Work Done for Hire (15 page)

S
omething must have shown on my face when I returned to the restaurant. Mario was by the grill chopping onions and he came over with the big chef's knife in his hand. “Something wrong,” he said.

“Hate to leave you in the lurch, man. We have to get out of here.” Kit untied her apron wordlessly and started folding it.

“You have to?”

I nodded.

“Shit happens,” he said, setting the knife down. He went around the counter and punched the cash register hard and scooped out two C-notes and a fifty from the till.

“We couldn't, Mario,” Kit said.

He put the money on the counter and looked at me. “I never seen you guys.” He turned to go back to his onions. “Good luck anyhow.
In bocca al lupo.
” He'd taught us that phrase, like “break a leg.”

We had Plan A mapped out completely. Every morning before we left for work we packed everything we owned into two knapsacks, so we could go into the apartment and out in seconds.

There was a bike shop on the way. The two we'd picked out, a couple of sturdy touring Treks, had been sold—but two new ones had just come in; he'd unboxed them this morning and almost had them together. It seemed like a good omen, starting out fresh, so we bought them and two sets of rear baskets.

While the kid was bolting the baskets on, we went back to the apartment and picked up the knapsacks and left the key on the dresser. As an afterthought Kit left a note saying we'd been called north, and expected to be back before the first, but if we weren't, go ahead and rent the room. We left our Jazzy Pass RTA cards with the note.

We had two detailed route maps that took us from New Orleans to Miami on back roads, and then down A1A to Key West. We would travel apart, Kit leaving an hour before me, the routes slightly different wherever possible. They'd be looking for a couple our age traveling together.

Not trusting cell phones, we'd bought a pair of kids' walkie-talkies from the Phone Shop. I would call her every hour on the hour, and let it buzz once. If she didn't buzz back soon, it meant she was in trouble—or we'd been betrayed by cheap Phone Shop technology, not impossible.

We split our cash down the middle, $4,320 each. Decided to go ahead and use her credit card for the bikes, since the Feds knew where we were anyhow. All my cards were flat.

I'd downloaded lists of bicycle-friendly hotels for the states we'd be going through. We chose one just out of town, about twenty miles away, for the first night, and I sent Kit on ahead.

Locked my bike up outside the Black Cat, our favorite tavern, and had one last imported beer before taking off into the land of country general stores and Bud Light. We'd made up our routes from a library copy of the Southern Tier Trail “southern tier” tourist maps, which kept you away from highways and cities, and decent beer.

It's very close to what my hero in the novel was doing, in reverse, but the only reference to that in the whole world was buried in Duquest's files; maybe my agent's. Under anybody's radar.

Kit was carrying the fake Glock, the pellet gun with the orange nose spray-painted black, figuring that if one of us was going to need it on these deserted country roads, it would be her. My thinking had gone a little beyond that, though.

The one morning drunk at the bar got up and left. I took a G-note out of my pocket and smoothed it onto the bar. “Jimmy,” I said to the bartender, “maybe you can help me with a little problem.”

__________

Two hours later I was down in bayou country, headed east on Route 90, a bright red accessory bag on a quick-release clip in the center of my handlebars. It held my wallet, maps, some nuts, and a candy bar—and a snub-nosed Taurus .38 Special, the favorite little pistol of TV detective actors. Actual criminals probably favor something with more punch, but a new .357 Magnum would have cost nearly a thousand more.

I didn't want anything bigger anyhow. When I unsnap the bag and carry it into a convenience store, I don't want the clerk to gauge its weight and reach for his own gun.

I'd bought it from a black guy who had conspicuous tracks on his left forearm and hadn't bathed in a while. But his hands were steady and his eyes clear, so I assumed he was a cop, or worked for them. Which didn't bother me too much. If somebody tried to bust me I would have Sara Underwood rain some Homeland Security shit on them. Though she might just ask them to lock me up and throw away the key.

There was enough truck traffic to keep me from being bored, and the road was pretty rough. The bikes were set up for endurance rather than speed, medium-fat tires with Kevlar inserts. Fewer miles per day but no flats, and we could go off-road if necessary.

There were no good scenarios that involved that, though. If someone was after us with a car, we were just caught. I wasn't going to hit the dirt and lay down a field of fire, not with five rounds of .38 Special ammo indifferently aimed. Twenty-five rounds if I had time to reload a few times, which didn't seem likely.

I guess the gun was more a psychological crutch than actual protection. As my M2010 had been in the desert, most of the time—if you live with a weapon 24/7 it becomes like another limb, and anytime it's out of sight you start to panic.

(So when is a crutch not a crutch? When you could walk better without it?)

I'd gone unarmed for most of eight years, but the feeling of symbiosis, of dependence, came back immediately. It made me feel more calm, in control, even though my rational brain knew that was nonsense. If any of our enemies produced a weapon, it would trump the hell out of a Dick Tracy snub-nose .38 not-so-Special revolver.

But it was better than nothing. Nothing would be total helplessness, being a target rather than a foe. And even though Sara Underwood probably already had a memo on her desk with the serial number and exact provenance of my .38, whoever was after us probably didn't know yet. That might buy us a second or two in a few of the less likely futures that we faced.

W
e had figured that it would be safe enough if we came together each night. Two people on bicycles might be conspicuous at a mom-and-pop motel, but two car-less bikers at two separate motels would be even more conspicuous, and we felt safer together.

She called me on the walkie-talkie and said there was a vacancy at the place we'd tentatively chosen, the Southern Comfort motel, a half mile up the road. On the way there I stopped at a convenience store and bought a pint of that odd beverage, honey-flavored whiskey. At a 7-Eleven. God bless Louisiana's liquor laws!

We celebrated our first day as two-wheeled fugitives with a couple of big plastic cups of ice and the sweet liqueur, sitting on folding chairs on a screened porch overlooking some bayou. The mosquitoes were pretty fierce for our being technically indoors, but after we swatted a dozen or so they showed us some respect.

We'd brought the bikes inside the motel room rather than risk them being stolen or identified, and Kit had just nodded when I showed her the .38. She didn't bring it up until we were halfway through the “Judy Collins Juice,” as my father called it. The sun was a dull crimson ball behind a confusion of spindly trees and power poles and lines.

“You know about guns and I don't,” she said, “but I thought we decided back in Iowa . . .”

“Yeah, we did.” I could've bought a regular pistol at the Kmart where I'd bought the pellet gun. But I didn't want to raise the ante, at the time. “I guess it was Blackstone getting killed. Like they're playing hardball now.”

She nodded, staring at the dying sun. “Hardball. You sound like somebody on TV.”

I laughed. “Guess I do.”

“But guns are real to you, from being a soldier. That's something we'll never share.”

What could I say? “Hope not.”

The sun disappeared and a dozen birds swifted by overhead, talking about dinner. A good still moment.

“Would you show me how?”

“How what?”

“How to use the gun. If something happens to you that doesn't happen to me.”

“'Course.” I stood up and stretched. “Not that I'm an expert.”

We went inside and I unzipped the red bike bag and took out the pistol, feeling a little foolish. The thin film of gun oil had collected some lint and grit. I took a tissue from the box on the desk and wiped it clean.

I thumbed the catch and the cylinder swung out. Looked down the barrel, using my thumbnail to reflect light up; it wasn't even dusty.

Shook the cylinder into my palm but only one round dropped; I used the built-in ejector rod to push the others out. “Never had one like this,” I said apologetically. “Couldn't fit an assault rifle into the bike bag.”

I snapped it shut and passed it to her with the nose pointed to the ceiling. “Rule Number One, they say. There's no such thing as an unloaded gun.”

“That must save a lot on ammunition.” She took it. “Sorry; I'll be good.”

“It does hurt a lot of soldiers, forgetting the round in the chamber. I don't think you will, though.”

“No.” She held it like a ticking time bomb. “Heavier than it looks.”

“Always.” I passed her the handful of cartridges. “Load it up?”

She fumbled and dropped two, which was a complete lesson in its way. “Easier in the movies,” she said with a nervous laugh.

“I hear it happens to cops,” I said. “They practice for years, but when they have to reload under fire they're all over the place.”

“I won't be doing anything ‘under fire.' Running, maybe.” She pushed the cylinder into place with a soft click.

“Me, neither, I hope.” I took it back from her and unloaded it again. “You don't really aim a gun like this. You can't hit the wall with it, anyhow, no matter how well you aim.” I pointed it at the TV and click, good-bye weather girl. “You know what a sight picture is?”

“No, I never heard the term.”

I handed it to her. “Point it at the door?”

She did, and I stood behind her and wrapped my hand over hers, and raised the pistol up to eye level. “The thing in the front is the blade sight. You line it up with the notch in the back and the bullet ought to go in that direction.”

She rocked it up and down. “You can't focus on three things at once.”

“That's right.” I peered over her shoulder and thought about what my eyes were doing. “I guess you look at the target, then bring the front sight in line with it, and then the rear sight, and then squeeze the trigger.” She did, and the hammer clicked down.

“I didn't ‘squeeze' it. I just pulled it.”

“Yeah, and the nose went up a little. But you're just trying to hit the wall. Do it again?”

This time she held it level and the nose stayed down when it snapped.

“I never used one in combat,” I said. “The Glock, we had one day of disassembly and cleaning, and a half day on the range, mostly safety procedures. I was never really issued one.” I did carry an automatic for a week, when I was TDY'ed to Shiraz, but I was advised to keep it inside the shrink-wrap so I wouldn't have to clean it. Not exactly hardcore.

“Well, you're a boy; you have it in your blood.”

“You never played with cap guns as a kid?”

She laughed and it felt good on my chest. “Mom would have a heart attack.”

“With dear old Dad a soldier?”

“Especially.” She raised the back of my hand to her lips and kissed it. “He's so jealous of you.”

“Getting shot. He can have it.”

“You know what I mean.” She set the gun down on top of the TV and rotated inside my arms. Her voice was muffled in my shoulder. “Is it true you soldiers are really good lovers?”

“I think you mean bicycle riders.” She smelled so good. “Soldiers can get it in the hole they're aiming at, usually. Bike riders know to hug the curves, though.”

“Idiot,” she said, and pulled down my shorts.

T
he road made us go northward for a couple of hours, which annoyed me in an obscure way. If we just wanted to go to Key West, we could've flown, or even hopped a train in New Orleans. False names, tickets bought with cash; in one day we'd be off the grid and almost off the map. But we'd also be, to complete the trio of clichés, at the end of the line. And not that hard to trace.

If they did follow us to Key West, we'd be cornered. Just as true with bicycles as a train or plane, but maybe after that much pedaling, we'd be in good enough shape to dive in and swim for Cuba.

I hadn't been to Key West since I was a little boy, but from what I heard it sounded like a good place to drop out of sight. Like New Orleans, it had lots of off-the-grid work for low pay, though in fact we did have enough cash to live on for a few months, a year if we were parsimonious. Best to find a little room and disappear into it. I could write well that way, I thought, and Kit was content to read and draw.

Give “the Enemy” time to lose interest in me. We started calling them that. Sometimes you could hear the capital E in both our voices.

Agent Underwood hadn't called. Just before noon, I called her number; someone said she was out of the office and would call tomorrow morning. That was okay by me. I can handle truck traffic, and I can handle spies, but I'd just as soon not do both simultaneously.

After a day of pretty serious riding we were dead tired. We took a couple of McDeathburgers to the Holiday Inn and almost fell asleep during the thrill of eating them. I slept ten hours, about four more than usual, and woke feeling like I'd come in second best in a bar fight. Some hard roads, and I'd been off the bike for a couple of weeks.

Holiday Inn coffee is nontoxic and the machine was quiet enough not to wake Kit. In the pool of light from the desk lamp I made a list of the facts we knew about the Enemy, and the assumptions we held. Sometimes the distinction between fact and conjecture was not clear.

1. They
were not “the government” in any conventional sense. Sara Underwood would have acted differently if she worked with the Enemy. (Maybe some sinister cabal of meta-spies like in the movies. Not likely.)

2. They
nevertheless seemed to have resources comparable to a government agency's. But Kit pointed out that this might not be true if, for whatever reason, I was their only project. If you really wanted to fuck with one person's mind this way, it wouldn't even be a full-time job.

3. This
raised the interesting possibility that I might be somebody's hobby. An agent like Blackstone could be a one-man “Let's drive Jack Daley insane” club, working a couple of hours a week. But why would he?

4. There
might be an army connection. They had easy access to my records, and of course had plenty of M2010s lying around.

5. They
were watching us—and not being obvious about it. We'd been on the lookout since Iowa City, often on deserted back roads, and hadn't seen anything.

6. It
seemed likely they could track me from a distance. Maybe a tracer implanted when I had surgery in Germany.

7. They
were serious enough to kill a federal agent. They used a rifle like mine, possibly. Setup or coincidence? An unrelated murder? Sure, there are snipers everywhere.

But it all pointed back to the big question: Why me? There were probably a hundred thousand people who could shoot a rifle as well as I can. A small fraction of them would probably shoot a stranger just for the thrill, or for the hell of it, let alone for a roll of G-notes. (Thriller writers sometimes assumed there were people on the government payroll who would do this sort of thing, but I always doubted they could keep it secret. A civil servant whose morals allowed him to murder on assignment could also be bought by a tell-all journalist.)

When Kit got up she read over the list. “Number 6, the implant. I guess we'll find out about that. If they show up now, they must be physically tracking you.”

I thought for a second, and agreed. “In a city, even New Orleans, we'd be on security cameras enough for them to follow us by face recognition software. They caught those spies that way in Chicago.” It had been fodder for a lot of
Big Brother Is Watching You
editorializing. The Ramirez couple had even had cosmetic surgery, but it didn't fool the software. They should've left the city instead.

Florida would be safe from that. Their courts had followed North Dakota's lead, and declared the ubiquitous camera network an unreasonable invasion of privacy.

“But New Orleans is still bothering me,” I said. “Suppose that
is
why the cops picked me up—computer sorting of routine security images. That's not the real mystery—I mean, hell, we were on the run. Using false identities, working for cash. They might have picked me up on general principles.”

She nodded. “And so?”

“So the real mystery is not why they picked me up, but why they let me go! The cops talked to someone back at the station, on the car radio, and immediately pulled over and uncuffed me and let me go. What did someone, headquarters, say to them?”

“Maybe that what they were doing was illegal. They can't just grab someone off the street.”

“Yeah, but they
can
, if you're a criminal. They definitely were sent to pick me up, or us. I didn't think fast enough. I should've asked to see a warrant or something.”

“They'd just invoke Homeland Security.”

“But how could they? Homeland Security didn't know where we were! I hadn't talked to the DHS woman for two minutes before the god-damned cops showed up!” Though maybe two minutes would be enough, if we were on the right list.

She got up and split the remaining coffee between us. “Maybe it was somebody else in the DHS. They're not just one woman with a phone up in Illinois.”

“Yeah, and it may not have been Homeland Security business at all. Maybe the guy who sold me the gun ratted on me.”

“Yeah,” she said, glowering theatrically. “Ya shoulda plugged the sumbitch.”

“Next time, Muggsy.” We both laughed.