sometimes three. As we
crossed the desert heading east his car was at times no more than a sunflash on the horizon and I thought about
Elizabeth, how the sun looked on her hair.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
I was far behind on this occasion. It was the middle of the week, and traffic on US 71 was very light. When traffic is
light, tailing becomes dangerous - even a grammar-school teacher knows that. I passed an orange sign which read
DETOUR 5 MILES and dropped back even farther. Desert detours slow traffic to a crawl , and I didn't want to chance
coming up behind the gray Cadillac as the driver babied it over some rutted secondary road.
DETOUR 3 MILES, the next sign read, and below that: BLASTING AREA AHEAD TURN OFF 2-WAY RADIO.
I began to muse on some movie I had seen years before. In this film a band of armed robbers had tricked an armored
car into the desert by putting up false detour signs. Once the driver fell for the trick and turned off onto a deserted dirt
road (there are thousands of them in the desert, sheep roads and ranch roads and old government roads that go
nowhere), the thieves had removed the signs, assuring isolation, and then had simply laid siege to the armored car
until the guards came out.
They killed the guards.
I remembered that.
They killed the guards.
I reached the detour and turned onto it. The road was as bad as I had imagined -packed dirt, two lanes wide, filled with
potholes that made my old Buick jounce and groan. The Buick needed new shock absorbers, but shocks are an
expense a schoolteacher sometimes has to put off, even when he is a widower with no children and no hobbies except
his dream of revenge.
As the Buick bounced and wallowed along, an idea occurred to me. Instead of following Dolan's Cadillac the next time
it left Vegas for LA or LA for Vegas, I would pass it - get ahead of it. I would create a false detour like the one in the
movie, luring it out into the wastes that exist, silent and rimmed by mountains, west of Las Vegas. Then I would
remove the signs, as the thieves had done in the movie
I snapped back to reality suddenly. Dolan's Cadillac was ahead of me, directly ahead of me, pulled off to one side of
the dusty track. One of the tires, self-sealing or not, was flat. No - not just flat. It was exploded, half off the rim. The
culprit had probably been a sharp wedge of rock stuck in the hardpan like a miniature tank-trap. One of the two
bodyguards was working a jack under the front end. The second - an ogre with a pig-face streaming sweat under his
brush cut - stood protectively beside Dolan himself. Even in the desert, you see, they took no chances.
Dolan stood to one side, slim in an open-throated shirt and dark slacks, his silver hair blowing around his head in the
desert breeze. He was smoking a cigarette and watching the men as if he were somewhere else, a restaurant or a
ballroom or a drawing room perhaps.
His eyes met mine through the windshield of my car and then slid off with no recognition at all, although he had seen
me once, seven years ago (when I had hair!), at a preliminary hearing, sitting beside my wife.
My terror at having caught up with the Cadillac was replaced with an utter fury.
I thought of leaning over and unrolling the passenger window and shrieking: How dare you forget me? How dare you
dismiss me? Oh, but that would have been the act of a lunatic. It was good that he had forgotten me, it was fine that he
had dismissed me, better to be a mouse behind the wainscoting, nibbling at the wires. Better to be a spider, high up
under the eaves, spinning its web.
The man sweating the jack flagged me, but Dolan wasn't the only one capable of dismissal. I looked indifferently
beyond the arm-waver, wishing him a heart attack or a stroke or, best of all, both at the same time. I drove on - but my
head pulsed and throbbed, and for a few moments the mountains on the horizon seemed
crossed the desert heading east his car was at times no more than a sunflash on the horizon and I thought about
Elizabeth, how the sun looked on her hair.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
I was far behind on this occasion. It was the middle of the week, and traffic on US 71 was very light. When traffic is
light, tailing becomes dangerous - even a grammar-school teacher knows that. I passed an orange sign which read
DETOUR 5 MILES and dropped back even farther. Desert detours slow traffic to a crawl , and I didn't want to chance
coming up behind the gray Cadillac as the driver babied it over some rutted secondary road.
DETOUR 3 MILES, the next sign read, and below that: BLASTING AREA AHEAD TURN OFF 2-WAY RADIO.
I began to muse on some movie I had seen years before. In this film a band of armed robbers had tricked an armored
car into the desert by putting up false detour signs. Once the driver fell for the trick and turned off onto a deserted dirt
road (there are thousands of them in the desert, sheep roads and ranch roads and old government roads that go
nowhere), the thieves had removed the signs, assuring isolation, and then had simply laid siege to the armored car
until the guards came out.
They killed the guards.
I remembered that.
They killed the guards.
I reached the detour and turned onto it. The road was as bad as I had imagined -packed dirt, two lanes wide, filled with
potholes that made my old Buick jounce and groan. The Buick needed new shock absorbers, but shocks are an
expense a schoolteacher sometimes has to put off, even when he is a widower with no children and no hobbies except
his dream of revenge.
As the Buick bounced and wallowed along, an idea occurred to me. Instead of following Dolan's Cadillac the next time
it left Vegas for LA or LA for Vegas, I would pass it - get ahead of it. I would create a false detour like the one in the
movie, luring it out into the wastes that exist, silent and rimmed by mountains, west of Las Vegas. Then I would
remove the signs, as the thieves had done in the movie
I snapped back to reality suddenly. Dolan's Cadillac was ahead of me, directly ahead of me, pulled off to one side of
the dusty track. One of the tires, self-sealing or not, was flat. No - not just flat. It was exploded, half off the rim. The
culprit had probably been a sharp wedge of rock stuck in the hardpan like a miniature tank-trap. One of the two
bodyguards was working a jack under the front end. The second - an ogre with a pig-face streaming sweat under his
brush cut - stood protectively beside Dolan himself. Even in the desert, you see, they took no chances.
Dolan stood to one side, slim in an open-throated shirt and dark slacks, his silver hair blowing around his head in the
desert breeze. He was smoking a cigarette and watching the men as if he were somewhere else, a restaurant or a
ballroom or a drawing room perhaps.
His eyes met mine through the windshield of my car and then slid off with no recognition at all, although he had seen
me once, seven years ago (when I had hair!), at a preliminary hearing, sitting beside my wife.
My terror at having caught up with the Cadillac was replaced with an utter fury.
I thought of leaning over and unrolling the passenger window and shrieking: How dare you forget me? How dare you
dismiss me? Oh, but that would have been the act of a lunatic. It was good that he had forgotten me, it was fine that he
had dismissed me, better to be a mouse behind the wainscoting, nibbling at the wires. Better to be a spider, high up
under the eaves, spinning its web.
The man sweating the jack flagged me, but Dolan wasn't the only one capable of dismissal. I looked indifferently
beyond the arm-waver, wishing him a heart attack or a stroke or, best of all, both at the same time. I drove on - but my
head pulsed and throbbed, and for a few moments the mountains on the horizon seemed
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