Antonia agrees to make the trip, and the gang erupts at the news, cheering and punching and hugging one another. They ride for Vegas the next night with a plan to crash at Bull’s motel on the outskirts of town, a ten-cabin motor court so dilapidated it doesn’t even have a sign anymore, just a red neon arrow. Bull isn’t a rover, but he’s fine with accommodating them as long as there’s no killing or feeding on the premises. He’ll even run daytime errands for a price.

He steps out of his cabin barefoot, shirtless, and wearing Bermuda shorts when they ride up, a big, bald fat man who claims he used to be a mobster in New York.

“Do you have room for us?” Antonia says.

“Enough for them,” Bull says. “But you’ll have to bunk with me.”

“Shit,” Antonia says. “You can’t even see your pecker over that gut.”

Bull grins around the joint in his mouth. “That’s okay,” he says. “You can tell me if it’s still there.”

“We need three cabins. We’ll be staying two, maybe three days.”

There’s no registration book, Bull just tosses them their keys. Only one other cabin is occupied, by a professor from Germany who’s come to the desert to study scorpions.

“I don’t know how serious he is,” Bull says. “He’s usually fucked up on schnapps by noon.”

Antonia uses Bull’s phone to call Beaumont. He says the rovers they’re after, a man named Jesse and his retarded brother, have arrived in town, along with the girl who stole the baby. He’s invited them to his house for dinner tomorrow night, and how he’s got it figured is that the Fiends will show up before they get there and lie in wait for them. His only request in exchange for letting the gang exact their revenge at his place is that he be allowed to keep the girl.

Antonia runs this by the other Fiends. They’re fine with giving him the girl, but Bob pitches a fit at having to delay his vengeance for even a short while, wants Antonia to call Beaumont back and find out where the rovers are staying. A quaalude and a few beers mellow him out, and soon they’re celebrating their good fortune, all of them gathered around a picnic table under a tamarisk tree at the edge of the motel parking lot. Bull’s drinking with them, and so’s the German. Johnny keeps throwing him the Nazi salute and barking, “Heil Hitler,” and the German keeps saying, “Fuck Hitler.”

“Is that jump joint still open, out toward the lake?” Bob asks Bull.

“Last I heard,” Bull replies.

“What’s the name of the girl you liked there?” Bob says to Pedro. “Blond hair, big ass.”

“Jenny?” Pedro says.

“Let’s pay her a visit.”

“I’m in too,” Johnny says.