They ate burritos and Lucas bought a cooler, ice, and a six-pack each of Diet Coke and water, and some power bars, and they followed Johnson southeast across desert and then up into low yellowdesert mountains, including one that looked like God hadn’t actually so much made a mountain as He’d emptied out a giant sack of God-sized gravel, and then they crossed more desert toward the intersection of I-10 and I-20.
—
JOHNSON SETTLEDinto an easy hundred miles an hour, but the run out to the intersection took almost an hour and a half. They passed a few buildings on the way, and an occasional gas station, but only one substantial town at Van Horn, but that was it. I-10 and I-20 came together in a wide looping knot, and the patrol had already blocked off I-10’s access farther west toward El Paso, and also the I-10 ramp to I-20.
Johnson led them to the eastern-most checkpoint, where traffic, mostly eighteen-wheelers, was backed up a quarter mile. Lucas got out in the dirt, thought the temperature must be close to eighty-five or ninety degrees. He was still wearing a sport jacket, dress shirt, slacks, and loafers. As he stripped off the jacket, Bob came up and said, “At least it’s a dry heat.”
Forte called: “He’s on I-10 now. We got another thing going—there was a call into his phone and he took it. The call came through a tower in Mineral Wells, which is west of Weatherford.”
“That’s Box, trying to negotiate, if the cartel’s got her,” Lucas said.
“That’s what we think here. The phone’s still there and we’ve got a half dozen patrol guys and some Rangers closing in.”
“Bet it’s a burner.”
“No bet. But Jesus, Lucas, this is the most fun I’ve had in years.I’m talking to people everywhere. This is something else... I’ve got four or five guys here with me, watching the action. We got a guy putting pushpins in a map, for Christ’s sakes. You needanythingwe can do, call.”
“Yeah, well... I’m standing in the desert in a pair of Cleverley calfskin loafers that are slowly melting into the sand, so you know... cherish the air-conditioning.”
“Ah, stop bitching, it’s gonna be a great story,” Forte said. “We’ve been looking for Poole since Bush 43. This is gonna be good. If you get him, of course. If you don’t, you know, I never heard of you.”
“Glad to know that somebody’s got my back,” Lucas said.
—
FORTE CALLED AGAINtwenty minutes later: “We spotted him again, but only briefly. He was in Fort Stockton. Now he’s gone again, but he shouldn’t be, unless he trashed the phone.”
Lucas got his iPad and walked over to Bob and Rae’s truck and got in the back, in the air-conditioning. “They lost him again, in Fort Stockton, but T-Mobile’s supposed to have coverage along most of I-10, even if it doesn’t on the back highways into Fort Stockton. Forte thinks he might have trashed the phone.”
“Why would he do that?” Rae asked. “If he’s negotiating for Box, he’s gotta have a phone that they can call.”
Lucas called up a map of Texas. The Verizon data came through grudgingly, but eventually he was looking at the road network between Fort Stockton and El Paso. There wasn’t much of one. Lucas turned in his seat and said, “What if he’s turned south? What if he’s going down this way”—he drew his finger across the Google map—“and plans to cross into Mexico... here. I think that’s a border crossing, it looks like the road goes across.”
He spread the map, and called up a satellite view.
“Presidio. Never heard of it, but it’s a crossing,” he said, looking down at the satellite view. He traced a route, the only route, that would get Poole from Fort Stockton to Presidio. He touched the map again: “Whatever he does, he’s got to go through this place.”
Rae knelt on the front seat to look: “Marfa. I’ve heard of that. It’s some kind of art town, I think.”
“That can’t be right,” Lucas said. “It’s pretty much nowhere. Who’d go there to look at art? What kind of art?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I’m pretty sure I’m right.”
“Too bad we don’t have an easily accessed, widely distributed source of information so we could look it up,” Bob said.
Lucas looked down at the iPad in his hands, said, “Fuck you,” and brought up the Wiki for Marfa, Texas. “Says it’s a major center for minimalist art,” Lucas said. He looked at the landscape in the satellite photo of Marfa. “At least that seems right. Theygotminimalist.”
“Make a call,” Bob said.
“I don’t want to miss this,” Lucas said, looking out at the traffic jam.
“We’re gonna miss it,” Rae said. “We’re sitting here on our asses, all those cute highway patrolmen are gonna make the bust when it happens. What we’ll actually do is shake their hands and say, ‘Good job.’”
“Screw that,” said Lucas. “If we leave right now and if that asshole is headed to Marfa, we’ll beat him.”
“Gotta drive fast,” Rae said.
“We can do that,” Lucas said. “Give me a couple of minutes.”
