“Ha ha, douchebag.” Another pause, then in a small voice. “Will you help take care of me?”
“Uh…yeah, nursing isn’t really in my skill-set, but you can crash at my place if you want.”
“I’ll do that thing you like me to do with my vagina.”
“So many great offers. This isn’t a Groupon, is it?
“Fuck off.”
“When are you seeing the doctor?”
“In two days. Wish me some fucking luck.”
“You got it. Now wish me some fucking luck.”
“You got it. Don’t get fucking killed.”
“What? How the hell would that happen?”
“I don’t know. It just popped in my head.”
An uncomfortable pause.
Jesus. I had to remember – she was a fucking witch.
We acted like nothing had happened and said our goodbyes, then I made it out to the rental with my Banana Republic bags, feeling like Don Draper on his last televised road trip, and took off west for Kentucky. It would be an all-day drive, which left me too much time to think.
As Jan took me where I needed to go – Jan was the name I gave the helpfully-efficient female voice of my phone GPS - I couldn’t help but feel like a shit for allowing myself to get mind-fucked by the rich hotness of Angela Davidson. When she casually indicated a guy like me was in her wheelhouse, it made me a little weak in the knees and almost hard between the balls. I knew now that she was most likely just warming me up for the bribe and I let my dick do the thinking instead of my head, as men sometimes do.
I had to get better about this shit. Jules was going to need me and I should fucking be there for her. It didn’t feel good being alone out here and she seemed more and more like a good deal I shouldn’t pass up. I was suddenly more than ready to put her in my will, if I ever was fortunate enough to have anything to leave anybody.
Maybe we should get a goddam dog.
Enough with the Romantic Adventures of Max Fucking Bowman and on to where I was driving to – the residence of Colonel Curtis Allen, somewhere near beautiful Booneville, Kentucky, which, I had discovered when I looked it up, was named for Daniel Boone, noted frontiersman who, legend had it, had a run in with a bear at the tender age of three. Or - wait – that was Davy Crockett, wasn’t it? Which one had a coonskin cap? Maybe both of them? Didn’t the same guy play both of them on TV in the sixties?
Did I mention history wasn’t my strong suit?
Anyway, Colonel Allen had literally put himself out to pasture, retiring with his wife to a modest home out in the middle of endless farmland, where I had managed to find him three years ago at the behest of (I now knew) General Davidson. Back then, I didn’t have to leave Roosevelt Island to find the guy, I just worked the internet, got a number and gave a call. He answered and my job was done. I just had to hand off his contact information to Howard and that was the end of it, I thought. Those were the days. Now I was headed to a town where, according to the last census, a staggering total of eighty-one people lived. I was pretty sure that added up to fewer bodies than were currently occupying the bottom floor of my apartment building.
Back then, when I did reach Colonel Allen on the phone, I recalled that he was polite but not all that friendly. I believe I even got the distinct impression he didn’t want to be found - which is why, I guess, they had to hire the likes of me to undertake the hunt. This time around, I dug a little harder but didn’t find out much more about him. He abruptly retired from the service seven years ago, a couple years after Robert Davidson’s death (or not-death, depending on what you believed). He had been Robert’s commanding officer, but he wasn’t in Afghanistan when whatever happened happened - he was in the midst of transferring from Kabul back to a desk job in the States. It wasn’t clear if he wanted out or they wanted him out.
Anyway, if he knew something, then he was worth the extra driving. And even if he didn’t know anything, he was at least on the way to Missouri, which was my next stop. That’s where my second potential lead was – Colonel Allen’s commanding officer, General John Kraemer, who I already didn’t like because his last name was a whole lot harder to spell than it needed to be.
Wednesday morning.
I had spent the night in Lexington to the north of Booneville. I had stopped there because I wanted to be sure I could find a motel where the rooms had doors on them. I woke up feeling sore and a little tense. I had talked myself into staying calm yesterday, now I had to reboot that dialogue, because I didn’t know what would happen when I actually started talking to my first lead.
It took about an hour and a half to get down to the Colonel’s neck of the woods. I passed through the towns of Richmond, Irvine and Waco and wondered if Kentucky stole all their town names from other states. Finally, I was on State Route 28, coming into Booneville, which looked pretty much as I expected it to look. A few scattered mobile homes, a lot of pick-ups, a Quick Mart and many, many more trees than people. The only thing that was unexpected was a huge ancient black-and-white photo of a major league baseball player that was hung on the outside of the courthouse. I didn’t recognize the guy, but I assumed he must have hailed from these parts. Either that or there was a judge in there who was a huge fan and had a lot of clout.
I had spent a lot of quality time with Jan, my GPS voice, over the past few days and I was starting to think we had the makings of a beautiful friendship. I found her calm efficiency sexy as hell. I kept imagining her making erotic suggestions to me in bed with the same flat emotionless tones she used when telling me when to stay to the right so I could take the next exit. At one point, I got so into it, I considered pulling over and jerking off, but thought better of it. I kept worrying about seeing a state cop’s face peering at me through the car window as I was just merging into Jan’s lane and didn’t think that would reflect well on me.
So it would remain platonic with Jan, who was telling me how to navigate Booneville at that moment. I was to take a right off the main highway, which I did, and, as I drove up the narrow but newly-paved road, I saw a clump of older, larger “classic” wood frame homes. Jan went on to tell me that my destination was two thousand feet ahead on the left. Did I detect disappointment in her cold commanding voice that I hadn’t yet consummated our relationship?
As Angela Davidson would say, “Hmmmm.”
I switched off my twisted imagination as I approached the clump of homes and refocused my brain back on business, wondering how I would broach the subject of Robert Davidson if it didn’t come up. Then I wondered which home was the Colonel’s, whether it was the big one in the middle or not.
And then all hell broke loose.
They say you experience these kinds of extreme moments in slow motion. And whoever “they” are, they seemed to be right. A second suddenly seemed like a minute, and all the moments that made up each one of those seconds stuck to my memory like stills shot by someone taking a burst of photos, one after the other after the other.
They flipped by in order like a slide show...
The big house in the middle erupting into a giant ghastly fireball.
The sky filling up with giant toothpicks, which I quickly realized were all that was left of the house.
A rusty metal mailbox with an American Eagle on it landing on the hood of my car with a huge thud, leaving an equally huge dent.
A black SUV smashing savagely into the passenger side of my car like a heat-seeking missile.
A grinning nasty face, a face way too happy considering what was going on, behind the wheel of the SUV ramming into me. And a face that was oddly familiar.
My car flying around from the impact until it came to a stop facing the opposite direction of the way it had originally been going.
My airbag deploying as everything went black, my last conscious thought being that the grinning horrible face looked exactly like that of…Chuck Connors.
Chuck Connors?
In the words of Jules Nelson, “FUCK WHAT FUCK FUCK FUCK?”
The EMT guy was looking at me in confusion.
“Chuck Connors?”
“You saw him too?” I asked.
“No, I didn’t see no Chuck Connors. You woke up and said Chuck Connors. Who is Chuck Connors?”
“The Rifleman,” I muttered. Wasn’t it obvious?
“The what?”
“Didn’t you ever watch The Rifleman as a kid? Lucas McCain?”
“No offense, mister, but I weren’t no kid when you were a kid.”
I still felt the heat from the explosion. “What happened to that house?”
“Only word I got is they think it was some kind of gas leak. Shame, old army guy and his wife both got killed.”
That woke me up.
“You was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But how’d your car get so banged up?”
“Nobody got the guy?”
“What guy?”
“Chuck Conn…never mind. Nobody else was around when you pulled me out?”
“No sir.”
“Chuck Connors?”
The local Booneville lawman was probably as old as me and sported a long grey moustache over his craggy face. His gut hung over his belt to such an extent that I was pretty sure he had even less fun shopping for pants than I did.
“Yeah,” I said, “The guy whose SUV hit me looked exactly like Chuck Connors.”
“The Rifleman?” he said in disbelief. Thank God I was with someone from my generation. “He’s gotta be dead by now, huh?”
‘Yeah,” I said, sitting up on the examination table. I was a little banged up but nothing serious, according to the very young doctor that had checked me out earlier. I pushed back at Doogie Howser and declared that surely I had a concussion from the car crash or the blast, but Doogie said no, I must have fainted, no head injuries. I guess, emotionally, I just was a delicate flower after all. Now the doctor was gone and the sheriff wanted to talk to me.
“So you’re telling me a guy who looked the Rifleman deliberately banged into the side of your car just as the house blew up.”
“That’s what it felt like.”
“That don’t make sense. Why would this man do such a thing? Especially in the middle of that horrible explosion. Most likely he was panicked and lost control. Most likely.”
He nodded to himself. He solved everything in his head and that was good enough for Booneville.
“But he took off.”
“Well, he was probably as scared as you were.”
“Who says I was scared?”
“Doc said you fainted.”
I was leaking manliness every second I stayed there. Especially since I was wearing this stupid paper patient gown from which my ass could instantly detect which direction the air conditioning was blasting from.
“What were you doing down here, anyway?”
“Was going to visit Colonel Allen.”
“Good man. That was just a damn shame. Moved back here a few years ago after serving his country. His family was from around here originally, y’know. Gas Company’s got some explaining to do.”
He sat down and I think he farted. Maybe he was focusing too much on gas.
“Well,” he went on, “Thanks for talking to me. Just wanted to see if you noticed anything unusual while you were driving up there. Besides Chuck Connors.”
He shook his head and smiled. And remained seated there, like he was waiting for someone to build a Waffle House around him and bring over a cup of coffee.
“I wanted to get dressed?” I eyed my pile of clothing over on a small table.
He got the message and got flustered. “Oh. Oh! I am sorry, I’ll get out of your hair, Mr. Bowman.”
“Before you do,” I said as he struggled to get up and I walked over to my stuff, “I’d like you to let me know if you find anything out about exactly what happened with the house.”
“Or if I see Chuck? Hey, you know they still show a whole bunch of those episodes on one of the cable channels, on the weekend, I believe. He was a big guy, huh? You know he played pro baseball and basketball before Hollywood?”
I yanked out a card from my wallet and gave it to him. “Yeah, I did.”
He read the card. “Lost and Found. Max Bowman.” He looked up. “You some kind of detective? Like Jim Rockford?”
“Sort of. I used to be with the CIA.”
All that fainting stuff washed away with that disclosure. Now he was looking at me like I was some sort of ancient Babylonian God.
He leaned in with a whisper. “They didn’t blow up the house, did they?”
“No, sir, I don’t believe so. Please hang on to the card though, okay? In case you find out something?”
He nodded solemnly. And stood there staring at the card for a few centuries.
“I still need to get dressed.”
“Oh! Yes, yes, of course, have a good day, Mr. Bowman.”
He was gone and in another minute or two, so was I.
Lockdown
I was awake.
If I had been asleep for the past dozen years, well, the extended nap was over. My eyes were wide open and my brain was on fire. That’s because the house blowing up and Chuck Connors ramming me from the side a few hours ago were far from the scariest parts of what was going on.
What was truly terrifying was realizing how closely someone had to be monitoring me for those two things to happen at the exact moment I arrived there.
Whoever was behind this obviously had to know where I was going the whole time. But that was something I hadn’t told anyone, not Howard, not Angela, not the General, nobody. True, Jules had texted me the addresses out of my computer, but she didn’t strike me as the “traitor within” type. Besides, again, whoever was tracking me had to have known exactly what time I would show up there. I don’t think Chuck Connors was sitting there for days on end with his motor idling.
So how would someone know all those little details?
There were three ways and they all related back to Mr. Barry Filer. Which meant I had to destroy those three ways and do it quick.
First, the burner phone he gave me to call him. It probably had tracking spyware built into it so my location was always an open secret, even when I turned it off at night. That’s how good that shit was these days. So, when the rental company delivered my newest replacement vehicle to me in Booneville, I placed the burner behind the back left tire of the car and backed up over it. Then I ran the car forward over it and then backed up over it one more time. I put the contents in a Ziploc bag, sealed it up and threw it in a dumpster outside the Quick Mart.
The second thing giving away my movements was my new and beloved endless benefactor, the credit card. It, of course, created an instant paper trail of where I had been and what I had been doing there. I drove north back to Lexington, where I stopped at the first big national bank branch that I could find, CitiChase Wells Fargo Bank of America. I parked, went in and withdrew as much cash as the card would allow. That turned out to be two grand. Then I left the bank, ripped my beloved new credit card in two, wiped a couple of tears and threw it into a sewer grating outside the bank.
Call it a shitty Viking Funeral.
The third and final thing was the flash drive. I called Jules at the office where, by this time, it was close to quitting time for her.
“It’s me,” I said.
“OHMIGODOHMIGODOHMIGOD!”
Pause on my end.
“It’s still me.”
“GET EXCITED, BOZO!”
“I think I’m excited enough after what I’ve been through.”
“No, no, no, moron! Tuesday after next! There was an opening! I scheduled the surgery!”
Pause on my end.
“Is that okay?” she finally asked. “Please tell me it’s fucking okay, please, please, please.”
“Well, I ho
pe it is.”
Pause on her end.
“HOPE??? Oh, FUCK me in the ass if we’re down to hope!!!”
“We don’t do anal, remember? Look, I need you to do something important for me and no, it doesn’t mean you get a third nice dinner.”
“Talk about a preemptive strike.”
“You need to go to my apartment after you get off…”
“And how do I get off without you here?”
“You go to my place, you go into my office, you unplug the desktop computer and you pull out the flash drive that’s sticking out of the front.”
“Sounds real exciting so far.”
“Then you take that flash drive and you physically destroy it. Use the hammer I have in that drawer in the kitchen, whatever, smash the fucker…”
“I’ll pretend it’s your penis…”
“Then go out and throw the pieces in the East River.”
“You know it’s not a river.”
Oh, here we fucking go again.
“It’s a saltwater tidal strait, everybody who ever made a map should be fucking ashamed of themselves, just watch the way the water moves, the way the direction completely CHANGES day-to-day, in no way, shape or fucking form is THAT fucking slice of shit-ridden water…”
“Jules…I’ve heard this before and I don’t have time to hear it again.”
Pause on her end.
“Is it really this bad?”
“I gotta go – just promise me you’ll take care of this.”
“I take care of everything, cowboy.”
“I know.”
I said a fond goodbye and hung up.
The flash drive - that’s what really got me. Boy, had I been a stupid son of a bitch. A whole flash drive with only one itsy-bitsy document on it, what the fuck did I think that was all about? No doubt it also contained more hidden spyware, which, when I shoved it into my USB slot, installed itself into my home computer and transmitted everything that I did with the PC over the internet back to whoever was watching me. Which meant they could see the document Jules had opened at my behest and see which two addresses I was planning to visit. By this point, they had also probably copied every single file on my desktop, not that there was anything all that exciting on it. It may have been like closing the barn after the horses got out, but I wanted the thing out of my computer because I didn’t want to take any more chances. It was obvious I didn’t have a real big margin for error moving forward. As a matter of fact, I needed to lower the odds against me and that would require some heavy-duty help.
Dark Sky (The Misadventures of Max Bowman Book 1) Page 7