“You should have said.”
“You should have asked.”
A little pout. Fat boy missed his chance, East thought, chance to ace the test. He curled the atlas under his arm.
“I’m going to piss then,” Walter said.
East went inside briefly, to buy a cup of lemonade, mostly ice. He took off his socks and shoes and shirt in the middle seat and bathed himself with melting ice. The cold bit clean through his tired skin, but the gray illness throughout his left side still dragged at him. He pulled fresh underwear out of his bag, and the second gray Dodgers shirt, and changed. He put his pants back on and iced his face.
It was beginning to be cold outside. Not night cold but winter cold. Big trucks pounded past both ways, their high exhaust pipes hammering.
Walter returned and they got rolling, the storm behind them again, looming high, boiling. East held the ripe, ripped Dodgers shirt outside his window and let it flap, tattered like a flag. The moment he let go his pinch, it was gone.
East dreamed interstate dreams, dreams he’d never had before, choppy, worrying. Running the wrong way, or driving against oncoming traffic, or impossible land: a highway emptying into a river, a bridge wobbling, a prairie breaking up. Or ahead of them in the east, LA, with its smog and brown mountain scrim, where it shouldn’t be. All the land—people talked about America, someday you should see it, you should drive across it all. They didn’t say how it got into your head.
He awoke. Walter was intent in the driver’s seat, his lips mumbling something, repeating, like a song. He glanced at the rearview mirrors.
“How far we come?”
“I don’t know. Fifteen hundred miles. Shh.” Walter gestured back with two fingers.
East blinked, wriggled upright. “What?”
“Shh,” Walter said again.
Out the back window he saw the dying light of the day below the shelf of the storm, a layer of smoky blue. One pair of headlights nosing behind them in the lane.
“That’s state patrol,” Walter said.
East looked again at the silhouette behind the headlights. “How you know?”
“Wasn’t so dark out when he picked us up,” Walter said. “He’s on my ass this whole time.”
“You speeding?”
“No. Right at sixty-five,” Walter said. “I wish this van had cruise control.”
“So maybe we’re okay? If he wanted, he’d light you up.”
“Maybe,” Walter said. “Maybe. Maybe he’s just taking his time? Maybe he’s checking us out in the database.”
“Database?” East yawned.
“Every plate,” Walter said. “I forget what it’s called now. Cops run a check. Find out are you wanted, are you missing, is the car stolen, do you owe money. Find out whatever they want.”
“But Johnny said the van was straight.”
“The van is registered in Johnny’s family. Someone named Harris who can’t be found. Insured. Licenses are straight. I know; I had them made. Everything was straight until Vegas.”
“Stopping at that casino?”
“It wasn’t the stopping,” said Walter. “Wasn’t even getting up on the tow. You can always pay the guy, give him a hundred dollars, the problem goes away. It was you two, jacking it up. Slugging the guy.”
“That wasn’t me.”
“All right. Your brother did.”
“That ain’t on me,” East insisted.
He glanced back. Nothing from Ty. No way to know if he was even alive.
“All right. Anyway. So what you gotta ask is: Did they call it in, those guys? Is there some bulletin out on us? Or did they keep it in house, make themselves a promise they’d kick our ass next time?” said Walter. “Wisconsin plates. So they knew there probably wasn’t gonna be a next time.”
East said, “How’d you learn all this?”
“That’s what I do,” Walter said. “Projects.”
“Projects?”
“I know people,” said Walter. “I got jobs. I watched a house for a bit like you. But I moved up.”
“You made the licenses,” said East. “What’s that mean? That license ain’t real, that’s what it means.”
“East. Fin has a whole setup. People in the DMV. People at the state. I got a part-time job there; they think I’m twenty-two. So we can float records. We can make people up. Some sit in the system for years, man, before we use them. When we need them, I take care of it. I make it happen.”
“You make what happen?”
“I make a license,” Walter said.
“You an artist? You print it?”
“No, state does that. I used to, but it wasn’t good enough. Get you past a bouncer. But a cop would spot it. Now they’re real.”
“But they ain’t real.”
Walter said, “What is real? These got everything a California license has. There’s backup in the statehouse says there is an Antoine Harris. State trooper calls it in, it checks out. That real enough for you?”
“I don’t believe it,” said East.