Jesus fucking Christ.
He got off at the next exit, a curving ramp that peeled off into nowhere—a brand-new stretch of four-lane highway with empty fields on either side. He drove until he found a place to pull over, an abandoned gas station that looked ready for demolition, a crumbling patch of asphalt. What he needed, truly needed, was to smoke a bowl and collect his thoughts. Under the floor mat he kept, for just such emergencies, a small-bore pipe packed with a single hit of weed.
He parked and walked a discreet distance from the empty building before lighting the pipe. Immediately his brain cooled. He saw clearly the task ahead: daunting, yes, but not complicated. He’d driven I-95 more times than he could count. The fuckload of weed in the trunk was not important; it did not change the basic nature of the task. All he had to do was drive.
The little pipe was quickly exhausted. As Timmy shook the dregs onto the ground, he heard a noise behind him, a rustle of grass. He turned and saw a guy pissing into the bushes, a little meatball of a guy with a shaved head. The man shook himself and zipped and for no reason turned his head. Timmy saw, then, that he was wearing a uniform.
He hurried back to the Civic, faster than was prudent. He should have taken his time. He peeled out of the parking lot. Idling nearby was another car, a late-model Dodge Charger—solid black, with an elaborate antenna. He had smoked his bowl next to a pissing Georgia statie.
The Civic was sweltering, reeking of weed. As Timmy pulled onto 95, he discovered that its windows would no longer open. Except for the rear passenger-side window, which opened maybe three inches, they were now sealed shut.
As he drove, the car got hotter and hotter. He tried to think cold thoughts. Junior high hockey with frostbitten feet. Passing a flask at the boatyard with Dennis Link and Andy Stasko, freezing his nuts off. Claudia’s cold hands on his back, his face, his shoulders and chest.
HE’D DRIVEN MAYBE TEN MILES WHEN HE SAW THE BLUE LIGHTS in his rearview. He pulled over to the shoulder and waited in a pool of his own sweat.
The cop stepped out of his Tahoe. It was the same bald guy he’d seen pissing behind the gas station. He motioned for Timmy to roll down his window.
“I can’t,” Timmy said.
The cop seemed not to hear him.
“I can’t,” he said, louder this time. How did you pantomime, My windows won’t open?
In a gesture of helplessness, he raised his hands.
He understood later that raising his hands had saved him. Reflexively, the cop reached for his weapon.
Timmy sat very still, his hands in plain sight, until the cop opened the driver’s-side door.
“Sir, please step out of the car.”
22
The world is full of signs.
This happened many years ago, in the early 1990s, somewhere in northern Nevada. Victor Prine was moving a load from Indy to Sacramento, a half day ahead of schedule, when he spotted a billboard along the highway.
ANNUAL EXPO GUNS AND AMMO
WEAPONS OF ALL KINDS
The hall, when he found it, was a low-slung bunker the size of an airline hangar. Who’d built it there, beside a barren stretch of road between Reno and Winnemucca, and for what purpose, were questions he didn’t ponder. The cavernous structure seemed randomly placed in the desert, as though it had fallen from the sky.
Inside, he walked the perimeter. The first person he met was a tall hatchet-faced kid in desert fatigues. He stood behind a card table piled with pamphlets and bumper stickers. Victor was then in his early forties. The kid was maybe twenty-five years old.
He handed Victor a business card.
“Is this you?” Victor asked, studying it. “Lon . . . Haruchi?”
The kid studied him intently, as though trying to determine whether the old guy was messing with him. “Do I look like my name is Horiuchi?”