Even though Heller's limping along due to his too-small shoes, he can still move better than Horsey Mary Schmeck, who has a "bad ticker" from her drug habit. But they manage to reach a combination gas station and used car lot run by a Harvey "Smasher" Lee, who is watching the still-blazing courthouse in the town's center. And so this chapter is a "tense" bit of haggling as the protagonists attempt to purchase an escape vehicle before the police find them.
Mary is still asking for a fix, but Harvey says no, he's not selling his stuff since the Federal narco agent shut down the town's supply until he gets his cut. Virginia is the epicenter of a heroin epidemic, y'see. So Mary urges Harv to get on with the car salesman bit. He tries to pass off a Datsun for on seven thousand dollars and five gallons of gas, then a Ford that smells of manure for only five thousand. Then Heller spots a gray Cadillac Brougham Coupe d'Elegance, decides that it's "the right color to be invisible," and that's that.
Harv gushes about how it's one of the last real Cadillacs made, a '68 that predates when they "clamped down with pollution controls." And then we move into the inevitable "alien confused by human technology" bit, where a story's human-looking extraterrestrial boggles at phones and toilets and doorknobs. One of the best things about the recent Thor movie was that it completely skipped this cliché. Hubbard doesn't.
The salesman mentions the five hundred "horses" under the Caddy, and Heller eagerly wants to see them. Then Harv has to clarify that the car burns gasoline in a liquid state, at which point Mary gets impatient and cuts off further comedy by correcting his insistence that the car was barely driven by its previous owner, a little old lady. "You know (bleeped) well -
This is a book in which a character purchases a sex slave, but the author is too squeamish to type out the word "damned."
"You know (bleeped) well it was owned by Prayin' Pete, the radio preacher, before they hung him!" I never knew Virginia practiced lynching well into the 80's. After threatening to tell Harv's wife that he keeps the Caddy so he can "(bleep) the local talent in because it has draw curtains in the back," Harv lets it go for a mere two hundred bucks. Then it's another two and a half pages of scribbling up a contract in Mary's name, checking the car's fluids, filling it with gas, turning it on, and giving Heller a crash course in driving things that don't fly. I guess there's no wheeled vehicles or hovercars on Voltar, only stuff with throttles and joysticks.
Mary decides that Heller, who by all indications has never driven before, should be the one behind the wheel. Police cars arrive with that sense of dramatic timing that ensures an exciting car chase, and they're off, with Heller swerving around wildly at full speed, the local fuzz in hot pursuit. Gris is thrilled that Heller is already in so much trouble. "[The police] had their quarry in sight and their chortling said so for all the world to hear!"
Yes, Gris can hear the police's evil laughter even over the roar of a trio of car engines, the wind noise, the squealing tires, Mary's screaming, and despite the fact that the people laughing are in separate vehicles trailing behind Gris' listening point. Science did it.
Chapters without anyone commenting on Heller's stupid clothes: 3
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