At two in the morning, Dreamer waited by the hedge where Junior had let him off. There were still a few lights at Enchanted Mesa West, constellations of the super well-to-do. At 2:35, he hopped on the back of a Freezy-Ice van, and pulled himself up to the roof. The van passed through the gate and headed south. The guards didn't bother looking up. People broke into Enchanted Mesa West, people didn't try to break out.
Riding atop the van through the pines, through the hot oppressive night, Dreamer had the sudden manic urge for a high-priced overseas beer. Beer and a burger and fat onion rings. Onion rings the size of a Kawasaki tire. He would pick up the rental where Junior had stashed it the day before, near the turnoff to Highway 45. Then he'd grab a bite, drive back to Houston and go to bed. Get a little sleep and call the client, get the bucks and get the hell out.
The job had been easy. All the extra gadgets had him slightly uptight for a while, but they didn't mean a thing. How many didn't count. One little crackerbox alarm or all the fancy stuff at Enchanted Mesa West. There wasn't a system made that could hope to keep him out.
The thought brought sweet exhilaration. An apres-burglary high. Followed, at once, by a voice that said, next time, baby, it won't work at all, they will surely burn your ass.
The van slowed and turned, left instead of right, heading for the lake or maybe Huntsville town where they kept careless felons locked tight. A road Dreamer didn't care to take. He dropped off the back and hit the bushes running fast.
The air was thick as syrup, the night hot and still. The pines on either side black as printer's ink. Nothing artsy here, no fine delineation, nothing stark against the sky. The chatter of insects filled the night. Water was close at hand, somewhere past the trees; frogs took up the chorus, low and mournful sounds as if they suffered mortal pain.
He thought about the morning, how he'd get his bucks quick and head for home. He ticked off things he had to do. Scratched off an item, put another in its place. The basic idea was to make his life appear as if it might be something else. This, in case someone looked a little closer than he liked. People who sometimes wondered what he did, where he'd been the night before.
The whole idea of this irritated Dreamer a lot. He remembered when getting out of town meant walking out the door. Now, there were too many doors, too many keys, too many people to think about. Good folks and bad, and they all had pieces of his life.
Now there was Dinh and the fucking tanks of fish, which had seemed like a good idea at the time. An honest, marginal enterprise with a chamber of commerce sticker on the door. A very nice front that worked for the IRS, but failed to fool Detective Sergeant Asher, or Mako Binder himself.
Lawmen and outlaws heard things they shouldn't ought to hear. Most of the time from the very same ears. Mako and Asher knew he made a lot more bread than a half-ass fish store could bring him in the very best of times, even though he seldom spent cash around town.
Still, a man had to try and look straight, and fish did the trick as well as anything else. You couldn't just take out an ad that said, 'semi-honest, reliable guy, desires opportunities in break-in and retrieval. I am not a common cutpurse, a felon or a thief.'
"Sweet Diane," he said aloud, "grow up and be mine. Let's get the hell out of here and fly to foreign climes!"
And that's not fair, he thought, not fair to another with skin pale as medieval art, a lady dark as ebony who smelled of Samarkand. Not fair to Eileen. Not fair at all to the angel in the Jag. They'd had so little time together, he couldn't break her heart. And, as much as he loved Diane, he simply couldn't wait around.
He was close to the highway now and he could see a patch of neon from the truckstop cafe, hear the songs of the heavy-duty tires, the big rigs growling through the pre-dawn night. He thought about the tanks that needed cleaning in the shop. He ought to tell Dinh to put an eye-catcher out in the window, a Rainbow or a Blue. The fish were too big for the average tank, but they'd pull new people inside...
...As he thought about the fish and arranged the wood and gravel in his head, as the lights grew brighter, as the sound of the cars seemed to reach a higher pitch, seemed to whine up the scale, bring the frogs to a single rowdy din, Dreamer looked up, heard the clatter of the pistons, heard the rattle of the engine, heard the shudder of the canvas in the wind, smelled the sweet and sour tang of castor oil, smelled the dust of St. Mihel, saw the stark moth shadow overhead, felt the jolt of heated air, saw it disappear back into the night...
It was there and it was gone, leaving Dreamer shaky in a still summer hour before the sultry dawn. He was slightly off-center, he was vaguely discontent. He wondered if what he'd seen was real or in his head. It was one of those times when he really couldn't tell, and he didn't care for that. It pissed him off and it scared him half to death. Worse than that, it made him itch in the middle of his back where he couldn't get to scratch...