Wednesday, August 29
1930 hours
Raton, New Mexico
Keogh couldn’t believe it.
He was sitting in the dining room of the Roughrider’s Roadside Grill in Raton, New Mexico, with the sun going down like a radioactive dahlia behind a sawtooth ridge of purple mountains on his right. He was thinking about calling Butler, wondering if Pat had got anywhere with Pike’s records, and staring at a plate of fries and gravy, the gravy being some kind of pale-white chicken gravy and not even a good rich beef gravy—which is what you were supposed to put on your fries.
He’d come all this way redball, with a litter of Bob’s Big Boy wrappers in the footwell and three days of beard, deked out all the troopers and stayed away from every town, no sleep, running okay for an amateur, and here it all goes, ’cause there’s two cracker assholes coming in the front door of the lounge and it was like they had a sign on them, or one of those big Felix the Cat balloons that say THINKS, and what it was these two crackers were thinking was ROBBERY.
Oh, yeah. The little one in the cattleman coat, the one hanging back now by the door—he’ll have a shotgun or something under the coat. Look at him, thought Frank, feeling the weight of the nine-mil under his jacket. Look at the guy. Weighs maybe one fifty if you fill his pockets with change, and those reflector aviators, and the throat working away. Twitchy way about him, as if he’s cranked up or something.
His partner halfway into the big room now, nobody looking up to see him, just a big room full of people eating, bunch of family folks by the plate-glass window, some truckers here and there, in off the interstate, some formers, teenage waitresses in brown nylon cowgirl suits running around with drinks and dinners.
The little guy now at the door. Standing six, they’d call it in Robbery. Look at him. You could almost hear him talking to himself, like Goofy, saying Dum Dum Da-Dum Nossir Don’t Mind Me, I’m Just a Harmless Old Dude Yup Yup … and the partner, a lanky thin guy with a forward lean and a kind of shuffle to his walk, jeans and a black silk A’s jacket over a T-shirt with a picture of Kennedy waving and the back of Kennedy’s head coming off as if he had just taken the round in Dealey Plaza.
Not too dumb, really, that shirt. The guy will go to the cash register, maybe even be quiet about it; he’ll see it’s the dinner hour and he’ll show the old broad a piece. All she’ll remember is the piece and the picture of Kennedy’s head coming apart.
Frank looked around and saw no one paying any attention.
No troopers in the place either, or he wouldn’t be here himself. God damn.
So keep your head down. Stick your face in the fries and the pale-gray stuff on them. Nobody sees anything, makes a fuss about it. They’ll collect and pony on down the road.
Please let them be pros. Let them be at least semi-pros.
Well, he really featured his luck, and that was a fact. What was it Butler used to say when something went totally and mind-bendingly wrong on a job.
Shit happens, he’d say, and put his hands out to the side and open his eyes wide and grin at Pulaski.
Shit happens.
Shit happened.