by Joe Nelms
How is it possible that he was missing his unemployed, cuckolded, guy-in-a-chicken-suit days? This was the worst vine ever.
And where was Yo? If anyone could give him advice on disappearing, Yo could. Maybe they would go together. Ride off into the sunset, never to be heard from again. Like Butch and Sundance. Or Thelma and Louise. Or that robot from Iron Giant and the Great Pumpkin. Brad’s analogies became more and more disjointed as he drifted off to sleep, overwhelmed by the day.
Malcolm’s Sordid Past
A bit about Malcolm’s history with women: He had never had sex with any of them. Never with a date. Not with a one night stand. No vacation tryst. Nothing.
There had been no wild nights out with the boys. No one had ever set him up with their loose cousin. Even during the post-birth-control-pill/pre-AIDS period of his high school and college days, he couldn’t get the job done thanks to eight years of crippling shyness.
His romantic backstory included a total of seventy-four first dates. This evidence is presented only to validate the effort he had put forth. It wasn’t that he didn’t like women. He did. In fact, he had had the nerve to ask well over a hundred women to join him for a drink after work or perhaps a night of dinner and dancing. Seventy-four had accepted.
None of the encounters had amounted to anything of value and certainly none had ever begged for an encore presentation, although there had been a few sympathy second dates. There had been girls he had liked. And presumably some who had liked him. But Malcolm had simply not run into the right girl at the right time in his forty-one dating years. Yes, he had ridiculously high standards. No, he had not compromised those criteria as time had marched cruelly forward.
But he kept trying. Naturally, it took a tremendous amount of time before he would broach the subject of dinner or even coffee with a woman. He had to think things over first, consider the smartest plan of attack. Occasionally he would run a background check. He was the opposite of spontaneous and that had worked out to about one point eight dates a year. For a man as secretly passionate as he was, it was maddening. But for a man as patient, disciplined, and scrupulous as Malcolm, it was necessary.
Of course he had never bothered with prostitutes, believing that was the sport of a lower class and wouldn’t put him in the best light once he did settle down with the woman he was sure to fall in love with. Besides, most whores didn’t have the kind of time it would have taken Malcolm to answer the question, “What are you looking for tonight?”
And that was why Malcolm Middleton was still a virgin.
He knew the mechanics of sex and presumed himself to be a natural at the act of intercourse. He had seen a few racy French movies and had accidentally-on-purpose clicked onto a couple of off-color websites when his mother went to bed early. But that was the extent of his experience with seeing a naked woman in the same room.
He had high hopes for Lola. She was an entirely different venture for him. She had asked Malcolm out. He was positive there was a meaningful connection. They had already successfully completed a second date that he was sure had gone swimmingly, and he was planning on asking for a third. A third!
He had let a little time pass since they last met so as to not look too virgin-y, but he felt in his heart that finally the time was right. He picked up the phone, called Lola, and asked for the very first third date of his life.
She said yes before he finished the question.
The Latest News
Brad woke up on Gertrude Abernathy’s couch four hours after he sat down on it. It was almost eleven and Yo still hadn’t shown up. Brad did not have a good feeling about this. Or maybe he was super hungry from not eating all day. He wondered if Yo kept any food in his fridge.
He did. Brad whipped up a sandwich and popped open a beer to help with stress management. He sat back down on the couch and turned on the television.
As he flipped through the channels, the reality of the situation started to sink in. Brad was in big trouble. His bodyguard had been killed. Very bad people still wanted him dead. Someone in the government he had trusted with his life had leaked enough information that he had been found. And it was all nowhere near over.
He had almost no money. His car was rented on a card that would no doubt be either canceled in the next few days or used to track his whereabouts and, either way, someone was probably scouring the streets for his license plate number right now. He was a fugitive, and he wasn’t guilty of anything besides straying from a poorly written creative brief.
The local news came on and cleared a few details up. A very concerned reporter described a bloody shootout at an office park Brad was familiar with. A promising young copywriter had been killed along with an unidentified man. Police didn’t have any suspects, but they were looking to question one Alan Silver. In other news, a fire burned down a house in a neighborhood Brad had recently visited. The house was a total loss and there was one fatality. A man about Brad’s age had been killed in the blaze. Firefighters were assuming the dead man was one of the residents, and were still trying to determine the cause. A neighbor commented that the dead man had always been the silent type and she hoped his boyfriend was all right. Up next, the newscasters promised some super-helpful diet tips for eating healthy in Chinese restaurants.
Yo was dead.
Brad realized Sal’s first stop wasn’t the office. It was his house. He had found Yo there, probably playing video games, and killed him. Yo probably thought Sal was a member of some elite hit squad commissioned by a shadow government his conspiracy theories were so fond of. Chances were, his last words were “I fucking knew it.” Brad took some comfort in the fact that Yo died basking in the warm glow of self-validation.
Brad was alone.
This would have been an awesome time to get some advice from someone who knew something about situations like this, but anyone who could advise him had recently passed away or was part of the organization that revealed his location. So he would have to figure something else out. On his own.
At least when he lost his job at Overthink, he still had Gracie. And when he lost her, he had the program. And when he lost Stump, he still had Yo. But now?
No vines. Nothing.
Brad was all by his lonesome. And not in the fun, Wander-the-Earth-Like-in-Kung Fu kind of way. Not in the Boy-It’s-Lonely-Being-the-World’s-Most-Handsome-Man way. Alone in a The-Hounds-of-Zaroff way. Yes, Brad was going to have to earn his Save Your Own Ass merit badge tonight.
Compounding the issue was that, aside from a goldfish and some cherished sitcoms, Brad had never before faced the death of a loved one. Seeing a human friend killed in front of his very eyes had shocked him to his core. But as the reality of the situation settled in on him, what struck him like a Bob Sapp nutpunch was how close he had become to both Stump and Yo without even realizing it. As different as the two friendships were, they were both based on the most honest interactions Brad had ever had. Stump and Yo really knew him. And they liked him. They had inadvertently become his best friends and now they were gone.
When he really thought about it, it wasn’t the living alone part that scared him. It was the dying alone part. There was the distinct possibility that Brad would end up as an anonymous pile of ashes whose only eulogy would be his butchers’ debate over which fast food drive-through they would stop by once Brad’s remains had been consumed by an industrial furnace.
Was this it? Would his only real contributions to the world be a few minutes of commercials, a bit of brief hope for an ambitious FBI agent, and some hardly needed inspiration for frat boys to binge drink? Probably.
Brad stopped himself. This momentary sigh of self-awareness was as philosophical as he would allow himself to become. Self-improvement had a time and a place. Currently, there was the matter of self-preservation to be considered. Regardless of how well attended his funeral would be, he needed to do something immediately to forestall that event. If he could just get out of the city and settle down into a simple blind panic, he would consi
der that a good start.
Brad took inventory of his current assets. Half a sandwich. Sal’s gun. Sixty-three dollars in cash. His shoes were in pretty good shape. He looked around Yo’s tiny room for anything that might be useful. He dug around under the mattress just in case Yo’s reference to his retirement fund wasn’t a figure of speech. There was nothing, of course. Yo was too smart for that. Brad assumed that cash was quietly hidden in the Caymans and not terribly accessible to him at this hour. Okay, what else? Books? Nope. Yo’s stash of Purple Haze marijuana and petty cash to buy more. Yes. Pornographic DVDs. Maybe. Car keys. Ah-ha.
On a hook by the door hung a set of car keys. Could these be an extra set of tow truck keys? The key ring was emblazoned with a vintage Buick logo. Does Buick even make a tow truck? Even Yo’s keys were in disguise.
Yo’s truck. Cops never stopped him, and he made good cash by shaking down innocent drivers. Perfect for Brad’s new life on the run. Or not.
Yo would have driven his truck to Brad’s house. It should still be there sitting in front of the charred remains of Brad’s fake life. Could Brad sneak back to his house on foot and make off with Yo’s truck? Who would look for a runaway art director in a tow truck?
Brad pulled the window treatments back a millimeter or two. The alley behind the Abernathy estate was fairly well lit, thanks to its proximity to the side street. As far as Brad could tell, there was no Mafia hit squad lurking outside.
He slipped the keys off the hook, cracked the door open quietly, and slipped out. As he quickly tiptoed down the stairs, he noticed something very important. No gunshots. So far, so good. Just another forty years of this and he was set.
He hid in the shadows of the house and took a good look around at the terrain he was about to head out over. Late-night suburbia. He figured the distance to his french-fried house was about three miles as the crow flies, or four and a half as the marked-for-death witness runs. Was this his best plan? Should he instead stick with his rental car until he hit the Mexican border, walk into Nogales, and hope he picked up the language? That was only supposed to take two weeks if you really immersed yourself, right? And his sixty-three dollars would go much further there. Or he could grab the tow truck, head for Canada, and grow a mustache. How hard could passing for Canadian be? He just had to act unambitious and gullible. Boom, Canadian. It was nice to have options.
Brad snuck along the side of the house to avoid appearing in any type of light until the last possible moment. The detached garage had a long set of shadows that would take him right out to the street. He crept along the darkest parts, plastering himself to the wall, until he passed a window.
Weh-heh-hell. What was this?
Inside the garage was a car. A big, boss muscle car. No way the real Getrude Abernathy spent her weekends working on that. Brad seriously doubted she drove this bad boy to her weekly bridge game. He snuck back to the door at the front of the building. It was locked, but he checked one of the keys on the chain and it slid right in, unlocking the door as if it were expecting him. Brad slipped into the garage and looked at the car. It was a Buick.
1970 is considered by many in the car world to be the year of the American muscle car. It was also the year that Buick released the GSX, but only six hundred seventy-eight of them.
Brad didn’t realize it as he drooled and prayed to sweet baby Jeebus that one of the keys he was holding fit the car he was looking at, but he was standing before a meticulously refurbished GSX, complete with functional scoops, front and rear spoilers, color-coordinated headlamp bezels, TH400 turbo transmission with a Hurst shifter, power disc brakes, a Rally Ride Control package (featuring rear stabilizer bar, front and rear firm ride springs, and rear lower control arm assembly), and the eight-track player that the previous owner had used to wear out Zeppelin’s fourth album. It was a spectacular feat to have re-created such a monster of a car to this level of perfection, and it had taken Yo the better part of two years to do so. Sold on the open market, this masterpiece could fetch well over one hundred thirty thousand dollars. But this was all lost on Brad.
As far as he was concerned, it was what looked like a fast car that no one would associate with him. And that made it beautiful for reasons most car enthusiasts never consider when judging refurbished 1970 muscle cars.
He slid into the driver’s seat and tried the key. VROOOOOMMM. The powerful engine fired up, so smooth. The gas tank was full. Even the air freshener had recently been replaced. He turned the car off and checked the glove compartment for a registration. The car had been registered three months earlier to one Gertrude Abernathy. All part of Yo’s planned anonymity. Brad imagined Gertrude wouldn’t mind if he took it out for a spin.
Six hours later, the sun began its predictable rise in front of Brad as he motored along Interstate 10, trying to look as inconspicuous as he could in a pristine, Saturn-Yellow GSX. He had made it past El Paso and still had no plan as to what he intended to do or where he was going to end up.
Canada was out. Too cold. Mexico was out. Too exotic. Like so many American desperados before him, he was headed in the general direction of Florida. If he was going to get hunted and killed like an animal, perhaps he could get some snorkeling in first. It beat waiting for death in some landlocked redneck town. Hopefully.
His six hours on the road had given him time to think through what had happened pretty thoroughly, and to make some big decisions regarding the rest of his life. So far, he had figured out that he was going to get as far away from Stump and Yo’s murders as he could, he was going live a quiet life under an assumed name he had not decided on yet, and he should have bought a muscle car a long time ago. Beyond that he was wide open and fascinated by the idea that the future was entirely in his hands.
The adrenaline he had been overflowing with earlier in his escape had begun to subside, and he started to realize just how exhausted he was. Coffee and beef jerky could only keep a man going so long. Brad pulled into a truck-stop parking lot and eased the GSX to a stop between two eighteen-wheelers. He turned it off, climbed into the back seat, and fell fast asleep.
Brittany’s Pickle
No wonder Stump didn’t check in last night. They were supposed to discuss what he had found while studying Brad’s video testimony. That’s what Stump had thought anyway. Brittany had finally managed to squeeze into her skirt and bull-effing-shit if she was going to the Justice Department and tell them Brad was changing his story now. There was too much at stake and she was totally ready. Mostly ready. Jarvis hadn’t really gotten much further and all of her other witnesses had been killed. But as long as she had Brad testifying, she was fine.
But Brittany had gotten a call first thing this morning from the Tucson police department telling her about the double murder at Assure and the fire at Brad’s house.
“And you’re sure the body at the house is Brad Fingerman?”
“We’re not aware of a Brad Fingerman, Ms. Marinakos. Is this someone we should be considering a person of interest in this investigation?”
“No, no! Please, don’t.”
Brittany thanked the Tucson officer and excused herself from the call without using the word “Fingerman” again.
Dammit. Brad was dead. She had kind of liked him. He was doofy and a terrible liar, but Brad was a nice guy and definitely deserved better than dying under an assumed name in Tucson. Poor thing.
Speaking of which. Now what?
The trial was in twenty-four days and she had no witnesses left. Give up? Fat chance. Move forward with only Brad’s video testimony? Would Justice go with that? It was such a long shot, but Frank Fortunato was a big catch. To pull out now after all the press would be nothing short of embarrassment. And it’s not like any new evidence was going to come along.
It was settled, then. If they were going to get Frank for Carmine’s murder, they would have to do it with what they had. Fine. She decided to fight with Brad’s video testimony, her agents’ affidavits, and her own testimony serving as circumstantia
l evidence. Brittany was on a mission and even something as crippling as Brad getting himself killed wasn’t going to stop her. It was what reality show contestants refer to as “time to step up.”
There was still a job to be done here. Frank would go down. Brad would be avenged. That G.D. skirt would be worn on national television.
And right then, Jarvis called.
Happy Frank
It didn’t take long for the news to work its way back to Frank. Prison gossip is a very efficient machine. He was thrilled his plan had worked and even shrugged off the lack of video documentation. The important thing was that he was going to get off and enjoy the remaining years of his life, God willing, in his own home, with his friends and family and a few girlfriends.
When Frank congratulated Mitchell the Aryan on a job well done, it sort of looked like Mitchell was surprised. Maybe he wasn’t used to gratitude. Maybe appreciation was considered a sign of weakness in here. Whatever. That no-good rat was dead along with all the other scumbag agents. Burned to death! Totally untraceable to Frank. That’s what mattered.
He had to pay a little extra since the assassin had died in the process, but in Frank’s mind it was a minor penance. He told Mitchell to put it on his bill.
Back with The Boys, Frank told Pete the Phone to have Moldy Tony get the word out that everybody, everybody including Sal, needed to hit the mattresses until after the trial. He wanted to make sure nothing screwed this up now that it was practically a done deal.
He also had Johnny Pancakes make arrangements to anonymously send Brittany a dozen roses along with a Sorry for your loss card. God, he was in a good mood.