The driver leaned over and popped open his glove box. “Here.” He handed her a stack of rainbow bumper stickers. “Be my guest, girlfriend.”
“See,” Hooter said to the next driver as the pickup truck with the rainbow sticker sped off, “if you nice to folks, it’s contagious just like germs is, only being nice don’t make you sick.” She reached out a gloved hand and took a dollar bill from Barbie Fogg.
“I know why all these cars are stopped,” Barbie said. “You heard about that man who got blown up over there by the river? It’s all over the radio.”
“Oh my!” Hooter returned a quarter to her and dropped seventy-five cents in the toll bin. “I don’t got a radio in my booth ’cause they ain’t no time for me to listen to it. What happened, baby?”
Cars began to honk, turning the interstate into an endless flock of migrating Canada geese.
“The police wouldn’t say. But it will be in the paper in the morning,” Barbie replied. “Problem is, I don’t get the paper, so I’ll never know what happened.”
“You just drive through my booth tomorrow,” Hooter said with importance. “I always read the paper before I go to work. I tell you all about it. What your name, baby?”
They exchanged names and Hooter handed her a rainbow bumper sticker.
“You put that on your minivan and it will bring smiles and hope to all you pass,” Hooter promised.
“Why thank you!” Barbie was touched and delighted. “I’ll do it the minute I get home.”
Nineteen
Governor Crimm chalked the tip of his lucky pool cue, cigar smoke hanging in a hazy halo around his head as he tried to make out striped balls on the red felt-covered table that Thomas Jefferson had brought back from France, or so Maude had claimed when she’d discovered it on eBay. Every few minutes, one of the troopers came into the billiards room to give the governor updates. The news was not promising.
Checks of vehicles passing through tollbooths had produced only one car with New York plates, and the driver, clearly Hispanic, had fled. So far, he had not been caught, and the consensus was that he–the heinous serial killer–had left the city, heading north. Other disturbing developments included Trooper Truth’s latest essay, which accused Major Trader of being a dishonest, self-serving pirate who was trying to poison the governor. As if things weren’t grim enough, Regina had planted herself on a Chippendale commode chair, slurping ice cream she had mixed with homemade Toll House cookies she had helped herself to in the kitchen. She was chewing with her mouth open and talking nonstop, distracting the governor as he peered through his magnifying glass at the pool balls he went after.
“Good shot,” Andy said when a red-striped ball bounced off the table. He quickly caught it and discreetly tucked it into a corner pocket.
“You aren’t letting me win, are you?” the governor said, chalking his stick again.
“Everybody always lets you win,” Regina told her father. “Except me. I refuse to let you win.”
Regina was a gifted pool player and between her father’s terms as governor, when she was at liberty to come and go as she pleased, she was known in area bars for her trick shots and ruthlessness. The only person who had ever beaten her without cheating was that dumbshit, disrespectful Trooper Macovich.
“Here.” Andy offered Regina his pool cue. “I’m not with it tonight. You take over. If you don’t mind my asking,” he said to the governor as Regina racked up balls, “how did Trader come to work for you?”
“A good question,” the governor replied. “It was during my first term as governor, and as I remember it, he was a low man on the totem pole, but I got to know him because he used to stop by the mansion to help out with things, such as supervising the inmates, which is not the most desirable job.”
Regina broke, and four solid balls whizzed into four different pockets. “Shit,” she complained. “I’m having an off night, too.”
Pony had just stepped inside to see if anyone needed a touch more brandy, and he caught what the governor said about inmates. He was hurt. It always wounded him when the First Family implied that just because a person was a convicted felon, he could never be trusted with anything ever again.