Relentless Read Free Page B

it to her tonight?”
    â€œI had it in mind.” All the months of counting up the back pay he’d saved: this night was going to be sweet. He could picture the soft shine of joy on her face.
    The waitress delivered Watchman’s chili and when she turned away Stevens reached for her wrist. “Honey, what’s your name?”
    â€œFrancine. What’s yours?”
    â€œBuck. Buck Stevens.” He said it with an aw-shucks tilt of his head and the blond cowlick fell over his eyebrow and Watchman tried to repress a grin. “You weren’t by any chance looking for a lift into Flagstaff this afternoon, Francine?”
    â€œNow if I was, what makes you think I’d go with you?”
    Stevens brightened. “How about it, then?”
    â€œNuts.” She reached over to pick up Cunningham’s plate and the white dress stretched tight over her ample breasts. “I’ve got work to do.” She straightened and gave him an arch look. “But come back when you’re big enough.” She even looked like Mae West.
    â€œBig enough where?” Stevens riposted softly; his eyes began to flash with lecherous hilarity.
    When Francine laughed her eyes wrinkled up until they were almost shut. “Y’all come back, hear? I’ll be around.” And flounced away.
    Watchman laughed till his stomach hurt. It was a good day for laughter. A fine day, with Lisa waiting at the end of it.
    Cunningham got up awkwardly and Watchman let him out. “You boys look out for that snow, now,” the constable said, and went tottering over to the cashier’s register on his cowboy boots. He hadn’t even cracked a smile the whole time. You could always depend on white men to be inscrutable.
    â€œSour old fart,” Stevens observed.
    â€œI’ll tell you, son, comes, the red revolution and there’ll be some changes made. We’re going to guide the white man in the proper enjoyment of life. We’re going to educate his funny bone so he can rise up to our level of civilization from his unhappy savage state. And when that’s done the Bureau of White Folks’ Affairs will sign over full citizenship rights to the white man for as long as the sun shall rise and the rivers flow to the sea.”
    â€œYou tell ’em, kemo sabe .”
    4
    The clouds to the west didn’t look sinister yet but up here it could hit very fast. They cleared the edge of town and Watchman put the cruiser up to sixty on the road heading east toward the mountains. A light plane went by overhead at four or five thousand feet with a buzzing sound that irritated Watchman: there were several fly-by-night outfits over on the Utah and Nevada slopes which made a business out of taking rich poachers into the Arizona high country at night to hunt antelope and whitetail from slow, low-flying planes equipped with enormous floodlamps that could pin an animal, dazzle it, paralyze it until the arrogant “sportsmen” had made their kill. Then the guide outfit would send in a flunky in a pickup truck to collect the carcass and if the pickup got intercepted the driver would claim he had collided with the animal and killed it by accident. Game wardens seldom had time or facilities to perform autopsies and most of the time the flying poachers got away with it.
    This plane didn’t look like a hunter; more like a business executive’s charter job. One of those Twin Apaches that seated seven or eight. It went over with a harsh drone, flying west toward the clouds, probably headed for Las Vegas or Reno.
    â€œThey’re likely to run into some turbulence, heading that way,” Stevens observed.
    â€œThose guys usually know what they’re doing.” Watchman had a secret admiration for pilots. He’d only been up in airplanes a few times, mostly in big liners, but every time he happened to drive past a private airport he would run his eyes over the little planes and start to think