Potshot

"We coulda flown," Vi

"With a bunch of infernal devices?" Hawk said.

"You mean guns?" Vi

"Sho 'nuff," Hawk said.

"Hell," Vi

"We may all wish you did," I said. "An hour out of Boston and you're already bitching."

V'mnie almost smiled.

"We there yet?" he said.

I had a CD in the player. Carol Sloane and Clark Terry.

"She can sing for a white broad," Hawk said.

"The best," I said.

"Keeps right up with the black guy," Hawk said.

"Astonishing isn't it?" I said.

We turned off the Mass Pike at Sturbridge and went west on Route 84. We weren't in a hurry. We drove through Co

"We got to find better chop," Hawk said. "We keep eating this crap we'll be dead before we get there."

"Maybe the next place will have a salad bar," I said.

"With some of that orange French dressing," Hawk said.

"Which is also excellent for slicking your hair back."

"My hair?" Hawk said.

"If you had some."

"Used to have an Afro," Hawk said.

"I remember," I said. "You looked like a short Artis Gilmore."

"Handsome," Hawk said, "and distinguished, but too easy to get hold of in a scuffle. My present do is more practical."

In the back Vi

We stopped the first night at Hagerstown, Maryland, near the Antietam battlefield, and slept in a Holiday I

Going through West Virginia, near Martinsburg, Vi

Hawk said, "No."

"Don't you have nothing like Pink Floyd, or Procol Harum?"

"How 'bout The Ink Spots?" Hawk said.

Vi

We drove down the horsy green Shenandoah Valley with the Alleghenies to the west and Blue Ridge to the east. We hit Knoxville that evening. We crossed the Mississippi at Memphis a day later. Fort Smith, Little Rock, Oklahoma City. I felt like Bobby Troup. Shoney's, Shakey's, McDonald's, Burger King, KFC. I felt my arteries clogging. Gulf, Mobile, Esso, Pilot. Truck stops with buffet tables where you could overeat vastly for maybe six bucks. Hawk and I had a ru

"You have to adjust," I said, "to your environment."

We went through Amarillo. Big John's Steak House. Tucumcari. Uphill to Albuquerque. We slept in Holiday I

"Used to sleep with a woman was a professor at Harvard," Hawk said. "Red-headed woman. Taught literature."

I was driving. Hawk was in the passenger seat. Vi

"She felt I was," and his voice deepened and his accent disappeared, "the perfect embodiment of untrammeled sensuality. Unrestrained by the stale ethics or conventions of the state."

"I thought that was you," I said.

"What the fuck she talking about?" Vi

"Meant she liked a lot of unusual ways to do it," Hawk said.

"Nothing wrong with that," Vi

"Nuthin'," Hawk said.

The next morning we came down out of the mountains west of Albuquerque, and by evening were in the desert.

Chapter 36

THE HOUSE WAS on the east edge of town, with a good view out the back windows of the Sawtooths to the east. It was a big sprawling place with a wide front porch. Bernard J. Fortunato was on the front porch when we pulled up. He was wearing a redchecked shirt and blue jeans and a cowboy hat and boots. A blue banda

Who the fuck is that," Vi

"It's that tough little dude from Vegas," Hawk said.

"Bernard J. Fortunato," I said. "We're all gathering. It'll be like The Big Chill."

"Just like," Hawk said.

"About time you got here," Bernard said. "I been cooling my heels in this burg for a couple days now."

"Been shopping some," Hawk said.

"Yeah. Hawk, how ya doing. Good to see ya again."

I introduced Vi

"Furnished," Bernard said. "Six bills a month, large."

"Six grand a month?" I said. "We better clean this up quick."

"Hey that's with the furniture, all the pots and pans, all we got to do is pay the fucking utilities."

"Anybody else show up yet?" I said.

"The hard case from Atlanta pulled in yesterday," Bernard said. "Where do you find these guys?"

"I pick them up at Tony Robbins Seminars," I said.

"Where's Sapp?"

"Out ru

"It's a hundred and ten thousand fucking degrees," Vi

Bernard shrugged.

"What have we got for bedrooms?" I said.

"Sapp's upstairs, front," Bernard said. "I took the couch in the den. I'm compact, and I don't sleep much anyway."