“Who would want to intimidate me?”
I held his eyes for a moment. Then he looked away uncomfortably.
“I don’t know. Maybe no one.”
“If there’s anything you know, any information you have, General, I really need you to share it with me now before…”
“There’s nothing,” he snapped. Then, more quietly, so quietly I had to lean in closer to hear, “I would only be guessing and that might prove…difficult for you. It’s far better for you to find out what you can on your own, without being prejudiced by me or anyone else.”
Military purity. He went on.
“You might not find anything. You might come back here after you’re done and tell me that I am crazy, that my son is indeed dead. I’m not expecting miracles. I’m only expecting an effort and I expect you to make one.”
Once he got all that out, he suddenly seemed tired. I finished my drink, stood up and said, “Don’t worry, the effort will be made.” Then I remembered something, something that had been left in the air.
“General, you started this by talking about parent-child misunderstandings.”
“Yes. My son and I weren’t speaking when he…disappeared. One of the great regrets of my life. And maybe the only regret I can still erase.”
I nodded and we exchanged curt goodbyes. As I walked back up the aisle, the lights went down and the Duke came back to life.
I headed out of his one-man theatre feeling bad for the guy. He wasn’t the American hero anymore, he was just another sad old man who screwed things up with his boy and wanted too much to fix them after it was too late. It didn’t take a shrink to realize this was just about wish fulfillment – but he had to know on some level that not many wishes ever come true.
The Blue Toyota
After I had left the Davidson estate, I was, if anything, more of a candidate for Jules’ myriad mental prescriptions than before I went in. How did I draw this card? The one that had the picture of the last remaining general-hero in America? Schwarzkopf was dead and Petraeus was caught diddling his biographer, so Don “Devil-Eyes” Davidson was it. And somehow, he was entrusting me with a mission that a lot of people, including his daughter, were nervous about being carried out.
And boy, was his daughter nervous.
On my way out, she had been waiting in the hallway, looking as tense as a closer with a one-run lead and the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth.
“You know this is a ridiculous wild goose chase. You know my brother’s dead.”
“I haven’t heard anything that indicates it’s not. But…”
She grabbed my arm. Not lightly either.
“So just take the money. Just take the money, come back here in a few weeks and say you hit a dead end. I don’t want the people of this country thinking of him as some kind of Alzheimer’s-ridden freak show.”
“To me, he seemed completely lucid. Maybe he’s misguided. If he is, I’ll put it all to rest and nobody will be the wiser.”
I gave her one of the cards I had printed up through some internet company that only charged ten bucks. We lived in a golden age, all right.
“Feel free to call me if you need anything. Or even if you don’t. I don’t want you to be nervous about me.”
It was a smart move, I thought. “Thank you,” she said and in a genuine way.
As I got on the 1-64 headed back toward Richmond, I replayed the conversations again and again in my head. Nothing seemed to add up to much of anything. Angela didn’t want the family embarrassed and the General didn’t want his boy to be dead. On the other hand, I was getting paid a lot of money to do something.
I just had to figure out what.
Was it even possible Robert was still alive? How could a very public death on a very distant battlefield translate into a secret resurrection over a decade later?
I needed a little traveling music to calm down and create some thinking space, so I turned on the rental car’s satellite radio. I paid extra for it – well, my new credit card did. I dialed up and down, past the Springsteen channel, past the Pearl Jam channel, even past the Elvis channel, until I settled on the Sixties’ station for a few seconds. Then I realized it was playing Hooray for Hazel, a song I hadn’t heard in forty years and never wanted to hear again; it always made me think of the TV maid on that sitcom I hadn’t seen in forty years and never wanted to see again.
I searched a little more and found the Sinatra station – only, what the fuck, it wasn’t playing Sinatra, just some other song recorded by one of the endless legions of Frank wannabes that sang Frank’s songs with Frank’s arrangements without Frank’s talent. Would they dare play Bon Jovi on the Springsteen station? No. And yet, here they were playing Tom “Dukes of Hazzard” Wopat’s take on That’s Life. Check it out for yourself and get back to me after if you make it all the way through without throwing yourself off the nearest balcony.
I moved on and, finally, at a loss, I stopped on a hip-hop channel, which was playing We Dem Boyz by something called Wiz Khalifa, according to the read-out on the radio screen. I stuck with it because it made me feel younger than a hundred and fourteen. It wasn’t half bad either, it just wasn’t half good. Still, I wasn’t one of those guys who went around insisting music was better when he was a kid. We Dem Boyz beat Hooray for Hazel by a country mile. My dirty little secret was I liked a little hip-hop once in a while, and it had to be a secret or Jules would have applied a sledge hammer to the back of my head.
My brief musical journey must have loosened the rocks in my brain, because they suddenly gave way to reveal a bright, shining light bulb, like those that signify an idea in the cartoon world. It was actually pretty obvious. The General said he had a source. It seemed a good bet who that source might be – or at least I could narrow it down to two possibilities. After all, he had also mentioned the fact that my hunt for the two retired Army officers a couple of years before had been at his request – and he was cagey about the reason he wanted them found. All he would say was it was about a “private matter.”
Nothing could be more private than this.
If one of those guys had told the General his son was still alive, he probably didn’t want to be called on it by somebody like me. And if neither of them knew anything about this bizarre claim, then I couldn’t let anything slip or the General and his daughter would have me shot at sunrise, if they even waited that long. So every move I made had to be a stealth move. I had to get information from people who had no idea what I was after. And I had to do it in person.
If I tried to do this over the phone, it wasn’t gonna work. No, I had to go to where they lived and knock on their damn doors. I had to be able to see their faces.
As I drove toward Richmond mulling this over in my head, I couldn’t help noticing a blue Toyota in my rear view mirror that seemed to be working very hard to stay exactly three cars behind me. It was as if the driver had read some secret stalking manual and was following its instructions to the letter. If he really was tailing me, he really sucked at it, because, otherwise, I never would have spotted him, because I hadn’t been at all worried about anyone tagging along after me. I had gotten to the point in my life where it was laughable to think that someone would actually consider it worthwhile.
Yet, there the fucker was, hanging back those three cars – as he had been doing for the last forty miles or so.
Still, because he was so obvious about it, I dismissed his existence in my head. When you drive on an interstate, you constantly see the same vehicles over and over. Like that truck that didn’t believe in abortion, according to the giant sticker on its back. It kept passing me going downhill and I kept passing it going uphill. So maybe the blue Toyota was using me as a pace car or something. Whatever, it wasn’t worth taking seriously.
I had other things to worry about. For starters, I needed supplies. I searched the highway exits for one of big box store plazas - the kind that always has a mammoth Old Navy overpowering the scenery next to an equally mam
moth, vacated Barnes & Noble. I spotted one too late to take the exit, so I took the next one a few miles up the road so I could backtrack.
That’s when the blue Toyota reminded me it was still there.
In my rear view mirror, I saw that it was getting off where I was getting off. Then I saw it was backtracking along with me. Which meant I had to pay some attention.
But I also spotted a Banana Republic tucked away in the corner, which was exactly what I needed. Yeah, I would have to park a few football fields away – it was Sunday and the place was mobbed – but I was going to be gone a few more days and I needed some clothes. And not just some clothes, better clothes. I needed some shirts that had buttons and maybe a jacket that didn’t look like a cast-off from Fonzie’s closet. I was heading into the heartland and I needed to dress for success. Or, more accurately, dress like someone to be trusted.
But fuck it, I was still going to wear my jeans and Chuck Taylors.
I finally found an open parking space, pulled my rental into it and got out of the car. I scanned the immediate area for my friend in the Blue Toyota, but saw no sign of it parking anywhere else or cruising around the lot. So I shrugged it off again and trotted over to Banana Republic. And began the godawful task of buying some clothes.
Like most men, I don’t do clothes shopping happily or competently. This was no exception. The hardest part was finding a pair of black jeans that fit over all the takeout food I’d consumed since the last time I dragged myself into a clothing store. I ended up with a casual jacket, three shirts, two pairs of jeans, some socks and underwear. The one bright spot? It all went on my brand new credit card. Hell, these were travel expenses, especially since the clothes were crucial to the job at hand.
At least that’s what I would tell Mr. Barry Filer.
Maybe the nice new silver watch I also bought wasn’t all that necessary, but I was felt entitled to reward myself for all the unpleasantness swirling around me. And speaking of unpleasantness, there was some more to get out of the way. I had to call Jules to tell her I wouldn’t be home that night.
It went about as I thought it would. Turned out I was an asshole cocksucking monkey fucker who raped his mother. I guessed I could live with that if I had to. When she was finally done enumerating my unusual, illegal and wholly fictitious sexual proclivities, she let me know she wasn’t staying the night at my place.
“If I stay here, I’m just going to have fucking nightmares about the ghost of Leg Sore Larry dripping ooze piss from his lesions. That doesn’t make for a restful fucking night, now does it?”
“Can’t deny that.”
“Besides, it’s a lot closer fucking commute from my place to work than from your place. And I don’t have to sit there on the F-is-for-FUCK train sandwiched like a sardine in the middle of all those smelly bastards from Queens.”
“They can be smelly.”
“Yeah, and…WHY ARE YOU AGREEING WITH ME SO MUCH, MR. DUMB FUCK?”
“I just appreciate every hair of your bogusly blonde hair.”
Silence.
“And I need one small favor…”
“Oh FUCK, I did not see THAT coming.”
Of course she did, we were at the point where we both saw pretty much everything coming. Luckily, what I was asking for wasn’t that big a deal on her end. I just needed her to open up a couple of documents from my folder of case files on my computer and text me the information I needed – which was the addresses of those two retired Army officers Davidson had asked me to retrieve years ago.
“Sure. Sure, Max Bowman, I’ll do that shit for you. Only now – I get TWO nice dinners when you get home. And one of them is gonna be at the Gotham fucking Bar & Grill, what do you think about that?”
My wallet began to silently weep. When the President came to Manhattan, he ate at the Gotham fucking Bar & Grill. When I went into Manhattan, I got a hot dog off the cart.
“Okay,” I said, “but no appetizers.”
“HAHAHAHA, you’re a comedian! Guess what, asshole? Appetizers AND dessert. Not only that, but also – dessert WINE.”
“Okay, okay, okay.”
“And – I WANT US TO BUY A DOG.”
What? A dog?
“I’ll think about it.”
But I wasn’t going to. If giving her a key to my place had been the equivalent of digging my own grave, agreeing to co-parent a dog with her would be asking for the dirt to get shoveled over my face.
Not that I actually related that charming metaphor to her. I didn’t want to hear more speculation on what other monstrosities my penis was capable of penetrating. Instead, I told her I missed her, said goodbye and put the phone back in my pocket, next to the burner given to me by Mr. Barry Filer. And actually, a part of me did miss Jules. I had to admit that to myself. I didn’t have much else in my life, and I kind of liked being around somebody who said “fuck” more than me. And she said it a fucking lot more.
It took the entire length of our conversation for me to make it from the Banana Republic to my parking spot in the far corner of the lot. At which point I realized I never should have written off the blue Toyota. It had left me a message that was far from a friendly one; all four of my tires were slashed, leaving my rental resting completely on its rims. I dropped my Banana Republic bags and just stood there for a few seconds, staring blankly at the car. The thought that immediately leapt to my mind was that I was glad I bought myself the watch.
According to that watch, it took about an hour forty-five to get a replacement car from the rental company. That kind of pissed me off, since I had checked every box and every insurance upgrade on the rental form – my new credit card could take the punishment, after all – so I expected some kind of superior service. But I forgot this was America and that ever since all of Mom and Pop’s little businesses went under, the corporations were fine with fucking over one individual customer. There were a few million others out there on hold waiting to give them money, why give a shit?
At least I had things to do to pass the time while I was waiting. Jules had texted me the addresses, accurately and quickly as I expected – and she had even gone to the trouble of putting “fucking asshole” in between every other word. I liked the fact that she was willing to put that kind of time and effort into our relationship. The addresses were close to what I remembered – one in Kentucky and one in Missouri - which meant I could drive the whole trip and avoid any more cramped pain-in-the-ass flights. I liked a long drive – and it would give me time to think out my approach.
Then the rental company finally showed up with my new car. We all agreed it was some damn teenager who ripped apart my tires and we went on with our lives. I got back on the I-64, then, when I got to Richmond, I took the I-95 north towards D.C. It would be a couple more hours, but some things had to be addressed before I continued west.
10 miles outside our nation’s capital, I spotted a Hilton Ramada Holiday Inn whatever-the-fuck generic hotel.
I pulled off the I-95, parked in the lot and headed for the entrance.
I went in, power-walked through the lobby and came right back out the back door – all so I could walk back around the front to where I had originally parked.
And there in the parking lot, I saw, as I expected I would, a familiar blue Toyota cautiously coming to a stop a few spaces away from my new rental. I waited to see who was going to get out of it.
And holy fuck if it wasn’t a damn teenager.
The kid was wearing expensive ripped jeans and t-shirt, trying to look street for too much money. He was skinny, furtive and was holding a heavy-duty X-ACTO knife in his left hand as he approached my shiny new rental car. But I was able to get right behind him before he got too far. I knew this was an amateur because he never felt me coming.
“Hold it, Billy the Kid. You don’t want me to use what’s sticking in your back.”
What was sticking in his back was the end of the tire wrench from the trunk of the rental. But he didn’t know that.
He
stopped immediately and put up his hands. Poor little fucker was shaking. Finally, someone else besides me was in the damn principal’s office and I got to be the damn principal.
“Drop the knife,” I barked like a tough guy. I’m up to it when there’s no chance of me getting hurt.
He dropped the knife. I picked it up.
“Thanks,” I said. “Sorry for the surprise, but I didn’t feel like wasting another hour forty-five today, it’s already starting to get dark. Now turn around.”
He did. I showed him the tire wrench. His eyes went wide. I was suddenly a magical trickster. Maybe I would turn him into a frog.
“What’s this all about?” I asked.
He looked glumly at the ground. But not before I noticed the family resemblance.
“Your mother’s name Angela?”
No response. Which was a response.
“Well, go home and tell Mommy you didn’t scare me off. And maybe have her give me a call.”
He stood there not knowing what to do. I pointed the tire iron at him.
“Bang.”
He skedaddled away, back to the blue Toyota, which he jumped into just as fast as he could, stumbling and almost falling on his face on the front seat. Then he drove off with a loud squeal, leaving a little of the tire tread behind in the parking space.
I had the feeling he was going to be up all night on Hulu watching old Family Guy episodes trying to calm himself down.
Five more miles up the interstate, I checked in under a phony name at a different Hilton Ramada Holiday Inn and took my luggage, by which I mean the Banana Republic shopping bags, up to my room, headed straight for the bathroom, and finally took the shit that had been trying to fight its way out of my ass for the past three hours.
Dark Sky (The Misadventures of Max Bowman Book 1) Page 4