Spain felt his head falling to the side and he woke up. It was night. Shit. He'd dozed off. The Mercedes was still there. Forty-five minutes later and getting very uncomfortable, somebody comes out and gets into the black car. Spain follows him from a distance when he pulls out. Fifteen more minutes and he stops and talks to somebody Spain doesn't recognize. They get in their cars and he follows them out to the boonies.
The other car is a dark-colored Caddy, and it passes the Tripotra car, so Spain stays back with BADTRIP.
It was getting dark now and more difficult to tail. The lights of the traffic were starting to hurt Spain's eyes. He'd been in the car for hours and he was getting sore. His neck and back hurt and his butt was getting numb and he had a slight headache. He rolled down the window a bit and rubbed his eyes.
He had lost the black Mercedes momentarily with some idiot trucker darting in front of him, and then he saw it again and moved a little closer. He'd lost sight of the dark Caddy completely.
Suddenly they're both going up an off-ramp and Spain has no choice but to stay with them. It's a three-car convoy now. He can make the Caddy out. He's wide awake now and his mind is working very fast. Trying to figure what they'll do. If they stop at the top of the off-ramp, will they go left or right. Right. He has no choice. He'll have to go around them. No telling.
They don't stop, they keep moving to the right. Spain hangs in there.
The traffic up on the highway sung along in the nighttime symphony of semis and fast cars. The black Mercedes swung sharply around a curve and over a concrete-and-steel bridge, coming down off the blacktop a little too fast and fishtailing a little as it hit the gravel.
The driver braked behind a parked vehicle and killed the lights, getting out and looking up and down the road. He gets in the other car. Spain, who has been following the Mercedes, sees the man get into the parked car and he pulls over just on the other side of the curve. It looks deceptively close but he knows what it will be like trying to move through the wooded area there beside the highway; the grass looks fairly short but he has no idea what he'll be getting into. It's worth the effort, because if they'll stay in the parked car awhile it's a perfect grenade shot from the woods.
Even as he starts stomping through the high grass as he goes down the steep berm he thinks he might go back and just drive down past them, turn around as if he was lost, and pitch it in at them as he goes back. No, he decides, he'll use the tube and thump a round or two in on them with that. It's a perfect piece of terrain for the tube. He can turn right around, come back up the hill, get in his car, and he won't appear to have been anywhere near the other vehicles. The traffic and the insect noises are covering his sounds as he nears the edge of the trees.
Condensation from the driver's breath has formed a little frosty O on the inside of the windshield and he sits there listening to the other man talk, seemingly mesmerized by the spreading windshield fog from their hot breath.
"I gotta crank down the fucking window here," he says, and lowers his window, inhaling the night air with its wet redolence of tree fogs and crickets and mosquitoes. " Motherfucker stinks."
"Why doncha turn the goddamn motor back on and run your fuckin' air-conditioning, then."
"I could put the defrost on," the driver says, but he makes no move to do so.
"Yeah. You could do that. Then we wouldn't sit here be havin' the fucking mosquitoes eating on us and shit. Why doncha turn the fucker back on and get som'p'n goin' in here. Or just leave it alone and let the fucking thing fog up. One r'the other."
"Fucking weird time a' d' year, you freeze to death if you run the air-conditioning and you goddamn melt from the heat if you don't or —"
"Yeah, okay, well, look, I got to drive way the fuck out in the county yet tonight. Let's get it done, can we?"
"Hey, no shit, I ain't got all fucking night either. Do it." The man behind the wheel turns and with some effort lifts a heavy sack from the floorboard in back of him, lifting it over the seat.
"Whatcha got?"
"Eight and a half each I gotta get on these. Thirty-four cents."
"Jesus. That's fuckin' LUGERS. I don't want fuckin' Lugers."
"Hey. Dem's fucking P-Thirty-eights. Dey ain't fucking Lugers."
"Whatever the fuck dey are I don't wannum. Dey look like fuckin' LUGERS. I want Thirty-eights. Fucking REVOLVERS, for Chrissakes."
"These are not fuckin' LUGERS, goddammit. This is my business here. We're talking genuine fucking Walther Parabellum P-Thirty-eights."
"I don't care if it's a paregoric model don't wave the motherfucker around f'crissakes."
"Yeah. The fuckin' chipmunks might see it out here. Look: you fire this bitch in a Holiday Inn and the round goes through your lady's head and through the wall and the headboard of the next-door-neighbor's room, his ole lady's head, the round comes outta her skull and goes bop onto a tit, bounces off the tit and lands on the fucking bedspread. You can send room service over to get the lead for you. We're training penetration here. A Luger isn't jack shit."
"I don't need no Holiday Inn gun, man. I wanna go through the wall of a Holiday Inn and clip somebody's ole lady I'll fucking drive through the sono-fabitch. I need a revolver."
"You don't know guns, man. No offense. I coulda got you garbage here. The sears that crystallize and shit. When the hammer is down you turn the thumb safety it locks the sear. But you turn this with the bitch cocked, a little steel arm trips the sear and the hammer falls on the safety not on the fucking pin like some of that postwar shit. You can jack a round in and BA-BOOM it fires the fucker. Suicide guns. Thirty-four is stealing these fuckers. These are rare. You say no I can do another thing and have nine hundred fifty apiece by domani, you understand?"
"Hey, all fucking due respect to you an' that shit, ya know, but you don't know guns any better'n me. You just a fucking thief same as me, ya know? All dis shit about how you got to go to Sears an' get a hammer an' that shit. But that's awright. I'll take the paregoric Lugers or whatever and I'll give you twenty-five for the sack, and I'll take the merch an' live with it even if they ain't fucking revolvers. So what'll it be? We gotta deal or what?"
"Hey, tell ya what, paisan, you give me twenty-five hundred, I give you a great piece. I got a brand-new Colt Government Model in forty-five ACP, fucker's customized, gunsmith blueprinted, tight as ten-year-old snatch and clean as Mary Green. Got checkered grips, got the ejector port'n' feed ramp ground down, got the wide spur hammer on it, speed-shooter safety, Pachmayr mainspring housing, adjustable trigger, speed-load lever, adjustable rear and combat blade sights, and I throw in a couple mags with special springs and cutaway feed lips. Twenty-five bills and you got it."
"I give you twenty-five for the four Luger deals here."
"Pasadena."
"Say what?"
"El Paso, baby. I need thirty-four beans. Cash American or I take my merch elsewhere. That's the deal."
"I'll go twenty-seven-fifty absolute tops. An' you throw in a couple hundred rounds of ammo."
Laughter.
"Listen, I really enjoyed it, hey. But I got to go do some things. Seriously. You want 'em at 3400 or no? Say the truth, now. I got to book."
"What about the ammo? I don't gotta buy the fuckin' ammo too, do I?"
"'Course you do, baby. I don't get that shit free either, dig?"
"Hey. Fuck it. I'll shop around, ya know." The car door.