Headlights. It’s a cab: white, with black skirting and magenta fenders. It slows as it turns off the ramp, moving steadily ahead. Nobody but the cabbie is aboard that he can see. As it approaches, it angles broadside, rolls to a stop. Its flashing dorsal LED screen tells him that the NCAA first-round pairings have been announced. Its back door says FORTUNE CAB.
A quiet drone: the driver’s-side window coming down. Hey, man, the cabbie says. You Curtis?
Yeah, Curtis says. Where’s your fare?
You’re my fare, man.
Okay. Where am I going?
The cabbie—dreadlocked hair gray at the temples, creased and sagging nut-brown skin—gives Curtis a slow once-over. I’m gonna tell you how it is, he says. And then you can decide if you want to ride or not. See, I’m not supposed to tell you where you’re going. I’m supposed to take your phone away, and I’m not supposed to talk to you once you’re in the cab. How’s that sound?
Curtis thinks about it. Can you tell me how long the ride’s gonna be? he says.
I’ll tell you what it’s gonna cost. One-sixty. I take that up front.
Hundred sixty? Curtis says. That’s a long ride. We crossing any state lines?
The cabbie gives him a thin crooked smile. What’s it gonna be, man? he says.
Curtis peels eight twenties from the envelope in his jacket pocket and hands them over. Then he gives the cabbie his cell. The cabbie powers it down as Curtis opens the back door and sits.
They wind their way to the garage exit and turn south, passing the flashing hyperboloid of the Barbary Coast on their way to the interstate. As the cab descends the entrance ramp and merges into traffic, the driver speaks again. May as well settle in, he says. You’re looking at an hour and a half, maybe an hour forty-five.
Curtis furrows his brow, calculating distance and time. Drawing blanks. We going to Indian Springs? he says.
The cabbie doesn’t reply. Curtis shifts in his seat, adjusts his gun, looks out the window. Still a lot of cars on the road: after the expressway they thin out, and more vanish into North Las Vegas. The cab stays on the interstate. Soon they’re passing the speedway, the airbase. The quiet radio plays Anita Baker. Hey, Curtis says. You know what’s going on with the war?
The cabbie takes a long time to answer. I don’t know anything, man, he says.
How about finding me some news?
The guy cranks the volume a little and punches a button until an NPR station pops up. The Morning Edition billboard is just starting. The U.S. has told UN inspectors to start leaving Baghdad; France says it’ll veto any authorization of the war; Bush says he’ll act no matter what; Americans support an invasion by a ratio of two to one.
By the time Bob Edwards comes on, Curtis has tuned the radio out. He meant to check in this morning with the concierge, try to get online, get some news from AC. If what Kagami said about the missing dealer from the Point is true, it’ll be in the papers by now. He should have checked last night, should have made some calls, but he was too tired, too distracted. That would be some good dope to have for this meeting with Argos, who was right in the middle of whatever went down, or wants Curtis to think he was. I know what happened in Atlantic City. I’m the guy you’re really looking for.
The radio fizzles as they climb into the mountains. The highway angles east; the horizon is watery blue, with a gathering band of white. The desert materializes: jagged rocks, clumped white bursage and creosote-bush, the odd scarecrow silhouette of a joshua tree. Sometimes the headlights catch skunks and cottontails, soft flashes by the roadside.
When they pass a brown FHWA sign for Valley of Fire State Park the cab’s turn signal clicks on. Curtis checks the exit number and the time: they’re maybe thirty-five miles outside the city, still forty-five minutes from their ETA. The cabbie pulls folded sheets of paper off his dashboard and flattens them against the wheel: printed directions. Curtis can’t make them out. After a few seconds, the cabbie folds them again.
The two-lane blacktop turns south, then east. The edge of the sun peeks at them between jagged ridges until they turn south again. There’s nothing else on the road. By the time they hit the park boundary the radio’s getting only gales of static, occasional stuttering voices: multilateral support … respiratory syndrome … Irish-American … uncertain whether … winning the peace. Instead of turning it off, the cabbie absently sings a Bob Marley tune over it, humming when he forgets the words, always looping back to the first lines, about being robbed and sold to slavers after emerging from a bottomless pit. The cabbie has a pretty good voice. Curtis likes the song, but he can’t remember the words either.
Away from the road the ground is steep and broken, crowded with wind-scoured monoliths of deep orange that cast long shadows in the oblique light. The cab drives on, winding past campsites and picnic areas, past a visitor center—Curtis checks his watch again—and through the state park’s exit, into the Lake Mead National Recreation Area.