We rented a pale blue Zip car, Randy and I, and he turned out to be a decent navigator. He talked at a rapid clip throughout the trip, facts about Buck: that he’d worked at a gas station, and also as a short order cook; that he’d won a half dozen bareknuckle fights; that he’d never been arrested. The two had shared a pull-out sofa at a mutual friend’s house for a week before Buck moved on, Randy said. They had not had a s****l relationship. I was paying Randy a day rate, and expected nothing from him other than that he guide me to Tad. He confessed that he had very little “going on” other than a half-baked porn shoot in “some fat dude’s garage in Queens that pays shit.” I knew that if he was not with me, so full of youthful oblivion, that I might have turned back. The closer we got, the mo
