SALAZAR: You have a right to remain silent…

CASS: Hey there, I clearly realize a lot of people would censor themselves. I would too. But I got a planet rolling down on me, and I’m already squirming in the shadow, brother. We might only have a couple minutes for us to do our fate. Maybe a few hours, I don’t know. But I do know it’s absolutely no more than twenty-two days.

SALAZAR: Our fate? Mark. Hey.

CASS: I go by Cass.

SALAZAR: Cass. Cass. And where’d you get this twenty-two days?

CASS: Where? Have you ever seen a woman bone-naked when she was totally dressed? We all have these powers. But they’re on, they’re off. Very few of us ever get to control them. They come and go.

SALAZAR goes to the sink, draws a glass of water, slakes his thirst. Pokes his head in the bathroom, shuts the door to it. Turns to CASS.

SALAZAR: Your name is Mark Cassandra. You go by “Cass.” You grew up in Texas—Odessa. Your mother is serving a long sentence for vehicular homicide. Your dad and your stepmom have recently been divorced. Your sister’s on suspension from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Your two brothers both have warrants out and both brothers are whereabouts unknown. You, yourself, live generally in Ukiah, California, but you get around impressively: You report you were recently in Las Vegas. You report you played a slot machine in Tonopah. We put you in Dallas on Thursday and Houston last Friday night.

CASS: Dallas? Houston? You mean to say Texas?

SALAZAR: I mean to say and I do say. Dallas. Houston. Texas.

CASS: I’m back in Texas?

SALAZAR: Back in Texas.

From a neighboring room a radio comes on, faintly playing something exotic, like “Maria Tudor” by Trio Bulgarka… CASS bangs the wall—

CASS: HEY. I got a headache!

—and the music stops.

SALAZAR: Back in Texas as of Thursday night.

SALAZAR turns the TV volume up and then down quickly—

TV:—killed in a fall from a roller coaster—

SALAZAR straightens the curtains, eliminating gaps. CASS keeps still.

SALAZAR turns to him.

Music resumes softly.

SALAZAR: Back in Texas at the Lu Anne Motel: the Green Room. “Of all the rooms on earth…” This room! The Green Room! Can I tell you?

Pause. CASS gestures: “Play on.”

SALAZAR: We were kids, you and I were—I was thirteen, I don’t know about you—when they pulled off the biggest cash robbery in Texas history, right here not fifty miles from Houston.

CASS: We’re fifty miles from Houston?

SALAZAR: Right up there on Highway Twenty-two. A Brinks armored truck with a driver and one guard, carrying close to twenty million dollars cash, turned north off the interstate and started up that long incline out of town…It’s a gradual hill about fifteen miles long.

CASS finds a cigarette butt. SALAZAR picks up the lighter and gives him a light. Music’s still playing.