“I’ll find my own ride.”
“It’ll look hinky, we don’t show up together.”
Danny Pogue said, “I’m not riding nowhere with a guy that throws rats on little kids. Understand?”
“What if I said I was sorry,” Bud Schwartz said. “I’m sorry, all right? It was a shitty thing to do. I feel terrible, Danny, honest to God. I feel like a shit.”
Danny Pogue gave him a sideways look.
“I mean it,” said Bud Schwartz. “You got me feeling so bad I got half a mind to cry. Swear to God, look here—my eyes are all watered up. For a second I was thinking of Bud, Jr., about what I’d do, some asshole throwed a rat or any other damn animal at my boy. Probably kill him, that’s what I’d do.”
As he spun through this routine, Bud Schwartz was thinking: The things I do to keep him steady.
And it seemed to work. In no time Danny Pogue said, “It’s all right, Bud. Least nobody got hurt.”
“That’s true.”
“But don’t scare no more little kids, understand?”
Bud Schwartz said, “I won’t, Danny. That’s a promise.”
Ten minutes later, stopped at a traffic light in Cutler Ridge, Danny Pogue turned in the passenger seat and said, “Hey, it just hit me.”
He was grinning so wide that you could count all the spaces where teeth used to be.
“What?” said Bud Schwartz.
“I remember you told me that Bud Schwartz wasn’t your real name. You said your real name was Mickey Reilly.”
“Mike. Mike Reilly,” said Bud Schwartz, thinking, Here we go.
“Okay, then how could you have a kid named Bud, Jr.?”
“Well—”
“If your name’s Mike.”
“Simple. I changed the boy’s name when I changed mine.”
Danny Pogue looked skeptical. Bud Schwartz said, “A boy oughta have the same name as his daddy, don’t you agree?”
“So his real name was—”
“Mike, Jr. Now it’s Bud, Jr.”
“You say so,” said Danny Pogue, grinning again, a jack-o’-lantern with volcanic acne.
“What, you don’t believe me?”
“No, I don’t believe you,” said Danny Pogue, “but it was a damn good story. Whatever your fucking name is.”
“Bud is just fine. Bud Schwartz. And let’s not fight no more, we’re gonna be rich.”
Danny Pogue got two beers out of the Styrofoam cooler in the back of the cab. He popped one of the cans for his partner and handed it to him. “I still can’t believe they’re payin’ us ten grand apiece to steal a boxful of rats.”
“This is Miami,” said Bud Schwartz. “Maybe they’re voodoo rats. Or maybe they’re fulla dope. I heard where they smuggle coke in French rubbers, so why not rats.”
Danny Pogue lifted the box from behind the front seat and placed it carefully on his lap. He leaned down and put his ear to the lid. “Wonder how many’s in there,” he said.
Bud Schwartz shrugged. “Didn’t ask.”
The den box was eighteen inches deep, and twice the size of a briefcase. It was made of plywood, painted dark green, with small hinged doors on each end. Air holes had been drilled through the side panels; the holes were no bigger than a dime, but somehow one of the animals had managed to squeeze out. Then it had scaled the front seat and perched on Danny Pogue’s headrest, where it had balanced on its hind legs and wiggled its velvety snout in the air. Laughing, Bud Schwartz had deftly snatched it by the tail and dangled it in his partner’s face. Over Danny Pogue’s objections, Bud Schwartz had toyed with the rodent for six or seven miles, until he’d spotted the red convertible coming the other way down the road. Then he had said, “Watch this,” and had tossed the animal out the window, into the passing car.
Now Danny Pogue lifted the green box off his lap and said, “Sure don’t weigh much.”
Bud Schwartz chuckled. “You want a turn, is that it? Well, go ahead then, grab one.”
“But I don’t wanna get bit.”
“You got to do it real fast, way I did. Hurry now, here comes one of them Winnebagos. I’ll slow down when we go by.”