The black man then proceeded to slather Tabasco sauce all over the pancakes, turning Grant’s hunger into revulsion. He shivered and turned back to Maddy, who smiled back mischievously as if she were somehow in on the joke.
“You kids seem to be enjoying the honeymoon,” Rudy grumbled, setting his cell phone on the table in front of him and checking for messages.
“You picking up a package? That's what your people do, right?
Rudy gave Grant a condescending look.
“His boss is a late riser,” Maddy explained. “As most morally weak men are.”
Rudy's look hardened. He turned his attention to the television on the wall running the morning news. “What do these men want with you?”
Maddy stared down at the five dollar bill she had been given as change, held tightly between two fingers.
“Listen, there’s no reason why I couldn’t leave you here,” Rudy told her.
Grant stiffened slightly.
“I think Frederickson and I both agree that this is safer than the side of I-10,” Rudy continued, flashing a quick look at Grant. “Now, I don’t plan to do that, because since you’ve been around, our boy’s been cooperative and I appreciate that.” He paused to fix Grant with a look. “But I need to know what level of trouble to expect from your friends.”
Maddy looked Rudy in the eye. “I don’t know who these people are or why they’re harassing me.”
Rudy stared at her a moment, then smiled at Grant. “Y’see, now why don’t I believe her, Frederickson?”
“I've got a question for you. Purely speculative,” Maddy asked Rudy, moving to face him. “If Grant were to give you the money he owes, would you let him go?”
“As I already explained to your client there, counselor, it is not my decision to make,” Rudy answered. “It is beyond my pay-grade.”
“Just so you understand, I paid them back in full,” Grant told Maddy. “It took me a year and the liquidation of all my assets, but I managed to do it. Torres decided to change the amount after the fact.”
“There was the matter of interest,” Rudy added, his eyes shifting to the TV indifferently.
“So you know Grant can't pay your boss back?
“Listen, what money he has, doesn't have, that's between him and the boss,” Rudy replied, turning to scan the parking lot again. “I don't speculate. I don't interpret. I just do my job.”
Grant finally sat forward in his seat. “Don't you see that the money isn't the issue here? If I came up with that, there would be more interest and more interest. Try and explain to her, Rudy, how someone like Torres can dedicate so much of his time and resources to ending the life of a nobody like me, because I've been trying to come up with an answer and I can't. My own death will be meaningless to me.”
Maddy studied Rudy. “This man you call your boss, he may have had what passes as honor once, but something happened to him and someone with street smarts like you must be starting to question his motives.”
Rudy sat silent, watching the TV.
Maddy continued undauntedly. “That inner, more reasonable, voice, whatever has kept you alive so long in this business, it's starting to ask what's going on here.”
Cheryl stepped out of the kitchen and set several plates of food down between Grant and Maddy, who smiled and slipped the five dollar bill into Cheryl’s hand.
“Thanks, Shug. You let me know if you need anything else,” Cheryl called back over her shoulder to Maddy as she headed back to the kitchen.
“I could use some coffee,” Rudy called to the retreating woman as she returned to the kitchen without a look back.
Grant watched as she closed her eyes over the plate of pancakes for a moment, then nodded. “Here. You’ve got to help me with all of this,” she said, sliding a knife and fork over to Grant.
Rudy watched as Maddy flooded the pancakes with syrup and carefully sliced off two crescents. As she held one of them out to Grant, Rudy returned his attention to the TV with a grunt.
“I’m good,” Grant said uncertainly.
“Take one bite. If these aren’t the best pancakes you’ve ever eaten in New Orleans then I won’t offer you a second bite,” Maddy replied with a smirk.
Grant gave a shrug and leaned forward, allowing her to feed him.
She speared the second crescent in the plate and stuffed it in her mouth with unladylike abandon into her mouth, her eyes closed in satisfaction.
Opening her eyes, she made eye contact with Grant, his mouth still full and nodded over her shoulder at a sign on the wall of the dining room.
Grant swallowed and studied the beer sign in silence wondering where he had heard of Killian’s Irish Red before. It sounded somehow familiar.
Then suddenly he remembered. During the chaotic escape from the truck stop, she murmured something that had sounded like nonsense at the time.
Buttermilk pancakes. Killian’s. French Quarter.
Slicing off another chunk, Maddy held out the fork to him. “I told you, didn’t I? Best pancakes in the Quarter.”
Grant slowly accepted the food into his mouth while he stared at the Killian's beer sign. Finally, he looked over at Maddy with an expression half confused, half awestruck.
“This is the first time I’ve ever been to the Quarter,” he told her.
“Well, there you go,” she quipped smugly, looking back at the Killian’s sign again. “Crazy, huh?”
Shaking his head in disbelief, Grant began to chuckle in spite of himself.
Rudy had stopped watching the TV altogether for the more interesting spectacle going on in front of him. He quietly sipped his coffee and watched the verbal interplay like a tennis match being played between two pros from different alien species.
“Just like at the truck stop?” Grant asked her.
Maddy nodded and leaned in closer to feed him another bite.
Rudy narrowed his eyes at the pair in frustration as they laughed and shared food from the same plate. Finishing off his coffee, he swept his cell phone off the table and stepped away.
“Does it always involve food?” Grant asked, casting a look over at Rudy’s retreating back.
“I think it's a visceral thing. Basic human needs stuff. If I'm hungry, my mind is thinking about where I'll be eating. If I'm in trouble, my mind is on how I can escape.”
Suddenly, her eyes glazed over.
A hand reached out from behind and grabbed Maddy's arm.
She turned to stare into the faces of the two Blank Men standing just behind her. On the TV beyond them, a small private jet took flight in the distance on a vacant airfield, while Rudy shoved Grant ahead of him, a gun down by his side.
Registering the change of expression on her face, Grant reached out to take her arm. “What is it?”
Maddy pulled her arm away from Grant and glanced back over her shoulder.
The other side of the dining area was empty.
Maddy pushed the plate over to Grant, her eyes glazing over. “Sorry. I feel a little sick all of the sudden.”
Rudy's cell phone rang. He moved even further away from the table and answered the phone, as a cheer goes up from the TV during a sports highlights reel.
Just as Grant was about to put another bite in his mouth, Maddy seized his arm.
“Listen,” she stated with authority. “This is very important. We can’t let him reach the airport.”
Grant simply stared at her in confusion.
“Watch me. Be ready,” she concluded as Rudy snapped off the phone and grabbed Grant's arm brusquely.
“Breakfast is over.”
Casting one last look over at Maddy, Grant dropped the fork and followed Rudy.
Maddy scrambled behind them nearly colliding with Cheryl. She took two steps toward the door then stopped, retrieved a couple of bills from one pocket and shoved them into the woman’s hands. “Have a good life,” Maddy exclaimed as she disappeared through the exit. “See you on the other side.”
Cheryl looked down at th
e pair of hundred dollar bills and wobbled on her tired feet.
“Mercy me.”
3
“How much?”
Rudy looked up into the rear view mirror at Maddy as the Mercedes rocketed down the Pontchartrain Expressway. He honked his horn angrily at an eighteen-wheeler lazily veering into his lane. “How much what?”
“I thought about it and I think he’s right. It’s not about the money at all, and you don’t care do you?”
Grant watched Maddy keenly as she leaned determinedly forward in her seat.
“Everybody has their price,” Maddy continued. “Torres either pays you very well or you feel loyalty towards him or…” She started to shake her head then studied him in the mirror. “Maybe that’s it then.”
As the car in front of him started to brake, Rudy blasted his horn and cut around him back into flowing traffic as the driver gave him the finger in return.
“Does Torres have something on you?” Maddy asked him. “Are you afraid of him?”
Rudy’s lips hardened into a thin white line. He accelerated the Mercedes even faster, cutting again around a slower moving car.
“I’m assuming you know why Torres is doing what he’s doing,” Maddy continued. “Either you approve of the death of the man sitting in your backseat or you’re in fear of your life if you questioned the judgment of your boss.”
Rudy glared up into the mirror then looked away. After a moment, he snorted derisively. “I’ve heard them beg and I’ve heard them talk trash, lady. This is an original.”
Maddy exchanged a single quick glance with Grant before turning back to Rudy.
“An animal doesn’t distinguish between right and wrong. It goes to whoever feeds it,” she continued, her voice, instead of increasing in volume, actually dimming to a whisper just loud enough for the man in the front seat to hear. “You’re a man, Rudy, isn’t that what you tell yourself. And when a man takes easy money without regard to self-respect, well, isn’t that the dictionary term for a prostitute?”
Rudy locked half-crazed eyes on her through the mirror.
“You called me a whore, but isn’t that what you really are, Rudolph,” she whispered, leaning slightly closer to him. “A whore?”
Glancing quickly back, Rudy twisted around and blindly reached his arm over the seat to grab her.
Maddy threw herself back, just not quick enough. His hand snagged her collar.
Grant grabbed Rudy’s wrist as Maddy let out a piercing shriek.
Through the windshield, Grant watched as their car veered violently to the right.
Attempting to regain control of the car, Rudy over-corrected. The Mercedes cut across the lane of an eighteen wheeler, careened out of control, and spun completely around to face the other direction.
Grant leapt over and grabbed Maddy protectively in his arms as an SUV struck them from behind and sent the driver’s side crashing into the guard rail.
Lifting their heads, Grant and Maddy peered around the cabin.
Glass covered the dashboard. Rudy rested with his head against the wheel. Grant could see blood beneath his nose.
“Now c’mon,” Maddy commanded, leaping past Grant’s stunned face and slipping out of the passenger side door with her satchel in hand.
Leaning forward, Grant gripped Rudy’s shoulder. “You okay?”
Rudy lifted his head and blinked foggily up at Grant. The blood from his nose didn’t seem quite so copious from this distance, he thought. Probably just a busted nose and not a skull fracture.
Grant felt a tug on his arm and stumbled out into the freeway alongside Maddy, surrounded by stalled, honking cars.
“He’ll live,” Maddy snapped, tossing the satchel at Rudy through the shattered front passenger’s side window. “There’s at least twenty grand cash in that bag. Give it to your boss and tell him to call off the dogs. You understand me?”
Rudy doesn’t react. He wiped at his nose, blinking in disbelief at the blood on his knuckles.
Sticking his head back in through the window, Grant called out to Rudy above the noise of the cars around them. “Hang on. We’re going to get you some help.”
“Get out of here,” Rudy mumbled, shaking his head in frustration and laying his head back down against the wheel. “Goddamn boy scout.”
Maddy cut around the back of the car and into the high-weeds of the shoulder, hauling Grant behind her by his arm. She swung one leg over the guardrail then looked down the slope of hill stretching out below them.
Acres of above-ground crypts stretched out as far as the eye could see. A city of the dead.
“What about all the other people that were in the accident?” Grant sputtered, giving her his hand and helping her over the guardrail, but still looking back over his shoulder at the mess on the highway they were leaving behind. In the distance, he could hear an ambulance.
“Listen, help is on its way,” Maddy told him. “You’re not running away.”
“That’s exactly what I’m doing,” he protested, following her over the railing.
“How are you going to spend the last hours of your life?” she snapped. “I don’t plan to waste one minute filling out paperwork with a traffic cop.” That being said, Maddy began the descent down the sharp grassy incline toward the cemetery, carefully avoiding the discarded items of trash and broken bottles that lay like hidden mines throughout the tall weeds.
Grant gave her a look as if registering for the first time his position relative to the man that remained behind in the Mercedes—the man whose sole purpose was to deliver him to a gangster who would see him dead. Giving one final look back at the Mercedes, Grant started the forty-five degree march down. He quickly lost his balance, dropped to his bottom, and sailed past Maddy on the seat of his pants—half-sliding, half-rolling to the foot of a chain-link fence bordering a gravel-lined railroad track and came to an abrupt stop.
Maddy dashed the last few steps down the incline and offered him a hand, hiding a smirk.
Ignoring her, Grant rose to his feet and looked grimly at the fence and the railroad track on the other side.
“They’re coming,” Maddy exclaimed, looking with wide-eyes back over her shoulder.
Following her line-of-sight, Grant could barely see the tops of the cars from his position, but he trusted her observation regardless. Before them was a foot-trail, obviously made by ambitious young explorers (or possibly the homeless).
“C’mon,” Grant said, taking Maddy by the hand and pulling her along behind him down the dirt trail.
“What are we looking for?”
“How the locals get through,” Grant replied. Rushing forward, he found a gap in the fence, and held the frayed ends open for Maddy to squeeze through. He quickly followed.
They scrambled over the empty railroad tracks and headed toward the seven and a half foot graffiti-covered wall, razor-wire lining the top. Taking her hand, Grant tugged her down the dirt trail between the track and the wall.
Maddy gave their interlocked hands brief contemplation before looking ahead toward the patch of wall Grant was angling toward. Coming to a stop, Grant released her hand and examined the wall. About five and a half feet up was a wide two foot by two foot square of missing bricks covered from view on the inside of the wall by a large tree. At their feet lay remnants of a wooden pallet, all that was left of the method the explorers had gained access to the cemetery.
While Grant ran his fingers along the edge of the opening and attempted to see inside, Maddy crouched beside the wall and studied its base. Finding an un-mortared brick a few feet from the ground, she worked it loose and began to slide it out.
Grant stooped and together they slid the wide brick out until it stuck out like a makeshift shelf below the gap in the wall. Hopping up, Grant stuck his head through the hole in the wall and found a crawlspace behind what looked like an enormous azalea bush.
“ ‘Enter through the narrow gate,’ ” Maddy whispered at Grant’s back. “ ‘For wide is the gate and br
oad is the road that leads to destruction.’ ”
Grant withdrew his head and cast a concerned look back at Maddy. “Um… yeah. Maybe I should go first,” he suggested, diving arms-first through the hole, as Maddy looked nervously back the way they had come.
4
As the sound of ambulances grew louder, the passenger side door of the Mercedes opened. Rudy lifted his head weakly and tried to turn his head to see who was rooting around in the backseat of his car.
But he knew without seeing. It was Them. The fullbacks in raincoats.
The taller of the Blank Men clucked his tongue at Rudy then reached down to pop the trunk with the lever below the seat.
Blinking rapidly to try and clear the blurriness in his vision, Rudy peered around at his side mirror as the second shorter of the two men lifted the trunk. “Whateryoudoin?”
The first Blank Man reached through the window and grasped Rudy’s nose between two meaty fingers. “Gotcha nose,” he said in a teasing voice.
Rudy howled in pain and struggled to reach around but fell weakly back to the wheel.
“We need to go,” the second voice snapped.
Rudy peered past the first figure. The second Blank Man appeared, with Pepe's coffin beneath his arm just as the first man slapped his black-gloved hand over Rudy’s mouth.
Rudy’s eyes widened. He could get very little oxygen through the broken nose filled with phlegm and congealing blood. He could not breathe!
He began to struggle, feeling real panic for the first time in a very long while.
No final taunts were exchanged. The dark man in the shadows of his Mercedes simply watched him with an almost analytical curiosity. Try as he could, Rudy could not get a good look at his face. His vision and his mind remained fuzzy.
Rudy resisted, steadying his heart rate and retaining what remained of the air in his lungs for what last moments he had left.
I will not give this bastard the satisfaction of dying like a scared little bitch, he thought morbidly.
The sirens grew louder.
“No more time.”
The pressure against his mouth disappeared and Rudy gasped in sweet air, color rushing back into the bluish skin of his face.
Remember the Future Page 8
