No Such Creature (23 page)

TWENTY-ONE

S
ABRINA WAS ZOOMING ALONG A SCENIC ROUTE
east across the southern United States. The CD player was going full blast with the Coldplay live album she had picked up at the Dallas HMV, the wind was whipping her hair into a full Medusa, and she was singing her lungs out. She’d checked out of the Red Roof about ten minutes after she’d spotted Bill’s Blazer and spent a restless night at the Terrell Day’s Inn, wondering how the hell he’d tracked her down.

She was pretty sure she’d lost him now; the rearview showed nothing but the Home Depot semi she’d just zipped by. And what could beat this? Swipe the swag and blast off, hit the highway running and no one telling you what to do. So here she was, in a microscopic denim skirt, a white tank, and a nifty pair of Calvin Klein sunglasses, having fun, thank you very much.

Or trying to. There were a couple of things she was trying hard not to think about. Her father, for one. As soon as she had got behind the wheel of this racy little car, she had had a change of heart. El Paso was 600 miles back the way they had come, and no one would be expecting her to go there, so she had phoned the hospice to make sure he would be able to receive a visitor. We’ve been trying to reach you, they told her. Your father died yesterday.

Which was why she was now taking the scenic route in the other direction. In a way, this little escapade was an homage to the old bastard. During the few times he was home and paying attention to her, Sabrina’s father had taught her that theft could be a reasonable way to make a living, provided you boosted only those things that offered a good rate of return. It made no sense to risk jail time for paltry sums. If, on the other hand, you were looking at, say, buying a car, financing your education, or even just upgrading to a more comfortable lifestyle, well, that might be a risk worth taking.

She had hardened her heart to him over the years; her mother’s suicide had done that. But she was discovering that death cancelled all debts, and already she was wishing she had not been so cold to him. It wasn’t anger she was going to carry from now on, it was regret.

Even before she had learned of his death, her attitude had begun to change. It was being in the Rocket with Max that had done that. Seeing the frailty of old age, the foolishness. How could you stay angry at that?

Which brought her to the other thing she didn’t want to think about. Owen.

Max and Owen entered suite 3114 and placed their sombreros on the table. You couldn’t beat a Club Med sombrero for thwarting security cameras. Still, their entry had been delayed owing to the fact that Bill had not answered their knock and they were forced to seek out a chambermaid and stage an elaborate distraction. This involved Owen’s pitching forward, throwing a series of baroque spasms across the hotel corridor, and foaming at the mouth. In the course of the chambermaid’s panicked efforts to help, Max had relieved her of her pass-key. Then they had retrieved the sombreros from the stairwell where they had stashed them and come back.

“Hotel security,” Max said, looking around. “Perhaps I missed my calling.”

“What if he just stepped out for a few minutes?” Owen said. “If he comes back, he’s going to go crazy, and I really can’t face fighting that guy again.”

Max put on a pair of gloves and opened the door. “Anybody home?” he called.

“Somebody is,” Owen said, pointing.

A pair of feet stuck out from behind an armchair near the balcony. Owen crossed the room to take a closer look. “Jesus. It’s Bill. He’s been shot.”

Max bent down and felt the man’s neck. “Still warm,” he said. “But definitely dead, poor sod.”

“Come on, Max, let’s go. We do not want to be explaining what we’re doing in a hotel room with a dead guy.”

“Eschew panic, lad. Panic is the mother of error. It would seem whoever aerated old Bill did not escape without a scratch.” Max pointed to the smear of blood on the table, and another on the far wall.

“There’s blood all the way over here,” Max said, following the trail into the bathroom. “Lav’s full too. He must’ve come in here for a towel to wrap himself up with. Shirt’s on the floor, shot in the arm. He must’ve appropriated one of Preacher Bill’s shirts after he patched himself up.”

“Max, please. I’m feeling sick.”

“In a minute, lad, in a minute. Cogitation is required. If I’m right that Bill here knew where the thieving Sabrina hides, there should be some indication in this room.”

“Well, he’s in security. He used to be a cop. He may have all kinds of ways of tracking people.”

“True, lad. True.”

Owen looked again at the bloodstained table. “There was a computer plugged in here—an Apple. You can tell by the cord.”

“No doubt our wounded killer made off with it. A junkie looking for a quick sale? Unlikely. Perhaps someone who wanted information off the computer? Are there any other electronic devices about the place? A security man is likely to own many.”

Owen took a quick look in the bedroom and came back. “Nothing but Gideon’s Bible. Max, what are you doing?”

Max pulled his hand out of Bill’s pocket, carefully holding a wallet by its edges. “I have established that the motive was not robbery. Several hundred dollars here.”

“Max, I don’t want to make money off murder.”

“A noble sentiment, my boy. Then again, we didn’t commit the murder. We discovered him pre-murdered.”

“Max, put it back.”

“Why? I can’t see him needing it—the afterlife is almost certainly a cashless society. In any case, this is far too nice a point of ethics to determine just now. I’ll just hang on to this, and weigh the matter at such a time and place as may seem conducive to fine distinctions.”

He put the wallet, slimmer now, back into Bill’s pocket and reached into another. This time he extracted a tiny phone. “Examine this, would you, boy? Electronics confound me.”

Owen took it from him, a cherry red iPhone. “Top of the line,” Owen said. “Wireless Internet, digital video, MP3 player, the works.”

“Could one use it for actual communication?”

“What are you looking for, Max?”

“Well, let’s discover who called him recently, shall we?”

Owen thumbed a few buttons until he found the right combination. “Sabrina! Oh, wait, that’s me. I used her phone because it had Bill’s number on speed-dial. Let’s see what he’s got on here …” Owen played with the buttons and squinted at the tiny screen. “Actually not much. Someone named Maria. That could be anyone—mistress, cleaning lady, hooker, who knows? Then he’s got Office one, Office two, Office three. Then Sabrina—same number we have. And then he’s got something called Star Trak.”

“
Star Trek?
”

“Star Trak. T-R-A-K.”

“What is a Star Trak when it’s at home?”

Owen hit the button. The little screen lit up with the Star Trak logo.

“I’ve got their home page. It’s probably going to want a password … No, wait, he’s got it set to remember his password for twenty-four hours.” He clicked another button. “It’s like MapQuest or something. For finding directions. No, wait, it’s a GPS outfit. Max, you were right! He’s been tracking her on GPS. He must have put a unit in her suitcase.”

“How absolutely diabolical,” Max said with admiration.

“It’s pointing to US 80. See, he probably had this screen open on his computer and now the other guy’s got it.”

“Not a moment to lose, then. Exeunt all, in sombreros.”

TWENTY-TWO

O
WEN AND
M
AX
had left the Rocket in the trailer park and were now barrelling along US 80 in the Taurus, the iPhone clutched in Owen’s fist. The GPS readout didn’t tell them Sabrina’s speed, but she wasn’t wasting any time.

She seemed to be choosing her route at random, sometimes sticking to the scenic highway, other times bounding onto the interstate. They tracked her across Louisiana, through two hundred miles of woody hills and Biblical injunctions.
Caution: Jesus has you on his radar
, one warned.
Are you ready for the Rapture?
inquired another. And Max’s favourite:
How about a little (make that eternal) swim in a lake of fire?
The towns alternated between industrial wastelands and hamlets so microscopic they weren’t on any maps.

They passed the boarded-up storefronts of Shreveport, and Max howled when they had to forgo the Riverboat Casino, which was not in fact a riverboat but a four-storey structure built to look like one.

“Are we closing in on her, boy? How are we doing?”

Owen checked the iPhone again. The tiny map showed Sabrina maybe sixty miles ahead.

“We’re definitely closing the gap.”

They stopped for gas in Gibsland (population 1,224), which, Owen informed Max, was the town where Bonnie and Clyde had met their grisly end. He even found a stack of postcards of their bullet-riddled bodies next to a news rack displaying the latest issues of
Edged Weapons
and
Varmint Masters
.

“Thank you for sharing,” Max said when Owen handed him one of the postcards.

“Criminal history’s our theme this year, Max. I don’t see why that should change.”

Bonnie and Clyde were nothing like the movie, Owen added when they were back in the car. “They killed a lot of people and didn’t think twice about it.”

“Is that meant to make me feel better?”

“It’s just a fact, Max.”

“Fact me no facts, boy. You’re dealing with a big-picture man.”

They drove past the shotgun shacks of Monroe, and not long after that they were in Mississippi.
Only positive Mississippi spoken here
, the road signs warned them.

“Only positive criminal history spoken here,” Owen said. “So I guess you’d have to say Bugsy Siegel was a pioneering hotelier and Bonnie and Clyde were excellent drivers.”

“You have a sarcastic side, lad. It somewhat mars your otherwise sterling character.”

They stopped to pick up coffees at a roadside diner. Across the highway, a fly-blown storefront offered evangelical services.
Serving God 24/7
, the sign informed them.
You welcome, Jews
.

Owen fiddled with the iPhone, poking at the tiny buttons until the screen changed again. “She’s about forty miles east of Vicksburg. Not so far now.”

Not long after, they too left Vicksburg and Jackson behind.

“She’s at Hickory now,” Owen said. “Heading for Chunky.”

“There’s a town called Chunky? Why would they call it Chunky?”

“It’s where they make peanut butter.”

“I sense a falsehood.”

A forest sprang up out of nowhere. Thick, dark woods lined either side of the highway. Roadside shrines began to appear. One was constructed entirely out of pop bottles, another out of seashells. All were decorated with Biblical verses and attended by furtive men who modelled their wardrobe on the Unabomber’s.

They paused for meal at Mr. Waffle, which amounted to a three-course dessert, sweet enough to make Owen feel ill.

“American cuisine,” Max pronounced, “cannot be faulted.”

Owen wasn’t listening. “She’s stopped. Hasn’t moved for the last little while.”

Max’s cellphone, which was next to his coffee cup, began to vibrate and skitter across the table.

“Get that for me, boy, would you? I’m digesting.” In fact, he was thoughtfully probing his teeth with a toothpick.

Owen picked up the phone. “Hello?”

A familiar voice said, “How many possible phone numbers are there in any given area code?”

“Roscoe?”

“Seven million, nine hundred and twenty thousand.”

“Roscoe, where are you? What happened to you?”

Max stopped picking his teeth and reached for the phone, but Owen dodged him.

“All you need to know, kid, is that if the Subtractors didn’t exist before, they do now. At least, one of them does, and he’s looking for some girl who stole your stash, or so he says. Guy named Zig.”

“Zig is a Subtractor?”

“Bastard owes me two toes. He’s killed at least two people and probably Pookie too. I would have called sooner, but they took my cellphone and I couldn’t remember Max’s number. I’ve tried about six million of those seven million combinations.”

Max grabbed for the phone again and this time Owen let him take it. He signalled for the check and put some money on the table. After what seemed like an eternity, Max hung up.

Owen was already at the door of the restaurant, holding it open. “Max, for God’s sake, hurry. It’s Zig—and he’s probably right on her tail.”

“I am hurrying, boy. Consult your astrolabe. Where is the witch?”

As far as Zig was concerned, you could take Mississippi and shove it down the wood chipper. He was definitely not liking what he was seeing. For one thing, the accent was way too Southern for his taste. People sounded like the kind of yahoos just itching to whip a slave. If a catfish could talk, it would sound like a Mississippian.

The girl had got quite a head start. First he’d wasted time trying to find Jeopardy Joe, and then he’d had to deal with the guy in the hotel. Zig caressed his upper left arm where Bill had shot him. It was a through-and-through, but it hurt like hell.

And then there was the heat. Absolutely disgusting weather in this state. Las Vegas, Arizona, California too, it could be climbing to ninety degrees and you’d be dry as a bone. Here, even though it was only about eighty-five, Zig’s shirt was drenched in sweat.

He smacked the wheel of the Explorer and cursed it. This was his back-up vehicle. He’d had the thing custom-boosted by the best car thief he knew, got it repainted a tasteful sky blue, and now the first summer he’s driving it the a/c quits on him. Last service station he’d stopped at said it wasn’t a matter of the fluid, the whole unit had to be replaced, and it just made him sick. You tried to maintain a certain standard of living while at the same time buying—well, all right, stealing—American, and you end up with a piece of crap. May as well have settled for some Korean rustbucket.

Having a taste for quality, Zig knew, was a double-edged deal. He’d once shared a cell with a guy doing hard time who had studied the Eastern philosophies to help him through it. One day Zig had expressed a longing for a pitcher of margaritas and an afternoon of teenage pussy, and his cellmate—Ozzie Starr was his name—told him, “Zig, there is no greater calamity than exorbitant desire.”

“Says who?”

“Says Confucius.”

“Uh-huh, and look where it got the Japanese. Sleeping in drawers, and subways so packed you need a key to take the lid off.”

“Confucius was Chinese.”

“Even worse. Look at the pollution, the child labour. How about a little exorbitant desire for clean air? How about a little exorbitant desire for democracy?”

Ozzie was sitting on the edge of his bunk, peeling the foil off a chocolate bar he’d squirrelled away somewhere. Zig couldn’t help noticing the Eastern philosophies did not apparently advocate sharing your Mars bar with your cellmate.

“Confucius wasn’t talking about political systems, bro, he was talking about personal happiness. If you’re going to be happy, you can’t be yearning for things you got no possibility of attaining.”

“What’s so exorbitant about beer and pussy?”

“Look around you, bud.” Ozzie had waved his Mars bar at the steel bars, the peeling grey paint, the stainless steel toilet. “You see any teenage pussy in here?”

“So, according to you, if I get a hard-on for Luther T. down wing, that’s gonna make me happier.”

“Absolutely. Because that is a desire that has every chance of coming true.”

“So Confucius say, Happiness is a huge black dick up your ass.”

“No, Zig. Happiness is a huge black dick up your ass if that’s what you
want
and that’s what’s
available
.”

Fucking Orientals. Zig wanted the good things in life, and no Buddhist, Communist, Falun Gong claptrap was going to talk him out of it. Early on in life he’d developed a taste for good whisky, two-hundred-dollar hookers, and suits that made people sit up and take notice. He liked luxury cars and sunny climates, and by his early twenties he’d understood very well that the world does not hand such things to high school dropouts—unless they happen to play mood-altering guitar or have a tricky way with a basketball.

Right now, for example, instead of seeing a lot of useless Mississippi trees, and stupid little Mississippi towns populated by more spades than he’d seen in his entire time at Sing Sing, he could have really used a couple of weeks on a beach in the Bahamas, maybe take in some deep-sea fishing out of Bimini. He would park his ass on the back of a boat, stick a Cuban cigar in his mouth, and tan himself dark as a saddle. The fish were entirely beside the point. Unfortunately, his perennial cash flow problem demanded that he chase down some little slut he didn’t even know because she happened to have her hands on a set of emeralds that—according to the news reports—could practically fucking
talk
.

Another Podunk town shot by. The laptop beeped and he eyed the screen. It was flashing an icon of a battery and a lightning bolt.

“Fuck you,” Zig said. “Don’t you do that to me. Not now.”

He hit the Okay button and the map came back. He was definitely closing in on the bitch, and he hit the gas a little harder. She was a looker, he had to admit. He had the photograph he’d swiped from Bill’s room on the seat beside the computer. Green eyes you could swim in, and a smile that was, well, let’s just say you can keep Saint Pete. When you die, this is what greets you at the Pearly Gates—silky wings and a smile like this girl’s. So, the order of business would be: scare the living shit out of her till she hands over the emeralds, have a little fun with her, then, sadly, switch off the light before you leave.

That switch was getting increasingly easy to throw, Zig noticed. There’d been Melvin; he’d had a pang or two about Melvin, mostly because it hadn’t been necessary—he’d been too impatient. The Pookie guy had been an accident; you couldn’t be held responsible for other people’s health problems. But he was a little surprised at himself for doing Clem—that hadn’t actually been part of any plan. In fact, that had made him feel pretty bad for a couple of hours. Stu? Well, the truth was he didn’t know Stu all that well, so he didn’t care that much. He’d been twiddling the radio dial for news all day. There was nothing about any bodies found in Dallas, other than Bill Bullard.

That was another no-brainer: guy shoots you, you have to kill him. According to the radio, the cops were looking for a man in a blue suit and a red tie, both of which he’d dumped a couple of hundred miles ago.

An Allied moving van in front of him forced him to slow down. Zig took the opportunity to hit the Update button on the laptop.

The little red arrow was pulsing near Lost Gap, less than ten miles ahead.

“Fuck you, Allied,” he said, and swung out across the solid line, flooring it. A Mazda coming the other way honked incredulously, then hit the brakes and swerved onto the gravel shoulder, fishtailing in a cloud of dust.

Zig got back into his lane and tried to keep things at a good clip without screaming to be stopped by a trooper. Last thing he wanted was a conversation with some redneck in a Smokey outfit and aviator sunglasses. He had to get this babe’s shapely butt in his sights in the next few minutes or he’d lose her for good.