“That doesn’t necessarily make it a good thing.”
Chuck flashed her a devilish grin and then looked out at the reporters. “I know you have many questions and we want to answer them all,” Chuck said. “You want to know where Jack Shaw is. So do we. We have not been charged with anything because we haven’t done anything wrong. We’re here because we’re worried about our friend.” There was another furious spate of questions, but Chuck waved them away. “From this point on,” he declared, “I will speak only with Sally Hughes.”
There was an angry, confused murmur from the crowd. “Why her?” someone asked.
“Because of her personal relationship with Jack Shaw,” Chuck said matter-of-factly. “They were an item. I thought that was common knowledge.”
There was a collective gasp from the crowd, and suddenly they all turned to face Sally Hughes. “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” she said. In the sudden lull, Chuck found the break in the crowd he was looking for and with tires screeching he peeled out of the driveway, leaving the reporters in a cloud of dust.
“What the hell was that?” I asked.
“It worked, didn’t it?” Chuck said proudly, as he turned onto Route 57. On our left I saw Deputy Dan running toward his car at full speed while attempting to unholster his radio at the same time. The radio suddenly flew out of his hands and went skittering across the dirt shoulder of Route 57. Yet another electronic appliance biting the dust. I briefly searched for some significance in that observation and, finding none, returned to the matter at hand. “I’m not familiar with this particular technique, Chuck,” I said from the back seat. “What did we actually accomplish back there?”
“We accomplished nothing,” Chuck remarked, glancing at me in his rear view mirror. “I, on the other hand, accomplished a great deal.”
“And that would be?”
“Foreplay,” Chuck said.
“Pissing off Sally Hughes was foreplay?” Alison asked.
“You betcha.”
“How so?”
“It’s a thin line between anger and lust,” Chuck said.
“Oh my god,” Alison said. “And you believe what you’re saying, don’t you?”
“Absolutely,” Chuck said. “You have to admit, she’s thinking about me now.”
“She’s thinking about how she’d like to strangle you.”
“Strangle me, mount me. It’s all a question of sublimation.”
“And I thought men didn’t care about foreplay,” Lindsey remarked wryly.
“Hey!” I said.
“Present company excluded, of course.”
“Look,” Chuck said, slowing down to take a curve. “Right now she’s thinking about me and she’s feeling something, right? Maybe it’s negative, but it’s still something. She’s no longer indifferent to me. Now I’ve got something to work with. Between anger and indifference, I’ll take anger every time.”
“The saddest thing about this whole theory,” I said, “is that on some level I actually agree with it.”
“This sounds like a Seinfeld episode,” Alison remarked.
“A bad one,” Lindsey said.
“Hey, slow down,” I said. We were passing the bend in the road where I’d hit the deer. There were black streaks that indicated the path of the Beamer’s tires where they’d skidded off the road, and a jagged set of tire tracks cut deep into the grass all the way down to the shallow gully where I’d finally come to a stop. Here and there was a smattering of shattered orange and clear plastic from the front lights of the car. I’m not sure if I was steeling myself for a cinematic flashback, or hoping for one, but none came and we rounded the curve, leaving the site of my accident behind.
“A jelly jar … a garden hose,” Chuck murmured thoughtfully. “A cheerleader’s baton.”
“No way,” said the girl above the breasts Chuck was addressing. She was dressed in tight black slacks and an even tighter blue polyester shirt, the bottom three buttons opened to reveal her flat, tanned belly. She seemed very skinny for the breasts she was carrying.
“I’m telling you,” Chuck said. “It’s more common than you’d think.”
“What else?”
“Cucumbers, an electric toothbrush.”
“Shut up!” the girl squealed in delight.
The topic was Things I’ve Pulled Out of People’s Asses in the Emergency Room, one in a handful of popular conversational gambits Chuck employed when flirting in bars. I was often skeptical that scatological talk could work as an aphrodisiac, but Chuck had proven the method successful on more than one occasion.
“I’m serious,” he said, catching the bartender’s eye and indicating the two shot glasses sitting in front of him. As the bartender filled them with Glenfiddich, Chuck straightened his back and rocked on his stool as he stretched, a move that expertly moved him a few inches closer to the girl he was talking to.
“He’s good,” Lindsey said appreciatively. We were watching from our vantage point a few stools down, eating a meal of grilled steak sandwiches and mashed potatoes.
“She can’t be older than eighteen!” Alison said.
“She got in,” I said, pointing to the bouncer, who sat on a stool by the door checking ID’s. “She’s at least twenty-one.”
“A Cookie Monster finger puppet,” Chuck said, tossing back the whiskey.
“No!”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Alison groaned.
We were in a pub called McAvoy’s, eating the house specials while we watched Chuck work on the girl. It was a dimly lit, wood-paneled room, with tables off to one side, and a recessed floor that had the bar, a small dance floor, and a pool table. The walls were adorned with framed, autographed pictures of aging celebrities and politicians, with nothing in common except that they all fit into the category of People Who Would Never Be Caught Dead In Carmelina. Frank Sinatra, Ed Koch, Marlon Brando, George Bush, Muhammad Ali, Buddy Hackett, and a host of others. Two lazy ceiling fans, installed ostensibly to disperse the thick smoke coming from the grills in the kitchen, seemed instead to be weaving the smoke into something thicker that hung suspended above us, creating a murky sense of intimacy. We’d been momentarily concerned that our notoriety would cause us some problems, but, if anything, the clientele seemed excited to have some quasi-celebrities to gawk at. It certainly wasn’t hurting Chuck any. Walking in he’d slipped the guy at the door a fifty and said, “Please keep out the cameras, okay?” A quick nod, the money disappeared, and we went inside to eat. The dinner crowd was just beginning to taper off but the place was still full, and we’d only been able to get seated at the bar.
A few minutes after we’d arrived, Deputy Dan burst through the front door, stopping short when he saw us at the bar. He seemed very flustered, and unsure of what his next move should be. Lindsey smiled and waved to him and he reflexively waved back, which seemed to add to his confusion. Finally, he did an about-face and walked out of the pub. I walked over to the window and saw him double-parked across the street, smoking a cigarette and glowering at the reporters who clamored around the pub’s window trying to get a glimpse of us inside.
Chuck and his new friend hopped off their stools and went over to look at the jukebox. A skinny guy with cratered skin and a mustache stopped behind us at the bar and tapped me on the shoulder. “You’re the ones on television, huh?”
“That’s us,” I said.
“So, where is he?”
“Where is who?”
This seemed to confuse him. “You know who,” he said. “Jack Shaw is who.”
“You got me,” I said.
He frowned, clearly disappointed with the way the conversation was going. “I saw Alec Baldwin once,” he said. “Guy was real standoffish, you know?”
“I hear you,” I sympathized.
“You really his friend?” he asked.
“I’ve never met Alec Baldwin.”
“Nah. I mean Jack Shaw. He’s your buddy?”
“Uh huh.”
“How ab
out that.” He considered this intelligence for a few moments before nodding politely and moving on.
“Boy,” Lindsey said as I turned back to the bar. “If being famous meant having scintillating conversations like that every time you went out, I’d be doing coke, too.”
“Come On Eileen” began playing on the jukebox. I looked up to see if it had been Chuck’s choice and saw him smiling at us as he led the girl back to the bar.
“This song always brings me back to high school,” Lindsey said, singing along quietly with the too ra loo ra yays.
“What else?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Men at Work, Pat Benatar, Simple Minds, you know, the theme from The Breakfast Club”
“Human League,” I said. “You know, ‘Don’t You Want Me.’ And everything by Duran Duran.”
“Tainted Love,’ ” Chuck offered, leaning between us to grab some beer nuts off the bar. “ ‘Hurts So Good,’ ‘Safety Dance.’ ”
“Who sang that again?” Lindsey asked.
“Men Without Hats,” I said. “But as far as I know, they only sang it once.”
“Never heard of them,” said the girl with Chuck, and I wondered how old she’d been when the eighties one-hit-wonder bands had played. “Do you like any old bands?” I asked her.
She thought about it for a minute, licking her lips. I noticed that she had a barbell through her tongue. “Pearl Jam,” she said, after a little bit.
I gave Chuck a look. “What?” he asked with a grin, leading her away from the bar. “They’re pretty old.”
“You’re older,” I said to the back of his head, then looked over to Alison, who was sipping her beer thoughtfully. “What’s on your mind?” I asked.
“Three guesses.”
“Where do you think he is?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” she said. “It really makes no sense.”
“We’ll find him.”
“We aren’t even looking.”
“I mean, he’ll turn up.”
“I hope so,” she said with a sigh. “I keep thinking that if we hadn’t tried this, he’d be back in California, and I’d be able to speak to him, the same as always, you know. Aside from all the worry about what might have happened to him, I just miss him, you know?”
I saw Lindsey looking over my shoulder, slightly alarmed, and I spun around on my stool to find myself face to chest with Paul Bunyan from the luncheonette. My heart skipped a beat, but I quashed the reflex to bolt from my chair. After all, I saw no sign of the Winchester, and the guy had served us some good soup. “How you doing?” he said.
“Good,” I said hesitantly.
“You and your friend get everything worked out?”
“What? Oh yeah, sure. Thanks.”
“I just wanted to tell you thanks,” he said, rubbing the bandanna on his skull.
“For what?”
“For them,” he said, pointing out the window at the reporters. “I did more business today then the last two weeks put together.”
“Really?”
“You bet. I’ve even got a Jack Shaw Special now. Any sandwich and a beverage for three bucks.”
“Good idea,” I said.
“They’re eating it up.” He put a huge paw on my shoulder. “No hard feelings about the other day?”
“Of course not.”
“I hope your friend turns up okay. I like his movies.”
“Thanks.”
“Okay then,” he said with a gap-toothed smile and lumbered out of the bar.
“What the hell was that about?” Lindsey asked.
Before I could answer we were approached by a man in a navy suit and a crew cut who pulled over a stool and said with a grin, “Hi. Do you mind if we talk for a minute?”
“So much for keeping out the reporters,” Lindsey said. “We have no comment.”
“I’m Agent Don Allender, with the FBI,” he said, his grin never faltering. It was certainly an effective conversation stopper.
“This day keeps getting better and better,” I muttered, but quietly since I was a little scared of him.
He studied me for a moment. “What’d the other guy look like?” he asked.
“Huh?”
“Your face,” he explained, pointing to my eyes. I had forgotten for the moment that they were still fairly bruised. I told him about the deer and he nodded sympathetically.
“You’re here to find Jack?” Alison asked, turning fully around to face Allender.
“Not exactly,” he answered, unbuttoning his suit jacket to sit more comfortably. He looked like he was posing, and I wondered if the FBI actually had classes on how to sit and stand while on duty.
“What then?”
“Well, I’m here to ascertain whether or not there’s a reason for us to be involved.”
“And what would constitute a reason?” I asked.
“If you kidnapped him, that would pretty much do it for me,” he said pleasantly.
“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you,” Lindsey said.
“Wait a minute,” Alison said. “If he hasn’t been kidnapped, then you don’t bother looking for him? Either way he’s missing, isn’t he?”
“Oh, we’re looking already,” Allender said.
“Really?” Alison asked skeptically.
“You bet,” he said, with just enough Midwestern twang to go with his ruddy complexion.
Chuck joined us, leaving his new acquaintance to consult excitedly with two other girls standing near the pool table. “Who’s this?” he asked.
“Don Allender,” said Don Allender.
“FBI,” I said.
“New York office,” Don added helpfully.
“No way,” Chuck said.
“Way,” Don smiled.
“I never met an FBI agent,” Chuck said. “What’s it like?”
“It’s all right,” Don smiled. “Beats working for a living.”
“I bet.”
“How old are you?” I asked Allender.
“What does that have to do with anything?” he asked, mildly taken aback.
“Just curious.”
“Thirty.”
“Us too,” I said, indicating our group. There seemed to be something less intimidating about the FBI when you realized the agents were your age.
“It’s a weird age, isn’t it?” Don said, surprising us all with his conversational tone. “Leads to a lot of annoying introspection.”
“Tell me about it.”
“So,” Don said, almost apologetically. “Did you kidnap him?”
“Are we on the record?” Alison asked him.
“Would you like to first talk off the record?”
We looked around at each other. “Could we have a minute?” Alison asked.
“Sure,” Don said, getting up and grabbing a stool at the end of the bar. He asked the bartender for a Molson and turned around with his back to the bar, looking around the room with a wistful expression on his face.
“I think I want to level with him,” Alison said.
“We’d be incriminating ourselves,” Chuck objected.
“We haven’t done anything wrong, really,” Alison said. “He seems like a friendly guy, like a guy who would understand.”
“They all seem like that!” Chuck retorted. “It’s to catch you off guard.”
“And you’ve talked to how many FBI agents?” I asked. I agreed with Alison. Don seemed okay.
“I agree with Alison,” Lindsey said. “He’s not like Sullivan or Deputy Dan, who are looking to be heroes. He seems like a decent guy with no real agenda. I think we can trust him.”
“I never trust anyone over thirty,” Chuck grumbled.
“Which explains your taste in women,” Alison said.
“Oh, bite me.”
“I’m too old for you, Chuck,” she said with a giggle and then, inexplicably threw her arms around him. He still looked pissed, but he returned the hug. “Okay,” he said. “But if we wind up in jail over this, I’ll hold
you personally responsible.”
“Ben?” Alison turned to me. “Are we unanimous?”
I looked over at Don Allender, sipping at his beer thoughtfully. That didn’t seem like proper behavior for a federal agent. I reminded myself that he had entered high school the same time I did, listened to the same bands and watched the same television shows. It was probably a lonely job, running around wherever the FBI sent you. He certainly seemed eager enough for conversation. The fact that he was drinking a beer while on duty made him seem even less threatening. “Okay,” I said. “If we’re going to make a new friend, he may as well work for the FBI.”
The rest of the night passed in an increasingly drunken haze. We told Don everything, and it turned out that he’d already pieced most of it together. When we asked him how all he would say is, “Hey, did I mention I work for the FBI?” After he’d agreed with Alison that it didn’t seem likely that we would face prosecution, we were so relieved that we started a tab and began celebrating with tequila shots. Don removed his jacket and joined in the celebration. “I’ve been on the road for the government for over three years,” he complained while licking the salt off his hand. “I turned thirty and suddenly I was alone in the world. No family, no friends. No real relationships of any kind.” He downed the tequila and squeezed a lemon rind into his mouth. “I mean, what are we living for?”
Later:
“Do you watch ER?” Don asked Chuck.
“Sometimes,” Chuck said.
“Do you, like, sit there and point out everything that isn’t realistic?”
“Nah. They’re pretty well researched, they’ve got doctors on staff. The only part that’s really bogus is the way they spew out all that technical jargon while they’re running around. If we really shouted out all those instructions so fast there would be a shitload of mistakes.”
“Really?”
“Also, that guy Carter. He’s an intern but he’s always on E.R. rotation. That’s not how it works. Hey,” Chuck said. “Do you watch The X-Files?”
“Sure.”
“Do you sit there and point out all the FBI bullshit there?”
Don looked up from his beer chaser and, wiping his mouth with his shirtsleeve, said, “To whom?”
Later:
I made my way somewhat unsteadily toward the jukebox, a fistful of quarters in one hand, a Sam Adams in the other, with the aim of playing every song from high school that I could find. “Centerfold,” by the J. Giles Band, “Ninety-nine Red Balloons,” by Nina, Billy Idol’s “Dancing with Myself,” Howard Jones’s “No One Is to Blame,” and “Space Oddity,” not David Bowie’s but that other one, with the bouncy synthesizer, by Peter something or other. The jukebox was like an eighties time capsule. I noticed the “Theme from St. Elmo’s Fire,” but by then I was out of change. I’d surpassed my personal limit on tequila, but rather than feeling sick, I was suffused with a warm, expanding laziness. My mouth was still tart from the lemons and salt. Lindsey moved toward me with liquid grace, as if in slow motion, and asked me to dance. “I taste like lemons,” I said, sucking on the insides of my cheeks. “Umm,” she murmured, “let me taste,” and pressed herself hard up against me, her tongue slipping between my lips before her kiss even got there.
Plan B: A Novel Page 25