You see where we're going with this?'
'Where's Pike?'
Garcia said, 'Fuck him.' When Garcia moved, he seemed to jerk, and when he wasn't moving he rubbed his palms on his thighs like they were wet.
'What happened to Pike?' Maybe something in my voice.
Riggens made a little shrug, but he'd heard it, too.
'Who the fuck knows. They separated in town and we got her. He's not so much. He wasn't so goddamn much.'
Thurman came back from the stairs, his eyes nervous and his face flushed. 'She's gone.'
Riggens said, 'What did I say?'
'You bastard.' Thurman threw the flowers at Riggens and started for him, but Riggens lifted his left hand and showed a 9-mil Browning. His face went cold as an ax blade. 'You wanna fuck with me? You want to see how far if it'll push?'
Thurman stopped. He didn't look like a kid going to the prom anymore. He looked like an oversized street cop with a serious mad on. He looked dangerous.
I said, 'Mark.'
Riggens straight-armed the Browning and told Thurman to back up, but Mark Thurman didn't move.
I said, 'Mark.'
Garcia's eyes flicked from Thurman to me and then to Riggens. Beads of sweat had risen on Garcia's forehead and he wiped his palms again. I didn't like that.
I stepped close behind Thurman, then eased him back.
Riggens said, 'You sold us out, you fuck.'
Mark Thurman said, 'If she's hurt, I'll kill you, Floyd.' He looked at Garcia. 'I'll kill every one of you.'
Floyd nodded. 'You shoulda thought about that before you decided to sell us out, you prick.' He gestured again with the Browning. 'Where's the tape?'
I said, 'What tape?'
Pete Garcia said, 'Oh, fuck this.' He jerked up from the couch so quickly that Mark Thurman stepped back.
Garcia said, 'Just shoot the sonofabitch, Floyd. Jesus Christ.'
I said, 'Oh, that tape.'
Riggens shifted the muzzle from Thurman to me. 'Come on. You guys give us the tape, and we'll give you the girl. That's the way it's going to work.'
I shook my head. 'Too late, Riggens. We gave it to IAD.'
Garcia said, 'Then the broad's dead.' He shouted it, as if what little control he had over himself was going.
Mark Thurman said, 'That's not true. We still have it.'
I looked at him.
Thurman said, 'It's in the car. Floorboard behind the driver's side.' He looked at me. 'I'm not going to risk Jennifer.'
Riggens said, 'Go see, Pete.'
Garcia went outside and came back maybe two minutes later with the tape. 'Got it.'
Riggens cocked his head toward a large-screen Zenith in the corner. 'Check it out.'
Garcia took the tape to the VCR and fumbled with the controls. His hands were shaking so badly that it took him a couple of tries to get the cassette into the machine. I didn't like all the shaking. Garcia wasn't the nervous type, but he was nervous today. I thought about why he might be nervous, and I didn't like that, either.
When the Zenith filled with Charles Lewis Washington and the Premier Pawn Shop, Riggens said, 'Fine. Eric's waiting. We'll take your car.'
The four of us went out to Mark Thurman's Mustang. Floyd Riggens asked if Thurman knew how to get to something called the Space Age Drive-in, and Thurman said that he did. Riggens told Thurman to drive and me to ride in the shotgun seat. Riggens and Garcia sat in back.
We worked our way out of the subdivision and onto the Sierra Highway, driving up through the center of town. It took maybe ten minutes to cross through Lancaster, and pretty soon we were away from the traffic and the traffic lights and into an area that the local cognoscenti probably called the outskirts of town. Not as many houses out here. Less irrigated lawn, more natural desert.
Maybe a quarter mile past a Tastee-Freez, Floyd Riggens said, 'There it is.'
The high sail of the Space Age Drive-In Movie Theater's screen grew up out of the desert maybe two hundred yards from the highway behind a marquee that said CLOSED. It was surrounded by barren flatland and overgrown scrub brush and yucca trees. A narrow tarmac road branched off the highway and ran up past the marquee and a little outbuilding where people had once bought tickets to giant-ant movies, and disappeared along a high fence beside the movie screen that had probably been built so that people couldn't park on the side of the road and watch the movies for free.
Riggens said, 'Turn in just like you were going to the movies.'
We turned up the little road and followed it up past the marquee and the ticket booth and toward the entrance
