Rausch won't take a dime from me, won't let me pay for our room... nothing. "Can't let you do that, little buddy," he says. "This here's my fight." Finally I can't take it anymore. In our room at the New Frontier I tell him that I'm leaving the next day, that we're never gonna find Lisa this way. Bobby's hurt. He's quiet for a moment, and then he sighs, climbs out of bed and begins getting dressed. "Look," I say, ''I'm sorry but it's true." He walks out the door. And the next thing I know he's shaking me awake by the foot, telling me to get dressed. I sit up. The clock on the nightstand reads 3: 15. I ask where we're going. "Where we should've gone from day one," he says, "the belly of the viper." I follow Bobby Rausch downstairs. In the cab turnout we climb aboard a mini-van driven by an Estonian in a sweat suit. There are six of us behind the driver in the van-two long-haired blond guys who look like the terrorist twins from Die Hard (Rausch watches them carefully) and two giggling-drunk businessmen in suits. The van heads out into the desert. Rausch is uncharacteristically quiet. He stares out his window. At four in the morning, there's nothing out here but our headlights. The brothel is called the Pony Palace. There don't appear to be any Ponies. The Palace is a small metal building with four doublewides flanking it. We open the door and a bell rings as we stepped inside a sad little bar. The bartender draws us ten-dollar beers. I pay for the beers, the least I can do. On the ride out I assumed that Rausch had some information that Lisa was at this particular brothel, but when the sad hookers come out-summoned by the bell-Lisa isn't among them. Rausch chooses a waif: pale with dark hair, a girl who either has her original breasts or a bad plastic surgeon. He pays two hundred dollars
THE NEW FRONTIER I 67