Argos’s voice, the whistle harmonizing with the wind: Keep coming, Curtis! he says. That’s good, what you’re doing with your hands. Keep ’em out, just like that.
He’s seated in what looks like a cheap plastic lawnchair next to a parked dirtbike. A second chair is about ten feet in front of him. Unless somebody else is coming, Curtis figures that for his seat. Both rest on the smooth concrete foundation of an old building long since gone, rotted or floated away by rising water. Aside from a few chipped corners where rebar peeks through, the slab looks ready to build on. Curtis can barely see Argos. Beneath the blazing mirror in his upraised left hand, he’s no more than a shade.
Hey, Curtis calls, Could you maybe knock that shit off?
Argos doesn’t answer, and the mirror doesn’t go away. Curtis takes another few paces forward. Slow and deliberate. Squinting. When he’s an arm’s-length from the empty chair, the light disappears, and Argos’s other hand comes up.
There’s a gun in it: a matte-black semiautomatic pistol. Argos holds it like he’s watched a lot of movies. It makes Curtis nervous, but not too nervous. He’s figured on this, more or less.
Come toward me, Argos says. Keep your arms out. Closer. Now turn around, put your hands on your head. Spread your legs. Good.
Curtis steps onto the slab and does as he’s told, letting Argos take away his pistol and ineptly pat him down. Curtis takes off his jacket, hangs it on the back of the empty chair, and sits.
Argos wears white-framed sunglasses with blue lenses, iridescent and opaque. He’s dressed in a sleek padded motocross outfit, so spotless it looks like he changed into it after he got here. He sinks into his own seat, setting the two guns beside him on the closed lid of a Styrofoam cooler. Curtis can see what Veronica meant: the guy’s face is totally unremarkable. He’s white, but not just white. Part Asian, probably, though he could just as easily pass for Hispanic, or Middle Eastern. Staring hard, trying to see around the sunglasses to what’s underneath, Curtis thinks of an illustration from an Intro Psych textbook he had at Cal Lutheran: a blurry picture of a man’s face, made up of the superimposed images of dozens of faces. Curtis can’t remember what the picture was supposed to be illustrating, but that’s what Argos looks like, right down to the blur.
Before we get started, Argos says, I ought to tell you something.
Okay.
About three hundred yards over your right shoulder, on top of the rise, there is a little clump of creosote-bush. Don’t look. Just take my word for it. Sitting in that clump of creosote-bush is a friend of mine, all decked out in camouflage. My friend has a rifle with a scope on it, and right now he’s got the crosshairs of that scope glued to the back of your skull. I’m sure you know more about these things than I do, Curtis, but my friend tells me that with his rifle three hundred yards is a pretty easy shot. So just keep that in mind, please.
For an instant Curtis tenses, his skin crawling, but it doesn’t last. Argos is already holding a pistol on him; why mention the rifle? It has to be bullshit: the guy’s alone out here, and he’s scared. Scared enough to be dangerous, maybe. But definitely alone.
You made pretty good time, Argos says.
Thanks. What do you want?
I want to make a deal. I’m sick of getting chased around. I want to get back in business, start putting teams together again. I’m not greedy, and I know where I stand. I want some specific and convincing guarantees from Damon that he’ll lay off me from here on out, and let me do my thing.
What are you offering?
Argos grins. His grin is crazy, but calculatedly so: a crazy grin. I’m not offering, he says. I’m giving. We’re having ourselves a little potlatch here.
Okay. What are you giving?
I’m giving up my memory. I’m forgetting any and all claims I have on any portion of my take from the Spectacular. Okay? I’m forgetting what happened in AC. It’s entirely forgotten. Hell, I’m forgetting that Atlantic City even exists. I’m never setting foot there again. All this I do unilaterally. No need for reciprocal gestures. You can tell Damon that it’s my gift to him.
He and Curtis look at each other. The wind hisses through the saltcedar. It makes a lot of noise, but Curtis can barely feel it.
However, Curtis says.