Very Hard Choices

by Spider Robinson

  "Don't be silly," I said. "It's only—"

  "Oh shit," Nika said, and opened the door just in time for a wave of thunder to roll in. At once it began to pour.

  "Where the hell did that come from?" Jesse asked indignantly. "It was sunny just a while ago."

  I wedged past her and Jesse, sprinted to the porch table, grabbed the recorder and scampered back to the house, a total of fourteen steps. When I got back inside I was as wet as if I'd stood in the shower for twice that long. I stopped on the doorway rug that kept pine needles from being tracked into the house, and wrung out my shirt and hair and stepped out of my sodden shoes. Jesse watched me with wide eyes. "That's not rain," he said with awe. "That's a fucking waterfall."

  "What, that little drizzle?" Nika and I both said at the same time, looked at each other in surprise, and then both added, "It rains more in Seattle than it does here," and looked at each other again.

  Jesse shook his head. "Vancouver people, no shit. It rains more in Seattle than it does in Nairobi in monsoon season."

  I excused myself, went to my bedroom, and changed into dry clothes as quickly as I could. I gave my hair a quick toweling and hasty brushing but didn't feel I had time for the hair dryer.

  Nika felt the urgency even more than I did. "It strikes me," she said as I returned to the living room, "that now would be a good time to get out of here."

  Jesse and I both turned to look at her.

  "Russell, I'm very sorry," she said to me. "I checked my car for bugs myself before I left for work this morning. I spotted some asshole staking me out this morning after parade, but I was sure I'd lost him. It just never occurred to me anyone could manage to bug a car parked outside the police station. I made damn sure nobody tailed me after I got off the ferry. I thought I had taken adequate precautions to protect you. I fucked up. I've burned this location. It's time to be someplace else while we figure out our next move. The rain will cover the sound of us leaving."

  "To go where?" Jesse asked. "And in what? SCUBA gear?"

  I knew she was exasperated, and he probably did too, but she kept it out of her voice. "To anyplace at all where we're sure nobody else knows we're there. We need to break the tail. If that means walking through the wood in a downpour, then hot-wiring somebody's car and getting off-island on the next ferry, that's what we'll do. We have to lose this jerk and buy time to figure out what to do."

  "I see that." I agreed reluctantly, and took a deep breath. "Okay, let me get some water bottles from the fridge to take along."

  "I don't see that," Jesse said. "There are three of us. Nika, you're a cop. None of us has done anything wrong. Why don't we just go out to your car and in loud voices invite the jerk in for coffee?"

  She shook her head, the exasperation beginning to show. "Jesse, being a cop doesn't give me the kind of weight to deal with somebody who uses gear like that bug. It makes me more vulnerable, because there are handles on me, that people like that know how to use. Nobody I know has the weight to help me. Maybe nobody has that much weight."

  "I know people who might," Jesse said. "I work for the largest PR firm on the planet."

  "And they probably work for the CIA," I said bitterly. "No, thanks."

  Jesse shut up, looking stubborn.

  Nika said, "I need more information and some advice before I confront him, and I only know one place on earth where I might get either one, but I don't dare go there or even attempt to until and unless I am absolutely certain I'm not leading this asshole there."

  "To Zudie," he said.

  "To Zudie," I agreed. "If Mr. X still remembers Zudie after all these years, it's a good bet Zudie will remember him too. And he got clear of him once already, and stayed clear more than thirty years. Maybe with us to help, he could . . . " I trailed off.

  "What?" Nika said, her voice harsh. "Maybe he could what?"

  I dodged. "Maybe we could discuss this in the rain? For all we know Mr. X on his way here right now. I've got two spare pairs of boots and one spare umbrella—let me get my cellphone—"

  "Got a coat and hat I can borrow?" Nika asked. "I don't want to get mine from my car."

  "Whoa," Jesse interrupted us. "Nika, I know my father has incipient Alzheimer's—but you're a cop."

  "Yeah?"

  "Look at me. I come from New York to visit my father on a remote island. Am I going to depend on him to drive me around? Or rent a car at the airport?"

  "So where is it? Oh! You wouldn't take a rental down this driveway. It's the one I saw out there by the mailboxes."

  Not far from the mouth of my driveway is what I call the Mailbox Box: a blocky green metal box which contains the mailboxes for sixty-four different rural dwellings that are all arguably within walking distance. It's how we spare Canada Post the onerous chore of actually delivering our mail, as if we were real humans, living on the mainland. For tolerably obvious reasons there are parking verges to either side of it, and Jesse was parked on the nearer one.

  "That's right," he said. "You might have taken it for Dad's car."

  "I did when I saw it," she agreed. "Didn't even notice the rental plates. By the time I saw his out there in the driveway. I'd stopped thinking about it."

  Jesse happened to have chosen the same car to rent that I had bought a few years earlier, a Toyota Echo—the same year and color as mine, right down to the bumpers, generic black rather than color coordinated. The amount of delight I'd taken in that simple coincidence was a sign of how nervous I'd been about Jesse's visit, after an estrangement of so many years. (Maybe you can explain to me why the majority of people who buy Echos—a cheap car designed to run just as cheaply as possible—pay extra to have expendable bumpers painted the same color as the car. Do they have their galoshes painted to match their suits, too?)

  I tossed Nika a hoodie from the front hall closet, set out an umbrella on the bench just inside the front door, and collected my phone, a flashlight, and three one-liter bottles of cold water while they both suited up for rain. While getting water I noticed the open catfood can plastic-bagged in the fridge and was reminded to put some out for Horsefeathers, adding another dish of the paté kind he hates for Fraidy; then I propped the laundry room door open enough for them both to get in and out. When I got back Nika had found my own boots and was holding open my jacket for me; as I turned around from putting it on, she was holding open the door for us.

  I held up a hand. "Hold on. I go first. I live here. You two don't show yourselves until I whistle. If I start singing instead, go out the back door fast and low, head straight into the woods until you hit the stream, then follow it uphill."

  "Uphill?" Nika said.

  "Harder going, but very soon you come to a footbridge and a path that'll take you to the road and Jesse's car. I'll meet you there if I can. If I'm not there, bug out, go to ground someplace, and find me a good lawyer."

  "No such thing," she said automatically.

  Jesse's eyes were wide. "Dad—"

  "Text me, son. I gotta go," I said, and stepped out the door, closing it behind me.

  No one immediately apparent. Rain so thunderous there could be a platoon a hundred meters away counting cadence without being immediately apparent.

  Behave naturally. Do not stare in all directions. Act like you're walking to the Mailbox Box to get the mail, which come to think of it you haven't done yet today. Natural to reach into pants pocket for mailbox key. Inspiration: pretend you can't find it. Slow, stop, turn back toward house, excuse to scrutinize everything to your left. Palm keys, remove them from pants pocket, pantomime finding them in jacket pocket—just in time to make it seem natural to convert a 180 turn into a 360, excuse to scrutinize everything to your right. Call me Chingachcook.

  No one immediately apparent. No official-looking vehicle visible. It is certainly possible to enter my property and find the house without using the driveway, but I did not believe any city men could or would do so in this rain without extensive preparation. If they were that good, we were screwed. I
continued walking up the driveway until I reached the road. No vehicles visible in either direction except Jesse's Echo on the right. A driveway was visible in either direction, and for all I knew squad cars or tanks could be parked fifty meters up either or both of them. The woods could be full of commandos. The rain made it easy to believe there were choppers somewhere nearby.

  The hell with it. I walked a few dozen steps back down the driveway, and gave the two-fingered stevedore's whistle my bus-driver father taught me, which can be heard in a hurricane or Manhattan rush hour. At once came the sounds of the front door being opened and closed firmly, and footsteps on my creaky porch, so I turned and finished walking to the mailbox. No mail. I walked back the few steps to Jesse's car and waited there. Externally it looked just like mine.

  Jesse and Nika appeared at the mouth of the driveway. I was standing beside the passenger side front door, but Nika walked past me and stood right beside me at the same door, until I got it, and moved to the back door. Okay . . .

  Inside, the Echo was quite different from mine. Clean, for a start. No inch-thick layer of forest detritus on the floors. No CDs or MP3 discs in either of the compartments to either side of the car stereo. No ice-scraper in the door boot. No smell of fine marijuana. Worse: it had been sprayed with fake new-car scent recently. It started more easily for Jesse than mine did for me, too, and I knew why: he was starting it correctly, by just turning the key. I cannot for the life of me seem to unlearn the habit of stamping on the accelerator once, first, to set the choke—which today is not only unnecessary but counterproductive. "Have you ever heard of starter fluid?" I asked my son out of curiosity.

  "For charcoal briquettes? I use propane. Someone please tell me where we're going."

  Nika turned in her seat so she could see both of us. "Russell, is there a place on the island we can use as a base for a day or two while we take turns mounting watch to see who shows up here to get his bug back?"

  I thought hard. Or tried to. "Yes, but what's your job situation?"

  "Shit." She bit her lip. "I have to get back and book off at 6:00. But I can be back again by, say, 8:00—"

  "You'll never make the 7:00 ferry from downtown," I said with certainty. "You'll have to wait for the 8:30, and be back here about 9:15 at the earliest. Just as the last ferry back to the mainland is leaving: you'll be staying the night."

  She nodded. "Okay. But after that I have four free days."

  Jesse said, "It sounded like you just said you have four days off."

  "I do. VPD officers all work four days off, four days on, and today is Day Four for me."

  "Sweet."

  She shrugged. "Uniform officers work eleven-hour shifts. Investigative section can run longer. We need a longer weekend than most."

  "And they shoot about five percent as many people each year as NYPD," I put in. "Even though the GVRD has about a third of New York's population."

  Jesse was scowling, but not from the implied insult to his beloved Big Apple. "I hate this plan. Dad, what other ways are there to get to the mainland, other than ferry? Could we rent a boat? Borrow one? Steal one?"

  "What's your thought?"

  "Where is Mr. X?"

  I spread my hands. "Maybe on his way here right now."

  "Exactly. We don't know. What we're fairly sure of is that he is not around now, because he couldn't have heard us discussing coming up the driveway but he wasn't here when we did. Even a man unfamiliar with the island should've found this place by now, with GPS. If he hasn't come here yet—why would he?"

  "The rain cutting off his audio could have just made him decide to close in." It doesn't take any effort to argue with my son; I could do it in my sleep.

  "Only if he was trying to follow the conversation," Nika said. "And if he was, he'd have closed in earlier, when that tape started to repeat. He'd be here by now."

  Two against one. "Okay, fine," I said. "Where are you going with this, Jesse?"

  "If he's not here or on the way here, where is he?"

  "Oh." The penny dropped. He was right. "Very close to the ferry."

  "You think?" Nika said. "Wouldn't he stand out?"

  "He stands out less there than anywhere else," I told her.

  Jesse nodded. "He draws minimal attention, and we can't get on the ferry without him seeing us."

  "I can disguise—" Nika began.

  "Are you confident you can fool a professional?" Jesse interrupted. "A ferry line is a slow conveyor belt. He could have a camera and face-recognition software on his laptop."

  "In the rain? I think I could. Or one of you could drive me, while I lay on the floor in the back—"

  "—and blink up at him, standing there on the sidewalk as you go by at five per—"

  "Okay—the trunk, then, all right? Unless you think he'll have radar on his laptop." It wasn't just me: Nika was picking up the knack of arguing with him, too.

  "I don't know what he's got," Jesse insisted, "except for a bug so expensive, assuming the worst is not a bad policy. What I do know is, when all the cows line up and start moving forward slowly, you don't want to be there."

  She rummaged for a comeback, and finally sighed. "I know what a choke-point is. Okay. When you're right, you're right." Damn. Agreeing with him. I'd never tried that. She turned to me. "Well? What have you got?"

  A splitting headache. "I can get us a couple of boats."

  "Why two?"

  "You and Jesse need to get to the mainland before six. I need to get somewhere else fast."

  "Why both of us?" Jesse asked.

  "Because you're not welcome where I'm going."

  "I shouldn't go anywhere," Jesse said. "I stay here and surveil this place. If someone does come, we have to be watching: it may be our only chance to learn anything."

  "Don't be silly, Son," I said. "You're a stranger here."

  "Which makes him the only one of us Mr. X can't know anything about," Nika said. Arguing with me came naturally to her.

  Jesse nodded eagerly. "I haven't even used my credit card since I left New York, Dad. My car was pre-rented, and the company paid for it. Unless he checked every airline flight for the last few days to see if by any chance any of your relatives is in town, I'm invisible. Would any of your immediate neighbors put me up for a night without asking too many questions?"

  In spite of myself I saw where he was going. "Doug's barn is close to the driveway, and it's warm and dry inside. He won't mind, he's off shooting Harrison Ford."

  "Beg pardon?"

  "He's a cinematographer. Ford's in town this week."

  "I'll see if he left an infrared camera behind."

  "Don't take any chances," I said, at the same instant that Nika said "Don't get near this guy." Our combined volume, in a tiny car called Echo, was enough to make all of us jump.

  "I won't," Jesse assured us both, suppressing a natural impulse to smile in order to show us how serious he was. "Where is this barn?"

  Reluctantly I pointed behind us. "The driveway just before mine on the same side."

  "Even better," he said. "He has to go past me to reach your driveway; I'll definitely hear him."

  "And you'll be approaching on the opposite side of Russell's house from him," Nika said. "Time's short. Let's go."

  They both opened their doors and got out. Only Nika got back in, on the driver's side this time. Jesse was already on his way in the rain. She buckled up.

  "Wait—" I began.

  "Wish I could," she said, and put it in drive. We turned around in old Milt's driveway, and I just had time to roll down my window and call, "Be careful, Jesse," before we were by him. I wished I'd had the hairs to add, "I love you." I turned to see him out the rear window, and he was gone. It was unsettling, but impressive.

  6.

  I told myself he'd be fine. The barn would be unlocked because it was on Heron Island. Even if a neighbor happened to see him, he'd think nothing of it because this was Heron Island. It wasn't freezing. Jesse was smart enough to keep his he
ad down. He seemed to know about high-tech surveillance stuff—again, unsettling but impressive. After a while, I turned around and faced forward again.

  A five-minute drive will take you to anywhere on the island that isn't closer. The one I directed Nika on now took us to the home of The Young Salt, as I usually insisted on calling him. Keith Salt's father Sam had definitely been The Old Salt until his recent death, and Keith has managed to inherit both his love of the sea and his seamanship without also acquiring the old man's sour personality, his deeply pessimistic conservatism, or his allergy to pleasure. Keith and his wife Lina live in a beautiful house of their own right down on the water, with a small dock for their boat, which they call the Asclepeadean and everybody else on the island calls the Encyclopedia. She's a 27-foot Erickson sloop, if that conveys anything to you—to me it sounds like a kind of fuzzy bug. As we parked in their turnaround and got out, I hoped they were both home. If so, there was no question they'd both agree to be Samaritans on a rainy night with a minimum of questions, whether they were happy about it or not, because it was Heron Island. If you want to live in a place where you can depend on others, live where they all have to depend on you too. Then don't fuck up.

  Lina had the door open by the time we reached it, having heard us arrive. I waved Nika in ahead of me and followed on her heels. A huge amount of white noise went away when the door shut, as if a poorly tuned radio station had suddenly been dialed in properly. (If you're old enough to remember when radio stations could be tuned poorly. Back in ancient times, when "sky the color of TV tuned to a dead channel" did not mean "blue sky.")

  "Hi, Russell," Lina said as we were dealing with wet things in the alcove. "Who's your friend?"

  "Lina, this is Nika," I said. "AKA Constable Nika Mand—I do beg your pardon, Detective Constable Nika Mandiç, Vancouver Police. I forgot the terminology's been changed."

  "Hello, Mrs. Salt," Nika said.

  "Lina. Out of the bag already, at your age, huh?" Lina said. "Way to go, hon."

  Nika looked at her with more respect. "Thanks. I got lucky. Sorry to crash in on you without phoning like this, but our hand was forced."