Hiding Tom Hawk

by Robert Neil Baker

  At the housing office he got another shock. “What do you mean, I’ll have a roommate?”

  “We have only a handful of single dorm rooms, Mr. Hawk, and they’re all long gone. Candidly, you’re lucky we found you anything at all, coming in this late.”

  Tom got a room key and left. The housing officer had told him this roommate had arrived two days ago and was comfortably moved in. He’d have to get rid of him. You couldn’t live a phony life in a shared room without eventually slipping up. If Tony and Company found him, the roommate was likely to get hurt like the paperboy. He went to find his room and get the kid to move out.

  The assignment was in an “overflow housing unit,” one of three converted Korean War Quonset huts. The exteriors were offensively ugly, with low-set windows that by late February would likely be half-covered by the Copper Country’s annual three hundred and some inches of snow. Each hut had been painted a different earth-tone color, presumably to aid drunken undergraduates in finding their own bed early on a Saturday morning. His unit was furthest from the rest of the campus, and painted brown.

  Tom left his few clothes and personal possessions in his car and went to inspect his new home. The small resident lounge where you entered the building and the long central hallway leading from it to the student rooms looked clean and well-maintained, but claustrophobia reared its nasty head. The hallway was narrow, with walls ready to converge and thoughtlessly crush you. You could see doors at each end, but you’d never make it once those walls started to move. The crowded common bathroom had one urinal, two showers, and three stalls in high metal walls. Little metal boxes, little traps; this would not be easy. He found his room two doors down from the lounge, door closed but not latched. An enormous peace poster was held to the door with George McGovern for President stickers at the top and bottom.

  Tom hated both the Vietnam War and most of the people who were protesting it. A peacenik roommate might make the unpleasant thing he was about to do easier. He considered kicking the door open, but rejected it as melodramatic overkill. He knocked loudly.

  “Enter,” trilled a fluty young male voice.

  “Enter,” mouthed Tom, swearing silently. He opened the door and a minor nightmare awaited him. The room was small, for which he’d prepared himself, but it was also plastered with left-wing propaganda and pictures of film stars more famous for anti-war posturing than any acting talent. And it stank of cigarette smoke.

  The smoker was easy to find. A scrawny owl of a kid was at a desk in an oversize turquoise sweatshirt. It displayed the name of some WASP prep school in a town he recognized as an old money suburb of Boston. The boy’s plaid Bermuda shorts were faded to such a degree that only a rich kid would wear them. He was listening to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, a piece Claire had tried to teach Tom to like. The portable stereo case was covered with some pansy-assed fake leather grain.

  What in God’s name was this delicate Eastern creature doing here among the sons of Midwestern engineers, auto workers, farmers, and iron miners? If this misfit had been here for over two days, why had no upperclassman run him off him already? Why had they left it for Tom to do? He belched loudly to set the tone for his little act as the kid turned to look at him.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I’m moving in. You don’t listen to that longhair crap all the time, do you?’

  “Pardon me?” questioned the boy, bottle glass lenses concealing whether his first judgment of his large new roommate was that of contempt or disinterest.

  “Turn off that funny music, Four Eyes. It makes my frigging teeth hurt. Are you queer, or what, listening to that garbage?” Tom was gratified when the boy stopped the record. He reached a hand down inside his pants crotch and scratched vigorously. “I’m Tom Hawk.” He withdrew the hand and offered it for a handshake, which was declined.

  “I-I expected a freshman roommate. You’re really going to live here?” the kid squeaked in disbelief in a distinct Bostonian accent.

  “Bet your ass, Junior. We’re going to have to move your desk so I can get my drum set and short wave set up. I’m a night owl so I need the bottom bunk. You are sleeping on top, right?”

  “No, I’ve been on the bottom.” The kid reached nervously for a cigarette.

  “You’ll move. Hey, I need one of them. I gave my last cigar to that hooker in Iron Mountain.”

  “T-t-take the pack. I have to go somewhere.”

  “Pick up some cigars for us and I’ll pay you. Oh, and knock before you open the door when you come back. I told this waitress at the Silver Saloon to come by.”

  The boy fled in confusion. Tom felt curiously pleased with himself. After a lifetime of You’re sure a nice guy compliments, he could be a real jerk if he needed to. Maybe he should make it part of his hide-out persona. He deserved to have a little fun, didn’t he?

  ****

  The dorm room had no telephone; that was in the lounge. It was about the only thing there not covered in cheap vinyl, and it was for local or incoming long distance calls only. But there was a public booth a hundred feet away across the parking lot against the side of the horrendously ugly, old Victorian-style metallurgy department building.

  Tom got a Pepsi from the lounge vending machine and went to the telephone, where he stacked quarters on the shelf, but stood mostly outside the tiny booth. He dialed the only Arizona number he still regarded as safe. The time was three-thirty in Houghton so it was one-thirty in Scottsdale. Greg should be back from lunch, if this was one of the days when he was honoring an intermittent commitment to his faltering golf equipment business.

  A deep, loud voice announced sonorously, “Golf Equipment Experts, how can we help you?”

  “Greg, this is Tom. I’m in Houghton, I’m enrolled, and I can actually work on my master’s here if I want to. Thanks for putting me on to this place. It does feel like it’s the end of the world, though.”

  “If you feel isolated now, you should see Houghton in winter.” Greg spoke unusually quietly, maybe a sign of fear. He asked Tom, “You’re still in one piece, then?”

  “Yes. You said you owed me, now I really owe you, man. Thanks.”

  “Sure. I’d be out of business and flipping hamburgers if you hadn’t gotten me hooked up with those fancy golf clubs. Tom, I’ve been following the papers about the dead jockey in the pizza oven. There’s speculation of a corrupt cop in this thing. I’m not sure you should come back to testify.”

  “After what happened in Phoenix I’m not sure either. I’m trying to figure out if I think there’s a strong enough case against the Sartorellis without me.”

  “So maybe this will blow over?” Greg sounded both hopeful and afraid.

  “Yeah, maybe it will.” Why further scare a friend who stuck his neck out. “I may actually stay here and get a degree.”

  “You could do worse. Tech has its own golf course. Give it a try. You could use the practice.”

  “I might do that. Greg, I need one last favor. Could you telephone Claire at that work number I gave you and tell her I’ll call her when she’s home tonight?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be in touch.” He hung up and looked back unhappily toward the Quonset hut with the small student rooms. His Cutlass was parked halfway between the hut and the telephone booth. It hadn’t been washed and looked it. Seven days of his landlady’s maple tree dripping crap on it hadn’t helped. Was he going to have to sell it to have enough money to eat?

  He wanted to give the Massachusetts kid time to flee, so he wouldn’t unpack and move into the room yet. He would go back to New Range and see if Gary Grant had been sincere about giving him employment. He drove with the driver window down, forearm on the sill with his left hand holding the Pepsi. Coming up the last curving hill before the town and staying scrupulously under the twenty-five mile-an-hour limit, he tried to picture Claire. He was afraid it was getting to be so long that his memory cells were dying. Self-pity mixed with untimely arousal as Claire’s face morp
hed into that of the big blonde woman. What was that about? He was a pig. All men were…

  A deafening sound blew both women from his mind. The force of a side collision tilted him toward the center of the car, and his right hand left the wheel as he felt the restraint of the lap belt. The Cutlass was going sideways, and Tom was being peppered with glass powder from the passenger door as the brown Pepsi drenched his beige trousers. He fought the steering wheel, trying to keep the car on his side of the road as the noise of the collision subsided with a last muted sound of twisting metal. He came to a stop on the gravel shoulder.

  His hands balled instinctively into hard fists as he climbed out of his ruined car and saw the faded gray sedan that had hit him. A sign that said G-G’S PIZZA tumbled leisurely from the roof, and a grating screech followed as someone forced open the driver’s door of the dowdy old car. The driver was a prematurely balding male a couple years older than him maybe, vaguely resembling him maybe, although with hands pressed to his face in horror, it was a difficult call. When the hands came down, Tom made out a shirt pocket with a ROBERT name tag.

  Robert said, “Are you bleeding? Oh, God, don’t be injured.”

  “I’m not injured,” Tom said, realizing his shoulder did hurt. But his focus was on the damage to his car. He turned to survey the right side where the Plymouth had hit him.

  His assailant did too. On closer inspection, he might look vaguely like Tom, but he was narrower and two inches shorter. “I’m so sorry, I always do these things. You really aren’t hurt then, are you? I mean, your pants there?” He stared at the incriminating brown stain.

  “It’s Pepsi Cola. I’m fine.” Tom looked around. Nobody else was in sight. It was two hundred feet to the nearest house and no one had come out; possibly no one had seen or heard the collision. Maybe all his luck wasn’t gone. He walked around the Cutlass while Robert followed him, mumbling apologies. There was serious damage to the passenger door and rocker panel below it. The frame might be bent. The front fender looked untouched, though, and only the first foot of the quarter panel was wrinkled. So if all the wheels could turn, maybe the car was drivable?

  Tom turned to inspect the other vehicle. The tank that had rammed his starboard side was a 1952 Plymouth, one of that frumpy and upright series made with left-over Korean War armor plate. Its bumper hung forlornly low on the right end below a now snaggle-toothed grill, but this bruiser that had crippled his Olds looked otherwise unharmed. It was so unfair.

  He wheeled on his thin-bodied, thin-haired vehicular antagonist. “We’re the only two cars at this intersection on a clear summer day. How the hell did you manage to hit me?”

  “I’m…I’m making deliveries. I looked down, looked at an address. It was stupid. Oh, God, you’re going to call the cops now, aren’t you?”

  Call the people who’d promised Tom he’d be absolutely safe in a dusty Arizona crossroads hamlet and had been dead wrong. The people with the “safe house” that had been anything but, where a bullet meant for him had wounded a thirteen-year-old. Not bloody likely Tom would call the cops. But this Robert character knew none of that. Tom challenged him, “And why not? Have you got a problem with that?”

  “No, I mean yes, a problem. Look, I can get money. I can make this good if you give me a little time. It would just be a deal between us. Do you think your car can be driven? I’m sure mine can. I just want to get out of here before we’re seen.”

  So did Tom. The Cutlass looked like it might be drivable. “Where will we go?”

  “You can follow me back to my room. It’s six or eight hundred feet up this crossroad.”

  He’d not said my house but just my room like any impoverished student. He drove a piece of crap. How was he going to pay?

  “My car might make it that far, but then what do we do?”

  Robert ran agitated fingers through strands of wispy, sweat-soaked hair. “At home I can give you maybe two hundred right now and the rest of the repair cost in a week, unless maybe I can get an advance from my boss. He might even pay for the accident since I was on company time. I’ve got another car you can use until we can get yours repaired.”

  A thirty-something delivery boy dressed in outdated Sears Roebuck bargain basement duds and driving an ugly twenty-year-old Plymouth had an extra car and a boss who might cover a road accident out-of-pocket. Maybe it was true. Tom was due a break, wasn’t he? From looking at the Plymouth, the other car had to be Robert’s “good” car, didn’t it? Driving something other than his own conspicuous Cutlass could help him stay hidden.

  “Let’s make sure I have this right. You live near here. You have another car to lend me. And you or your boss will pay for the repairs.”

  “Yes, all of that. Please, can we move the cars now?”

  Tom peered under the front of the Cutlass, looking for telltale puddles of fluid. The pavement was dry. It was the same under the Plymouth. He picked up a piece of chrome trim off the road—potential evidence of the mishap here—and threw it though the opening that minutes ago had been his front right door window. “Fair enough, we’ve got a deal. Let’s see if these cars will both start.”

  Chapter Two

  The Cutlass did start. There were new and strange noises, steering was difficult, and the breeze through the mangled passenger door seemed like a gale, although they crept up the hill at fifteen miles an hour. Tom’s right shoulder ached. The old Plymouth passed a modest sign that proclaimed KESSLER INN. Robert turned up a wide driveway cut into the dense trees and Tom followed. It was getting hard to turn the Cutlass to the left.

  They crested a small rise and at the far end of a scraggly lawn Tom saw the big house. If you had to characterize it, he supposed it was a Victorian, based on the lavish wooden scrollwork and several porches. But there were occasional Italianate and Greek Revival embellishments and even a trace of the ubiquitous Romanesque in the brickwork. It was a comprehensive sampler of nineteenth century architectural styles, probably the fevered creation of some lumber or copper baron awash in money and devoid of taste.

  Robert pulled off to the north of the house in a gravel parking strip, and Tom managed to slip in next to him as the Cutlass’s power steering went completely dead. Robert joined him as he got out of his car and watched as he opened his trunk and took out clean pants. Tom changed behind the two cars, wincing as he pulled his fly zipper shut.

  “You’ve hurt your shoulder. Oh, man, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’ll be fine,” Tom snapped to shut him up. It wasn’t fine. “You live here?”

  “Well, yeah. Look, Beth Kessler, the owner, is only supposed to rent to students, so my staying here is kind of unofficial. When she gets the right license, she plans to make this place an upscale bed and breakfast. That’s where—”

  “I know what a B&B is.” Tom studied the secluded, tree-belted property. He might be able to leave the Cutlass here completely unnoticed until Robert could get it fixed. “This looks like a pretty isolated place.”

  “Oh, yeah, it’s real private. Nice and quiet, too.”

  “You want to keep this accident we just had nice and quiet. Why?”

  “That tattoo—are you a veteran?”

  Robert was trying his patience. With an icy edge to his voice, Tom countered, “I thought I was asking the questions.”

  Robert took a step back, out of left hook range. He mumbled, “It’s sort of a military draft thing. If we report the accident, I’ll have a problem.”

  “You look a little old to be worrying about being drafted.”

  “It involves some other people. Also, there’d be trouble with the ID I’m using.”

  How about that? Two guys have a collision, and they’re both using fake driver’s licenses. Even near a college town, what were the odds? Tom reassured him, “I am a veteran, but I’m not going to hit you. I want to see the first two hundred dollars and the car you’re going to give me while they fix mine.”

  “It might take a little time.”

  “I don’t hav
e much time. I guess we can still call the police and the insurance companies.” Tom was afraid to breathe. He was pushing his luck with these demands, and he tried to look angrier than he felt while he watched Robert’s face blanch.

  Robert pleaded, “No. Please no. Look, you can keep my other car if I can’t get you the money.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes, as God is my witness.”

  “I guess I can live with that, Robert.”

  “I don’t know your name.”

  “Tom Hawk.”

  Robert pumped his hand eagerly. “Robert Matthews. I really appreciate us keeping this quiet.”

  “Yeah. Is your other car, the one you said I can use, here?”

  “Uh-huh. Beth lets me keep it in the garage. Come on.”

  They walked behind the house to a three-car concrete block garage, much newer than the house but still no more recent than 1930. There were cracks in the walls, there was rust on the faded and sagging double doors, and it had needed a new roof for a long time. Robert wrestled with the first set of doors and revealed his second set of wheels. Tom had assumed the Plymouth was his work car, and he would give Tom something better to use. He was disappointed.

  “Is that what I think it is?” He eyed what looked like a scale model of a fifties convertible, with a scraggly chocolate brown canvas top over a tiny faded vanilla body.

  “Yes, sir. It’s a 1955 Nash Metropolitan, the only one in the county, maybe the only one in the Upper Peninsula. How about that, huh?”

  Huh, indeed. The diminutive roadster was rare, but hardly desirable, let alone collectable. “Does it run?” Tom questioned doubtfully.

  “Well, geez, sure it will, for a month or two. It was made in England so it’s not so good when the weather is cold.”

  Cold weather accounted for three quarters of the year in Houghton, Greg had told Tom. Nine months of winter, and three months of bad skiing. “Can I get in it?” meaning, Can I even fit in this toy?