The answer wasn?t one Bobby Lee liked to think about. The rest of the team consisted of him and Liam Eriksson, and Liam was already on Jack?s S-list for stealing the disability check and trying to cash it while he and his hooker girlfriend were drunk. Liam and Bobby Lee were basically working stiffs, making a score here and there, putting away a few bucks for a better life, waiting for the proper time to hang it up. They weren?t religious crazoids like Jack, or guys like Hugo who got off on capping people. For Liam and Bobby Lee, it was just a job. But working stiffs were disposable and replaceable. If anyone disagreed with that, he just needed to check out the audience at an ultimate-fighter match.
Bobby Lee remembered when he did his first hit, at age twenty, out on Alligator Alley between Fort Lauderdale and Naples, a five-thou whack on a Cuban who?d raped the daughter of a Mobbed-up guy from the Jersey Shore. At first Bobby Lee thought it might bother him to pop a guy he had nothing against, but it didn?t. He bought the hit a couple of drinks in Lauderdale, told him he had a fishing camp in the Glades, then showed him this big grassy bay in the moonlight and parked two .22 hollow-points, pow, pow, that fast, behind the guy?s ear, and suddenly the guy was facedown in the water, his arms outstretched, his suit coat puffed with air like he was studying the bottom of the bay, the night air throbbing with bullfrogs.
But what should Bobby Lee do now? Deep-six the brothers-in-arms stuff and blow Dodge on Preacher? That thought didn?t sit well, either. If Bobby Lee was to remain a pro back in Florida, where he planned to re-enroll at Miami-Dade, doing an occasional contract job when he needed money, he had to keep his reputation intact. Also, bailing out on Preacher was a good way to ensure a lifetime of looking over his shoulder.
Bobby Lee opened his cel
l phone again and hit the redial button.
?Where you been?? Preacher?s voice said.
?All over most of two counties.?
?Think about what you just said. It?s a contradiction in terms.?
?What??
?What did you find??
?Nothing. But I got an idea.?
?What do you mean, ?nothing???
?What I said. I couldn?t find a Siesta motel. That?s where the guy Junior Whatever said the girl and the soldier were staying.?
?Call me back on a landline.?
?Jack, the CIA isn?t following us around. They pull stuff out of the air when they?re after the rag heads.? Bobby Lee stopped, his frustration with Preacher building. He wanted to throw the cell phone down on the asphalt and stomp it into junk. ?You still pissed at Liam ?cause he tried to cash the soldier?s check??
?What do you think??
?I say give Liam a break. The guy?s out there, he?s trying.?
?Out where??
This time Bobby Lee ignored Preacher?s constant attempts to correct his language and somehow turn it against him. ?Look, I?ll call you back later. I?ve got a plan.?
?You?ve been wandering around on the border for two days. That?s a plan??
?You ever know a junkie who was farther than one day away??
?What?s your point??
?There?s no difference between a junkie and a drunk. A rat goes to its hole. The soldier is a juicer and drifts in and out of A.A., at least that?s the word. Hugo says he?s got a pink scar on his face as thick as an earthworm. I?ll find him. I guarantee it. I called the A.A. hotline and got an area schedule. You still there, Jack??
Had the service simply gone down, or had Preacher hung up? Bobby Lee hit the speed dial, but his call went immediately to voice mail. He closed and opened his eyes, the mountain in front of him like a dark volcanic cone cooling against the evening sun.
THERE WERE FEW twelve-step groups in the area, or at least few that met more often than once a week, and the following day Pete Flores felt he was lucky to hitch a ride to one called the Sundowners that met in a fundamentalist church thirty miles down the road from the motel where he and Vikki were staying. The church house was a white-frame building with a small false bell tower on the apex of the roof and a blue neon cross mounted above the entranceway. In back were a mechanic?s shed and, next to it, a cemetery whose graves were strewn with plastic flowers and jelly glasses green with dried algae. Even with the windows wide open, the air inside the building was stifling, the wood surfaces as warm to the touch as a cookstove. Pete had arrived early at the meeting, and rather than sit in the heat, he went outside and sat on the back steps and looked at the strange chemical-green coloration in the western sky, the sun still as bright as an acetylene torch on the earth?s rim. The sedimentary layers of the mesalike formations were gray and yellow and pink above the dusk gathering on the desert floor. Pete felt as though he were sitting at the bottom of an enormous dried-out riparian bowl, one shaped out of potter?s clay in a prehistoric time, the land giving off an almost feral odor when rain tried to restore it to life.
The man who sat down next to Pete on the step was wearing an immaculate white T-shirt and freshly pressed strap overalls. He smelled of soap and aftershave lotion, and his dark hair was boxed on the back of his neck. His thick half-moon eyebrows were neatly clipped, the cleft in his chin shiny from a fresh shave. There was a bald spot in the center of his head. When he stared southward at the desert, his mouth was a gray slit without expression or character, his eyes dulled over. He pulled a cigarette out of his pack with his lips, then shook another one loose and offered it to Pete.
?Thanks, I never took it up,? Pete said.
?Good choice,? the man said. He lit his cigarette and blew the smoke from the side of his mouth deferentially. ?I?m new at this meet. How is it??
?Don?t know. This is my first time here, too.?
?You got some sobriety in??