by Hailey Lind
Michael did not answer. He also did not look so hot.
“Maybe we should get you to a doctor,” I said uncertainly.
“I don’t need a doctor,” he spat. “I need a drink. Badly.”
I looked over at the Hulk, who was still motionless, and bit my lower lip anxiously.
“Do you think I killed him?”
The Hulk groaned as if on cue.
“I think that’s a ‘No,’ ” Michael replied. “Let’s go before he comes around.”
We sprinted out the back door into the cool evening air, down a dirt alley to the road beyond, and around the corner. I started toward my truck and skidded to a halt.
It was not there.
Michael gestured toward his Jeep.
“I moved it.”
“You did what?”
“I moved your truck. I’ll explain later. Get in the Jeep, Annie.”
“Where is it?” I was furious at his high-handedness. I needed my truck.
“Get in the goddamn Jeep!” Michael shouted.
Since we were fleeing a crime scene containing one dead body and one very angry Hulk, my fear overrode my fury, and I decided to worry about the truck later.
“You drive. I’m a mess,” Michael said, tossing me the keys.
We hopped in. My hands were shaking. I tossed the evil elf, which I was still holding, into the backseat.
“What the hell is that?” Michael demanded.
I ignored him until I got the engine started and the lights turned on. “What does it look like? I kind of forgot I was holding it. Besides, it’s evidence. It may have some of the Hulk’s blood, maybe some of your hair and skin and stuff, too.”
“Blech,” he said.
I slammed the Jeep into gear and peeled out, spewing gravel behind us. I heard some sputtering from the passenger seat and looked over to see Michael laughing weakly. The pain from his head wound was probably preventing more energetic guffaws.
“You’ve spent the last how many days looking for fabulously valuable artwork, and you wind up stealing an ugly bronze elf ?”
“You focus on the strangest things, Johnson,” I responded as we bounced along. Jeeps were not famous for their smooth ride.
I spared Michael a glance. He had stopped laughing and he looked awful. He had an egg-sized bump on his forehead, abrasions on his cheek and chin, and his upper lip was beginning to swell. I, on the other hand, did not have a scratch on me, and I felt a surge of gratitude toward him. Whatever else Michael was, he was not a coward.
I pulled up to the stoplight at the highway and signaled a left turn. I could hardly wait to get home to Oakland, shut the blinds, and crawl under the covers with a heavy tire iron, a shot glass, and a cold bottle of Absolut.
“Take a right,” Michael directed, pushing in the Jeep’s cigarette lighter and pulling a package of wet wipes out of the glove compartment.
“A right? Why? Where are we going? And this is no time to smoke.”
“We’ll go into town, find a place to wash up, and get a drink,” he said quietly. “There’s still the small matter of a dead body. We have to call the cops. Give me your gloves.”
I ground my teeth. I hated it when others were nobler than I. Fine. We would do the right thing. Anyway, there were worse ways to spend a weekend than visiting Napa. Especially when being chased by scary men. I turned right and we headed toward the town of St. Helena.
Once we were under way, Michael helped me to strip off the gloves, then held the red-hot cigarette lighter to the fingertips, filling the Jeep with the toxic stench of burning latex.
“What are you doing?” I yelled, and cranked my window open, blasting us both with the cold evening air.
“Destroying evidence. Fingerprints can be lifted from latex gloves. This should take care of it.” He did the same to his, after which he took out a penknife, ripped the remnants of the gloves into pieces, and threw the shredded bits out the window.
Frankly, his criminal expertise was starting to worry me. Whoever Michael X. Johnson was, he was suspiciously competent when it came to breaking and entering, finding dead bodies, and fleeing from threatening strangers.
“How do you know all this?” I asked him. “And do you always have wet wipes in your glove compartment?”
“I read a lot. And I used to have a slobbery dog. He lives with my sister in Fremont now,” Michael said, then closed his eyes and leaned his head against the back of the seat.
“I need a drink,” he said after a minute.
“You already said that.”
“It’s still true.”
“I need food,” I said.
“Again?”
“What do you mean, ‘again’? I haven’t eaten since lunch,” I said self-righteously. “You should probably eat something too. As my grandfather says, ‘Starve a cold, feed a flesh wound.’ ”
“Your grandfather sounds fascinating,” he commented dryly.
“You have no idea.”
Chapter 8
When smuggling art objects across international borders, play upon the tourist’s fondness for cheap souvenirs. Dip your genuine artifacts in plastic, paint them a gaudy black, and mix them in with worthless reproductions. The border guards will hold you in disdain and you will hold on to your artifacts.
—Georges LeFleur, “How to Market
Your Forgery,” unfinished manuscript,
Reflections of a World-Class Art Forger
Twenty minutes later we were sliding into a padded orange vinyl booth at Tiepolo’s Tavern, a dimly lit hangout favored by the unyuppie set. The X-man was a sorry sight, though I supposed I didn’t look so hot myself. Tripping over dead bodies and beaning Hulks with evil elves had kind of taken the spring out of my step.
Michael winced and sighed as he relaxed into the booth. A young blond waitress in hip-hugger jeans and a cropped T-shirt brought us water and complained about the rude customers. Michael nodded sympathetically as he surveyed the Grand Tetons inside her push-up bra.
She took our order for two vodka martinis, a jumbo serving of extra-hot buffalo wings, and two Tiepolo’s cheeseburgers with fries. The drinks arrived quickly, and disappeared just as fast. We ordered another round.
There was little conversation as Michael and I lost ourselves in our thoughts. When the food arrived I savored the spicy heat of the buffalo wings followed by bites of crisp, cool celery dipped in tart blue cheese dressing. The burgers were served in red plastic baskets, piled high with glistening hot French fries. As if we had done it for years, Michael and I moved with choreographed precision, he seizing the ketchup and squirting, I grabbing the salt and sprinkling. Then we dove in. For several minutes we ate and drank in companionable silence. Michael emptied his basket first and started eyeing mine, but he was plumb out of luck, as I finished every scrap.
I sat back and sighed, feeling more human. Since the second round of martinis had gone down so well, we put in another order. After all, we both needed what my mother used to call “Dutch courage,” which seemed rather unfair to the Dutch, since they were not the only ones who drank to work up their nerve.
“We have to call the cops, remember?” I said. “Just how do we go about this? You seem to be the resident expert.”
“We phone in an anonymous tip.”
“Give me your cell phone,” I said, holding my hand out. My battery was almost out of juice.
“It’s in the Jeep. Use the pay phone.”
“What if the cops trace the call?”
“That kind of thing only happens on television,” he said loftily. “You really should spend more time reading.”
I thought that was rude, even if it was true. I tried again. “Don’t the cops have caller ID on their phones?”
“How should I know?”
“You claim to know they don’t trace calls.”
“Even if they do have caller ID, what difference would it make? It’s a public phone, and we’ll be leaving soon anyway.”
“Should I call
it in?” I figured it was high time I started acting like a woman and taking the initiative, even though I could think of a few things I would rather do than call the cops to report a dead body.
Be Agnes Brock’s love slave, for one.
Michael smiled. “Why don’t you just let me take care of it?”
My first reaction was relief. My second was annoyance. Did he have to sound so bloody condescending?
“No, really. I’ll do it.” I inched my way out of the booth. “Give me some quarters.”
Michael raised an eyebrow but reached into his pocket and handed me several coins.
I marched across the bar and down a short hallway to the restrooms, where a pay phone hung on the wall between two swinging doors marked COWBUDS and LIL’ FILLIES.
I stared at the phone. Whom should I call? 911? I knew from watching TV that the emergency lines were recorded, and I did not want my voice captured on tape for possible criminal prosecution. Plus, it was not an emergency in the strictest sense. Poor Joanne would not be going anywhere, and even though I might go to hell for thinking it, I didn’t care if the Hulk recovered or not.
Fortunately, the number of the non-emergency police line was written in large red letters on the front of the phone, along with the fire department and rescue squad phone numbers.
But exactly what should I say? “Hello, you don’t know me, but I’d like to report a suspicious murder.” Short and sweet. I dropped the quarters in, panicked, and depressed the lever. The coins jingled back out.
A suspicious murder? Was there any other kind? Something that stupid would raise eyebrows on its own, prompting the cops to begin a trace, so they could come and arrest me, even though I was mostly innocent.
I decided to go to the bathroom, because otherwise I might blurt out something incriminating under the pressure to pee. I hurried into the LIL’ FILLIES room, did my business, looked in the mirror, raised my chin, squared my shoulders, and emerged, ready to beard the dragon.
Michael was on the phone. “Good evening, Officer. I should like to report a crime,” he said in an upper-crust British accent.
Now why hadn’t I thought of that? Hadn’t I brought down the house as Eliza Doolittle in the John F. Kennedy Jr. High School production of My Fair Lady?
“Officer,” he continued in a voice that sounded as if his mouth was full of mush. “I just saw a man break into the Dusty Attic on Landacre Street. Big chap. Rather ugly. Square head.”
He hung up and smirked. “Got tired of waiting. Now was that so hard?”
I trailed along as he strutted back to our booth. Big jerk, I thought resentfully. What I wouldn’t give to show him a thing or two.
Then I remembered.
When we walked into the tavern, I had spotted an air hockey table in the rear, near the pool tables. Air hockey was the one and only game I excelled at. I was so good, in fact, that when I was in college the occasional weekend tournament had kept me in pocket change.
I tugged on Michael’s shirt and nodded toward the table. He followed my gaze and raised his eyebrows in a silent challenge.
Grabbing my drink, I sauntered over to the table, Michael hot on my heels. I parked my glass on a ledge behind me and took up my post at one end of the table, Michael facing me on the other end.
Reaching into my jeans pocket, I pulled out the two quarters I hadn’t needed for the phone. I plunked them into the slot; a flat plastic hockey puck popped out and the rectangular table started to hum as the air jets kicked in.
We grasped our paddles and the game was on.
I began by slamming the puck directly at Michael, who stood at his end with his drink in one hand. The puck smashed into the goal and dropped down the slot.
Score!
“Too much for ya, big guy?”
“It’ll be a cold day in hell before you’re too much for me to handle, lassie,” he replied, setting down his drink and preparing to serve.
I hunched over, ready to rumble. The puck shot toward me, I parried and banked it off the side at a perfect forty-five-degree angle. The puck slammed into Michael’s goal and rattled down the slot. Score! 2-0.
I yawned. “Boy, am I bushed. Had enough?”
Michael ordered another round of drinks.
A handful of the bar patrons had started to gather, watching in delight as the air between Michael and me crackled with tension. I inspected my nails. “Care to make it interesting?” I asked him. “Because, frankly, so far there hasn’t been much action.”
“How interesting?”
“Loser drinks straight vodka shots.”
“Go, dude! Show her what you can do!” The good ol’ boys rallied around, urging Michael to defend the honor of Cowbuds everywhere, while a group of Lil’ Fillies, led by a buxom redhead, gathered around me and shouted a riposte.
The air hockey battle of the sexes was on.
Michael tossed another puck on the table. I parried. He challenged. I feinted. He made his move. The puck rocketed toward me, but I blocked the shot and quickly returned it, slamming the puck into his goal. Score!
The good ol’ boys groaned while the good ol’ girls roared. Money changed hands as the dudes were forced to make good on their bets. The redhead asked my name and started chanting, “Annie! Annie! Annie!” and the other women picked it up. Encouraged, she got more creative, chanting “Two, four, six, eight. Annie’s hot. She’s just great!”
As poetry went it kind of sucked, but I liked it.
“Loser pays!” the women shouted, forming an L with their fingers and holding it to their foreheads to signal just what they thought of Michael’s gamesmanship. Michael bowed, ordered a round of vodka shots for the crowd, chugged his, and slammed the empty glass down on the table.
He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and smiled, but his green eyes were furious as he stared at me across the expanse of the tournament-sized table. As if in slow motion, I watched him drop more quarters in the slot, toss another puck on the table, and send it hurtling in my direction. It was nowhere near the goal, and with a flick of my wrist I sent it spinning, hitting a three-point shot off the sides before zipping back to me. As soon as it crossed the centerline, I tried to hammer it into the goal, but he beat me to it, scoring on me fair and square.
I drank my obligatory shot of vodka, and after that, the rest of the evening was a bit of a blur.
I remembered the bartender mixing up a commemorative drink that I christened the Anti-Whachahoochi. I remembered leading the house in a dance of the same name, set to the tune of “The Hokey Pokey.” I remembered green eyes throughout.
What I did not remember was how I ended up at the motel. The bad news was that I awoke in a strange bed. The good news was that I was wearing the jeans and T-shirt I had put on yesterday afternoon. At least I presumed it was yesterday, because a grayish light came in through the window curtains, and I was pretty sure it had been dark when we were at the bar. I was feeling fuzzy on the details, but it seemed to me that traditionally meant that it was now the next morning. I registered the throbbing headache, the dry mouth, and the general listlessness that indicated I’d had way too much fun the night before. Bleary eyes took in the green glow of digital numbers on the bedside clock. 10:23 A.M.
I lifted my head carefully and looked around: a standard-issue king-sized motel bed, a dresser, a desk and a chair. I was alone not only in the bed but also in the room.
I buried my nose in the rumpled pillow beside me. He had been here. I could smell the man.
“Michael?” I croaked.
Silence.
I tried again, a little louder. “Hello?”
No answer. No manly sounds of showering or shaving. I sat up, took a minute to adjust to my spinning head, and noticed there were no clothes strewn anywhere.
I got up on shaky legs and stumbled over to the bathroom. No manly naked man, no manly toothbrush. I splashed water on my face, rinsed my mouth, drank a lot of water, and used the toilet. Feeling more human now, I started to think. I cros
sed the room and peeked through vinyl-backed, brown plaid curtains. There was no red Jeep in the parking lot.
Maybe he had gone out for coffee and bagels. Maybe it was time to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. He had been pretty helpful with the Hulk, after all. And darned if I could remember, but it seemed to me we might have shared a little kissing and snuggling last night.
Or not.
But still. He wouldn’t abandon me here, not after all we had been through.
Would he?
I didn’t even know where my truck was.
The important thing was not to panic. First things first. Item Number One: a shower. I stripped off my rumpled clothes and stood under the hot water for a half an hour, using the diminutive bottle of shampoo and minuscule sliver of soap provided by the motel. Refreshed, I dried myself with the baby towels that were neatly folded on top of a metal contraption screwed to the wall. As I brewed really bad coffee in the wee, tiny Mr. Coffee machine I wondered if there was any chance that the owners of budget motels thought they catered exclusively to Lilliputians.
I was forced to dress in the same jeans and shirt, but at least I felt more like a real person now. I emerged from the steamy bathroom nurturing a tiny flame of hope that Michael would be sitting at the desk, cups of Peet’s coffee and plates of Noah’s bagels spread out before him.
As I took in the empty room, the flame fizzled, and I started to get really, really pissed. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I began to assess the situation. My purse was in my truck. My truck was somewhere in Yountville, several miles south of here. My credit cards and bank card were in my purse, along with my identification. All I had with me were my keys, a dead cell phone, and two dollar bills in my jeans pocket. I had no friends within two hours’ drive of here.
So all I had to do was find a taxi driver to take me to Yountville and cart me around town until I found my truck, all the while avoiding the cops who would no doubt be swarming around Joanne’s shop. How hard could that be?
The room’s phone had no dial tone, so I went to the motel office to use the pay phone. As soon as I walked in, the desk clerk informed me that the motel room had not been paid for and would I kindly take care of it.