Pizarro could shove it. He was through with them now and everybody was paid.
But it stayed in his mind. You never should have let them into this, he thought, then told himself to forget it. In time this would be past him and he wouldn’t worry about it or think about it again. Look at all the things you’ve done that you never think about anymore, he said to himself.
“Hey, this is the place,” Billy Ruiz said. He was kneeling up against the front seat, his head lowered and pointing to the left side of the road. “See, the golf course along here. Then”-he waited as they moved past the fairways and scattered greens-“up there, see? The road goes in. See the sign?” It was an Old English-looking board sign hanging from a chain between two posts and painted green. On it in white letters were the words THE PONTE, and below them, smaller, PRIVATE.
“Remember, I was telling you?” Billy Ruiz said. “This is the place. All along here where the rich ones live. Man, they got homes back in there-big, big-Christ, make that brown one look like a goddamn chicken house.”
Ryan looked out the back window as they passed the entrance road and continued along another stretch of fairways. He noticed the same cars following them.
“You’ve been back in there?”
“I tole you,” Billy Ruiz answered. “Last year we go in take a look around, they kick us out.”
“Who kicked you out?”
“I don’t know. Some guy.”
“Police?”
“No, no. Like a gatekeeper. There used to be a little house there where the road go in? He come after us.”
“I don’t know,” Ryan said. “I’d have to see it.”
“I tole you, it’s perfect.”
“If you say so.” Let it die, Ryan thought. He hunched forward and watched the road ahead. In a couple of minutes it would be over; he’d pile out with his bag and that would be it. But there was one more thing to make sure of.
He waited until they were passing the motels on the outskirts of Geneva Beach, passing the Putt-Putt Golf now and the Dairy Queen, and could see the stores and the signal light a couple of blocks ahead. The IGA supermarket was on the right.