The flashing arrow was a tougher proposition — at first I couldn’t see how I was going to unhook it from the locked battery box without electrocuting myself. Then I saw the plug. It had been mostly hidden by a hard rubber O-ring on the side of the sign-case . . . a little insurance policy against vandals and practical jokers who might find pulling the plug on such a highway sign an amusing prank, I supposed.
I found a hammer and chisel in my toolbox, and four hard blows were sufficient to split the Oring. I yanked it off with a pair of pliers and pulled the cable free. The arrow stopped flashing and went dark. I pushed the battery box into the ditch and buried it. It was strange to stand there and hear it humming down there in the sand. But it made me think of Dolan, and that made me laugh.
I didn’t think Dolan would hum. He might scream, but I didn’t think he would hum.
Four bolts held the arrow in a low steel cradle. I loosened them as fast as I could, ears cocked for another motor. It was time for one — but not time for Dolan yet, surely.
That got the interior pessimist going again.
What if he flew?
He doesn’t like to fly.
What if he’s driving but going another way? Going by the Interstate, for instance? Today everyone else is . . .
He always goes by 71.
Yes, but what if —
‘Shut up,’ I hissed. ‘Shut up, damn you, just shut the fuck up!’
Easy, darling — easy! Everything will be all right.
I got the arrow into the back of the van. It crashed against the sidewall and some of the bulbs broke. More of them broke when I tossed the cradle in after it.
With that done, I drove back up the rise, pausing at the top to look behind me. I had taken away the arrow and the cones; all that remained now was that big orange warning: ROAD
CLOSED USE DETOUR.
There was a car coming. It occurred to me that if Dolan was early, it had all been for nothing
— the goon driving would simply turn down the detour, leaving me to go mad out here in the desert.
It was a Chevrolet.
My heart slowed down and I let out a long, shuddering breath. But there was no more time for nerves.
I drove back to where I had parked to look at my camouflage job and parked there again. I reached under the jumble of stuff in the back of the van and got the jack. Grimly ignoring my screaming back, I jacked up the rear end of the van, loosened the lug-nuts on the back tire they would see when
(if)
they came, and tossed it into the back of the van. More glass broke, and I would just have to hope there had been no damage done to the tire. I didn’t have a spare.
I went back to the front of the van, got my old binoculars, and then headed back toward the detour. I passed it and got to the top of the next rise as fast as I could — a shambling trot was really all I could manage by this time.
Once at the top, I trained my binoculars east.
I had a three-mile field of vision, and could see snatches of the road for two miles east of that.
Six vehicles were currently on the way, strung out like random beads on a long string. The first was a foreign car, Datsun or Subaru, I thought, less than a mile away. Beyond that was a pick-up, and beyond the pick-up was what looked like a Mustang. The others were just desert — light flashing on chrome and glass.
When the first car neared — it was a Subaru — I stood up and stuck my thumb out. I didn’t expect a ride looking the way I did, and I wasn’t disappointed. The expensively coiffed woman behind the wheel took one horrified glance and her face snapped shut like a fist. Then she was gone, down the hill and onto the detour.
‘Get a bath, buddy!’ the driver of the pick-up yelled at me half a minute later.
The Mustang actually turned out to be an Escort. It was followed by a Plymouth, the Plymouth by a Winnebago that sounded as if it were full of kids having a pillow-fight.
No sign of Dolan.
I looked at my watch. 11:25 A.M. If he was going to show up, it ought to be very soon. This was prime time.
The hands on my watch moved slowly around to 11:40 and there was still no sign of him.
Only a late-model Ford and a hearse as black as a raincloud.
He’s not coming. He went by the Interstate. Or he flew.
No. He’ll come.
He won’t, though. You were afraid he’d smell you, and he did. That’s why he changed his pattern.
There was another twinkle of light on chrome in the distance. This car was a big one. Big enough to be a Cadillac.
I lay on my belly, elbows propped in the grit of the shoulder, binoculars to my eyes. The car disappeared behind a rise . . . re-emerged . . . slipped around a curve . . . and then came out again.
It was a Cadillac, all right, but it wasn’t gray — it was a deep mint green.
What followed was the most agonizing thirty seconds of my life; thirty seconds that seemed to last for thirty years. Part of me decided on the spot, completely and irrevocably, that Dolan had
traded in his old Cadillac for a new one. Certainly he had done this before, and although he had never traded for a green one before, there was certainly no law against it.
The other half argued vehemently that Cadillacs were almost a dime a dozen on the highways and byways between Vegas and LA, and the odds against the green Caddy’s being Dolan’s Cadillac were a hundred to one.
Sweat ran into my eyes, blurring them, and I put the binoculars down. They weren’t going to help me solve this one, anyhow. By the time I was able to see the passengers, it would be too late.
It’s almost too late now! Go down there and dump the detour sign! You’re going to miss him!
Let me tell you what you’re going to catch in your trap if you hide that sign now: two rich old people going to LA to see their children and take their grandkids to Disneyland.
Do it! It’s him! It’s the only chance you’re going to have!
That’s right. The only chance. So don’t blow it by catching the wrong people.
It’s Dolan!
It’s not!
‘Stop it,’ I moaned, holding my head. ‘Stop it, stop it.’
I could hear the motor now.
Dolan.
The old people.
The lady.
The tiger.
Dolan.
The old —
‘Elizabeth, help me!’ I groaned.
Darling, that man has never owned a green Cadillac in his life. He never would. Of course it’s not him.
The pain in my head cleared away. I was able to get to my feet and get my thumb out.
It wasn’t the old people, and it wasn’t Dolan, either. It was what looked like twelve Vegas chorines crowded in with one old boy who was wearing the biggest cowboy hat and the darkest Foster Grants I’d ever seen. One of the chorines mooned me as the green Cadillac went fishtailing onto the detour.
Slowly, feeling entirely washed out, I raised the binoculars again.
And saw him coming.
There was no mistaking that Cadillac as it came around the curve at the far end of my uninterrupted view of the road — it was as gray as the sky overhead, but it stood out with startling clarity against the dull brown rises of land to the east.
It was him — Dolan. My long moments of doubt and indecision seemed both remote and foolish in an instant. It was Dolan, and I didn’t have to see that gray Cadillac to know it.
I didn’t know if he could smell me, but I could smell him.
Knowing he was on the way made it easier to pick up my aching legs and run.
I got back to the big DETOUR sign and shoved it face down into the ditch. I shook a sand-coloured piece of canvas over it, then pawed loose sand over its support posts. The overall effect wasn’t as good as the fake strip of road, but I thought it would serve.
Now I ran up the second rise to where I had left the van, which was just another part of the picture now — a vehicle temporarily abandoned by the owner, who had gone off somewhere to either get a new tire or have an old one fixed.