Chris Holm - The Wrong Goodbye

We shook hands and parted friends.

Then I headed north, following the breadcrumbs Gio left behind.

Las Cruces to Las Vegas is eleven hours on a good day, I-10 cutting a jagged northwest diagonal out of southwestern New Mexico and clear up to the southernmost tip of Nevada —bisecting Arizona like a through-and-through. Eleven hours of khaki-colored desert interrupted only by the occasional, reluctant green that accompanied human settlement, jutting from the arid soil like weeds through a sidewalk crack. Eleven hours between me and my only hope of finding Danny.

I made the drive in nine.

Not bad, I’ll admit —but I could’ve shaved off another half hour if I hadn’t had to stop for gas, money, and a change of clothes. I was so focused on my task, I damn near forgot this battleship of a car ate gas like Gio’s meat-suit went through Ring Dings. But somewhere outside of Tucson, the engine started sputtering, and I realized the needle was on E.

And me without a penny to my name.

Took another ten minutes for me to spot a truck stop, and by then, poor Bertha was on fumes. I doubt she could’ve gone another mile. Hell, I thought she was going to quit long before she did, but that old girl took pity on me. I was grateful. I’d spent far too long in the desert the past two days to relish the thought of hoofing it.

The truck stop was huge: three acres of fresh-lined pavement, pumps, and gleaming big rigs, all rippling in the late morning heat. At the center of the automotive sprawl loomed a massive central building trimmed in red neon piping and boasting a lunch counter, a convenience store, a set of jumbo-sized car wash bays, and —if the signs were to be believed —shower facilities both hot and clean. Why in God’s name hot was a selling point six inches from the surface of the sun was beyond me.

I pulled the Caddy up to a pump out of sight of the main building next to a municipal truck stacked high with orange traffic barrels and caked with hot-mix asphalt. The faded state seal stenciled across the side of the truck bed read Ditat Deus. God Enriches , if my rusty Latin served. Though as I watched the trucks belch black diesel fumes into the cloudless sky and set out across the lifeless earth, I didn’t see much evidence to support that claim.

Even in the shade, the pavement burned my soles. I trotted barefoot to the door, thinking inconspicuous thoughts. Turns out, I needn’t have bothered; bare feet aside, I wasn’t any rougher around the edges than half their clientele.

The store inside was more Walmart than 7-Eleven. Everything from tube socks and trucker caps to televisions and toaster ovens, the latter two made special to plug into a truck’s cigarette lighter. The clothes —mostly novelty Ts and off-brand jeans —weren’t much my style, but they were tempting nonetheless. Still, tough to walk off with a whole outfit hidden in your pants, so instead I settled on pocketing a hammer and a flat-head screwdriver. Wish I could’ve snagged some aloe vera while I was at it; after two hours of being chased westward by the sunrise, the back of my neck was hot enough to fry an egg. But all pharmacy items were on a rack up by the register. Guess they didn’t want the truckers lifting the No-Doz.

The signs for the showers led me down a long, narrow white-tiled hallway, cracked here and there and yellowed with age, but clean enough not to put the lie to the signs outside. As I pushed through the swinging door to the men’s locker room, I heard the sound of running water. The locker room was only slightly wider than the hall, with two benches running parallel to one another in the center, and a wall of lockers on either side. To my right, a doorway led to a series of toilet stalls, a wall of sinks and mirrors opposite. Another doorway on the far left of the room led to the showers, if the steam billowing through the aperture was any indication.

Sounded like at least a couple of them were running, which I was psyched about. Meant I’d have me some selection. Occasionally, one of the showers’ occupants let slip a line or two of Skynyrd, neither tuneful nor lyrically accurate. That I could’ve lived without.

I turned my attention to the lockers. Two banks of small, square boxes, painted institutional gray. The kind where you put in quarters and take the key, which was perfect for my purposes, since a) you can tell at a glance which ones are occupied, and b) they’re by far the shittiest-constructed type of lockers on the planet.

Three of them were occupied. I popped ’em each in turn. A nosy parent with a paperclip would’ve had more trouble with their daughter’s diary than I had with these bad boys. Insert screwdriver in lock and tap with hammer, as easy as you please. Hell, I even had the sound of running water to drown out my hammering, and its sudden absence would let me know if the owners of this crap were coming back. My only worry in the world right then was that these guys would be too short or too fat for their clothes to fit.

I laid out the contents of the lockers on the wooden bench nearest me. Grayed with age and damp and mildew, the bench was bolted to the floor nonetheless. Who’d want to take the fucking thing was beyond me, and that’s even granting my only purpose for being there was to steal shit.

I played Goldilocks a second, poked through my potential haul. A pair of cargo shorts, size 48: too big. Bright red shirt, all fringe and piping, and some skinny ink-blue jeans to match: too cowboy. Wellworn pair of boot-cut Levis and plain black T-shirt: just right.

I dressed quickly. The shirt smelled of sweat, but likely far less than did I —and anyways, it fit, or near enough. The pants were maybe a size or two too big, but had a studded belt threaded through their loops. I buckled it, and all was well.

The shoe situation was a tougher nut to crack. I looked to be a twelve at least. But all I had to work with was a pair of steel-toe work boots, pair of cowboys, and a ratty pair of high-tops —nines, tens, and (I shit you not) seven-and-a-halfs, respectively. The tiny high-tops came from the same locker as the tent-like cargos. I wondered how the guy stayed upright.

Cowboy had a travel stick of Old Spice. I slathered some on. Big Dude and Just Right had left their wallets in their lockers; I guess Cowboy left his in his truck. I thumbed through them, fixing to take them both, but something stopped me.

Pictures, encased in those cheap-ass clear vinyl books that you get with wallets —the ones most folks throw out. Big Dude hadn’t, though. Instead, he’d stuffed them full of shots of him and his little girls. Smiling, happy. Had a smiling wife, too. In a couple pics, they had themselves a dog —a handsome little mutt, all ears and lolling tongue. Even he looked like he was smiling.

I swiped his cash and cards, but left his wallet on the bench. What I took, he could replace. But those vinyl-wrapped pictures were like happy trapped in amber. Like little glinting slivers of skim, only without the nasty comedown. Last thing I wanted to do was deprive Big Dude of that.

The only picture in Just Right’s wallet was torn out of a girly magazine. That one I kept.

The wallet, I mean. Jesus.

I strolled out of the locker room whistling before one of them shut off the tap. Grabbed some jerky, bottled water, and a pair of flimsy flip-flops, and brought them to the counter. Told the kid behind the register to grab me one of the pre-paid cell phones hanging up behind him, and paid for fifty bucks in gas. Then I said, “Fuck it,” and had him ring up some aloe vera while he was at it.

I was in and out in less than seven minutes, and long gone before the shouting started. Of course, I didn’t realize at the time I’d just taken a star turn on no fewer than two dozen security cameras, or that the cops who’d spotted us lowriding through the Rosita’s parking lot would ID me from that footage right around the time I stopped in Phoenix to take a leak. I didn’t know that they’d tie Bertha —and by extension, me —to the explosion at the strip club, or that a piece of shrapnel containing the Fiesta’s VIN would lead the Feds to Ethan’s doorstep around the time I hit the Nevada state line. The way I hear it, Ethan’s breathless (if not entirely sensical) statement to the Federales tied a bow around the whole damned affair and set some junior G-man salivating at the prospect of nabbing the nefarious perpetrator of a real-live transcontinental crime spree.