Page 23 of Making His Bones

Gray

“We’re here to get you assholes, stat.”

Knoxie was driving a refurbished, but trashy, ’63 Dodge Dart his old lady had loaned him. Our bikes were too obvious, and we didn’t want to risk any good vehicle being shot at. Bellamy, the club’s wrench, had put a modified 383 V8 engine into it to give us speed and good gas mileage. She’d driven it down from The Citadel, the club’s construction biz on Mescal Mesa. We’d practically leaped into it at a roll so as not to waste time.

Galileo, in the back seat, had suddenly turned into Jason Bourne.

“We sure are,” I agreed, but we hadn’t even found the truck we were supposed to be following.

The computer whiz Tobiah had put up a a spycam to watch the back door of The Vinyl Resting Place. He’d had to go up into the eaves of a donut shop to install it and just hope no one noticed. This morning, he’d reported seeing the guard Rafael herd about five pubescent boys into the back of a box truck marked as Babel Fish, a biblical reference that could led us back to Bud Pitchfork. It took us only fifteen minutes to get our shit together, since we all worked in the same block. But it took us forty-five minutes to even get to Seeker, by which time Tobiah reported the truck had headed north on 17. We knew that because Janet Treasure, Elektra’s old friend, had followed it out of town. Per our instructions, Tobiah had told her to stop. We didn’t want her getting shot at, either.

“Look at me, look at me,” Galileo insisted, in this new televangelist voice. He slapped the headrests of our seats. “We’ve got a great team. Now we just need a concept.”

Knoxie was flooring it down the highway, pedal to the metal. He was passing cars like they were standing still, weaving in and out of the thankfully sparse traffic. “Concept? Have you been watching too many instructional videos?”

“Bros before prostitutes,” recited Galileo.

“Was the driver Mexican?” asked Knoxie.

“White,” I reported. “That makes it even weirder. If they’re heading for the border, which they aren’t, they’d use a resident of Mexico as a driver, wouldn’t they?”

Knoxie said, “Probably white, to get through the border easier.”

“Pivot! Pivot!” declared Galileo. “I haven’t sped this fast since I was rolled into a carpet and put into someone’s trunk. I woke up in Gallup.”

I said, “Well, good thing they were speeding. Whoa, Knoxie, watch out for—never mind.” Knoxie side-swiped a hulking SUV with grace. “Galileo, what’s your take on these guys? What do you think they’re up to? The only thing out here is Petrified National Forest.”

Galileo lost no time in replying. “I think they’re going to drop those kids off with gallons of moonshine in the middle of nowhere. I hope we’re there to save them.”

Galileo’s sketchy childhood had made him the perfect person to go on this mission. His bizarre insight into the ways of child abusers, along with my particular take on the matter, provided us a personal vendetta that energized us.

We had to make an assumption in Flagstaff and chose 40 East. We were silent with tension for about fifteen minutes. Galileo white-knuckled it, squeezing the back of our bench seats.

“There it is!” shouted Galileo, so loudly that both Knoxie and I jumped. He slashed an arm between us, practically vaulting into the front. “The fish truck! See?”

“I see,” said Knoxie calmly. He’d saved his wife from a mountainous cult with a hypnotic, sadistic leader. He could do this. “I’m not gonna follow too close in case they realize they’re being watched.”

There was a badlands feel to the country out there. The cliff layers were mudstone, sandstone, and creamy white gypsum. Down here it was barren aside from greyish-green sagebrush, some lying sideways like windblown metal garbage cans. It wouldn’t be a pleasant atmosphere to be wandering with nothing but a moonshine bottle, especially in July.

The truck driver skipped the Winslow exit and continued on.

Galileo said, “We need software that can locate children anywhere in the world.”

“Well, that’d be a little bit difficult unless the kids wore ankle bracelets all the time,” I pointed out.

Knoxie said, “And think of the optics. ‘We can locate your kids anywhere, whether they’re at play or at school.’”

“What’s wrong with that?” queried Galileo. “I used to wish someone would come and find me.”

Galileo’s pathetic youth gave me a fresh surge of enthusiasm for saving these kids. We couldn’t employ all of them, although Unity, Tanner’s old lady, said she could give one of them a job at her dog boarding facility. But we could at least take them back across the border with money and encouragement not to work for smugglers any longer.

“Whoa, he’s getting off!” cried Galileo.

Once we turned south onto the dirt road, it became more obvious that we followed them. There was no one in their passenger seat, so I asked Knoxie,

“Is he looking back at us?”

“Yeah. Shit. Your piece loaded?” he asked for the hundredth time.