Freedom Road

by William Lashner

  The hard cityscape flew by outside the windows—first Chinatown and then Sox Park just beyond the highway—and as it passed he wondered whether it would be Marisol or Erica flying with him over the Pacific to a new life. One moment he was sure he could convince Marisol to take the leap and renew their love on the other side of the world, and the thought filled him with peace. Marisol had owned his heart, she knew his soul, she was the one person who could make him the artist he once believed he could be. But in the next moment he was pining for Erica, her youth and beauty, her boldness and her lack of shits to give. In that moment he was certain that she was the necessary catalyst for living the brave and roguish life he so craved.

  Marisol. Erica. Freedom! Fuck.

  As the train rumbled south, he thought of the next step, the ride west, the hard miles driven while being chased by all manner of demon: the Russian, Delaney, maybe even some deranged detective hired by Erica’s parents. He thought how the squabbles and deprivations that came from life on the road could leave him making the trip alone, a prospect that frightened him to his bones. He needed a muse, someone to push him and guide him and love him, someone to cure the abject loneliness that periodically came over him like an illness and sent him spiraling into depression and ever more drugs. Marisol or Erica, it didn’t much matter as long as there was someone; but would there still be someone by the time he arrived in Santa Monica?

  Then the idea came in a swift and beautiful rush, like all the best ideas do.

  Maybe he didn’t need to drive all the way to California to make the final sale. Bongo was fun, sure, but never the most reliable; it was always a crapshoot with Bongo. Maybe there was another answer. After enough begging the night before, Marisol had finally made the call to set up the meet with her cousin Jorge. Frank had always gotten along with Jorge before the thing with Delaney blew everything sky-high. Good old Jorge, who sure as hell owed him big time. Maybe Jorge could do more than give him a fair price for the quarter kilo. Maybe Jorge could give him a fair price for all of it. Maybe Frank could complete the sale in the here and the now. Maybe he could be winging out from O’Hare by nightfall, tomorrow night at the latest.

  He began to shake with a fevered excitement, so close to everything, so close to true freedom, when the train lumbered into his stop. Garfield, just west of Hyde Park. It was only a few blocks to Green Street.

  The house was just like his old house in Humboldt Park, a Chicago-style single with a covered entranceway and a jutting alcove beside the door. It had probably been a fine house at a different time, but now the lawn was uncut and its next-door neighbor, an identical structure, was boarded up. Across the street was a weedy lot with a lone tree. On the steps, a burly young man tapped on his phone.

  Frank bobbed his head as he stood there, getting into business mode, before he headed up the stairs.

  He had been here before, not at this house in this run-down neighborhood, but on the edge of a life-changing deal.

  About two years before, toward the end of his time in Chicago, sick of the stasis that had overcome his life and feeling middle-aged defeat in his early twenties, he had taken a risk, stepped out of his lane, made his move. If it had worked out, Frank would have made enough money to build that recording studio he had been incessantly talking about, the one that could have started his producing career and finally taken him to the stars.

  At the time, as a side hustle, he had been working for an Irish motorcycle maniac turned drug kingpin, Delaney, delivering product to customers in Humboldt Park, Garfield Park, West Town, and Logan Square. There wasn’t much to it, and as his music career stalled the money was enough to pay for his room, and his drugs, and keep his car gassed. Then Marisol’s cousin Jorge told him of a contact who was looking for some serious merch. And Frank knew about a shipment that Delaney had been having a hard time unloading. Delaney’s stranded shipment and Jorge’s contact seemed like a match made in heaven.

  He should have run the details by Delaney first, but then the profit would have been Delaney’s profit, and the contact would have ended up as Delaney’s contact. So, at Jorge’s urging, Frank told Delaney he’d take care of it all on his own. Delaney had raised an eyebrow to let him know he was on the hook if things turned south, before he okayed the move.

  Of course it all went to shit. The contact was sketchier than Jorge had let on. The arrangements were sketchier than Frank wanted to admit. And then Frank wasn’t smart enough to catch the briefcase switcheroo. Really? Yeah. So what should have been a triumph turned into a disaster.

  When Delaney found out, he ripped Frank’s face apart and gave him a week to get it back, all of it, the money or the drugs. A week. Three days later, without a word to anyone, including Marisol, Frank was in Philadelphia, bunking with an old friend from high school, waiting for the hammer to fall. But though Delaney hadn’t found him, all that waiting only led to despair and defeat and a rampant bit of drug use to quell the swell of loneliness and fear, which led Frank to falling in with the Russian, like he had fallen in with Delaney.

  Frank had a habit of falling in with the worst.

  But this was the end of that. He had sworn to himself this would be the last deal. Take the money and run, baby, run from Chicago, run from America, run from every failure he had ever had into the waiting arms of Freedom!

  “Yo, what’s up?” said the man on the stairs. He was still looking at his phone.

  “Is Jorge in?”

  “What’s in the bag?”

  “Nothing much.”

  The man put aside the phone and wiggled his fingers. Frank handed the backpack over.

  After a quick look, the man stood wearily, handed Frank back the pack, and patted Frank down, tracing his palms over Frank’s legs and ankles and crotch, across his sides, around his belt. Frank had left the gun in the car, along with the rest of the stash. Sometimes carrying a gun only showed fear, not confidence, and this play was all about confidence.

  When he was done, the burly man dropped back down onto the stoop and picked up his phone. “Go on,” he said.

  “The name’s Frank.”

  “Who gives a shit,” he said.

  “Good answer,” said Frank on his way up the stairs.

  It wasn’t an encouraging scene inside the house. A television was on, and a pack of men and women with hard, blank expressions were sprawled on the couch and the floor, watching explosions going off on the screen. One of the men eyed Frank and called out, “That dude’s here.”

  A moment later a woman with blue hair and a tight T-shirt pushed open a swinging door that led to a kitchen and waved Frank inside.

  Jorge sat at a linoleum table in the crappy little kitchen. He smoked a cigarette and held on to a beer. On the table in front of him was an ashtray and a gun. Jorge was tall and lanky, like Marisol, but butt ugly. He smiled weakly at Frank, his face not so much lighting up as cracking, as if the meeting wasn’t his idea of fun.

  The woman with the blue hair sat down next to Jorge, leaned back in her chair, crossed her legs, took the cigarette from Jorge’s fingers. Jorge didn’t invite Frank to sit. Instead, Frank remained standing, like a peasant before a king. Fuck that, Frank thought. He grabbed a chair, pulled it from the table, and sat like it was nothing.

  “Your ass shouldn’t be here, Frankie man,” said Jorge with his little lisp that could be endearing or threatening, depending.

  “In and out,” said Frank.

  “You better be right. Where’s your boy Hunter?”

  “I left him with a friend in Philly.”

  “Too bad. I always liked that dog. You know, I wouldn’t see you at all if it wasn’t for Marisol making the ask. I can’t believe she’s still giving you a lift after what you did on her. She was so worried, you leaving like you did, and not a word from you.”

  “I’m trying to make it up to her.”

  “Maybe you could make it up to her by leaving again.”

  “I’m leaving as soon as our business is done. I’m just
here to make a deal.”

  “Okay then. What you got for me?”

  “This,” said Frank as he pulled a small packet wrapped with gray tape out of his backpack and tossed it onto the table. It landed with a thud.

  “What is it?”

  “H. Prime. Strong as shit.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “I got it, what does it matter?”

  “It’s nice to know you didn’t get no smarter.”

  Jorge grabbed hold of the packet, weighed it in his hand, gave it a sniff, and then put it on the table in front of the woman. She kept smoking for a bit before she squashed the cigarette into the ashtray, grabbed the packet, and headed down a set of stairs to the basement.

  “You still singing?” said Jorge.

  “Sure.”

  “Where?”

  “Philadelphia.”

  “You going back?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then where you headed now?”

  “LA. Santa Monica. You ever been to the beach at Santa Monica?”

  “Nah, man.”

  “It’s like miles wide and white as cocaine.”

  “You been?”

  “Not yet, but I’ll be there soon.”

  “That’s good. I was sorry how that other thing turned out. But you know, my cousin, she’s working now.”

  “Advertising,” said Frank.

  “She’s making pretty decent bank. And she’s got this boyfriend who’s got himself a business. She’s in a good place now, my cousin, and my aunt, well she’s talking about a baby. You know she only had the one daughter, which means she’s been waiting. And it wasn’t like you were gonna get it done. So I got to say, I wasn’t so happy to hear you was back.”

  “Like I said . . .”

  “Yeah, like you said.”

  Just then the girl came back with the packet, a blue piece of tape now over the gray. She sat down and tossed it onto the table.

  “How much?” said Jorge.

  “A quarter.”

  “Any good?”

  “Too good.”

  “All right, Frankie man. Five thou.”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Now you’re making jokes.”

  “Ten then, and let’s say a hundred forties.”

  “Cotton?”

  “For a friend.”

  “Go home, bucko.”

  “This is pure. You’ll be cutting it every which way before it hits the street or you’ll be losing customers, if you know what I mean. It’s a bargain at ten. And if you go with that, I can get you more. Same quality.”

  “How much more?”

  “I could load you up, man.”

  “How much more?”

  “A full five k.”

  “That’s like, two hundred.”

  “It’s not like anything,” said Frank. “It is what it is.”

  “Wow. Frankie, man. You hit the mother lode, didn’t you, motherfucker. Maybe my cousin missed a good bet with you after all. Wait, two hundred, that’s about how much you owe Delaney, isn’t it?”

  “Fuck Delaney,” said Frank.

  “Yeah, I get you. Sorry about how that turned out. Your face don’t look so bad, you want to know the truth. So when could you get it?”

  “Tonight if you want.”

  “It’s in the city?”

  “We can arrange a meet.”

  “I bet you’ll be a little more careful with the briefcases this time.”

  Frank waited for the laughter to die. He was so close to closing the deal he could taste the marmalade on the croissant.

  “So, Jorge,” said Frank, “are you big enough to handle it all?”

  “Am I big enough?”

  “I’m just asking. I don’t want to waste my time.”

  “Maybe I wasn’t before,” said Jorge. “Back then I’d be stretched to buy the quarter, you know what I mean? But things have changed. I’m flusher than I was, and I got me a new partner.”

  Frank felt a sense of unease at that last word, “partner.” That meant someone else had entered the equation. But Frank didn’t realize all of what was happening until Jorge went and picked up the gun.

  When he heard the footsteps climbing the basement stairs, it came to him, the truth of things.

  “Sorry about this, Frankie man,” said Jorge, waving the gun loosely. “Except, you know, my aunt, she so wants that little baby, and I had to think of her in this whole messed-up situation.”

  Frank bolted out of his seat and tried to smash his way through the swinging kitchen door, but the door bashed back, hitting him like a right hook to the face and knocking him off his feet. He was sitting on the floor, holding the blood back from his smashed-in nose, when the person who had been waiting in the basement finished climbing the steps and stood in the doorway.

  “Well now, what a sweet thing this is,” said Delaney, broad as a bull, a gold hoop in his ear, and his smile a smear of malevolence. “Frankie boy has finally come home.”

  When Delaney’s boot stamped down on Frank’s knee, releasing a kaleidoscope of pain, the crack of the blow and Frank’s own scream combined into a death knell for all the unrequited yearnings of Frank Cormack’s pathetic little life.

  23

  FAST CAR

  The skyline of the city appears like a ghost in the distance. As he drives toward it, the shape and rhythm pull a complicated longing from Oliver, even as it mocks the very emotions it evokes. And right in the middle of the jagged cityscape, rising above all the other massive obelisks, is the Sears Tower, standing tall like his father, staring down with stark disappointment at his younger son.

  Was it worth it? his father demands. Was leaving your life for some utopian fantasy everything you ever hoped?

  “No.”

  What have you achieved, Oliver?

  “Nothing.”

  What do you regret?

  “Everything.”

  What gift have you bequeathed to humanity?

  “Grief.”

  Where is the girl you threw it all away for?

  “Dead.”

  How did she die?

  “I killed her.”

  Just as I always knew, the old man says. The wrong son died and the world has paid the price.

  “Go to hell,” says Oliver Cross in his imagined dialogue with what was once the tallest building in the world, but the dialogue might not have been so imagined after all.

  “What did I do now?” says Ayana. The dog looks up at him as if to echo the girl’s question.

  “I didn’t say anything,” says Oliver.

  “You just told me to go to hell.”

  “That wasn’t directed at you. But save it anyway. I’m sure it will come in handy.”

  “Then who were you talking to?”

  “A dead man.”

  “Do you often talk to the dead?”

  “Whenever I can.”

  “Because they don’t talk back, I suppose.”

  “Wrong,” says Oliver. “Talking back is all they do. But these days I have more in common with the dead than the living.”

  “And yet here you sit.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “You’re just so sad, Oliver. You’d bring me to tears if I didn’t know you.”

  “There,” he says. “That thing I said you should save. Use it there. But it could be worse. I could be nineteen again and think I’m something. I’m pulling over. Give the dog a walk before we hit the city.”

  “Does he have to go already?”

  “He’s a dog. He always has to go.”

  As Ayana walks Hunter along a ditch, Oliver climbs out of the car, steps to the road, and looks to the left. A few cars slide by, a van, a pickup, nothing he recognizes. He took a few turns this way and that as they passed through small towns on the way to Chicago, and he saw no motorcycle behind him. Maybe it was nothing after all and the dope had made him paranoid; it had been known to happen.

  While he stands by the road he slips the p
hone out of the inside pocket of his jacket. He asked Fletcher to see if the police had found a list of contacts on Frank Cormack’s phone or from the cloud. He told his son not to ask for anything specific, just request a look at the names and numbers to see if anything rang a bell. And then to find an entry for some Marisol. This is the third time he’s checked to see if Fletcher has come through.

  Nothing. Not a thing. But what else could Oliver expect from his son? So many unions to bust, so little time.

  When the girl and the dog are back in the truck, they start again toward the big city that was his home. Returning once more as an exile, he remembers the poem Helen used to recite to the girls. Hog butcher for the world. Tool maker. Stacker of wheat. Helen always thought it was so romantic; to Oliver, now, it sounds like a Costco.

  “I’ve never been to Chicago before,” says the girl.

  “It’s just another city.”

  “What fabulous things are there to see?”

  “Buildings,” says Oliver. “Crowds. Traffic. Sewers.”

  “You’re such a romantic.”

  “What’s wrong with sewers? Where would we be without sewers? Sitting in crap, that’s where we’d be.”

  “Like this truck, for instance.”

  He drove on for a moment, thinking. “In Chicago,” he says, finally, “they have the best hot dogs in the world.”

  “Really?”

  “Scout’s honor, though I’m no Scout.”

  “The best hot dogs in the world. Now that sounds like something. I’m all for that. Let’s eat a dog, no offense there, Hunter.”

  “Sure,” says Oliver. “We’ll find us a dog. But first, we need to do some shopping.”

  “Act natural,” says Oliver as he and the girl walk toward the store. “And don’t go blabbing about all nervously, or more nervously than you normally blab about.”

  “Why would I be nervous?” says Ayana.

  “That’s it exactly. You shouldn’t be. So play it just like that. We’re thinking of buying a guitar. You’re going to try some out, strum a little. I’ll look on like the loving grandfather.”