He didn't bother looking for truck-stops when he needed to piss, just pulled over on the turnpike's side and let fly. Why not? At that hour, it was just him and the truckers and the tourists with morning flights. He reached Miami ahead of schedule and had a diner-breakfast big enough to kill a lesser man, a real fatkins affair. He got back on the road groaning from the chow and made it to the old Wal-Mart just as the merchants were setting up their market on the roadside. When he'd done the Boston ride, he'd been discouraged that they'd kept on with their Who-ville Xmas even though he'd grinched away all their fun, but this time he was expecting something like this. Watching these guys sell souvenirs at the funeral for the ride made him feel pretty good this time around: their disloyalty had to be a real morale-killer for those ride-operators. The cops were getting twitchy, which made him grin. Twitchy cops were a key ingredient for bad trouble. He reached behind him and pulled an iced coffee from the cooler and cracked it, listening to the hiss as the embedded CO2 cartridge forced bubbles through it. Now here came a suit. He looked like a genuine mighty morphin' power broker, which made Sammy worry, because a guy like that hadn't figured into his plans, but look at that; he was having a huge fight with the eyebrow guy and now the eyebrow guy was running away from him. Getting the lawyers to agree to spring the budget to file in every location where there was a ride had been tricky. Sammy had had to fudge a little on his research, claim that they were bringing in real money, tie it to the drop in numbers in Florida, and generally do a song and dance, but it was all worth it. These guys clearly didn't know whether to shit or go blind. Now eyebrow man was headed for the cop-cars and the entrance, and there, oh yes, there it was. Five cars' worth of goths, lugging bags full of some kind of home-made or scavenged horror-memorabilia, pulling up short at the entrance. They piled out of their cars and started milling around, asking questions. Some approached the cops, who seemed in no mood to chat. The body-language could be read at 150 feet: Goth: But officer, I wanna get on this riiiiiide. Cop: You sicken me. Goth: All around me is gloom, gloom. Why can't I go on my riiiiiide? Cop: I would like to arrest you and lock you up for being a weird, sexually ambiguous melodramatic who's dumb enough to hang around out of doors, all in black, in *Florida*. Goth: Can I take your picture? I'm gonna put it on my blog and then everyone will know what a meanie you are. Cop: Yap yap yap, little bitch. You go on photographing me and mouthing off, see how long it is before you're in cuffs in the back of this car. Scumbag street-vendors: Ha ha ha, look at these goth kids mouthing off to the law, that cop must have minuscule testicles! Cop: Don't make me angry, you wouldn't like me when I'm angry.