I dumped my bag into the trunk and took my leave of my aunt.
She kissed my cheek. “You take care now, hear?”
“That I will. See you in a week or two?”
She smiled. “I guess you will.”
***
Rain fell off and on throughout the morning, but by the time I reached Montgomery, the skies had cleared, and the sun was a hazy white disc overhead. It was warm enough, and humid enough, that I’d turned on the car’s AC. Yet another sign I’ve been living up north, I thought.
The Waffle House parking lot was three-quarters full at ten A.M., with half a dozen spots open next to the restaurant itself. Following Micha’s instructions, I parked my car at the back of the lot and headed inside with my bag slung over my shoulder.
Inside, the place was hopping. The overworked hostess handed me off to a waiter, who led me back to a booth next to the restrooms. I ordered a serving of grits and redeye gravy and a pot of coffee.
The grits and gravy were delicious. The coffee, hot and strong. Once I finished off my grits, I leaned against the wall with my cup cradled in both hands. From here I had a clear view of the restaurant—the middle-class families with their kids, on a driving vacation to who knows where. More than a few truckers. The locals, farmers mostly, on a break from their Saturday market. No sign of Micha, yet, but I didn’t expect her for another hour at least.
Eleven A.M. The waitress took away my empty plate. The customer at the table next to me got up and paid her bill, only to be replaced moments later by an elderly black man. I ordered a second pot of coffee and a hamburger with fries. My stomach was jumping from nerves. One more hour, then I could hand off the spy business to Micha.
I had gone to refill my coffee cup when I heard a familiar voice.
“Janet. So glad you found your way here.”
I froze. Micha?
Slowly I turned my head toward the voice. The old man was grinning at me. When he—she—tilted her head, I finally recognized her. Micha’s hair was entirely gray and clipped close to her skull. A scar twisted over her cheek, changing the shape of her face and adding deep lines where none had existed before. She wore baggy overalls over a white shirt that had seen better days.
“I didn’t recognize you,” I said softly. “Did you lose weight?”
Micha laughed soundlessly. “Something like that.”
The waitress had returned with her order pad. Micha swiveled around with a brilliant smile. “Oh, honey, you are just in time. I was about to expire from hunger. Lessee. Can I get me a pot of that fine coffee, a short stack, and a plate of hash browns? Oh, and don’t forget the hot sauce. It’s all that keeps my blood pumping.”
Her voice had changed as much as the rest of her. Now it was deep and raspy, with the lilt of the South. I turned back to my hamburger and fries. Micha and I didn’t speak again until the waitress returned with Micha’s order.
“What comes next?” I murmured.
“We take things slow. Finish off your meal. Take your time. After you pay your bill, make a trip to the restrooms. You will meet a tall dark stranger who answers to the name Isabelle. Do exactly what she tells you to do. I’ll meet up with you in the parking lot.”
Orders given a step or two at a time. How much practice did Micha have, handling a newbie spy?
But I followed her instructions exactly, lingering over my excellent hamburger, even though my appetite had vanished. I paid my bill, left a tip, then wandered back to the women’s restroom.
A tall black woman waited just inside. Her coloring was a shade or two lighter than mine, but not by much, and she was maybe an inch taller, but she had a heft and weight that resembled mine. I had just enough time to take in all those details before she pulled me inside and locked the door.
“My name is Isabelle,” she said. “Take off those clothes.” When I hesitated, she made an impatient gesture. “Hurry. We only have a few moments.”
Without waiting for me, she stripped down to her underwear. I skinned out of my jacket, T-shirt, and trousers, then changed into the clothes she had discarded—patched and baggy overalls, a long-sleeve T-shirt, and a Rangers baseball cap.
“Give me your cell and the keys to your car,” she said. “Is that list inside the car? The one for the medical centers? No? Hand that over too. And your credit card.”
I did. “What if my aunt calls?”
“Then she’ll get a message saying your voice mail is full. Didn’t your friend explain all that?”
She did not. And no, she’s not my friend.
“Best if we exchange bags, too,” Isabelle said. “No telling who’s watching.”
She dumped the contents of her bag onto the floor. We had nearly completed the exchange when the door rattled. “What the hell is going on in there?”
Oh shit.
“Take my bag,” Isabelle whispered. “Once you hear me gone, get yourself out the back door. Look for the Ford pickup with the Tennessee license plate G49 77X, Warren County.”
She shoved me into the nearest stall, along with her bag, which now contained my belongings. I huddled on the seat while I heard her open the door and explain how the lock must’ve gotten stuck, and she was sorry if she made any trouble.
There was a muttered exchange. Then, the sound of the outer door swinging open and shut, followed by running water.
I waited another couple moments, then ventured out of the stall. A young white woman stood by the sinks, washing her hands. She shot me a glare. I ducked my head and hastily washed my hands before scurrying out the door.
Isabelle was nowhere in sight. To my left was a metal door, clearly a service entrance. That in turn led me into the parking lot, near the dumpsters.
I found the pickup truck at the far end of the parking lot—a dirty dark blue truck with a bumper sticker for the Democratic Progressive Party, and another for a local baseball team. One of the tires looked to be low on air, and there was enough rust flaking off the doors and the underbelly of the truck that I wondered if we would make it out of the parking lot.
The doors were unlocked, the windows rolled completely open. I slung my bag inside and climbed into the passenger seat. The vinyl seats had cracked sometime in the last millennium, and the stuffing had escaped to the point where I thought I could feel the metal frame. Damn. There was such a thing as too much attention to detail.
“Beautiful truck, don’t you think?”
I jumped.
Micha leaned against the driver’s side of the truck.
“As long as we don’t break down before the next stoplight,” I said gruffly.
“We shall not. I promise.”
As if to make her a liar, the truck needed two tries before the engine turned over, and even then, it continued to sputter as Micha guided it through the parking lot to the exit. “We’ve made good time this morning,” she said. “I’m thinking four, five hours to the next stop. That should give me plenty of time to explain the situation.”
“Oh, has Sara shared more information with you?”
She hesitated, and for once her expression turned anxious. “Yes. But I can’t explain here. Let’s get away from Montgomery first. We don’t want to wait around for any watchers.”
That reminder, that someone might have traced Micha from DC to here, that someone might have watched my movements more closely than I realized, was enough to stop my questions.
For now.
16
A few miles outside the city limits, Micha pulled off the highway onto the local roads. We had not left Montgomery entirely behind—beyond the city and its suburbs came the run-down neighborhoods, built from shacks and the remains of strip malls. Micha set a zigzag course through the streets, half of them paved, half dirt, pausing once or twice to check her maps, but also to glance in the rearview mirror.
“Do you really think we’d see them?” I asked.
“What I really think is they’ll follow Isabelle if they follow anyone at all. But in case someone decides t
o ask questions around here later . . . We’re two ordinary black folk looking for my great-aunt Mary’s address.”
She took the next left into a narrow alleyway, where our truck scraped between two brick buildings. Once these had been a garage and an old-fashioned department store, according to the rusted signs. Now the few windows gaped empty and dark, piles of trash blocked the metal service doors, and the bricks looked as though someone had sprayed them with gunfire.
The New Civil War had wounded more than soldiers these past five years. How long before the war ended? How long after that before neighborhoods like this one rebuilt themselves?
The abandoned brick buildings gave way to a series of shacks, which didn’t end as much as they collapsed into heaps of rotted wood, lost in a sea of weeds and shoulder-high grass. Micha guided our trunk over the dirt road until we eventually met up with a more official road, such as it was.
“Now?” I said.
Micha gave one last glance around. “Now.
“Our deadline has shifted,” she said. “Sara tells me that Our Enemy intends to launch their . . . effort by next week. No, Sara did not explain what that effort might be, nor what caused this sudden change. All I know is that we must get ourselves across the border to a small town, the name of which you don’t need to know. There Sara has promised to explain all.”
“She didn’t say why she needs a surgeon?”
“She did not.”
I sucked my teeth. “I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I, but for different reasons.” She shot me a sidelong glance. “Tell me now if you want out. I can drop you back in Montgomery. Isabelle can hand back your car and your cell. You can forget about Sara. Tend to your own family’s needs.”
Jesus. I hadn’t realized how much I wanted just that until she made me the offer. Speaking of Christ and temptation. Oh, Father, won’t you take this burden from me?
“You sure know how to push those guilt buttons,” I said.
“Learned from the best teachers in the world,” Micha replied sweetly.
I scowled and hunched down in my seat. Her offer was sincere. I could abandon the quest now, this moment. I could return to my life as a respected surgeon at Georgetown University Hospital, with my high-tech device, and reclaim both my career and my sense of self.
The life Sara Holmes had gifted me, back in December.
There was also the small matter of Nadine Adler, who had murdered all those veterans and soldiers with her poisoned drugs, as surely as if she’d injected them herself. The scars on my back, where she’d shot me last October, seemed to draw tight.
“I’m afraid,” I said at last.
“You should be. You’re a sensible person.”
“Then why did I agree in the first place?”
Micha shrugged. “Because you love Sara, just as I do. Because you and she believe in that ridiculous romantic ideal of justice.”
At that I did laugh. “So why are you here? You aren’t the least bit romantic.”
Her gaze remained fixed on the road ahead, but I had the sense she watched me closely. “Perhaps not. But Sara is my favorite cousin. Even if I didn’t owe her countless favors . . . But this is going far afield of the question. Do you wish me to call Isabelle?”
“No,” I said softly. “I— No, I don’t.”
“Okay, then.”
We drove on through the greening countryside, the fields dotted with trees and the occasional barn, the cows and goats in their pastures, the wreck of one old farmhouse after another, with only a few clusters of brick buildings that marked a prosperous family.
Forget the New Confederacy, my father once said. We’re supposed to be different in these Federal States, they say. We left that old Confederacy behind almost two hundred years ago, they say. My eyes tell me different. I lived down south—the real South, not Washington, DC. Not every black man was poor, not every white man rich, but I saw enough . . .
Enough that on a Saturday night, he’d drink a beer or two, then rant about the days when he and his brothers and sisters had watched Barack Obama on the television for his last State of the Union speech. How they had all yelled and wept because they knew that bad days were to come. Around that time, my mother would herd me and Grace into our bedroom, whispering how we shouldn’t pay any mind to what our father said. It would all be fine.
We stopped for gas at a crossroads between Hanceville and Good Hope. The attendant was an ancient woman, her ruddy brown face tucked and pleated, the epicanthic folds around her eyes sagging with age. She eyed the dirty bills that Micha gave her with deep suspicion, but at least she didn’t spit at us. Micha bought a couple bottles of pop and a pack of generic cigarettes before we took off again.
I waited until we got back on the state highway before I spoke again.
“I have a few questions.”
“Thought you might.”
“Who is Isabelle?”
“A friend.”
A very convenient friend, who looked enough like me to take my place. Who had the necessary skills to evade both government agents and others less official, and whatever else a mission like this required.
“Can you trust her?”
“As much as I trust you.”
Ouch. Okay, then.
Micha punched the truck’s old-fashioned lighter, then extracted one of the cigarettes from the pack and clamped it between her lips. When the lighter popped out, she lit the cig, then jammed the lighter back into its socket and took a long drag. Wreaths of smoke swirled around us both.
I opened the bottle of pop and took a swig. So. We were on our way at last. Everything fine, right? Right? But I wasn’t a spy like Sara, or a person of ingenuity like Micha. All I could think of was how many ways our mission could fail.
“Can we make it?” I said softly. “Across the border. To Sara. Tell me the truth, Micha.”
For a very long moment, Micha didn’t reply. She drove with one hand resting lightly on the steering wheel, the cigarette dangling from her lips and trailing smoke like a dragon’s breath. Her expression seemed strangely pensive. I had the strongest urge to tell her, Never mind, don’t tell me the truth, let me believe that everything will come out just fine.
She took the cig from her mouth and stabbed it into the ashtray.
“I’ll make damned sure we do.”
Her voice was soft and light, the voice of Micha back in DC. The voice of someone gifted with ingenuity.
Well, okay then. I leaned back, took another swig of pop, and watched the miles unwind.
April 18.
Later that same day. Huntsville, Alabama.
Around seven P.M. we pulled off the road at another gas station. Micha bought a pack of cigarettes, then asked for the key to the restroom. I waited in the truck, finishing off the last of my pop. Ten minutes later, she reappeared, and I almost didn’t recognize her. She’d gone into that restroom as an elderly man, stoop shouldered and walking as though every joint creaked. The person who climbed into the truck had dropped at least twenty years. The gray and white hair had turned gray and black; the scars and wrinkles had vanished, as though scrubbed away. She still looked old, but definitely brisker.
Visit the restroom, she said. Then you return the key.
I was unnerved by how she’d transformed herself. Won’t they notice something different about you?
Micha gave me a funny smile. I doubt it. I’m just moving a bit faster than before. But I do want you to return the key yourself. Just in case.
I took the opportunity to splash cold water over my face before I returned the key. If that attendant noticed anything except the porn feed on his cell phone, I would have been astonished, but maybe Micha was right.
We traveled the state highway to the outskirts of Huntsville, where Micha took the first exit marked with lodgings. She pulled into the parking lot of one of those sad little motels, the kind that has three single-story sides around the parking lot and a sign reading, $30/DAY, SPECIAL WEEK AND MONTH RATE
S. Right next door were the usual businesses—liquor store, adult vid shop, and a tiny grocery store.
So, tonight, we are no longer Janet and Micha. We’re Alice and Moses Johnson, back from a visit to our great-aunt Mary. I kept my hands stuffed into my jacket pockets to hide Lazarus. Micha paid in cash. She offered a driver’s license, which the clerk barely glanced at before he handed over a set of old-fashioned keys.
And not that I’m surprised or anything, but this entry is my last until . . .
God, I didn’t think it would be so hard to write these words.
Deep breaths. Okay. Until we come back.
Until we come back. And we will come back. Me. Micha. Sara.
Sara. I wonder what she has planned for Nadine Adler.
But enough speculation. When we got to our room, Micha took my bag and dumped the contents of it onto the bed. Swiftly and efficiently she sorted through my belongings. Clothes. Supplies for Lazarus. My mystery novel plus a few others I’d packed. Then her hand dove straight for my new and almost empty journal.
No, she said. Absolutely not. Goddammit, girl. What were you thinking?
I flinched back. I was thinking we’d burn those three or four pages and ditch the notebook.
She gave me a withering look. And what if they be following us right now, sunshine? Setting fire isn’t exactly discreet, even in a dump like this one. What if they use some of that fancy CSI on the book and find your DNA? What if they go after Isabelle? Goddamned amateur.
She went on like that for another five minutes, a rant delivered in a soft but stinging voice. When she finished, she lit a cigarette and flipped through the journal’s pages before she handed it over to me.
I know what to do, she said. I need to run a few errands right now, but when I get back, we’ll get rid of those pages—safely and discreetly—then you’ll write a whole new set. Otherwise, folks might get curious about a blank notebook with a few sheets missing. I’ll help you with that part.
The Hound of Justice Page 17
