“You don’t want my father to know?”
“Everybody has to carry his own canteen,” I said.
“What?”
“That’s a pipeline expression.” I put my arm around her again. The muscles in her back were as hard as brick. “We’ll be okay,” I said. “Straight shooters always win.”
She took my arm from her shoulders and entwined her arm in mine. “It’s not going to pass, is it.”
“You up for a chocolate shake?”
THE NEXT MORNING Loren Nichols came into the filling station. He was driving the skinned-up dirty-vanilla pickup truck owned by his brother. He had washed his hair, and it hung on his head like a black mop. “How’s it dangling?”
“Pretty good. How’s yours dangling?” I replied.
“Got to ask you a favor. I got a job driving a church bus on Sundays, three dollars for the afternoon. They talked me into playing with a quartet at their picnic and assembly tonight. I’m going to be singing lead on two of the songs.”
“That’s great, Loren.”
“Except my guitar shorted out and caught fire.” He gazed at the live oak growing out of the concrete next to the station.
“You want to borrow my Gibson?”
“Valerie told me how much you treasure it.”
“Can Valerie and I come with you?” I said.
“I’d like that.” He pushed his hair back. “You know a plainclothes peckerwood pile of shit named Hopkins?”
“Yeah, I do. He busted Saber and me.”
“He pulled me in. He tried to squeeze me about you and Bledsoe and Vick Atlas and Grady Harrelson’s convertible.”
“Why should you know anything about Harrelson’s convertible?”
“That’s what I told him. He asked me about those two guys Bledsoe was hanging with, the ones who got killed on the train tracks. You heard about that, right?”
“I saw it in the paper.”
“Hopkins said somebody was chasing them when they tried to beat the guard.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That I didn’t know anything. He said, yeah, I did. He said gutter rats like me always had their noses to the sewer grate.”
“What did you say?”
“To shove it up his old lady’s ass because it was obvious she hadn’t been coming across lately.”
“You said that to a plainclothes cop?”
“Another roach hit me in the back of the head with a shoe. That was about it. What’s the deal about Harrelson’s convertible?”
“It’s stuffed with money. The two Mexican guys killed on the train tracks took off with it.”
“How much money?”
“Close to one million. Maybe more.”