Rovers

by RICHARD LANGE

  “I knew a pimp who had a getup like that,” Johnny shouts in Pedro’s ear, pointing at one of the dancing men.

  After half an hour, the music and lights have given Bob a headache. He feels like he’s trapped on a carnival ride. He’s about to tell Johnny and Pedro “Let’s get the fuck out of here” when a tall, thin dude surrounded by a black aura enters the club with an unturned chick on his arm. He’s not one of the rovers that dusted Bob 2, but beggars can’t be choosers.

  The Fiends duck into the hallway leading to the bathrooms to avoid being spotted. Bob peeks around the corner to watch the rover and the chick dance their way to the bar. He and the others make their move while the guy’s flagging down a bartender, surrounding him. He starts to bitch about being crowded but freezes when he sees it’s rovers.

  “What’s your name, brother?” Bob says.

  “Darren,” the rover replies. He’s wearing white pants and a lime-green shirt.

  “We need to talk to you, Darren.”

  The rover looks from Bob to Johnny to Pedro, contemplating running. Bob wraps an arm around him. “Order me a scotch and soda,” Darren tells the girl, a little blonde in a sequined dress that barely covers her ass. “I’ll be right back.”

  The Fiends hustle him to the door and walk him out to the future site of Sunset Estates. Bob releases him when they’re beyond the reach of the disco’s lights. Darren straightens his clothes and smooths his hair, figures cocky’s how he’ll play this.

  “Fiends,” he says. “I’ve heard of you.”

  “We haven’t heard of you,” Bob says.

  “I’m a city mouse. New York, Philly, Boston. And I keep to myself.”

  “What are you doing here, city mouse?”

  “I’m on my way to San Diego to see a pal.”

  “And the chick?”

  “Some local chippie.”

  Darren takes some Doublemint out of his pocket, pulls a stick for himself, and holds the pack out to the Fiends. Johnny pinches a piece.

  “How long you been in town?” Bob says.

  Darren unwraps the gum and sticks it in his mouth. “This is my third night.”

  “Seen any other rovers?”

  “Nope.”

  “You sure? Nobody’s traveling with you?”

  “I told you, I keep to myself.”

  The Fiends exchange heavy glances.

  “You said you heard of us,” Bob says.

  “This and that,” Darren says.

  “Like what?”

  “Like steer clear of you.”

  “Good advice.”

  Pedro has slipped behind Darren. He slaps a hand over his mouth, and Bob stabs him in the heart. They’ve dusted him ten seconds after he hits the ground. Johnny paws through the ash, retrieving the guy’s wallet and puka-shell necklace.

  “We going back in?” he says.

  “Fuck it,” Bob says. “Let’s see what other shitholes we can find.”

  Antonia and Elijah have passed through Phoenix once or twice a year since before Arizona was a state. The first time they visited, they rode in on horseback. They’ve watched the city grow from a dusty cluster of saloons, dance halls, and assay offices into a sprawl of suburbs that’s filled the valley with shopping malls, golf courses, and housing developments.

  And now the powers that be are pulling down old Phoenix. Every time Antonia and Elijah return, more downtown landmarks have been demolished and replaced with smoked-glass-and-concrete high-rises. The Fox Theater is now a bus terminal, the cheap hotel where they used to stay is a gleaming Hyatt, and their favorite chop suey joint lies buried beneath a new convention center.

  The area used to be prime hunting ground: the whores working the Paris Alley brothels, the sots pickling themselves in the dives lining the streets of the Deuce, and the assorted other lost souls who haunted the gambling dens, topless grinds, and all-night movie theaters. Ragged men and women still drink, fight, and fuck here, but now it’s right out in the open, and when they crash, it’s not in dollar flops or cots at the mission, it’s on the sidewalk, curled in cardboard boxes in the shadow of the new buildings.

  Elijah laments the changes, but Antonia couldn’t care less. Nostalgia’s a weakness as far as she’s concerned. When something’s gone, it’s gone. Cut it loose and move on. She’s lost so much in her two hundred years, she’d drown in tears if she mourned it all.

  They’re cruising the same streets for the third time. It’s close to midnight, and nobody’s out. Elijah taps his horn to get Antonia’s attention and points to the Torch, a bar they know. They circle the block and park in front of the place.

  “Let’s grab a quick one,” Elijah says. “Might be our last chance.”

  Antonia’s reluctant. Three years ago she fed off an old man she picked up here. “I don’t got a person who gives a shit about me,” he told her. “Everyone I know is dead.” She lured him to an abandoned produce warehouse on the promise of a hand job, drained him, and got rid of the corpse in the desert.

  “Nobody’ll remember you,” Elijah says. “They won’t even remember him.”

  They step over a kid passed out on the sidewalk to enter the bar. His girlfriend is messed up, too, sitting on the curb and chanting, “Greg! Greg! Greg!” The bar is bright as day inside. Four gargoyles are hunched over the stick, a few more in the booths. Something by the Doors wheezes out of the jukebox.

  The bartender is a leathery redheaded woman wearing a cardboard red, white, and blue top hat. More star-spangled crap is hanging on the walls in anticipation of the Fourth. The woman takes Elijah’s order for two draft A-1s and says, “Those junkies still out front?”

  “They are,” Elijah says.

  “Call the fucking police, Sarah, will ya?” one of the gargoyles croaks.

  “I don’t need Phoenix PD in here,” the bartender says.

  “I should go out there and shoot them myself.”

  “You ain’t gonna shoot nobody,” the bartender says, rolling her eyes at Antonia and Elijah. “He ain’t even got a gun,” she says out of the side of her mouth.

  The junkies are still on the sidewalk when the Fiends leave. Elijah doesn’t feel like getting back on his bike yet. There’s a porno theater next to the bar. THREE TRIPLE X FEATURES.

  “You want to see a movie?” he asks Antonia.

  “If you need to get your ashes hauled, we’ll go to the motel,” she says.

  “Come on. We’ll watch until the bars close.”

  They pay their admission to a zitty kid behind the candy counter. The only snacks for sale are warm sodas and stale popcorn. Elijah gooses Antonia while they wait at the back of the theater for their eyes to adjust. “Don’t you touch me,” she says. Someone’s fucking someone on-screen. The moans aren’t synched to the action, and the print is so bad, it’s like watching a catfish flap its gills through the glass of a filthy aquarium, rhythmic flailing in greenish murk. They sit as far from the other patrons as possible, but even so, one of the sewer rats pops up to leer at Antonia. A hard look from Elijah sends him back into his hole.

  Elijah tries to follow the movie, but there’s not much story to keep track of. Squinting at the screen, he wonders if this is what it’s like to be a ghost, if after you die, you’re doomed to peer from the dark into the light, the living world just out of focus, a smear of writhing bodies, speeding cars, and ringing telephones. He leans over to whisper this thought to Antonia, but she’s fast asleep.

  The Fiends reconvene by the pool near dawn.

  “Nothing?” Antonia says.

  “We drove our section five times,” Real Deal says.

  “We got something,” Bob says, and tells everybody about Darren. “Maybe the next one we find’ll know something about those that dusted Bob.”

  “And maybe not,” Real Deal says. “Maybe they’ve already hit the road. Maybe we ought to hit the road too.”

  Bob bristles. “We’re not giving up,” he says. “Not after one fucking night.”

  “I’m not
talking about giving up,” Real Deal says. “I’m talking about looking for them someplace else.”

  Antonia just wants to get to bed. “We’ll go out again tomorrow,” she says, “switch routes and put fresh eyes on everything.”

  “However you want to do it,” Bob says, “but we’re not giving up.”

  Johnny hands him a can of beer. He presses it to the back of his neck, trying to cool off.

  After another restless day, the Fiends set out for a second night of searching. Bob rides with Pedro and Johnny again. They’re covering downtown this evening. Lots more people on the street, lots more places you might find a rover.

  They take a break at a hamburger stand. An old alky trying to place an order at the window can’t keep his pants up. They’re too big for him—probably pulled out of a trash can—but he keeps forgetting and letting go of the belt loops, whereupon the trousers drop to his ankles, exposing his skinny legs and bare ass until he squats to yank them up again.

  “Be a good boy and give your dad your belt,” Bob says to Johnny.

  “He looks like a jack-in-the-box, don’t he?” Johnny says. He kicks Pedro, who’s crouched next to his bike. “What do you think? Is he just a weenie wagger putting on a show?”

  Pedro doesn’t respond. His head is down, and he’s gasping for air. Johnny kneels beside him.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Pedro wipes away a strand of drool and swallows hard. “Help me up,” he says.

  Johnny and Bob walk him around the parking lot until he’s breathing normally and able to stand on his own.

  “I’ve gone too long without feeding,” he says. “It snuck up on me.”

  “How bad are you?” Johnny says.

  “I’m gonna have to hunt tonight.”

  “So we’re calling off the search?” Bob says, anger in his voice.

  “I’ll be fine on my own,” Pedro says. “You two keep looking.” He gets on his bike and starts it. “I’ll catch you back at the motel,” he says before riding off.

  “Cuidado,” Johnny calls after him.

  Real Deal and Yuma start by riding every street in their sector twice. The problem is, nobody walks in this town, so pretty much their only hope of spotting a rover without getting off their bikes and going into every goddamn place is to catch one entering or exiting a bar or 7-Eleven. And what are the odds of that?

  Yuma signals Real Deal to turn into the parking lot of a strip mall with a twenty-four-hour laundromat. The place is empty, and all the other businesses in the mall are closed for the night.

  “You see something?” Real Deal says.

  “I’m bored,” Yuma says.

  She steps off her Harley and pulls a screwdriver out of one of her saddlebags. Walking into the laundromat, she goes to the soap vending machine, uses the screwdriver to bust the lock, and pockets the money she finds there.

  “Feel better?” Real Deal says when she comes out and gets on her bike.

  “Still bored,” she says.

  The two of them have been together for nine years. They met in Dallas and fell in love fast and hard. She’s on-and-off crazy, so’s he, and they accept this in each other. So far, whenever she’s lost it, he’s been right enough in the head to stop her from getting in too much trouble, and she’s done the same for him. Riding with the Fiends for the past five years has helped too. The discipline imposed by Antonia keeps them on track most of the time.

  Real Deal’s not sure what flipped Yuma’s switch tonight—Bob getting dusted, the other Bob acting like an asshole, losing out on the baby—but he knows he’s got his hands full. Her next stop is a closed gas station. He waits while she jimmies the Coke machine. A few minutes later she tries to smash her way into a parking meter with a hammer.

  “If you need money, all you got to do is ask,” Real Deal says, joking.

  “I don’t need your fucking money,” she replies.

  She gets back on her bike and rides until she comes to a liquor store in a Mexican neighborhood. Real Deal follows her into the parking lot and turns off his engine when she does. Three men leaving a bar next to the store stop to admire her Harley.

  “How much you pay?” one of them asks her.

  “A million dollars,” she says. “Two million.”

  The guy makes a face and repeats what she said in Spanish to his buddies. They scoff too. “No two million dollars,” the guy says to her. “Two million pesos.” His buddies laugh, and all three climb into a pickup bristling with gardening tools and drive away.

  Real Deal runs a hand over his closely cropped afro. It comes away sweaty.

  “What are you up to now?” he says.

  Yuma walks into the store without answering. He follows. An old Mexican couple is behind the counter. The wife’s sitting on a milk crate, watching a soap opera on a tiny TV; the husband’s at the register, a cigar stub wedged in the corner of his mouth.

  The store shelves are overflowing with merchandise. The place sells groceries in addition to booze—cans of beans and hominy and menudo, sacks of rice, wilted vegetables—and also odds and ends like toilet plungers and tamale pots. Dramatic music plays on the TV as Yuma goes to the beer cooler without so much as a nod to the old man. Real Deal tries to be friendly, saying “Buenas noches” and pretending to be interested in a display of car deodorizers—pine trees, Playboy bunnies, Mexican flags. The old man ignores him. He’s watching Yuma in a round mirror mounted on the ceiling.

  Yuma grabs a six-pack of Coors tall boys and lets the cooler door slam. She asks the old man for a pint of Cuervo. When he turns to get it off one of the shelves behind him, she shoves a fistful of Slim Jims into the pocket of her jacket. The old man sets the bottle on the counter and rings it up. His wife’s standing now too, staring at Yuma.

  Yuma grabs the beer and tequila and walks out without paying.

  “Hey!” the old man shouts, all of a sudden holding a pistol. The old woman has a machete in her hand.

  “It’s cool,” Real Deal says. “I got it.”

  He lays a twenty on the counter and backs out of the store.

  Yuma cracks one of the beers in the parking lot and downs half of it. Real Deal finishes it while she loads the rest of the stuff into one of her saddlebags. She throws her leg over her bike and starts it. Real Deal puts his hand on hers to stop her from revving the engine. She glares at him, something wild thrashing behind her eyes.

  “You see me, right?” he says. “I’m here for you.”

  “But you weren’t always,” she says. She puts her bike in gear and takes off.

  Pedro keeps a string of boxcars between him and the hobo jungle at the edge of the train yard. The track bed is elevated enough that if he crouches, he can see under the cars to the camp beyond. He makes his way toward it stealthily, avoiding the noisy crushed-rock ballast covering the embankment.

  The jungle is nestled in a grove of willows. A small fire flickers there, and Pedro hears someone speaking Spanish. He climbs on top of a car and lies on his stomach, giving him a clear view of four men gathered around scrap wood burning in a ring of stones. They’re indios, like the ones who did all the shit work in Huamantla, the town in Mexico where he grew up. Short, stocky, and dark.

  Two of them are playing cards on an apple crate. The other two are lying on the ground, staring at the flames. A gallon of Gallo is making the rounds. The men in these camps are wanderers and vagrants, runaways and fugitives. The kind of men who disappear. The kind of men nobody misses. Pedro’s knee trembles. He’ll be feeding tonight, he’s sure of it.

  “I was in a game in Salinas once, a guy bet his truck.”

  “I was in a game where a guy bet his house. And I won it.”

  “You never won anything in your life.”

  “A woman carrying a baby gets on a bus.”

  “No jokes! No jokes!”

  “Pass me the bottle.”

  “It’s empty.”

  The indios are drunk. Pedro can hear it in their voices. He reaches into his p
ocket for his knife. A train blows its horn somewhere behind him.

  “Go for another.”

  “The market’s closed.”

  “It’s open till midnight.”

  “Pendejos.”

  One of the card players staggers up the path leading from the jungle to the rail yard. Pedro drops from the top of the boxcar. The only light comes from a few weak bulbs mounted on poles widely spaced around the yard.

  The indio crosses two sets of tracks and approaches the string Pedro’s hiding behind. Three cars up from his, the man crawls under the train, emerging on the same side as Pedro. Pedro lies flat on the ground, but the indio is focused on his mission. He sets off across the yard toward a road leading to a small store.

  Pedro follows, closing the distance between them. Another string of cars blocks their way. When the indio ducks to pass beneath it, Pedro scrambles under the car right on his heels. He grabs the man’s arm, flips him onto his back, and presses a hand to his mouth. Lying on top of him, he uses the tip of his knife to poke a hole in his jugular.

  The indio struggles, but there’s no chance of him squirming out from under Pedro’s bulk. Pedro fixes his lips to his neck. He smells cheap wine. The man eventually settles, and Pedro repositions him to keep the blood flowing. When the well runs dry, he keeps sucking, enjoying the warmth creeping through his body and the calm enveloping his brain after days of feeling antsy.

  The yard bull plays his flashlight over a string of cars a couple of tracks away. Pedro waits until he’s gone before dragging the indio’s body from under the car and slinging it over his shoulder. He carries it to the other side of the yard, where another trail leads to a reservoir ringed by cottonwoods.

  Once at the reservoir, he lays the body next to the water and removes its clothes. By the light of a fingernail moon he cuts open the belly of the corpse and scoops out the innards, tossing them into tall grass. Coyotes will eat them before dawn. The buzzing of a million cicadas in his ears, he gathers the biggest rocks he can find and fills the indio’s stomach cavity with them.