Kick (The Jenkins Cycle Book 1) (3 page)

When it comes to hotels I’m fairly particular, depending on my finances. If money’s no object I like to stay at a Hilton. But with only $2,500 to cover the next few weeks, I opted for the Hampton Inn. I got a nonsmoking suite with a king-size bed at $109 a night and reserved it for three weeks using Mike’s credit card. If I wasted my cash I’d be living off ravioli and hotel TV for the duration. I’m fine with that when I’m broke, but this ride had money. Money means fun.

I wasn’t sure how close to the limit Mike kept his card, so when the card cleared I relaxed a little.

At some point on the way to the room I accidentally got a whiff of myself, or maybe something someone tracked in that smelled like me. One of the things I do after arriving in a new body is take a shower. There’s probably some spiritual symbolism or psychological explanation for the ritual, but I never finished college so I couldn’t tell you.

When I got to the room, I threw my vest on the bed, stepped into the bathroom and started to strip down. Casually, I noted that Mike wasn’t much of a hygiene freak… and he liked white underwear. I also noticed a key hanging from a bootlace looped around my neck, over my T-shirt.

Though my shower beckoned, I dressed again and returned to the parking lot to retry those padlocks. The key worked. Even better—the back right saddlebag contained a couple of thick bricks of $20 bills. Drug money, I assumed.

“Thank-you-thank-you-thank-you,” I whispered to the Great Whomever. I’d ridden some broke SOBs before.

The other bag had a map, which I grabbed. I took a stack of twenties with me and relocked the bags, placing my trust in the streetlight three spots over to ward off thieves.

Then it occurred to me: whatever Mike’s plans were, they didn’t involve a night at the Hampton Inn. He had to be staying in the area already, else he’d have a change of clothes with him. Then, remembering the underwear, I allowed that I could be wrong about that.

Back in the room, I flipped through Mike’s wallet again, this time looking for a hotel pass but didn’t find one. I closed my eyes and sent a probe to my conscience. If he had a house with kids waiting for him…
No
, I decided. He didn’t seem like the domestic type. And he had a Maryland license plate. If he had kids then they were someone else’s problem.

The Road Map of the U.S. looked well used and wrinkled, with plenty of markings throughout, mostly in eastern states. I put it away for later, shucked my macho biker getup and resumed my holy quest for a shower.

That’s when I got my first real look at Mike’s tattoos. He was covered near head to toe in them—biker club, hello? And wow, there were some doozies: black roses, an X-rated succubus with a trident, a curious tattoo that read “1%” inside a triangle formed by red lightning bolts. He also liked spiders and spider webs, daggers and skulls and… oh man. On the right side of his chest, big and proud, blazed an evil-looking red and black swastika. The guy was some kind of Nazi biker. I wondered how he’d like coming back with a Star of David tattooed on his face.

After getting the water temperature right, I stepped into the shower. And if I scrubbed more vigorously than I normally would, chalk it up to a need that had nothing to do with mere dirt or bacteria. Happily, I had a jet-powered showerhead with no end in sight to the hot water. Content at last, I wasted no less than four towels drying off.

In the other room, Mike’s phone began to ring. I let it go until it stopped. A minute later, it started again. I clicked the button on the side, dumping it to voicemail. I knew Mike’s wireless carrier required the last four digits of his social security number to reset the password. Since I had his social security card, I could reset it later if I needed to hear it.

Even if Mike had an unfamiliar accent, I could have answered without too much worry. Just because his memories were off limits, it didn’t mean I couldn’t access certain parts of his brain.

Every ride has his own unique speech patterns, integrated so well it takes effort to even notice them. An accent is pretty much the only thing I can’t carry with me when I move on to another body, since it’s not really a product of intellect. If that seems strange, give it a try. Imagine the voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger for a moment. Easy enough. Now try to talk like him—and don’t cheat and use some famous catchphrase like, “I’ll be bock.” Choose something conversational like, “I am Elmer J. Fudd, millionaire, I own a mansion and a yacht.” Now swap in anyone you know but have never tried to imitate before. Unless you’re an unusually gifted mimic, I’ll bet the results were the same.

Anyway, knowing how to talk like a ride is nice, but knowing what to say is a whole ’nother ball game. For that, I was on my own.

When the phone stopped ringing, I flipped it open and clicked around until I found Mike’s number. Then I called it from the hotel landline. Mike’s recorded voice sounded vanilla Midwest or variety thereof, and mean: “Leave a message or fuck off.”

I looked in the mirror over the nightstand and said, “This is Mike, leave a message or fuck off ya dirty motherfucker.”

I squinted, biker-style, and tried again. “This is Mike. Hitler was a dummkopf and I’m thinking of joining a boy band.”

I felt sure I could do it. The thing is, I didn’t want to. What I wanted was to go to a nice restaurant, order anything that looked good and then catch a movie, but I felt uncomfortable going out in Mike’s Mad Max costume. Until I did some shopping, I decided to hold off eating anywhere fancy.

The nervous guy at the front desk directed me to a nearby steakhouse that he swore by. I told him I’d let him know if I liked it or not and barely managed to keep from laughing as he shakily scrawled out the directions for me.

Later at the restaurant, a few bites into my steak, I leaned back and looked over to the nearly empty bar. I couldn’t help notice a lady perched nicely on a stool at one of the overflow tables along the wall. She was something. Correction—she was take-your-breath-away gorgeous. One of those impossibly pretty women you remember for a while and almost suspect of being a dream. Maybe thirty years old and wearing a royal blue business jacket and matching skirt. She had glossy, shoulder-length black hair, full lips and sea-green eyes that threatened to drown mere mud puddles like me.

I noticed she liked to cut each piece of her steak while she ate, rather than all at once, and despite it being perfectly normal I found it fascinating for some reason. She was no waiflike skinny thing with too many bones and undeserved pretensions. No, she filled her suit nicely, and unlike most pretty girls, she didn’t mind looking around once in a while—and that’s how I caught her eye. Not that I had any chance of hooking up with someone in my current state. I looked like a crazy killer and a forty-something one at that, with white-trash facial hair and a bruised eye. Also, call me a pessimist, but I didn’t think she’d be up for my brand of long-distance relationship. So I looked away, like I always do.

I paid for my food and left a good tip in the sensible range.

It had grown dark outside, cooling down considerably from the dry July heat. I didn’t feel like a movie anymore, so I shot over to Walgreen’s and picked up some toothpaste, a razor, and some cherry flavored gum to mask the taste of the nicotine gum I added for Mike’s addiction. Then I roared back to the hotel, chewing happily, even blowing the odd bubble. I must have been a sight.

That night in bed, I watched half a movie where a gorilla the size of a two-story house runs loose in New York carrying a screaming white woman. Thus ended my first day back from the Great Wherever in the body of a biker named Mike. My last thoughts before drifting off were of smooth lips and green-eyed glances and being lost happily at sea.

***

The clock on the stand displayed 8:55 a.m. in big red letters. Mike’s cell phone had started ringing again. It would ring eight times and stop, then eight more times and stop, then on and on like that until I couldn’t sleep anymore.

“Christ,” I said, answering it. “Is that you, Jake?”

“No man, it’s me, Stump,” he said. “Where you at anyway? I need you here. Who the hell’s Jake?”

“Never mind. I got sidetracked.”

“What’d you do, scrape something stinky off the road? When you got prime meat right here? Damn man, you’re worse than me.”

Maybe Mike had a girlfriend—either that or he and Stump were lovers. But I didn’t think so, what with the nudie pictures in Mike’s wallet.

Girlfriends and wives have always been a problem for me, and I still haven’t worked out a way to sleep with someone and not feel guilty of something like rape at the same time. My solution is to avoid the thorny moral dilemma and remain celibate. If I have to be around someone’s significant other, I play cold fish. It isn’t easy. There’s something about bad boys that attracts the lookers—and let’s be honest, there’s nothing sexier than a strange woman with lots of problems trying to get in your pants. But I’m sure if the Great Whomever can come up with the Great Wherever for a suicide like me, he could also come up with The Place Where You Burn Forever, or The Place That Plays Reruns of
Full House
For All Eternity.

Also, cut it how you like, some things are just wrong.

“Fuck you, too,” I said, figuring it’d be a mistake to let anyone give it to me without giving it back. “Where are you?”

“You’re shitting me, right? I’m at the house—waiting for you. Z’s on his way and I’d rather we were both here for that.”

“Does he know the address?”

I scooted quietly off the bed and over to the lacquered desk, where I grabbed a pen and pad.

“Yeah, he’ll find it.”

“Well, what’s the address?”

“I told you he’ll find it.”

In this short exchange, I took a gamble that I ranked at least the same as Stump in whatever pecking order they shared. Putting as much scorn and suspicion into my voice as I could, I said, “Look, just tell me the address you told him, ok? Humor me.”

“Mike you’re acting weird, what’s up man?”

“Just tell me the fu—”

“—ok, all right, Jesus—1282 Calypso Lane.”

“Off what highway?”

With something like disgust, Stump said, “Rasco Road—you want the ZIP code, too, asshole?”

“Never mind, I’ll talk to you later.”

“Z’ll be here by noon, just sayin’.”

“I’ll be there, don’t be a crybaby.”

I hung up on him before he could reply.

This trip had begun to suck a little. Dealing with friends and associates always complicated matters. For all I knew, Stump wanted my money, and I had no intention of giving it to anyone not on the other side of a cash register.

On the other hand, I knew there were reasons for being here that went beyond my personal desires, that by reaching out to these doorways I’d made a bargain of sorts. So I had to do whatever it took to find out as much about Mike’s crimes as I could, put a stop to them in the least expensive or time-consuming way possible and somehow squeeze in the odd baseball game or amusement park when I could.

It was as simple as that.

Chapter 5

Before leaving the hotel, I stuffed my wallet and pockets with about $1500, then hid the rest of the money under the mattress. I wasn’t worried about a maid stealing it. In fact, I planned to leave the rest to one of them or give it away to someone who looked like they could use it—at the end of my trip, like I’d done with Helen back at the diner. I’d be damned if I let it go to anyone who hung out with criminals like Mike Nichols. Ok, sure, technically I’d judged him before I knew anything definite. But he did have a swastika tattoo and a bunch of strange cash. Judge Judy didn’t even need that much to pass sentence.

Years ago I’d memorized the road maps of every major city in the country. So I tossed Mike’s map away after a cursory look. After hearing the address, I knew how to get there.

The wind helped keep the climbing heat and humidity to bearable levels as I roared out of the greater city, heading south. After a pleasant thirty minute ride, my internal GPS led me to a rundown neighborhood called Palmetto Springs. The houses were faded, Lego-shaped ramblers and boxy colonials from the eighties. I didn’t see any palm trees, and if there were ever any springs they’d dried up ages ago.

Outside the address Stump had given me, I noticed a tough-looking chopper parked next to a primer-coated van on a cracked and spotted driveway. The house was a two story brick colonial with the curtains closed. A tree the height of the house escaped skyward from the parched and balding lawn.

I worried the bike’s whuf-whuf-chuffing would alert someone inside.

“Come on fraidy-pants,” I said to no one but me and parked just behind the chopper.

Cautiously, I approached the door and began rehearsing various openers. Mom said it best: first impressions are everything. Dan Jenkins believed in knocking first, but I pegged Mike Nichols as the just-barge-in type. Still, if he and Stump were up to something illegal, a polite knock or a phone call might have been smarter. It helped that Mike Nichols was only a loaner body.

I tried the door and found it locked. I reached for the doorbell, then thought better of it and tried my keys. I had to cycle through them twice before I found one that worked. Trying not to seem as if I were sneaking in, I sneakily snuck in and found myself in a foyer with a closed door at one end and a flight of ascending stairs to my right. The air reeked lousy with old cigarette smoke overlaid with the musty staleness you get when the windows haven’t been opened in years. The carpet made a tread-stained track through the house with the original beige color visible only along the edges. The walls along the stairs were tiled with little brown and white marbled bell shapes, each inverted over the other in a staggered pattern.

I crept forward and tried the door. It stuck a little, and when it popped free of the frame it quivered loudly enough to give me away, but nobody called out. Directly ahead stood a card table covered with beer bottles and overflowing ashtrays. Cautiously, I went left and entered a room with a large TV and a faded blue recliner with the stuffing coming out at the arms. Otherwise, the room was empty.