Pistol Poets

laughing. Shook his head and laughed more. He looked at himself like a stranger. Poor dumb bastard. He was still chuckling when he left the rest room.

He stood in the lit doorway of the rest room, hands in pockets. He let the cold wash over him. Winter had started to ease these last few days, but at two in the morning, it was sharply cold. Damp. Refreshing, but it would get cold soon if he stood outside for very long.

Reams approached with an armload of something wrapped in newspaper. He frowned, eyes hard, his enthusiasm for the trip apparently spent.

“What’s that?” Morgan asked.

“The drill, the saw, and the chisels,” Reams said. “How am I supposed to return these goddamn things when they’re covered in Jakes’s vomit? It’s revolting.”

“Throw them away,” Morgan said.

“They were expensive,” Reams said. “Keep an eye on that idiot, will you? I left the doors open to air out, and I don’t want him stumbling off. I’m going to try to clean these.”

Morgan eyed the saw. “Please be careful.”

“Give me some credit.”

“Reams,” Morgan said. “Be careful.”

Reams frowned, walked past with the armload of pukey tools.

Morgan stood, looked at the night, heard the night sounds, the occasional car on the interstate. He rocked heel to toe with hands in pockets, the night air cloying on his face, damp on his ears, the back of his neck. His thin ponytail hung loose and limp. The cold air stung his throat and lungs.

He checked the Mercedes. Jakes hadn’t budged. Morgan cast about for something else to look at.

Across the lot sat the car that had followed them into the rest area. Strange, thought Morgan. The driver hadn’t got out to use the rest room. Morgan thought he could just see the outline of the driver’s body behind the wheel. He watched for a moment. There. The red-orange pinpoint of a cigarette flaring in the front seat. The guy had pulled off to have a smoke.

The bright glow of the cigarette went out. It came back a second later, hovered in the implacable darkness a moment, then faded.

Morgan’s gut grew heavy. Worry crawled up his spine, found a home in his brain. He hadn’t thought about Ginny’s attacker for hours. The endless string of minor annoyances perpetrated by his traveling companions had distracted him.

Ginny said he was after me, Morgan thought. This dangerous fucking freak wants something from me, and I don’t even know what. Something to do with Annie? Morgan’s eyes shifted nervously. Jakes’s Mercedes and the other car were the only ones in the rest area.

Morgan kept his eyes on the strange car, reached behind him, and knocked on the men’s room door, which was propped open. “Let’s speed it up, okay, Reams? I want to get back on the road.”

“Just a moment.”

Morgan heard the water running, the tools clanking in the sink.

“I’ll be in the car.” Morgan fast-walked back to the Mercedes, took the keys out of his coat pocket with trembling hands. It’s just cold. That’s all.

He climbed in, cranked it. He kept glancing in the rearview mirror at the other car. No movement. Not even the glow of the cigarette. The back door was still open, but the dome light wasn’t on since Jakes had smashed it. The car was still thick with the reek of vomit.

Reams returned and startled Morgan. Morgan had been watching the rearview mirror and hadn’t seen the professor coming. Reams shoved Jakes’s head back into the car. He dumped the tools onto the floor of the backseat, then slammed the door. He climbed into the front next to Morgan.

Reams’s hand was wrapped in multiple layers of rest room paper towels. A little red spot forming where the blood seeped through.

“What happened?” Morgan asked.

“Nothing.”

“Did you cut yourself again?”

“Never mind,” Reams said. “Just drive.”

Morgan backed the Mercedes out of the space, then took the on-ramp back to the interstate. He kept one eye on the other car in the mirror. It didn’t turn its lights on, didn’t follow. Morgan drove ten minutes. The interstate was long and dark and quiet. No other cars.

Maybe he was being paranoid. It was natural he’d be nervous, overcautious. He eased into the driver’s seat, relaxed his grip on the wheel. Reams was quiet, Jakes passed out. Maybe the rest of the trip south would pass in relative peace.

He glanced at the mirror again, and his breath caught.

Distantly, a pair of headlights, two dots of light hugging the road behind.

This is a major interstate, Morgan told himself. Even at this hour there’ll be lots of people traveling. That doesn’t have to be the car from the rest area.

But deep in the pit of Morgan’s belly, he knew it was.

Deke Stubbs kept his distance.

He figured the professor had almost made him back at the rest stop, but now he wasn’t sure. He’d stay well behind them for a while. Creep up slowly with the daylight, mix in with the other cars as the morning traffic increased. No problem.

Stubbs unzipped himself and pulled out his pecker, he leaned, reached, grabbed an empty beer can off the passenger-side floor. He brought it to his pecker and pissed. He’d already filled two other cans. It sure would have been nice to use the pisser back at that rest stop, but Stubbs couldn’t risk Morgan getting a look at him. Stubbs might want to get closer later on, and he wouldn’t want the guy to recognize him.

Stubbs rolled down his window, tossed out the nearly full can, rolled his window back up.

The detective was tired and half-hungover and sick of driving. How far were these sons of bitches going? He thought about popping another couple of caffeine pills, but his stomach was already burning.

When he sold the drugs, maybe he’d set himself up in some other line of work. Being a private detective sucked.

thirty-one

The Houston Santa Anna Sheraton was nice, expensive, full-service, four stars. Morgan had been to several regional conferences where he’d stayed at whatever budget motel had been near the campus.

But the Thirteenth Annual International Interdisciplinary Conference of the Humanities & Fine Arts was something special. Scholars and writers from all fifty states and twenty-two countries stampeded like hypercaffeinated lemmings to the host city, where they delivered mind-numbingly complex papers on obscure subjects in their desperate bids to rack up points toward tenure. Morgan had been to more than one panel where the panelists outnumbered the audience.

Morgan had never stayed at a hotel nicer than the Holiday Inn Express. So he stood next to the Mercedes in the valet roundabout with his bag in his hand and waited for somebody to tell him what to do. Reams rummaged the trunk for his own bags.

The parking valet’s red uniform reminded Morgan of a cartoon. The valet hovered, waited for somebody to hand him a set of keys.

The back door of the Mercedes swung open. Jake’s empty bourbon bottle fell out, clanked alarmingly on the cement but didn’t break. It rolled underneath the car.

Jakes stumbled out. “Jesus Christ.” He rubbed his eyes, belched. He looked like death in a sports jacket, skin slick and ashen, hair matted, eyes dark.

Then Jakes took charge.