by Ezra Sidran
“And you know who the sonofabitch is?” the pitcher got up from the lawn chair.
“Yeah, Colt,” Katelynn replied, “It was Professor Gilfoyle.”
“And the cops know about this?” Colt pushed his cap far back on his head and wiped his brow with the back of his throwing hand.
“The cops, or at least one cop, were in on it,” Katelynn answered. Her clear green eyes fixed Colt with an earnest stare.
“I might just be a big ol’ left-handed fastballer from Luckenbach, Texas,” Colt said, “But from where I come from we don’t stand for that kind of shit,” and he threw the baseball hard into the ground. “Where is this sonofabitch?” Colt spit out a thick, brown stream of chew on the grass.
“I don’t know exactly,” Katelynn replied, “I’ve got a general area… maybe even the exact location, I don’t know. I was hoping….” Katelynn did her best damsel in distress impersonation.
“Don’t say anymore, Miss O’Brian,” Colt confidently put his right hand on her shoulder, “You leave it to me. I just got called up and have a week to report to the Washington Nationals. That should be more than plenty of time to find those fucks… excuse my French Miss O’Brian… and get Bill back.”
“What a coincidence,” Katelynn mused, “I think they’re somewhere in northern Virginia.”
“Is that anywhere near Washington D. C.?” Colt asked.
CHAPTER 5.12
They left that very minute.
Colt detoured back through the locker room to pick up his bag and put on a pair of blue jeans and change his spikes for a pair of Nikes. He was waiting for Katelynn in the parking lot next to a white Cadillac Escalade by the time she had hugged Andy and walked back out and around the left field fence. “Got this with my signing bonus,” Colt motioned towards the SUV, “and don’t worry about gas and incidentals, neither,” he said, holding up a gold Visa card, “I’ve got that covered, too.”
Katelynn smiled and hopped into the passenger seat in the Escalade. “Thank you, Colt,” she said, “I don’t know how we’ll ever repay you.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Colt assured Katelynn, “We’ve got a code out west. We take care of our own. And may the good Lord have mercy on any sorry sonofabitch that kidnaps my friend because I, sure as Hell, will not show any mercy upon that sorry motherfucker; excuse my French Miss O’Brian. Now, which way is Northern Virginia?”
Katelynn pointed towards the bridge that crossed the Mississippi. “It’s that way, Colt,” she answered, “You just get on 74 for a real long time. I’ll tell you when we gotta turn.”
“Okay, you buckle in and hold on tight because we ain’t stopping for nothin’ until we get Bill and your man back.” Colt took a second to adjust the rearview mirror before he put the Escalade into drive and sped off towards the bridge.
The Louis Weisman stadium disappeared behind them as they raced across the bridge. Colt barely slowed down as he threw two quarters into the toll hopper and sped on; Katelynn directing him through the cloverleaves until they emerged on I-74 heading east.
Colt, as good as his Texan word, refused to stop for anything except gas and drive-through burgers. Katelynn, who calculated their voyage in miles per cups of coffee, became an expert in peeing quickly during refueling stops (the Escalade had a powerful thirst for high octane). Be it gallantry, pride or fear that she would total his signing bonus; Colt nobly refused her repeated offers to drive. And so they sped further towards the east.
When the night was darkest, about two AM, they drove through Champaign where Bill had got his pacemaker at the University of Illinois Veterinary Teaching Hospital. They did not slow down.
At Indianapolis they turned south. At Louisville Katelynn directed them on to I-64 and they turned due east. They were skirting Frankfurt when the sun rose before them. From here on out they would be driving directly into its glare. Colt lowered his cap on his forehead until the bill shaded his eyes. He squinted into the distant horizon as if he was looking for the sign from a catcher, not 60 and a half feet away, but 487 miles away; as if he would shake off the signs for the curve and the forkball, the splitter and the changeup, until the catcher signaled for the heat and Colt would position his fingers around the seams of the baseball hidden in his glove and rear back and chuck that lump of horsehide and cork and twine at an ungodly speed towards the catcher’s mitt. Colt put another plug of chew in his mouth and furiously masticated. He had not said two dozen words to Katelynn since their journey began in the parking lot of Louis Weisman stadium yesterday.
Katelynn could not sleep. She would not sleep if she could and would not allow herself the luxury of the thought of sleep, either. It was noon when they entered the mountains and began a series of switchbacks and tunnels. And then, as abruptly as they began, the mountains were behind them. They drove down into the Shenandoah Valley. A fall thunderhead, dark and ugly, troubled the green fields to the south.
They turned off I-64 at exit 99 and slowed down as they merged onto 250. Katelynn knew from the Mapquest directions that they were within five miles of the address that arin.net had returned. Colt turned and looked quizzically towards her. “Where to, now?” he asked.
“Well, the address is just up ahead a bit, Colt,” she answered, “but I don’t think they’re so stupid that they would let us find them this easy.”
CHAPTER 5.13
They were not so stupid that they were found that easily.
Suite 201 at the address turned out to be a drop box at a Mailboxes, Etc. store in a strip mall. The acne scarred teen behind the counter steadfastly refused to divulge any information about the proprietors of suite 201 even though he nearly wet himself when Colt leaned over the register and grabbed him by the lapels.
“Forget it, Colt” Katelynn reasoned with him, “The kid doesn’t know anything. This is a dead end.” Colt put the kid down and glared. They left the store and walked back across the parking lot to the SUV. A cold front was moving in ahead of the storm they had seen earlier. Candy wrappers and trash swirled across the asphalt.
“What we do now, Kate?” Colt asked.
“I wish I knew,” Katelynn answered despondently.
The got back in the Escalade. Colt put the key in the ignition but stopped short of turning the engine over. They sat silently staring through the windshield.
“Hey, why don’t we just wait until somebody shows up to get the mail?” Colt earnestly suggested.
“Good idea, Colt,” Katelynn answered trying to let him down gently, “except that there about two hundred and fifty mailboxes in there and we don’t know who is getting the mail for 201 unless we sit inside all day and watch and I suspect ol’ pimple-face would call the cops the next time we walk in the door. Other than that,” Katelynn sighed, “it’s a great idea.”
“Yeah, I can see how it wouldn’t work,” Colt slipped another chaw into his cheek, “so what’s out next move?”
“I saw a motel a few miles back that advertised broadband internet service. Neither one of us has slept for a couple of days. Let’s check in and get some rest while I work out a few ideas.” Katelynn looked wistfully at the sky, “Man do I miss Nick. This is the kind of problem he could solve.”
Colt turned the engine over and pulled back on to the highway.
Under her breath Katelynn unconsciously began repeating a mantra, “What would Nick do? What would Nick do?”
They checked into adjoining rooms at the Bide-A-Wee motor lodge. Colt said goodnight and immediately went to sleep. Katelynn turned on her laptop and logged on to the internet. She inserted a data CD that she had brought with her and idly opened and closed a dozen files hoping that something would trigger an idea. She repeatedly looked at the last file that Nick had sent. She walked over to the window and stared out into the motel parking lot.
Just then there was an extraordinary clap of thunder.
Then the rain began to come down in sheets; splashing up against the window pane. She could hear distant Teutonic kettle drums. She could smell the
static electricity.
And then rain came down with a power.
CHAPTER 5.14
INTERVIEW WITH MS. KATELYNN MARGARET O’BRIAN CONTINUED
Q: The motel records indicate that you stayed at the Bide-A-Wee for five days. In fact you still haven’t checked out.
KMO’B: Yeah. Maybe you could call them or something. I hate to see Colt’s credit card get charged when you have provided all these gracious accommodations for us.
Q: Ms. O’Brian your sense of humor in the face of adversity is truly inspirational. What did you do during those five days?
KMO’B: Surfed the web. Drank a lot of coffee.
[Tape recording muted at this point.]
[Tape recording resumed.]
Q: I apologize for that. Are you ready to continue? I ask again, what did you do during those five days?
KMO’B: I thought a lot about Nick and what he was working on and why he died. Everything kept coming back to radio frequencies. It was the only variable left in the equation. I got on the web and found a HAM radio shop in Charlottesville. They fixed us up with a complete RDF kit.
Q: RDF?
KMO’B: RDF: Radio Direction Finder. There’s a big antennae that looks like an old laundry drying tree like my mom used to have in the backyard. They bolted that to the roof of Colt’s Escalade. And they sold us this box called a ‘Handi-Finder’ that plugged in to the cigarette lighter. It has an RS-232 connection that interfaces with my laptop. I just went down the list of floating point numbers that we had stripped from Stanhope’s database figuring they had to be valid radio frequencies. And then Colt and I drove and drove and drove. We went up and down highway 340, 254, 610; about 50 miles in every direction. About every fifteen minutes I would try another of the floating point numbers from the list of errors that we generated.
Q: And were you successful?
KMO’B: I’m here; aren’t I?
CHAPTER 6.O
This was our day.
Twenty-four hours from now we would be dead or free.
Bill and me, dead or free.
Dawn: slate gray sky streaming through the slatted shades. The Authoritarian Man entered. The cart with the Eggs Benedict and orange juice & the carafe of coffee draped underneath the white starched linen was wheeled in.
The obsequious sub-Junior Authoritarian Man in spotless livery delivered and bowing and scraping exited.
The ritual: the Authoritarian Man dissecting the Eggs Benedict with stainless steel fork and knife, the Authoritarian Man dipping the forkful of food just so into the hollandaise sauce, the Authoritarian Man placing the morsel upon my tongue. The ritual of the Authoritarian Man wiping the corners of my mouth with the linen napkin. The ritual was completed when the Authoritarian Man replaced the napkin upon the tray.
The Authoritarian Man looked into my eyes, patted my shoulder and tucked the napkin away.
The coffee was good; I’ll give them that.
“This is good coffee,” I said, “Starbucks House Blend.” The same black rabbit turd whole beans I bought at $6.95 a pound for the little yellow house. “Do you make it with cold water? I think it really improves the flavor.”
The Authoritarian Man took a sip from his mug. “You know,” he said, “I’m not really sure how they make it but this is a good cup of coffee.”
If Starbucks wasn’t so damn international maybe I could get a fix on where they were holding Bill and me. Does Russia have Starbucks? Does China? Probably. We could be held on the fucking moon and there was a Starbucks just over the next lunar crater.
Bill and I are going to get the fuck out of here and then what?
Where will we be then?
Just our luck we’ll get out to the weed-choked garden, kill the Authoritarian Man, leap the wall and… and… find ourselves in downtown Shanghai without a passport and persona non grata at the U. S. embassy. Well, I guess as my great aunt Etta used to say, we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it. Etta had problems with screwing up the punch lines of metaphors.
Good coffee. Old friends sharing good coffee. Mugs sending up their tiny moist steam clouds into the chill air. The interrogator and a man strapped to a gurney drinking good strong coffee; as natural as could be. Winter coffee in the kitchen; our boots in the mud room, the fields frozen over, the farmer’s daughter asleep upstairs between her starched white bed sheets; as natural as could be.
It’s funny how Midwestern mores, traditions, bonds you can’t break come back again and again. I have distant memories of good coffee in distant kitchens across distant frozen fields.
“Good coffee,” I said.
“Yes it is,” said the Authoritarian Man, “and now it’s time to get back down to business.” And so it begins, again.
I could see the Mississippi River through the six over one window if I sat just right at the dining room table in the little yellow house. Even now strapped to this gurney I could see the Mississippi River. I could see Bill and me in the park. I could see the goddamn tall grass. And then I could see the goddamn Authoritarian Man. And so it begins, again.
“You know the key to a successful operation is good coffee,” I said.
“Is that so?” the Authoritarian Man responded right on cue.
“Oh, yes,” I said, “six AM, every morning someone has to get up and make the coffee. You know you can’t lead by whipping the hired hands. That will get you nowhere. Someone has to get up and make the coffee; good coffee. I never set my alarm clock; there was no need. Bill woke me up every day exactly at 5:45. He has a bladder you can set you clock to. Oh, yes,” I nodded.
“Is that so?” the Authoritarian Man said; he had fallen into the cadence of the Midwestern straight-man sitting around the country stove. If you set these things up just right everything falls into place.
“Bill has this way about him. He would wake me up by just staring at me. You ever wake up with this feeling that someone is staring at you?” I asked.
“Yes, I have,” the Authoritarian Man answered and I wondered if it had happened in Beirut, or Baghdad or some other far-flung country that we had savaged and then cast aside. So what country was it that the Authoritarian Man woke up in with unseen eyes staring? Was it Afghanistan? Was he Russian? Was it Brazil? Was it Thailand? Was he Mossad? Or KGB? Or GRU? Or fucking IRS? I honestly didn’t care anymore; I just wanted a clue as to who it was that was asking the questions. Could we just get the ass-raping over and then you could let Bill and me go? Well that wasn’t going to happen.
“All ready?” the Authoritarian Man asked.
Yes, yes! Injections of benzodiazepine, shock treatment, another roundhouse right upside the head; I just didn’t care anymore; yes, yes, YES! I am ready. I am ready, Authoritarian Man. please for the Love of God, I AM READY!
The Authoritarian Man released the straps that held my hands fast to the gurney. He released the straps that held my legs.
I was free.
I was free.
I swung my legs over the bed; I tried to stand but I could not. The Authoritarian Man caught me as I fell. You cannot strap a man to a gurney for a week and expect him to stand.
And then the door to the room opened and Bill pranced in dragging that sonofabitch handler behind him. He knew that this was our day.
‘You ready?” the Authoritarian Man asked.
“I was born ready,” I answered; and I had never felt more ready in all of my life even if my body was a rag doll that was no longer responding to whatever signals I sent from my brain.
“I think we’re just about done here,” said the Authoritarian Man and I thought, “Yes, yes there’s really only one question left and that is this: can I wrap my hands about your throat and choke the life out of you before Bill tears into your jugular? Can I kill you before Bill does? Because, truth be known - I think we’re just about done here - bottom line is this: either Bill or I are going to kill you and the only question is this: which one of us is going to get to you first? Because, really, that was the only question t
hat was left that was worth answering. Yes, my life had telescoped into that small of a space.
“Okay, easy now,” said the Authoritarian Man as he carefully placed my ass in to the wheelchair.
Bill smiled at me – the dew flaps drawing away from his yellow teeth and the muzzle flecked with white - he wagged his tail and shot me the sign.
Oh, lord, oh lord, Bill was focused. I had never seen him so focused.
I’m going to kill this man he said and we will run, we will flee like we did before, just you and me… running into the night… don’t you worry, boss, I will kill this man and then we will run… run, boss, run!
This deal was going down.
Authoritarian Man you were a dead man; it was just a question if I killed you first or Bill.
CHAPTER 6.1
This was our day.
Too weak to stand, the Authoritarian Man placed me in the wheelchair and pushed me out the door; Bill hanging just a yard behind and to the right; pulling that sonofabitch handler behind him.
I marshaled my strength. I channeled every thought to getting strong; now, right now because this deal was going down right now.
How many times in your life do you get a chance to put everything on the line? All our lives all we ever wish for is an even chance; all our lives this is all we pray for: dear Lord – dear Sweet God – please give me an even chance to smite my enemies.
Dear Sweet Lord, please, please, put all that is evil into a human form and place it before me; please give me a chance – a 50/50 chance – to slay them, to place their worthless carcasses upon an altar before you; and – if I’m weak – please let my dog, Bill, be there to rip out their goddamn throats. Dear, dear Sweet Lord…. please just give Bill and me a chance.
Please, dear sweet Lord just let me roll the goddamn dice!