Page 21 of It Takes a Thief

Going to Chinle. xx

Chinle? Wasn’t that some godforsaken burg in the middle of the Rez where a bunch of John Redcorns chugged Doctor Thunder mixed with Robutussin?

Then I felt bad, feeling that way about my own people. Lytton was much better about that than I was. He embraced his heritage. Me, I sort of drop kicked it to the other side of the fence.

So Maddy hadn’t even been at the house in the morning when I’d left. That message was from yesterday. She was gone and I didn’t even notice. How fucked was that?

But I was in the prime of my life! I had to make hay while the sun shined. There was never a second to rest on your laurels in this biz—both bizzes, matter of fact. Like Slayer had said—I was too legit to quit. Did ever a second go by that didn’t need my help?

Like now.

“Jefe, jefe!”

Wolf Glaser was the only gringo in the place ballsy and moronic enough to call me a jefe. But he was also injured, had a broken kneecap, so his progress down the inner hallway was slow. I got up to meet him at my office door.

“What’s up, Wolf?”

“Something is seriously up with the GPS software. It’s making it look like the paver is laying down asphalt over a lane of bubble wrap!”

I strode alongside him down to the engineer’s offices. “You mean it’s not smooth?”

“About as smooth as a teenager’s pizza face, jefe! Jiang Yang and Eshan are going crazy in there—you won’t believe what they’re seeing!”

We’d purchased state-of-the-art GPS surveying equipment. The vehicle-mounted road resurfacing scanner eliminated lots of costly survey work. It was highly bitching, and everyone clamored to work with the equipment. The scanner collected millions of data points from the safety of the truck. These coordinates were sent back to the Citadel, making complex road designs way easier. Grinding on the highway job had gone off without a hitch. Now, on the computer screen in resurfacing mode, our real-time camera showed a paver that was as jiggly as a pool full of Jello.

“Mr. Illuminati!” cried Jiang. “This is crazy! We’ve got to put a stop to this!”

“How many yards have they done like this?”

“Yards?” shouted Eshan. “Try a quarter mile! This thing’s been out of control for half an hour and we can’t seem to get a hold of the operator!”

CHAPTER NINE

MADISON

Swishing down the sandy, rutted road sitting on the bench seat by Galileo Taliwood, I felt utterly at home. I hadn’t spent much time with my own brother Speed until he patched in with The Bare Bones. He’d spent his teens skulking in his bedroom, adorned with so many skulls it was like he was already prospecting for the MC. Speed was a dark, emo fuckup—sort of a perfect “wrench,” or mechanic, for the club—but we’d never really laughed and goofed around before. How could I, when I was putting out for random greasers and thugs in Hellcat Canyon? And then, later, that whole mess with Ford’s father and Speed patching in had left, shall we say, a bad taste in my mouth. We hadn’t exactly palled around.

I was instantly at one with Galileo. The six foot six scarecrow was so supremely happy despite his horrible, almost fatal circumstances. The frayed collar of his button-down shirt told me that he couldn’t get a better one, and as he put that weird crook into the back of his truck, I saw the seat of his chinos was worn almost through. And true, his eyes had that faraway, almost imbecilic cast, like he’d been punched by a fistful of stars.

Was he of sub-intelligence? No, I quickly figured out. I think it was more that he’d evaluated his life, his conditions and probable futures, and he’d come out a philosopher.

“So why’d you stay here on the Rez while Ogden got out?” I asked.

His smile was tiny, like a doll’s. He spoke as though I should’ve already known the answer, his voice wavering meekly. “Well. Those sheep don’t herd themselves, you know.”

“Yes, but you could’ve sold the sheep to someone else. Used the money to, I don’t know. Get out.”

“But what would that help? I’d get out and wind up an adláanii in Gallup, being run over on Highway 40 trying to cross to a bar.” He looked thoughtful, an orange sand dune reflecting in his lake-blue eyes. “Some friends rolled me up in a rug once and put me in the back of a truck.”

I frowned. “What? Did they think you were dead or something?”

He seemed unfazed by the memory. “No. I couldn’t get out until a warehouse worker in Albuquerque decided to steal the rug for himself, and unrolled it to see what it looked like.”

“Galileo, that’s horrible! And you called these guys your friends?”

“There weren’t any other kind back then.” He thought. “Or now either, come to think of it.”

How pathetic! How sad! “Why doesn’t Ogden come to take you away from here?”