LUCAS AND RAEwere back in Marfa, in quite a nice hotel, for the next three days, in the predicted blizzard of paperwork. The hotel people wanted them out of their rooms as soon as possible, because of an enormous influx of art lovers, there to inspect the damage.
A good-looking young woman called Lucas, who had been identified to her as one of the lead cops, a fascist. Rae asked, “Me, too?”
The young woman looked at the tall black woman and seemed to struggle for a moment with all the possible politically correct replies, and got off the elevator without attempting one.
—
WITH THE PAPERWORKdone, the crime scene measured and discussed, sworn statements given, Lucas kissed Rae on the forehead at the El Paso airport and said, “Rubber match, next time we hook up. Work on your game.”
“Like I need it,” she said. And, “You take care, big guy.”
She took her business-class tickets and walked down the Jetway and out of sight.
—
THAT SAME DAY,John Stiner was hired to be an assistant manager at a new Starbucks in Tampa, Florida. The Starbucks regional mansaid, “We’re quite impressed with your qualifications. Year or two, you could be running your own store.”
“I’m looking forward to it, sir,” Stiner said, and thought, privately,How in the fuck do you look at yourself in the morning, you boring, paper-pushing cocksucker?“I’m really anxious to make Starbucks my future.”And maybe getting in the shorts of one of your tight little baristas... or maybe more than one.
—
ON THE VERY SAME DAY,a team of marshals swarmed Darling’s Alabama farm. They found nothing, but one agent spotted a heap of raw dirt across the road from the house, in some brush. He brought Janice Darling across the road to look at it. “It’s a gopher, you dummy,” she told him. He was from New York City and didn’t know gophers from wolverines, and so accepted her answer.
She’d dug up and moved the money the day before. In a year, she thought, she’d be in Toronto under a new name and still desperately missing Sturgill.
—
ON A BRIGHT TUESDAYa couple of days after he got back, Lucas and Weather drove to their polling place, where they voted for Mrs. Bowden for President. That night they went to a Bowden victory party, which didn’t work out all that well: by ten o’clock, people were slinking out of the place.
“Wolf Blitzer can kiss my ass,” one of the partiers told Lucas, as they shuffled down the sidewalk.
—
VIRGIL FLOWERS,a BCA agent and old friend, was in town the next day, and stopped by to check on him. He cut through the post-election gloom: “Hey, man. The world goes on, you know what I mean? Go out in the backyard, burn some steaks, fire up a doobie, relax. Oh—and tell me about Marfa...”
There were no doobies to be had, but they burned some steaks and with the cold weather moving in, ate at the dining table, drank some Leinies, and Lucas told them all about it.
He said, “I’ll tell you, Virgil, things are getting strange out there. This whole case was pinned on... guess what?”
“Uh, let me see. Couldn’t be intelligent investigation, we can rule that out...”
“Telephones. Everybody was leaning on telephones.” Lucas took a phone from his pocket and held it up, then looked at it, at the shiny black glass. “They’re so great, these little machines are, that we all agree to be spied on for the privilege of carrying them. The phones know where we’ve been, when we were there, and lots of time, what we were doing there—what we were buying, who we were talking to, and wherethosepeople were. They can even tell how fast you were moving, in case somebody wants to prove you were speeding. They know who you talk to, who your contacts are, what credit cards you have, where you bank. We all know that, but we can’t get away from them. Even crooks know it, and eventheycan’t get away from them.”
“All you’d have to do is not have one,” Flowers said.
“You can’t do that—listen to me,you can’t do that anymore,” Lucassaid.“What if you left your phone at home and had a heart attack or rolled your car over on a back road? How would you call nine-one-one to ask for help? And if you’re a crook and leave your phone at home while you’re sticking up a bank, but you carry it all the rest of the time... you automatically look suspicious. Youalwayscarry the phone, and this one time, during the bank robbery, youleft it at home? I don’t think so. Sooner or later some prosecutor will convict somebody of something because hedidn’thave a phone in his pocket.”
“You need another drink,” Flowers said. And, “Say, how’s Letty doing? Is she coming home for Christmas? Maybe I’ll call her up.”
“Only at the risk of your life,” Lucas said.
“What? You’d shoot me for calling up Letty?”
“Oh, no, I’d just tell Frankie,” Lucas said. Frankie was Virgil’s girlfriend, and not a stranger to violence. “I’d say, Frankie? Guess what...”
Flowers held up his hands: “All right, all right. Joking there about Letty...”
—
