He stood at a payphone on the street in downtown Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It was night, just after ten o’clock, and he was half a block from the beach. He could hear the water lapping at the sand. High-rise hotels and low-rise motels lined the strip here. A lot of them were closed and boarded up. Foerster didn’t care. He had exactly nineteen dollars left of the money his mother had given him, and he would avoid paying for a room if he could.
A handful of honky-tonk bars were open right near here. Neon lights blinked, country music blasted, and people milled around and smoked cigarettes in the night air. A lot of military types in olive T-shirts and crew cut hair. A lot of biker types wearing leather and denim jackets and showing gang colors. A lot of sun-kissed, big-haired blonds wearing shorts, bikini tops and high-heels. Once in a while, a police cruiser rolled slowly by. To Foerster’s eyes, these were the only people who seemed to be out.
He seemed to have no energy left – like someone had inserted a tube and drained the vitality right out of him. The payphone kiosk was practically holding him up. His head was congested and he felt a bit feverish. No surprise there. By his own estimate, he’d traveled about seven hundred miles in a little over thirteen hours. Luck had been with him. After swimming to shore from the ferry, he’d limped to the highway entrance ramp, stuck his thumb out and inside of ten minutes got picked up by a long haul trucker headed for Maryland. Half-drowned and bedraggled, the barest trickle of traffic on the roads, and he’d still managed to get a ride. Foerster was almost willing to say that something more than luck was at work here.
Maybe it was meant to be.
Of course that was silly. Nothing was meant to be. The universe unfolded in random fashion and people were the helpless playthings of enormous forces beyond their control. But then again…
If mere luck had sent that first ride, it couldn’t have worked out much better than it did. The driver was young, with a three day growth of beard. He had been arrested half a dozen times, hated cops, and sympathized completely with Foerster’s story. He even gave Foerster a flannel shirt and jeans to wear, plus a towel to dry off with. The clothes were a size or so too big, but it was better to be dry than wet.
‘How do you even keep this thing on the road?’ Foerster said after they’d traveled a while. They were rolling down the New Jersey Turnpike by then, headed for Delaware. ‘I mean, it must cost a fortune. Most of the independents are already out of business, aren’t they?’
‘Want the truth?’ the young guy said, a mischievous gleam in his eye.
‘Of course.’
‘I’m carrying a load of dry goods for a discount chain. Buried here and there in the boxes with the ladies’ nightgowns and bed linens is a load of cocaine headed for the Midwest. There’s more than a million bucks worth of coke inside this truck right now.’
Foerster was impressed. ‘Yours?’
The trucker shook his head. ‘The guys who own the chain store. It’s how they stay in business. Drugs, my friend, are good for America. It’s how my employers stay in business, how I stay in business, how everybody stays in business.’
Foerster had hoped to go all the way to Charleston tonight, but he hadn’t made it there. The ride he’d gotten out of Virginia, a middle-aged salesman named Mort, was coming here to Myrtle Beach. Mort would have been happy to drop Foerster off along the interstate. But the place where Mort exited the highway to come here, some seventy-five miles inland, was the same exit where an old rundown roadside attraction called South of the Border had once been. Foerster had been there once as a kid – a bunch of rinky-dink rides, an observation tower that looked out on nothing but the highway, a bad restaurant and a gift shop selling cheap crap and T-shirts with funny slogans. South of the Border’s major claim to fame, a dubious one, had been the billboards advertising the place, posted every mile or so for more than sixty miles before you ever arrived.
South of the Border was still there at the highway exit, but it had changed. It was closed, and some bomzhies had taken it over. When Foerster and Mort had arrived after dark, much of the place was on fire. Silhouettes raced back and forth in the light cast by the flames. Traffic raced by on the highway. No sirens sounded, and no firemen worked to put the fire out. The amusement park just burned and burned, the crackling of the flames punctuated by the screams and the laughter of the drunken nutjobs who had torched it.
Mort had pulled over a little way from the inferno. ‘Sure you don’t want to try your luck in Myrtle Beach?’
Foerster didn’t want to, but what choice did he have? No one was going to stop for him – not in the dark, not with that blaze going. Finding another ride was going to be a bust, and Foerster sure as hell didn’t want to stay over in that nightmare stop. So Myrtle Beach was his only option.
Now, at the payphone, with the night’s action unfolding all around him, he dialed his mother collect. It was a little late, but she wasn’t famous for her early to bed, early to rise work ethic. She was famous for her loud snoring and her late-night TV watching. He wouldn’t be surprised if she answered.
As the phone rang, he took a look around. He was getting a few funny looks from people on the street, and why not? Here was a pale skinny guy with a carved up scalp, wearing a flannel shirt and jeans that hung off of him. Tanned beach bunnies and muscle-bound, vein-popping steroid freaks, all in skin-tight clothing, would see him as a member of an alien race. But none of the looks they gave him were too threatening, so he took no immediate action.
On the other end of the line, his mother accepted the reversed charges.
‘Davey?’ she said. ‘My God, where are you?’
‘Don’t worry about that right now. I’m OK, and I’m in a safe place. That’s all you need to know. What happened today after I left?’
‘What happened? Those two men chased you down the block. Later, they came back and asked me all kinds of questions.’
‘What did you tell them?’
‘Nothing. What could I tell them? They wanted to search the house. I told them to see a judge and get a search warrant. Until then, I couldn’t help them. I know how these things work. The police can’t just barge in here any time they want.’
Foerster shook his head. ‘They’re not the police.’
‘What?’
‘They’re not the police, Ma. They can’t search the house. They can’t get a search warrant because they’re not cops. They’re private goons.’
‘Well, they left anyway.’
‘OK. Good, Ma. You did the right thing. That was good. Now I need you to do something for me. Upstairs, on the bedside table, I left a business card. It’s the business card I showed you. It’s from a friend of mine, like I told you. He wants me to do some work for him, and I need his phone number.’
‘Davey, I don’t have that card anymore.’
‘What? What do you mean?’ Foerster felt his heart do a jerky little dance in his chest. If she had given those clowns Gant’s card… No. His mind rebelled against going down that road.
‘I didn’t want those men to see the card. So when they chased you I went upstairs, tore up the card, and flushed the pieces down the toilet.’
Foerster rubbed his head with his free hand. His fingers moved along the railroad line of scar tissue and stitches. OK, he’d live through the night without calling Gant. He’d make it down to Charleston tomorrow, the same way he’d made it this far. He’d have to find some kind of sleeping arrangement, maybe on the beach, maybe in an alley, but that was OK. Hell, maybe he’d find a chick to take him home, right? Stranger things had happened in this world. It was better she had destroyed the card than it had fallen into the hands of those bounty hunters. And it showed him something, too. Maybe, just maybe, she was on his side for a change.
‘You did the right thing, Ma. Thank you.’
‘Davey, are you OK? You sound like you’re on drugs. Where are you? This is your mother talking.’
Foerster rolled his eyes. ‘I’m fine. I’m on my way to Charleston, like I sa
id.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
Jesus. He wished someone else could listen in sometimes, just so people would know what a psycho bitch his mother was. ‘Ma, I’m in Myrtle Beach right now, about a hundred miles from Charleston, calling you from a payphone. That’s where I am. I hitchhiked all this way. I’m gonna go down to Charleston in the morning and see that guy about the job. I was thinking I’d give him a try tonight if you still had the card, but it’s not a problem. I’ll meet up with him tomorrow.’
Her tone said she still didn’t buy it. ‘OK, Davey. If you say so. I’m glad you’re all right.’
‘Thanks. I’m glad you’re all right, too. I’m glad they didn’t… do anything to you. Listen Ma, I’m almost out of money. I’m tired and I need a place to stay. Maybe some food. Is there any chance you could Western Union me some more money down here tomorrow morning? If I know the money’s coming I can probably convince somebody to give me a room for the night.’
His mother hesitated. Foerster already knew what was coming. ‘Davey, I’d feel funny about it. I just gave you money this morning. After everything that happened with those men, I’d just feel funny about it, that’s all.’
‘OK,’ he said. ‘I understand.’
‘Davey?’ came his mother’s voice, but Foerster hung up the phone. He glanced around. The nearest bar was a place across the street called Bottoms Up, with a blinking neon sign of a cowgirl in a short skirt, bending over. A buzz of music and raised voices came from the place. Foerster stepped into the street and headed toward the front door. He took the money from his pocket and looked at it – a ten, a five, and four ones.
It was going to be a hell of a night.
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