Caravan of Thieves by David Rich Page B

She pointed south. I looked up and down the road and imagined a series of women stationed in all directions, a few on each roadway, there to lure me. If I didn’t stop for the first one, the next would appear, more needy or more alluring. The picture made me laugh. The woman got into her car and locked the door. It must have been hotter in there than my cell had been. I realized I probably looked pretty frightening, and there was a slight chance that I was wrong about her reason for being there. I drove away.
    First stop was Walmart for some clothes that weren’t slashed or bloody. They carried that. I bought sunglasses, jeans, two T-shirts that said “49ers” to give anyone I ran into something to remember other than my face, two plain T-shirts, a pack of underwear, socks,antibiotic cream to put on the cut across my chest, and a backpack to carry it all. The first fast food chain I saw was Burger King; I ordered enough to put me to sleep.
    Fallon proved the point that Nowhere and Anywhere have merged in a slurry of chain stores, restaurants, and hotels. For a small town, Fallon is very crowded: most of us live there. I chose the Holiday Inn because they had the sense to claim they were number one in all of Fallon and McColl wouldn’t have left me so much money if he wanted me to scrimp.
    I sank into the bed and worked at understanding who McColl expected me to be. Greedy. He would get stuck on that and I was stuck there for now, too. It was dark when I woke up, nine p.m. The air conditioner buzzed and coughed, but it kept the desert out of the dreary room. I showered and dressed, planning to eat more, then start for Phoenix. The motel had no restaurant. Two replicas of Pongo and Perdy marched through the lobby as if to remind me that the real ones were still lurking somewhere out there. The desk clerk directed me to Dollard’s Steakhouse, located in Dollard’s Casino, home of the Dollar Deals.
    The air conditioning wasn’t working too well, or the management was too cheap, and the air was thick and close. I walked quickly through the sad, smoky casino to the steakhouse, on the lookout for anyone who might be with McColl’s gang. The gamblers, dealers, pit bosses, and waitresses all watched me with that hungry drooling-for-fresh-meat look, though none of their fangs were showing. Maybe McColl sent them all. A fat woman, so fat she had two stools pushed together, rubbed a quarter and licked her lips, but I couldn’t take that personally; salivating was like breathing to her. Three blackjack tables, one sparse craps game,and a poker table of five players comprised the action, all of it in slow motion. A few players were cowboys. No one, not even Dan, was a deceitful enough salesman to make Fallon a tourist destination. I figured the rest of the patrons worked at the naval air station a few miles down the road.
    The hostess must have been on break, so I took a table at the rear of the steakhouse where I could see anyone coming in. The waitress was a thin, energetic woman in her fifties. She hustled over with a menu. I ordered a draft beer. She turned and said, “Anywhere, hon.” And when she moved away, I saw the woman from the blue Honda decide to take a booth on the right side of the room. I joined her.
    “I’m sorry,” I said, “if I was scary this afternoon.”
    “And are you sorry that you’re scary now?”
    The waitress delivered my beer. I said, “She liked this table better.” The woman ordered a beer, too.
    “How’s your car?”
    “Fine.”
    “You work at the naval air station?”
    “No.”
    The waitress brought the beer. “Y’know whatchu want?”
    “Another table,” said the woman.
    “Anywhere, hon.” The waitress walked away. The woman looked the room over.
    “They’re all gonna be the same,” I said.
    She sat back and sipped her beer and looked me over. She did not seem to be afraid of me. “Why me, with all the beautiful women in this town?”
    “They’ve already turned me