Curtis shakes his head. You’re one paranoid son of a bitch, he says.
Argos puts his pistol in the saddlebag, along with two bottles of water from the cooler. His crazy grin is back; it seems less affected this time. You think I’m paranoid, huh? he says. Okay. Let’s talk about our pal Damon for a second. What did Damon do after the Gulf War, Curtis? Embassy security. Where? Bolivia. Pakistan. Who hangs out at those embassies? You’re gonna tell me Damon didn’t network with those guys? Damon Blackburn? C’mon, Curtis. This guy knows the secret handshake, okay? He owns the decoder ring.
Curtis laughs at that, shakes his head like it’s ridiculous, but at the same time he’s thinking: how did Albedo find me yesterday at New York?
Argos pulls his binoculars from the saddlebag to scan the rise again. Curtis risks a glance of his own this time. Sure enough, there’s a pink column of dust there, fading in the breeze. He can’t see anything moving on the ground.
A helmet hangs from the dirtbike’s handlebars; Argos pulls it on, fastens the chinstrap. Then he stows the binoculars and shuts the saddlebag. Wait a minute, Curtis says. We’re not done yet.
Oh, I’m afraid we are, my friend.
Curtis forces himself to think quickly, to get back in character. He still doesn’t have what he needs. Not enough. Not yet. You’re full of shit, man, he says. If you expect Damon to make a deal based on what you just told me, then you really are crazy. You’ve got nothing. Go ahead and give that story to NJSP. Damon’ll say you cooked it up. He’ll say you and the dealer put the scam together on your own, and that you whacked the dealer yourself. Anything you claim he did on the inside, he’ll say you could have done yourself from the outside with a little foresight. Who can corroborate?
Argos straddles the bike, tips it, and kicks up the sidestand. Have you guys found Stanley yet? he says. No? I didn’t think so. I guess I’ll see you at the finish-line.
Nobody’s gonna find Stanley, Argos. You know that. He’s not gonna save you. You need some kind of physical evidence against Damon, and you don’t have it. You’re going up against a decorated ex-marine, and you don’t even have a real name. All you’ve got are your paranoid bullshit stories.
I got a number, Argos says.
Say again?
A number. Seventeen ninety-seven.
What the hell are you talking about?
That’s the room at the Point where I met the dealer and Damon’s triggerman. I can’t say for sure, but I got a suspicion the dealer didn’t exit that room under his own power. I just hope for Damon’s sake he didn’t leave all the cleanup to Housekeeping.
Argos turns the bike’s ignition key, shifts to neutral, squeezes the clutch, and presses the starter. The noisy little engine sputters and catches. I’ll be back in touch in a few days! Argos shouts over the buzzsaw drone. You better have some good news!
He rolls forward, angles away, and opens the bike’s throttle, skidding in a long arc along the old drowned road, scattering fine gravel and alkaline dust in a seething cloud. Before Curtis can get his hands up, the brunt of it catches him in the chest and face. It feels a little like being downwind from teargas. He spits and curses. Then he smiles. The whine of the bike’s engine pitch-shifts and fades. Room 1797, Curtis thinks. That’s good. That might do the trick.
The Styrofoam cooler still lies open on the concrete slab. Curtis stumbles to it, reaches inside. Two bottles left. He opens one, removes his glasses, fills his cupped palm, and splashes his face and scalp. He does it again, rubbing his wet hand over his neck, and drinks the rest of the water. Then he wipes his hands on his trouserlegs and puts the bullets back in his gun.
The vehicle on the dirt road must have been the park ranger. Just in case it wasn’t, he’d like to get out of here soon. He ties his jacket around his waist, puts the last waterbottle in its pocket. His left eyesocket stings and tears up: something must’ve gotten into it around the safety glasses’ lenses, or maybe while he was washing his face. He wants to rinse it again but he’s dehydrated already, and can’t spare the second bottle.
A short distance away, behind a waving screen of toothy grass, he spies the unbroken foundation of a house, well-made enough to trap and hold the most recent rains. It could almost be a rectangular pool in a Roman atrium but for the tumbleweeds clustered along its western edge. He makes his way to it in the hope of examining his reflection, but all he can see is the dark outline of his head. Then he kneels and closes his right eye tight, balancing blind as he lifts rainwater to his face.
It doesn’t help. He can’t stick around here any longer. The visitor center is ten miles back at least, part of that over rough ground. Curtis towels off with the upstretched hem of his shirt. The wind dries his scalp as he hikes the rise back to the road.
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