The phone rang again. I opened it. “Didn’t you hear what I said?”
It was a familiar woman’s voice, but not Sara Underwood’s: it was the mystery woman who first talked to me in Iowa City, and threatened me with the story about the boy who died of myelofibrosis.
“Jack? We know where you are now. Are you ready to talk?”
I threw the phone into the street and got up to rush to Korn Dogs.
Bikes in a Box
1.
Something must have shown on my face when I returned to the restaurant. Mario was by the grill chopping onions and he came over with the big chef’s knife in his hand. “Something wrong,” he said.
“Hate to leave you in the lurch, man. We have to get out of here.” Kit untied her apron wordlessly and started folding it.
“You have to?”
I nodded.
“Shit happens,” he said, setting the knife down. He went around the counter and punched the cash register hard and scooped out two C-notes and a fifty from the till.
“We couldn’t, Mario,” Kit said.
He put the money on the counter and looked at me. “I never seen you guys.” He turned to go back to his onions. “Good luck anyhow. In bocca al lupo.” He’d taught us that phrase, like “break a leg.”
We had Plan A mapped out completely. Every morning before we left for work we packed everything we owned into two knapsacks, so we could go into the apartment and out in seconds.
There was a bike shop on the way. The two we’d picked out, a couple of sturdy touring Treks, had been sold—but two new ones had just come in; he’d unboxed them this morning and almost had them together. It seemed like a good omen, starting out fresh, so we bought them and two sets of rear baskets.
While the kid was bolting the baskets on, we went back to the apartment and picked up the knapsacks and left the key on the dresser. As an afterthought Kit left a note saying we’d been called north, and expected to be back before the first, but if we weren’t, go ahead and rent the room. We left our Jazzy Pass RTA cards with the note.
We had two detailed route maps that took us from New Orleans to Miami on back roads, and then down A1A to Key West. We would travel apart, Kit leaving an hour before me, the routes slightly different wherever possible. They’d be looking for a couple our age traveling together.
Not trusting cell phones, we’d bought a pair of kids’ walkie-talkies from the Phone Shop. I would call her every hour on the hour, and let it buzz once. If she didn’t buzz back soon, it meant she was in trouble—or we’d been betrayed by cheap Phone Shop technology, not impossible.
We split our cash down the middle, $4,320 each. Decided to go ahead and use her credit card for the bikes, since the Feds knew where we were anyhow. All my cards were flat.
I’d downloaded lists of bicycle-friendly hotels for the states we’d be going through. We chose one just out of town, about twenty miles away, for the first night, and I sent Kit on ahead.
Locked my bike up outside the Black Cat, our favorite tavern, and had one last imported beer before taking off into the land of country general stores and Bud Light. We’d made up our routes from a library copy of the Southern Tier Trail “southern tier” tourist maps, which kept you away from highways and cities, and decent beer.
It’s very close to what my hero in the novel was doing, in reverse, but the only reference to that in the whole world was buried in Duquest’s files; maybe my agent’s. Under anybody’s radar.
Kit was carrying the fake Glock, the pellet gun with the orange nose spray-painted black, figuring that if one of us was going to need it on these deserted country roads, it would be her. My thinking had gone a little beyond that, though.
The one morning drunk at the bar got up and left. I took a G-note out of my pocket and smoothed it onto the bar. “Jimmy,” I said to the bartender, “maybe you can help me with a little problem.”
Two hours later I was down in bayou country, headed east on Route 90, a bright red accessory bag on a quick-release clip in the center of my handlebars. It held my wallet, maps, some nuts, and a candy bar—and a snub-nosed Taurus .38 Special, the favorite little pistol of TV detective actors. Actual criminals probably favor something with more punch, but a new .357 Magnum would have cost nearly a thousand more.
I didn’t want anything bigger anyhow. When I unsnap the bag and carry it into a convenience store, I don’t want the clerk to gauge its weight and reach for his own gun.
I’d bought it from a black guy who had conspicuous tracks on his left forearm and hadn’t bathed in a while. But his hands were steady and his eyes clear, so I assumed he was a cop, or worked for them. Which didn’t bother me too much. If somebody tried to bust me I would have Sara Underwood rain some Homeland Security shit on them. Though she might just ask them to lock me up and throw away the key.
There was enough truck traffic to keep me from being bored, and the road was pretty rough. The bikes were set up for endurance rather than speed, medium-fat tires with Kevlar inserts. Fewer miles per day but no flats, and we could go off-road if necessary.
There were no good scenarios that involved that, though. If someone was after us with a car, we were just caught. I wasn’t going to hit the dirt and lay down a field of fire, not with five rounds of .38 Special ammo indifferently aimed. Twenty-five rounds if I had time to reload a few times, which didn’t seem likely.
I guess the gun was more a psychological crutch than actual protection. As my M2010 had been in the desert, most of the time—if you live with a weapon 24/7 it becomes like another limb, and anytime it’s out of sight you start to panic.
(So when is a crutch not a crutch? When you could walk better without it?)
I’d gone unarmed for most of eight years, but the feeling of symbiosis, of dependence, came back immediately. It made me feel more calm, in control, even though my rational brain knew that was nonsense. If any of our enemies produced a weapon, it would trump the hell out of a Dick Tracy snub-nose .38 not-so-Special revolver.
But it was better than nothing. Nothing would be total helplessness, being a target rather than a foe. And even though Sara Underwood probably already had a memo on her desk with the serial number and exact provenance of my .38, whoever was after us probably didn’t know yet. That might buy us a second or two in a few of the less likely futures that we faced.
2.
We had figured that it would be safe enough if we came together each night. Two people on bicycles might be conspicuous at a mom-and-pop motel, but two car-less bikers at two separate motels would be even more conspicuous, and we felt safer together.
She called me on the walkie-talkie and said there was a vacancy at the place we’d tentatively chosen, the Southern Comfort motel, a half mile up the road. On the way there I stopped at a convenience store and bought a pint of that odd beverage, honey-flavored whiskey. At a 7-Eleven. God bless Louisiana’s liquor laws!
We celebrated our first day as two-wheeled fugitives with a couple of big plastic cups of ice and the sweet liqueur, sitting on folding chairs on a screened porch overlooking some bayou. The mosquitoes were pretty fierce for our being technically indoors, but after we swatted a dozen or so they showed us some respect.
We’d brought the bikes inside the motel room rather than risk them being stolen or identified, and Kit had just nodded when I showed her the .38. She didn’t bring it up until we were halfway through the “Judy Collins Juice,” as my father called it. The sun was a dull crimson ball behind a confusion of spindly trees and power poles and lines.