Chapter 4

Boatwright bent and picked it up.

He read it twice. One way. Today.

"You're leaving town."

Rue held out his hand for the ticket. Boatwright folded it once and put it in his pocket next to the pickup, which was a small, ugly thing to do, and both men knew it.

"Give me one thing," Rue said.

"Excuse me?"

"One thing. Let me set it on the counter. Then I'll walk out and you'll never see me again."

Boatwright laughed - a short, performative sound, for the benefit of the two staffers straightening vinyl by the door. "You want to put stolen merchandise on my counter."

"It's not stolen."

"Then produce a receipt."

Rue's jaw worked. There was no receipt. There had never been a receipt. The pickup in Boatwright's pocket had been wound in a back room in Lockhart in March, on a bench Rue had built himself out of a door and two sawhorses, using wire from a spool he'd bought in 1991 with money from a job he lost four years later.

"Didn't think so." Boatwright checked his watch. "Doors in thirty-five. You're going to stand here until APD arrives, and then you're going to explain it to them."

The line outside pushed forward. At 1:45 the staff opened the doors and let the first wave in - thirty people with records and posters and Sharpies, funneling past the counter, past the old man standing at the window like a piece of furniture with a bad history.

A kid in a denim jacket stopped. "You okay, sir?"

"Move along," Boatwright said.

"He asked him a question," said the kid's mother, behind him.

"Ma'am, this is a private matter-"

"You emptied an old man's bag in front of a window."

Boatwright turned. The whole front of the shop had gone quiet in that particular way rooms go quiet when a camera is already rolling. Two phones were up. The kid in the denim jacket had his out.

Boatwright straightened his polo. "Sir, are you going to tell these people you were stealing?"

Rue looked at the floor. He looked at the kid with the phone. He looked at the door, and the sun on the sidewalk, and the shadow of the awning.

"No," he said quietly. "I'm not going to tell them anything."

Which was, Boatwright thought, as good as a confession. He took Rue by the elbow again and moved him two feet to the left, so the shop's hand-painted sign was behind his head instead of the guitars. A cleaner frame.

At 1:50, the tour bus pulled up at the curb.