Bean jammed down the accelerator. The truck lurched and bumped as though taking a deep breath. Then it jumped forward.
Bassi whipped his gun onto the hood and leveled it at Bean.
Bean jerked the wheel left. Bassi slid to one side and his gun skittered across the hood. When the Judge yanked back hard right, Bassi went the other direction.
“Get. Off. My. Truck.” With each word, Bean jerked the wheel back the other direction, tossing Bassi side to side, loosening his grip.
“Fuuuuck yooouuuuu.” Bassi howled. He slid off the hood but managed to keep his hand tight around the ornament. Somehow, he got his head up over the edge of the nose again. “Tell her I’m sorry.”
“What the fuck’re you talking about?”
The air was full of sirens now. Cops called to a shootout and a burning truck and who knew how far away they were.
“Tell Faith I’m sorry.”
Guiding the truck down Big Spring Street, cars parting like he was Moses in the fucking Red Sea, Bean yanked out his cell phone.
“Faith, I’m sooooooorrrrryyyy.”
Then Bassi was gone. He’d ripped the ornament off the truck when he went down. The cab bumped over Bassi’s body.
Bean pushed the thing harder.
6
Less than a hundred miles from Barefield, just a little south of Lubbock, the smell of gun oil, and fear-stink, filled the space between duo.
Only four lonely bullets left. But if the ammo ran dry, there was always the Kennedys, wasn’t there? And the Nazis after that.
Damnit, clear the shadows and confusion outta your head. Sing a song. Dance a jig. Draw a fucking picture.
None of that ever worked. The shadows were always there, light or dark, drugs or whiskey be damned.
This time it was a man. Probably a different one, even though his face was pudgy and drawn and scared and sweaty, just like the guy in Albuquerque...or maybe the one in Sierra Vista. “You’re all the same.”
Same man, different man. All scared and babbling for mercy. Same men, same women. Their fear all had the same funk to it. Boobs or dicks, high society or dog shit, fear smelled and tasted the same.
“When it comes to fear, everybody bleeds the same.”
This guy—too-tight jeans strangling his balls, fake silk shirt unbuttoned to the bottom of his too-hairy chest—saw the gun and immediately dropped to his knees. Just like a Southern Baptist preacher at tent revivals, on his knees, begging for coin.
Except his hands weren’t out. How them saved souls gonna drop silver in that palm if those hands aren’t out?
“Beg...” Touched the gun to the man’s forehead. “Beg.”
Head bobbing like one of those dolls, spittle all over his lips. “Sure...anything you want. Hell, everything you want. Just let me and the sun wake up together tomorrow.”
“Or at least long enough to get some clean skivvies, huh?”
The man had pissed himself. “I don’t want to die.”
“Who does?” A pause. “I been running short of bullets.”
Hope flared in the man’s eyes.
“But I know the Kennedys. Personally.”
“What? The who?”