He had not expected any of this to help him answer that question. And yet, "You doing okay?" Garrett asked him. Garrett was back in the booth, but he'd turned sideways, one arm on the back of the seat, watching the room with the relaxed alertness of someone who had fully downshifted but not fully stood down. "I'm fine," Dave said.
Then after a pause, "I've been under that counter for approximately 12 years." "Felt like it," Garrett agreed. "My tie is ruined." "It was a bad tie," Bobby said without looking up from his pie. Dave looked down at his tie. It was a clip-on navy blue with small silver diamonds.
He had bought it at a Dillard's in 2019 and wore it to every sales call because a client had once told him it looked professional. He looked at it for a moment. "You're right," he said. "It was a terrible tie." And he unclipped it and set it on the counter, and somehow that small act, the discarding of the bad tie on the counter of a desert diner at 2:00 in the morning, felt like the first honest thing he'd done in longer than he could easily account for.
Harold set a fresh piece of pie in front of him. Dave didn't ask what kind it was, he just ate it. Leo and Corey were still at the counter. They hadn't moved toward the door.
Nobody had told them to stay and nobody had told them to go, and the not being told was its own kind of instruction, an invitation to remain in the space and let the night finish what it had started. Leo had both hands flat on the counter and he was staring at the space between them with the look of a man doing internal accounting that keeps coming out differently every time. "The car," he said abruptly. Mike looked at him.
"Our car, Corey's car. When Toad, when Velasquez sends his guys out, they usually take the car first. That's how it started with me. He takes the car, you can't get to work, you can't make money.
You fall further behind, and then you need to borrow more to catch up. He looked at Mike. Is the car safe? He can't.
Tonight, is there any chance he sends someone before the message gets through? Mike looked at Bobby. Bobby was already typing. "Sending Sully a follow-up now," he said.