is head. ?I haven?t said no to your offer, but I need a sit-down before I finalize anything.?
?It?s not an offer, Nicholas. ?Offer? is the wrong word.?
?You used the name of this guy Preacher. He?s the guy who?s supposed to give me cold sweats, right? If he?s a factor, he should be there, too.?
?Be where??
?At the sit-down. I want to meet him.?
?If you meet Jack Collins, it?ll be about two seconds before you become worm food.?
?You?re saying you can?t control this guy? I?m supposed to give you twenty-five percent of two businesses so I can be safe from a guy you can?t control??
?You?re not giving me anything. You owe me over a hundred thou. I owe that to other people. If you don?t pay the vig, the vig falls on me. I don?t pay other people?s vig, Nick.?
?Was your driver at my club last night??
?How would I know??
?A guy answering his description got thrown out. He was shooting off his mouth with my manager. He claimed he was going to be working there. You want the sit-down or not? You called this guy Collins a religious nut. If I get to him first, I?ll tell him that.?
There was a long pause. ?Maybe your wife gave you a blow job this morning and convinced you you?re not a pitiful putz. The truth is otherwise, Nick. You?re still a pitiful putz. But I?ll call Preacher. And I?ll also have those transfers of title rewritten. Forget twenty-five percent. The new partnership will be fifty-fifty. Give me some shit and it will go to sixty-forty. Guess who will get the forty.?
Hugo hung up.
?Got everything worked out?? the driver of the Chrysler said through the window.
PETE AND VIKKI got exactly sixteen miles up a dark highway when the car Pete?s cousin had sold him on credit dropped the crankshaft on the asphalt, sparks grinding under the frame as the car slid sideways into soil that exploded around them like soft chalk.
When Pete called, the cousin told him the car came with no guarantees and the cousin?s car lot did not have a complaint window for people with buyer?s remorse. He also indicated he and his wife were leaving with the kids early in the morning for a week of rest and relaxation in Orlando.
Vikki and Pete removed two suitcases and Vikki?s guitar and a bag of groceries from the car and stood by the roadside, thumbs out. A tractor-trailer rimmed with lights roared past them, then a mobile home and a prison bus and a gas-guzzler packed with Mexican drunks, the top half of the car cut off with an acetylene torch. The next vehicle was an ambulance, followed by a sheriff?s cruiser, both of them with sirens on.
Two minutes later, a second cruiser appeared far down the road, its flasher rippling, its siren off. It came steadily out of the south, a bank of low mountains behind it, the stars vaporous and hot against a blue-black sky. The cruiser seemed to slow, perhaps to forty or forty-five miles per hour, gliding past them, the driver holding a microphone to his mouth, his face turned fully on them.
?He?s calling us in,? Pete said.
?Maybe he?s sending a wrecker,? Vikki said.
?No, he?s bad news.? Pete widened his eyes and wiped at his mouth. ?I told you, he?s stopping.?
The cruiser pulled to the right shoulder and remained stationary, its front wheels cut back toward the center stripe, the interior light on.
?What?s he doing?? Vikki said.
?He?s probably got a description of us on his clipboard. Yep, here he comes.?
They stared numbly into the cruiser?s approaching headlights, their eyes watering, their hearts beating. The air seemed clotted with dust and bugs and gnats, the roadway still warm from the sunset, smelling of oil and rubber. Then, for no apparent reason, the cruiser made a U-turn and headed north again, its weight sinking on the back springs.
?He?ll be back. We have to get off the highway,? Pete said.
They crossed to the other side of the asphalt and began walking, glancing back over their shoulders, their abandoned car with all their household possessions dropping behind them into the darkness. A half hour later, a black man wearing strap overalls with no shirt stopped and said he was headed to his home, seventy miles southwest. ?That?s pert? exactly where we?re going,? Pete said.
They paid a week?s advance rent, twenty dollars per day, at a motel on a stretch of side road that resembled a Hollywood re-creation of Highway 66 during the 1950s: a pink plaster-of-Paris archway over the road, painted with roses; a diner shaped like an Airstream trailer with a tin facsimile of a rocket on top; a circular building made to look like a bulging cheeseburger with service windows; a drive-in movie theater and a miniature golf course blown with trash and tumbleweed, the empty marquee patterned with birdshot; a red-green-and-purple neon war bonnet high up on the log facade of a beer joint and steak house; three Cadillac car bodies buried seemingly nose-first in the earth, their fins slicing the wind.
?This is a pretty neat place, if you ask me,? Pete said, sitting on the side of the bed, looking through the side window at the landscape. He was barefoot and shirtless, and in the soft light of morning, the skin along his shoulder and one side of his back had the texture of lampshade material that has been wrinkled by intense heat.
?Pete, what are we going to do? We don?t have a car, we?re almost broke, and cops are probably looking for us all over Texas,? Vikki said.