The thing to do, I thought, as I noticed the tall man in the long wool overcoat exiting the Miss Albany Diner, was to go to Athens, no matter what my lawyer advised, and find out for myself.
BOOK THREE. ATHENS
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
THURSDAY, MIDDAY, I OPTED for the scenic route north from Stormville and followed the Hudson River for seventy stop-and-go miles. I made it to Athens about an hour and a half later. Athens, with its run-down wood-framed buildings and sleepy sidewalks, was the sort of small town Fran might have described, once upon a time, as quaint. I, on the other hand, might have called it a dump.
One main artery ran through the center of the downtown-a road that paralleled the Hudson River, which ran wide and dark under the gray cloud cover. Judging by the proximity of the river, I guessed that Athens had been built inside the flood plain, which may have made it a constant source of anxiety for some of its residents, especially when you considered how many American towns had been wiped out by floods during the past few warm, wet winters. Whatever the case, the town was made up of dozens of two- and three-story asphalt-clad houses and buildings that occupied both sides of Main Street. An occasional coffee shop or hardware store was interspersed amongst the residences. Cars and pickup trucks parked on the diagonal against the curb, the hoods and bumpers pressed up against parking meters with red flags clearly flying, as if the police had simply given up collecting revenues from parking violations.
I took it slowly, driving through the town at ten to fifteen miles per hour, and kept a watchful eye out for Vasquez on the off chance that he might be reckless enough to be walking the streets, maybe taking in a little sightseeing, despite the fact that there were no sights to be seen. I knew that finding Vasquez on the street like a common citizen would have been next to impossible. But then, I had no other plan in mind but to cruise the streets and find what I could find until something turned up.
I took three separate trips up and down the main drag, doing my best to get a good look through the wide, square-shaped picture windows of the eating establishments. I gazed at the faces of the passersby. Sad looking people in blue jeans and T-shirts, mostly, who returned my stares with squinty-eyed suspicion.
After a while, I decided to turn off onto another side street that ran parallel to the Hudson River. But the effort was futile. That was when I decided to pull into the Sunoco station at the northern edge of town. When all else fails, my father used to say, stop at a gas station, ask for directions.
This wasn’t the new-style gas station with islands of computerized, self-service pumps, shiny aluminum paneling, and colorful neon. This was an old station, the kind I remembered as a kid, with revolving black-and-white numerical displays on the pump faces as opposed to computerized readouts with accompanying robotic voices that say thank you when you’ve finished feeding them your plastic money.
The station itself was something my father and grandfather might have built decades ago. Squat and square-shaped, the flat-roofed building had been constructed from cinder blocks covered with a coating of yellow plaster that, over the years, had faded to off-white from too many summer suns. Outside the picture window was an oversized tin placard shaped like a Coke bottle. The long thermometer embedded in the center of the bottle read eighty-seven degrees-a record, I guessed, for this early in May, although I could have been wrong.
The decor on the inside of the station was hardly an improvement. Fran would have called it a charming time capsule. A relic from an era gone by. I would have called it a dive and Fran would have said that I had little appreciation for what could easily pass as art deco. One thing was certain: the place smelled like gasoline and motor oil. Not a bad smell really. But then, it wasn’t a good smell either. Just a heavy industrial odor that tickled my sinuses.
A calendar was tacked to the wood paneling behind a metal desk and it featured a full-color photo of a bleach blonde in a red string bikini and high heels. In her right hand she held a torque wrench, in her left a long rubber hose, while a banner draped like a bandolier around her waist and shoulder read Snap-On-Tools.
On the desk sat a black rotary-style phone next to an adding machine and a mound of little yellow credit slips. A radio on a metal shelf gave the play-by-play of a noontime Yankees game.
Big Daddy, hero of the ‘96 World Series, was at bat.
The guy seated behind the metal desk was asleep, with his feet up on top of the credit slips. He wore a button-down shirt with a football-shaped emblem glued to the left chest pocket, the name Henry sewn into it in red curlicue letters against a white background. Henry had thick black hair that looked like it had been soaked in a grease pit.
I slammed the door closed.
It took little less than a split second for Henry to sit up straight, feet back on the floor. He began counting receipts, but then he got a hold of himself and raised his head to take a good, slow look at me. Once it registered that I wasn’t the big boss, he took a breath, tossed the yellow receipts back onto the counter, and sat far back in the swivel chair, looking more relieved than exhausted.
I gave him my best stranded-stranger smile.
But Henry’s expression never wavered.
“What?” he said.
Big Daddy took a swing and missed. Strike one. A hum from the crowd at Yankee Stadium.
“Hi there,” I said, raising my voice a full octave. “Jeez, I’m passing through on my way to Montreal and, jeez, I was wondering if you might recommend a hotel where a tired guy could spend the night.” I stretched my arms, let go with a fake yawn.
Henry squinted, sat up straight, and leaned up against his desk.
“Haven’t I seen you before?”
I imagined Big Daddy knocking the dirt out of his cleats with the heavy, wide bottom of his Louisville Slugger.
I brought my right hand to my face, rubbed the stubble of my day-old beard.
“I can’t see how,” I said. But then I glanced over Hank’s shoulder into a corner of the room that contained a newspaper vending machine nestled between a glass-topped peanut dispenser on one side and candy dispenser on the other. Like everything else in the gas station, the dispensers were relics. You had to slip a quarter into the slot and turn the silver-plated knob 360 degrees to release a handful of junk that had probably been stored for more than a decade in the clear glass containers. As for the newspaper vending machine it housed the Poughkeepsie Standard.
“Warden Indicted!” read the headline, and just a for a split second I felt like I was reading about a total stranger. But the headline was accompanied by a photograph taken a decade ago. I had lost some hair since then. So recognition for Henry may not have been that instantaneous. But just to be safe, I looked to the floor and turned the collar up on my charcoal-colored blazer.
Big Daddy swung and missed. Two down.
“Yeah,” Henry said, bringing his right hand up and rubbing his chin so that a few of the yellow credit receipts floated down to the floor. “You look real familiar to me.”
Big Daddy set up one last time to the commotion in the stadium.
I took a quick glance through an open interior door that led into the garage. The far wall inside the garage was covered with dozens of mufflers that hung from an overhead ceiling-mounted rack. I turned back to the attendant. “You ever hear of Midas Muffler, Henry?”
When he nodded, a thick strand of greasy hair fell down onto his forehead.
“The commercial where the customer looks into the camera like this.” I made a stern, tight face. “And then he says, ‘I’m not going to pay a lot for this muffler!’ “
Henry beamed with an ear-to-ear grin. “Yeah, yeah,” he said, “I know it.”
“That’s me,” I said.
Henry took his hands away from his face, set them in his lap.
“I’ll be damned,” he said. “Never seen a film star up close before.”
“Now,” I said, “how about that hotel?”
“The only place around is the Stevens House
Bed-and-Breakfast over on the corner of Livingstone and North Water Streets.”
“Expensive?” I said, making that same tight, stern face. “I don’t want to pay a lot for that hotel.” Maybe I was pushing it too far.
“Cheap,” Henry said, “for a man of your means.” He sat back once more in that swivel chair, ignorant of the credit slips that continued to float down to the grease-and-gasoline-smeared floor. “Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep filmed some of Ironweed over there on the second floor.”
“Jeez,” I said. “Jack and Meryl.”
“You know them?”
I crossed the finger on my right hand.
“Jack and me are like this,” I lied.
“No kidding,” Hank said.
“Who should I see at the Stevens House?”
“Just tell them Henry Snow sent you.”
I glanced at my picture and my headline.
“What did you say your name was?” said Henry, his eyes squinty and curious.
I hesitated for a second or two-maybe longer than I should have.
Big Daddy swung and missed again. Three strikes and a loud buzz of disappointment from the New York fans. I remembered seeing Mickey Mantle make a rare strikeout when I was a boy, having made it to the ball game with my father on the bus trip the Italian American Benevolence Society of Albany sponsored once a year.
I took a quick look at the bowling trophies and plaques displayed on the same shelf as the radio broadcasting the game. Some of the plaques had been service awards issued by the Sun Oil Company. The most recent award had the year 1972 embossed in fake silver plate attached to a fake marble base.
Nineteen seventy-two, the year Wash Pelton, Mike Norman, and I might never have seen had we not survived Attica.
“Sonny Rivers,” I said. “My stage name.”
“Can’t say I know the name,” Henry Snow said. “But it sounds like it could be famous.”
I put my hand on the door, took one last look at the newspaper headline and photo. But then Henry turned and looked at the headline, too.
Time for Sonny Rivers to make his exit, stage right.
“Hey thanks,” I said, turning the knob on the old glass-and-wood door.
“Don’t mention it, Sonny,” Henry said.
And then I left.
But as I climbed back into the 4-Runner, I could see that my newest buddy, Henry Snow, had already picked up the phone. I turned over the four-by-four and glared at him through the plate-glass window that took up a whole quarter of the station’s facade. For a second or two, our eyes locked. But Henry kept right on talking into the receiver as if convinced that he could see me, but that I had no way of seeing him. Glass tends to fool some people that way, as if transparency works only one way. Maybe it was just a hunch, or maybe just a bad feeling. Maybe my nerves were getting the best of me. But as I turned out onto Main Street, I felt certain that gullible Henry Snow hadn’t been snowed at all. He was calling the cops.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
THE STEVENS HOUSE WAS an old townhouse that took up an entire street corner. It had a high Victorian-style roof with gables atop all four corners. The gables were visible from where I parked the Toyota on the opposite side of North Water Street. With its tall shutters and dark, heavy oak doors, the place looked more like a haunted house than a bed-and-breakfast.
The west bank of the Hudson River cut across the flat landscape directly to my right. A jetty made up of black boulders reached out to the center of the river. At the farthest point of the jetty was a lighthouse, the base and tower of which had also been constructed of heavy stone blocks. The lighthouse beacon cast a bright yellow light against the cloud cover.
I turned back to the Stevens House and decided to wait and watch out for a dark, wiry-looking man who fit Eduard Vasquez’s description. A man with his ID number tattooed to his knuckles and a mouth with a hole in it where a molar had been extracted. I waited for a woman with brown hair and a small, heart-shaped tattoo on her neck. I would have waited and watched until dark, had I not heard the unmistakable wail of police sirens.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
NOT EVERYTHING ABOUT THE Attica riot was fear and loathing and silent desperation. There were moments of real heroics. I don’t mean Arnold Schwarzenegger-style Hollywood heroics where I singlehandedly take out each and every one of the rebel inmates with my bare feet and knuckles. What I’m trying to get across is this: Just staying alive constituted honest-to-God heroics.
For example, I still see myself dragging Mike Norman by his feet back to the wall of D-Block, keeping him between me and the stone foundation. Wash Pelton follows, sets himself right beside me. Two rebel inmates-one black, one white-watch over us. Other inmates stare at us, the guards who have become the prisoners. From here I can see the sudden reflection of the sun in the scopes of the sharpshooters during the occasional breaks in the clouds.
The rebel inmates lift their shivs and spears and assume a sort of attack formation. When they begin to close in, I can see the whites of their eyes. I can see their jagged, broken blood vessels. I can almost smell their sour breath.
It’s then that something strange happens to me. All fear leaves my body. It just seems to drain out through my bare feet like water from a sieve. It’s as if, along with the realization that I’m already dead, a great burden has been lifted from my shoulders.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I KEPT THE TOYOTA at an even thirty-five per until safely outside of town. Then I shot up Route 9 to Highway 87, fast lane. When I came to the first available rest stop about fifteen minutes later, I pulled around back of the wood-and-stone building and parked between two green dumpsters.
The rest stop resembled a ski lodge more than a tourist trap for wayward and exhausted motorists. Bolted to the exposed fieldstone interior, a colorful neon sign advertised a Burger King and a Santo Pizza Parlor. Another smaller, much less conspicuous neon sign advertised an ATM like an afterthought.
Since I hadn’t eaten all day, I chose the lesser of the two evils and ordered two giant slices with sausage from the pizza joint. I covered the slices with Parmesan and ate them while standing at a green Formica counter that wrapped around a seating area with identical pea-green tables and chairs. The tables were filled to capacity with families mostly, eating now, tasting later. Middle-class travelers, I imagined, en route to early vacations upstate at a time of year when the cost of lodging was still cheap. And there were others. Men and women eating alone. One slice of pizza cost four dollars, which meant I’d blown a ten-spot on two lukewarm slices of sausage-covered. My mother would have called the cardboard-thin pizza a disgrace. But then, when it came to my mother, any pizza other than her own was less than edible.
I glanced at a family of four seated in the far corner. Mother and father in their mid-to-late thirties with two young children-a boy and a girl. The cherubic faces of the children barely cleared the table as their little hands awkwardly maneuvered the oversized slices of pizza to their undersized mouths. Throughout the meal, the mother and father never once looked at each other, never once spoke a single word. It made me sad to look at them. I also knew that if I thought about it hard and long enough, I would begin to feel a certain desperation for them.
But then, I knew I had to clear my head, stay focused.
I finished the pizza and wondered about the California return address handwritten on the envelope. Had Athens been a deception or merely a temporary stop-an out-of-the-way place for Vasquez and Wolf to regroup before making their escape to California? Connections and possibilities; possibilities and connections. Maybe Vasquez had simply planted the envelope. Like everything else I’d found along the way (the orgy stills, the.38, the key to Logan’s cuffs, etcetera, etcetera), maybe all of it had been a plant from the start, designed to manipulate me and the cops. Maybe Cassandra Wolf and Eduard Vasquez were hiding out in Athens for a few days until things died down, the road blocks taken up, the fugitives given up as missing. Or maybe, as a last possibil
ity, they had attempted to deceive everyone, to make us believe that they were headed back out to California when in fact they had no other plan but to hole up in a small town located not far from Green Haven Prison.
As the young mother tried to maintain her composure while placing a stack of napkins on the orange soda her little daughter had spilled, I recalled the first rule about going after the location of an escaped convict: Check on his significant other, first thing. Nine out of ten times, an escaped convict could be found in bed with his girlfriend or wife or lover, making up for whatever time together they had lost. It would amaze some people to know just how many escapees could foul up a foolproof escape plan for a romp in the hay. It happened more than John Q. Public knew. It just wasn’t publicized.
As the young family got up and left their table, I wiped the last of the overpriced pizza from my mouth, pulled the envelope from my jeans pocket, took one more look at the California address and the Athens postmark. Just a red-lettered, mechanized postmark barely visible even in the light from the overhead fixture. Vasquez wasn’t your basic, run-of-the-mill prisoner. If I had to make a choice, I’d say he had set up a deception that hadn’t been entirely carried out yet.
But it was then, as I stacked the now-empty tray in its designated place on top of the Formica-covered garbage receptacle, that I noticed him again. The guy in the long wool overcoat who had been drinking coffee in the Miss Albany Diner. He was standing at the ATM machine, making a cash withdrawal. At first I thought I might have been imagining things. But after a few quick looks, I knew for certain it was him. I also knew for certain that I was being tailed, and not just by the cops. I knew I’d have no choice but to let him follow me until I was presented with the perfect opportunity to ditch him. But then, there was another option. I could always flank him, come up on him from behind, stick the.45 in his face, demand information on who had sent him.
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