The Distant Echo of a Bright Sunny Day

by Patrick O'Brien

  “None of us really thinks that, Rick.”

  “Thanks, Jody. It’s nice to know I’m trusted.”

  “We trust you, Rick,” Heidi assured him. “And we’re all in this together. Really. But where’s Mike, anyway? He should have his cigarettes by now.”

  Tony, turning his back to the others, had busied himself by gathering up his own toilet articles. Over his shoulder, he said, “He went out to look for a smoke shop.”

  “What the fuck’s he want with a smoke shop? There’s a 7-Eleven across the street…”

  “He smokes a special brand.”

  “No shit?”

  “Nat Shermans…he acquired a taste for them some time ago. But you can’t find them just anywhere.”

  “Those the ones that look like candy, right?”

  Tony put the toenail clippers and the file board in the side pocket of his kit bag and stuck a tube of hair gel in the main compartment.

  “I suppose,” he said, not looking at Rick.

  “I think that’s him now,” Jody said. She was standing near the door and heard a light knock.

  She opened the door a crack and peeked out.

  “It’s him.”

  “Who else would it be?” Mike said and stepped into the room.

  “What took you so long?” Heidi wanted to know. “We were beginning to think maybe you got lost?”

  “Hardly,” Mike said. “But I had to drive to a mall that had a smoke shop. The first one that I went to didn’t.”

  “What the fuck they put in those things, anyway—gold leaf tobacco?”

  “Something like that, if you must know.”

  “Shit,” Rick said. He turned and left the room.

  “What’s the matter with him?” asked Mike.

  Heidi explained.

  “My God! Does that mean we’re toast?”

  Rick came back into the room. He had a small duffel bag and had put on a leather jacket, the kind Harley-Davidson motorcycle aficionados typically wore. His coal-black hair was brushed straight back from his forehead, and the effect accentuated the longitudinal cast of his face. A thin black mustache gave him the look of a small-time bookie or a Reno card sharp.

  “No, it doesn’t mean we’re toast,” he said, “not yet, anyway. But it does mean there’s a legitimate concern there…for all of us. If I were you, I wouldn’t plan on doing anything else for a while…maybe just retire or get involved in something with less risk.”

  “So you’re leaving now?”

  “Now’s as good as any time, Heidi. Maybe I’ll catch up with the rest of your crew. They can’t be too far ahead of us. They only left a couple of hours ago, right?”

  “It’s hard to tell where they are…”

  “Yeah, well, anyway, it was a nice gig. I don’t know if we’ll ever do it again, though, but good luck.”

  He crossed the room to the door and stood with his hand on the knob.

  “Walk me to the van, Jody, will ya?”

  Jody hesitated but then said yes.

  Rick opened the door.

  “Keep us posted, Rick.”

  “I sure will, Heidi. I’ll let you know if anything develops. The rest of ya take care. And stay away from them donuts, Tony…you got too much baby fat as it is.”

  Outside, most of the guests who had checked in the night before had already left, and the parking lot was all but deserted save for the Subaru wagon, the VW camper, and one or two vehicles belonging to other travelers. A cleaning cart stood outside an open doorway three units down, and the maid had just come out to get a roll of toilet paper. As Rick and Jody crossed to the van, she glanced their way, then went back inside the room.

  “I wish you would come with me,” Rick said. “It’d be nice, just the two of us, hangin’ out with birds, lizards, and wild flowers. There’s lots of beautiful sights out there, and the solitude is good for the soul.”

  He slid the camper door open and tossed the duffel bag inside. Sliding the door shut and turning to her, he looked into her eyes.

  “Think about it,” he said.

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “It’s probably too hot for me. I’m cold-blooded, you know, and can’t take the heat.”

  “I thought it was the other way around.” He laughed.

  “I don’t know. I just know that I don’t like it too hot.”

  “Well, it’s not bad this time of year, when everything’s in bloom. It‘s really kind of comfortable.”

  “What do you do when you’re there?”

  “Mostly lie on top of the van at night and look up at the stars. During the day, I hunt for rabbit and check out the scenery. I can usually find a nice stream or a creek where the fishing is good. It may not sound very exciting, but it satisfies me.”

  He reached out and pulled her into him. Kissing her on the mouth, he put both arms around her waist and pressed into her. After a moment, feeling resistance, he backed away.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s the wrong time, Rick. They’ll wanna be leaving soon. And everybody’s a little nervous right now, including me.”

  “I threw a monkey wrench into the works, huh? I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “Even without that, we’d all be nervous. That’s why Carlos wanted to leave when he did. Ditto Ralph and Misty.”

  Rick stepped away and lit a cigarette. Blowing the smoke off to the side, he said, “I guess you have a right to be nervous. It’s not the kind of thing a person does every day…and when you do, it’s bound to cause high anxiety, like robbing a bank. Nobody’s immune to the apprehension that follows.”

  “Not even you…”

  “Not even me.” He smiled.

  “What if they do find your prints, Rick? What are you gonna do then?”

  He looked away.

  “Get a good lawyer, I guess.”

  “Do you know any good lawyers?”

  He chuckled.

  “Bernie the Pudge.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “They call him that. And we got other names for him, but if you’re facing a murder rap or a dope charge, he’s the best friend a biker’s got.”

  “You know some nice people, Rick.”

  “Not so nice, to be honest. But, hey, I know you, and you’re pretty nice.”

  He tried to kiss her again, but she held him off.

  “I’d better be going,” she said. “We’ve got tons of driving ahead of us, and I imagine everyone’s anxious to leave.”

  “Flee the scene of the crime, huh?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t put it that way…”

  “Why not? No matter how you cut it, it was a crime.”

  “It’s all about a higher principle, Rick…”

  “You really believe that?”

  “We didn’t come all this way just for the fun of it or just to commit a crime. You don’t think that, do you?”

  “I don’t know—I guess not. But, hey, I may as well start. I got my own mileage to cover. How ’bout one last kiss, maybe for old time’s sake, in case we don’t see each other again?”

  “We can see each other again, Rick. Just call me when you get back.”

  “You’ll probably forget all about me. I’m just one of those ‘bad boy’ flings women get involved in before they come to their senses and marry the right guy.”

  “Are you a bad boy, Rick?” She laughed.

  “I hang with bad people. And most of the rest of it has come under the official heading of ‘Just Doing My Patriotic Duty for God and Country.’”

  “That last part’s pretty cynical, Rick.”

  “Yeah, well, like a lot of things in life, it’s all subject to spin. But, hey, I’m still waiting for my farewell-and-Godspeed kiss.”

  She smiled, then gave him a quick kiss on the mouth.

  “What’s the matter, don’t you trust yourself?” he joked as she turned and walked away.

  “Keep in touch,” she said, over her shoulder.

  “For old time’s s
ake!”

  4

  The following day, FBI agent William “Wild Bill” Hammerstein sat in his cramped corner office on the eleventh floor of a skyscraper in downtown Cleveland. The view from one of his windows looked out over the industrial area near the mouth of the Cuyahoga River. From his desk, he could see passing ore boats going up the river or coming in from Lake Erie. On most days, especially during the summer months, pollutants from factories and ubiquitous power plants created a haze that made air pollution a little too obvious for his liking. He much preferred Portland or Seattle, where copious amounts of rain kept things fresher and cleaner. But today was different. A light rain had fallen during the night and had cleared the air. Well out into the lake, past the multitude of harbor cranes, warehouses, and ships lined up along piers, he could see a sailboat or two and, on the horizon, the approach of an ore boat coming from the Mesabi Range in northern Minnesota. Unless he opened a window and smelled the seemingly ever-present industrial effluents, the tableaux brought to mind the brightest days of any season on the calendar.

  “Maybe a round of golf next weekend, if you feel up to it,” he turned from the window and said to his partner.

  Thomas “Big Tom” McCullers had come into Bill’s office a few minutes before and was sitting in a wooden armchair across from Bill’s desk. Like Bill, he had joined the FBI after four years of college football and, also like Bill, had gained a few pounds but still retained a linebacker’s build. Both men, partners going on four years now, wore open-collar sport shirts and off-the-rack sport jackets.

  “If the weather holds, yeah, we could do a round.”

  “Let’s plan on it.”

  “You bet.”

  Before Tom had come into the office, Bill had been tossing a kid-size basketball into a hoop hanging on the wall beside his desk. It was something he did as a sort of Zen-like accompaniment to the decision-making process. Over time, he had developed a degree of accuracy in the hand-eye coordination involved that allowed each shot to drop through the hoop without touching the rim. With a simple, yet precise flick of the wrist, he sent the ball into a parabolic curve that brought it down in the same place every time: right through the basket. He had done it so often now he had reached the point where, theoretically, he thought he could do it blindfolded. He had previously discussed the possibility with Tom.

  “I got a dollar that says I can do it, buddy. How about it? Wanna see me try?”

  “Make it two dollars, an’ you’re on.”

  “Don’t think I can, huh?”

  “I’m gonna clean up, Bill. Lunch money.”

  “You’re on. But you’re not gonna be a sore loser about it, are ya?”

  “Quit stalling—show your stuff.”

  “You got it.”

  Bill picked up the ball from a saucer he kept on his desk and held it aloft with one hand, just above his head. Closing his eyes, concentrating intently, he let his body relax through a series of shallow breaths and then, with his head cleared of all thought, he made the same arm and hand movement he had made several hundred times before.

  Opening his eyes, he saw the ball arc through the center of the basket and drop with a soft thud into a rounded metal chute he had rigged up. The ball rolled right back onto his desk.

  Tom cracked up laughing.

  “You son of a gun,” he said, “I didn’t think you could do that! I should’ve had a camera!”

  “That was one for the books, wasn’t it?”

  “You think you can do that again?”

  “I think I’ll quit while I’m ahead.”

  They both laughed.

  “Damn—you nailed that!”

  “I sure did.”

  “Maybe we oughta start taking bets. Go on the road…Make some serious money…Like a blindfolded knife thrower.”

  “Hell, I’d get self-conscious and start missing. That’s the trick, anyway, not to think about it.

  “But, listen here, Tom, whatta ya think? What have we got goin’ on here?”

  “I don’t know, Bill,” Tom said, shifting in his chair and pushing his pork-pie hat back on his head. “What have we got so far?”

  Bill, wearing a pair of sturdy brogues, put his feet up on his desk. He folded his hands across his stomach and rested his elbows on the arms of his leather executive chair.

  “Hell, I don’t know, Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “Eco-terrorists?”

  “Dumb fucks, if you ask me. But, yeah, probably something like that. A bunch of misguided fools. What’s the lab come up with so far?”

  “We got three sets of prints off the spool. Two of them are no good, but they’re working on the third one.”

  “What about that kid who called the newspaper, that journalism student out at the university?”

  Tom took a notepad from his jacket pocket. He flipped it open to the halfway point.

  “He’s sticking to his story. He says he got an anonymous call from somebody, telling him to be out on 490 at five o’clock Monday morning. They told him to watch for an explosion and then to call the newspaper. He swears he has no idea who they were, just that it was a woman’s voice.”

  Bill drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. He looked out the window, then back at his partner.

  “Why would they call a college kid, working for a college newspaper, and tell him to call a city paper? Why not just call the city paper in the first place?”

  “Yeah, I wondered the same thing. It was probably somebody they knew, and they figured he was more likely to show up. Maybe they figured he wouldn’t be as apt to call the police.”

  Bill rubbed his chin.

  “What’s the kid’s background?”

  “He’s clean. Journalism major…good family and all that. The only thing remotely suspicious—he’s a Democrat and probably a liberal.”

  “Automatic grounds for holding him, Tom. Let’s get out the cuffs.”

  Laughter.

  “Seriously, unless we got something solid, we’ll have to cut him loose. His dad’s a big-shot, industrial type, anyway. Too much juice to fuck with the kid.”

  “Any local groups out here involved in that kind of shit?”

  Tom removed his hat and ran his hand across the top of his head. Ever since a specialist had informed him that he was subject to hereditary baldness, he had unconsciously adopted the habit.

  “Out-of-towners, maybe, huh?”

  “Possibly.”

  “What did he say they called themselves?”

  “Soldiers for a Sane Planet.”

  “Not very damn clever, if you ask me. Hell, my kid could’ve thought of that.”

  “Based on their activity so far, though, it sort of incorporates their agenda, dontcha think?”

  “Yeah—it means we’re suddenly at war with a bunch of dumb fucks.”

  Tom chuckled.

  “College kids, more than likely, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Probably. But whoever set those charges knew what the hell he was doing. And they don’t teach that in college.”

  “He had to have had some experience, that’s for sure,” Tom agreed. “What about that vehicle report? A VW camper, a late-model Subaru, and a Toyota sedan?”

  “A probability, but nothing certain. A store owner out on The Flats reported seeing the van several times over the last two or three nights and a sedan a couple of times. He said he just happened to be having a smoke early Monday morning in front of his store when he heard the explosion and saw all three cars go by shortly afterwards. He said he called the security company out there earlier that evening, but their guy waited until his usual time to make his rounds. If they had been on the ball, the guy might have discovered them before they had a chance to do the blast.”

  “That’s amateurs for ya—sitting on vital information.”

  “Exactly. But if they’re out-of-towners, they had to case the area, maybe spend a day or two getting their bearings. What do you say we check out local motels, start with t
he cheaper ones?”

  “Good idea,” Bill said. “And I’d say they probably wanted to stay fairly close to their area of operation so as to minimize travel time, especially afterwards.”

  “Yeah, at that time of the morning they’d wanna get back to their motel right away. Too conspicuous, otherwise.”

  “It takes a bunch of dumb fucks to do a thing like that in the first place. It’s only after the fact that it all collapses in on them, and they begin to panic.”

  “Yep, after it’s all over and done with, they get walloped with the magnitude of what they’ve done, that’s for sure.”

  Bill picked up his desk phone and punched in a number. “I’m gonna check with the lab before we go.” With the receiver to his ear, he waited a moment, then got a response.

  “Millie, Bill Hammerstein here. You got anything on that set of prints yet?…Nothing?…Not as clear as you’d like them to be, huh?…Well, keep me posted, will ya? Thanks, Millie.”

  He turned to Tom. “Apparently, the computer has to do more sorting. Too many similar patterns involved at this point.”

  “I’m not surprised. It wasn’t easy getting them off that spool. What I don’t understand, though, is why the guy didn’t wear gloves? If he was professional enough to rig the tower, he should have known better.”

  “Panic, Tom…he didn’t intend to leave it behind.”

  “Yeah, they probably saw the security car and just wanted to get the hell outta there. They must have figured they’d be alone out there at that time of the morning, but it didn’t work out that way.”

  Bill stood up and put on his baseball cap with its FBI logo stitched across the front. “The best-laid plans…” he said. “But let’s boogie on outta here and see if we can uncover one of the Eternal Mysteries—why dumb fucks are so dumb.”

  § § § § § §

  Late that afternoon, he and his partner drove into the parking lot of a diner out along a commercial thoroughfare. They parked their black Caprice next to a yellow cab and went inside. They sat down at the counter and ordered a cheeseburger, double fries, and a cup of coffee apiece. The waitress, wearing a black apron over a starched pink dress, wrote their orders on a pad, went away, and came back a moment later with two mugs of freshly brewed coffee.