerved left. Beside us, a car horn blared.
Gio tried to correct, and went too far. We barreled toward the barbed wire fence that separated the dirt shoulder from the green-tinged farmland beyond.
Shi
t, I thought –
two cars in one day? You've got to be kidding me
.
But this time, it wasn't meant to be. I heard a string of curses, delivered in a drawn-out Texan twang, and then an arm shot out from the back seat and grabbed the wheel, yanking it to the left. Our bumper missed the fence post by scant inches, and then Gio slammed the brakes, bringing the Caddy to a skidding halt on the shoulder.
"Jesus H. Christ, that was a close one! I mean, shit, I didn't want that bitch to take ol' Bertha here away from me, but that don't mean I want to go and wreck her!"
I turned toward the source of the statement to find a paunchy, denim-clad sixty-something sprawled across the back seat and fanning himself with a sweat-stained Stetson. A thin cotton blanket that had until moments ago no doubt covered him sat discarded on the seat beside him. He had a shock of white hair atop his head, and a dusting of stubble to match. Gin blossoms colored his nose and cheeks, and his eyes were rimmed with red. As I watched, those eyes widened, and he suddenly twisted around, hanging his head over the side of the car and puking.
Normally, in my world, that's a sure sign of possession, but if the smell coming off this dude was any indication, this time it was the result of way too much tequila. The odor of sick aside, I was relieved that the head-kicking portion of the program was apparently behind us. The shape our passenger was in, he didn't pose much of an immediate threat, so while he was busy purging the contents of his stomach, I wheeled on Gio and tried my best to conjure death-rays with my eyes.
"You have got to be fucking
kidding
me," I whispered. "You didn't check to see if the car was
empty
before you boosted it?"
"How was
I
supposed to know he was sleeping it off in back? With that blanket on, he looked like a pile of junk."
I touched my good hand to the back of my head. "That pile of junk almost took my fucking head off – and damn near got all three of us killed."
"Yeah, but look on the bright side," Gio said, smiling. "If he's here, there ain't nobody around gonna report this baby stolen."
The bright side. Right.
This day kept getting better and better.
Eventually, our cowboy friend's heaving ceased, and he flopped back onto the seat, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.
"Well, hell," he said. "I guess you boys are going to have to take me back now, aintcha?"
"Come again?" I asked, flummoxed. I suppose the more well-behaved among you might not know this, but in my experience, carjackings don't typically elicit such blasé responses.
The man saw my confusion and frowned. "Boy, I don't want to tell you how to do your job, but ain't you repo types just supposed to take the
car
? Jolene's made it pretty clear she wants her half of what I got, but she sure don't seem to want nothin' to do with
me
."
Gio opened his mouth to say something then, but I silenced him with a glance. Then I turned to our new friend and gave him my best not-a-car-thief smile. "Listen, Mr – I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name."
"That's because I didn't throw it, son. Name's Roscoe McRae. As in founder and CEO of McRae Oil, and soon-to-be-ex-husband of one Mrs Jolene McRae. But then, I would've expected you to know that."
"Of course, Mr McRae. Listen, Mr McRae, we're sorry to have troubled you, but we were only doing our job. The agency led us to believe the car would be unattended."
"You're sorry to have troubled me."
"Yes."
"You were only after the car."
"That's right."
"And you think taking the only thing that I got left in this world that brings me any joy wouldn't have
troubled
me?"
"Sir," said Gio, the word dropping unfamiliar from his lips, "if you don't mind my asking, what the hell were you even
doing
back there?"
Roscoe looked at Gio like he was the kid in class you had to keep away from the paste. Then he shook his head and laughed. "You a car guy, son?"
"A little," Gio admitted.
"Ain't no
little
about it – either you
is
or you
ain't
. Me, I been a gear-head since long before I could even reach the pedals, and I always told myself that when I made my fortune, I was gonna get myself a Cadillac – a real one, mind, not one of them silly SUVs all the NBA players cruise around in these days. Took me damn near forty years to manage it, too. So if you think I'd leave this beauty unattended in a strip club parking lot just 'cause I had a little too much to drink, you got another thing coming. Bertha here deserves better'n that – just like she deserves better'n getting auctioned off to the highest bidder so Jolene can buy herself another of them ugly stoles she never even wears. As if she ain't got useless crap to spare now that she's maxed out all my credit cards."
Gio looked chastened. Me, I felt too shitty about the whole affair to bother gloating.
I told you so
is all well and good, but it wasn't going to get us out of the predicament Gio's dumb-ass call had put us in. "For what it's worth," I said to Roscoe, "I'm sorry."
"Ah, hell, son, it ain't your fault. You been nothin' but nice to me since I woke up, and that's even granting that I kicked you in the head. You're so polite, it's almost hard to believe someone went and beat the snot out of you." Roscoe's gaze slipped from my bruised and swollen face to the rocket-ship lines of his beloved Bertha, and his eyes shone wet with tears. "Almost."
He shook his head as if to clear it, and when he met my gaze again, his eyes were dry. "Ain't no use crying, I suppose. You gotta take the hand the good Lord gave you, and do with it the best you can. Tell you what – how about the three of us go and grab a little breakfast, and then y'all can drop me at a bus station so I can head back home. That bitch can wait a spell to get her filthy mitts on Bertha, and I could use a little grease to soak up what's left of this tequila."
After a moment's consideration, I agreed. After what Gio and I had put him through, it seemed to me the least that we could do. And hell, if an hour or so of playing along meant that we could drive this baby free and clear a couple days, then it was time well spent.
So Gio pulled back into traffic, and we continued on our way. I was oddly cheered by Roscoe's presence, and I was heartened by the fact that he believed us to have a legitimate claim to take his car. This quest to recover Varela's soul had thus far proved to be quite the pain in my ass, so it was nice to finally catch a break.
Of course, the problem with being damned is there's no such thing as a lucky break. And as much as I liked Roscoe, I had no idea at the time what a lousy idea it was to let him tag along. If I knew then the cascade of awful
that
call would kick off, I swear I would've given the man his car back on the spot. Reunited with his precious Bertha, Roscoe could've been on his merry way, and me and Gio would've been free to hitch a ride the last twenty-odd miles into town – no harm, no foul.
But I didn't know. So instead of making the smart play, I carried blithely on – oblivious to the disaster that awaited.
16.
If it weren't for Rosita, none of this shit would've happened.
Don't get me wrong – I'm sure that she's a lovely person. And if she isn't, how the hell would I know? I've never even met the woman. But if she hadn't gone and plopped her diner smack in our fucking way, we wouldn't have wound up in such a goddamn mess.
I guess I should've known better, but at the time, all I was thinking of was getting rid of Roscoe without a hitch, and the hand-painted "Rosita's Diner – Nothing Finer!" billboard made the place look divey enough you just
knew
they could fry up a mean egg. Plus, the stretch of I-10 just south of Las Cruces was nothing but farmland and trailer parks, which at the time made Rosita's seem like a godsend. I figured we'd stop long enough to pour some coffee into Roscoe, get him a bite to eat, and call the guy a cab, and that would be the end of that. Hell, I was even going to pay. OK, fine,
Ethan
was – but still, a gesture's a gesture. The way I saw it, it was the least that I could do. But unfortunately, that's not how things shook out.
Just the sight of the place as we pulled up was enough to put a smile on my face. Rosita's was built around an old Valentine Industries lunch counter – those squat little red-and-white diners so common to the Southwest in the decades following the Second World War. Sure, the paint had faded a bit, now more rust-and-sand than red-and-white, and the original railroad car design had been expanded over the years with a series of squat cinderblock additions, painted white and wodged on here and there at random. But still, the sight of the old diner, and the salty-sweet scent of its well-tended griddle, brought me back – back to a time when Danny was a trusted friend, and every meeting with Ana crackled with the spark of possibility. Back when Quinn was a smiling, happy child who dreamed he'd one day be an engineer, building cities out of blocks in his mother's tidy Belfast garden.
I should've known right then Rosita's would be trouble. Those times are long gone now. Ain't nothing going to bring them back, and I'm a sentimental fool for wishing otherwise.
Our problems started in the parking lot. Two black-and-whites, parked nose to tail – their engines running, their drivers chatting amiably over paper cups of coffee. Another cruiser sitting vacant in the lot. We hadn't seen them before we pulled in because the bulk of the parking lot was tucked out of view around back of the rambling hodge-podge structure. In retrospect, I should've realized they'd be here – there wasn't anyplace else nearby for folks to go, and it's not like the cops along this stretch were all that busy. A little all-night place like Rosita's probably topped up their thermoses for free – a small price to pay for a guaranteed police presence in the wee hours of the morning. Helps to keep out the riff-raff – riff-raff who might otherwise be inclined to rob the place. Problem is, it also works on riff-raff like Gio and me, who are just looking for a bite to eat.