The men’s room had a cologne dispenser that took a dollar coin. So I could at least disguise myself as a weary traveler who knew how bad he smelled.
The crossword puzzle in the paper was too easy. I did about half of it and quit out of nervous boredom. Then I picked it back up and filled in all the blanks with random words. That was a little more challenging. I got to cross AXOLOTL with LYNX, a biology experiment that would probably never actually happen.
It was three and a half hours till the train. I got up to look at the map on the wall and with a shock realized I was only twenty miles from the motel where I’d been kidnapped.
I hurried outside and went to the first cab in line. He looked like a cliché New York cabbie, fat and grizzled and unfriendly, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lip. In actual New York, I realized, he’d be from the Indian subcontinent or Northern Africa. Maybe that’s why he moved to Mississippi. I tapped on the window.
“Yeah?”
“Could you take me to a motel in Quigman and back in two hours? Mom’s Home Away from Home, off 85?”
“Twenty-some miles? Sure. Cost ya.”
“How much, about?”
He tapped the dash map a couple of times and entered some number into his meter box. “Fifty-mile round trip… call it $250 plus waiting time?”
I handed him the card. “Give you three hundred if you can get me there and back in an hour, and you never saw me?”
He took the card and the back door sprang open. “Never saw who? I been off duty since ten seconds ago. Gonna drive the long way home.”
I was sure the meter box would keep a record, but hell. The back of the cab smelled of stale cigarette smoke, which made me think of Kit, trapped somewhere with her face down by that overflowing ashtray.
My eyes stung and I closed them during the drive, just to rest them, but was sound asleep when he pulled up at Mom’s Home Away from Home. “Here you go, buddy.”
“Thanks. Back in a minute.” I got out and stretched. Against all odds, the hatchback was still in front of number 15.
I went into the office and the querulous old man looked up. “Well, finally,” he said. “Where the hell have you been?”
“In the hospital in Biloxi. Not sure how I wound up there.”
“Oh. You okay now?”
“Still sore from where someone hit me over the head. Look, I left a suitcase and stuff in that room.”
He stared at me with a mixture of confusion and suspicion. “Maid cleaned up. Guess you can take a look. You got your key?”
I took it out of the plastic bag and jiggled it. He decided to follow me to the room, putting a BACK IN FIVE sign on his door. The cabbie joined us, I guess to protect his investment.
The door to room 15 was locked, which gave me a moment of optimism. But the pink suitcase wasn’t anywhere to be seen, nor the dime store computer. The Dexter Filkins book was on the floor, open, its hollowed-out pages empty.
“What happened to that book?” the old man asked.
“I don’t know. Someone got mad at it.”
I knelt down to pick up the book and yes, the .38 was still down there, not visible behind the bedspread. I swept it out and into my pocket as I stood. The old man hadn’t been looking at me, and the cabbie developed a sudden interest in the ceiling.
Checked the bathroom and retrieved the shaving kit I’d gotten from the casino.
Nothing in the car but some road maps and a box of stale cookies. Aluminum foil and masking tape. A coffee cup with dried-up mold in it.
“You gonna take the car? This ain’t no parkin’ lot.”
“Somebody’ll be by for it tomorrow.” State police or Homeland Security, but maybe not tomorrow. I wasn’t going to take it and drive to Maine with a beacon: Come shoot me again; maybe a bullet this time.
On the cab ride back to Biloxi, the cabdriver and I listened to music on a country station. We didn’t talk until we got to the train station and he opened the door. The cab machine took my card with no protest, and I tipped him up to three hundred.
“It’s none of my business,” he said, “but you better watch your ass. Listen to a fellow vet. Guns are never nothin’ but trouble. Haven’t we had enough trouble?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We shouldn’t go looking for it.” He nodded and drove off shaking his head.
When trouble comes looking for you, though, best to be ready. A little revolver with five shells is five shots better than a pocket full of nothing. On cue, a train whistled in the distance. The train to Maine, soon enough.
I’ll come to thee by moonlight, the poet said, though hell should bar the way.
12.
I probably could have upgraded my ticket to a sleeper compartment, but didn’t want to push the one credit card too high. I did nurse a couple of glasses of wine, watching TV movies in the bar car.
The revolver seemed heavy and obvious in my Amtrak bag, and perhaps the idea of a gun clashed with its cheerful logo, but it would be more conspicuous in my pocket. I decided to use my layover in Washington to buy a shoulder holster. And a double-breasted dark jacket, with padded shoulders, to go with it. Mirror shades and a rent-a-girl to hang on my arm. Or maybe I should stick with the Amtrak bag.
Actually, an inconspicuous light jacket and a shoulder holster would be a good idea. I checked the web on the bar-car computer, and was amazed to find out (admittedly in an ad for shoulder holsters) how risky it was to simply carry a pistol in your pocket—at any second, the trigger could snag the pocket lining and blow your dick off! Buy a shoulder holster for the sake of your theoretical progeny! I’d gone all my life without worrying about that.
Actually, I’d be more concerned about a policeman saying, “Is that a pistol in your pocket, or are you just… wait! That is a pistol in your pocket! Hands up!”
The Amtrak bag seemed effective and inconspicuous, and the price was right. But I wondered whether I might be going into a situation where I would want a concealed weapon and both hands free. That might be worth the hundred bucks or so. Though I wouldn’t put it on unless I was walking into an actual “situation.”
I did get a solid six hours of sleep on the train, even getting up a couple of times to take the foil off for random intervals, to confuse things. As we approached Washington, I left it off for the last hour or so. The people who were renting the room in the Marriott would no doubt be listening.
I’d want it covered up all the time when I headed north, but also, naturally, I’d want it to be “not working” for hours at a time before I left.
Of course I had no idea where the listeners were located. Maybe they were in Maine, in the same room as Kit, which they implied. I must be ready to surprise them there, at least approaching with the hand quiet, wrapped up.
But first there was Washington to worry about. In all likelihood, they would expect to meet, or at least contact, me when I arrived in Washington. Perhaps I should do that, reassuring them just before I headed north, with my foil-silenced hand. If I checked into the hotel on schedule and then turned around, wrapped up the hand, and went straight to the train station, I could be halfway to Maine before they missed me.
By now, I hoped, they should be used to the intermittent signal from the hand.
When I got off the train in Union Station, I looked around, checking the time, as if I were expecting someone to meet me. Kept looking as I walked from the track through the huge station, but nobody contacted or, apparently, followed me.
I got to the taxicab rank and then doubled back to the ticket machine. Quickly bought a ticket up to Maine via Penn Station. There were lots of trains from Washington to Boston, but not so many from Boston to Maine. Two leaving in the morning, two in the afternoon, and a red-eye just before midnight.