First day of July, perfect time to hit Vegas if heatstroke’s your thing. I phoned Rufus, told him to put my judo lessons on hold for a while, caught a taxi to the rental place near the airport, picked up the Mustang, then hit I-80 east at 9:40 a.m., top down, happy to be on the road, headed in a direction, any direction. Motion can fool you into thinking you’re getting somewhere. It’s mental feng shui, good enough that it almost works on Amtrak.
Gumshoe on the loose, road trip, free to turn left, right, or keep going straight ahead. I left Reno with eight thousand dollars in a lockbox in the trunk of the car, a few hundred in my wallet. It was a lot to be carrying around, but cash is still king, and if things got murky in southern Nevada, I didn’t want to leave a big credit card trail.
East through Fernley to Fallon, south on US 95 to Schurz, past Walker Lake to Hawthorne, then through serious desert as the temperature climbed into three digits. Left turn at Coaldale, then forty hot, dry miles to Tonopah.
Tonopah, where Holiday and I stayed at the Mizpah Hotel, working the Harry Reinhart caper. The memory was still sharp. And good.
Caper. Another word I need to use more often.
Around a broad swooping bend in the highway, the town appeared to be about eight miles up a long sloping rise. I went eight miles and the town was still six miles away. That was the desert for you, full of mirages and vast distances that fool the eye. At an elevation of just over six thousand feet, Tonopah was cool when I finally got there, only ninety-eight degrees.
One thirty-five. Time to gas up. Time for food.
McGinty’s Café looked like a fair bet since there was a Texaco station right next door—and a fifties motel, the Stargazer.
McGinty’s was doing a modest lunch trade, eight customers in the place, four booths and five tables empty. Two waitresses. The counter was half full, so I sat in a booth with a view of the highway and an occasional car trolling along at twenty-five. I picked up a menu stuck in a metal holder that also corralled salt, pepper, nondairy creamers, sugar packets.
“Hi, I’m Lucy. I’ll be your server.”
She’d snuck up on me. Eighteen years old, fresh-faced, pretty, auburn hair cut in a short, perky style. Gave me a déjà vu moment, put me back in high school for a few seconds, senior year, thinking about who to ask to the prom.
“Start you off with something to drink first?” she asked.
“Coke or Pepsi, either one.”
Lucy stared at me for a moment. Then hustled away, came back a minute later, and set a big plastic cup of Pepsi and a straw in front of me.
“Ready to order?”
“The fried chicken okay?”
“It’s dead. How okay is that?”
I stared at her.
“Joke,” she said. “It’s . . . well, fried chicken. I mean, if you were battered and fried, would you be okay?”
“Let me guess. Your parents don’t own this place.”
“Nope. So, how ’bout that chicken?”
“Why not? And fries.”
“The Heart Buster Special. Works for me.”
She hustled away, slender, trim, curvy, wearing black pants and a short-sleeve white shirt, mouth that wouldn’t quit.
I looked out at the street. Watched trucks roll by, spinning up dust devils. Hot blue sky. Weeds. A crow perched atop a power pole, eyeing the asphalt for roadkill. Tonopah is built on a hill, a pile of rocks, actually. Without US 95 going through, the place wouldn’t have so much as an outhouse.
One forty turned into one forty-eight, then a huge crash in the vicinity of the kitchen and a man’s voice: “Son of a bitch, Lucy! That’s it, that’s the last goddamn time! Get outta here! Out! You’re fired!”
Lucy slowed as she went by. “Your lunch is gonna be late.” She kept going, pushed through the door into the hot afternoon, and was gone. The other waitress, fortysomething with big hair and a pen tucked behind one ear, came by. “Chicken’ll be another few minutes, hon. Sorry ’bout that. I’m Terry, by the way. Can I get you a refill on that drink?”
“Sure, thanks. Make it a diet. I’ve reached my sugar limit.”
She laughed as waitresses do, got me a refill, hurried away now that her workload had suddenly doubled.
More trucks.
The crow flew away.
A kid on a bicycle glided downhill as the temperature finally hit a hundred.
My fried chicken arrived. Half-size corn on the cob, too. I had a leg and a few fries down when Lucy came in the door with a small suitcase and sat down opposite me in the booth. She had on black nylon running shorts that barely covered her butt, and a lightweight ribbed cotton tank top, pale pink, that hugged half-sized breasts like a second skin, complete with nipple bumps.
“Buy me lunch, Mortimer? I’m starved.”
I stared at her for six long seconds. “I’ve seen pictures of Ethiopia. You don’t look starved.”
She looked down at herself, then stole a fry off my plate, stuck it in her mouth. “I was about to go on break. That would’ve been lunch—free, too, but then . . .” She shrugged. “Your plate got loose and Earl reached his limit. Fourth one I’ve dropped in two weeks, so it’s like I’m not supposed to be a waitress.”
A beefy guy, fifty years old, wearing a chef’s hat, came out of the kitchen as if shot out of a cannon. “Get outta here, Lucy.”
“Hey,” she said. “I don’t work here, Earl. I’m a customer. You treat customers like that in this place?”
“You’re not a customer—”
“Yes, she is,” I said. I handed her a menu. “What’ll it be?”
She put the menu back in its slot. “I pretty much know what they serve here. I’ll have a toasted cheese and cole slaw. And fries.” She took another one of mine, then looked up at Earl.
“You, you, you . . .” he said. The backs of his hands were hairy. His apron was smeared with cooking grease.
“She’s with me,” I said.
