Leaving the first rest stop east of the Toledo exits, a sub-average hamburger under his belt, his tank full of gasoline, Lockington checked his rearview mirror for fast-closing headlights, seeing none. He drove toward Youngstown under a glittering canopy of stars. Stars had become a rarity in the Chicago area—there was a grayish moon on occasion, but honest-to-Christ stars, the kind that actually twinkle, were hard to come by. The situation was due to too many people, too many factories, millions of automobiles, thousands of trucks, hundreds of diesel locomotives, and more jet airplanes than a man could shake his fist at—during its busiest hours, O’Hare Field handled a flight every twenty seconds. The racket was awesome, you could have carved the pollution with a butcher knife, and Lockington was glad to get away from it, however temporarily.
He wondered what’d clued Billy Mac Davis to his route. Moose Katzenbach had been told what direction he’d be taking, but Moose didn’t slip on matters of that nature. Natasha Gorky had known his destination, but if she’d wanted him eliminated, she’d have had him shot in Chicago where his death wouldn’t have caused a ripple. Billy Mac Davis had been playing for keeps—there were half a dozen wind-whistling holes in his windows to prove it, three coming in, three going out. Davis had figured Lockington for Ohio following his departure from Mike’s Tavern, and it hadn’t been a random shot like a raffle ticket pulled from a hat. Davis’s guess had been educated, it’d been based on knowledge. Somewhere in the Youngstown area there was someone or something that Lockington wasn’t supposed to come into contact with. There are no Chicago-to-Youngstown shortcuts—Interstate 80 is the most direct route and Davis had been flying low on that course, overtaking everything ahead of him, knowing that he’d catch a tired blue Pontiac within three or four hours.
The Pontiac clattered past the Cleveland and Akron exits and Lockington was less than an hour’s drive from Youngstown when he turned onto the ramp of the next rest stop, rattling by the truck park where dozens of over-the-road cowboys slept in their cabs, awaiting daybreak and the haul to the east coast. Lockington wasn’t a chronic hunch-player, but he was a firm believer in taking precautions and this stop amounted to a precaution.
The passenger-car parking area was empty. It was 2:03 A.M., and at 2:03 A.M. most decent people were in bed—doing any number of indecent things, perhaps, but in bed nevertheless. He parked well clear of the building, leaving the Catalina where it’d be clearly visible from the glassed-in foyer. He climbed out, stretching, moving at an unhurried pace, ostensibly the bored traveler, which was hardly the case—Lockington was covering his ass, as they say in the infantry. Once inside, he took stock of the place. The lobby was deserted, so was the dining hall. He heard the clanking of pans in the kitchen. These places didn’t come to life much before daybreak, when they became beehives of activity. He leaned against a wall, lighting a cigarette, staring into the morning darkness, waiting. It was a short wait. A white Cadillac was slipping into the parking lot, lights out, stopping alongside Lockington’s car. Billy Mac Davis had ducked into a rest stop, letting Lockington pass, or he’d left the turnpike and looped back onto it—however it’d gone, he’d been tracking his quarry for a hundred miles and Lockington gave him an A for determination.
So, what to do? There was a crackpot out there with a gun. Lockington considered barging through the kitchen to leave the building through a service door and turn his opponent’s flank, thus leveling the odds, boiling it down to a one-on-one shootout. Or he could call the Ohio state police and wait for their arrival—a thankless proposition at best. By the time Lockington could get the situation explained, Billy Mac Davis would be in the next county, establishing another ambush, and Lockington would be in the nearest mental facility, sharing a room with a guy who’d just returned to planet Earth after having been kidnapped by extraterrestrials. Or…or nothing!—a green Pontiac Trans Am had wheeled into the rest stop parking lot. The passenger’s door opened, a man got out, walking to Billy Mac Davis’s white Cadillac, revolver in hand, pumping half a dozen rounds into the Cadillac’s interior. Talk about coldblooded efficiency—within twenty seconds of its arrival, the Trans Am was gone. Lockington had recognized the executioner—Vince Calabrese.
He left the building at a long-legged stride. There were no signs of life in any direction save for a Peterbilt snorting from the west end of the truck park, trailing a long filthy plume of diesel smoke. Early start. Lockington got into his Pontiac, kicking it to life, pulling away to roll down the outbound ramp, blending with I-80’s sparse dead-of-the-night traffic. Billy Mac Davis would be back there in his white Cadillac, deader than a fucking mackerel, looking a great deal like a volleyball net. Lockington shrugged. What the hell—Jesus saves.