Long Way Down

by Michael Sears

  I gunned the engine and pulled into the oncoming lane. There was no oncoming traffic on the short road into the airport. I raced up to the corner, passing four surprised drivers on the way. A big pickup was sitting at the intersection, waiting for a slow-moving minivan to get by. I barely touched the brakes as I made the turn in front of the pickup, cutting off the mini and earning a blast of the horn from both drivers. I raced down Airport Road, taking only a brief look in the mirror—the Jeep was still back in line. He had made no move to follow me.

  At the next light, most of the traffic was lined up to make the left, the rest continued straight on Airport Road. I took the right and pushed the pedal to the floor. The big Beemer roared forward.

  There is a vast difference between being paranoid and being hunted. I was confident that I was being hunted, and if the Jeep was not part of the hunt, I had only made a minor mistake. Not to have taken it as a serious threat could have been a major mistake. Luck is not a substitute for action.

  The speedometer continued to rise up over a hundred, but I didn’t let up. I was surrounded by a black-on-black featureless desert. Ahead, and coming up quickly, was I-25, my route back into the city. I eased off the gas and aimed for the entrance ramp. German engineering pushed hard against the laws of physics. The SUV swayed and I felt the left tires begin to lift, but it held the road. I gunned it again as I rose up to the top of the ramp and took a look back toward the airport. A single set of headlights was coming down the road I had just left. It was hard to tell at that distance, but they looked high and close together—just like the headlights on a Jeep Wrangler.

  Two miles and much less than two minutes later, I took the next exit and headed up Cerrillos Road. There were lights and stores and shopping malls with movies getting out and people moving in all directions in all manner of conveyance. There were hundreds of SUVs in all makes and colors. It is always easier to hide in a crowd than in the desert. I slowed and joined the flow.

  The Comfort Inn and Motel 6 were too upscale for what I needed, their systems too efficient. I was looking for the kind of place that respected cash over credit, and more cash over the need to show ID. I wanted anonymity. I couldn’t know for sure if that Jeep was really following me or not, but at some point those nameless, faceless men would pick up my trail, and I could only afford to have them find the clues I wanted them to find. I needed to keep them one step behind, and yet not lose them.

  The Taos Trail Motel fit the bill. It was not on the old Taos Trail, that was a fragment of poetic license, but the flickering neon sign out front promised both air-conditioning and heat in every room. As the outside temperature on the dashboard readout was hovering just above single digits, I hoped the place lived up to at least some of its advertising. The final selling point was that the parking lot was in back, away from the main road.

  The woman behind the counter had that four-season golden hue of the Southwest desert dweller, and a face so windburned and sun-lined that she could have been forty or eighty. Either way, she looked tough enough to stand up to floods, droughts, windstorms, and desperadoes. I gave her two twenties and took my change. She gave me my room key and had me fill out a card with my name, home address, and the license plate of my car. I wrote that I was John Forbes Nash III of Princeton, New Jersey, and my vanity plate read MTH MJR. She didn’t even look at it.

  “Where can I get a bite to eat nearby?”

  She checked a big clock over the door. “Not much this late. Kitchens tend to close earlier in winter. How far you willing to drive?”

  “I don’t need much. Anything in walking distance? I’ve been sitting all day.”

  “Taco Bell.”

  I was in a city justly famous for its blends of Native American, Mexican, and American cuisines, and for my one night there, I was not going to eat ersatz fast food. How could Santa Fe even support a Taco Bell? Who would eat there?

  “Or pizza. Plenty of places that will deliver.”

  I thought of sitting in my room and waiting for a knock at the door.

  “Where’s the Taco Bell?”

  34

  I woke up early—before dawn—still on New York time. I pulled the curtain aside and checked the parking lot. There was no white Jeep out there stalking me. A light snow was falling, dusting the ground and the cars. It was too early to hear from my father or Skeli. They would just be waking up in Saint Thomas. The boat that was to take them across to Tortola wouldn’t be there for hours. There was no chance that they would call before they got safely to Tuttle’s house. That didn’t stop me from wanting them to call.

  I showered, shaved, and got dressed, not because I was in any hurry but because it gave me something to do. It was the solstice. The shortest day of the year and I had plenty to do, but I wasn’t going to get anything done until the sun came up.

  The snow stopped and the sky began to lighten. I turned on the television and watched the local weather. Sunny, high of thirty-eight. Zero precipitation over the next thirty-six hours. Possible light snow again tomorrow night. The only relief was the forecast for a thorough lack of humidity. My sinuses were already opening up, causing my ears to pop repeatedly as bubbles of pressurized air burst upon my eardrums. It was the first time in a week that I woke without having to clear my throat of a suffocating lump of mucus. Mountain air must have agreed with me.

  The national weather map filled the screen. Eighty and sunny in San Juan. Nice day for a boat ride from Saint Thomas to Tortola.

  The neighbors to my right were up and arguing in Spanish. She spoke loudly—but much too quickly for me to understand anything. He mumbled in a low growl, but I caught the word chinga every other beat. I turned off the television and checked the time. Still early, but I couldn’t stay put. I was going to start pacing in a minute and the walls would start closing in. I took a deep brave breath and walked out.

  The door to the room to the left of mine opened as I was crossing the parking lot. Two rough-looking men in jeans, down vests, and baseball caps came out, and I froze. They were either looking right at me, or right through me, I couldn’t tell. I was trapped. The only way out of the lot was through them. The car was somewhere behind. I’d never get to it in time. I braced myself.

  “Morning,” said one as he walked by. The other just nodded.

  They started to get into a big pickup. There was a logo for an Albuquerque construction firm on the door.

  “Say, hey,” I called.

  The one who had spoken to me stopped and turned back. “Hey.”

  “Where can I go for a good breakfast around here?” I thought I should give some parameters to that request. “Local food. Someplace off the main drag.”

  He nodded. “Try Counter Culture over on Baca. It’s not far.”

  I nodded thanks and got in my car. I was going to have to get control over my fear of pursuit or I’d be jumping out of my skin every time I saw someone looking at me.

  The breakfast burrito with red and green chili was everything that Taco Bell wasn’t. I sat over my coffee, studying local maps, reading the real estate ads in the local paper, and making calls until the café began to get noisy. I placed a five in the tip jar on my way out.

  The snow was already gone, sucked up in that dry atmosphere as soon as the sun was fully up. Though I knew the temperature was still only in the thirties, I felt overdressed in my New York overcoat and suit jacket.

  More cars were coming into the little parking lot in front of the restaurant and few were leaving. It took me a few minutes to edge my way out to the street. Coming out of a driveway directly across the road was a white Jeep Wrangler. This time I had no trouble seeing the driver. He was a tall man, made taller by a white cowboy hat. He was wearing a raw shearling coat unbuttoned, revealing a blue-and-white plaid shirt. His face was partially hidden by the brim of the hat.

  I couldn’t race my way out of this, there was too much traffic around me.
I would have to think my way out.

  There was certainly a chance that this Jeep was not the same one as the night before. I had never seen such a gathering of big four-wheel-drive vehicles. Did everyone in Santa Fe harbor some fear of being caught in a dry riverbed as a flash flood came hurtling down at them out of the mountains? Or being stuck in a snowed-in mountain pass where the only hope of survival was to scramble over the mountaintop, wheels spinning and sliding?

  But the odds of this being a different Jeep were outweighed by the risks. I drove up Cerrillos toward the center of town. The Jeep hung back but followed. I caught a quick sight of the driver talking on a cell phone. Preventative action was called for.

  There was a Whole Foods coming up on my right, and an idea occurred to me. I hit the brakes and swung into the parking lot. The Jeep, now two cars back, did the same.

  I drove around to the back of the building, quickly parked, got out, and began to quick-walk back to the street. The guy in the cowboy hat watched me, trying to figure out the game. He could have parked and followed on foot, but instead he elected to keep the car and follow from a bit farther back. That’s what I was counting on.

  The map of downtown Santa Fe had shown a warren of one-way streets. Driving through the center of town while following someone on foot would be impossible. I crossed Paseo de Peralta and began weaving up and down, in and out, never traveling with the traffic but always against it.

  It was early and cold. The streets were empty. Crowds were what I needed. I could melt into them. I wasn’t going to get my wish.

  I checked my watch—my first appointment with a realtor was not for another half hour. I needed to kill time and lose the cowboy in the Jeep.

  The central plaza was surrounded by shops, many with rear doors that let out into smaller plazas that in turn led to other shops facing other streets. I dashed through stores selling silver and turquoise jewelry, pottery, woven baskets, glass sculptures, skulls and skeletons of various animals from longhorns to rattlesnakes, bundles of dried sage, red chili pepper decorations, calendars, recipe books, T-shirts, aprons, sauces, powders, mixes, and enough of the dried and fresh peppers to give heartburn to all of New York and New England combined. When I found myself back on a street, I immediately began walking quickly again—against traffic.

  My winding perambulations finally led me onto a residential street with dusky red adobe fences broken by bright blue wooden doors, and cracked concrete driveways. I caught a faint whiff of woodsmoke on the air. It was so peaceful it terrorized me. I’d been in constant motion for thirty minutes.

  The Jeep pulled into view at the end of the block.

  The street was one-way—against him. But there wasn’t another person or automobile in sight. The Jeep turned and began racing the wrong way, straight toward me.

  I vaulted over the nearest four-foot-high adobe fence and ran toward the back of the house. I could hear the Jeep’s engine racing out in the street behind me, then the squeal of brakes and the thump-thump of a car driving up onto the sidewalk. Another short fence slowed me down for just an instant, then I kept on running.

  That next house had a longer yard with two scraggly fruit trees, not much taller than big shrubs, and a lattice frame supporting some nasty-looking thorny vines. On the far side was a taller chain-link fence. I jammed the toe of one of my five-hundred-dollar shoes into the fence and jumped up and over it and hit the ground running. I was halfway across the yard before I realized that I was not alone.

  The dog had a head like a bowling ball with teeth, and four stubby legs with almost as much muscle mass as Conan the Barbarian. It didn’t bark, growl, or even give me a dirty look. It just bared its fangs, jumped off the back porch, and ran straight at me. Two more long strides took me to the next fence. This time I didn’t bother sticking my toe into the mesh. I twisted and threw my body into a high jump, the first I had attempted since Mr. Marciano, the track coach, made me try it back at Edward Bleeker Junior High School, sending me immediately after to the school nurse. I wasn’t very good at it then, and though I wasn’t much better this time, I was good enough.

  I heard the snap of the dog’s jaws in the air where my ankle had been an instant earlier and I imagined that I could feel its breath on my leg. But I sailed over the fence, one of the jagged tines catching and tearing the tail of my three-day-old overcoat and spinning me over so I landed ingloriously on hands and knees, bouncing off the winter cover of an outdoor hot tub. The dog didn’t try to follow.

  Behind me there was a clang and a clash as the man in the hat hit the first chain-link fence and jumped over. He saw me pulling myself erect over the next fence, and for a moment our eyes met. He meant to kill me. His right hand reached inside the shearling coat. If there was a gun there, he never got ahold of it.

  The dog hit him mid-thigh, latched on, and shook, knocking the man to the ground. In the moment of falling, his face froze in terror with the knowledge that the predator had just become the prey. He landed badly, his right arm trapped under him. Encumbered by the coat, his face in the dirt, there wasn’t much he could do to defend himself. The dog released its hold on his leg only to run up his back and bite again—this time into the nape of his neck. The man began to scream. Loud, terrified screams. The kind of screams that come when you think that you are being eaten.

  I ran, brushing through a hanging forest of wind chimes, setting off an unmelodious harmonic din that did nothing to hide the man’s ongoing screams. He wasn’t calling for help, he was howling in primitive terror.

  Another voice yelled out of a window, telling the dog to back down. I didn’t wait around to see if the mutt obeyed.

  Back on the street, I saw the Jeep, two wheels on the sidewalk, driver’s-side door open, motor still running. I did not think twice. I jumped in, slammed the door closed, put it in gear, and hit the gas. I pulled into the first open driveway and made a quick three-point turn and raced back down the street—this time in the right direction. No one saw me, but at that point to have been stopped while driving the wrong way on a one-way street would simply have added the last touch of absurdist hysteria to the events and have sent me into screaming fits.

  I made a left at the corner and tried to keep from racing through the streets on the way back to the Whole Foods. The parking lot was full of big SUVs, motors running, spewing hydrocarbon and nitrogen compounds into the atmosphere; spouses keeping the heaters going while their partners were inside shopping for organic, earth-friendly, naturally produced, sustainable, fair-trade food items that they would take home in hemp bags. The exhaust fumes created a gray haze outside the door. I slowed to a crawl and circled the building to the rear parking lot. The BMW was gone.

  “Well, that answers that question,” I said to myself. “You really can steal a BMW.”

  Whoever was after me had just delivered a very detailed message. First, the cowboy wasn’t operating alone—there were more of them there in Santa Fe. Second, they were very good. I knew that in Europe, BMWs were sometimes hacked and stolen, but I had thought it was impossible in the U.S. Apparently, I was mistaken. Third, they wanted me to know. Therefore they believed strongly in their own power. And fourth, they were playing me. They wanted me frightened, but free, until they figured out why I had come running to this western town.

  I wasn’t ready to let them find out. Not quite yet.

  These were not the Central Americans who had tried to have me killed six months earlier and ended up killing my ex-wife. Those men had been violent and impulsive. The men who were after me now had access and resources far beyond those of some pissed-off drug gangers. These guys had been able to hack into airline manifests and track me across the country. They were able to get men on the ground, waiting for me, thousands of miles away. Brady was right. If these guys didn’t work for a government, they worked for an organization with equal power and assets. I’d been lucky with the cowboy and I would need a lot more luck
before I was through.

  I drove the Jeep the few blocks back into the center of town and parked it in an enclosed garage.

  “How long you going to be, mister?” the slack-jawed youth at the gate asked me as I left.

  “As long as it takes, son. You’re not planning on closing anytime soon, are you?”

  “I have to collect in advance, if you’re staying overnight, that’s all.”

  “Well, thanks. I’ll be long gone by your dinnertime.” I had many miles to go.

  I had called and left messages for three different real estate brokers while I was sipping my coffee at Counter Culture that morning. The three with the most high-end ads in the newspaper. One had called me back. She was about to win first prize.

  Her office was on the far side of the main plaza, between the library and a Vietnamese restaurant. I got there just as she was opening the door.

  “Mrs. Montoya? I’m your nine o’clock. Jason Stafford.”

  Mrs. Montoya’s jewelry must have weighed as much as she did. She was so thin she could have worn my old wedding ring as a bracelet. But the platinum would have clashed with all of her silver, turquoise, and coral bracelets, earrings, rings, pins, and necklace. She jangled when she moved, and she was in constant motion. Driving her car—a big Lincoln Navigator—her head, arms, shoulders, and hands were all gesticulating all the time, emphasizing the opportunities in Santa Fe real estate.

  “There are three houses I can show you that all meet your specifications to one degree or another. But I really want you to consider something on the north side of town. I can do so much more for you there and the views are spectacular.”

  “My son has special needs. He’ll be going to school in Albuquerque and I’ll be driving him both ways every day. North of town adds thirty minutes to my drive—in each direction. Sixty extra minutes a day.”