The alcohol fumes were getting to him. He couldn’t stand the stench. Sometimes his mind would drift—this had happened a lot in the last couple of weeks—and when he came back into his body he imagined he could smell it on himself.
But he was clean. Alcohol and drug free.
Reborn.
A couple of hours later, the deputy who arrested him unlocked the cell door. Her nameplate said “Tess McCrae.” Tan uniform, twenty pounds of leather and weaponry girding her hips and ruining what was probably a nice line. She had good posture, though. Squared away, no nonsense. Efficient too, the way she’d had him handcuffed and shoved up against her sheriff’s cruiser in one fluid motion.
She led him through intake, which was also output, just a shabby corner hidden from view by a flimsy partition. The whole inside of the third floor of the courthouse was like a stage set. Even the guard by the door seemed like a cardboard cutout—adding to the unreality that floated around Max most of the time now.
She returned his possessions, including his belt and shoelaces, which had been taken in case he’d gotten it in his mind to hang himself. He waited for her to say something. You’d think, in this backwater, not having ID would be a capital crime—maybe even a hanging offense. But she didn’t bring it up.
“That it?” he asked. “I’m free to go?”
She nodded.
He gave her his best Max-as-charming-con-man voice. “What did I do? Officially.”
She looked at him sideways through calm, hazel eyes. “You loitered.”
“Seriously?”
“It’s on the books. You can look it up.”
Loitering was as good a trumped-up charge as any, Max guessed. He was grateful to her for saving him from the two guys in the limo, even if it meant spending a couple of hours in the pokey.
Who knew what they were after? If it hadn’t been for the deputy’s resourcefulness, he might have been a rotting corpse in the middle of the desert by now.
Although more likely, he’d be on a jet headed back for LA.
Tess McCrae walked him down the stairs and out through the echoing, empty first floor to the double wooden doors. The door screeched as it scuffed over the sill. Sunlight spotlighted him. He blinked and realized again that although he didn’t have a hangover, it sure felt like one.
Outside, the street looked like someone had run an iron over it. His heart sped up for a moment or two, then slowed back to its normal pace when he saw there were no suits in a black stretch limo. In fact, nobody at all.
They could be around the corner, watching and waiting.
The unreality of it was dizzying. For a moment, his thoughts started to fly away again, and he pictured himself holding the M-1 rifle, the one in Man Down, how he’d liked the heavy feel of it cradled in his hands, liked the shooting, the casings pinging around him. He pictured holding a pistol muzzle to his head, those many times he’d wished hard for the percussive sound that would obliterate it all.
But now, he marveled, those thoughts had lost their potency. Realized he just thought them out of habit.
“I’m free,” he said.
She looked at him. “Of course you’re free. I said you were.”
He stepped outside, getting his sea legs. The sun bearing down, blinding, he could swear he smelled alcohol—he’d been pickled in it for so long—and the smell of sex with countless women he didn’t know, and the dry mouth and seizing heartbeat from the prescription drugs. Sweat beaded under his hair. “You know a good place for lunch?”
“I know a place for lunch,” she said. “But it isn’t good. Nothing’s good around here.”
“The diner?”
She nodded again. That straight spine. No leeway there for all the silly stuff most people did with their hands and expressions and body language when they realized who he was.
Then she spoiled it. “I’ll go with you.”
“Why? You said I was free to go.”
“I’m hungry. How’s that?”
THE DINER HAD a western theme, like everything in the town. Old movie posters on the walls, bustling waitresses with raccoon eyes and beauty-shop hairdos, clicking down the plastic plates and banging the ceramic coffee mugs. The deputy caught the door he held out for her. He could feel her calm presence even though they weren’t touching. He wondered if he’d been mistaken—that maybe she didn’t know who he was. The beard helped. He’d been living in these clothes since yesterday morning, and with the hundred-degree heat and the hitchhiking and the rainstorms he knew he was pretty ripe. During his two weeks at the Desert Oasis Healing Center, he’d learned the hard way that the hippie deodorant they provided didn’t work for shit.
The waitress didn’t make eye contact with him. Amazing how that worked. Nobody saw the homeless.
She sat them by the window away from everyone else. Fine by him. He could look at the street. He caught the deputy noting that. The deputy noted everything. After the waitress left with their order, the deputy leaned forward, setting her hands palms-down on the paper place mat. She wore clear polish and her trimmed nails were little half-moons. Her gaze was so steady it made him want to look away.
“So,” she said. “Who’s after you?”
“No one’s after me.”
“Those guys in the limo—why did they want you to go with them?”
“Beats me.”
She said nothing, just continued to watch him. No recognition in her eyes, though. Her face didn’t betray her real feelings about him, if there were any.
The silence was oppressive. He felt he had to say something. “What’s it to you?”
“Frankly, I don’t see why they’d want to get their car dirty.”
He gave her his most winning smile. “I can’t explain it.”
“You can’t.”
“Nope.” He added, “Maybe they were aliens come down to abduct me.”
She stared into his eyes, searching. Her half-moon nails solidly on the place mat.
Max realized he liked her.
She tapped her fingers on the place mat. “I guess it’s your business,” she said.
The diner was beginning to fill up—starting to get noisy.
A short, stocky man came in and approached their booth. The man wore a knit polo shirt and jeans and a lanyard around his neck. “Push over, doll,” the man said to the deputy, sliding into the booth next to her. He thumped union-boss elbows on the counter and leveled his gaze at Max. “Who’re you?”
“Who are you?”
“I asked first.”
The deputy said, “This is Pat. He’s Bajada County’s one and only detective, so don’t make him mad.”
“No kidding.” Pat lifted the paper place mat up close to his face and studied the menu printed on it. “Tess, you know if they got peekin’ pie today?”
“Think so,” the deputy said.
“So who is this guy?” Pat asked.
“Says his name is Dave.”
“Dave?” Pat looked up, his blue eyes startled in his pink Irish face. Something changed in his expression, but he hid it well.
The waitress took their orders, standing upwind and doing her best to ignore Max.
After the waitress left, Pat leaned forward on his stout elbows. “So, Dave. What’s a genuine, honest-to-God, bleeding-heart, liberal movie star like you doing in this piss-water town?”
“You’re mistaking me for someone else.”
“Uh-huh. Tess, you ever see this guy’s movies?”
“Some of them.”
“What was the first one you saw?”
“The Slab.”