There’s a line of Porta-Johns, and he uses one to offload his coffee and juice. When he comes out, a black chick in a halter and a denim skirt short enough to show the edges of her panties is standing nearby. She looks like she’s been up all night and the night was a hard one. The mascara around her eyes reminds Billy – dumb self Billy – of the Beagle Boys in the old Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comics he sometimes picks up at rummage and yard sales.
‘Hey, good-looking man,’ the lot lizard says. ‘Want to date me?’
This is as good a chance as any to try out his cover story. He takes his pad and pencil from the front pocket of his biballs and writes mi es sordo y mudo.
‘What the fuck does that mean?’
Billy touches his ears with both hands, then pats his mouth with the other.
‘Forget it,’ she says, turning away. ‘I ain’t sucking no wetback cock.’
Billy watches her go, delighted. No wetback cock, huh? he thinks. Doesn’t exactly make me John Howard Griffin, but I’ll take it.
2
He stays parked behind the donut shop until eleven. During that time he sees the black chick and a few of her co-workers chatting up truck drivers, but none of them come near him. Which is fine with Billy. Every now and then he gets out of the truck, pretending to check his goods, actually just wanting to stretch his legs and stay loose.
At quarter past eleven he starts up the truck （the starter doesn’t catch at first, giving him a scare） and continues north on 45. The Paiute Foothills draw closer. From five miles out he can see Promontory Point. It’s different from the house Nick rented in the city where Billy did his job, but every bit as ugly.
As his GPS is informing him that his turn onto Cherokee Drive is a mile ahead, Billy comes to another rest area, this one just a turnout. He parks in the shade and uses another Porta-John, thinking of Taco Bell’s dictum: Never neglect a chance to piss before a firefight.
When he comes out, he checks his watch. Twelve-thirty. In his big white hacienda, Nick is probably settling in to watch the pregame show with a couple of his hardballs. Maybe eating nachos and drinking Dos Equis. Billy punches up Siri, who tells him he’s forty minutes from his destination. He forces himself to wait a little longer and forces himself not to call Alice. Instead he gets out, grabs a crowbar from one of the dirty barrels, and punches a couple of holes in the Ram’s muffler, which is already distressed. If he comes up to the service entrance with his old truck farting and backing off, so much the more in character.
‘Okay,’ Billy says. He thinks of giving the Darkhorse chant and tells himself not to be ridiculous. Besides, the last time they all chanted that, their hands in the huddle, things didn’t work out so well. He turns the key. The starter spins and spins. When it starts to lag, he clicks it off, waits, gives the gas pedal a single pump, then tries again. The Dodge fires right up. It was loud before. It’s louder now.
Billy checks for traffic, merges onto 45, then turns off at Cherokee Drive. The grade grows steeper. For the first mile or so there are other, more modest houses on either side of the road, but then they’re gone and there’s only Promontory Point, looming ahead of him.
I was always coming here, Billy thinks, and tries to laugh at the thought, which is not just omenish but pretentious. The thought won’t go, and Billy understands that’s because it’s a true thought. He was always coming here. Yes.
3
The air is bell-clear outside the smog bowl of Las Vegas, and maybe even has a slight magnifying effect, because by the time Billy is closing in on the compound’s main gate the house looks like it’s rearing back so it won’t fall on him. The wall is too high to see over, but he knows there’s a lookout post just inside and if it’s manned, his old beater is probably already on video.
Cherokee Drive ends at Promontory Point. Before it does, a dirt track splits off to the left. There are two signs flanking this track. The one on the left says MAINTENANCE & DELIVERY. The other says AUTHORIZED VEHICLES ONLY. ONLY is in red.
Billy turns onto the track, not neglecting to set his hat a little higher on his head. He also pats the front pocket of the overalls （silenced Ruger） and side pocket （Glock）。 Sighting the guns in would be a joke, handguns are really only good for close work, but he realizes he hasn’t test-fired either of them or examined the loads. It would be a fine joke on him if he had to use the Glock and it jammed. Or if the Ruger’s silencer, maybe made in the garage of some guy with a taste for meth, plugged the gun’s barrel and caused it to blow up in his hand. Too late to worry about any of that now.