by Brett Adams
“Hiero told me how one day when he was thirteen, his mother just up and dragged him off to New Mexico, leaving his father, a private detective, in Los Angeles. How for years it had been another term, another move, another school.
“I told him how Mum thought maybe you were having an affair with Aunty Janie.” Heat flashed through my body. God, that’s how Jane got twisted into this.
“I knew that wasn’t true, Dad,” Her fingers gripped my wrist—mistaking my emotion. “And I argued with her. Convinced her. She didn’t really believe it. She was just hurting and confused.
“And to Hiero I tried to describe how you just . . . disappeared. You didn’t go anywhere, but you were just going through the motions. Like you’d been cast in the role of ‘Dad’ but didn’t want the part.
“But at some point during this mutual catharsis with Hiero—I didn’t notice at the time—he stopped talking. And when I finally ran dry, I looked up and found him just staring at me, with a look in his eye I couldn’t name then.
“I can name it now, though,” she said, resigned. “Avarice.”
She fell silent. I could have picked up the story. Some time after that drunken conversation, an email had popped into my inbox. A cold call from a Hieronymus Beck, wanting to do honors, self-funded, on exchange from the US. He wrote, ‘I’ve read every one of your short stories I could get my hands on.’ He loved story. He lived and breathed story.
He’d had me at ‘I’ve read every one of your short stories . . .’
But Tracey’s fault?
That’s ludicrous, is what I wanted to say to Tracey. But a calmer, wiser part of me just took her in my arms again and hugged her tight. It would have to do for an apology for now. My confession wasn’t a luxury we could afford right then.
“What are we going to do?” Her eyes cast about as if a door of escape might open miraculously in our stinking cubicle. She had the look of a hunted animal. “Or we just stay here? Right here. What are they going to do, drag us out past . . .”
I watched the cogs turning in her mind. She was probably totaling up the number of people within three miles of us. The guy behind the shop counter. One. Four or five in cars pulled up at the pumps? Another one eating a microwaved heart attack at the dinette. Seven souls?
Hiero wouldn’t have let us out, particularly let us out together, if he wasn’t prepared to pull the pin here and now, and run the risk of not getting away with it.
Perhaps he was happy to give his novel an abortive ending. My gut told me he wasn’t, but what if I was wrong? I thought of Huck Finn and Jim, and that made me think of Marten Lacroix who didn’t read novels.
Tracey must have recognized my grimness for what it was.
“We could run for it. Or, or—barricade ourselves in the shop behind the counter. This is the US, Dad. The owner is bound to have a gun.”
It took every shred of willpower in me to say, “No.”
She recoiled, but I said it again. “No. We can’t. Not here, at any rate. It’s too isolated. He would take the risk and shoot. I know he would, if he thought we were finished playing his game.”
“But how do you know he’s not going to do that anyway?” The strain pulled at her face, threatened to make it a mask of madness, but it subsided.
“He won’t.” How much could I tell her? Enough to calm her. But not all of it. “Trust me. Please. He has a destination, and we’re not there yet. He won’t try anything until we reach it, because he has way too much riding on it. He’s invested to the core.” Down payment one soul.
I felt the metal teeth of the RV’s key pressing into the soft skin of my thigh. Part of me said that had to stay secret, too. But I had to give Tracey something concrete.
“We’ve got this,” I said, and slipped the key from its hiding place. She glanced at it sitting snug in my palm, and understanding lit her eyes. “If they give us just thirty seconds alone in the van, we’re gone and they’ll never catch us. Just keep your head down, and be ready.”
“In five hours, Dad, they haven’t left us alone in the RV once.”
Without a word she reached into her jeans pocket. She grabbed my hand and over the key placed a cellphone.
All my resolve nearly crumbled in that moment of recognition.
“How did you get this?”
“I stole it.” A blush spread up her neck. I nearly hugged her again. Standing cramped in the men’s toilet plotting for our lives and my little girl felt shame at having stolen someone’s banged up, low-end cellphone. “It’s why I’ve been stopping every opportunity to go to the restroom. Looking for an unguarded handbag.”
Holding the phone up closer I saw that it appeared to be dead. My heart sank. “Battery’s dead.”
“No. I turned it off. I couldn’t be sure if I’d silenced it.”
I gave her a quick hug. She smiled with the ghost of pride. My thumb hovered over the power button.
“Call the police,” she said.
The police. ‘First sniff of police and she dies. And you go to jail for it.’ That’s what Hiero said. Probably bluffing. But what if he wasn’t.
“No,” I said with deep reluctance. “Not the police—not the US police. But I know someone. She’s a friend.”
“A friend.” Tracey’s voice was flat with an emotion I couldn’t read.
“I hope so.”
77
Marten stared through a grimy window of the little office at ranks of Winnebagos for hire. The FBI’s IT wizard, Nick Alvero, had made short work of finding the taxi fare that had picked up Jack et al. a few streets over from the café, and dropped them here, a rust bucket RV Emporium.
The manager of the emporium was right now out there plying his charm on a would-be customer. Either that or he was having a showdown with a local gangster and they were about to brandish sidearms and begin a shootout. It was hard to tell. She guessed you had to be a hard case to keep a business going in this neighborhood.
When at last he came inside, without having exchanged shots, but also without having secured custom, he had plastered on his face what was meant to be a winning smile. After all, he probably thought Marten was another customer.
Marten was about to disabuse him of that notion.
“That guy,” he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at the man in the lot, who was now talking on a cellphone, “does not know his shit. It’s like he came here to convince me a caravan is a better bet than an RV. Like, ‘Yeah, I want to spend my hol-i-day backing the frickin thing.’ Know what I’m saying? Like telling me Batman would beat Spidey.”
Marten couldn’t resist. “He would.”
He stared at her. Then his face split in a grin. “Feisty lady.”
The coquettish smile Marten dredged up seemed to encourage him, but before he could dig himself any deeper, she said. “Feisty police officer.”
“Oh. Shit, eh?” He began to fidget, moving notes for no apparent purpose, and rearranging the strangely large number of cellphones that were scattered across the counter.
“I’m not interested in whatever other businesses—legitimate or otherwise—you have going here. I just want to know about a hire you made yesterday. Okay?”
“Sure, sure,” he said, still playing with the office debris. “Which van? I’m a successful businessman. Had plenty of business yesterday.”
Marten frowned, and spoke slowly. “I don’t know which van. That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
He suddenly turned and fixed a penetrating gaze on her. “You didn’t show me a badge. You might only be a feisty lady.”
Marten felt a tingle of unease and flashed her London badge.
“Feisty, naughty, lady,” he said, and Marten again saw the intelligence betrayed by his gaze. “Your badge don’t amount to much but a Halloween costume here in the borough. And that mongrel accent? A guy could say you were trying to impersonate an officer.”
Hoping that her uneasiness didn’t show (Grover, after all, was just as likely to drop her in it if pr
essed), she said, “I’m conducting an investigation with the full co-operation of the FBI—”
“On your own,” he stated, making it sound like an accusation.
This guy was a rock.
And the clock was ticking.
In a flat tone, she said: “You have a lovely range of RVs. I would like to enquire about the possibility of hiring one.”
Raising both arms in the air, he said, “Ah! Welcome, welcome, lovely lady,” and emerging from behind the counter, “Step this way.”
Minutes later Marten stood on the curb at the point where, sixteen hours ago, Jack Griffen had alighted from a yellow taxi. In her hand she held a note, on which was scribbled in pencil the license plate of the RV that Jack had hired.
She was also the holder of a three day hire of her own RV, which nevertheless was not going to so much as leave the lot, and the advice that no New Yorker could ever imagine a sulky rich man beating Peter Parker.
She retrieved her cellphone and was at the point of calling Grover Jackson to inform him that Jack Griffen was at large in a hired RV, when the phone rang in her hand. The sudden vibration startled her.
The caller number was unfamiliar, but she accepted the call and held it to her ear, curious.
“Marten?”
“Speaking. Who is this?”
“Oh, God, thank you.” And she recognized the voice of Jack Griffen.
“Griffen! Where are you?”
“Sitting on a crapper, with my daughter, Tracey. Tracey’s here.”
“That makes no sense, Jack, but whatever. What is your location? We had you at the café in Chelsea, then lost you. I have the registration of the RV you hired and was about to put it through to the FBI—”
“No, no, no!” His shout was painfully loud. “You can’t do that. Whatever you do: Do. Not. Involve. Police.”
“Jack,” said Marten reasonably. “I’m police.”
“You’re also a friend.” A pause. “Aren’t you?”
“Of course,” she said.
“Good. Then, as my friend, know that if Hiero detects the faintest whiff of police he will start shooting. Do you understand?”
“Jack, I understand, but cops deal with this sort of thing all the time.”
“Not like this.”
“Jack—”
“Not ever with my daughter.”
Marten swallowed what she had been about to say. It was too easy to imagine how she would feel if her son were caught up in this.
“What do you want me to do?”
“God, I don’t know. We’re stopped at a gas station. It’s all my fault.”
“It’s not, Dad” A girl’s voice.
Jack went on.
“I’m a fool. The hours we spent talking about it. I should have guessed sooner.”
“What, Jack?” Marten wished she could reach down the line and slap him. “Talking to who? Spit it out.”
“In Cold Blood—”
The call died.
Marten couldn’t believe it. She stared mutely at the phone, before attempting to call back. But each time an automated voice said the number was unavailable.
78
Fourteen hours since Tracey and I had crept like guilty kids from the gas station restrooms, apparently undiscovered, and sharers now of a common burden. The knowledge that both of us were thrall to murderers.
To me the shared burden, despite age-old wisdom, felt doubled.
In that time we’d stopped three times to replenish the RV’s miserly gas tank. We had crossed into Indiana, Illinois, Missouri. Watched the green fade from the land, and the horizon withdraw into a distance haze.
We’d hit Kansas City three hours ago, at midday. The sun could barely raise a glitter from the brown Kansas River.
Kansas. Fate state. Emblem a lonely farm house.
Behind me, Tracey slept on the camper’s couch. Next to her, Hiero sat upright, eyes shut. Beside me, Ghost was at the wheel, driving in a trance. A half-hour ago he had begun to shrug his shoulders and straighten his arms. Every so often he would drag a palm across his face.
“Tired?” I said.
“Not my first all-nighter,” he said without shifting his gaze from the white line forever unwinding just beyond the RV’s hood from the sun-haze on the dusty windscreen.
In the distance a gas station sign stood like a sentinel, poking above a rare rise in the road.
“No good you planting this thing into a light pole from fatigue. Why don’t we stop. Stretch our legs. Grab a Coke. I need a leak.”
A digital bleeping intruded. Twisting to look into the cabin, I found Hiero fully awake. He silenced the alarm with a flick of his finger upon his watch.
He spoke to Ghost. “Go ahead. Pull in at the next stop. Fill up. Everyone could do with a drink.”
We hadn’t drunk anything for hours. The last stop Ghost had bought only salted crisps and peanuts.
Our RV labored up the last reach of the hill with a whine of its 2.8 liter engine, crested it, and curved down, following the highway as it skirted a tumble of rocks. A cluster of buildings hove into view, and just beyond them, the gas station. Ghost had already left the highway and was in the slip lane when the white bulk of a county sheriff’s SUV appeared, parked out front.
My heart skipped a beat.
The briefest grab of the brakes was the only evidence Ghost had seen it. Then he executed a smooth turn into the pump bay directly across from the sheriff’s car and killed the engine.
Ghost tugged the brim of his cap lower and got out. For a moment I feared Hiero would make me stay. The cop was visible through the dirty plate glass brooding over a half-gallon mug and a newspaper.
But Hiero raised no call as I opened my door and slipped out.
Inside, I found Ghost staring at a wall of candy. The cop was still wedged into a booth not twenty feet away.
A little fantasy played in the cinema of my mind: me, walking calmly over to the policeman. Stooping, I whisper in his ear, “We’re being kidnapped. Please help. But quiet.” The cop turns to look up at me, his gaze serious, believing. “Two men,” I say. “One behind me.” I jerk my head in the direction of Ghost, who is still pondering the sugar wall. “One outside. He has a gun. And my daughter . . .”
My daughter.
I look in the direction of the RV. Hiero’s face fills the cabin window, then disappears. A gunshot explodes in the night air. The fantasy falls apart.
Back in reality, Ghost has moved to the soda station. He has four 32 ounce cups lined up, and is filling them assembly-line style.
While I’m fumbling in my mind for the right sequence of words, Ghost beats me to it.
“I thought you needed a piss?” He pushed the fill button and premix Coke cascaded into a cup.
“I’m clenched tight,” I said. “Probably will never urinate again.” The stream of soda continued to hiss into the cup.
“Do you mind if I sit down with the cop?”
He twisted his head to look at me from beneath his cap, then shrugged. “Your funeral.”
Fighting to master fear and anger, I said quietly, “Whatever he’s got on you, we can work it out.”
“What makes you think it’s like that?”
“You seem sane.”
He turned back to the soda. The shushing noise had risen in pitch, the cup was almost full. Two empty cups remained.
A pretty young clerk appeared, toting a fresh stack of cups. As she refilled the dispenser she glanced at Ghost and his cap. “Don’t get many Yankees fans here.”
Maybe it was a flirt. A blush rose up the sides of Ghost’s neck, but his gaze remained fixed on the cup he was filling. The girl pushed the last cups home into their slot and left.
I tried, “We were never properly introduced.”
Silence.
“Ghostwriter, huh?” I continued. “Orchestrating, laying it out. Getting it down. But you know what ghostwriters never get?”
“No, but you’re going to tell me. You’re the gho
st whisperer.”
“Glory,” I said after a forced laugh. “They never get any glory, even though they’re the ones with the real genius. The real artistry.”
I leaned closer. “If you help me, you could be the hero.”
Soda hissed. From behind me came a rustling and a slap. The cop had folded the paper and thumped it on the table. He coaxed the last drop of whatever was in his mug into his upturned mouth, preparing to leave.
“I’m rich you know. Whatever he’s paying you, I can double it. Treble it.”
“No you can’t; I checked.” He grimaced. “Shit, I had to make a deposit into your account when you were in Hong Kong. Couldn’t have you redlining when you needed to get to Vienna.”
Of course he’d checked.
“I forgot. You’re the IT whizz.”
“No one says ‘whizz’ except old guys.”
The back of his skinny neck screamed at me to throttle it.
He continued: “I’ve hacked grad students. I’ve hacked journalists. Doctors, bankers, cops. I hacked my Mom’s boyfriend—and he was an ex-marine. But you guys, you”—He turned to air quote at me—“‘academics’ are the worst. It’s like you guys think the net isn’t there to eat you. ‘Knowledge should be free!’, huh?” He laughed and slid the last cup under the nozzle.
“You have no idea,” he said, “but when I looked through your department’s email I found a woman, a lecturer, who thinks you have nice eyes. She’s been emailing an admin about you, who said forget it, he’s married.”
It occurred to me that this was the longest utterance I’d ever heard him make.
“But you got owned, yourself, didn’t you?” I prodded.
