Nobody Move by Denis Johnson

right, looking for a building, a sign, anything.
After a while she opened her eyes. “What’s the plan?”
“So far the plan is I can’t go back and I can’t stay here. That’s the plan so far.”
“You know what I mean. What’s the plan?”
Luntz stalled for twenty seconds, starting a cigarette. He set his lighter between them on the console. “I think if you’re looking for a gunslinger, you better keep looking.”
“You said you shot Gambol.”
“Only in the leg. I should’ve put two more in his head, just in proper observance of the rules. Instead I took pity. You don’t want a guy with pity in his heart.”
“I’d like to know what the plan is.”
“I didn’t say yes yet. Let’s sit down with a paper and pen and map out the pros and cons.”
“Great.”
“Don’t say great yet. Say great when I say yes.”
“I just hope I chose the right guy.” When Luntz said nothing, she added, “Don’t be insulted.”
“I’m not insulted. I just think it’s bullshit for you to act like you had a choice.”

    The woman was what they called a hefty blonde, in jeans and a sweatshirt and big pink fuzzy slippers. She smoked cigarettes and watched crime shows and fake judges on TV while Gambol nodded out and watched cartoons in his head. She laughed a lot at the shows, and when she laughed it woke him up, and he watched her.
“Where’s the vet?”
“Vet?”
“Juarez said he knew a vet could fix me.”
“A vet, huh? I guess that’s me.”
“What kind of animals? Large? Like cattle? Or small like pets?”
She laughed, took a drink from her glass—some kind of booze—and set it down and lit a cigarette. “I’m a veteran . I was an army nurse for twenty-one years, three months, and six days. Dealt with lots of combat trauma.” She exhaled straight upward to avoid blowing smoke in his face. “I’m a veteran. Not a veterinarian.”
“What’s your name, lady?”
“Mary. What’s yours?”
“Fuck you.”
“That’s what I thought.”
He nodded off and shot Luntz four times in the crotch, waited while he suffered, and then left him with two in the head.

    In the last light they parked the Caddy and got out. Behind the building the ground sloped toward a tiny shantytown by the river, half a dozen trailers, pickup trucks, a couple motorcycles. She asked him if this was some sort of gang hideout, and he said it was the Feather River Tavern, that’s all.
They entered a large café with a torn-up floor and secondhand tables and a view of spectacular cottonwoods dropping their seed tufts on the river in the dusk, and the trailers.
Jimmy glanced at the man behind the counter and said, “Wow,” and sat down at a table with his back to the counter. “Sit there,” he told Anita.
She sat across from him. “Is that him?”
“He’s not the one I want.” Jimmy sat touching his fingertips together. “He looking?”
“No.”
Jimmy glanced over his shoulder at the man once more, quickly, and said, “Okay, I’ll hit the head. Ask him about selling a Harley. Like we’ve got a bike to sell. Don’t mention any names.”
“He’s coming over.”
Jimmy stood. “Get me a Coke, okay?” He touched her arm with two fingers as he walked past her.
The other man approached. He was slumped and bony, and the knees of his jeans brushed together as he walked. “Got a special today. Trout.” He wore a red headband around a shaggy gray mullet.
“Maybe just a couple Cokes, please.”
Behind the counter he opened two cans and poured them into glasses with ice, all the while looking at her with something other than the hunger of a man. Something more like envy. After she’d reached puberty, her mother had looked at her like that.
He brought her the Cokes and set them down, each with a cocktail napkin. His fingers were long, the fingernails too. On his left ring finger he wore a large turquoise.
Anita said, “I have a Harley I might like to sell. Do you know anybody who could point me in the right