Shattered

“
        “Yeah,” Colin said. “I wonder if he'll have the nerve to walk in after us?”
        “He's just here to get gas. By the time we come out, he'll be fifty miles down the turnpike.
        “When they came outside again nearly an hour later, the parking spaces in front of the restaurant were all occupied. A new Cadillac ' two ageless Volkswagens, a gleaming red Triumph sports car, a battered and muddy old Buick, their own black Thunderbird, and a dozen other vehicles nosed into the curb like several species of animals sharing a trough. The rented van was nowhere in sight.
        “He must have phoned his superiors while we were eating-and discovered he was following the wrong people,” Alex said.
        Colin frowned. He jammed his hands into his dungaree pockets, looked up and down the row of cars as if he thought the Chevrolet were really there in some clever new disguise. Now he would have to make up a whole new game.
        Which was just as well, so far as Doyle was concerned. It was not likely that even Colin could devise two games with built-in excuses for his popping out of his seatbelt every fifteen minutes.
        They walked slowly back to the car, Doyle savoring the crisp morning air, Colin squinting at the parking lot and hoping for a glimpse of the van.
        Just as they were to the car, the boy said, “I'll bet he's parked around the side of the restaurant.” Before Doyle could forbid him, Colin jumped back onto the sidewalk and ran around the corner of the building, his tennis shoes slapping loudly on the concrete.
        Alex got in the car, started it, and set the air conditioning a notch higher to blow out the stale air that had accumulated while they were having breakfast.
        By the time he had belted himself in, Colin was back. The boy opened the passenger's door and climbed inside. He was downcast. “Not back there either.” He shut and locked the door, slumped down, thin arms folded over his chest.
        “Seatbelt.” Alex put the car in gear and reversed out of the parking lot.
        Grumbling, Colin put on the belt.
        They pulled across the macadam to the service station and stopped by the pumps to have the tank topped off.
        The man who hurried out to wait on them was in his forties, a beefy farmer-type with a flushed face and gnarled hands. He was chewing tobacco, not a common sight in Philly or San Francisco, and he was cheerful. “Help you folks?”
        “Fill it with regular, please,” Alex said, passing his credit card through the window. “It probably only needs half a tank.”
        “Sure thing.” Four letters-chet-were stitched across the man's shirt pocket. Chet bent down and looked past Alex at the boy. “How are you, Chief?”
        Colin looked at him, incredulous. “F-f-fine,” he stammered.
        Chet showed a mouthful of stained teeth. “Glad to hear it.” Then he went to the back of the car to put in the gasoline.
        “Why did he call me Chief?” Colin asked. He was over his incredulity now, and he was embarrassed instead.
        “Maybe he thinks you're an Indian,” Alex said.
        “Oh, sure.”
        “Or in charge of a fire company.”
        Colin scrunched down in the seat and looked at him sourly. “I should have gone on the plane with Courtney. I can't take your bad jokes for five days.”
        Alex laughed. “You're too much.” He knew that Colin's perceptions and vocabulary were far in advance of his real age, and he had long ago grown accustomed to the boy's sometimes startling sarcasm and occasional good turn of phrase. But there was a forced quality to this precocious banter. Colin was trying hard to be grown up. He was straining out of childhood ' trying to grit his teeth and will his way through adolescence and into adulthood. Doyle was familiar with that temperament, for it had been his own when he was Colin's age.
        Chet came back and gave Doyle the credit card and sales form on a hard plastic holder. While Alex took the pen and scrawled his name, the attendant peered at Colin again. “Have a long trip ahead of you, Chief?”
        Colin was as shaken this time as he had been when Chet had first addressed him. “ California,” he said, looking at his knees.
        “Well,” Chet said, “ain't that something? You're the second in an hour on his way to California. I always ask where people's going. Gives me a sense of helping them along, you know? An hour ago this