Bad Men (2003) by John Connolly Page B

up some lost ground.
    “Baby, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
    She dabbed at a make-believe tear with the tip of a finger. “Yeah, well, you ought to be more careful about what you say. You can be very hurtful sometimes, Harry Rylance.”
    “Sorry, “he repeated. He leaned over and kissed her on the mouth, trying to ignore the taste of nicotine on her breath. That was another thing: her damn smoking. If there was one thing—
    “Harry, there’s someone coming!”
    He looked up, and sure enough, there was a cloud of dust and fumes heading their way. He skipped away from Veronica, took the map in his hand, and waved it at the oncoming vehicle. As it drew closer and the dust cleared some, Harry could see that it was a blue Ford truck, twenty years old at least. Behind the wheel was a young man with blond hair parted on the right and hanging down over one eye. He stopped and brushed the hair back onto his head with his fingers as he looked at the older man.
    Behind him, he heard Veronica purr in approval. The kid
was
good looking, Harry noticed, maybe a little on the pretty side because of that blond hair, but still a fine-looking young man. Harry wondered if he was turning queer, then decided that the mere fact that he was worried about turning queer probably meant that he wasn’t. Still, thought Harry, that kid better not do anything that might offend the law, because if he went to jail, his cell mate would never have to buy cigarettes again.
    “You lost?” asked the kid. His voice was a little high, almost eerily so. Harry walked over to him and realized that the young man was older than he had first appeared: early twenties at most, but he had the voice of a thirteen-year-old boy waiting for something to happen below his navel.
    Fucking backwoods freak, thought Harry.
    “Took a wrong turn somewhere back down the road,” said Harry, which wasn’t actually an admission that he was lost but wasn’t saying that he knew where he was either. It was a man thing.
    “Where you bound?”
    What the fuck? Where you bound? Who talked like that?
    “We’re headed for Augusta.”
    “You’re a long ways from Augusta. That’s a whole ’nother state away.”
    “I know that. We were planning on taking our time.”
    “You on vacation?’
    “Business.”
    “What d’you do?”
    “I sell insurance.”
    “Why?”
    “Why what?”
    “Why do you sell insurance?”
    Harry’s brow furrowed. This was all he needed. The kid was obviously some kind of redneck retard driving a clapped-out old Ford up and down back roads, looking for folks to bother. They hadn’t been off the plane more than two hours and already the weekend was turning to shit.
    “People need insurance.”
    “Why?”
    “Well, suppose something happens to them. Suppose you crashed your truck, what would you do?”
    “It ain’t my truck.”
    Jesus.
    “Okay, well suppose you crashed it anyway, and the guy whose truck it is wanted something done about it.”
    “I’d fix it.”
    “Suppose it was so badly damaged that it couldn’t be fixed?”
    “There ain’t nothing I can’t fix.”
    Harry wiped his hand across his face in frustration.
    “You get hurricanes down here, right?”
    “Sure.”
    “What if your house blew away?”
    The young man considered this, then nodded.
    “If I had a house,” he said, then started the truck up again. “Follow me,” he told Harry. “I’ll take you where you need to go.”
    Harry smiled in relief and trotted back to the car.
    “We’re going to follow him,” he told Veronica.
    “Okay with me,” she said.
    “And put your tongue back in your mouth,” said Harry. “You’re getting drool on your chin.”
     
     
    They followed the truck for five miles before Harry started to worry.
    “The hell is he taking us?” he said.
    “He probably knows a shortcut.”
    “A shortcut to where? Louisiana?”
    “Harry, it’s his country. He knows it better than we do. Calm down.”
    “I think the kid’s retarded.