The Big Wheel

by Scott Archer Jones

  Thomas only had to wait an hour, a jumpy, nervous hour. A plain white van pulled up to the church’s office, and four large men clambered out. The first one on the pavement scanned up and down the street. They tramped inside.

  Thomas eased out of his car and stepped across the street. He carried the three-shot taser down by his right side. He armed the taser and dropped his finger onto the trigger guard. The muscles in that finger ached, tight as whipcord. He slipped through the front door of the church and skittered through the walkway. He hugged the wall as he moved up to the priest’s office. Hesitant, he stopped at the closed door. He hung there and listened, his ear near the crack between door and frame. Inside something big slammed into the wall—a colossal boom. All the school memorabilia on the wall jumped and rocked. Thomas jerked back from the shock. With a ragged breath, he grabbed the doorknob.

  He could only wedge the door partway open; legs stuck out from behind it. He wiggled through over a fallen man, into the room.

  The odds sucked: the priest balanced himself on spread feet, defiant beside his desk, confronted with three men. Thomas jerked the taser and fired at the man nearest him. The nitrogen cylinder discharged, the barbs sailed forward dragging their wires and struck the merc in the neck. The man fell to the floor, spasmed, and thrashed like a fish out of water. Thomas turned his aim to the next man and shot him also, hooked his next fish straight into the shoulder. Not waiting to watch this one flop, Thomas fired at the only merc still standing. The barbs didn’t penetrate the man’s back but fell to the floor. Something had stopped them punching in—body armor. Out of gas cartridges and disarmed, Thomas stared down at two men who twitched with huge spasms on the floor.

  The last bullyboy paid no attention to Thomas behind him—or his downed associates. Instead he charged forward, caught the priest around the chest, and lifted him as he ran Mirko backwards. Both men flew out the window. They crashed onto the porch beyond. Thomas leapt to the window and gaped out through the broken frame.

  The situation flip-flopped. Mirko ripped himself out of his opponent’s grip and twisted around behind his attacker. He had an arm over the man’s head and a hand around his throat. Thomas shouted, “For Christ’s sake, don’t snap his neck!”

  Ignoring him, Father Mirko pursed his lips and shook his head. “Forgive me, son,” said the priest. Mirko pinched the carotid arteries with his hand and the man, struggling, passed out in ten seconds.

  The priest dropped the merc onto his face and heaved himself up on his feet. Fishing in his pocket, he delivered a handful of large, black zip ties. “Here, take these and secure the men inside for the police. I’ll take care of this one.”

  “You’re prepared.”

  “Previous life experience. And I knew they were coming.”

  Thomas couldn’t touch the men he had hot-wired without catching the charge that coursed through them. He switched off the taser. They lay limp and stunned while he zipped their wrists together. By the time he tied their ankles, they had recovered. They struggled against their bonds, cursed him with mouths that still quivered and spit. Father Mirko crawled in through the window and hog-tied the unconscious man he had thrown into the wall.

  Mirko and Thomas panted, their breath rattling in and out. Thomas asked, “How long before the cops show up?”

  Mirko said, “A good ten minutes? Neighbors might not even report it.”

  “You might have to call it in yourself.”

  The priest scuffled around the four mercs, extracted guns, and tossed them into the corner. “I owe you an apology. You’ve shown which side you’re on.”

  “I’m not on Zlata’s side, if that’s what you’re thinking. But I’m not one of them.” His voice cracked.

  Mirko said, “I will have to call the police, sooner or later.”

  Thomas shook his head. “I would prefer not to be here when they arrive.”

  “You’ve earned that.”

  “Let me call O’Brien while we’re both here. He needs to know what these guys did in his name.”

  “Yes. I wouldn’t mind listening in.”

  The CEO picked up on the second ring. “Tommy,” said O’Brien. His voice boomed hollow into the office. His face was composed.

  “Dennis, I’m calling to let you know what your extraction team did.”

  O’Brien’s voice was full of honey. “I expect they did what was needed so I get what I want. Otherwise, I am disappointed.”

  “They followed the phone to a priest. He had parked it on his desk, in plain sight. They assaulted him, tore the place up, and ended up lying on the front porch in public view.”

  “This would be the priest you failed to convince?”

  Thomas shook his head at the rebuke. “The same. He’s tough enough to take two of them. He wouldn’t have talked.”

  “I had hoped Sibyl Boxwood still had the mobile on her. The priest—that’s an unforeseen complication.” O’Brien didn’t look at all worried. Why?

  “They tried to beat up a priest in broad daylight!”

  “You had two days to sort this out, Thomas. Where’s the Artifact?”

  “How should I know? I’m wasting my time cleaning up after your army.”

  “Careful, Thomas. I don’t like your tone.”

  “The police will soon have your team. Then you can worry about something besides my tone.”

  O’Brien shook his head. “Unfortunate. Their bonuses rise immeasurably if I have to buy their silence.”

  “This isn’t about money. This’s about effectiveness and consequences. These clowns screw up everything.”

  O’Brien was frowning, his face as dark as a storm. “Careful, Tommy. I’m not feeling very—patient right now.”

  “We start all over. Zlata’s on the run again.”

  “Don’t lecture me or point out the obvious, Steward. Just do your job.”

  Thomas stared into the phone.

  “Do you understand me?”

  “Yeah. I’ll call in later, Mr. O’Brien.”

  “Get the Artifact. Now.” The call ended. Thomas shook his head and dropped his vidi into his pocket.

  Mirko said, “It appears your employer has more in common with these men than you.”

  “Maybe. I’m glad you were out of sight.”

  A new voice drawled into play. “How charming. Collaborating with the enemy, Steward?” LeFarge lounged in the doorway. He carried a pistol with a silencer screwed into the barrel. His man from the porch sagged against the doorframe beside him, rubbing his freed wrists.

  Thomas dipped his head, inhaled with a rattle in his throat. “LeFarge. I should have known you’d come out to watch your operation.”

  LeFarge, stepping inside, spoke to his man. “Close the door. Cut the other three loose.” LeFarge waved the gun. “And this would be the priest? I don’t think we’ve been introduced.”

  “Father Mirko. I already know you.” The priest backed up to the desk and faced LeFarge.

  The room grew crowded again as LeFarge’s men struggled to their feet and staggered about. LeFarge said to them, “Take Mr. Steward to his car. Make sure he drives away.” Cocking his head, LeFarge said to Thomas, “You get a pass this once. If O’Brien rescinds his protection, I’ll kill you myself.”

  “The Father comes with me.”

  “Now, that wouldn’t be helpful to me, would it?” LeFarge aimed his gun at the priest. “I’ll ask once, where is Robko Zlata? Where is Sibyl Boxwood?”

  “I sent them away. I don’t know where they are. Now there’s no way for you to know.”

  “Pity,” said LeFarge. “I believe you. Makes all this so much harder. Thomas will have to find them again.”

  Mirko stared into LeFarge’s face. He saw something there. “I forgive you.” The priest made the sign of the cross.

  Thomas had always thought silencers made guns noiseless, but they just suppress the noise to a powerful slap. The gun reverberated, and Thomas jumped.

  At first they all stood there, w
aiting. A sigh, nearly a groan. Mirko slid down the desk to the floor. Blood oozed out of the hole in his face.

  “As I said before, drag Mr. Steward out of here, stick him in his car, and relieve him of that stun gun, even if it’s empty.” LeFarge aimed his pistol at Thomas, squinted down the barrel. His cheeks hollowed and his lips blew out a popping sound—nearly a kiss.

  Chapter Thirteen: End and Beginning

  Sibyl leaned over Robko’s shoulder; her finger pointed ahead. He saw a water tower to the northwest, a water tower emblazoned with graff. He nodded his head and strained to read the message. Hanging above the rolling upstate New York road, it offered a shout of joy to the place and the season, “Winter’s Army is Defeated—Hot Summer Got It on the Run.” Thinking he had just passed a sky-laid signpost meant only for him, he swept into a new set of curves.

  Sibyl shouted to him over the keening of the wind.

  He should have bought comm-helmets. “What?”

  She banged her chin guard right up against the side of his head. “Do something for Mirko?”

  He shrugged, telegraphing his answer back to her. Her chin sank onto his shoulder, and she clenched all the tighter.

  He had already closed the door to Mirko and boarded it over with downers. He put all on hold in this sunlit world. He had a metallic taste in his mouth, a cruze building up behind his eyes, an image of his friend standing to his left smiling, dressed all in black. He didn’t know what road uncoiled under him or where it headed. The right way to ride a bike.

  In the early evening, they stumbled across Rochester. She shouted, “Middle America. Company town.”

  “Crap food. Crap clubs. Mid-America values,” he shouted back.

  “I want to stay in one of the luxury hotels down on the river.”

  “Can’t happen. We lie low.” He swept across the town and down to the West. He spotted a chain of cheap motels lined up on the interstate, and he took the exit. “Pick one.”

  “You gozo. The one in the middle, then.”

  The bike swept up under the portico. They pried off their helmets, ruffed their hair out, and took off their sunglasses. Synchronicity. He said, “We need to think, and I can do that in this type of place. I have trouble doing anything but the stone in those fancy high rises. All the juju centers on the room, not on people. Here you can scheme up good stuff.

  “That’s because the cheap mattress keeps you awake.” She climbed down from the bike and stretched catlike.

  He said, “Staring at the ceiling is the best way to work things out.”

  She sniffed. “Sounds like jail.”

  He booted the kickstand down. “Great things are planned and written in jail.”

  “So jails make the greatest intellectuals? I think not.”

  “Gandhi and Mandela both did their homework in jail.”

  She grinned. “So did Hitler.” She followed him in and watched him check in and pay cash. The room hid around the back of the motel, just the way he liked.

  The room. He nodded, feeling a good vibe. He watched her scan the interior of the concrete box, with two gloomy prints on the wall, a bathtub in need of re-grouting, and a huge, ominous TV that loitered on the dresser. Robko threw himself onto the bed. “Isn’t this great? The soul of America.”

  “It’s awful, Robert. Take me to dinner, right after I pee.” She dropped her bag on the bed.

  He needed to offer her something. “I saw Thai a mile back.” He waited until she whisked off to the bathroom, then rolled over to the bag. He emptied it onto the cover, picked through the contents and kept four hundred dollars and a pair of earrings. He left the camera.

  ***

  They found dinner, as Sibyl summed it up, to be “Okay.” After New York, provincial Thai turned out less of a thrill and more of a misplaced expectation. Sibyl said, as she pushed phat Thai around her plate with a flatware spoon, “The owners must be Vietnamese… or Greek.”

  “A distinct possibility. I tried to talk you into the steak house.”

  “Ugh. Fat and gristle. A GMO animal full of steroids.”

  “There’s package liquor in the strip next door. Let me buy you a bottle of wine.”

  “Will you help with it?”

  “Not this time. I’ve got sodie in my blood and thought I might add a diazepam on top.” He shoveled money, her money, onto the bill, and found his feet.

  “Sure then, wine it is. At least I won’t mind when you lie there saying dreamy things at random.”

  Rochester closed up shop at ten in the evening. They had little choice but to crawl onto the cheap mattress early. Robko lay on his back, his head on the world’s thinnest pillow; Sibyl stared at the muted TV, a frown cut across her face.

  He said to the ceiling, “I want to swing through Chicago and see my Ma. But Chicago is too dangerous for us long term. They’ll know I come from Chi. I can’t see us hiding in Humboldt Park looking over our shoulders all the time.”

  “Okay. Where will we settle then? Seattle?”

  “The one place in America with weather worse than New York?” His eyelids hung at half mast, sleepy from the Valium. At last his brain was starting to turn off.

  “It’s not that bad. Rains more in Detroit.” The over-priced bottle of Bordeaux towered up on the tiny bedside table with a plastic cup from the bathroom. The cup showed three inches of red.

  “Let’s try L.A. It’s a good place for thieves like me to outfit and to operate.” He threw his arms out like he was a cross on top of the slab-like bed. He toyed with the idea… a carved ornament on a tomb.

  “Hmph,” she grumped.

  “I know you don’t want to motorcycle across the country, but once we arrive, the bike would be great. That wonderful California weather.”

  She hunched her shoulders, “You’re right about one thing. I don’t want two thousand miles of wind in my face and bugs in my teeth.”

  “I got a plan.”

  “At last.” She reached out her hands clear to her ankles and stretched.

  “Let’s buy a car here, drive it to L.A., and sell it.”

  “What about your sport bike? You can give up your Italian?” She gazed down; he stared into her violet-colored eyes, changed up from blue, courtesy of contacts. So fake—he loved it.

  He said, “We can rent a trailer and take the bike with us. We’ll look like Okies migrating to California. That’s also the soul of America, just like motels.”

  “Sure. The great transcontinental road trip. I can even buy a real suitcase and clothes to fill it. Just so you have a plan.” She turned and leaned over him, laid her hand on his chest.

  He grunted. “The real plan comes later. We have to figure out O’Brien’s weak spot. We need to buy him off or neutralize him. Or we have to run and hide where he’s guaranteed not to find us.”

  “Hard to neutralize one of the richest, most powerful men in the world.”

  “Aah, he’s not so tough.”

  She snorted. “So we can eventually go back, to the City?”

  “Only when we’re ready and only when they’ve called off the search.”

  “Robert, they won’t call off the search. O’Brien didn’t store just anybody in the brain archiver.” She slid down the bed, lay on his outstretched arm and faced him.

  “Artifact.”

  “What?” She had her hand on his chest, distracting him.

  “The file we have calls the gadget ‘The Artifact’ over and over again.”

  “Don’t change the subject. I think Dennis O’Brien loaded himself up in the box, all the nastiness of his black heart, and you ran him down the garbage disposal.”

  “You think he would back off if he knew it was gone?”

  She considered it. “No, he takes all this personally. Take this army of goons he has. Look at this Steward and his mission to find you. If you told O’Brien you mangled his toy, he’d be worse, not better.”

  “I’ve been thinking about the Artifact. First, there’s more than one—I just stole the on
e that he was using. Second, I’m certain that he wants to corner the market. Evidently O’Brien wants it for himself.”

  She sank down beside him, onto the thin mattress. “So? Why should we care?”

  Robko scratched his nose and rolled over a bit towards her. “It doesn’t figure. He loves money and power. This Artifact, it would be bigger than television, bigger than the Internet. It would be a huge change in the way people saw life. He’d sell one to every single American. And, that’s without hooking Artifacts up to anything except desktabs.”

  “So why’s he’s hiding the Artifact? As personal immortality?”

  “Possible.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel any better.” She dug her fingernails into his chest, to make the point.

  He rolled on his side to face her. Lying knee-to-knee, nose-to-nose, he found it hard to see anything but her eyes. By squinting down, he saw her nose as an out-of-focus blob. “We’ll get to him. He’s a man of passions, so he’s vulnerable. I’m a man who smooths passions out.”

  “Yeah, with yellow jackets.”

  “And diazepam. It makes me a good thief.”

  “I have my doubts about that. Hemingway wasn’t a great writer because of his drinking. How come you don’t talk much about what you do?”

  “Maintains an aura of mystery. But you can be assured, you’re my team now, and we can trust only each other.”

  She fiddled open two of his shirt buttons.

  “Team, huh. What’s the split, fifty-fifty?”

  “Seventy-thirty. I’m the senior partner.”

  “Forty-sixty, my way. I’m better looking.”

  “Huh. You don’t even know what the job is.”

  “That’s true. How come you don’t talk about what you do?”

  “You asked that before. It’s hard to explain. And we don’t talk about what you do….” He drew back where he could watch her and determine what was safe and not safe to say.

  “It’s called whoring, Robert. You don’t have to dance around it. In the business, I’m called an ‘ivory,’ a white whore.” She nuzzled into his neck, to show it was okay.