In the end he left half the product behind, in Wolfman’s barn. I’ll get it next time, he promised. He had enough to supply his regular customers for two months, three at the outside. He smoked a bowl to calm his nerves and, at last, got on the road.
HE WAS GETTING TOO OLD FOR THIS.
Long ago he’d enjoyed the intrigue, the feeling of danger. To his teenage self, sneaking a joint in someone’s basement had seemed radically adventurous. The fear of getting caught only enhanced the high. If weed had been legal, would he still be smoking all these years later? It seemed unlikely. Probably he’d have lost interest, the way he lost interest in drinking once a fake ID was unnecessary. It was the opposite of thrilling, it was somehow demoralizing, to bring home a sixer from the package store like a younger, slightly less defeated version of his dad.
That morning, watching the sun rise over a Shell station outside Deltona, he saw the truth clearly: for a middle-aged man, selling weed was a ludicrous way to make a living. He thought of his old buddy Dennis Link, the Massachusetts statie, now staking out speed traps in his stormtrooper boots. Was his own career path any less ridiculous? Dennis, at least, would have a state pension, a house to remortgage so he could send his kids to college. After twenty years of playing cops and robbers, Timmy had jack shit.
Like any displaced worker, he’d been resistant to the changes ahead. When weed became legal he would lose his profession, the only one he’d ever practiced. On the other hand, retiring from weed would open up his life. No longer would he spend his days waiting for the phone to ring. He would see the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam maybe. Timmy knew these places only from television. In point of fact, he had never been anywhere.
While filling his gas tank, he made a decision: in a year or two, when the Laundromat was up and running, he would quit smoking weed altogether. The idea was revolutionary. Until that moment, the possibility had never crossed his mind.
He got back into the car, wondering if Claudia had ever seen the Grand Canyon. One day they could drive there together, hours and hours on the open road, never saying a word.
Weeks had passed since their night together. At first he’d waited patiently. Sooner or later she would text him, or simply show up at his door.
Claudia Something. He had tried to recall everything he knew about her. She had a job, which was stressful. She’d grown up in Maine and liked cars and weed.
The point being that he had no fucking idea how to find her. Short of walking the streets of Cambridge and Somerville, questioning strangers—Hey, do you know Claudia?—he had no strategy at all.
He carried her with him. When their night together was still fresh in his memory, he had sketched her to give Connor something to work with. Connor got the body right: the small hands and slender legs, the naked torso compact and guitar-shaped. At Timmy’s request, he gave her long hair. (Maybe Claudia could be convinced to grow hers.) After some discussion, Connor left the face blank.
Next time you see her, he told Timmy, take a picture.
But there had been no next time. The faceless woman on his back remained an outline, a void to be filled with something. The outline showed what was missing, an empty space shaped exactly like her.
BY THE TIME HE REACHED THE GEORGIA BORDER IT WAS LATE morning, the sun high overhead. He had forgotten his sunglasses. When he flicked on the air-conditioning, nothing happened. Whatever short had disabled the trap had also killed the AC.
Jesus fucking Christ.
He got off at the next exit, a curving ramp that peeled off into nowhere—a brand-new stretch of four-lane highway with empty fields on either side. He drove until he found a place to pull over, an abandoned gas station that looked ready for demolition, a crumbling patch of asphalt. What he needed, truly needed, was to smoke a bowl and collect his thoughts. Under the floor mat he kept, for just such emergencies, a small-bore pipe packed with a single hit of weed.
He parked and walked a discreet distance from the empty building before lighting the pipe. Immediately his brain cooled. He saw clearly the task ahead: daunting, yes, but not complicated. He’d driven I-95 more times than he could count. The fuckload of weed in the trunk was not important; it did not change the basic nature of the task. All he had to do was drive.
The little pipe was quickly exhausted. As Timmy shook the dregs onto the ground, he heard a noise behind him, a rustle of grass. He turned and saw a guy pissing into the bushes, a little meatball of a guy with a shaved head. The man shook himself and zipped and for no reason turned his head. Timmy saw, then, that he was wearing a uniform.
He hurried back to the Civic, faster than was prudent. He should have taken his time. He peeled out of the parking lot. Idling nearby was another car, a late-model Dodge Charger—solid black, with an elaborate antenna. He had smoked his bowl next to a pissing Georgia statie.
The Civic was sweltering, reeking of weed. As Timmy pulled onto 95, he discovered that its windows would no longer open. Except for the rear passenger-side window, which opened maybe three inches, they were now sealed shut.
As he drove, the car got hotter and hotter. He tried to think cold thoughts. Junior high hockey with frostbitten feet. Passing a flask at the boatyard with Dennis Link and Andy Stasko, freezing his nuts off. Claudia’s cold hands on his back, his face, his shoulders and chest.
HE’D DRIVEN MAYBE TEN MILES WHEN HE SAW THE BLUE LIGHTS in his rearview. He pulled over to the shoulder and waited in a pool of his own sweat.
The cop stepped out of his Tahoe. It was the same bald guy he’d seen pissing behind the gas station. He motioned for Timmy to roll down his window.
“I can’t,” Timmy said.
The cop seemed not to hear him.
“I can’t,” he said, louder this time. How did you pantomime, My windows won’t open?
In a gesture of helplessness, he raised his hands.
He understood later that raising his hands had saved him. Reflexively, the cop reached for his weapon.
Timmy sat very still, his hands in plain sight, until the cop opened the driver’s-side door.
“Sir, please step out of the car.”
22
The world is full of signs.
This happened many years ago, in the early 1990s, somewhere in northern Nevada. Victor Prine was moving a load from Indy to Sacramento, a half day ahead of schedule, when he spotted a billboard along the highway.
ANNUAL EXPO GUNS AND AMMO
WEAPONS OF ALL KINDS
The hall, when he found it, was a low-slung bunker the size of an airline hangar. Who’d built it there, beside a barren stretch of road between Reno and Winnemucca, and for what purpose, were questions he didn’t ponder. The cavernous structure seemed randomly placed in the desert, as though it had fallen from the sky.
Inside, he walked the perimeter. The first person he met was a tall hatchet-faced kid in desert fatigues. He stood behind a card table piled with pamphlets and bumper stickers. Victor was then in his early forties. The kid was maybe twenty-five years old.
He handed Victor a business card.