by Joe Nelms
Brad’s Blowout
Brad was awakened late in the afternoon by the honking of a trucker angry at him for taking up a primo eighteen-wheeler parking spot with the GSX. It took a few moments for him to shake off the confusion of where he was and why he was sleeping in his clothes in the back seat of someone else’s car. He hoped it was some sort of buddy road trip that involved a sorority, but as the cobwebs cleared, he remembered the whole murder-witness-on-the-run-from-bloodthirsty-killers thing.
Brad looked around to find himself still sitting in the rest stop parking lot, no longer protected by the trucks he had hidden between this morning. His bright yellow car was sitting out in plain sight, blocking valuable truck parking.
He cranked down his window to hear the driver behind him.
“This is for trucks only, asshole.”
“Right, sorry.”
Inside the truck stop, Brad gnawed on another piece of jerky and chased it with a sip of maybe the worst coffee of his life. The question was how much of his cash should be allotted for food. The more he ate, the less he had to spend on gas and chances were when he ran out of gas money, he was staying wherever he was. For a brief moment, as he stared at the moon pies on the counter next to the cash register, he thought maybe he could trade Sal’s gun for some snacks. This was Texas, after all. They loved guns here. But then, based on his current status of Guy Running For His Life, he decided against it and erred on the side of spending his cash on gas in the hopes of coasting into Florida on fumes. He did allow himself one indulgent purchase. A prepaid cell phone.
When you called Owen’s home and he wasn’t there, the outgoing message played a recording of a high-as-a-kite Owen saying, “Yoooooou know what to do . . .” followed by a minute and a half of Owen channel surfing before saying, “Is this still on—(BEEP).”
Brad called hoping to talk to the one person in the world he knew he could still trust. But he got the machine instead. He didn’t leave a message because it wouldn’t have helped anything to drop his problems on Owen. So that left Brittany.
Despite the fact that someone in her agency had ratted him out to Frank, Brad still felt like he could maybe/kind of trust Brittany. And he really needed to talk to someone. If nothing else, to get the truth off his chest. It’s not like he was going to testify in Frank’s trial now. Maybe it would help if he had one less burden to carry around. Maybe if he came clean with Brittany, they could start fresh and she could wire him fifty dollars or call a cousin who lived in Orlando so Brad could crash on their couch instead of at another truck stop or Walmart parking lot.
Brittany sat on the edge of the couch in Jarvis’s bay, once more watching him peck away at her surveillance video. He had come up with something interesting in the footage after Brad bent down. Brad had sneezed. She didn’t know what to make of this detail, but wondered if it wasn’t significant. He had never mentioned the sneeze before and according to her calculations based on the timing of the shots, the sneeze had to happen just before Carmine was shot. What did that mean? How did it affect the story Brad would have told if he weren’t blackened Fingerman right now? This would have been so great to have had two weeks ago.
As Jarvis fiddled and tweaked, Brittany distracted herself with a phone call from her grandmother. Listening to her blather on about her next date was excruciating, but would hopefully one day get Brittany into heaven.
Brittany almost ignored the call on her other line when she didn’t recognize the number. Not that she didn’t want an excuse to get rid of her grandmother. The details of senior-citizen Brazilian waxing were way beyond the point of too much information. Lola was planning “something big” for her new boyfriend, and felt like some girl talk with her granddaughter. How could this help anyone? As if having Brittany’s best marshal killed and her star witness burned to a crisp weren’t bad enough, Lola started in on how some overly hot wax gave her a blister that could ruin her whole evening. Brittany shivered in disgust, interrupted, and clicked over.
“Hello, Brittany. It’s me, Brad Pitt.
When she heard Brad’s voice, she almost made in her pants.
“Where are you? I’ll send marshals.”
“I can’t tell you where I am. And I don’t want any marshals.”
“Look, Brad, I know you’re scared, but we can protect you.”
“Uh, no, I think we tried that.”
Brittany bit her lip, hoping some intense pain would help her think. What could she possibly offer Brad to save the trial of the century and, let’s face it, her television career?
“I’ll come get you myself.”
“Look, I just called to talk. I could only afford like four minutes on this thing.”
“Brad, I really need your testimony. All my other witnesses are dead.”
Oops. Maybe she should have bitten a little harder.
“Funny you mention that. I have something I have to tell you. You know, about being a witness.”
“That’s great. Let us come pick you up.”
“I didn’t—”
“Brad, if you don’t show up at the courthouse in three weeks, my case gets thrown out and I lose everything. I’ve worked too hard on this to lose it now. It’s my whole career.”
There it was. She laid it all out. Almost. “Oh, and Frank will get off. Don’t forget, Frank will get off.”
Brad drove in silence for a moment. He really felt bad destroying Brittany’s career, but there was the gaggle of Mafia trigger men to consider.
“I just called to tell you—”
BOOM!
Brad dropped the phone and scrunched down for cover. The car began to swerve violently and he struggled to maintain control.
Holy Christ, they found me. That trucker must have sold me out. I hate truckers!
It took a few moments before he realized he was not, in fact, a victim of trucker backstabbing, but instead, a flat tire.
“Brad? Brad, what happened? Brad, Jesus, are you all right?”
He picked his phone up and hit the Off button. Obviously, he was not meant to confess to Brittany just yet.
Brittany barked into her phone a few more times, but got no response. The last thing she had heard was a loud noise (gunshot?), a bunch of commotion, and then silence.
Really? He’s killed and then he’s alive and then he’s killed again? How is that fair?
She tried calling his number back, but guessed there wouldn’t be an answer. She was right.
Brad glided the car to a stop and sat in silence. And then he cried. He cried for being alone and helpless and having no idea what to do and for not just telling Brittany he hadn’t seen anything in the first place and for not knowing if he was going to have to live like a scaredy-cat baby the rest of his life or even if he was going to have a rest of his life. And then he got mad at himself for crying. If the truckers hadn’t turned him in before, they definitely would if they saw him like this.
Brad pulled himself together. Enough already. If this was to be his life, then he needed to accept that. So what if two months ago he was married in Manhattan with a great new promotion and one of the coolest jobs of anyone in his chosen profession. That was over. Someone had different plans for him. It was time to nut up and figure out his next step. Forget New York. Forget advertising. Forget his old life. There was no sense in trying to re-create what was gone. There were bigger fish to fry. He was now a nobody with nothing and nowhere to go. If he were ever to become a somebody with something and somewhere to go, he had to make something happen himself.
But first, he had to change the tire.
Brad popped the trunk and found it as tidy as the rest of the car. He pulled the pristine carpet up to find a full sized, Armor All-ed spare tire and jack. He moved the fireproof lockbox out of the way and started unscrewing the wing nut that held the tire in place.
Wait.
Why was there a fireproof lockbox in the trunk of Yo’s car? Brad pulled the box out and sat back down in the front seat with it. It was heavy.
And it was locked. Okay. So you’re a paranoid conspiracy theorist with something of value you need locked away. Where do you put the key?
If anything, Yo was a practical man. He wouldn’t have kept the key to this presumably valuable treasure trove in the same place as the lockbox. But if he kept the box in the car he maintained to perfection but never drove, the box was probably never touched either and meant to be used only when the car was used. Brad checked the key chain. There were a few smaller keys next to the ones for the garage, ignition, and trunk.
He tried the first. No match. He tried the second. Didn’t work. He tried the third. Click.
Brad opened the lockbox and looked inside to find the meticulously laid plans of Dr. Yo.
“Whoa.”
The game had changed dramatically once again, so he dialed up Owen’s number one more time in the hopes of getting some advice. He succeeded without even speaking to Owen. This time, when Owen’s answering machine told Brad he knew what to do, he hung up and did it.
Brad Fingerman Is Alive
“I want every available agent on this. I want his credit cards tracked. Both identities, real and program. Also check Stump’s cards just in case he’s using those. Check the hospitals. I want roadblocks and face checks and cavity searches at every bus stop, train station, and airport if we can get them. If he’s still alive, I want him.”
Brittany pulled every resource she could onto the case. As long as there was a glimmer of hope, she planned to use up whatever favors she had within the agency.
Two and a half weeks later, Brittany’s key witness was still missing. Brad had called from a disposable phone bought somewhere in West Texas. Local agents scoured the highway, found the phone where he had tossed it out his car window, and that was where the trail had ended. No more phone calls. No credit card purchases. No sightings. Nothing at all.
She never officially told the press that Brad was dead, so Brittany didn’t tell them he was possibly still alive.
She did call Justice and let them know the good news. They told her they were looking forward to meeting him and that things were going well with their preparation.
So, there was that.
Malcolm and Lola’s Third, Fourth, and Fifth Dates
Malcolm had been paid pretty well in his past life as an attorney in his dad’s firm. Babysitting money. Now, as a judge he made $169,300 a year. Which wasn’t great by local standards. Unless you still lived with your mother in the same rent-controlled apartment you grew up in before your parents divorced. Then it was pretty good.
Malcolm’s two-bedroom, one-bath, three-story walk-up was that mythical apartment every Manhattan resident keeps a secret eye out for, hoping against hope that one day a long-lost cousin, old friend, or father who abandoned them when they were six will ring up and casually mention that they are moving to the suburbs and ask if you’d like to hop onto their dirt cheap, state-enforced lease. It never happens.
What does happen in these situations is guys like Malcolm save the money they don’t spend on things like exorbitantly high Manhattan rents and mortgages for the bigger, more-impressive apartments they never moved into, dinners for the third and fourth dates they never had the nerve and/or inclination to ask for, starter wife engagement rings they never bought, exotic honeymoons they never went on, hefty private school and college tuitions for the children they never had, daughters’ weddings they never paid for, oh-you-really-shouldn’t-have anniversary presents they never bought, spontaneous all-inclusive vacations they never took, alimony for the divorce they never got, and oversized, second marriage, trophy-wife engagement rings they never even looked at. And they end up loaded.
Which is how he could afford to buy Lola such a nice tennis bracelet on their third date. He had never been so spontaneous, but there was something about this woman. Some weird electricity between them had altered his inner being, causing him to feel relatively swashbuckling. He found himself playing racquetball, sleeping naked, and considering R-rated movies. He was a new man.
Their fourth date had been dinner at Manhattan’s most expensive restaurant, prime seats at the opera, and a drink afterward. Lola had hinted strongly that she would like to go back to his place and kept humming the Brazilian national anthem. But Malcolm wasn’t quite ready to introduce her to his mother. She was probably already asleep anyway. So he politely declined and found Lola a cab.
Later, as he over-analyzed the evening, he realized the real reason she wanted to come home with him. In her usual turnaround of classic roles, Lola was invoking the third date rule. Technically, it was the fourth date, but it was obvious what was going on. It was time to get busy.
Looking back he saw that she had tried to invoke it on their third date as well. Wow. She must have really liked that tennis bracelet.
Malcolm made a life-altering decision. Their fifth date was coming up. He was going to have sex with Lola Marinakos.
Brad Is Back
Brad did eventually make it to Florida. The Keys, even. Down in the middle islands, he found a small, family-owned hotel that took cash and had parking in the back. He stayed in his room for most of the two weeks he spent there, ordering in from various restaurants around town and keeping to himself. He didn’t use a phone. He didn’t send an e-mail. He barely changed TV channels. Occasionally, when the loneliness was too much, he went to movies at the one theater in Marathon, getting there after the film started and leaving before it ended. Not that anyone in that sleepy town was looking for him. Like the rest of the Keys, Marathon was filled with people trying to escape their own past lives and worrying about someone else’s problems just took energy away from worrying about your own, so why hassle with it? And, same as the rest of the year in Marathon, not much happened while Brad was there.
By the time Frank’s trial was a few days away, Brad was rested and ready. Hiding out in the islands had given him plenty of time to reflect and plan, and he was quite sure of what he needed to do.
So he fired up Yo’s car and drove to New York.
The Morning After
Malcolm was awake before dawn, but he didn’t move a muscle. Hopefully, Mother would understand that he hadn’t called, as this was a bit of a special occasion.
It hadn’t been on the fifth date as he had planned, or even the sixth or seventh. But last night, number eight, Malcolm had finally mustered the gumption to release the hounds.
As the morning light began to creep in through Lola’s bedroom window, he allowed himself the luxury of rolling over to look at his conquest. He marveled at her as she slept on her side, facing away from him. The paper-thin skin of her back piling up as it cascaded down onto her mattress. The butterfly tattoo on her shoulder, crisp and flirty in her late twenties, now a faded blob of fuzzy color that looked more like a Rorschach test question. Her hair ratty and matted under her head. Her angled, snore-preventing pillow, stained with the previous evening’s make up. Lola farted in her sleep. Malcolm let the gravity of the situation sink in.
Last night had been spectacular. He had presented Lola with his latest purchase. A Birkin bag. He had read in one of the women’s magazines that they were quite popular, and after a considerable amount of trouble and expense, he had tracked one down. Lola had been duly impressed with his gift, and he could tell she was about to say something laced with innuendo as she leaned forward and smiled through the haze of her third martini.
“Ooh, I’m getting a little tipsy.”
“Shall I call you a cab?”
“Oh, I’m just saying I may have had a little too much to drink.”
She smiled a smile that might as well have had “H-I-N-T-H-I-N-T” written on her teeth and it meant that what came out of her mouth next would be unequivocally forward. Malcolm was having none of that. The night was his and things were going to happen on his terms. He seized the moment, grabbed her hands, and looked into her eyes.
“I’m tired of slow dancing, Lola. It’s time to mach schnell.”
He was pretty sure t
hat was a Jimmy Stewart line. He followed it up with one of his own.
“Let’s go back to your place.”
His arm was still a little sore from being yanked as she hopped up to leave. It was a bit of a blur, but Malcolm was pretty sure she had thrown a few hundreds on the table and told the waiter to keep it before dragging him out. That was fine. His shoulder would heal.
What was far more important was that he had finally inserted his penis into the vagina of a live and willing woman. The waiting and wondering of fifty-seven years was over.
Who’s gay now?
Boy, if this ever came up at work and he had the confidence to say anything and somebody cared to listen, would they be impressed.
He rolled back over onto his back and smiled.
“So this is love.”
Brad Turns Chicken
Thank God for Christian-radio talk shows. Rock music is fun to listen to and everybody loves to sing along to Motown, but for pure entertainment purposes nothing beats Christian talk shows on the radio. And, because it’s never too late to get the word of God out and dissect it fifty ways to Sunday, they played and replayed the worst of them on at least three AM stations in whatever areas Brad drove through.
How to choose Christian lingerie for married couples? What do we get to eat in heaven? What team would Jesus cheer for? There was no topic too great or too small for Bible-beating hosts who needed to kill an hour of sponsorless air time. Everyone that called in had an opinion they feverishly defended with scripture quotes, quasi-logical arguments, and general glossolalia before capitulating to whatever domineering host happened to be manning the mic. Trying to keep up with these nonsensical debates kept Brad from obsessing on how relentlessly boring his drive was and, more important, kept him from falling asleep at the wheel.