Webster smiled. “’Cause they all zealously guard their turf. Little bee homeboys, brandishing stingers and wearing their wings backwards, fending off the new immigrant arrivals—industrious but interloper ants who bring over millions of relatives all crammed together in a single house. They bog down our welfare system.”

“Call up INS.”

“And don’t you know that both groups are scared witless of the tick gang-bangers drooling saliva teeming with Rocky Mountain spotted fever Rickettsia. I ain’t lying about this. Just check it out with any bug CRASH unit.”

“What the hell is Rocky Mountain spotted fever?”

“My uncle once got it when he was traveling up near the Great Divide. Comes from a tick bite. You get high fever, muscle aches, chronic fatigue, and lots of skin shit. He weren’t pretty for a long, long time.”

“The Great Divide is around a thousand miles from here, Webster.”

“Yeah, but with plane travel anything’s possible. You probably shoulda worn long sleeves.”

Martinez rubbed his arms. “Why didn’t you tell me this shit?”

“How was I to know there was gonna be a tick canyon out here?” Webster looped around a hairpin curve. “We passed Mountain Crossing. Don’t I turn there?”

“Yes, I think you do.”

Immediately, Webster swerved to the right and maneuvered an unsafe U-turn, wheels squealing under the chassis. Martinez gripped the door handle with white knuckles. “You’re crazy.”

“Where’s your sense of spirit?”

“It disintegrated after I married. Turn right here.”

The road snaked upward, then leveled. At the higher elevation, the winds became redolent with the scent of pine. Blackbirds cawed from above. A mile into the climb, the mountain walls abruptly fell prey to man’s progress: from a vertical barricade of hard rock to terraced soil. A couple of ranch houses, still in the framing stages, sat on dirt-covered lots. Next to the bulldozed mountain was wide-open space. Within moments, the glint of chrome winked at them. Then the motorcycles came into view. Next to the bikes was a makeshift shed. A miracle that the wind didn’t do a huff and a puff and blow the thing down. Several hundred yards in the distance stood a lone eighteen-wheeler semi, as out of place as Stonehenge.

“Well, well, well,” Webster said. “Lots more up here than a couple of trailers. We got a whole private dealership, no doubt specializing in ve-hicles without pink slips.”

“Or someone is running a chop shop.”

“That was my second guess.”

Webster pulled the car into the sandy clearing, shut the ignition, and got out, wind blowing grit in his mouth. He rolled down his sleeves. Martinez slid out of the car, popped a piece of gum in his mouth. They both took their time, sauntered over to the inventory. Immediately, a fat man came out of the shed. He wore overalls but no shirt. On his head was a Dodgers baseball cap.

“Help you?”

“Looking for Grease Pit,” Martinez said.