Chris Holm - The Wrong Goodbye

“Ah, hell, son, it ain’t your fault. You been nothin’ but nice to me since I woke up, and that’s even granting that I kicked you in the head. You’re so polite, it’s almost hard to believe someone went and beat the snot out of you.” Roscoe’s gaze slipped from my bruised and swollen face to the rocket-ship lines of his beloved Bertha, and his eyes shone wet with tears. “Almost.”

He shook his head as if to clear it, and when he met my gaze again, his eyes were dry. “Ain’t no use crying, I suppose. You gotta take the hand the good Lord gave you, and do with it the best you can. Tell you what —how about the three of us go and grab a little breakfast, and then y’all can drop me at a bus station so I can head back home. That bitch can wait a spell to get her filthy mitts on Bertha, and I could use a little grease to soak up what’s left of this tequila.”

After a moment’s consideration, I agreed. After what Gio and I had put him through, it seemed to me the least that we could do. And hell, if an hour or so of playing along meant that we could drive this baby free and clear a couple days, then it was time well spent.

So Gio pulled back into traffic, and we continued on our way. I was oddly cheered by Roscoe’s presence, and I was heartened by the fact that he believed us to have a legitimate claim to take his car. This quest to recover Varela’s soul had thus far proved to be quite the pain in my ass, so it was nice to finally catch a break.

Of course, the problem with being damned is there’s no such thing as a lucky break. And as much as I liked Roscoe, I had no idea at the time what a lousy idea it was to let him tag along. If I knew then the cascade of awful that call would kick off, I swear I would’ve given the man his car back on the spot. Reunited with his precious Bertha, Roscoe could’ve been on his merry way, and me and Gio would’ve been free to hitch a ride the last twenty-odd miles into town —no harm, no foul.

But I didn’t know. So instead of making the smart play, I carried blithely on —oblivious to the disaster that awaited.

If it weren’t for Rosita, none of this shit would’ve happened.

Don’t get me wrong —I’m sure that she’s a lovely person. And if she isn’t, how the hell would I know? I’ve never even met the woman. But if she hadn’t gone and plopped her diner smack in our fucking way, we wouldn’t have wound up in such a goddamn mess.

I guess I should’ve known better, but at the time, all I was thinking of was getting rid of Roscoe without a hitch, and the hand-painted “Rosita’s Diner —Nothing Finer!” billboard made the place look divey enough you just knew they could fry up a mean egg. Plus, the stretch of I-10 just south of Las Cruces was nothing but farmland and trailer parks, which at the time made Rosita’s seem like a godsend. I figured we’d stop long enough to pour some coffee into Roscoe, get him a bite to eat, and call the guy a cab, and that would be the end of that. Hell, I was even going to pay. OK, fine, Ethan was —but still, a gesture’s a gesture. The way I saw it, it was the least that I could do. But unfortunately, that’s not how things shook out.

Just the sight of the place as we pulled up was enough to put a smile on my face. Rosita’s was built around an old Valentine Industries lunch counter —those squat little red-and-white diners so common to the Southwest in the decades following the Second World War. Sure, the paint had faded a bit, now more rust-and-sand than red-and-white, and the original railroad car design had been expanded over the years with a series of squat cinderblock additions, painted white and wodged on here and there at random. But still, the sight of the old diner, and the salty-sweet scent of its well-tended griddle, brought me back —back to a time when Danny was a trusted friend, and every meeting with Ana crackled with the spark of possibility. Back when Quinn was a smiling, happy child who dreamed he’d one day be an engineer, building cities out of blocks in his mother’s tidy Belfast garden.

I should’ve known right then Rosita’s would be trouble. Those times are long gone now. Ain’t nothing going to bring them back, and I’m a sentimental fool for wishing otherwise.

Our problems started in the parking lot. Two black-and-whites, parked nose to tail —their engines running, their drivers chatting amiably over paper cups of coffee. Another cruiser sitting vacant in the lot. We hadn’t seen them before we pulled in because the bulk of the parking lot was tucked out of view around back of the rambling hodge-podge structure. In retrospect, I should’ve realized they’d be here —there wasn’t anyplace else nearby for folks to go, and it’s not like the cops along this stretch were all that busy. A little all-night place like Rosita’s probably topped up their thermoses for free —a small price to pay for a guaranteed police presence in the wee hours of the morning. Helps to keep out the riff-raff —riff-raff who might otherwise be inclined to rob the place. Problem is, it also works on riff-raff like Gio and me, who are just looking for a bite to eat.

Gio was the first to spot them. He’d been regaling Roscoe with stories of car-thefts gone awry, repurposed —for the sake of conning Roscoe —as repossessions one and all. They’d been getting on like fast friends, laughing and cursing and bragging loudly to one another in the way that both cowboys and gangsters do. Then we rounded the corner of the building and Gio clammed up mid-sentence —his posture jerking ramrod straight, his hands suddenly at ten and two on the wheel. The Caddy rocked on its suspension as he slowed it to a crawl. The way he was acting, he may as well have lit a fucking flare.

“Uh, Sam?”

“I see them,” I replied through gritted teeth. “Keep driving.”

Gio had us rolling at about a half a mile an hour. Ants were zipping past us on the ground below. “A little faster than that ,” I snapped.

Roscoe glared at me through narrowed eyes. “You boys want to tell me what the hell is going on?”

“Nothing,” I replied, perhaps a bit too quickly.

“Nothing —right. That why you’re trying your damndest not to catch the cops’ attention?”

“Roscoe,” I said, my voice as calm and even as I could manage, “this is really not the time.”

“But–”

“I said not now . I like you, Roscoe —I do. Which is why I’m going to ask you nicely to please shut your fucking mouth before I’m forced to do something we’ll both regret. Sit tight and I promise you that everything will be just fine. Or don’t, and see what happens.”

At that, the color drained from Roscoe’s face. He looked from the cops to me and back again as though wondering whether he should try to make a play, but my words must’ve had their intended effect, because a moment later his shoulders sagged, and suddenly he looked old and frail and deflated. Satisfied, I nodded at him and turned in my seat, facing once more forward. We’re just three friends out for a drive, I thought as loudly as I could, hoping against hope the cops would pick up on the vibe.

“Gio,” I said, “get us out of here —quietly.”

Gio obliged, piloting the gigantic Caddy on an excruciating lap through the lot and heading out the way we came. I prayed they hadn’t noticed us. I knew that in this parade float of a car, they couldn’t not.

What I didn’t know was whether they had traced the Fiesta back to Ethan yet, and if they had, whether the Feds had managed to distribute our descriptions. I told myself they couldn’t possibly have worked that fast —that as far as these dudes knew, we were just a carload of guys who, on second thought, didn’t want to brave the twenty minutes’ wait it’d take for a table to open up.