CRIME THRILLERS-A Box Set (10 page)

through his nostrils.

He thought about Boots, then put his ghost away. He thought about Indians on ponies whipping up dust storms across the valley floor. As much as he hated Texas and Texas lawmen, he never failed to relish the past he imagined lingering just at the edge of modern society out in the desert regions. There were worlds beneath worlds, even if they

couldn't be seen.

Despite what he told Molly, he liked the idea of ghosts, did not think them macabre or frightening. If the ghost of an Apache warrior strode up to him right this second, he

wouldn't be all that surprised. It was Indian land, stolen from them, drenched in their

blood and tears. He felt them all around him and was comforted in thinking they watched the white man's progress through the sacred mountains. At least the travelers weren't alone with just the desolate landscape and the dome of the night sky pressing down overhead.

He took another deep dry bracing breath before moving toward where Molly waited in the building surrounded by reflected yellow Love light. He strained to hear the hissing from the neon tubes but could hear nothing beyond the throaty idle of semi-truck engines.

He spied Molly coming out the ladies' room door and waved her over. "How about an apple?" He led her to a refrigerated counter and gestured for the clerk to give him

two red delicious apples.

Molly took the fruit and bit into it as they strolled over to the coffee machine. Cruise poured a big cup, asked if she wanted any.

"No, thanks." She worked at demolishing the apple.

Outside again, Cruise sipped at the coffee. He frowned at the taste. Burned. Old. Pissed him off when the fuckers didn't keep the coffee fresh. "No Lot Lizards here tonight,"

he said. "They'll be all over El Paso. It's a wide-open city because it's so close to the border. Cops can't control the place."

"Are we far from there?"

"Another hundred miles or so. You ever been to Mexico?"

"New Mexico?"

"No, old Mexico. The real Mexico."

"I haven't been anywhere much. You're not going to Mexico, are you?" She sounded suddenly worried.

"I was thinking of crossing the border at El Paso. Just for one night." When Molly didn't say anything as she climbed into the passenger seat he said, "You're not on a tight schedule or anything, are you? I'11 get you to California."

"I don't care. It's your car."

Cruise set the coffee cup into the holder on the floorboard between the seats. It was horse piss coffee, hardly worth drinking. He'd like to take it back inside and pour it all over

someone's head. Instead, he pulled back onto the freeway.

"You'll like it," he said. " Mexico.
Me-hi-co
. You ever see Richard Gere in
Breathless
? He was driving the stolen Porsche and beating the steering wheel in time to a Jerry Lee Lewis song? Well, he said Mexico like that.
Me-hi-co
. 'Me and Monica in
Me-hi-co
.' There's a little town over the border I'd like you to see."

He could tell she was in a silent stew over his pronouncement. She might even want to leave him and catch another ride out of El Paso. He'd never let her, of course, but she

might want to. He wouldn't know until they got there. He wasn't sure yet how much of a hold he had over the girl. He certainly didn't want to kill her so soon. Wasn't time yet. He wasn't finished with her.

He contentedly munched on the juicy apple, drank the bad coffee, and thought about Mexican whores. Skinny ones, fat ones, dark brown skin or light skin like cream, raven-haired, but, most of all, willing.

And he still needed money. Soon he would kill to get it.

Molly slept as Cruise drove toward the huddled lights spread at the feet of a mountain range. Van Horn. Not far to El Paso.

A night breeze blew through his partially lowered window. It swept aside his long hair and caressed his neck. The metal of the knife he kept hidden there cooled into a thin

strip of chilled flesh at the base of his scalp. Sometimes the glue of the Velcro patch made him itch. Sometimes it abraded his skin and caused a red, bumpy irritation. And sometimes the glue came loose after he shampooed his hair. He carried extra Velcro pads in his travel bag. Every so often he had to take a Bic shaver to scrape off the bristly hair that tried to grow back, then replace the old Velcro patch with a new one.

He reached behind his head now and checked how well the knife was holding. Two edges of the Velcro were loose and the little knife sagged. Tonight in El Paso when he bathed, he would shave his hair there and replace the patch.

During the next hours on the road Cruise indulged in fantasies and memories of his kills. The miles disappeared.

Time ceased to exist. As he approached El Paso, his mind wrenched itself into the present. First there was a string of lights on the horizon, a sparkling necklace of pearls

strewn all in a row. Nearer the city the lights were scattered across the foot of the mountains like multifaceted jewels.

The mountains to the rear of the city blocked out the stars and moon. As Cruise drove, he watched the skyline and saw a pure white sickle moon emerge, suspended low over the city. If the Comanches, Kiowas, Apaches, and Lipan Indians who roamed West Texas living on buffalo before the mid-1800s were to ride into El Paso today, the brilliance of the lights would stun them into either reverent silence or a mad fury to destroy the invading infidels.

Interstate 10's twin lanes going west soon expanded to four lanes and filled with heavier traffic. Minutes before he saw the huge green Metro Truck Stop sign, Cruise woke Molly. "Here," he said. "Now I'll show you a real truck stop. You're gonna love it."

Molly readjusted the reclining seat so that she was sitting up. She rubbed her face and spoke in a groggy voice. "Big, isn't it?"

"Largest city between Houston and Albuquerque. By the time you get to El Paso you're starved for a city and after you leave it, you starve a long while more until you reach another of any size. It's the last outpost. On trail drives back in the heyday of the Old West, El Paso must have seemed like paradise to the cowboys. The last stop for hundreds of miles in any direction. It still is."

Cruise took an exit. Molly grew more interested in her surroundings, craning her head to look out the window.

Cruise turned left on an overpass. Not far from the freeway he pointed to the Metro sign. "That's it," he said.

"Jesus. It looks like a shopping mall."

Cruise grinned. "That's kind of what it is. Wait till you see." He knew he sounded like a carnival barker trying to get the unsuspecting to come into the geek house, talk the innocents into watching a boy with strong teeth bite off the head of a chicken. And that was exactly what he was doing too. Luring Molly into his world where the lights burned

all night, bartering for sex rampant and quite evident, liaisons being made everywhere you turned. Beneath the lights and the clean rest rooms and the aisles of polished glass

cases, there was a lurid, steamy world where you could buy anything your heart desired--women, boys, radio and CB equipment, hot merchandise off the trucks, drugs, or a

combination of any sort of entertainment you might want. Or need. This outpost town with its Old West flavor offered the unwary danger, the innocent an education, and the jaded a whole raft of all new thrills.

Cruise loved it. He reveled in it. Where anything goes, Cruise felt unbound. Life here came with a promise of an eternal playground, and the advertisement wasn't a lie. If you couldn't find satisfaction in El Paso, it wasn't to be had.

Cruise parked to the side of the restaurant area, not far from where the big rigs lined up ten deep and twenty long. Trucks pulled in and out, behemoths lumbering slowly and

making exquisitely precise turns or backing-up maneuvers. That was just one parking lot. The entire complex had three more. Across a fence west of the restaurant he saw a couple

of small sleazy trailer houses and billboards announcing ADULT VIDEOS, MAGAZINES, BOOKS.

"Come on inside, I want you to see this place." Although he didn't tell her, he also wanted to find a Lot Lizard who went by the name of Chloe. He really needed a couple of hours with a woman other than his young witness.

He waited in front of the grill of the car for Molly. She bounced along beside him like a young athlete limbering up for a race. He could feel her energy like an aura that touched his skin and made it hum in tune to her high-pitched current. He grinned all the way inside the glass doors of the Metro.

Once inside what appeared to be a busy lobby, Cruise guided Molly to the right toward the restaurant. Though it was three o'clock in the morning, the tables and booths were full of truckers and travelers. Sounds rang from the busy kitchen to mingle with dozens of conversations, phone calls going on at the booths, waitresses taking orders, busboys clearing tables. Cruise looked around the room for Chloe, but she wasn't there.

Sitting at a counter, Cruise ordered two coffees, swirled on his seat to grin at Molly. "What do you think so far?"

"Does no one sleep around here?"

"Oh, they sleep, out in their cabs, but these are the men who just got into town or they're getting ready to leave it. You can walk in here anytime of day or night and find it this way." He gazed around at the commotion, drinking it in, letting it revive him after his own long haul of driving. It was like getting an electrical charge. His weariness receded,

his brain woke to the various sounds, sights, and smells.

There was the scent of cinnamon rolls, coffee brewed fresh, the early morning smell of bacon and fried eggs. Now if he could just spend a short time doing the Big Nasty with

Chloe everything would be perfect.

"I think I'm going to need this." Molly used both hands to steady the cup of coffee at her lips. "This place is hopping."

"Drink up and we'll go explore the rest of it."

Outside the restaurant after paying their bill, Cruise took Molly across the lobby to the travel store. They saw Indian blankets and headdresses, pottery, Navajo turquoise jewelry,

tapes, video movies, books, souvenirs. Cruise bought a hair comb made of an abalone shell. He waited as Molly thanked him and used it to hold one side of her red hair

from her face.

"Now let's see what else they have," he said, hustling her into the open lobby area once more.

With a proprietary air he pointed out the ice cream shop, the barber, the shoe shine stand, the full-size theater, the TV room, the knife shop, rest rooms, showers, a game room, and a laundry. One area was unlike any he had found in other truck stops across the Southwest. There was a glass-enclosed room with a sign on the door that said simply, THE QUIET ROOM. Inside were pastel flowered sofas and comfortable chairs, a long polished table with more chairs pushed around it, plants, bare walls, magazines scattered around. In there a trucker could relax and pretend he was in his own living room at home, all sounds from outside masked, dampened, set at a distance. There was no TV there, nothing to infringe on the feeling of womb-like isolation.

In each shop and room he and Molly looked, Cruise watched for the short black cap of hair that made Chloe stand out from other women. She was like a shadow, sometimes here, sometimes there, always on the move. He doubted he could find her, but he wished he could; he hoped desperately to see her in every female face he saw.

His testicles tightened at the thought of her paper-white skin, her shiny black hair and eyes. She was one girl he never felt the urge to kill. He saw her as seldom as once a year on his travels, but their coming together stayed with him for months afterward. She knew tricks no one else had even thought of yet.

Behind a jewelry counter selling silver necklaces, he showed Molly the four clocks on the wall that gave all standard U.S. time zones. There were people milling everywhere. Men getting their boots shined, buying jewelry trinkets, doing laundry, watching television, playing games, eating ice cream cones. Some of them just sat on the benches placed throughout the lobby, watching the traffic ebb and flow. Some stood talking in an open line of phone booths to their dispatchers or their wives at home. But nowhere did he see the woman he really needed. She was probably in some dark sleeper in a rumbling cab, showing a trucker the time of his life.

"Seen enough?'The tour had taken them half an hour. He was tired of playing the guide.

"This is incredible," Molly said, staring open-mouthed as she tried to assimilate all the strange goings-on happening simultaneously within the truck stop complex. "This sure

isn't like the White Elephant Cafe," she added. "This isn't like anything I've ever seen before."

Cruise was as pleased as he would have been had he created the place from scratch for her amusement. At the double entrance doors leading outside again, they passed two young couples talking together in an animated fashion. Cruise touched Molly's arm lightly and nodded toward them.

"What?" Molly asked.

Once outside Cruise said, "Lot Lizards and their dates."

"Really?" She turned entirely around and gazed back.

"But those girls look like college students or something. How do you know?"

"I overheard them discussing price. El Paso, I told you, is a wide-open kind of town. It has equal parts of rawness and sophistication. Not all Lizards look like your regular street hookers. Those girls probably do go to college. But they can make enough out here at the truck stop on one weekend to pay their tuitions.
And you should see Chloe
, he thought.
She looks like a senator's wife on vacation
.

"Well, they fooled the hell out of me."

Cruise laughed. "If you had any hell in you you'd have recognized what they were."

Molly frowned, sore at being caught out. "I know enough. I'm not a total dweeb."

"No one said you were, kid. But the world is wider and stranger than you would ever believe. There's more goes on in it than you can possibly imagine."

"I'll agree with you on that. I mean that one girl wore glasses and preppy clothes. And she's a Lot Lizard. I'd never have guessed that in a million years."