‘Not good enough,’ he says.
‘I know. Moisturize again.’
She uses the spray a second time. When he goes into the bathroom for another look it’s better, but he’s still not satisfied. ‘I don’t know,’ he tells Alice when he comes out. ‘This might have been a bad idea.’
‘It’s not. Remember what I said? For the next four to six hours, it will continue to darken. With the cowboy hat and the bib overalls …’ She gives him a critical look. ‘If I didn’t think you could pass for Chicano, I’d tell you.’
This is where she asks me again to just give it up and come back to Colorado with her, Billy thinks. But she doesn’t. She tells him to get dressed in what she calls ‘your costume.’ Billy goes back to his room and puts on the dark wig, T-shirt, bib overalls, barn coat （work gloves stuffed in the pockets）， and the battered cowboy hat Bucky and Alice bought in Boulder. It comes down to his ears and he reminds himself to raise it up a little when the time comes, to show that long black hair streaked with gray.
‘You look fine.’ All business, red-rimmed eyes notwithstanding. ‘Got your pad and pencil?’
He pats the front pocket of the biballs. It’s capacious, with plenty of room for the silenced Ruger as well as the writing stuff.
‘You’re getting darker already.’ She smiles wanly. ‘Good thing the PC Police aren’t here.’
‘Needs must,’ Billy says. He reaches into the side pocket of the biballs, the one that doesn’t hold the Glock 17, and brings out a roll of bills. It’s everything he has left except for a couple of twenties. ‘Take this. Call it insurance.’
Alice pockets it without argument.
‘If you don’t get a call from me this afternoon, wait. I have no idea what kind of cell coverage they have north of here. If I’m not back by eight tonight, nine at the outside, I’m not coming back. Stay the night, then check out and get a Greyhound to Golden or Estes Park. Call Bucky. He’ll pick you up. All right?’
‘That would not be all right, but I understand. Let me help you carry those bags of fertilizer out to the truck.’
They make two trips and then Billy slams the tailgate. They stand there looking at each other. A few sleepy-eyed people – a couple of salesmen, a family – are toting out their luggage and preparing to move on.
‘If you don’t need to be there until one, you can stay another hour,’ she says. ‘Two, even.’
‘I think I better go now.’
‘Yeah, maybe you better,’ Alice says. ‘Before I break down.’
He hugs her. Alice hugs back fiercely. He expects her to say be careful. He expects her to tell him again not to die. He expects her to ask him one more time, maybe plead with him, not to go. She doesn’t. She looks up at him and says, ‘Get what’s yours.’
She lets go of him and walks back toward the motel. When she gets there, she turns to him and holds up her phone. ‘Call me when you’re done. Don’t forget.’
‘I won’t.’
If I can, he thinks. I will if I can.
CHAPTER 20
1
An hour north of Vegas on Route 45, Billy comes to a Dougie’s Donuts mated to an ARCO gas station and a convenience store with the unlikely name of Terrible Herbst. It’s a truck stop surrounded by great expanses of parking, big rigs on one side snoring like sleeping beasts. Billy gasses up, grabs a bottle of orange juice and a cruller, then parks around back. He thinks about calling Alice, only because he’d like to hear her voice and thinks she might like to hear his. My hostage, he thinks. My Stockholm Syndrome hostage. Only that’s not what she is now, if she ever was. He remembers how she said Get what’s yours. Not fearless, she hasn’t morphed into some comic book warrior queen （at least not yet）， but plenty fierce. He has his phone in his hand before remembering she got as little sleep as he did last night. If she’s gone back to bed with the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging on the door, he doesn’t want to wake her.
He drinks his juice and eats his cruller and lets the time pass. There’s enough of it for doubts to creep in. In some ways – many, actually – it’s like the Funhouse all over again, only with no squad to back him up. He can’t be sure Nick went to Promontory Point for the weekend. He has no idea how many men he may have brought back with him if he did. Some for sure, not bounty hunters from some other outfit but his own guys, and Billy has no idea where they might be placed. He has an idea of the interior layout from the Zillow photographs, but there might have been changes made after Nick bought the place. If Nick is there, rooting on the Giants, Billy doesn’t know where he’ll be watching. He doesn’t even know if he can get in through the service entrance. Maybe sí, maybe no.