14.

The drive to Mexico was sweltering inside Hank’s un-airconditioned truck. Despite my recent shower, I was already feeling grimy and unlovely, drenched in sweat with desert dust in my hair. Hank was sweating, too, in the passenger seat, but it looked sexy on him. He was so ugly it went beyond ugly and became hot somehow. I just seemed to be getting more and more into him, the more time we spent together. It was this huge illogical, purely physical thing that I needed like a fucking hole in my head with everything else going on, but I just couldn’t seem to stop myself from staring at him. It was a real struggle to keep my eyes on the road.

“Where are you from originally, Hank?” I asked, just to say something other than I’ll die if you don’t fuck me right now.

“Reidsville, North Carolina,” he replied. “Left when I was seventeen and ain’t never been back. How about you?”

“I grew up in Chicago,” I said. “Then moved to Los Angeles and never went back.”

“Do you miss it?” he asked. “Chicago I mean.”

“I miss the city,” I said. “But not my family.”

“I hear that,” he said. “I sure don’t miss all my good-fornothing cousins and uncles and in-laws back in Reidsville. My momma died from cancer just three months after she lost her job at the Lucky Strike factory. With her gone, there weren’t no reason to stick around.”

After we’d chewed up some more highway, I said, “Tell me about Lovell.”

“Lovell,” Hank said, shaking his head. “Well, he’s half Indian, or claims to be. To be honest, you just never know what’s true or what ain’t with Vernon Lovell. I’ve been working for him about four years. He was pretty much the only person who would give me the time of day after...well...when I got out.”

“Got out?” I frowned. “From prison?”

Hank nodded and looked away out the passenger window, then pulled a pill bottle from his hip pocket and dry swallowed a pair.

“What for?” I asked.

“Assault,” he said without meeting my gaze. “It was stupid, just lost my temper and then three years of my life were gone. But truth is, I deserved a lot worse for what I done.” He looked up at me, suddenly standoffish. “Reckon you don’t want nothing to do with me now.”

“Assault,” I repeated, then laughed and shook my head. “That’s nothing. I would have gone down for multiple murder if I hadn’t agreed to testify against a bunch of scumbags who were importing underage Eastern Bloc girls for sex. I’m a cold-blooded killer, Hank. A ‘vigilante.’ I’m hardly in a position to judge other people’s sins.”

Hank’s eyes went wide.

“Vigilante?” he repeated.

“Yeah,” I said. That’s what the headlines had called me. Pornstar Vigilante. Dirty Harriet. Lady Killer.

“I knew you was tough from the minute I laid eyes on you, but murder?” He shook his head. “That’s really something. Whoever they were, I’ll bet those guys deserved it.”

“More than anyone I’ve ever met,” I said.

We drove in silence for a sweltering minute. Then:

“Wanna tell me about it?”

I looked over at Hank, then shook my head. That was a can of worms that didn’t need opening.

“Some other time,” I said. “Right now, I want to hear more about Lovell.”

“Right,” he said. “Well, when I first got out, I got myself into a fight with one of Lovell’s boys. The kid wouldn’t back down, kept on pushing me.” He looked away. “Ended up putting him in the hospital. Lovell said he didn’t see any reason to involve my parole officer in the matter, provided I was willing to go to work for him.”

“So that’s how you started teaching at Richland’s?”

“Well, yeah. Lovell made Truly hire me on at the school so I had a legit-type job to keep my P.O. happy, but that’s not the real work I do for Lovell.”

I didn’t say anything. I just drove until he was ready to continue.

“It’s collection, mostly,” Hank said with a shrug. “Anyone owes Lovell from the fights, I have a talk with ’em, make sure they pay up.” He wiped the palms of his hands on his jeans like they were dirty. “I hate doing it, but if I don’t, Lovell’d have me back inside before I knew what hit me. Lovell’s got the local law deep in his pocket. It’s like one of them catch-22s, because the more I do for him, the more he’s got to hold over my head.”

He was looking at me out of the corner of his eye, gauging my reaction. I drove without comment for a good minute before I spoke.

“Look, there are no good guys here,” I said. “You do what you have to.”

He nodded. That was the last of the conversation until we hit the border.

Crossing the border turned out to be no trouble at all. The new passport worked like a charm. Ten minutes later, we were in Mexico and on our way to Cody’s fight.