by Earl Emerson
“I like him. He’s nice.”
“He is a nice man. He used to be a lot more outgoing, but somewhere along the line his confidence wore thin.”
“And your sister? She told me she was on the swim team in high school.”
“Placed in the districts and third at the state meet her senior year.”
“She went missing for a number of years?”
“You heard this from your brother?”
“Some of it.”
“What else did he say?”
“Not much. I mean, we don’t talk much these days,” Nadine said, hoping he wouldn’t sniff out her white lie. Out of allegiance to her brother and embarrassment for Zak’s sister, she didn’t want to tell Zak that Kasey had deemed Stacy poor white trash and a slut.
“I love her, but she’s extremely independent and resents it when anybody gives her advice.”
“She lives with you and your father?”
“I find it strange that we couldn’t be a family when we were supposed to be, but now that we’re adults we’re all under one roof. I sometimes wonder what Mom would have said.”
Nadine tried to figure out whose father was the more eccentric, hers, who slept in an oxygen sleeping chamber like Michael Jackson and who’d had seven remodels done on their house in the past seven years—or Zak’s, who had once been a corporate attorney and now pounded nails for a living.
Zak drove north along Twenty-third toward Madison, which was well over a mile from the station. On Madison, the only street in Seattle to touch water at both ends, they would travel northeast until they hit Broadmoor, where the sumptuous houses were built around a golf course that included the Broadmoor Country Club.
“I bet you were always a good girl,” Zak said.
“I was good to the point of being stupid. Once when I was about eleven I found a ten-dollar bill on the sidewalk outside the school. Any other eleven-year-old would have chalked it up to good luck and pocketed it, but I pinned a notice to the school bulletin board, thinking one of my fellow students had dropped it. Of course I got about four hundred replies. I guess I was kind of famous around the school for that one.”
“I bet you get straight A’s.”
“You know I do. Actually, I never even got dirty as a little girl. It’s embarrassing to admit. Even Nana urged me to do something wrong once in a while. The worst thing I ever did was once I wore a T-shirt to school that said, OBJECTS UNDER THIS SHIRT APPEAR LARGER IN REAL LIFE.”
He was afraid to laugh for fear of offending her, but not laughing might offend her, too, so he settled for a smile and chuckle, making a point of not glancing at her nearly flat chest.
“I bought it on a whim, then one of my friends dared me to wear it to school, so I wore a sweater over it till I left the house and then I took the sweater off at school. In second period I got invited to the principal’s office. I never did anything like that again.”
At that point Zak couldn’t help laughing. Nadine was so timid but wanted so badly to be bold. “You’ve got a good heart, Nadine. Don’t ever lose it.”
“I wish I could say that was true, but it’s not. I was good because I was scared of getting in trouble. Now I toe the line with our Lord and Savior, but I’m really not sure if I’m toeing the line because I want to, or because I don’t want to end up in a hot place.”
“You believe there’s a physical hell?”
“There can’t be a kingdom of heaven without a hell. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Right.”
Zak turned off Twenty-third Avenue onto Marion, much earlier than he’d planned, and began driving residential streets, making what appeared to be random turns. “What are you doing?” Nadine asked.
“You know a guy drives a BMW Three Series? Black.”
Nadine swiveled around in her seat and peered out the rear window. “Oh, my…gosh. It’s Scooter.”
“Your ex?”
“He keeps pestering me. He says we’re going to get married someday, and I’m just delaying the inevitable.”
“You’re sure you broke up?”
“I told him we were finished ten days ago. Since then he’s been following me and calling and coming over to the house whenever he feels like it. Kasey was there the other day, Saturday, and Scooter came over, supposedly to see him, and stayed all day. He kept coming to the door of my room trying to get in. You don’t know how creepy it is having him in the house.”
“You tell your parents?”
“They’re on his side. They think we should get back together. They’ve never seen his dark side and think I’m blowing it all out of proportion.”
“Just how dark is his dark side? Is he going to pull alongside and fill my door with bullets?”
“Of course not. He’s just kind of unpredictable right now.”
“That’s not very reassuring.” Zak hadn’t liked Scooter from the beginning, hadn’t liked him any more than he’d liked Nadine’s brother, and he knew jilted suitors, ex-boyfriends, and former husbands could be trouble. In this case he wasn’t worried personally—he could take care of himself—he was worried about Nadine.
Zak drove around a block, then around another block, and still Scooter trailed them. It wasn’t possible to slip away from a BMW in his underpowered van, so Zak picked up his cell phone. “What are you doing?”
“Calling the cops.”
“Don’t. Please?” She touched his arm lightly. “Please?”
“Why not?”
“Just…I don’t want any trouble. He’s a friend of the family, and his father and my father are friends. I don’t want any of this getting out. It would be humiliating for all of us. Besides, he won’t get into Broadmoor. We can tell the guard and they won’t let him through.”
“What he’s doing is criminal harassment. Stalking.”
“You would be doing me a big favor it you didn’t call the police. I’ll see him again today. Kasey’s home for a few days, so he’ll be over at the house. I’ll tell him to stop it. I’ll tell him you were going to call the police. That should scare him.”
“How’d you get hooked up with such a control freak?”
“Control…How did you know that?”
Zak rolled his eyes so Nadine couldn’t see. “Wild guess.” What did she know about this kind of man? She was nineteen. She’d probably never run into anybody like William Potter III before. “Okay. I won’t call the police, but you have to do something for me in return.”
“What?”
“Every time he follows you or you see him on the street, I want you to write it down and note the time, the date, and who you were with. Build a file. Keep it somewhere he won’t find it. That way if you ever have to go to court to get a restraining order, instead of saying, He follows me all the time, you’ll have a record with times and dates.”
“We’re not going to end up in court.”
“Promise me.”
“Okay, but we’ve known him since I was in the second grade. I’m only doing this to keep the police from getting involved. Scooter’s pushy, but he’s not a lawbreaker.”
“I already told you how many laws he’s breaking.”
“He thinks he’s still in love with me.”
“No. He thinks he owns you. That’s an entirely different proposition.”
15
August
“Okay, okay, okay. I’ll bet a million bucks. Giancarlo’s bike against a truck. Any one of them trucks. Pick the fastest. Myself, I’d take that Land Rover.”
“Hugh, you don’t have a million dollars,” said Zak.
“Okay, a hundred. Bet a hundred dollars you can’t beat Giancarlo down that hill.”
“To the bridge?” asked Scooter.
“To the bridge,” said Hugh, growing excited.
“Forget the hundred. I said a grand. You have a thousand dollars?” Scooter stepped close enough that Hugh backed away.
“Sure.”
“Let’s see it.”
“I’m not stu
pid. I don’t carry it everywhere I go, but I got it. You got a thousand dollars?”
Scooter pulled out his wallet and fanned a sheaf of hundreds.
“Why don’t we just forget the money?” said Morse. “And Giancarlo, you don’t want to do this, do you?”
“I don’t mind.”
“What’s the matter?” Scooter stepped close and once again forced Hugh to step back. “Losing your nerve?”
“A thousand dollars,” said Zak. “He’s good for it.”
“Are you going to guarantee it?”
“If that’s what you need.”
“Then you have a deal,” Scooter said, staring at Zak with the arrogance and contempt of somebody who knew in advance that he was on the winning team. Somehow the bet had become an issue between Scooter and Zak. It was outrageous, because Zak had never bet a thousand dollars on anything in his life. They were like a couple of bragging schoolkids and Zak knew it, but knowing it wasn’t enough to prevent him from playing it out. Zak could see that every man and woman in the Jeep camp believed it was inevitable the truck would win and the cyclists were fools. The bike group, on the other hand, appeared divided about the possible outcome. While Zak knew Giancarlo Barrett was the best natural downhiller he’d ever ridden with and that he thrived on competition, he also knew the bike Giancarlo was riding wasn’t a full-fledged downhill model and this run wouldn’t be his fastest.
Jennifer said, “Scooter, it’s not a fair race and you know it.”
“Hey, this retard wants to give me his money, who am I to stop him?”
“I’m not a retard,” Hugh said. “I had a brain injury.”
Hugh had put on a lot of great drama at Station 6, but he was on his way to an Oscar with this. “We shouldn’t be gambling,” said Roger Bloomquist, glancing around uncertainly at his friends. “Maybe we should keep this friendly.”
“There’s nothing friendlier than a thousand dollars changing hands,” said Scooter with a smirk. “We’ll be friends for life. Isn’t that right, Hugh?” Scooter laughed viciously, spit erupting through his gritted teeth.
“We’re already friends for life,” Hugh said. “All my friends are for life.”
“You up for it?” Zak asked Giancarlo as the two of them walked to the road and stared down the hill.
“I think so.” The steepest section was the first twenty yards, with an almost sheer rock wall on the left and a knoll on the right, the knoll giving way to an open field that seemed pasted to the side of the mountain. It wasn’t going to be pretty if one of them hit the rock wall or went off into the field, which was actually steeper and more treacherous than the road itself.
The smoke Zak had noticed in the distant hills had grown in volume, and the sun had sunk low and was lighting up the scattered pink clouds on the horizon, painting them umber at the edges, a filigreed brownish purple higher up.
The narrow, twisty road had been blasted out of the mountain, leaving a base of solid rock—a pity, since Giancarlo hadn’t brought along the plastic knee and shin pads, the rib protectors, or arm braces he wore when he did serious downhilling. He was taking chances. So was Scooter, because if either the bike or the truck slid off the road, it could easily lead to a fatality, which made the entire affair something just short of insanity.
“We shouldn’t be doing this. It’s plain nuts,” said Zak.
“I’m game unless you want to call it off,” Giancarlo said.
“You want me to call it off?”
“I kind of want to fuck these guys over. They’re getting on my nerves.”
“Anything happens, it’ll be on all of our heads, but I’m not going to stop it.”
“You hate that Scooter guy, don’t you?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“And he hates you, too. I saw that right off.”
It didn’t take long for both parties to agree on a set of rules. The track was tight and treacherous enough that everybody agreed the race should be run as a time trial; Giancarlo would go first because he would throw up less dust, then fifteen seconds later Scooter would leave in Chuck Finnigan’s truck. They would race from where they were standing to the middle of the bridge that spanned the North Fork, a distance of roughly half a mile, all precipitously downhill.
Zak thought the Ford was a poor choice because it was high and prone to tipping, but the consensus in the Jeep camp was that it had more rubber on the road than any of the other vehicles and thus would hold the track better. Fifteen seconds seemed like too short an interval, but the Jeep camp refused to concede any more than that.
There would be stopwatches at the top and the bottom of the hill, everyone in communication via walkie-talkies the Jeep people had brought with them. If the truck caught the bicycle, that would speak for itself, but otherwise, in order to win, Scooter had to reach the center point of the bridge less than fifteen seconds behind Giancarlo.
While Scooter talked to Chuck about the Ford’s quirks and Giancarlo went back up the hillside to get his bike, Zak, accompanied by Nadine and one of her friends, walked partway down the roadbed.
“This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of,” said Nadine.
“I know. I know.”
Kasey, Jennifer, Stephens, and Morse piled into Kasey’s Porsche and drove to the far side of the bridge to do the officiating at the bottom of the mountain. As they passed Zak, Kasey leaned out the open driver’s window and said, “This is going to be a slaughter.”
Stephens was in the shotgun seat, talking to somebody in the back. Zak caught just enough to realize he was explaining the difference between mountain bikes that were built specifically for downhill runs and the cross-country bike Giancarlo would be riding, a generalist bike built to do almost everything but with no particular specialty. Downhill bikes were heavier, the extra weight helping to buffer the jolting. They had beefier shocks, larger brakes, and were designed to make a rider feel comfortable going down a hill, often with a smaller rear wheel to tip the bike to a more level position.
It took surprisingly little time to get everybody into position, Scooter in Chuck’s Ford, revving the motor, and Giancarlo with his helmet, heavy gloves, and, just in case, a pair of long pants tied at the cuffs so they didn’t catch in the chain. If he crashed, the pants might save some skin.
Officiating up top would be Fred and Chuck, Zak, Nadine, one of her girlfriends, and Hugh.
The road dropped steeply for the first 150 yards—so steeply, most people wouldn’t ride a bicycle down it at any speed—then curved slightly to the left. It straightened out for an eighth of a mile, and it was on this straighter stretch that the grade was embedded with washboard ridges created by trucks spinning their wheels. The washboard would be the trickiest part. If the Ford’s shocks or the bicycle’s suspension weren’t tuned perfectly, the corrugated sections could easily send them out of control. Zak hoped nobody crashed. If Giancarlo went down, he would never forgive himself, and if Scooter wrecked the truck, it could be fatal.
After the straight section came a sharp bend to the right, and while the road on this section was bare rock, there were still areas with gravel and smaller loose rocks that could cause a loss of control. To make matters worse, the steep corner was off camber, which would conspire to throw the contestants toward a scree studded with old stumps. It was from this corner that one had an unobstructed view out over the rolling hills toward Seattle and south toward North Bend.
Past the corner, the road had more curves in it and some gravel, but the grades were less threatening. At the bottom it turned into a chute that flattened out for eighty yards as it crossed the intersection and fed onto the bridge. Zak figured whoever got around the first sharp, off-camber corner with the most speed would take it.
“I figure it the same way,” said Giancarlo at the starting line.
“You going to win?”
“I don’t know.” Giancarlo grinned, and the dimples in his cheeks deepened. “I’ve never seen him drive a truck.”
Twenty feet a
way Scooter and Fred were whooping over the roar of the Ford’s motor while Chuck spoke to Kasey on a two-way Motorola walkie-talkie.
Nadine came alongside Zak. “Zak, this is too dangerous. Tell him it’s too dangerous, Lindsey.”
Her girlfriend looked wide-eyed at Zak and said, “I kind of want to see it. I mean, a thousand dollars.”
“Oh, honestly, Lindsey.”
“Giancarlo knows what he’s doing,” said Zak.
After Chuck drew a line across the road with a stick, the truck and bicycle lined up on it. Chuck pressed the button on the walkie-talkie in his massive hand and said, “Everything ready at the bottom of the hill?”
“Ready.”
“Everything ready up here?” Chuck asked. Now that they were up against it, Zak could see that Giancarlo was jittery. He hoped it was only adrenaline doing its job, because the last thing they needed was for Giancarlo to get the heebie-jeebies and crap out on one of the corners. He’d never seen Giancarlo this nervous. Not even when they were crawling into house fires during drill school.
16
“On your mark. Get set. Go!” said Chuck Finnigan, waving a makeshift flag.
Zak had been holding Giancarlo and his bicycle upright, so when the flag went down Zak gave him a good, hard shove. Giancarlo sat far back on his seat, which he’d lowered. Several of the onlookers gasped when they saw the speed he reached before the first corner. Even to Zak’s experienced eye the blinding acceleration made him look like a bullet.
“My God,” said Lindsey.
“I thought Scooter was going to win,” said Nadine in a tone that made it clear she wasn’t so sure now.
“He sure is a missile,” said Hugh.
“Wait’ll you see my brother’s goddamn truck,” said Fred.
Everybody watched Chuck as he timed the fifteen-second interval before Scooter could start. He dropped the flag a second early, and the Ford’s tires squealed. “Go! Go, you bastard!”
Shooting small chunks of rock and gravel out from the wheels, the truck spurted forward and careened down the narrow trail, slewing to the left and then to the right on the first curve, heading perilously for the far edge. For a split second Zak thought Scooter was going to veer off the road, but at the last minute he regained the proper trajectory and roared down the hill and around the corner.
