Fortunately, this was Nevada, and gun stores were about as common as Dunkin’ Donuts shops in Massachusetts. On the way out of town, he passed a store with a rearing wooden Grizzly outside, and a sign that read “Gun & Sun.” Making a U-turn, he parked in the lot and went inside. It was a gun store that doubled as a tanning salon.
The girl behind the counter couldn’t have been more helpful. She would probably have sold him an RPG, if he’d asked. But there was a problem. “The phones are down,” she said.
“So what?” Burke asked, eyeing a sleek Beretta.
“We have to do an instant check with the state police before we can sell you a gun – to see if you have a criminal record. You don’t have a criminal record, do you?” she teased.
“No,” Burke replied.
“Sometimes they’re down for a minute – if there was a storm, or something? But sometimes it’s an hour or more. You want to wait? I could put you in one of the pods at the back, get you some color.”
Burke shook his head. “Not today. I’m kind of busy. How about a gun show? They don’t have to do a check, do they?”
“No. And you can get anything you want at one of them. Only I don’t think there is one until the weekend,” she told him. “And we’ll have our phones up before then. You sure you don’t want to get a tan?”
“No, but… is that a cell phone?” He pointed to a glass case, which held an arsenal of handguns and miscellanea. A crossbow. Some kind of… wands. Cell phones.
“It looks like a cell phone,” she said. “But it’s a stun gun. One hundred eighty thousand volts.”
“What do you do with it?” Burke asked.
“Basically, you just touch someone and… he kinda loses it.” She paused. “I could sell you that!” she said. “Cuz it’s nonlethal.”
He took I-95 to I-80 and followed it all the way to Elko. Eight hours later, he veered north in the direction of Jackpot. Soon, the pavement gave way to dirt and gravel. He drove on in a cloud of dust, locking headlights with a single car.
It was close to ten p.m. when the darkness brightened a few miles ahead. Juniper. The town consisted of two stick-built houses, facing each other across the road, and a cluster of trailers. “Downtown” was a post office, a general store, and a bar with a sign that read BUCKET OF BLOOD.
The saloon reminded Burke of the nightmare bar in Quentin Tarantino’s vampire film, but it was the only place that was open – and he was thirsty.
The Bucket of Blood had been decorated at the whim of its eccentric owner. Driven by a solar battery, a porcelain Hello Kitty sat on the bar, waving its paw unceasingly. A collection of dusty plastic horses marched along a ledge near a sign for the restroom. There was an entire wall covered with postcards, and a television set framed by a rack of elk antlers.
The Diamondbacks were at bat.
In a corner of the bar, a poker game was in progress. An old woman – her scalp visible beneath her thin red hair – pulled listlessly at one of the slots near the door. Burke bellied up to the bar, where a weedy man in a camouflage jumpsuit lifted his chin with a questioning look, as he dried a glass.
“Beer,” Burke said.
“Sierra Nevada’s on draft. Coors Light, Bud, Bud Light-”
“Sierra Nevada would be grand.” He was so tired that he didn’t really want to get into it. What he wanted was to go to bed. So he was halfway into his second beer before he got up the gumption to ask the question.
“You know a guy named Jack Wilson… lives around here?”
The bartender eyed him warily. “Who wants to know?”
Burke was about to answer, when one of the poker players looked up and laughed. “What do you care who wants to know, Denny? It’s not like the guy’s a friend of yours.”
“Maybe not, but what do you care if I care?” the bartender asked. “Play the fuckin’ game.”
“Yeah! Play the fuckin’ game,” one of the other players said.
“You in or not?” asked a third.
Burke didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
The bartender put a glass of beer in front of him, and raised an eyebrow. “So?”
Burke took a sip. “Jesus, that’s good.” After a moment, he added, “Mike Burke.”
“Denny.” The bartender polished another glass.
Burke sighed. “Wilson’s foster mother is sick.”
“No shit,” the bartender replied, his voice thick with skepticism.
“No,” Burke said. “Really, she’s in a trailer, over in Fallon. The only address she had for him is a P.O. box. I said I’d try to find him, but…”
“She ain’t been up here?”
Burke shook his head. “No. But he hasn’t been up here all that long himself.”
The bartender thought about this for a moment. “About three, four months is all,” he said.
“Building a plan-e-tar-i-um,” one of the poker players remarked.
“He’s not building a planetarium,” the bartender corrected, “he’s just building a place for a telescope.”
“Big difference,” the poker player declared. “He’s still stargazin’.”
The bartender ignored everyone, his eyes on the television.
Burke wanted to get to the point, but he sensed that if he tried to rush it, he wouldn’t get anything out of these men.
“I’ll bet he’s stargazin’ right now,” said one of the players at the card table. “You got your solstice tomorrow. Longest day of the year.”
“That concerns the sun,” the bartender told him.
“Uhhh, Denny?” the poker player said. “The sun’s a star?!” The other players at the table laughed.
The bartender turned to Burke. “This foster mother,” he said, “she doesn’t have his telephone number?”
A shout rose up from around the card table. “H-whoaa! The Bat was bluffin’! The Bat was bluffin’ your ass!”
The lady at the slot machine came over to the bar and pushed her glass toward Denny. She had the wistful eyes of a child, and a weather-beaten face. She was forty or sixty, Burke couldn’t be sure. The bartender mixed her a 7 & 7, then turned to Burke and pointed west.
“It’s about sixty miles,” he said. “Nice place. National forest all around him.” He drew a tiny map on the back of a coaster, keeping up a running commentary as he made it. “There’s a blue trailer on your right, all beat to shit. Got some of them pink flamingo statues in the front. You see that, you hang a left, and it’s about fifteen miles from there. You’ll see the sign over the fence. B-Lazy-B. Can’t miss it.”
“Bullshit!” someone exclaimed.
The bartender smiled. “Well, yeah, I guess you could miss it, but…” He handed the coaster to Burke. “What are you drivin’?”
Burke shrugged, and laughed to himself. “I forget. It’s a rental.”
“Off-road?”
“No.”
The bartender leaned back. “But it’s an SUV, right?”
“No. It’s just… a sedan.”
An incredulous wince. “Well, that’s gonna be exciting.”
The slot machine gushed, and a siren went off. A waterfall of coins crashed to the floor. The woman just stared.
“You want one for the road?” the bartender asked.
Before Burke could answer, one of the poker players corrected him. “You mean one for the goat track!”
Everyone laughed.
Burke, too.
CHAPTER 49
Burke rolled the trip counter in the dash to zero, and took it slow.
He had to. The road was so washboarded that twenty-five miles an hour amounted to reckless driving. He could taste the grit in his mouth, and he was thirsty. But there was nothing he could do about it. He’d forgotten to bring any water – not good planning if you think Armageddon is just around the corner. Or, more accurately, up ahead and to the left.