Besides, if someone was looking for him, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to sleep during the day and do his driving at night.

Unfolding himself from the bed, he ran through a few wake-up calisthenics. These were a necessity, as he’d learned from hard experience that sleeping in cramped, too-short motel beds always left him aching and sore when he woke up.

While he worked out the stiffness in his muscles, he hailed his patient companion. Jed sat in the room’s single chair, between the round table and low dresser. His eyes remained shut and he looked neither to left not right nor, for that matter, straight ahead.

“How ’bout it, Jed? You sleep okay?” The alien did not move or reply and Ross Ed smiled to himself. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

Parting the cheap curtains, he found himself with a partial view of the setting sun. Anxious as he was to continue on his way, he knew it would be wise to have something solid to eat before returning to the shrouded monotony of the interstate.

Problem was, this was his first time in Lordsburg, and other than the usual international fast-food suspects, he didn’t have a clue where a man might find a decent meal. From what he’d seen of the town on his way in, the “burg” portion of the name certainly fit. He wasn’t sure about the “Lord” part. Travels through Texas and Louisiana had taught him early on that small-town restaurants might offer you the best meal of your life … or an early death.

Stepping into the tub-shower, he hunched over in the usual gnomish position and did his best to come clean. The effort left him feeling much refreshed and ready to drive. But first, something to eat.

After packing the car, he checked out and inquired after a good local restaurant, uttering the usual long-distance traveler’s silent prayer that it wasn’t some ptomaine palace which happened to be owned by the motel clerk’s uncle Og.

“What kind of food you like?” the young man asked in return.

Ross shrugged. “Pretty much anything’s fine with me, so long as it’s reasonable, filling, and wholesome. Don’t mind a little grease.” He was, after all, a Texan.

The clerk directed him to an out-of-the-way Mexican restaurant on the north side of the railroad tracks. All concrete bricks, wrought iron, and raucous music blasting from the adjoining bar, Ross Ed immediately identified it as a local hangout. It was plenty crowded, and the food proved to match the spirit. He never would have found the place without the clerk’s directions.

More than satisfied, he followed his number-eight combination plate with homemade pie and a last glass of iced tea before taking the bill up to the register. The waitress rang him up with a smile and bade him a cheery buenas noches.

By the time the remnants of the red chili chimichanga reminded him of its presence, he was already out in the dimly lit parking lot heading for the Caddy. As usual, he’d parked it a little ways from the next nearest vehicle to preserve it from careless dings and scratches.

Intent on calculating the next leg of his interstate odyssey, he didn’t notice the clutch of young locals until he’d unlocked the car. That’s what they’d been waiting for, he realized as they materialized around him. To see if he was the vehicle’s owner, and to learn if the Caddy was protected by any kind of custom alarm system.

“Nice car, man.”

He turned to confront them. There were half a dozen, all in their early to mid-twenties. Two or three he might have handled, but not six. Then he saw that even two would have been too many because they had their hands in their pockets. They might have been holding nothing more lethal than short-stemmed screwdrivers, but it was a chance he couldn’t take. It went a long ways toward explaining the strutting bravado of the much smaller individual who was addressing him contemptuously. The guy acted like he had high-caliber backup.

His black hair was cut short and a fragmentary mustache struggled to survive beneath his nose. His jeans were new but dirty and the only iron his long-sleeve western shirt had ever seen was wrought. Instead of boots he wore the kind of fancy sneakers hyped by overpaid basketball players. Their presence didn’t surprise him. He’d often seen three-hundred-dollars sneakers on the feet of men who didn’t make three hundred dollars a month. The economics of such relationships were best not questioned.

None of them were smiling, not even sarcastically. They were all business. The shortest and heaviest of the group, who very much resembled a deeply tanned beach ball, stood well behind his compadres, keeping an eye on the rest of the parking lot lest their business be disturbed by wandering kibitzers.

“Mind stepping around to the other side?” In case Ross Ed didn’t get the idea, the man gestured sharply.

“Look, guys, I don’t know what you’ve got in mind, but I’m just on my way out of town.”

“Do it now,” the swarthy speaker reiterated impatiently. One of his companions gestured pointedly with the bulge in his jacket.

Ross complied, dropping the car keys into his pocket as he did so. There was an old Ruger stuffed under one of the backseat cushions and he tried to think how he might reach it without triggering a possibly fatal reaction.

He stopped by the rear right door and turned. “All right, what d’you want? I haven’t got much money.” He hoped they wouldn’t find the slim metal box shoved under the front passenger seat. It contained everything he’d saved from his sojourn in El Paso.

The younger man sniffed derisively. “Come on, man. We don’t want no trouble. We don’t want to hurt you. Just give us your wallet, man, and the keys, and you won’t see us no more, okay?” He stuck out an expectant hand, palm up.

“Hey now, wait a minute.” Ross raised and spread both arms. Given his impressive wingspan, it was a gesture sufficiently alarming to make his antagonists tense. “Take it easy. Look, you can have the wallet. There’s about a hundred and fifty bucks in there. Let me take my license out and leave me my car, okay? I’ve got to get to California. There’s a job waiting for me there,” he lied, “and if I don’t make it on time they’ll give it to somebody else. You take the car and I’ve got nothing.”

The leader of the pack shrugged indifferently. “I’m really sorry, man, but it’s such a nice car, you know? A classic.”

“Come on, I know what they like over the border.” Ross gestured at the Caddy. “This ain’t no Chevy Suburban or Camero. Besides, man, it sticks out like a beached whale. Where you gonna hide it?”

“Let us worry about that. Besides, who said anything about taking it across the border? I kind of thought we might keep it in the neighborhood, you know? Tell you what, man. We’re not bad guys.” Turning to his friends, he added something in Spanish. Ross Ed possessed a passable command of the language and caught the joke, but it didn’t make him smile the way it did the others.

“You say you got a hundred and fifty bucks in your wallet? We’ll leave you fifty. Me, I think that’s pretty generous of us. Greyhound comes through here twice a day, you can get a ticket back to someplace useful.”

“I’d rather keep my car. Got a lot of sentimental value, you know?”

“You’ll get over it, man. It’s not like it’s new.”

The one with his hand shoved inside his jacket stepped forward unsmilingly. “That’s enough talk. Give us the keys.”

Ross Ed nodded at the bulge. “You let that thing off and everybody in the restaurant will be out here in ten seconds.”

The young man pulled what he was holding and Ross saw that it was no screwdriver. “Don’t mess with me, man. These little twenty-twos hardly make any noise at all. Besides, they’ve got the jukebox going in the bar. Nobody in there can hear nothing.”

“A twenty-two’s not going to stop me,” Ross Ed replied, stalling as best he could.

“Maybe not one shot, but there’s eight in this clip. I put a couple in your face, man, and you won’t care. Is that worth an old car? Me, I don’t think it’s got that much sentimental value to you.”

“All right, all right, you can have it.” Slowly he turned toward the Caddy. “Can I just get a couple of personal things out?”

“Sure, man.” Now that the issue had been decided peaceably the first speaker could afford to be magnanimous. “Give me the keys first.” A reluctant Ross Ed tossed them over.

His tormentor moved past him to unlock the car, grinning as he did so. “Don’t want you pulling any surprises out of the glove compartment or from under the seat. You tell me what you got to have and I’ll get it for you.” He pulled the passenger door open. The little shit knew what he was doing, Ross Ed had to admit.

There was no way he could slip past him to get at the money box or the gun in the back.

“Hey, mira este, you guys!”

“Look at what?” The pistol holder strained to see without coming too close to Ross Ed. “I don’t see nothing. C’mon, man, I’m getting nervous. We been here a long time.”

“Relax,” the speaker snapped at his buddy. “Nobody’s coming out here.” Straightening, he looked back at the tall Texan. “What is this thing, man?” Reaching into the car, he put a hand on a cold alien shoulder.

Ross twitched, but nothing happened. The young hood gave no indication that anything out of the ordinary had occurred. He eyed his quarry expectantly.

“It’s a ventriloquist’s dummy,” Ross Ed heard himself saying. “It’s an act I do sometimes when I’m tending bar. Helps break the monotony. Good for a few extra tips.”

“No shit?” Reaching into the car, the speaker picked up the body. While Ross sweated, the figure of Jed was held out for all to see. “Look at this ugly sucker!”

A couple of the onlookers chortled. Others made rude remarks.

“Hey, man, you think those are all legs?”

“Shit, the dude that made that was on something!”

“And he didn’ stop in time. Made too many arms and legs.”