One Got Away

by S. A. Lelchuk

  “I’m going to take a look around.”

  * * *

  I walked casually down the shoulder of the road to Johnny’s Crab Shack, hearing my footsteps crunch against gravel. The lot was empty of people. Maybe a dozen cars. From where I stood, I could glimpse inside through the glass door and a side window. A handful of tables visible. Mr. Z and his entourage, if they were indeed there, weren’t anywhere in sight. I heard faint voices, carrying over the air. The back of the restaurant faced the water. A patio.

  I cautiously approached the Mercedes and let my hand graze the hood, where the engine block would be. The hood was warmer than air temperature but not hot. An engine that had had some time to cool. I noted the blank dealer plates, Mercedes-Benz of Monterey, and the impenetrable tint over the windows. A red antitheft light blinked from within.

  Mason’s voice in my ear voiced the question in my mind. “Is it the right one?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  There was a noise as the door of the restaurant opened.

  I stepped away from the Mercedes fast.

  I heard a woman’s laugh and relaxed. Just a young, happy couple enjoying a night out. They climbed into a pickup, still laughing, and pulled out of the lot fast enough that the tires kicked up gravel. I walked back to the Mercedes and shined a penlight around the cargo area. Impossible to see anything through the opaque tint. I walked around to the driver’s side and angled my light at the high windshield, where a white strip on the dashboard showed a minuscule set of numbers and letters, facing out. I quickly wrote down the seventeen-digit chain. A VIN could tell me all kinds of things.

  No way to tell if Coombs was in the Mercedes.

  No way to tell if it was the right Mercedes.

  And no way I could chance going into the restaurant. If Mr. Z was there, being recognized would be disastrous. I scooped up a handful of gravel from the parking lot, then walked back up the street to the Seagull. Mason sprang to his feet when he saw me. “Was he there? What’s the plan?”

  “I’m going to be a really bad example,” I told the boy.

  He was confused. “What do you mean?”

  “I need to borrow your slingshot.”

  * * *

  I stopped about twenty yards from the Mercedes. The slingshot felt well-crafted, the brace fitting snug against the top of my left wrist, my left hand on the solid, pistol-grip handle, the leather pouch fit around one of the pieces of gravel I’d pocketed. I stretched the elastic tube back, feeling the tensile strength as it tightened. I could probably launch this stone the better part of a football field. Not the most accurate weapon, but I had a big, motionless target sitting right in front of me.

  I stretched the elastic back as far as I could, aimed, steadied the slingshot, and released my grip.

  Two sounds, so close together as to be almost indistinguishable. The sharp metallic ping of the stone slamming into metal. Then a strident cacophony of beeps and blinks as the wounded vehicle exploded in distress, destroying the quiet of the night.

  Reactions happened quickly.

  First, a waiter, sticking his head outside to see what had happened. Then he was thrust aside by a big man, who rushed out the door toward the noise. I recognized him. The bodyguard with the hatchet. If Coombs was in the Mercedes, the obvious conclusion would be that he had either escaped or set off the alarm while trying to. The bodyguard would immediately check the interior.

  He didn’t. He studied the SUV and then pressed a key fob.

  The noise stopped and the headlights ceased flashing.

  Two more men emerged from the restaurant. Mr. Z and his accountant, Albert.

  They watched the bodyguard as he used a flashlight to check the Mercedes from all angles, kneeling to peer up at the chassis as though worried someone had attached an explosive. Mr. Z and the accountant maintained a wary distance, as though they had the same thought. I heard angry exclamations as he saw and pointed out the brand-new dent in the door panel. I was already walking back to the Seagull.

  Four men had left the Cypress Inn, carrying a suitcase with a fifth man inside.

  Now there were three men and no suitcase.

  The second bodyguard must have been tasked to bring Coombs somewhere else. I walked faster. The Mercedes was my only link to Coombs. I couldn’t let it out of my sight. That thought was in my mind when the police car pulled up alongside me, its searchlight pinning me like a moth.

  18

  I threw an arm up to block my eyes from the cone of dazzling light. A marked SUV idled next to me, striped like a tiger, two cops inside. Blue lights off. The female officer sitting in the passenger side gave me a long look and asked, “How’s it going tonight?”

  I squinted into the searchlight. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “Nothing wrong. Saw you walking around, heard a car alarm, just thought we’d check in.” She had the kind of excessively nonchalant tone that cops employed so frequently to insinuate that wrong-doing had been done and it was okay to tell them all about it. Hey, we’re all friends here…

  They wanted an explanation. That was clear. I nodded up the road. “I’m staying at the Seagull. I was taking a walk.”

  “Mind if we take a look at your ID?” she asked.

  “Is that a request or an order?”

  They exchanged a look and the cop nearer to me said, “We’re just asking.”

  I hadn’t been driving. I wasn’t required to show ID. I also knew that cops could make any process shorter, or much longer, depending solely on their own preferences. The Mercedes wouldn’t stay parked all night. Cooperating was the better bet.

  “Sure. I’m reaching into my bag for my ID,” I added. I was a woman alone and it was a nice area, but cops could be jumpy, especially late at night. I took out my wallet and handed over my license, seething with impatience. I saw headlights turn on in the parking lot of the restaurant.

  The female cop typed unhurriedly into her laptop. Taking her time. Making a point. The headlights were moving. A vehicle leaving the restaurant, headed in our direction. The Mercedes.

  The female cop kept clicking away. Her partner said something to her and she laughed and nodded just as the Mercedes passed us, the driver maintaining what looked like a perfect twenty-five, dipping courteously over the center line to give our little group a respectful distance. Neither of the cops seemed to even notice it.

  I watched my only link to Coombs drive leisurely away.

  The cop finished what she’d been doing and handed my ID back. “Thank you, Ms. Griffin. Enjoy your evening in Seaside and stay safe.”

  “Thanks.”

  The cops headed in the opposite direction of the Mercedes. Toward the restaurant. Maybe looking to hang out and bust a few late-night drinkers. I kept walking. As soon as the SUV was out of sight I broke into a run. By the time I reached my motorcycle I was breathing hard and knowing it didn’t matter.

  The Mercedes had vanished.

  * * *

  “Why did you do that?” Mason wondered. He sounded more than a little jealous. To a boy his age, turning a slingshot on a luxury vehicle in the thick of night was probably like handing a baby boomer front-row tickets to a Stones concert.

  I upshifted as the speed limit increased. “Setting off a car alarm can sometimes tell you a lot about what’s inside, and how much people care about it.”

  “Did you learn anything about the man from the airport?”

  “Just that he’s somewhere else.”

  It had been a long night. My dinner with Coombs felt weeks distant. I stopped at a twenty-four-hour McDonald’s on Del Monte. Only the drive-through was open, but that was all we needed. We parked the motorcycle and walked over to the window to order. I’d never figured out how to get drive-through on a motorcycle.

  “I usually stay away from fast food,” I said, feeling guilty. Late-night vandalism and fast food. I wasn’t exactly hitting the gold standard of parenting. “But there’s a time and place for everything.”

&nb
sp; We each ordered a chocolate milkshake along with our food, then carried bags of burgers and fries over to a bench at the edge of the parking lot. I was hungry, and the salted, crispy fries tasted delicious. Which was, of course, the problem with fast food. They were too good at making it too good.

  “I’m supposed to be on my diet,” Mason said, taking a huge bite of his burger. “But this is my first adventure, so it’s different.”

  “I think you look good,” I said. “Seriously. What’s with the diet?”

  He blushed. “I know I’m overweight. Everyone says so.”

  “Who cares about a couple of pounds?” I asked. “Trust me, you’ll grow up and spend your whole life worrying about empty calories and utility bills and cholesterol and too many e-mails and a hundred other things. Now you should be enjoying yourself.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. I bet you were never bullied when you were my age.”

  I shook a fry at him. “Wrong. Definitely wrong.”

  His voice was openly skeptical. “You’re just telling me that to make me feel better.”

  “Nope—I mean it. Seriously. I moved twice growing up. To a foster family when I was about your age, and then two years later to a second one, in a different city, when I started high school. You wouldn’t believe how much crap I got. Doesn’t matter if you’re skinny or anything else. Bullies will always find a way in—if you let them.”

  He was listening closely. “What did they say about you?”

  I slurped at my milkshake and smiled ruefully. “Just about everything there is to say—minus anything good.” DYKE and LESBO written in black Sharpie across my locker after I turned down the upperclassmen boys. FREAK. NUTJOB. The cafeteria stares. Whispers twisting strands of gossip like hot wire. She murdered her whole family. She escaped from a psych ward. A secret sex addict. NYMPHO. PSYCHO. DRUGGIE. SLUT. Unrelenting.

  Mason stared at me, both hands wrapped tight around his milkshake. “What did you do about it? About the bullying?”

  “I didn’t handle things the right way,” I admitted. “I hurt one or two of the kids who were doing the worst of it. I shouldn’t have. They left me alone eventually, but it made me a pariah for pretty much the rest of high school. It wasn’t worth it.”

  He nodded. “Like The Old Man and the Sea.”

  I was startled by the reference. “What?”

  “You got what you wanted, but still lost.”

  “Exactly,” I said, impressed again by the boy’s literary knowledge.

  “I’ve never been in a fight,” Mason confessed. “The kids who tease me are mostly bigger than I am, so I don’t think that would work too well. Plus, our school is zero tolerance on fighting. If I get expelled I won’t be able to go away to college, and then I’ll be stuck here forever.”

  “It’ll get better,” I promised. Along with the fast food and vandalism, fistfights had somehow joined the list. Did this fall under the category of being an official bad influence? “I should get you home pretty soon,” I said. “I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

  He took a bite of his Big Mac. “Maybe you still need my help?” he suggested hopefully. “I could meet you tomorrow. I have more equipment and supplies I could bring.”

  “What’s wrong with your home?” I asked. “Why don’t you want to be there?”

  He regarded the half-eaten burger he held. “My dad and I don’t get along too well.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  He shrugged. “It’s okay. I’m used to it by now.”

  “How about your mom? You get along with her?”

  He fell silent. “She’s not in the picture.”

  “Divorce?” I asked sympathetically. “That’s hard.”

  There was a moment of quiet before he answered. “She died.”

  I put my food down and put my hand on his shoulder. “Mason, I’m so sorry.”

  His voice was softer. “It’s okay.”

  “We don’t have to talk about it. I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “It’s okay,” he repeated. “No one—no one ever talks with me about her anyway, except the psychologist they make me see, who doesn’t get anything about me. I don’t mind talking about her with you. She was amazing. I write about her in my journal each night so I don’t forget what she was like.”

  “What happened?”

  “It was three years ago. A car crash. She—she and my sister. Someone ran a red light while we were going through an intersection.”

  “Your sister, too?” I hugged him without thinking about it. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry, Mason.” Because of the enormity of his statement it took me an extra second to catch the word he had used. “We?”

  “I was in the back seat. My sister was older, so she always got the front.”

  I released my arms from around him but took his hand. “Were you hurt?”

  His eyes glistened, but his voice was even. “No. Just a few bruises and a bloody nose. The doctors said it was a miracle. I think that was what made it hardest for my dad.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think it sort of bothers him to see me. Like I remind him of what happened. He’s usually out, or at work. When he comes home he likes to be alone. I think I always end up annoying him—when we talk it’s usually him asking me why I didn’t make the soccer team or why my nose is always in a book. I really wanted him to let me go away to boarding school, but he won’t.” He looked up at me hopefully. “Do you think I could come with you? To San Francisco?”

  “Sorry,” I said, feeling much worse than sorry as I saw my words deflate the hope in his eyes like a nail in a tire. “I don’t think that would work.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re a minor, Mason. Your dad controls you until you turn eighteen.”

  His eyes flashed. “I can’t wait to be eighteen! I’ll leave so fast his head will spin!”

  I asked the question without even thinking about it. “Would you like me to try to talk to your father for you?”

  The boy shook his head quickly, the anger leaving his eyes as fast as the hope had. “He wouldn’t like that. He gets pretty angry at me sometimes. If he thought I had tattled on him it’d be a lot worse.”

  “Tattled? What do you mean—what did he do?”

  “Nothing. I mean, nothing that matters.”

  My voice was quieter. “Sometimes when I talk to people it’s less about what they want to hear, and more about what they need to hear.”

  “It’s okay,” the boy said. “It wouldn’t help, but thanks anyway.”

  “Has he ever put his hands on you?”

  Mason shrugged and inspected a stray fry from his bag. “Can we talk about something else?”

  “Sure,” I said. “We can change the subject. Tell me more about some of your favorite books, why don’t you?”

  He started talking. I listened. Half-listened, anyway. Sometimes changing a subject was easier said than done. There was a thought bouncing around in my head.

  I had told the boy that hurting people wasn’t worth it.

  I hadn’t added the second part of the sentence.

  That sometimes it was.

  * * *

  Mason’s neighborhood was set in the hills above Monterey Bay. It was sickly-sweet with wealth. Hedged, floodlit driveways full of European cars leading to gated homes done up in extravagant European styles, Spanish Colonial and French Chateau. Mansions bulged out of sweeping, manicured lawns that probably needed sprinkler systems going 365 days a year. Enough water and resources to supply whole cities. I wondered if the people in the homes thought about those things. I wondered if they cared. Floodlights set into lawns painted Caravaggio swaths of light and shadow across the homes. The paving on the street was as immaculate as if the blacktop had been poured the day before. No debris or signs of life anywhere. So different than my East Bay neighborhood. No stray newspapers floating along the sidewalks, no graffiti or trash. The curbs were uncluttered by garbage bins. No flyers advertising commu
nity yoga or Italian classes stuck haphazardly on bus-stop glass—no bus stops, either. No need for them, I supposed. The people in these homes wouldn’t ride the bus.

  The whole beautiful, tasteful neighborhood was as soulless as a vacuum cleaner.

  I didn’t know what it meant. Whether any of it made people happier. Whether they still wanted things, and if so, what those things were. Like my clients. The Johannessen family with their secrets. I wondered what Susan would reveal, less than twelve hours from now. This rot—this web. What dirty laundry would be brandished in my face, tossed into my lap with an expectation of a nice wash and a neat fold? Were they happy—any of them? Wasn’t that the point of all these things—all of this? Or did having so much just instill a twisting, earthworm-blind desire to hold, and gain, and hold, and gain, all the way to the very end?

  I felt a stab of desire to be back home in Berkeley. Back in my bookshop. Graffiti and clutter and dirty streets and all.

  When I dropped Mason at his house I understood more about why it was easy for him and his dad not to run into each other. The house was an enormous brick Tudor, the steep pitch of the roof stern and forbidding. It seemed a huge, sentient being, windows darkened, slumberous and still, but watchful, too, the gabled roof set in a suspicious squint.

  Mason took off his helmet and accepted the walkie-talkie that I unclipped and handed back to him. He gazed wistfully at my motorcycle. “You can go pretty much anywhere on that, can’t you?”

  “As long as I have gas.”

  I thought of something that should have been obvious. “That’s why you’re always watching the airplanes, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You tell me. Why do you like them so much? Airplanes?”

  He knew I had guessed the truth. “Because they can go anywhere they want.”

  “You’ll be able to,” I told him. “Soon.”

  He scuffed the ground with a sneaker. “I wish I could now. I wish I could go with you.”