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Do
‘Nothing, bitch. I’m fine.’
Except he wasn’t fine. His father’d noticed the missing bike and, even though he seemed to believe the lie that Do
And, with Do
Big Nathan, who didn’t take as many showers as he ought to, moved his hair out of his eyes. ‘So here.’ He flashed a picture on his Galaxy of a stop sign, uprooted and sitting in Vince’s garage. His mother never used the place. His father might have killed himself in there – that was the rumor – so nobody in the family ever went inside or did anything with it. So it had sort of become their clubhouse.
‘Can I get an amen?’ Nathan asked. ‘Team Two scores.’
Fist bumps.
‘Cool,’ said Wes. ‘How much did it weigh?’
‘Tons,’ Vince said. ‘We both had to carry it.’
‘I could have,’ Nathan said fast. ‘Just, it was long, you know. Hard to get a handle on.’
If anybody could muscle it, Neo could. He was a big fucker.
‘Nobody saw you?’ Do
‘Naw. Maybe one kid but we looked at him, like, you say anything and you’re frigging dead.’
Nathan said ‘frig’ instead of ‘fuck’. He’d come around, Do
We’ll totally fuck you up …
Do
He wrote on the Nathan/Vince side: Challenge 5, completed.
Do
Vince grimaced. ‘Only, like a half-hour later, not even, there was another one up.’
‘That’s fucked up,’ Do
Wes gave a sour laugh. ‘Who drives around with signs to put up?’
‘Du
Nathan slapped his arm. ‘Shit, dude. We got the point.’ A stab at the score sheet. ‘Am I right, ladies?’
Do
‘Dude,’ Wes was talking to him. ‘Show ’em.’
Do
Nathan didn’t seem happy. He and Vince were down two points.
Vince said, ‘That thing, that’s Indian.’
Impatiently, Do
‘What’s Raj?’ Wes said.
His mother didn’t let Wes and his sister, Maggie, watch much TV.
Do
‘Oh. Sure.’ Nathan seemed to have no clue.
Vince said, ‘No, what I’m saying, Indian like bows and arrows and tepees.’
‘It’s called a swastika,’ Wes said. ‘The Nazis used it.’
Do
Nathan asked, ‘Is a swasti-whatever, is it like a blade you throw? I mean, are those knives on the end?’
Wes said, ‘It’s just a symbol. On their flag.’
‘The Indians?’
Wes cocked his head. ‘No, dude. The Nazis.’
‘Who were they again?’ Nathan asked.
Do
‘Yeah?’
‘Game of Thrones. Like that.’
Do
Nathan said, ‘Okay. Our turn. We’re challenging Darth and Wolverine to the following dare. You know Sally Caruthers, the cheerleader? We challenge you to get some Visine in her drink at school. It gives you the runs.’
‘That’s way gross,’ Wes said.
Do
‘Yeah?’ asked Nathan, frowning.
Wes sighed. ‘The asshole, the house we tagged, perped our bikes.’
‘Put ’em in his garage. Me and Wes were talking about it, what to do.’
Wes said, ‘To get ’em back.’
Do
‘And we need some help. Backup, you know. You up for that?’
Vince considered it. ‘We’ll help you but we get a point.’ Tapping the score sheet.
Nathan said, ‘Dude, that’s mad brilliant.’
Do
Finally he said, ‘All right, you ladies get a point.’ And popped the Red Bulls and passed the cans around.
CHAPTER 76
They were driving along Highway One, O’Neil behind the wheel of his patrol car, Dance in the front passenger seat. In the back were Al Stemple and their confessing suspect, Congressman Daniel Nashima.
This was the condition to his confession: a drive to the scene of the crime, where he’d tell her everything she wanted to know.
He wasn’t under arrest, so no cuffs, but he had been searched for weapons. Which had amused him.
The compact man was silent, staring out of the window at the passing sights – agricultural fields of Brussels sprouts and artichokes on the right; to the west, the water side, were small businesses (souvenir shacks and restaurants) and marinas, increasingly downscale as they moved north.
Finally they turned off the highway and took the driveway to the parking lot; the roadhouse was boarded up. The trucking business was operating but Dance wondered for how long: she remembered the story on the news about the company’s probable bankruptcy.
O’Neil was about to stop but Nashima directed him to the end of the lot, not far from where Dance had discovered the path that led to where she’d found the witness in the trailer, A
‘Let’s take a walk,’ Nashima said.
Dance and O’Neil exchanged glances as together they climbed from the car and followed Nashima as he started along the path. Stemple plodded behind, boot falls noisy on the gritty asphalt. Both he and O’Neil kept their hands near their weapons. The unsub, armed with at least one nine-millimeter pistol, was still at large, of course.
Was he headed for the cluster of residential houses? And why did he seem to have no interest in the roadhouse itself?
I’ll confess …
He didn’t get far along the path, however, before he turned left and walked toward Solitude Creek, through the grass and around the ruins she’d seen earlier, the remnants of concrete floors, fences, walls and posts. As they got closer to the water, she found a barrier of rusting chain-link separating them from the glistening creek.
He turned to them. ‘When I said I didn’t know if the lawyer made an offer, that’s because of a blind trust.’
‘We know about it,’ Dance said.
‘I put all my assets in it when I took office. Barrett controls everything as trustee. But he knows my general investment and pla