by Rex Bolt
On account of one guy.
The phone rang again. “What,” Chris said.
“That bad?” Ned said. “I thought you liked the open road.”
“Oh,” Chris said, “hey.”
“Listen,” Ned said, “can you call me on a pay phone? They got any of those out where you’re at?”
Chris said actually he had been seeing some of those, ten times more than you saw in California in fact. Thinking though, from right here, tonight, that could be a bit of a goose chase locating another one. Not to mention having to get out of the comfy hot tub period, and drag yourself somewhere.
Ned said, “Let’s make it 45 minutes, how about?” And he gave Chris a number to call back on.
So . . . you drive 6 and half days in peace, for the most part, and then back to back, when you’re just settled in real good, two guys disrupt you, independent of each other.
Chris got out of there, showered and dressed again and figured start simple, and he went to the office and asked if they might have a pay phone right on the premises.
“We did,” the night clerk said. “Got removed in ‘06. They were extending the pump house round the side, that booth was a casualty.”
“Progress then,” Chris said. “So, anywhere else, you could recommend finding one?”
“Well, old man Rogers, they got one still.”
This was rough, a headache was coming on, and you’d have to get directions from the guy, and you prayed old man Rogers didn’t live a couple towns away.
Two greasy-looking guys came into the office, and both needed shaves and shampoos, long hair touching both their collars, caps up top, one a John Deere the other a US Army something or other.
The car they got out of was still running outside. Chris could make out someone vaguely in the driver’s seat. Hard to pick up the plates, but they were yellow, not Ohio.
Which didn’t mean much, this being a roadside stop off the interstate . . . but the vibe wasn’t good.
“What can I do for you boys?” the clerk said, and meanwhile Chris stepped around the counter, joining the guy.
Instead of the normal reply -- you’all get a vacancy for tonight, and so forth -- one guy was swiveling his head around, back out toward the parking lot, and the other was keeping his eye on the doorway opening behind the desk.
Chris said, keeping it quiet and under control: “Get back in the car, fellas.”
“What was that?” the night clerk said.
And it seemed the two greaseballs hadn’t heard it either, because they didn’t react.
At first.
Then the guy who’d been scanning the parking lot opened his jacket and pulled out a small automatic with a yellow grip and pointed it at neither one of them specifically, but right down the middle.
Chris very slowly reached under the counter, squatting just slightly. He said, “Fellas, I’m not going to be telling you again. It’s not a suggestion. Get . . . back in the car.” Locking eyes, not with the gunman but the other mutant.
Maybe 10 seconds went by. The non-gunman said, “Bo, let’s bring it. It don’t matter.”
For a second Chris thought that meant bring the heat, and a jolt of terror hit him above the belly button and exited his lower jaw, but it apparently meant hightail it out of there, since that’s what they did, and the car sped off.
“Golly,” the night clerk said.
“I know,” Chris said. He straightened up from the counter and his hands were shaking and he couldn’t get them under control, and the clerk noticed but didn’t say anything, and the guy lit a cigaret and stuck it directly between Chris’s lips.
“I don’t smoke,” Chris tried to joke finally, but it tasted good, no surprise that it was a no-filter Camel.
The clerk said, “Didn’t know if we was set up for some fireworks tonight there.”
Chris didn’t either, what might have gone down, but they were junkies, pretty sure of that . . . no predictability to a junkie. You give them what they want, a trigger’s just as liable as not, to get squeezed by someone.
He said to the guy, “We had to make our stand I felt . . . Of course it’s all speculation.”
The clerk was nodding his head like a robot. “You got that right. Meanwhile . . . God Damn, I’m letting time go by, notifying the authorities.”
He picked up the desk phone and you could see him punching in 911, and Chris motioned that he was going outside to take a look, and he kept going and got in the Malibu, and there was traveller’s area on the other side of the freeway with one of those 24-hour Pilot trucker deals, and he asked a guy if he knew where ‘old man Rogers’s place’ was, and the guy said what for at this hour, and Chris said a pay telephone, and the guy said they had one here, and pointed.
“One thing I’m learning you are,” Ned said, “is reliable. I got here early, and the phone still rings.”
“Where’s that?” Chris said.
“Redondo. The Jack-in-the Box still has one outside. The enclosed booth and everything. Yeah you have the usual bb gun damage, the glass, the way kids do, both overall it’s respectable.”
“You use it a lot?” Chris said.
“Sure, now and then. Citizens should have the right to keep their personal conversations private. Or at least the option . . . You never finished telling me, the road trip. How it’s going.”
“It’s been uneven,” Chris said. “You know what I’m flashing on now, out of left field? . . . Holly with her first book idea, she’s on a road trip and she finds herself, and there’s assorted other bullshit ups and downs.”
“Piece of work,” Ned said. “She would have been better off, sticking with that topic. Now she’s un-interpretable.”
“Anyhow,” Chris said, “always more adventures than you expect, out here in the heartland. Finding yourself.”
“That’s the way it works. My own experience, people bother you, but they mean well, and you get diverted.”
“Or some variation,” Chris said. “So . . . you bothered me tonight, because?”
“Wait a second. You told me to call you -- you gave me a time frame -- when you announced your were taking off without my blessing.”
“Skip the unnecessary dialogue and spit it out. Criminy.”
“Okay we’re making an adjustment . . . Where are you by the way? I didn’t even ask.”
“Not there yet. What’s the difference.”
“Fine. Do you know Bucks County?”
“Pennsylvania?”
“Correct . . . Now write this down, or commit it to memory. Don’t put it in your phone obviously . . . you know the drill.”
Chris was not in the mood tonight, that’s for sure, to have his intelligence insulted, but whatever . . . and he said he was ready.
Ned said, “We got Nick -- could be Nicholas too, or Nicky -- Protancio. Otherwise known as The Tank.”
“Why’s that?”
“Built like a fire hydrant. All-city nose tackle at JFK Yonkers High, way back in the day. That school’s not even there any more. But real big neck on the fucker. Cro-magnon type bone structure in the head. You see where I’m going?”
“Short legs, competing the package?” Chris said.
“Extremely. There used to be those rides at Coney Island . . . I’m getting off track here . . . What do you think?”
“About what? Socializing with the gentleman? Explaining Gee, sorry about what happened to Ralph, let’s smooth it over?”
“Wouldn’t be that, no,” Ned said quieter.
Chris said, “He lives in Bucks County? Or I’m, like, intercepting him there.”
“No he’s out there now. Lot of the old Bronx guys, they’d barely know shit about how to even start up a weed-whacker, but suddenly it’s fashionable, stake their claim out in the countryside, grab yourself a hundred acres . . . Dutchess County’s another place now. But The Tank opted for Bucks.”
“I can’t blame ‘em,” Chris said. “Close enough still, I’m guessing, where you can can cont
rol the important stuff back home. Striking distance.”
“Listen,” Ned said. “Like I been saying all along, no obligation. You hear me? ‘Cause I think you don’t . . . Take a look, see if it’s your cup of tea . . . If not, no sweat, go down to Florida for a while, have some fun.”
“Which is where you told the other writers I went.”
“I like that, by the way . . . See how you said the ‘other’ writers? By doing that, you’re indirectly saying I’m one too.”
“Well you are.”
“We’ll see, but I’ll take it. Thank you my man.”
“Speaking of Florida,” Chris said, “wouldn’t you know, I found out I have a relative there I never met.”
“So the karma is lined up. Go for it.”
Chris said, “I’ll check on Nick first. Make an evaluation . . . he is connected to Ralph, I mean so to speak? Paulie too?”
Ned lowered his voice again. “Not sure, honestly, which specific motherfucker back there is calling the shots. Whose eyeballs, in a perfect world, I’d claw out and piss in the empty sockets of.”
“I hear you,” Chris said. “But take it easy.”
“Point being, we make a statement to The Tank, we’re in the ballpark.”
This made sense. You’re not trying to take down one of the mythical Five Families here, for Gosh sakes. You’re just trying to establish a little credibility.
Hopefully slow down the next Ralph from showing up in MB, was all.
That could be unlikely of course -- and unfortunately, but one thing for sure: you’re not going to slow down the next Ralph by doing nothing, either.
Ned gave him The Tank’s address, plus a building in town he owned, seemed to do a little work out of.
“And he’s on his 4th wife,” Ned said, “should that come into play.”
“You know her?” Chris said, no reason except something told him Ned might.
“We go back a bit,” he said. “Lorraine -- used to be Guggliano. Mind you now, she’s a good 25 years younger than Tank. He’d be in 60’s by now.”
Chris said, “If I do run into them both -- but take a pass and decide to head to Florida after all -- should I still say hi to her for you?”
“That’d be fine,” Ned said, and it was hard to throw the guy off-balance, he had a straight-up answer to most anything, didn’t he . . . and Chris thought, when this is over -- and I try to go straight -- I’ll have to absorb some of that.
Chapter 14
It was a little weird, you passed a town called Jersey Shore, and that was way in eastern Pennsylvania, and Chris remembered a week he spent once at the real Jersey Shore, and coming back from there that time, a guy driving and his girlfriend in front, Chris and some other guy in back, traffic stops on the turnpike and the guy asks the girlfrined how she’d feel about him breaking the law, and driving on the shoulder for a while -- which a few people are doing -- and she says that would grossly unfair to everyone else, who’s obeying the law and waiting out the stoppage -- and the boyfriend considers if for a couple minutes, what she said, and then swings onto the shoulder.
Chris made a mental note a couple times to find out whatever happened to that relationship, but he never did.
This morning it wasn’t going to kill you, adjusting your angle from the Big Apple to Bucks County. In fact it was probably shorter. You continue on 80 as normal, except at Berwick you jump on 81 South, then after a while 476, and you’re home free.
Door to door, leaving the Hi-Ho Inn, 5 hours and 22 minutes, it said.
Chris didn’t know much about Bucks County except what he loosely remembered from history class, that there was quite a bit of British activity there a hundred years before the Revolutionary War blew everything open, and there were manors and stuff.
Glancing down at the map, a half hour away, he could see the appeal for a guy like Nick. You were north of Philly, but only an hour or two, you were a couple hours east of New York, tops, and -- something you didn’t think of but likely applied to Nick -- 2 hours from Atlantic City.
They seemed to divide it into Upper, Central and Lower Bucks County, and the respective towns were Quakertown, Doylestown and Bristol -- but his town . . . checking the note again, Ned’s info, would be Beddingham, also in lower Bucks, if he was reading the map right.
And of course you thought you were a half hour away, quite a while back, but you had to zig zag around once you were technically in Bucks, and this involved some secondary roads, his particular one including quite a bit of up and down, not mountains but short, steep and curvy hills, and finally you did see Beddingham up ahead, and Chris found a diner and stopped for a coke.
One impression today, the countryside was rich with spring, stuff blooming up the wazoo, little creeks and waterways running fast and disappearing into stands of what Chris guessed were flowering cherries, and maybe dogwoods and magnolias mixed in too, all of it feeling pretty dang fresh and vibrant.
The effects of a real winter, in other words, not a California one, meaning nature had been seriously held back for four months and now was making up for it.
The menu in the diner had some local tourist info on the back, and it informed you that William Penn himself founded Bucks County, and Jeez, that was probably the guy they named the darn stated after.
The main thing, Chris was thinking now, adding a little perspective to the situation, based on the last episode . . . not Roland so much, but the other one he had to travel to . . . was come at it a little different this time.
That had been pretty torturous, no other way to frame it, the absurd business of going Reno to Montana and like a slingshot gone haywire, all the way to back to Beacon, the Central Valley -- and then the mess there, the endless following the bozo around -- not to mention having to find him in the first place -- and then once you were on him, all the waiting.
As he told Dr. Moore, he’d at least met the high school guy Gillette, so that killed an hour at one stage, and he did envy and admire that kid, even after the kid disclosed he was dealing with a major issue. Dr. Moore hadn’t pressed him on it, really, but she should have, this being a common-enough theme, wasn’t it, Chris always looking to go back somewhere and start fresh and re-do his own stuff.
But here -- today -- don’t screw around. Kind of like the example of those achievement tests again -- you over-work it, you probably don’t come out any better, and you may end up getting it wrong.
Chris checked the time. It was 1:20. Hmm . . . in fact, if you handle things during business hours, or thereabouts, you might not even have to check in to a motel. Not the worst thought, since judging from this tourist info attached to the menu, you didn’t have your typical all-American motels in Beddingham, but instead your country inns and B & B’s . . . and Chris supposed that’s how it had been around here for a long time, and you weren’t likely to get many new town council people welcoming in the modern age enough to approve a Holiday Inn Express for example.
Chris didn’t care for country inns or B & B’s -- first of all you felt like you were in someone’s house, and had to tiptoe around, no matter how they disguised it . . . and second, you weren’t crazy about parking right in front of one of them, where your vehicle - and you -- seriously might end up standing out if something were to happen.
You trusted Ned by now of course -- mostly -- but to wholeheartedly embrace and address his issue, Chris figured you better make sure the guy was worthy of being addressed.
Meaning . . . that he wasn’t just some guy, that Ned had an issue with once in a pickup basketball game.
And that the guy had been his sworn enemy ever since.
If Nick was really in his 60’s, that would admittedly put him 20 years older than Ned -- so the basketball example was less likely -- but either way, you still were responsible for your own due diligence.
Chris had been getting more lax about having to use a public and theoretically untraceable (back to him) computer for these initial researches . . . and sitting in the diner,
pretty comfy, having added the ‘Brown and Tan’ special to that original coke, a local dish that featured bacon battered in beer and was pretty dang amazing -- he decided it was safe enough to use his phone.
That realistically . . . if it came to the point where they’re checking you on that secondary stuff, you were likely in much bigger trouble on the primary stuff -- and Chris thought of Mark again, the amazing work but the ultimate failure, and Jeez, you needed to block that all out right now.
So Chris googled: Nicholas Nick Protancio Arrest Record, and before he clicked Enter he inserted The Tank too, since you’d assume Ned wasn’t the first one to ever call him that.
But the point, obviously, you want to make sure this guy actually did something. Beyond perhaps loosely directing Ralph to make an inquiry in Manhattan Beach and finding out he ended up in a marsh a quarter mile south of one of the Panda Expresses in Torrance.
It was confusing. His name showed up, or partially did, various places, not necessarily criminal ones, and it was looking like a bear to put it together logically and get that concrete conclusion you wanted.
So Chris tried it again, substituting Arrest Record with Going to Jail -- a lot less formal, but let’s see what happens.
Again, a mishmash, a lot of it different this time . . . but there was a link to one article from the NY Daily News that had potential, and Chris went there.
Yonkers Man Sentenced to 8 Years Following Manslaughter Conviction
by Jack Krinkle
October 16th, 1987 - White Plains, NY - A Yonkers man was sentenced today in Westchester County Superior Court, following a manslaughter conviction last month in the death of 38-year-old Patrick Solowski, of Red Hook.
Nicholas Protancio, 33, of 884 Reggina Drive, was found guilty of slaying Solowski on the night of December 12th, 1986, after Solowski allegedly rang Protancio’s doorbell and attempted to serve him with a legal document.
Witnesses described a discussion between the two men on the doorstep of the Reggina Drive residence, and a subsequent escalation after Protancio spit on Solowski’s paperwork and according to witnesses, told Solowski to ‘go back where you came from, I’m not interested’.
