But first, he needed to be at The Elysium Terrace.
53
Donnie Fiasco
Donnie Yeats sat at the front desk of The Elysium Terrace, ears plugged into the headset of his walkman, fingers tapping out a Bee Gees tune on the arm of his chair while he hummed the repetitive chorus. He was perusing the latest edition of TV Guide as he lost himself in his disco world.
The door opened and three men in official looking attire strode inside the lobby. Donnie pulled off his headphones and plopped them on the desk. The tinny sound of Barry Gibb’s falsetto voice floated up from the discarded earpieces, sounding like a muffled version of Alvin and the Chipmunks.
Donnie put on his most impressive smile. “Can I help you?”
“We need to search the apartment of Ethan Blake Tannor,” said one of the men.
Donnie looked closer at the tall, lean man. A curlicue of wire wrapped over one of his ears, its end piece feeding into the ear canal. The man wore a deep black three piece suit that looked tailor made and clung to his body. Dark leather gloves covered his hands.
Donnie felt a shiver of trepidation run up his spine. “And who may I ask is requesting?”
A badge was flipped out and Donnie caught little more than a brief glance of the man’s picture before it was snapped closed and pulled away. The man deposited it back into an inner coat pocket. Donnie had no clue what the official seal and lettering even said, but he wasn’t about to request a second look.
“What room number?” Mr. Three Piece asked.
“Well, I think you might need a search —” Donnie began.
“We’ll also need his mail box opened,” said the other man, who stood near the wall boxes. A third suit was positioned by the front entrance. Standing guard.
Donnie’s unease grew. “Like I said, I think you’ll need to get a —”
Three Piece reached across the desk, snatching Donnie by both of his sideburns. Before Donnie had time to react to the assault, his face had been yanked up to within inches of the man’s snarling visage.
“This is a matter of national security,” the suit growled through gritted and bared teeth. “Are you aware that your tenant is directly linked to a murder that happened just around the block last night?” He pressed his palms painfully into Donnie’s cheek, fingers twisting further around Donnie’s voluminous sideburns.
Donnie was about to explain to the man who had a vice grip on his face that he wasn’t the owner of the building, he just monitored the maintenance calls and the residents’ comings and goings. He opened his mouth to speak, but his response was interrupted by an audible voice coming from the man’s ear piece.
— “He’s down here, I’m —”
With a rough push, Donnie was shoved back into his chair, instantly forgotten. The three men locked eyes and pulled firearms from inner holsters as they converged around the lobby entrance door.
A sudden, loud, —POP, POP, POP— shattered the air, and the front glass crashed inward, scattering into the main hall. The men ducked for cover behind the corner walls and furnishings.
Donnie dropped down behind the receptionist’s counter and stole a cautious peek at the front door. He expected to see someone rushing in, guns blazing, but there was no one visible outside. Yet the shooting continued.
Where is it coming from? His frantic mind raced for answers, and he considered risking a mad dash for the stairway or elevators.
The cacophony of bullets pelting the sides of the building and ringing into the entrance eliminated all other noise, but Donnie could see the leader of the group yelling commands into his wrist.
Donnie couldn’t hear what the man was screaming, but he seemed to be repeating the same two words: “Go hot! Go hot! Go hot!”
54
Pains, Trains, and Automobiles
Perhaps ripping out the mobile phone hadn’t been the best idea at the time. It was unfortunate that the Toyota wouldn’t start up now, but Blake surmised that an exposed wire had made contact with metal somewhere, creating a parasitic drain on the battery. Or maybe the slick used car salesman had sold him a lemon.
Ethan was leaving the library and Blake wouldn’t be able to follow him on the road to The Cozy Clam without a vehicle. It wasn’t the end of the world, though. He could use the subway to scoot across town.
He’d been trailing Ethan all day, and everything happened just as before, despite Blake having changed his own fate earlier at Ethan’s apartment.
That part had been easy enough. Blake just switched up his attack this time around, opting to fire at Wallace’s crew from the top of a nearby building just long enough for Ethan to escape. The outcome may have been different this time, but from Ethan’s vantage point, it had probably looked pretty much the same: gunfight outside his apartment meant time to find another place to stay.
It had been eighteen minutes since Blake kicked the Corolla in disgust and stalked away from its parking spot close to the library. Now he was sitting in one of the seats on the city metro with a scowl blanketed across his face.
With funds running low, it wouldn’t be possible to purchase another car so late at night, and he couldn’t just go and rent a room at the same hotel where Ethan was staying. He didn’t want to risk the manager saying something to Ethan in the morning about a twin that had checked in as well. Granted, Ethan might dismiss such information as coincidence, but Blake doubted it based on what Ethan had witnessed over the last couple days.
Still, sleeping arrangements had to be made; the idea of spending the night on the street wasn’t appealing. Then Blake thought of something. He pulled his duffel from the floor and began to loosen the top of the bag. He dug inside, searching, but was interrupted by a massive shape protruding into his field of view.
The most obese human being he’d ever seen hovered over him. At first glance, he couldn’t tell whether it was a woman or man. The dress helped clue him in; still, even then you might not know for sure these days. The woman looked like she could double as The Michelin Man’s wife, with rolls of lumpy flesh constricting in on itself to form rings along her arms, legs, chin — and Blake didn’t even want to imagine what lay under that dress. Thick glasses framed her frog-like face, and a ridiculous shade of hooker red lipstick outlined her mouth and beyond. Veins of the lipstick had leaked into the wrinkles around her mouth, accentuating her clown-like appearance.
“Get up, I’m handicapped,” she half-croaked and bellowed through her wobbling jowls.
Already pissed, Blake didn’t even attempt to control his response. It fluttered to his mind and out his mouth without a filter. “You’re not handicapped, you’re just a fatass. Move along Queen Kong,” he snapped.
Her pig eyes widened in surprise; apparently no one had ever stood up to her bully tactics before — either out of sympathy or fear of being crushed beneath her bulk. She let out an, “Ugh!” and the noise sent a reverberation through several of her chins.
Blake almost gagged; he felt like shit and the sight of this woman wasn’t helping. They had a brief staring contest, but when Blake didn’t move she gave up and turned away in search of another passenger’s seat to acquire, doing a strange waddle from leg to leg as she moved further down the aisle that barely accommodated her girth.
He scowled after her and resumed the search inside his bag. After a few moments of sifting, he pulled out what he was looking for, and sighed in relief. It was the keys to his ’67 Mustang, the one he’d had in his pocket when he jumped back to 1948 — and in doing so had created what now amounted to a duplicate set in 1986. He smiled, thankful he hadn’t left them behind in the past.