“There’s one person,” Walter said. “That girl at the doughnut shop. She saw us both. She saw us get into the car. She knew Martha Jefferson, knew she was going to the airport. If they asked her about us, man, she could trip us up.”
“But you got your ticket,” East said. Beyond considering possibilities. “You’re gonna go anyway.”
“I’m really gonna go,” Walter said. “Let’s find someplace to talk. I got to be at the gate in twenty minutes.”
—
They sat apart in bathroom stalls, trying to purge, then huddled together at the sinks. Around them the businessmen cast down their eyes, wet their hands in the basins. Walter slipped East a wrinkled wad of bills. East counted it out. Seventy-one dollars.
“You take it,” Walter said. “Give me back a twenty I can show. Get me on a bus or whatever. Get me home.”
East fed him back a twenty. Now a hundred and fifty-one dollars was his stake in the world.
“Here,” Walter said. He gave East a slip of paper from the airline counter. A suitcase tag, a 310 number on it and an elasticized string. “Give me till tonight, man. Then call me. I’ll take care of you, man. I swear it.”
East laughed hoarsely. “You gonna take care of me? Really?”
Walter stammered. “East. Why I’d wrong you? I mean, you’re a bad man now, right?”
East lowered his head.
“You tell me where you’re at. Town and address. I can buy you a ticket: plane, train, whatever you want. I can rent you a car. I can wire you money. I can probably find you a house to crash in.”
“All right,” East said. “I know it. We better ditch these van keys.”
“Oh shit. You’re right,” Walter said. He grabbed a series of paper towels from the wall, dried his hands, and they wrapped the two keys up in them. Tossed it out.
“What happens to that trash?”
“They burn it. Some incinerator somewhere. They’ll wind up in the ashes. But nobody ever looks at that shit,” Walter said. “Whyn’t we get out of this bathroom? I’m tired of the smell in here.” Suddenly he was smiling, lighter. “E, man. We finished it.”
They walked together into the spilling white carpeted light of the terminal. People flowing around them. East barely noticed them.
“This was terrible,” Walter said. “I hated it. Hitting the dude. But I’m glad you were there. It wouldn’t have gone on without you.”
“I know,” East said.
“We did it,” Walter said. “I got to go.”
“Be careful.”
“I will.” Walter slapped East’s shoulder. “Love you, man.”
He slapped Walter back and started walking. He burped; it came up raw, bitter. Love you, man. He didn’t love Walter, and he didn’t say shit like that. He made sure of the bills in his pocket and he looped the luggage tag with the number through the hole in Martha Jefferson’s key. And he made his way out toward the garage. But before he left, he looked back. Walter was in the security line, watching him, his pants sagging already below his belly but the ticket clutched in his hand. East raised a hand and Walter smiled back. There. That much was enough.
He returned to the trash can out front and fetched the greasy white bag he’d stowed. He could feel its contents, the two loose weights inside. The popgun he’d shot Ty with and the other, the Glock that had killed Carver Thompson and his girl. The two guns with history. The third, the Taurus that no one had fired, the clean one, he’d left on his brother, tucked it into his pants at the end. He tightened the bag and clutched it to his hip.
“Can I help you get somewhere?” sounded a voice over his shoulder.
Maybe the airport cop had seen him. Maybe it was taking trash out of the can that had brought him hovering. Maybe it was just the way East looked. Or felt.
“Naw, man,” he drawled without looking. “You can’t help me.” Then he was moving again, off into the garage. He was a bad man now.
—
First he drove south. South was away from the police and the van; it was away from Wisconsin; it was neither here nor there. Farms by the side of the road, naked highways, no trees. Sometimes he glimpsed ghostly barns lost on plains, herds of pigs thwarted behind wire.
His eyes felt caked, sticky, like they’d rolled around in the gutter before he’d popped them back into his face.
Brown signs pointed the way to a state park: picnic, camping, river access. Something in his mind started at the idea of a river—it promised crossing, crashing, the cold water dividing this from that. He turned off the highway down the old, tree-lined road.
A cruiser rolled by. STATE PARK RANGER. Cop of a different color is still a cop.