you’ve got a phone, you’re hooked up. That’s the problem with rules, I suppose. You don’t get to pick and choose the ones you want.” Mickey let Billy go out first and turned and stood in the open doorway. Ron still had his arms folded across his chest and an arrogant grin on his face. He stood, feet shoulder width apart, solid and confident in the center of his living room, having been proven right and knowing it.
For a second, Mickey contemplated walking over to the pipe behind the lamp and arresting the son of a bitch. Something about Ron bothered him. But then he thought about the paperwork. And then he thought about the fact that the 911 call really had been a mistake. He shouldn’t even be standing there. He should never have seen the pipe to begin with. Let it go, he told himself. What would be the point of arresting the guy? To get even with him for being pissy? To make a point of who was the most powerful guy in the room? In the end, it would only underscore the hypocrisy of his own life—enforcing a law he didn’t believe in, merely to prove to himself that there was some kind of order in the universe—but that wasn’t really why he did the job, was it? If there was a reason at all, surely it wasn’t that.
Mickey took hold of the doorknob and nodded. “Well, we’re sorry to bother you. Have a good evening. See you at the next practice.”
On his way back to the Suburban, Mickey watched a stray dog pissing on the back tire of Ron’s truck. The dog watched Mickey cross the lawn, balancing on three legs with the fourth raised and the trickle running through the dust on the wheel. When the mutt was finished, it scurried across the yard and seemed to vaporize into the darkness. Mickey stared into the void after it, struggling to see something more. A picture, an image, an answer to a question not yet formed.
But there was only Billy, with his nagging aura of uncertainty, emerging from behind him to ask whether Mickey thought it strange that the 911 call had apparently been false. “Isn’t that strange?” the young man asked.
Mickey climbed into the Suburban and started it. “The world’s full of strange things, Billy,” he said through the open window. “I’m not even sure this qualifies.”
XXV
The whole evening, Hank kept telling himself he was fucking up. He should be back at the Super 8, packing his stuff into the car, drinking coffee, planning out the final details. He could slip into Ron’s house about two in the morning, put six rounds in his chest, and be catching a flight out of Vegas before sunrise, perhaps a day or even a week before anyone would find the body.
But what was the rush? The job was basically done. Besides, it would be easier to break in during the day and wait for Lugano to come home from work. There was no risk of waking him up that way. Instead, Hank could just sit on the man’s couch, watch some TV, relax, and when the door opened up, step out from behind it and put one smooth round through the back of his head. Simple. He’d done it dozens of times before. This one would be easy.
“You seem distracted,” Janie said, turning her head to look at him.
They were on top of a massive egg-shaped rock looking out over a narrow valley of similar rocks, each of them crisp against the moonlit desert sky. It was an odd geographical anomaly, to be sure, but Hank was having trouble focusing on the present.
“Sorry,” he said, and took another can of beer from the cardboard twelve-pack they’d bought at the gas station. “I was just checking out the view. Pretty weird rocks,” he said, and then cracked the beer and took a long drink.
“Yeah, most people have never heard of this place.” Janie got a beer of her own. “We used to come out here all the time in high school, have fires, party all night.”
Hank hesitated for a moment, unsure of himself and not wanting to risk upsetting the evening. But he needed to distract himself, to relax. He felt the small lump in his pocket and debated bringing it up. But then, after a few seconds, he just asked her. “Hey, you wanna smoke some pot?”
She looked at him and smirked. “You got some?”
“Yeah, the kid