by D J Mcintosh
“No,” she mumbled, sipping the coffee and holding her head. “I might not be alive when you get back.”
I blew her a kiss and left.
I filled Dr. Cass’s prescription at the local Duane Reade, but after reading all the cautionary notes, decided not to risk any dizziness before a long drive. I reached the library before it opened. By mid-morning I’d found Walker’s essay, photocopied the fifty pages, and was back on the road. Rain misted the windshield but thankfully didn’t slow traffic.
My Maserati had been totaled in the accident that took my brother’s life. I used to love letting my car rip on country drives. Now I put on J-Kwon and pushed the Porsche up to seventy-five. It had been a while since I’d tasted the true freedom of the road. It felt good.
Heavy clouds turned the sky into a dense curtain of gray and the wind blew across the fields with a vengeance. An hour before Albany the rain hit again in earnest. Flat sheets of it whipped sideways at the cars. The pavement turned slippery, water sprayed out from wheels, and even with the wipers slapping away I could barely make out the cars in the southbound lanes. Traffic both ways slowed; it felt like driving through an endless waterfall. A red glow from the truck taillights ahead of me faded and disappeared.
I had to continually nudge the brakes, but the Porsche did its job and gripped well. A typical cloudburst would briefly drench the landscape and then lift as the tempest passed through. Not this time. The weathermen, predicting a major storm, had been right after all. The drenching kept up for almost an hour until it dropped to a steady rain and more than a few feet of highway became visible again. I’d planned to stop near Albany for a bite, but I’d lost so much time I decided to keep going.
Mistake. I tuned in to the forecast and heard that the deluge, on top of yesterday’s rain, had caused the Mohawk River and Erie Canal to overflow their banks. Flooding in the railway bed had forced Amtrak to halt all train traffic. Sure enough, about twenty minutes outside Albany, when the highway turned west toward Rotterdam Junction, traffic began to crawl. Up ahead I could just make out yellow barriers and red lights slicing through the gloom. As I inched up, the police, standing in front of emergency vehicles, waved all the cars off to the ramp. Beyond the exit, a propane tanker had flipped onto its side. It lay like a beached whale in a lake of water that had gathered in a dip on the Thruway, a silver SUV crumpled against its nose and a red Honda smashed against its tail. They’d draped an orange blanket over what was left of the Honda driver’s side window, the car so wrecked it looked as if it had gone through a compacter. One of those heart-sinking moments. You knew the driver couldn’t have made it out alive.
A hand-lettered sign propped up against a cruiser read PORTIONS OF THRUWAY FLOODED. MUST DETOUR. Most of my fellow travelers followed each other like a long line of ants, turning their cars southbound on the Thruway to head back. I considered following suit. Under good conditions I’d be only an hour from Strauss’s. At this point it made more sense to carry on, so I got off the highway altogether and tried to find another route. The 5 was closed and the 5S too close to the river for my liking. I’d have to climb north and pick out a lateral course to Herkimer, the village closest to Strauss’s place. The farmland and forest I now traversed, with the odd house and barn in the distance, would have been pleasant on a bright summer day, but the rain had turned gullies into rushing torrents and creeks into raging rivers. Hollows in the road became muddy ponds. On one bridge, the water level almost spilled over the roadbed. And the rain, although no longer violent, continued to fall with a steady drumbeat on the roof of the car. My breath caught in my throat when a fox, its coat dripping wet, leapt out of the wood in front of me. I missed it by inches.
The GPS kept sending me into flooded roads; again and again I had to turn back and look for alternative routes west. This led me to increasingly worse thoroughfares until I found myself on a one-lane stretch of sopping gravel. Only the power of the car kept me from getting mired in mud. I silently thanked the Porsche gods. Even aside from the risk of an accident, I felt tense and apprehensive. If the car got stuck there was no guarantee of finding shelter. While not cold enough to snow or produce freezing rain, it was chilly and I had no boots with me, just an overcoat. My stomach was turning somersaults from lack of food. At least I wouldn’t run out of water, I thought grimly.
It was now well into the afternoon. I hadn’t seen the sun all day and already the sky was growing darker. I reached a bridge. Made of bolted metal and anchored at both ends by stone bases, it looked as if it had been built out of rust. Heavy forest cloaked it on either side, restricting visibility so that an oncoming car would have no room to avoid me. I could see water rushing underneath the vertical gaps in the bridge’s iron platform, the metal so worn and corroded I wasn’t sure it would hold. The car crept forward and the metal sang and bent under its weight.
I made it across and carried on. When the road forked I slowed down and realized there was only one choice if I wanted to keep heading west, a secondary gravel road that would take me close to the point where I could find a route south to Herkimer. I cursed silently when a battered cargo van sprayed muddy water onto my car as it sped past, almost hitting me. Who the hell would pass in these conditions? After I’d mounted a crest in the road I started to follow it sharply down into a glen. To one side was an old trailer, so deteriorated I couldn’t believe anyone still lived there. Bicycles, garden implements, and barrels lay scattered beside a dirt path leading to its door. On the other side the van that passed me had slid into the gully and was now acting as a kind of dam, forcing the gully water to form a shallow pond over the roadbed. The door to the van was open.
A man lay sprawled beside it on the ground, face down in the mud.
Was it a heart attack? I made it out of the Porsche in seconds and whipped out my phone to call 911. He pulled out a gun as he lurched up and fired at me.
Twenty-Two
The shot went wild. Before he had a chance to squeeze off a second shot, I scrambled behind the protection of the Porsche. I hadn’t shut off the ignition. I leapt into the car and gunned it straight at the guy.
He tried to run but I hit him, a soft thud as he slammed up against my windshield, cracking the glass. The impact flung him into the air. His body hit the side of the van and fell to the ground. He lay still.
I glanced at the decrepit trailer, afraid someone might come out with guns blazing. All was silent, so I got out of my car again, shaking now, and went over to him. He was a slim, short man with a rough-looking, mud-streaked face. I pressed my fingers to his neck and found a pulse. A search through his pockets revealed some wet dollar bills, the key fob for the van, and a black plastic device that I guessed might be a chip tracker. A metal ornament with an image of flames burning in a vase dangled from the dash inside the cab. I cast around for his gun but couldn’t see it and didn’t want to waste time looking. Taking the chip tracker and his key fob with me, I got back into my car and tore down the road.
I couldn’t believe what I’d done. But driving straight toward the guy had been my best option. If I’d just taken off he would have followed me in his truck and tried to run me off the road or shoot at me again.
I kept my speed up, hoping to find a place to turn in. I had the chip tracker, if that’s what it was, so I could no longer be followed, but I didn’t want to take any chances. Salvation came in the form of a garage and gas bar, two miles farther along. It sat at a bleak crossroads in the middle of nowhere, a tow truck and some combines parked on the asphalt in front. I pulled up, and ignoring the rain, got out and quickly scanned my car. The right front headlight was broken and the metalwork around it scratched and crumpled from where I’d hit the shooter. I got a tissue out of my pocket and ran it over the damaged light but couldn’t spot any blood. The rain must have washed it away. After groping along the underside of my car, I located the tracer underneath the front bumper, pried it off, and stuck it in my pocket.
Just then the red neon WE’RE OPEN Coca-C
ola sign blinked off to a green WE’RE CLOSED. A blond-haired guy who looked like he could hoist a truck with one hand walked out of the garage and shut the door.
“Any chance you can help me out?” I said.
He stopped under the overhang and looked me up and down, then checked out the Porsche splattered with mud. His gaze flicked to the crack in the windshield and the broken headlight. “Rough way to treat it,” he said. “Car like that.”
“I’ve been driving around for hours, got lost a thousand times. The freeway’s closed. A rock hit my windshield and wrecked it. Could I leave it here and have you fix it? Any chance you’d have a replacement car?”
“You can leave it here if you want till you git where you’re goin’. I can tow her into the mechanic in Utica when the rain lets up. Can rent you some wheels for now—how’s that?”
“Fantastic, I’d appreciate that very much.”
He took me back inside where we did the paperwork. I paid him in cash and added a hundred for a tip to reward his discretion. He asked me to leave the loaner car at the mechanic’s shop when I picked up the Porsche the next day. I bought a pop and a package of chips then got a spare pair of jeans out of my trunk. He gave me the keys to an older model Ford Taurus and I was on my way.
I kept a close eye out for anyone following me but chances were there’d been just the one guy. I hurled the chip, the tracker, and the van’s key fob into a ditch rushing with water.
Turning south toward the village of Herkimer, I saw it was less than half an hour away. Being so close to the Erie Canal, the place had suffered badly from the downpour. The low-lying parts lay awash in water: houses and commercial buildings like tiny islands marooned in a lake, vehicles drowned, trees uprooted and submerged like wet logs. I had to ford a main street transformed into a fast-flowing stream. On the outskirts, away from the canal, an inn advertised vacancies. The place was a touch shabby, but, as I discovered, the sheets were clean and the water hot. I’d never been so glad to see a $65 room.
I changed into the dry jeans but kept on my shirt. It wasn’t too wet. Nothing I could do about my shoes. The owner kindly threw my wet stuff in her dryer, and even better, sat me down in the lounge and fixed me a hot roast beef sandwich with farm mashed potatoes and a coffee. No one else was there. They were either helping the emergency workers or standing guard on the home front. “Rain’s letting up now,” she said as she brought over the coffeepot to refill my cup. “’Spect the worst is over.”
“Sure hope so,” I replied. “A lot of damage in the town.”
Her eyes darkened. “People’ve died in this more than likely. Somewheres along the canal. State’ll have to give us disaster relief. You from New York?”
“Yes.” Not hard to guess with my accent.
She raised her eyebrows as if to suggest this wasn’t a point in my favor. “Come to Herkimer for sightseeing? Bad choice in this weather I’d say.”
“No. I’m on my way to see someone and I can’t get there along the canal route or on the Thruway. Any chance you can explain how else I could reach it?” I told her the address and then mentioned Strauss’s name, figuring someone that famous would be well known around here.
Her face dropped.
“Do you know him?”
“Not well. He keeps private. That’s fine with us around here. People don’t like him. He hardly ever comes into town, but when he does he has the sidewalk all to himself. People stop to let him pass.”
“Why is that?”
“Some older ones think he can put spells on ’em. Believe he can call on the spirits. I don’t have those fancies. But I know he keeps wild animals. My nephew saw one once when he and a couple of his friends tried to prowl around that place of his. Unless your business is pressing, I’d give the magician a miss.” She gave me a motherly pat on the arm and sidled back to the kitchen.
I wolfed the meal down like it was filet mignon and went through almost a jug of coffee. I couldn’t get anything but voice mail for Strauss, and left a message saying that I’d show up the next day, weather permitting. When I reached Bennet on her phone I gave her a snapshot of my trials, omitting the gunfire.
Back in my room, the events of the day crowded in on me. The innkeeper’s warning resonated—only a veneer of gentility masked Strauss’s mercurial personality and I believed him capable of trying to kill me. But he had no reason to. Quite the opposite: he wanted me very much alive to pursue Helmstetter and the book. Yersan, on the other hand, might want me out of the way to more easily obtain the cylinder seals and the statue. That little decorative item in the shooter’s truck depicting the Zoroastrian symbol of a flaming vase pointed the arrow straight at him.
Reporting the assault to the police was out of the question. I couldn’t prove I’d been shot at and risked getting charged with hit and run. Nor did I think the gunman, assuming he’d survived, would make any official complaints. If he died I’d probably end up in deep shit. It wouldn’t take long for the cops to question the locals and a damaged Porsche would definitely pique their interest. Something else continued to eat away at me: I hadn’t spared a second to think about the consequences of aiming my car at another human being. Yes, the fear of getting shot had put me on autopilot. But even after I knew I was safe, I hadn’t cared about the man’s condition at all. Atrocious sights were the norm in Iraq, and I’d been directly involved in a few of them. Cass was right. I had PTSD, and it had taken not only an emotional toll but a moral one as well. With no energy left, I crawled into bed and slept like the damned.
At breakfast the next morning the innkeeper shook her head and gave me directions to Strauss’s place—another convoluted route but one that, for the most part, kept me away from the canal. The rain had finally stopped, although it was still cloudy and even colder. Pleasant enough territory at the right time of year, it now felt like a freezing, watery hell.
Strauss lived on an isolated stretch of land. I had to take such a roundabout route that I found myself retracing territory I’d come in on. Bennet had told me Strauss had fashioned his home by converting a once bustling mill where grain was processed and packaged, then sent down the canal to New York. The outbuildings and silos where farmers stored their grain were long gone but the original red-brick mill remained. The canal banks up and down the state were littered with these reminders of past prosperity, many of them now sad derelicts, rust-belt victims of jobs sent offshore.
In summers when he was home, Samuel would often take me to the Great Lakes—Erie and Ontario. I remember being fascinated by the canal, where we’d often stop for a picnic lunch before driving on again. In those days it seemed a semi-tropical paradise. I’d chase the monarchs and viceroys that fluttered among the wildflowers, lie on my stomach to scoop up water spiders spinning on the canal surface, watch for leopard frogs or the white bodies of slow-moving carp weaving through the water. And yet, in my child’s mind, the canal always gave me an eerie feeling. There was something about the still, flat water; when the sun was at its strongest it took on a poisonous green hue. For some time I’d even thought that’s why it was called the Eerie Canal until Samuel laughed and corrected me.
The last stretch having taken me through a small forest of spruce and cedar dappled with white birch, I arrived at Strauss’s place around ten. High chain-link fencing encircled the densely wooded property. I could see no sign of a house. Nor was there another car in the little gravel parking area. I walked up to the gate. The buzzer had a street number and a single name—strauss. When I pressed it I got no response. After punching it a second time, the gate slid open and nearly caught me as I went through. A narrow asphalt path littered with fallen leaves and spruce needles led straight forward. Mist hung in the air and moisture, almost like a fine rain, dripped off the trees. My shoes hadn’t entirely dried overnight and I shivered from the cold, pulling my now very wrinkled overcoat closer around me. Low-hanging cedar branches rustled ahead. As I looked toward the sound, I thought I detected movement and stopped in my trac
ks.
Another twist of the branches startled me. And then out from the trees came a flash of brown and white. A fawn. It couldn’t have been more than a week old; it was still unsteady on its feet. It stared at me with its huge chocolate-brown eyes, flicked its big ears, and dashed off again into the cover of the wood. I gave an inward sigh and relaxed, continuing up the walk until I heard another noise close by. A huffing sound, one I wasn’t familiar with. Something large crashed its way through the bush. The branches parted ahead. A black shape emerged, a blond snout, claws, small ears flat to its skull and beady eyes. The bear turned toward me and reared on its hind legs.
I practically swallowed my heart and ran, despite knowing I could never outpace a bear. The gate was locked. I reached the fence, the chain link still so wet that I couldn’t gain purchase. I chanced a look behind: no sign of the bear. I calmed down a little.
And then it came to me: fawns were born in spring, not in the depths of winter. I marched back to the spot where it had appeared. The little brown-and-white spotted body danced in front of me again before it vanished. A few yards on, the black bear stood on its hind legs once more. I walked toward it and pushed my hand into its fur, feeling only a spruce branch and thin air. Strauss must be employing the most recent special effects technology. Coupled with my natural fear, the trick worked well.
Another fifteen minutes down the path and the trees gave way. A weak sun peeked out from the cloud cover. A flat-roofed structure came into view; it looked like all the other abandoned factory buildings along the canal. It was three stories high with potted and worn brickwork. There was no door. All the windows on the first floor had been boarded up on the inside. Water, several inches deep, lay on the ground surrounding the building. The canal glimmered behind it. I gritted my teeth and slopped through the water, soaking my shoes all over again. The front facing the canal had no proper entrance either, just a wide opening about the size of a double garage door. A low concrete ramp, green with slime, extended from the opening to the canal, only ten yards away. I hoisted myself onto the ramp and went inside.
