by W.H. Harrod
A faint rapping sound came from outside Terrance’s door. At first barely noticeable, it became more defined, insistent, louder, and even louder yet. “What is that annoying noise? Where is it coming from?” growled Terrance, still trying to wake up. Bang! Bang! Bang! It sounded like an all out assault by this time. “What is that infernal noise? Why won’t it go away and leave me alone? Where am I? Why do I feel so completely and utterly exhausted?” Slowly the fog cleared, and through two blurry eyes, Terrance recognized his apartment.
Bang! Bang! Bang! The noise became louder. A persistent loud voice now accompanied it. “Terrance, Terrance, my boy. Are you in there? You must get up. You’ve got to get to Kansas City for me. It’s almost 11 a.m. The race starts in two hours.” Bang! Bang! Bang!
Terrance came to his senses, leapt out of bed, and discovering he wore the same clothes from the day before, hurried to the door. “I’m coming professor,” he shouted. “Be right there.”
The sight that greeted the professor once Terrance unbolted all the locks and removed the chair propped against the door did not give cause for a celebration. Unshaven, hair looking like a mistreated mop, clothing rumpled from being slept in, and appearing as if he needed at least another week’s sleep, Terrance presented a most uninspiring picture standing before the professor.
When the professor finally regained his composure from seeing Terrance’s condition and began to speak he sounded alarmed. “My goodness, are you all right? Are you well? Should I call a doctor?”
While still not mentally alert, Terrance realized that if he looked only one-tenth as bad as he felt, he presented a frightening sight. “No. No, I’m all right. Just give me a couple minutes, and I’ll be ready to go. Sorry about being late. I got back in town late last night.” Why am I lying to this man? Terrance asked himself as he finished the sentence. Is this the way it’s going to be from now on, afraid to tell the truth to anyone, even to friends?
“You’re sure? Because I can get the old chariot out and go myself if you’re not well.” The professor’s concern persisted.
“No, I’m ready to go,” shouted Terrance as he returned from retrieving his keys and jacket after finishing a quick mouth rinse.
Standing on the stairs outside the apartment door facing the hesitant professor, Terrance’s overall appearance offered little reassurance.
“Really, I’m ready. All I need are the numbers to bet and the cash. Let’s see, it’s right at 11 a.m., and it’ll take me no more than an hour and a half to get there and get to the window. See, we’ve got plenty of time.”
The professor cracked a smile for the first time. “Boy, you young folks don’t know when to slow down, do you? I can vaguely recall myself barely running on fumes at times in my youth. One of these years it will catch up with you, though. One of these days you’ll start to slow down. Well, here’s the list and the cash, one hundred and eight dollars. Let me go over the list with you. See hear, in the first, third, and forth races we’re betting three horses; in the second and fifth we’re betting two horses; in the sixth race, we’ve got a single entry, but I feel real good about that horse, more so than the horses in the other races and that’s why he’s going off by himself. And do you know what else?” A mischievous smile flashed across the professor’s face.
“No,” answered Terrance cautiously.
“We’re due,” said the professor. “I mean we are due! I’ve got a real good feeling about this one. Are you with me on this, Terrance? You’ve got to be with me on this. So, let me hear you say it.”
Terrance squinted, his puzzlement obvious. “Say what?”
“Now, don’t let me down, son. I just told you what I felt, so let me hear you say it.”
Terrance recognized the seriousness in his request. “We’re… due?”
“That’s exactly right, son. We’re due! Keep repeating this all the way to Kansas City. Remember Terrance, if you are a living, breathing human being, you have to believe in something. If we don’t believe in something, if we cease to aspire, to dream, we are merely stardust forever adrift in an ever changing, indiscriminate universe. So for today, affirm your existence—believe!” Then the smiling old man turned around and walked away down the steps, whistling as he went on his way.
Travis watched the professor walk away. What is it about that guy? wondered Terrance. He really is one of the world’s true optimists. How was he able to fight and claw his way through all the meanness, uncertainty, and horse crap served up by the world on a daily basis and come to this advanced stage in his life still believing in and looking for the good—especially without having subscribed to those incessantly proselytizing purveyors of religious dogma?
Terrance, recalling his urgent mission, pulled the door shut behind him, and hurried towards his faithful Cherokee parked below in its usual assigned place. Not until he headed down the alley towards the main thoroughfare did the previous day’s traumatic activities come to mind.
Never in his entire life had so many strange matters of importance lay on his plate: the meeting with Mrs. Bidwell to discuss the information discovered in Harmony, their mutual decision that he be the one to decide on whether or not to publish all, some part, or none of it in the local paper, and her confirmation of the real danger posed by the cartel to them both if he decided to go forward with the story. Add to this, his paranoia over the possibility that sinister cartel members tailed him from Illinois to Kansas.
An experience late yesterday afternoon justified his concern about being followed. As he left Mrs. Bidwell’s residence, he took notice of a large black SUV with dark tinted windows sitting a half block down the street, parked on the wrong side, headed in the same direction as the Cherokee. From first glance, it looked out of place. The people who inhabited this old neighborhood could not afford such luxury vehicles. It looked as if the cartel had somehow followed him to this location in spite of his efforts to ensure otherwise, after all.
Not revealing his suspicion, he calmly got into his vehicle and pulled away, acting unaware of their presence. Once on the main street, he watched in his rear-view mirror as the black SUV pulled out onto the street going in the same direction while staying a block behind at all times. Terrance made several turns and changes in directions, yet the SUV stayed with him always a block behind. This went on until he decided to lose them.
He made a dash for his secluded alley-parking place and soon enjoyed the temporary safety of his apartment. He held out no real hope that they wouldn’t find him again, but as he teetered on the brink of physical and mental exhaustion, he needed a place to crash and figure out what to do. Plus, not having exposed his hand yet, they still didn’t know for sure why he went to Harmony and looked through the old newspapers. He believed he still had a little time before they made their move. He needed to make sure he made his first. Bolting all three locks on the door and propping a chair against it as he’d seen done in a number of old movies, he crashed in a pile not to revisit consciousness until the professor’s rude awakening a short while ago.
So, right in the middle of the biggest crisis in his life, he headed to Kansas City to place a bet for the professor on a series of horse races to be run later in the day at a track in California, the aim being to pick the winner in six consecutive races and win something in the neighborhood of half to three-quarters million dollars, the usual pool for the Pick Six wager. The professor’s earlier success in winning Pick Six cards had paid smaller purses due to the unfortunate fact several other players had the same picks, causing the pot to be split between fifty to a hundred bettors. The professor kept hoping for that special day when only he picked the six winners. If that happened, he took home the entire pool usually amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Terrance, as usual, got ten percent. Not bad for a few hours work. Except this time, he had other matters on his mind. No matter, he couldn’t let the professor down, and who knew, if he did hit the big one Terrance’s money problems, at least in the short term, ceased to exist. That mattered for naught thou
gh if those thugs in the black SUV decided to come after him.
He pulled onto the divided highway that took him to within a few miles of the racetrack and settled back planning to use the windshield time to assess the whole situation. The forty plus mile drive this late Friday morning presented no difficulty as traffic continued to be light going in his direction. The first matter that regained center stage of his conscious mind related to the shocking admission by Mrs. Bidwell that she also suspected him to be the birth son of Whitney McClain and Howard Douglas. While she couldn’t positively confirm this, she, too, believed all the available evidence amounted to something much more than a weird coincidence.
This put the whole project in an entirely different light. No longer did it concern not destroying a good man’s life for the sake of printing a barnburner story to get him significant recognition or of simply deciding to protect their rear ends by never allowing the story to see the light of day. There also existed a very good chance that the main character was his real father, the central person he always regretted not knowing about. To think now about besmirching his memory for the purpose of gaining recognition for doing a part-time job he cared little about didn’t make sense. If it came down to this single reason for not doing the story, then he needed more proof. He would need to have a DNA analysis made. To do that required physical specimens from the man known as Joseph Right: a strand of hair, a cigarette butt, an old razor blade, a piece of chewed gum, or any number of every day items that hold some small part of Joseph Right’s former physical presence. Mrs. Bidwell had agreed to help him with that.
In the distance, he recognized the exit leading to the track. The drive over did help him sort things out. At least, he now had something of a plan to follow. After going inside the track and placing the professor’s bet, he’d return to Lawrence and then proceed to gather the physical evidence necessary to do the DNA test. For the first time in the last few days, he sensed the slightest bit of optimism beginning to take a stand among the ruins of his scattered thoughts. This newfound sense of optimism vanished as soon as he glanced at the rear-view mirror and saw the menacing looking black SUV several car links behind. The cartel was back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE