“Roanoke.” Bob coughed. “They’re in the cattle business, too. It’s a sign. Oh my God. Oh my God.”
He forked another squirting chunk of beef into his mouth, looked up at the ceiling fan, and started yelling as he chewed. “Look! I’m eating it, you bastards! I’m eating it all!”
Bits of meat flew out of his mouth, hit the fan, and were evenly distributed all over the restaurant.
Chapter 25
Bob ate the entire damn thing, but was paralyzed afterward. After some cajoling, we arranged to briefly borrow a wheeled office chair from the restaurant’s back room, and trundled him out to the parking lot in it. He was still sucking scraps of flesh off the horn, and bellowing that he’d showed them, he’d showed them all. Oh, and that the chef was a whore.
“Fuck this,” I said. “Get the keys from him. I’ll drive. We’ll dump his crazy ass in front of the hotel and pay someone to move him or kill him or something.”
“This is how you treat your friends?”
“He’s a nutbag, Trix. Look at him.”
“Whooooores,” said Bob.
“There you go. Get the fucking keys.”
Trix patted him down and found the keys in his inside jacket pocket. “Thank God,” she groaned. “I wasn’t up for checking his pants.”
Bob studied her with one eye, oddly drunken. “Mike never had the pretty girls before. How does he get the pretty girls now? I’m a goddamn
“You always talk to your buddies’ girls like that?” she frowned, tossing me the keys.
I nearly dropped them.
“That’s how I get into trouble.” Bob teared up. “I’m so lonely.” And, just at the point where we softened, he added, “Whooooores.”
I opened up the rear door and tipped him into it.
“What about the chair?”
“Leave it here. They called that rump well done? If I’d poured my beer on it to wake it up it could’ve skated its way home in that damn chair. Get in.”
“Oooh. Masterful.”
“I’ll spank you right here in the parking lot.”
“Promises.”
“Just get in the car.”
As we pulled out of the parking lot, Bob seemed to pull out of his meat fugue a little. “Left at the lights. Something I want to show you.”
“Whores?”
“No. Roanoke.”
I looked for Trix’s take. She shrugged. “It’s what we came for.”
I took us left at the lights, and a handful more directions took us out of town. The dark came in hard. Trix looked up out of the window. “Stars,” she said. “You don’t see so many in New York. You don’t realize.”
“Kill the lights,” said Bob, “and pull over here.” We did, by a low wooden fence.
“Get out and look into the field.”
“What are we looking for, Bob?”
“You’ll see.”
The night air was warm. The fence surrounded a large field littered with sleeping cattle. We wandered to the fence, put our feet on it, and waited.
“You look tense,” Trix said. “Have a cigarette while we’re waiting for whatever we’re waiting for.”
“The lighter flame will screw up my night vision.”
“Huh,” she said, thoughtfully. “You’re a real detective, aren’t you?”
“What did you think I was?”
“A cute, crazy guy who just fell into a crappy job. I don’t think it ever occurred to me that you were, you know, a real detective. Knowing about things like night vision sounds like real detective stuff.”
“Well, at least I’m still cute.”
“I like funny-looking guys.”
“Oh, thanks.”
She giggled and hugged my arm. “You are just too easy to tease. Look. The cattle are waking up.”
