“Think about speaking the language,” Darling said. “That’s a big deal. If you don’t know the language, you’ve got to rely on somebody else for everything.”
“How do you know so much about this?” Poole asked.
“’Cause if I ever have to run, that’s where I’m going,” Darling said. “Canada. I worked through all of this, years ago, with Janice. We have money stashed up there and a couple of good IDs for each of us.”
The food came, and when the waitress had gone again, Poole asked, “How about Phoenix or Vegas?”
“Mmm, if I had to choose, I’d say Phoenix. That’s another place with a lot of tourists going through, people moving in and out all the time, and it doesn’t have the surveillance that Vegas does. Vegas has a million cameras all over the place, and I gotta believe that thefeds monitor the video feeds with their face-recognition technology. That place is like a sump hole for old Mafia guys.”
“Okay. Not Vegas. How about California?”
“About a billion cops,” Darling said. “You move there, you’ll have fifty government workers looking at you, checking your tax records, asking where you moved there from, where you work now, how long you’ve been there. California is like a Nazi state with palm trees—‘Papers, please.’ Seriously, I’ve looked into all of this.”
“Ah, shit.”
“You got another problem,” Darling said. “I don’t want you to get pissed when I say it.”
“Dora.”
Darling twitched a finger at him. “You’ve been thinking about it.”
“Yeah. If they’re looking for faces, hers is... distinctive. She’s pretty, and lots of guys look her over. Including cops. If I stay with her, spotting her could mean spotting me.”
“I didn’t want to mention it, when she’s around.”
Poole ate silently until his steak was nearly gone, then said, “You know, I’ll take the chance with Dora. I’m not leaving her behind. People get to know me, they don’t like me—I can feel it. Dora knows me and she still likes me.”
“I like you,” Darling said.
“And I likeyou,” Poole said. “But we are rare people. I mean, what would you do without your wife and kids? Who would your friends be?”
Darling looked out the window at the parking lot, then shook his head. “I don’t know. I’d be pretty goddamn lonely.”
“So we’re stuck with what we got, and who we are,” Poole said. “That’s what we got to work with.”
Darling chewed on his lower lip for a few seconds, then looked across at Poole and said, “You can’t walk away from Dora, but you could shoot that little girl.”
Poole said, “Yeah, well... I don’t know what that is. I guess it means that I’ll take care of me and mine, but I don’t so much give a shit about anyone else.Youyell for help, I’ll come, no questions. Some stranger catches on fire, I wouldn’t walk across the street to piss on him.”
—
THAT NIGHTthey got together in Box’s room and ate roast beef sandwiches she’d bought at a supermarket, and argued about their next move. Darling mentioned Edmonton, and when Box found out where it was, she shook her head. “No way in hell,” she said. “My uncle was somewhere up there during the Cold War, at a radar station. He said it got dark in November and didn’t get light until March. Even if I could handle the cold, which I couldn’t, I couldn’t handle all that dark. I’m a Southern girl.”
They ran again through the other possibilities—Arizona, California, Florida. Darling even mentioned the possibility of simply moving thirty or forty miles over to Fort Worth, or down to Houston or San Antonio.
“You’ve already got a few good sets of Texas IDs, you wouldn’t have to go through that routine again, getting new ones in Arizona, getting new tags and all that,” Darling said.
“Wasn’t that big a problem,” Poole said. “You got these illegalscoming across the border, there’s a whole industry out there making good phony IDs. The guy I got my Texas IDs from could probably get us good Arizona IDs.”
“Texas is too scary now. Especially since we’ve left the house. I think it’s Arizona,” Box said. “That’s good with me.”
Poole turned to Darling: “You think you’re still okay in Alabama—and I know you’re anxious to get going up to Canada.”
“Got to go,” Darling said. “I need the alibi if the feds come around again.”
“Could you go with us to Arizona?” Poole asked. “You and me in your truck? I’m thinking you got that hideout spot in your camper back. I’ve got three million in cash and a million and a half in gold I got to hide. If the cops pull me over...”
“What is it? Two days’ drive down there? I can do that,” Darling said.
