by Roland Smith
“Have you told John about the car bombs?” Vanessa asked.
“No.”
“How about the president?”
“No.”
“And?”
“And if I tell him he’s going to send in the cavalry.”
“That might not be a bad idea.”
“We’re not ready yet,” Boone said. “He has a SEAL team standing by. And if I know J.R., he’s already ordered them south so they can get to us quickly if I tell him to pull the trigger. We’ll be covered when the time comes. I want you to concentrate on disabling the bombs. I have it covered down here. I’ll keep you posted. You do the same.”
He ended the call.
I stared out the side window at the trees whipping back and forth. Angela returned to the kitchen table and was staring at the laptop. Boone stared out the windshield at the Tahoe in the distance. Croc jumped back onto the leather sofa and started chasing a flea on his nether region.
The itch.
I took my cards out and started shuffling. I wasn’t exactly sure how to ease back into the conversation I wanted to have with Boone when deaf Felix nearly flipped us. Hey Boone, as I was saying before we found out about the car bombs, and it’s very likely the president’s daughter is in the Tahoe we’re following, and the only help you have are two kids and a toothless dog, but I wanted to talk to you about this thing I get that I call “the itch.”
I split the deck with one hand, twenty-six cards in each stack, then split it again, then made four perfect fans of thirteen cards each, then folded them back into a complete deck without changing the order of a single card, then I started again.
“Something on your mind?” Boone asked.
Before I could answer, a flash of light in the side-view mirror caught my attention. It caught Boone’s attention too.
“What the …”
There was a car on our tail, flashing its brights on and off.
“Felix?” I asked.
“Not unless he hijacked a jet from the Cracker Barrel,” Boone said. “Whoever it is, if they keep it up, they’re going to tip off the Tahoe.”
“It’s passing us,” Angela said. She was on her feet, looking out the kitchen window.
Boone let up on the gas so the car could pass more easily, but the car didn’t pass. It matched our speed and began honking its horn. I undid my seat belt and leaned over to look.
It was the yellow Hummer.
The Hummer
“What’s he trying to do?” Boone shouted. “Who is he?”
“He’s my dad,” I said.
Angela joined us up front. “He’s supposed to be at Rehab Rock,” Angela said.
“Can’t believe everything you read in the papers.”
“What are you two talking about?” Boone asked.
I told him about seeing the Hummer earlier.
“Are you sure it’s him?”
“I am now,” I said.
“What’s he doing here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, he’s going to ruin everything.”
“He usually does,” I said, feeling terrible even though it wasn’t my fault he was there.
“Maybe it’s a Match groupie who recognized the coach,” Angela said.
I shook my head. The itch. I should have never doubted it. “My dad is in the yellow Hummer honking at us and he’s not going to stop until you let me out.”
“Let you out?” Boone asked.
“It’s the only way. And you need to do it right now.” I pointed through the windshield. The Tahoe taillights were no longer in view.
Boone stared at the dark road ahead.
“My dad’s nuts,” I said. “But he’s harmless … except to himself. I’ll find out what he wants. I’ll slow him down, or get him out of here. We can’t sacrifice the president’s daughter for Speed Paulsen.”
“I’ll pull over and talk to him,” Boone said, letting up on the gas.
“There’s no time!” I said. “Just drop me off and go. You need to catch up with the Tahoe.”
Boone gave me a grim nod, slowed, and started to pull off onto the shoulder. The Hummer dropped back behind us.
“Take Angela’s phone. I’ll have Felix pick you up and talk to your dad on his way south.”
That ought to be an interesting conversation, I thought as I grabbed my coat and Angela’s phone. I was out the door before the coach came to a complete stop. Boone was back on the interstate and heading south before I could turn around and look at the Hummer. Croc was standing next to me. I was surprised. I hadn’t seen him jump out. The wind blew the rain sideways. No one got out of the Hummer. It just sat there twenty feet away with steam rising off the hood. What if it wasn’t my dad? I looked south again. The coach disappeared around a curve. I was getting drenched, but I didn’t move. I wanted to give the coach as big of a head start as possible. Croc was looking up at me like I had lost my mind. But he didn’t know what I knew. My dad had ombrophobia. Speed was afraid of rain. That wasn’t exactly accurate. There was more to it. He didn’t like being out in the rain, or being splashed in a pool, or being squirted with a squirt gun, which I did to him when I was a kid, and watched in horror as he grabbed the gun from me and jumped up and down on it until it was a pile of red plastic dust. His paranoia about getting splashed was a family secret. It was one of the few things the press didn’t know about him. I was now convinced the guy behind the wheel was my dad. I could have stood there all night long, and as long as it was raining, he would not get out of the Hummer.
But if he got frustrated enough, he might run me over. I hadn’t been exactly truthful with Boone when I told him my dad was harmless. He had never hurt me, but he had been arrested a couple of times for assault and battery. And then there was the time he tried to smash his way with a baseball bat onto the sailboat mom and I were living on, which led to Mom getting a restraining order against him. I gave it thirty seconds more, then walked around to the passenger side. The passenger window rolled down.
“Hey, Sport,” he said. He always called me Sport. I’m not sure why. He hated sports. He was leaning as far away from the passenger window as he could. “Why are you standing in the rain, man?”
Definitely my dad. Whether you were a guy, or a girl, or a dog, you were man.
“I wasn’t sure it was you,” I said.
“Why did you think it was me, man?”
This was going to be a lot harder than I thought.
“I thought I saw you at the truck stop, but the Hummer threw me. I’ve never seen you drive a car. I didn’t think you knew how to drive. But when you tried to flag us down, I knew I was wrong about that. Or thought I knew.”
He nodded as if that was a reasonable explanation, and to his addled brain it probably was.
“Hop in, man.”
I opened the back door for Croc, then climbed into the front seat. This was a mistake. As soon as I closed my door, Croc started shaking the water off. My dad started swearing and nearly went through the roof trying to get away from the splatter. I jumped up from my seat and tried to get Croc to stop, but he was having none of that. He was determined to shed every drop of rain. I swear he was grinning at the chaos he was causing. He hadn’t done this when we got back into the coach after spotting the Tahoe, and we were just as wet then. My dad curled up into a ball behind the driver’s seat, with his T-shirt pulled up over his head, stringing together curse words that made absolutely no sense next to each other. After what seemed like an eternity, Croc turned the shower off and laid down as if nothing had happened.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know he was going to do that.”
Dad was either too shook up to speak, or else he didn’t hear me above his rapid-fire cursing. Eventually he ran out of steam, and strange word combinations, and popped his head out of his T like a turtle. He ran his hands through his shoulder-length hair, checking for damp spots.
“What’s the deal with the dog, man?” he asked.
“
He’s not mine. He jumped out when I did.”
He glanced back at Croc. Croc gave him a deep growl.
“Is that Tyrone’s dog?”
“You know Boone?”
“Everybody knows Tyrone Boone, man. I thought he’d been moldering in the grave by now. It blew my mind when I saw him outside the White House.”
“You were in D.C.?”
“Tried to get into the concert there, but of course the Secret Service gestapo wouldn’t let me in.”
“It was invitation only,” I said. Angela and I had passed out a lot of those invitations. If I’d known he wanted to go, I wouldn’t have given him one either. With his arrest record, they wouldn’t have let him in anyway, invitation or not.
“I tried to catch you in Philly, but missed you. So I borrowed this yellow monstrosity from a friend and drove down. I waited for you to leave the White House, and decided to follow and catch you at your next stop. Lost you for a bit, because I had to stop and fill this yellow pig with gas.”
There were some major holes in his story, but there were going to be even bigger holes in my story once I figured what my story was going to be. I wasn’t there to pick his story apart. I was there to stop him from following the coach so Boone could follow the Tahoe. The longer I could keep him on the shoulder shooting the breeze, the less chance he’d have wrecking Operation Medusa.
He looked down the dark road, tapping his ringed fingers on the steering wheel to the rhythm of the windshield wiper. Busy hands. He didn’t know what to do with them without a guitar. Wonder where my busy hands came from?
… tap … tap … tap …
“I guess your mom and what’s-his-name aren’t in the coach.”
He knew that what’s-his-name was Roger Tucker, but I didn’t call him on it. “Yeah, they’re still at the White House. They’re doing a press conference with the president tomorrow for the bombing victims’ relief fund.”
“The bombs.” … tap … tap … tap … “That was a bummer, man.”
I nodded in agreement and thought about the other bombs rolling down the road to kill people.
… tap … tap … tap …
“The reason I knew your mom wasn’t in the coach was that you jumped, and it took off like a shot. No way she’d let you do that if she was inside. What was that all about?”
… tap … tap …
Here we go, I thought. It’s whopper time.
“The second tour truck broke down on its way south. Boone had to head down to see what he could do to get it moving again. Angela and I decided to ride with him. We were getting kind of bored in the White House. Mom and Roger are flying down to the next gig.”
… tap … tap … tap … tap … tap …
“You’d think Boone would have at least made sure it was me before dumping you out in the middle of nowhere, man.”
I lost track of how many taps it took me to come up with an explanation for this.
“He didn’t want to stop at all,” I said. “He’s trying to beat the hurricane so he doesn’t get hung up. No truck, no concert. He was kind of in a panic.”
… tap … tap …
“Thought their next gig was in San Antonio. Weird way to get down to Texas from D.C.”
I shrugged. “I’m just along for the ride. I don’t pick the routes. Boone doesn’t explain much. Angela wanted to jump off with me, but thought she should stay to keep Boone from falling asleep and driving off the road. The guy’s pretty old.”
“Ancient, man.” … tap ... “Surprised he still has a license, man. Tell your mom I can get you a better driver. She’s gonna want a different driver when she finds out he dumped you and drove away.”
“I’ll tell her.”
He stopped tapping and put the Hummer into gear. “Ready to go, man?”
“Go where?”
“Catch your ride before he gets too far ahead.”
“Maybe we could go back to D.C. and I can fly down with Mom tomorrow.”
“I’m your dad, not your chauffeur.” He pulled the Hummer out onto the highway and started south. “I’m heading down to the Florida Keys. The only reason I stopped in D.C. was because it was on my way.”
I doubted that was the only reason. Mom thought he’d show up somewhere on the tour, and she wasn’t looking forward to it. I looked at the speedometer. He was going eighty miles an hour. At that rate, it wouldn’t take him too long to catch up to the coach. Then what?
“What are you going to do in Florida?” I asked, hoping to distract him and maybe slow him down.
“The guy that owns this hog has a place in Largo. I’m going to chill for a couple of weeks. Write some new tunes. Get some alone time.”
Alone time? I wondered again if this was really my dad. I was seeing a side of him I’d never seen before—a side I suspected no one had ever seen. He looked like my dad and talked like my dad, but he wasn’t acting like my dad. He was driving a Hummer. He wanted alone time? The speedometer dropped down to seventy-six miles an hour.
“Speaking of tunes,” he said, “how’s that album of your mom’s doing?”
First, it wasn’t my mom’s album, it was Roger and Mom’s album. Second, he knew very well how their album was doing. Everyone in the music business knew the Match album and their single “Rekindled” were well on their way to going platinum.
“I don’t know,” I lied.
“And she remarried, huh?”
Another lie. Mom’s marriage to what’s-his-name at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco had gotten the royal wedding treatment around the world. You would have had to be dead not to have at least heard about it.
“Yeah,” I said.
“What’s the stepfather like?”
I shrugged noncommittally, even though I liked Roger a lot, except for his vegetarianism.
He gave me a sympathetic look, then reached over and squeezed my shoulder. “Give him time, man,” he said sagely.
It was all I could do not to burst out in laughter. But it did slow him down to seventy-three miles an hour, and there was still no sign of the coach.
“I thought I read somewhere that you were on the Rock.”
Seventy miles an hour.
“I was … for about five minutes. In the front door, out the back. It was the only way I could figure out how to hit the road for a couple of weeks for some incognito. Good advertisement for the rehab facility, and good for me. I’ve been clean for … well … for days.”
I didn’t know if that was true or not, but he did seem pretty lucid for him. There were times in my life where he had looked at me blankly as if he didn’t know who I was. The incognito thing was one of his pipe dreams. He hadn’t done anything to disguise himself. Everyone knew what Speed Paulsen looked like, and to top it off he was driving an SUV that shouted: “Look at me, man!” I was surprised there wasn’t a mile-long line of paparazzi and fans following us.
The speedometer was back up to eighty miles an hour.
Angela’s cell phone rang. It was Boone.
“You okay?” he asked.
I glanced over at Dad. “Yeah. We’re behind you.”
“Maybe not. The Tahoe just turned off I-95 onto 64 East. Have you passed it yet?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What’s your dad up to?”
“He’s headed to the Florida Keys.”
Dad looked over at me. I smiled. “It’s Boone.”
“’Bout time he checked in to see if you were alive, man.”
“What did you tell him?” Boone asked.
“Yeah, I told him about the second tour truck breaking down,” I said.
Boone didn’t say anything for a second or two. I wondered if I’d screwed up.
“Tell him you were mistaken,” he finally said. “Tell him it was an accident, not a breakdown. Tell him there were injuries. Tell him I’m headed to the hospital to check on the drivers before I check on the truck.”
“What about—” I stopped myself just in time. Some secre
t agent I’d make.
Dad pulled into the left lane to pass a slow semi-truck in the right lane. Croc started barking, then jumped into the far back and began scratching at the window.
“Tell him to knock that off!” Dad shouted.
I scrambled into the backseat and grabbed Croc’s collar. He growled, and for a second I thought he was going to bite me, or gum me.
“What’s the matter with you!”
Croc continued to growl. I held on to his collar in one hand and the phone in the other.
“You there, Boone?”
“What’s going on?” Boone asked.
“Croc freaked out. He’s okay now.” I looked at him. “I think.”
“There’s a hospital on the right-hand side of 64, not far from the interchange. The coach will be locked. Go into admissions. Angela will be in the waiting room. If your dad comes in with you, you’ll have to ditch him.”
“What about … ?” Once again I couldn’t finish the question without tipping my dad, but I didn’t want them to lose the Tahoe because of me.
“We caught a break,” Boone said. “John Masters showed up. He’s behind the Tahoe. We’ll catch up to him down the road. I have another call coming in. See you at the hospital.”
He ended the call. I climbed back into the front seat. Croc had stopped growling, but he stayed where he was, staring out the back window.
“Well?” Dad asked.
“I guess it wasn’t a breakdown,” I said. “It was an accident. The drivers are in the hospital. Boone is going to meet me there.” I was surprised at how easily the lie flowed out of my mouth.
Dad nodded. “Where’s the hospital?”
“Up ahead off 64.”
He nodded again as if he knew where that was, which was surprising, because the dad I knew couldn’t find his way around his own mansion without a guide.
I was still feeling the itch … at least I thought it was the itch. It could have been my wet clothes drying in the hot Hummer, but I didn’t think so. When the premonition comes true or shows up like this one, the itch goes away. It’s like someone walking up and scratching your back where you can’t reach. I looked over at my dad. He was staring down the road, tapping the steering wheel to a tune only he could hear. I turned my head and looked at Croc. He was still in the back looking out the rear window. And that’s when I knew. The itch hadn’t been caused by my unexpected appearance—not entirely anyway.
