Gary couldn’t decide quite what to do. He wanted to do something, but wasn’t sure what.

So one day, he’s driving around town late one night in his big four-wheel-drive pickup, he sees one of the Comets out and about in his mint, red 1970 Dodge Super Bee, hood scoop, bumblebee racing stripe, the whole deal. Grant Delmonico, a minor player in the Comets, but still one of them. So Gary follows him, figures maybe an opportunity will present itself.

Grant’s coming up to a railroad crossing, lights flashing, big freight coming in from the west, couple of massive SD40s linked together. Gary comes up along behind, truck sitting up high, headlights shining into Grant’s car.

The crossing has no gate. Gary gets an idea. He drops the truck into low gear, shoves the Super Bee right into a passing tank car. The train took hold of the front of the car, dragged it down the track, mangled it all to shit. Some mess. Grant was toast.

Gary was pretty proud of himself when he got back to the Kickstart, telling the boys. Eldon said it was bush league. Grant was small potatoes. And would the Comets even get the message? For all anyone knew, the dumb ass just drove into the side of the train.

Not long after, one of their own, some hanger-on by the name of Sebastian, never really one of the crew but did some go-fering for them, gets beaten to death behind a butcher shop.

What are you gonna do? Eldon asked Gary. “That’s what I asked him, right in front of everyone else,” Eldon told Miranda on their way back into town from shooting practice. “‘What the fuck are you gonna do now?’”

“Not in front of Katie,” Miranda said. “What do you want her first word to be?”

A week later, she found out what Gary had decided to do.

There was a knock at the door around midnight. She’d gotten home early from the Kickstart, relieved the elderly woman from down the hall of their apartment building who often looked after Katie, who was fussy. Teething, she figured. Miranda was cradling her in her arms, walking her around the apartment, trying to settle her down.

“Police,” someone said.

There was hardly anything left of the Toyota, the officer told her. The train hit it at nearly sixty miles per hour, carried it down the track well over a mile. They’d need her to come in and identify this Eldon Swain person, at least those parts of him that were left.

CHAPTER 15

15

“SO, WHAT’S THE PLAN, Stan?” Angie asked me.