29 – The money is gone
The parking lot
emptied quickly, dust swirling up as police cars vanished first, then the
truckers-- rednecks slipping out, studiously avoiding the van and its
occupants.
"Now isn't that a bitch!" Dan
growled, leaning against the van with his hat pulled back. Before them, their
things remained as the police had left them, piled into a single pyre waiting
for a flame, the sleeves of loose garments flapping out of the open mouths of
suitcases and back packs.
Lance said nothing about what he'd overheard.
They didn't need to know and he could feel the eyes of the law upon him, the
x-ray vision of justice that looked beyond his set of phony ID to the real him.
Now more than ever he needed to get back to L.A., find himself a job, get
himself north. Maybe he and Sarah could lose themselves in the woods, where
Demetre might overlook them like he had overlooked them here.
"I suppose we should clean it up,"
Sarah said softly, sounding as stunned by the whirl-wind experience as Lance
felt.
"I agree," Dan said and tossed away
another half-smoked cigarette. "But I damn well wish the others were here
to help." He bent and began to sort through the pile.
None chose to refold anything, but stuffed
clothing in any space that would fit it.
"We'll figure it out later," Dan
said. "The first thing is to get our asses out of here."
But half way through the procedure, Sarah
cried out.
"What is it?" Lance asked, leaping
up from his own project of pots and pans. Sarah leaned back from the metal box.
Twisted metal showed where the lock at been, a half dozen manilla envelops
strewn inside. All of them empty.
"Our money," Sarah said, looking up
at Lance with terrified eyes. "It's all gone."
***********
Lance sat in the front seat head pressed
against the glass, the van wobbling with its repacked load as it moved west
again. Stacked highway signs showed along the side of the road like tin totem
poles. Towns like Avondale and Liberty passed, part of the dust off-road vision
of flat-topped factories. Chincos lingered outside the doors of each in grey
work clothes, looking as miserable as Lance felt.
Dan's coughing increased as they rode, as did
his cigarette use. One dangled constantly from the corner of his mouth, as he
pressed the van's engine hard, pushing it faster than it wanted to go. Its
death-whine now part of the other road sounds.
"You see anything behind us?" Dan
asked for the tenth time since leaving the diner.
"No," Lance said without glancing
back. They were there. But he couldn't see them. Clinging to the van's bumper
like Indian spirits.
The van rolled over bridges which spanned dry
creek beds. Some bore signs and names like Centennial or Hassayampa wash, or
the Gila Santa River. For a time, Lance wondered about them, but soon closed
his eyes afraid of them, too, as if a flash flood would seize them suddenly,
part of their overall ill luck.
The money had vanished and with it Lance's
grub stake. Job or no job, two thousand dollars meant a lot.
"Dan?"
"What?"
"How much you think we can get for the
van?"
Dan's dark eyes glanced over at Lance.
"Thinking about stopping for a roadside sale?"
"When we get back to L.A."
Dan shrugged. "Not much with the shape
it's in. Nobody'll pay extra for a dented side and bullet holes. A couple of
hundred if you're lucky."
"Oh."
"Don't let it get you down, boy,"
Dan said. "I'm sure the cop'll enjoy your money."
"If they're the ones who took it,"
Sarah said, seated in her usual spot between them, though her rosy expression
had vanished at the discovery.
"You have information we don't?" Dan
asked.
"No," she mumbled. "But God
knows anyone could have done it while it sat in that warehouse."
"So, you think Gil
took it?" Dan asked with a laugh. "Maybe we should go back and ask
him, eh?"
"NO!" Lance said with
surprising vehemence.
"And what's the matter with you?"
Dan asked, curious gaze studying Lance's face for a moment.
"I just want to keep going," Lance
said. "I don't want to ever see that town again."
"Not even for two grand?"
"No."
"Hey, look!" Sarah yelled, pointing
ahead on the highway. "Isn't that Chris?"
Dan slowed the van and squinted through the
dusty glass. A hippie chick with dark hair and a red bandanna sat on two
suitcases near the side of the road. She held a lazy thumb out in a
half-hearted attempt to snare a ride.
"Damn if it isn't," Dan laughed and
down shifted. The tires popped on the loose gravel as it pulled up to the
seated figure. Chris glanced up and grinned, then grabbed her suitcase and
lunged for the doors.
"Wow, people!" she said, diving into
the back, reminding Lance of soldiers hitching rides on choppers. "You're
the last thing I ever expected to see."
"We didn't exactly expect you
either," Dan said, starting the van forward again. "You were supposed
to meet us back at Gil's."
"I tried," Chris said, seating
herself behind Dan. She smelled of the desert and hot sun. "But things
happened, and by the time I got back the place was crawling with cops."
"Cops there, too?" Dan said.
"Did Gil get away in time?"
"You mean you don't know?"
"Know what?"
"Gil is dead."
***********
She knew little more than what Demetre had
revealed. But rumors ran wild in the downtown street. Small gangs had already
started vying for Gil's throne. Lance listened to it all, sickened by it,
feeling the same pangs he'd felt in the hospital after his tour in Nam. A kind
of shell-shock, as if he hadn't quite understood the significance of his
experience until after it had ended.
Death! Destruction!
But for the first time since the search in the
parking lot, Lance understood Demetre's reasoning for letting them go. The
threads of a new web clung to their heals as they headed west, a new trap
forming to catch the fly.
"What about Mike and Marie?" Chris
asked. "Any word on them?"
Dan shook his head. "But I'm not too
worried about him. If he senses trouble, he'll scoot."
"Yeah," Chris said, climbing back
towards the bed, her sagging shoulders suggesting she hadn't slept. "He's
good at that."
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