I returned to the bench where we’d first met. Streetcars clanged, loud as ever. Pigeons still picked at trash on the street. People still hustled toward their destinies. Nowhere was there a single sign that he’d passed through. It was impossible to grasp that he’d left. For good. He’d eluded us. Checked out without paying his bill. Made a new plan. Slipped down the stairs.
In life, he could only have been trusted to serve his own crazy agenda. Sometimes, you summon a person like that. Against your better judgement, you let them in because something you need is on offer. That was Hornsmith. He’d revealed what I couldn’t figure out for myself. He’d shown me how to break free. By example, he’d demonstrated how to live by the courage of your own convictions. Make up your own rules. Create your own reality. Hornsmith showed me a person could be free. For that, I loved him, and I would miss him.
Air brakes hissed. Jackhammers pounded. The air tasted of gritty exhaust. Hot dogs and garbage soaked the hot afternoon. I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hand. The traffic grew thicker until the world around me ground to a halt, stopped by a red and yellow taxi making a U-turn to get a passenger on the other side of the street. Horns blared. People shouted.
The honking and shouting all subsided when the cab door slammed shut — an exclamation point at the end of a noisy outburst of furious frustration. Wheels started to turn again. Slowly at first. Then back up to speed, the rupture in the flow resolved. The moment passed. World order restored.
The cab, now back in the stream, rolled past my bench, and the passenger window came down. Inside, a glimpse of someone silhouetted in the back. I’m certain it was Hornsmith in his favourite Sherlock Holmes outfit. He leaned out. His beard rippled in the wind. That famous grin. He pointed his finger at me. I thought I heard his voice faintly over the traffic.
“Your shoes. Get new shoes. Carry on.”
Stunned, my breath stopped. Then, he waved. The window rolled up and the taxi vanished into the flow.
SIXTEEN
The Rubber Hits the Road
WE WANDERED around for a while without success until it started to look like Marla had given us the wrong address. Then, Akinwole spotted the rusted red and white sign swinging from a post: MYERS MIRACLE MOTORS: SPECIALISTS IN EUROPEAN CARS — VOLVO, BMW, MERCEDES, ETC. ALSO DETRIOT [sic] BUILT CARS PRE-1975. A few weedy sumac trees obscured the building from the street. Iron bars secured the windows. Security cameras pointed down from every corner of the flat roof. We entered through the open garage door. Inside smelled of oil and rubber. Cool chrome-plated wrenches hung in orderly rows along the wall. A sleepy pug eyed us from a blanket under the workbench.
There were two cars in the place, one outlined under a tarp. That was likely the one we’d come for, because the other was a mangled BMW. The mechanic on the Bimmer was a short, muscular black guy in orange coveralls. He sucked his upper lip where his front teeth used to be. He thumped out dents in the car door with a rubber mallet. He paid no attention to us.
Two guys owned the place. Twins. They sat behind the counter in the office off to the side of the garage. Built like sumo wrestlers with tiny brown eyes like chocolate raisins set deep into fleshy close-cropped heads. They both sported lightning bolts shaved into their temples. They wore white T-shirts with the sleeves rolled up. Red suspenders held up grey trousers. You couldn’t tell them apart, except one had Barry embroidered in red letters over his heart, the other Ben.
After introductions, Ben asked about my connection to Lover Man.
“I’m a friend of a friend,” I said, reluctant to say more about my relationship with Marla.
Barry pointed to Akinwole. “What the fuck does that make him? The friend of the friend of a friend, I suppose?”
I shrugged. “I suppose.”
Akinwole stared into the overhead security camera. Expressionless. He flared his nose. Ben and Barry ignored his chill and continued.
“Did anyone tell you what the deal is?” Ben eyed me like he was sizing up a new wreck.
“It needs to be delivered to Los Angeles in one piece. It’s his favourite car.”
“His favourite car?”
In unison, Barry and Ben let out wet gasps, and for a moment it seemed they might be choking, until I grasped that this passed for laughter. Barry unclogged first.
He said, “This isn’t any fucking car we’re talking about. This is a rare eighty-five-thousand-dollar 1968 Firebird 400 HO.”
After Ben throttled down his own phlegmatic eruption, he said, “The Ram Air II model. First generation, coke-bottle design. V8. Four hundred horsepower. That’s a monster car for 1968.”
“That’s a monster car for any time,” Barry said. “Can you drive a stick, son? Because this car has the four-speed floor shifter.”
“Yes, I can,” I said. Farm vehicles surely counted. Old pickups and tractors. No hot rods. Same vintage, though. It couldn’t be that different. Clutch. Stick. One. Two. Three. Four. How hard could it be?
“Well, let’s see some ID. We’re sure as shit not turning this thing over without knowing who the fuck you are.”
I handed Ben my driver’s licence. Barry dialed the phone while Ben waddled my licence over to an ancient Xerox machine. It rattled, hummed, and flashed. Duplication of my identity achieved by clunky electronic alchemy. Over the din, Barry shouted on the phone.
“Yeah, boss. He’s got some African fella with him. Doesn’t say much. In fact, he hasn’t said anything. It’s possible he don’t speak English. Okay.”
After he cradled the receiver, he pointed a sausage finger at Akinwole.
“Boss says to get his ID.”
Akinwole cleared his throat. “If you care to see my identification, you will not be happy.”
Barry and Ben raised their eyebrows in unison.
“If I had it with me, which I do not, I would see no reason to share it with you.”
“How about because we don’t know a rat’s ass about you?” Ben flexed his arms.
Akinwole blinked fast a couple of times like there was dust in his eyes. Then he said, “Something is unusual about your request. I am not a person who needs to show my papers to people who operate a garage because their boss says so. Unless something is going on here that is not apparent.”
His quiet tone had them all fired up, blubbering protest noises. Akinwole raised his hands before their clamour could form into words.
“Your business is not with me,” he said, “and I have no business with you. File an official request with Immigration if you wish to see my documents.”
“Listen, buddy,” said Barry, “these are the rules. It’s that or the car stays here.”
“This does not interest me,” Akinwole said. “It is none of your concern who I am. Where I come from, only police ask people for identification. You are not police, are you?”
Barry’s knuckles were white from gripping the counter. Ben tripped over a garbage pail on his way back from the Xerox machine. Dirty paper coffee cups and balls of wadded paper spilled across the floor.
“Look,” I said, “my friend isn’t part of this. He’s not coming with me. There’s no reason to harass him. It’s still a free country. Leave him alone.”
“He’s not driving?” said Barry.
“He’s not going?” said Ben.
“No,” I said. “He’s keeping me company today. Can we get on with this?”
Ben and Barry exchanged a glance and shrugged. Ben handed back my driver’s licence. He said, “If this brother stays home, we can get on with business.”
That resolved it. Calm was restored faster than it had been disturbed. Barry lifted a hinged section of the counter and squeezed himself through the opening, his fatty rolls overflowing the banks of Formica.
“Follow me,” he said. “I got something to show you.” Inside the garage, Akinwole held me back.
“These men,” he said, “something is not correct about them. I have a bad feeling.”
In a whisper I said, “The last time y
ou had a bad feeling was about the witch upstairs who turned out to be a cute girl making pottery.”
He started to protest when Barry called us over.
“Look at this baby. You’ve never seen anything like this.”
Barry and the toothless guy in the orange coveralls pulled off the tarp. In the shadowy garage, the car sparkled, a shiny black wonder. It was a convertible with two menacing air scoops and a tach mounted into the hood. Red go-fast stripes trailed along both sides. Matching fat red-walled low-profile tires on silver rims. Dual chrome-tipped exhausts poked out the back.
“Not a lot of these babies ever hit the market,” said Ben, who’d shuffled up behind us. “We spent months rebuilding the motor. All the original serial numbers still match.”
“The only non-stock upgrades are the Fiero front seats,” Barry said. “Custom red leather.”
I circled the car. It was more like a sculpture than an actual automobile. Lover Man wouldn’t use a car like this to move dope. Stealth wasn’t part of its profile. It wanted to be seen, touched, and examined. Better to trick out some old Mazda sedan or an ordinary-looking panel van for a dope run. Something to blend in with the traffic. Only an idiot would trap a car like this. And I didn’t take Lover Man for an idiot. My doubts diminished. My fears were allayed. This ride seemed to be all Marla said it was.
Akinwole, however, had reservations. He squinted and shook his head.
“If it is such a great car,” he said, “why does your boss not truck it to California? That would be safer.”
“We’re going to break in the rebuilt engine,” Barry said, “so by the time he gets it, it’s ready to drive.”
“Is that difficult?” I said. Farm equipment, beaters, and rental cars never required special treatment.
Ben stroked the trunk. “It’s a breeze. Run it five hundred miles under twenty-five hundred RPMs. Then run it hard for a couple hundred more. Like at six or seven thousand RPMs. After, change the oil. Synthetic. And use only high-test fuel with a lead additive. Keeps the valves coated and stops them from burning.”
I laughed, nervous. “I’m never going to get this.”
“You don’t have to,” said Barry. “We’re monitoring the car from here.” He tossed me a cellphone. “We’re going to be calling you with specific instructions. If you fuck this up, you’ll be into us for eighty-five large.”
“And,” said Ben, now beside his twin brother, “if you disappear, we’ll find you. There’s a GPS tracking unit built in. If you steal it, the boss’ll send people to find you and kill you. You can be sure.”
They looked at me and waited like they wanted a pledge from me. Akinwole snorted. I struggled to find something to say.
“All right,” Barry said, “enough talk. We’re fucking with you, kid. About the killing. Don’t sweat it. You get the picture. Don’t screw this up. Let’s have a look at the car.”
Ben squeezed behind the wheel and fired up the engine. Deafening thunder exploded from the exhaust pipes. The pug under the bench yawned. Ben waved me over.
“There’s no trick to this thing,” he shouted over the engine. “Use high-octane fuel. You have a week to get it to California.”
Hornsmith had figured there was under a hundred thousand dollars in the Business’s account. So, I wrote a cheque to cash for ninety thousand. It bounced. There were two signed blanks left. I tried one for fifty thousand and one for twenty. I certified them at the bank. They both cleared. The Persian rugs, the leather couches, the armchairs, and the fancy desk went for another seven thousand dollars. The rest of the office went to the dump. I was free of the Business with seventy-seven thousand dollars. My plan was on track. For now.
Something else became clear. Shirley Rose in Detroit and her Dipshit Kid haunted me. Someone had to tell her he wouldn’t be back. I toyed with her picture. I reread her letter. On the back of the envelope, there was a Detroit return address and a name: Shirley Rose Holbert. How had she ended up on the far end of his story? I guessed she liked it like that. Her and the Dipshit Kid in Detroit. Hornsmith far enough away not to be a permanent deal. It sounded complicated. One thing was for sure: the arrangements people live with only make sense from the inside.
I’d fed Hornsmith the dope. I’d taken the money. To square myself with him, as my final farewell, I decided to stop in Detroit. Look up Shirley Rose and the Dipshit Kid. See how they were doing. Break the bad news and leave her with some cash. Twenty-five thousand dollars. I’d already mailed Hornsmith’s wife a cheque for twenty-five thousand. The cash had been for the taking. I’d taken it. To appease my conscience, I’d tempered my greed and decided to split it with the women. They had earned it. They were his partners, too, after all.
The rest of the money was my stake. Something to set myself up with once Lover Man’s Firebird was delivered. A down payment on a food truck or a couple of vending machines. Something that would pay for itself. A cash drip. Cash. Drip. That sounded good.
The balmy summer weather lingered throughout September. The stale room in the Havanap sweltered. The air conditioner didn’t work. Sweat dripped down my back. For relief, I propped open the aluminum door with a chair. The map of America, land of the free, home of the brave, sprawled across my bed: Amarillo, Memphis, Chattanooga, Nashville, Indiana, Flagstaff, Albuquerque, Mesa, Houston, Charleston, Colorado Springs, LA. The names rolled through my head. Exhilarating. Exotic.
Highways were in my blood. My grandparents had lived in the middle of nowhere between Saskatchewan and Alberta along the Trans-Canada Highway, one of the longest, loneliest roads in the world. When I was a boy, the seductive hum of rubber and engine, like the steady siren song of a river, had lured me away. At sixteen, I’d stood on the side of that road, stuck out my thumb, and never looked back. Now, like then, here was played out.
I poured a drink. I lit a joint. Counted down the hours to takeoff.
“Look at you, lounging about in bed in the middle of the afternoon in your shorts with nothing to do.”
At the open door: Rachel. Hands on her hips.
“Witch girl,” I said, “where’ve you been? No one’s seen you since the fire.”
“Oh? Who’s watching for me?” she said.
I passed her the joint.
“We displaced persons watch for each other.”
She glanced at the map on the bed.
“You’re planning an escape?”
“I’m going away in the morning,” I said. “Driving. Across America.”
“So much for watching out for each other, then.”
“It’s like a job,” I said.
“A job? Like your other jobs?”
“It’s simpler. I have to deliver a car.”
She looked at the map again.
“Well, I’m sure you’ll find a way to make it exciting.” She pointed at the map. “What’s your route?”
“I start in Detroit.”
“Motown.”
“Drop a package for someone who’s not expecting it.”
“Sounds like you’re up to your usual bullshit, only in different places.”
She handed back the joint. Our fingertips burned on the roach when they touched.
“Supposedly everyone got out from the fire,” I said. “Still, I worried about you. The front desk won’t reveal guests’ names.”
“I had stuff to do.” She smiled a smile that revealed nothing.
Stuff. Like what? Where and with whom and for how long? I was insane to hold back. She had a pure heart and a clear mind. Cowardice held me in check.
“I like jazz,” she said. “Let’s go catch some jazz on your last night in town.”
I said, “I have to pack and get some sleep. It’s an early start.”
She rolled a strand of hair around her finger.
“That sounds practical.”
I shrugged. Here was played out, I reminded myself.
“When will you be back?”
I said, “I’ll see what happens.”
&nb
sp; “Well, you had your chance, boy,” she said. “Happy trails. Goodbye, then.”
“I don’t like to say goodbye,” I said.
“People do it all the time,” she said. “It’s customary when people go their separate ways.”
“Is that what we’re doing? Going our separate ways?”
“You are, it seems to me.”
Curry wafted through the air. Somebody was cooking in one of the rooms.
“I don’t like to go out because I’m afraid the Russians will find me,” I said.
It sounded weak. It revealed my cowardly nature. It was the truth. I wished I could take it back.
“They’d have found you if they wanted to,” she said. “Nobody cares anymore.”
She could’ve been right. With Hornsmith dead, the whole thing might’ve faded away. It was hard to tell without testing the situation. But with escape so close, it didn’t seem worth the risk. Play it safe. Get out of town. Stick to the plan.
I said, “I’m going to miss you.”
“I’ll be the one who got away,” she said.
“I’ll send you a postcard from the desert.”
She smiled, like she felt sorry for me.
“No, you won’t.”
The alarm on the clock radio chimed four thirty. The time when the bullshit of the night has finally ended and the bullshit of another day has mercifully not yet begun. A night bus roared past the open window. In the cool predawn mist, the street lights cast an ominous orange fog over the parking lot of the Havanap Motel. A light drizzle of rain beaded on the Firebird’s hood.
I tossed a couple of plastic bags full of clothes into the back and settled into the cold leather driver’s seat. The engine growled and spat plumes of blue exhaust, then settled into deep idle grunts. With the clutch engaged and the shift rammed into first, it was a clean getaway.
Then, out of the darkness, someone rapped on the window next to my head. I made out Akinwole’s silhouette, all shattered apart like a mosaic by the raindrops on the glass. I cranked down the window.
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