Read Last Exit in New Jersey Online
Authors: C.E. Grundler
From the velvety blackness, blinding light appeared. This was it. Hammon knew the drill. Go to the light.
Only this time he wasn’t going anywhere. He was still lying on that stinking tarp in the trunk of his car, and he still felt like shit. That wasn’t right.
The light moved closer, burning his eyes.
“Zap? Oh shit.”
“That sounds like Gary,” Annabel said.
The flashlight beam swept across him, but Hammon couldn’t move. “Jeez.” Gary poked his shoulder, then slumped back, shaking his head. “Christ, kid.”
Hammon blinked.
“JESUS!” Gary jumped backwards. He leaned over cautiously. “I thought you were dead. You look dead.” He yanked the tape off Hammon’s mouth, along with some hair and skin. “You smell dead.”
Hammon sucked in fresh air, coughing.
Gary peeled the tape off Hammon’s hands. “What the hell happened to you?”
“Reality.”
Agonizingly Hammon propped himself up on his elbows, feeling like a voodoo doll as stabs of pain shot through his stiff body. With Gary’s help he hauled himself out, balancing against the bumper and repositioning his damaged leg. Gary cringed and looked toward the glowing emergency room entrance. “At least you’re in the right place.”
“It’s just broken. I’m not going in there. What’re you doing here?”
“Some kid called. He said to tell you the next time you cross ‘them’ you won’t be so lucky.”
Hammon brightened. They didn’t want him dead…at least Micah didn’t.
Gary said, “And ten minutes ago, the signal went live again. Care to explain?”
“You mean THE signal?
Revenge
?” Hammon grinned. Hazel and Micah were on the move again, and he could track them. “You have to show me!” He started toward the driver’s door, his leg buckled, and he landed in a twisted pile.
Gary looked ill. “You seriously need a doctor.”
“I’m fine. Just give me a hand, I’m sure I can jury-rig it.” Hammon pulled himself upright, balancing on one leg. Holding the Fairmont, he hobbled around to the door, dragging his damaged limb. His backpack was gone but they’d left the duct tape. He eased himself into the car and grabbed his leg, propping it straight.
Gary winced. “You need that looked at, and you need to explain what the fuck’s going on.”
“We need to get moving, dear,” Annabel said. “Now.”
Hammon nodded. “I know, but I can’t drive like this.”
Gary’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t say drive.”
“I was talking to Annabel.”
“Annabel?” Gary rubbed his face.
“Just cause she’s not real doesn’t mean she’s gone. That’s not important. I’ve got to follow that signal.”
It took a round of show-and-tell to convince Gary he didn’t require medical attention, at least not for his leg. His head was another matter. Finally Gary gave up, locking his truck and heading the Fairmont toward the Turnpike. “So you don’t remember why you were at the hospital or how you wound up in your trunk.”
Hammon shook his head. “Nope. Not a clue. My brain must be shorting out again.”
“And you don’t know who called me.”
“Nope.” Hammon hiccupped.
“And you’re not gonna tell me why you’re lying through your pointy teeth.”
“Nope.”
He was operating on Annabel’s advice. Don’t explain, not that he could even if he wanted to. He had no idea what was going on.
Gary glanced into the backseat at the gear from
Nepenthe.
“Should I even ask why you got a carload of sailboat shit?”
“Nope.”
“And the fact that the signal came on in the middle of this all, just coincidence?”
Hazel’s words still echoed in his head. “She said nothing is coincidence.”
“Annabel?”
Hammon nodded. “Yeah, Annabel.”
“No,” she snapped. “I said, ‘Shut up, already.’”
Gary watched the monitor on his laptop.
Revenge
was underway, heading south. The plan was to switch over to
Temperance
and follow by water.
“How far you think they’re going?” Annabel said.
“Damned if I know.” Hammon rolled his pants leg up, assessing the damage, past and present. The prosthetic began midthigh; Hazel’s shot was lower, mangling the knee joint. He rigged a splint with sail battens and duct tape. It would hold, but he’d walk with a nasty limp until he got it fixed. A horn sounded and Gary swerved back into his lane.
“Watch the road,” Hammon said. For years he’d been obsessively self-conscious of his physical condition. Time in the trunk gave him a new perspective about what really mattered.
“You never mentioned…that.”
“Never came up.” Hammon wrapped more tape around his repair. “I’ll need a hand with this. The foot and socket look okay but the knee’s history. That sucks; I just got this one three months ago. German engineered, state-of-the-art microprocessor controls, but I got a feeling assault by tire iron isn’t under warranty. Good thing she hit this side.”
“Brilliant,” Annabel grumbled.
Gary’s eyes narrowed. “She?”
Hammon blinked. “Who?”
“You said…” Gary tapped his fingers on the wheel. “I wish I had a better idea what I’m dealing with.”
“That makes two of us.”
“I meant you. Five years, I got no more idea who or what you are than when I found you holed up on that freakin’ boat.”
“I figured you were happier not asking. I know I was.” Hammon tested his leg, wrapping it a few more times. Satisfied, he pulled the pants leg down.
Gary stared ahead. “And I’m not supposed to ask what the hell’s going on.”
He had to find her. She needed him. He’d make her see. The tracking system showed them running along the outer shore, passing Rumson. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“You’ve got that right.” Gary swung onto the shoulder and snapped the laptop shut. “I’ve put up with lots of weird shit over the years, and I’ve tried to roll with it. Either you start talking or you can kiss finding your boat good-bye.”
“But…”
Revenge
was his last link to Hazel. Reluctantly Hammon related everything up to the present, the whole while glancing anxiously at the computer. “She’s in trouble,” he insisted.
“You sure she didn’t take a swing or two at your head? Wake the fuck up. She’s not in trouble, you are. You’ve been set up. The question is, why?”
“She couldn’t kill me.”
“She only tried to cripple you. How touching.”
“Someone’s after them and they think it’s me. But they don’t understand, whoever’s after them is using them to get to me.”
“Let me guess: the people with the tracking microchips.” Gary eyed him skeptically. “If I hadn’t got that call and found you like I did, I’d think you lost it completely. Seriously, what’s anyone want with you?”
Hammon stared out the window. “I know things.”
“What things?”
Hammon sighed. “That’s the problem. I don’t remember.”
July 2 dawned with vivid shades of red, pink, and orange shimmering off the water.
“Damn, that’s freakin’ breathtaking.” Micah gazed up as they docked the freshly fueled-up
Mardi
among the fleets of charters and fishing boats in transient slips at the Belmar Municipal Boat Basin. “Almost leaves you without words.”
Hazel regarded the sky as she tightened the spring line. “A depression’s moving in.”
“Can’t you just once say, ‘Oooh. Pretty sunrise.’”
Hazel looked up. “Ooooh. Pretty. My dad’s been shot, my life’s falling apart, people are trying to kill us, and the weather’s going to get ugly.”
Micah grinned. “But on the bright side…”
She glared at him. “Don’t say it.”
They passed the day catching up on sleep aboard the boat. Through a late-day call from nurse Chris, Hazel learned her father was making a strong recovery, and making himself a pain in the process. If everything continued smoothly over the coming hours, he’d be headed into surgery with an orthopedic specialist to pin together his ankle, fibula, and tibia, all shattered when the Buick’s engine crushed into the firewall. They checked in again as darkness fell to learn surgery was scheduled for Saturday morning. The next call, made from a pay phone blocks away, left Micah pale.
“Keith couldn’t find anything on Stevenson, but he said last night Atkins’s trailer burned to a shell. The cops didn’t find Atkins, but they’re still sifting through it.”
“He might not have been there,” Hazel said, without much conviction. The way things had been going, her optimism had worn thin.
Micah dialed Atkins’s number. Hazel leaned closer, trying to listen in as he scribbled down “NY, SDH-896” then hung up.
“What’s that?” Hazel said. “A license plate?”
“This,” he pointed to the paper, “is code for a time and place. We set this up back when things first hit the fan, just in case. Atkins is a bit on the paranoid side. Then again, he’s been right so far. Here,” he showed her. “Add all the numbers, you get twenty-three. So twenty-three minutes after each hour, give or take.” He underlined
NY
. “That means the Turnpike. ‘NJ’ is the Parkway. Take the last letter,” he circled the
H
. “That’s the eighth letter in the alphabet. So subtract eight from the eight-nine-six, then divide by eight,” he explained, figuring it as he did. “And that’s where we meet: at the rest stop by that milepost at that time at the furthest end of that lot. No one shows, leave and come back in an hour.”
“Mile one eleven.” She knew Micah trusted Atkins completely, but she couldn’t help but wonder if they’d been sent the coordinates for a trap. “The Alexander Hamilton rest stop in Secaucus.”
“And we need a car.”
The vehicle of choice was a Chevy Blazer from which a mildly intoxicated couple emerged, laughing as they stumbled into the pub across the street. There was no debate or discussion; Hazel pointed, Micah nodded, and minutes later they were rolling, Micah at the wheel.
The sky darkened and light rain began to fall, and the dismal wiper blades only smeared the view of the taillights ahead. Micah remained uncharacteristically quiet, which made Hazel more uneasy than she already was.
At Newark she watched cargo planes taxiing around terminals and runways. A Fed-Ex jet roared as it raced Turnpike traffic then rose into the night sky. Rows of boxcars lined up on rail tracks, hauling cargo to and from the container ships docked along the Elizabeth waterfront. Massive cranes ceaselessly transferred loads between ships, trains, and trucks in a well-orchestrated ballet. Further ahead oil refinery lights twinkled. There was a certain beauty to the industrial landscape, alive and shimmering in the rainy night.
“You know what the problem is?” Micah stared out. “People fly into Newark, see this, and figure the whole state’s the same thing.”
Hazel glanced across, noticing his tight grip on the wheel.
“It’s not just that,” she joined in. “Half the country, they’ve never even been here, they watched some TV show or movie and they assume Jersey’s a toxic wasteland populated with mobsters.”
Micah nodded grimly. “Everyone says they air’s lousy, but nobody points out where most of that pollution comes from: out west. The jet stream carries all the smog from coal-burning power plants and dumps it here. I’m sick of Jersey-bashing. Atkins says the state slogan should be, ‘Welcome to New Jersey, now go home.’”
Hazel counted the numbers on the mile markers, her anxiety rising as they increased. What were they headed into? Try as she might, she couldn’t shake the awful feeling this trip was a mistake.
“It’s too bad we took Hammon’s phone,” Micah said.
“How so?”
“We’ve got no way of calling him.”
“And why would we want to do that?”
“Because you’re no fun when you’re morose. Around Hammon, at least you were smiling.”
“Yeah, until I learned Stevenson sent him.”
All the warning signs were there, but she’d chosen to ignore them. She’d been careless and completely misjudged Hammon, endangering them both. She was turning out to be a poor excuse for a salvage consultant.
They passed through the Meadowlands, reaching the Alexander Hamilton service area on schedule, and Micah parked beside a dingy red Corolla. Hazel watched warily as the greasy-haired driver unfolded himself from the car, greeting Micah with a round of friendly profanities.
“Didn’t even recognize you when you pulled up.” Atkins looked Micah over. “Good move losing the blue hair and crap on your face. Finally showing some sense.”
Hazel remained beside the Blazer, scanning the lot for threats, and backed up slightly as Atkins approached.
“You nervous, girl?” His discolored eye locked on her in an unblinking stare. “Smart. Micah said you got a good head on you.” He nodded toward their surroundings. “The last hour I been watching, no one’s came and parked over here. I warned Micah this shit was coming. Your boat, my trailer. Word is your dad’s had a bad accident, only I’m betting it wasn’t an accident.”
“No,” Hazel said. “Someone shot him.”
Atkins nodded. “I was afraid of that. This’s getting ugly. Someone out there’s rattled and wants us all gone. They shot up my trailer while it burned. Good thing I was out. Come dark I swung by your place looking for Joe. He wasn’t ’round, but I found this stuck to your old Kenworth.” He pulled a sloppily folded paper from his pocket, smoothed it, and passed it to Hazel.
Micah leaned his chin over her shoulder to see. It read: “FOUND” with the photos of
Tuition
, the trailer’s interior, and Hazel,
Times
in hand, finger raised. At the bottom was a 201 area-code number.
“That’s Stevenson’s number,” Hazel said.
Atkins leaned back against the Corolla. “This’s just the thing I tried warning you about. I don’t know what’s become of Kessler, but he weren’t working alone. You got this Stevenson on one end, Kessler’s partner on the other, and us dumb schmucks stuck in the crossfire. I figured I call, play along, see what they say. Maybe we can turn it to our advantage, but I wanted to run it by you kids first.”
“Why?” Hazel said suspiciously. Micah shot her a look but Atkins only nodded.
“When I quit, Kessler said it weren’t that easy. I know his operations. So do you all, at least as far as they figure. Likely there’s bullets out there with our names on ’em. We work together, watch each other’s backs, maybe we make it out whole.”
“So, what’s the plan?” Micah asked.
“I thought about that the whole ways here.” Atkins’s unsettling gaze fixed on Hazel, an awful smile filling his face. “From all Micah’s told me ’bout you, I figure you’ll appreciate this.”
First step was arranging the meeting.
Atkins called from the pay phones while Hazel and Micah stood lookout. The conversation was brief, and Atkins scribbled down notes. He hung up and they returned to the relative privacy of the cars.
“My contact, he didn’t give me any name, but he’s one smooth-talking son of a bitch. He says I got an interesting little operation. He said he could keep everything for himself, but without the right marketing connections, it don’t do him much good. He says in exchange for twenty-five percent of the profits, he’ll return it and become a silent partner. He says anything unfortunate happens to him, he got documented information goes out to the DEA and all.”
Atkins wiped his face. “He said Kessler got sloppy, and he’s got someone more reliable to replace him. And he said there were some loose ends. I’m guessing that’d be us. But he said he’s already got that being taken care of.”
“Somehow,” Micah said, “I don’t think that means limos and room service.”
“Not likely. We’re meeting by the truck at midnight to shake on our new partnership.”