Work Done for Hire (18 page)

I
called Underwood on the lady's cell as soon as it was 9:00 in Washington but got a recording. I asked her to call this number back and also send an e-mail. Phone trouble.

We decided to stay off the expressway, and just crawl down the two-lane. Might as well make it easy for the Mississippi cops, if Mary Taylor decided not to stay quiet for $600. We had bigger problems.

How had the Enemy caught us? From the billboard encounter we knew that they weren't following cell phone information; I'd stomped the cell long before that. Maybe, far-fetched as it seems, the mystery did go back to the surgery in the army hospital in Germany—a tracer bug imbedded in muscle mass. What would it use for power? Can a tiny battery or fuel cell work after sitting for ten years? Maybe there was some biological thing, generating electricity from my own body chemistry.

As soon as we could stop for a few hours in a big enough town, I should arrange to have my hand X-rayed. I could complain about phantom pain from the missing finger, and who would refuse to give me a picture? If only to shut me up. A tracer could be tiny, but big enough to see.

I didn't say anything out loud about that. Of course this car had to have been bugged by whoever left it for us. We could assume they knew exactly where we were at any time, and could overhear us talking. Kit hummed a folk song from a couple of years ago: “Sittin' in my home alone / Waitin' for the god-damn phone. . . .”

She took the paper tablet and marker out of her bag and wrote HAVE TO DUMP CAR—GREYHOUND IN GULFPORT? in big block letters.

I nodded and scrawled CASH TICKETS TO TWO DIFFERENT PLACES? Keeping my eyes on the road.

It made me nervous, the idea of being separated. But we had agreed that it was a necessary step. There would come a future, I supposed, when every little Podunk bus station and train terminal would have spy-cams with face recognition software. For now, though, you might still travel through the country without Big Brother making sure you stay out of trouble. If you're careful to stay off the grid.

They would have our description, a man and a woman biking together, out in the middle of the country but without any touring gear. We'd be less conspicuous as individuals just taking bus rides to wherever.

(I don't think I was unduly paranoid about this—and my controlling metaphor wasn't Big Brother, actually, but Big Mother, the nanny state. If you really want to keep control of your children, you have to keep them on a leash. The image of the cyber-state as a harried young mother with children going every which way, straining at tethers, seemed pretty accurate.)

We turned on the radio and listened to dreadful Southern nova ska for the benefit of our supposed eavesdroppers. After about ten minutes, though, Kit made a face and slapped the search bar until it delivered some funky bayou jazz on NPR.

We did take an hour and a half to indulge my paranoia. We saw a sign and pulled into a small “urgent care facility” in the middle of nowhere, and I complained to the doctor about sharp pains in my hand, by the stump. He had a young man take an X-ray, and brought the film to me with a perplexed look, and put it up on the wall.

“Never seen anything quite like this,” he said, “but then I don't get a lot of combat amputees.” Where the bone for the little finger was cut off, there was an opaque perfect cube, maybe a third of an inch on a side. “The medics didn't say anything to you about it?”

“It was a confusing time.”

“At a guess, I'd say it was something to promote healing. Never seen the like. Maybe you were a guinea pig, and they didn't follow up.” He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Not allowed to do that, but they do. God . . . damned . . . army. You a disabled veteran?”

“Eighty percent,” I said.

“You get home, get the VA on their case. Get a patient advocate and stand your ground. They can call me if you want.” He handed me his business card and a prescription. “This is Tylenol with a little codeine. Don't drive on it.”

He stood up and shook my hand. “Thank you for your service, son. Wish I could do more.”

“You've done plenty.” Kit and I both said good-bye, staring at the little white cube on the film.

We settled the bill in the waiting room and then stood for a minute in the small parking lot before getting in the car. “I don't feel good about leaving you now,” she said.

“Not that much has changed,” I said. “We figured it was something.” I looked at my hand. “Know any amateur surgeons?”

By the time we got to Gulfport it was dark. The next bus going north didn't leave till seven in the morning. That didn't bother either of us; stop at a nice motel and have a decent dinner and a sleep together before we separated.

Not a good decision, it turned out.

The dinner was great, a deep-South crab and shrimp boil with small new potatoes and baby onions cooked in the broth. We tarried over it and had a bottle of wine and a plate of fresh gingersnaps, the house specialty.

Our lives might have been a lot simpler if we'd just picked up some burgers. Driven on.

We got back from the restaurant about eleven and there were no parking spaces in front of our motel room at Traveler's Rest. I let Kit off to run to the bathroom while I went around back to the auxiliary lot.

We were separated for less than three minutes.

When I opened the door, there was only a line of light coming from under the bathroom door. “Kit?” I called.

She made some noise from the bathroom and I stepped into the darkness. A sharp pain exploded in the back of my head, and I was conscious just long enough to think
Stroke?

__________

It had been a stroke, all right; the stroke from a club or a blackjack. At three in the morning, 3:17 by the bedside clock, I sort of woke up, ears ringing, pain radiating in spasms from the base of my skull. A big tender swelling there. No blood. I swallowed back vomit and staggered to the bathroom and drank some water, and managed to keep it down. Splashed cold water on my face and rubbed it with the harsh towel.

There was an insistent buzzing in my ears that I eventually realized was coming from a strange cell phone, centered on the neatly made double bed. I got a tissue from the end table and picked up the phone like a master criminal, or an amateur one.

I pushed the button but didn't think “hello” would express how I felt. “Fuck you.”

“Now, now,” a familiar female voice said, “what if this was your mother calling?”

“I suppose I would ask her what the fuck was going on. But I guess I'll have to ask you. Who the fuck are you?”

“We are the people who have your girlfriend. That's all you need to know.”

“So you've upped the stakes to federal crime.”

“Technically, no; I think it was already a federal crime when somebody killed a DHS agent. But yes, the stakes will be higher . . . for you.”

“How so?”

“It goes like this: we'll give your girlfriend back. If you cooperate, we'll give her back all at once. If not, we'll send you a finger first, and then negotiate the next part.”

I couldn't speak. It was like my vocal apparatus was glued shut.

“You can reach me at any time by touching the REPLY button. Do not make a recording of the call. If you don't reply in one hour, or if you call the authorities, we will definitely give you the finger. Registered mail.” She hung up.

I stared dumbly at the phone while it sank in.

They had me pretty well figured out. It might not work with an actual war hero; he would probably make the calculation and, more or less with regret, do what he had to do.

But to me? Killing some stranger, no matter who he might be, was not unthinkable; that had been my business as usual for more than a year, not that long ago. But allowing the woman I love to die—slowly, tortured by amputation? Through my inaction?

The ghost of my missing finger talked quietly all the time, in a language no one else could hear. Now it screamed.
You can't let them do this. Do this to her.

It wasn't just the pain. The chest pain was worse, when it was bad. But nothing was missing in there.

The muscle below the stump flexed and flexed. The ring finger clawed in sympathy.

As it had done when I woke up in the hospital bed in Germany. The tight swath of bandages that covered the chest was nothing compared to the arm suspended just above eye level, twitching, broadcasting loss more than pain.
This will never grow back. Never be better.

I pushed the button. The phone rang once, and the person who picked it up didn't say anything.

“So what do you want me to do?” I asked the silence.

A man's voice: “Do you feel fit to drive?”

I didn't, actually. Maybe I could walk to the door. “How far?”

“Some distance. You should sleep first.”

“Sure.”

“There are sleeping pills and aspirin in your shaving kit.”

“I don't carry sleeping pills.”

“You do now. Take two and I will call you in the morning.” He hung up, a comedian.

My “shaving kit” was a courtesy zip-bag from Harrah's. It now had an aspirin bottle with eight aspirin and four purple pills.

No way in hell. Even if I knew they looked like sleeping pills, which I didn't, I wasn't going to take them on the word of a probably homicidal mystery man. I walked across the street and got an ice-cold quart of beer from a local place called Swamp Hawg Brewery.

It was not as bad as it might have been. I drank the whole quart in about ten minutes, while nibbling on stale cookies for my stomach's sake. I started to undress, but only got my shirt off. Decided I had to rest a bit before tackling my shoes.

Woke up slowly with shoes still on, eyelids stuck together, clothes twisted and heavy with sweat. The clock said 9:14. Dappled sunlight coming through the window by the bathroom. Funny feeling in my stomach, butterflies rather than nausea, and probably a bad case of Swamp Hawg breath.

Maybe nerves, too.

I set up the coffee machine and slumped to the shower. It had a head more talented than my own; I set it to a complex vibrating mode and let the thrumming hot water try to wake me up. When it turned cold I stepped out carefully, remembering a stupid accident in junior high. Slipped in a strange bathroom and laid open my chin.

No Time for Stitches
, a good title for my autobiography.

I got the cardboard box out of the trunk and dumped the rifle out onto the bed. A lot heavier than the one I used in the desert.

I'd only used the sniper-mod M2010 once as a plain rifle, rather than a sniper weapon, and the results were more instructive than impressive. The bolt action that gives it such accuracy is a handicap when you're not punching somebody a new orifice long-distance.

There were seven or eight of us deploying in a roomy MaxiStryker, crawling up a steep hill with maybe a dozen other vehicles on our way from nowhere to elsewhere, and we ground to a halt when the vehicle either ran over a mine or was hit by an IED. We were all deafened, but otherwise unhurt. Smoke everywhere. There was some small-arms fire whispering from above us, and we all piled out on the downhill side to shoot back.

It was an unholy racket, even to the deaf; at least two Strykers blasting away with fifties and the littler machine guns and grenade launchers chattering and booming. I could see by tracers what they were aiming at, a dun-colored lump that was probably a pile of sandbags, and I managed to get two rounds in that general direction while the Strykers pelted it with about a thousand. Finally something hit something and it went up in a big orange-and-grey blossom. Some guys pumped fists and cheered, I guess the way Goliath did until his last engagement.

I remembered taking comfort in the rifle's weight and balance, back then, and now allowed myself a familiar fantasy: those guys pull up in their SUV and start taking pictures of Kit's bare ass—but instead of the piddling Dick Tracy toy, I pull out my trusty M2010. Right eye or left? Perhaps a new one, in between?

It occurred to me that this might be the same rifle I'd “modified” by plugging the barrel with a low-powered bullet. I slid the bolt back and looked down the barrel; it was unobstructed.

I could take it to the cops. Tell them my story. Some lunatic assholes gave me this rifle and want me to go to Washington and assassinate someone, and they kidnapped my girlfriend to make sure I do it. Here's a note that proves it.

Sure, son. Why don't you just put down the gun and sit over there while we check it out . . . you don't mind handcuffs, do you?

For some time I sat there and looked at the weapon. Then I carefully filled its box magazine with five fresh rounds, then pulled the bolt back and slipped a sixth one into the chamber.

Four rounds for the car and driver, and then two for the grinning schmuck with the camera. Chest and head. Take a picture of
this
, motherfucker.

I
was just about done with waiting, quarter to eleven, when the little phone buzzed. I pushed the button and didn't say anything.

“Do you have a pencil?” the woman said.

“No. Second.” I found a ballpoint in my bag, and a folded-over piece of paper. “Okay.”

“You have to be in Washington, DC, in four days. You have a room reserved under the name ‘Grant Harrison' from the third of July until the fifth, in the JW Marriott Hotel, on Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest.” She paused. “Do you have that?”

“I have it.” I repeated it back to her.

“Your confirmation for the room, and a wallet with Grant Harrison identification, are in the glove compartment of your car. You will have to drive there, of course, so your luggage won't be searched.”

I didn't bother to write that down. “I'm not doing anything for you until I know that Kit is safe.”

There was a long pause. “Nothing?”

“Of course not. If you've killed her I have no reason to follow your orders.”

“Oh. She is not dead.” There was some line noise and a beep. “I've sent you a photograph of her. The picture includes the first page of this morning's
New York Times
.

“She still has all her fingers. But take note of the man standing next to her. If you call the authorities . . . we will give her to him.

“She will be killed. Repeat that to me.”

“She will be killed.”

“Keep that in mind. She will be killed, slowly, badly, and you will be to blame.” The phone went dead, and then buzzed.

I clicked it for “Recents” and found a call with the current time, supposedly from “411.” I opened it and found a photograph.

It was Kit, seated, gagged, wearing only frilly blue underwear. Which I had never seen.

A white rope thicker than clothesline was wound around her. Shoulders, chest, waist, legs. Her wrists were tied together in her lap, with what looked like telephone cord. Low coffee table in front of her, with a metal ashtray in the shape of a bird, filled to overflowing with cigarette butts. A corner of a window behind her showed a pine forest.

A tall thin man wearing a black mask hooded over his head stood next to her. In one hand he held a newspaper and in the other, a long-bladed fileting knife.

That was theater, of course. She was at the mercy of anyone, dramatic weapon or no. If not this theatrical knife-wielder, then the fat guy with the camera, or his black driver. The woman with the honey voice, the person who killed Blackstone, the man who'd just talked on the phone. And maybe some to whom I had not yet been introduced.

The background of the photo didn't reveal much. There were probably a million rooms just like it in motels and vacation cabins: fake log paneling, furniture that was worn blond Ikea or the like, many years old. I couldn't read the date on the
Times
, but the headline was current, “West Virginia Coal Miners' Strike Near Resolution.”

I couldn't read Kit's expression, either. Wide-eyed, I supposed with fright, looking away from the camera, down at the table. The bandana pulled tight between her teeth, that must hurt. Her mouth would be dry. The dead-tobacco smell from the cigarette butts, rank and penetrating.

The man's eyes were visible, somewhat shaded by the hood. Windows of the soul, supposedly, though it's hard to read eyes with no other features. Safe to assume they were cruel. Cruel pulp-fiction eyes under a hangman's hood.

Would the long slender blade reach his heart if I thrust up under the sternum? That's what the master sergeant claimed in Basic Training. Maybe I would play it safe and just cut his throat. Shoot him a few times first.

Kit didn't have any blue underwear. White or nothing, usually nothing. She had been stripped and redressed.

An interesting word, “redress.” Could anything really pay us back for all this?

The phone by the bed rang, and I snatched it up. It was just the office, asking if I planned to stay another day. I said no, and assured her I'd be out by eleven.

“Where you headed?” she chirped. I told her Washington, DC.

“Gonna be a madhouse, Fourth of July coming up.”

I tried to laugh. “Guess I can handle it.”

She might wind up on page three of the
Times
herself.
He seemed like such a nice boy. I saw that long box but didn't think nothing of it.

That room in the photo could be a block away, or it could be almost anywhere with pine trees. Underneath the note I had copied from them, I did some calculation: They hit me over the head and took Kit around 11:00 last night, 2300. Almost twelve hours later, they sent me the photo.

If they were driving, they might have gone six or seven hundred miles. But they didn't have to drive if they had access to civil aviation. I called the desk, and the woman said there was a landing strip two miles down the road. Yes, she had heard several planes take off tonight.

In that time, a plane could get them anywhere in the hemisphere. Someplace with a
New York Times
, but no other constraints.

I went out and opened the glove compartment and took out a cheap plastic wallet. Illinois driver's license, library card, and Exxon and Visa credit cards for “Grant Harrison,” the names of two presidents. One gave us Black Friday and the other was a nonstop talker who died of pneumonia after a month in office. From eating cherries in cold milk, which I never believed. I wouldn't have voted for either one of them.

Not much packing up to do. I put our bathroom gear back in her pink suitcase and the rifle back into its box. Went to the office and paid with a C-note, which caused the clerk to purse her lips.
I knew there was something fishy when he didn't use a credit card.

I asked whether I could use her desk computer for a minute, though, and she decided I was probably not that dangerous. She wanted to go off to the little girls' room anyhow, she said; would I watch things?

Sure. The main thing I wanted to watch was the picture of Kit, bound and gagged. It took me a minute to transfer it to her machine. She didn't have Photoshop or anything, but I was able to enlarge portions of the picture.

What I mainly wanted to study was a small wall calendar that was nailed to the paneling at the edge of the picture, next to the window.

It was a freebie calendar from an Ace Hardware; I recognized the logo but couldn't read any of the lettering. Maybe the words under the logo were the name of the town.

I pushed the enlargement in and out. The first line looked like two words: four letter-blobs, an apostrophe, and another blob. Probably an “s.” Then six blobs. The first one narrower; might be an “i.”

The second line was five blobs, slightly larger. The name of a state? I called up a list of states, and there were only three with five letters: Texas, Maine, and Idaho.

A CIA genius or
Jeopardy!
winner might rattle it off instantly: a place name that was “somebody's” “something,” in one of those three states. I Googled around and found a gazetteer that would search for place names with missing letters.

Texas and Idaho came up blank, but I scored on Maine: Swan's Island. It was a little pinpoint in the ocean, south of Mount Desert Island. Population 350.

I wrote all of that, and the latitude and longitude, on the back of a postcard extolling the virtues of Traveler's Rest.

It wasn't much, but it was all I had. What were the chances that somebody who
didn't
live on that little island would nail up a throwaway calendar from there?

I could hear a despised math professor from my freshman year sneering that the probability was non-zero. Which meant
not bloody likely, but the only chance you have
.

But wait. There was a retro phone with a rotary dial on the table. I selected it and enlarged it. Someone had carefully printed a number with clear block letters on the white circle in the center of the dial.

I scribbled that down and Googled “phone number” + “land line” + “find address.”

It gave me a service called FindFone. I was never so glad to have my Amex card number memorized. I typed it in and FindFone charged me ninety-seven cents to divulge 127 Ring Road, Swan's Island, Maine.

The clerk came back and I thanked her and rushed back to the room.

Threw everything in the car and reviewed my options. I could go to an airport and take a chance; try to fly there on my illegal credit card. Airports are a little less forgiving than rustic taxicabs on that, though.

__________

I drove for a couple of hours and then stopped to get a sandwich at a Pilot truck stop. Walked through the big convenience store, looking for inspiration, and possibly found it.

The car was parked behind a Dumpster, not visible from the shop. I got in and almost enjoyed the microwaved cheeseburger and an ice-cold Coors. Not my brand of choice, but there was nothing less American on offer.

I had bought three other items, cash, paying at a register that was not visible from outside: a sling for my left arm, masking tape, and a roll of aluminum foil. I wanted to reconstruct a vaguely remembered Science Fair project from junior high school.

One of the kids had a demonstration of the “Faraday Cage,” basically a box that blocked electromagnetic radiation. He'd built boxes of chicken wire, fine-mesh metal screen, and plain metal. The demonstration involved putting a cell phone into each cage and calling it from different distances.

I couldn't remember what he had proved with it, but it gave me an obvious idea. Would a container made of aluminum foil block a radio signal?

Maybe you wouldn't need a whole room with aluminum wallpaper. If I wrapped my hand in aluminum foil, would it block the transmitter buried in the flesh? If I wrapped the arm up past the elbow, would that keep radio waves from leaking out?

Wished I knew more science. The “open” end of the cylinder of foil would be full of muscle and bone. How well would radio waves travel in and out through that?

Car radios work, inside a “box” that's mostly metal. But I vaguely remember something a teacher said in school about how they got around that. I was probably studying the back of Rosy Bender's neck, and trying to imagine the rest of her skin, and somehow didn't quite get what he was saying about radio waves.

Looked around and didn't see any witnesses, and the car's windows were tinted anyhow. I tore off a long sheet of foil and wrapped it around my left hand and arm, molding it up past the elbow. Having a right angle in the tunnel of foil might help; there wouldn't be a straight line from the bug to the outside world.

Good thing I'd gotten a wide roll. It overlapped with plenty of room to spare. I wound masking tape around the whole thing generously, then managed to hide most of it inside the sling.

I would still be able to fire the rifle or the revolver, but probably couldn't reload either of them without tearing the foil off the left hand. Well, if it came down to shooting, I wouldn't be worried about radio waves.

I'd worked out a vague plan. Might as well get going.

A county road paralleled the interstate for two dozen miles, so I'd follow that. I put the cell on the passenger seat, in case I had to do dangerous stuff, like driving while talking on the phone, or shooting at people. Started the car and moved out.

The road was almost deserted. After a few miles, the cell buzzed, and I picked it up. “What?”

I resisted the urge to laugh into the awkward pause. “Your . . . car is moving,” the woman said.

“It's your car, I think, and it's headed for Washington,” I said. “Isn't that what you wanted?”

“Why aren't you on the highway?”

“I have three days. It's an unfamiliar car, so I'd rather not speed. Why is that a problem?”

“Take your next right. Get back on the highway.”

“Okay.” He didn't say,
We seem to have lost your hand.

Maybe time to confuse things more. Steering with my elbows, I unwrapped the foil from my hand. Then as I drove along, I covered it up for a few seconds at a time. Then I left it uncovered. Let them think that the battery inside my hand was failing.

My half-formed plan was to set them up so they wouldn't panic if the signal from my hand flickered on and off. Over the next three days, I wouldn't cover it up for more than a minute. But if I ever did want to drop off their radar screen, I could do it, and the first thing they'd think was battery failure.

Of course they could track me anyhow, as long as I stayed in this car. That was okay for the time being. Since I didn't know where Kit was, my only hope was that their directions would lead me to where she was being held.

I did take the next right, and obediently got back on I-85. The screen button said I was 980 miles from Washington. What could I do in 980 miles?

Sleep a couple of times. I picked up the phone and thumbed it. “This car doesn't have Supercruise. How long do you think I can drive before I fall asleep at the wheel?”

“We will tell you when to stop.” The woman again.

“What if I have to pee?”

“Go ahead,” she said, a trace of amusement in her voice. “It's not your car.”

I drove along eight or ten miles, until the next exit sign. Picked up the phone: “Seriously, I need some coffee if I'm going to stay on the road. There's a place in two miles.”

“All right,” she said. “Use the facilities. Treat yourself to a candy bar.”

I would, actually; get the blood sugar fired up. I pulled into the rest stop and parked. I watched for a few minutes, and no black SUV followed me in.

Well, if they could assassinate a president, or someone important, they could probably afford a second car.

On impulse, I opened the back door and took the rifle out of its box. I propped it up diagonally across the passenger's seat, then left the car unlocked and went to get my coffee.