Metro

by Stephen Romano

  “Hey, girl. You missed a big one the other day.”

  “So did you.”

  “Yeah. I was wondering when I was gonna hear from you.”

  “Not if? Just when?”

  “It was inevitable, girl.”

  “It’s been on the news then? About the Kingdom?”

  “On every damn channel. And a few that don’t exist too. The cops think you’re probably dead in a ditch somewhere. Like all those other motherfuckers.”

  “The real cops?”

  “Shit, girl. You wanna tell me what happened?”

  “I can’t talk long. And the less you know the better. For now anyway. Can you bring us in?”

  “What, in the air?”

  “I need three plane tickets and ID.”

  “Dangerous. You got a car? You could just drive here. Do the cheap-motel tour.”

  “Can’t do that. Too many eyes on the road. It’s complicated. I need to get on a plane and be in Philly tomorrow. I need twenty-four-hour guard in one of your safe houses.”

  “Christ, girl. You’re asking a lot.”

  “I’ve got money. A huge score. This is big, Peanut. You have to bring us in.”

  “Okay, calm down. What kind of score?”

  “Just get us the tickets, okay? I’m really scared.”

  “What kind of score, Jollie?”

  “Millions. It’s millions. I have it stashed. Money and dope.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me? Is that what this is all about? Is that why all those people ended up dead at your house? A fucking drug deal?”

  “It’s complicated and big. I can’t explain it now. But I can take care of you if you help us. I need to get to a safe place and I need you to make it happen.”

  “Millions?”

  “Millions.”

  “Shit. You are one crazy bitch.”

  “Make it happen, Peanut. I’m serious.”

  “Okay. But can YOU make it happen?”

  “What’s that mean? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Do you even know what’s going on right now? We’re sitting inside a multilingual clusterfuck. You and your friends are officially missing persons. Your house is the scene of a mass murder and they’ve got the state police combing the whole county for whoever did it. That’s only gonna get worse in the next twenty-four hours. They’ll have yellow alerts up at the airport too. Major Big Brother action.”

  “So what?”

  “So I’m asking you a real important question: Can YOU make it happen? Because if you blow it at the metal detectors, all of us go up the creek. I can get the papers, but they’ll only fool the Feds at a glance. You gotta go in there like fuckin’ Baretta, baby. You gotta be super cool.”

  “I can do it.”

  “What about your friends?”

  “They’re dinged up pretty bad. It might raise suspicion.”

  “How bad?”

  “Bad.”

  “Then you gotta take the long way. The cheap-motel tour.”

  “And I’m telling you, Peanut, that can’t happen. I am running the fuck away from extremely connected, very high-tech people. They’d have any number of ways they could track us out of here, if we decided to spend three days driving in a car.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means just what I said. The airport is the only way out of this city. And if the above-radar cops think me and Andy are dead, or at least presumed dead, well, that gives us an edge of at least semi-invisibility. Even with the bandages on their faces.”

  “This is still freaky-risky shit you’re talking about.”

  “We live in a freaky-risky world, Peanut.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “I can’t tell you that . . . but I’ll tell you where to send the papers. Call me back when you have it all arranged. Do it right now.”

  “I’m on it. But I still have to ask the big question, Jollie.”

  “I told you, I can’t—”

  “I just wanna know if this is about the senator.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Jollie . . . you really haven’t heard, have you?”

  “I haven’t had access to . . . Peanut, what are you talking about?”

  “It’s bad, girl. We might all be in serious trouble by sunrise.”

  “Peanut . . .”

  “Senator Bob shot himself last night.”

  • • •

  Jollie hangs up a minute later, the shock wave hammering her hard.

  She can’t even remember much of anything Peanut said to her after the big question. Just remembers what he said about Bob. Found dead in his own car in a government parking lot, still clutching the .45 he used to end his own life, just one mile from the halls of justice.

  Christ.

  Who do you trust now? Who do you fucking trust?

  • • •

  Jollie thinks about the years at Wildcat River, how crazy and freak-flaggy they’ve always been. She thinks about organizing the filibuster and Peanut bragging on putting the senator in his pocket. How awesome it was all gonna be, jacking up those smug-ass Washington motherfuckers. And now she’s waiting by the phone.

  Think it through. Put it in perspective. Analyze what you know about the situation and use it to your advantage.

  She sees one possible version: The cleaning agents of METRO scanning and scouring all possible records at the Kingdom. Finding every bit of fact-checking and background on the senator she dug up. All her millions of words and databases, back there in her room—encrypted, sure, but not so hard for the right techies to crack. She sees them connecting the dots to Peanut’s people. She sees them working their way easy to the senator, who was still on TV spewing the Wildcat manifesto when the shit came down in the House of JAM. They would have grabbed him as soon as he left the building. Stuck him in one of those deep dark holes. Made him talk about whatever it was they thought he might be up to. Because it all must mean something, right?

  They could have done it simple, then dumped his body in a car and made it look like a suicide. Men like Darian Stanwell could have executed that. It wouldn’t even be a hard day at the office.

  But then . . . why isn’t Peanut dead too?

  Or is Peanut still what he says he is?

  Another possibility is that it’s all some giant freaky coincidence—that the senator was headed for a flameout and this just happened to be the moment when it all went down. She laughs at herself for even thinking that, for being so incredibly, mind-fuckingly naive. But it is a possibility. He really might have whacked himself. His career was sure as hell over. Was that his exit plan? Blow the whistle and pop himself in the parking lot? Goddamn.

  Just God fucking DAMN.

  • • •

  She waits by the phone for nearly a half-hour.

  The street is almost empty in front of the gas station. This intersection is busy as hell during the day. Only a few early birds out now. A bum stumbles by and asks for a quarter. Jollie pretends to ignore him and he weaves away. She looks at the stoplights cycling at the intersection—sees the little black globes whirring silently in their perches.

  Say cheese, you dumb fucking bitch.

  She is about to walk away when she gets the call back. It’s good news. But the eye in the sky still sees all.

  • • •

  They’re booked on the red-eye to Philly in forty-eight hours. A FedEx letter will arrive at the front desk of the downtown Hilton in twenty-four with their new papers. The letter will be addressed to a ghost named Catherine Tanner—with a room booked, of course. Catherine can check in for the night and get her shit together, along with her husband, Joe Tanner (Mark), and traveling companion Rand Nichols (Andy). That’s what the record will show. Philly ID cards for the three of them will be
their only backup, but it’s the best Peanut’s people can do on short notice. The fake names are ridiculous, of course, and she asks if his guys are good at what they do about a second before he laughs and says Are you kidding me, girl? The tickets will match spot-on with the cards they hand the transit cops, guaranteed. Just don’t do anything dumb at the metal detectors.

  That scares the hell out of her.

  He asks her again if what she said was true—about the money and the dope.

  She says it’s true.

  He asks again if she can do it—if she can be fuckin’ Baretta at the checkpoints. And she realizes something really comforting when he says that for the second time. Realizes that he’s quoting Mister Orange from Reservoir Dogs. That scene where Tim Roth looked himself in the mirror and said he wasn’t gonna get hurt, and that the bad guys believed every word he said because he was super cool. It makes her smile. She wonders why she never noticed before. She holds on to that feeling of comfort like a desperate child. Like she’s still the Princess of the Kingdom.

  She tells herself that this will work. The package will buy their freedom. Peanut will have the right connections. He’s friends with scary people who can move the shit. He’s the man in Philly, and she’s his best girl and they have to come in now because it’s life-and-death multilingual serious.

  He tells her to stay cool.

  The FedEx is on the way, and so is the jet. Just be at the Austin-Bergstrom airport in forty-eight hours.

  • • •

  She hangs up and stands there. Thinks about what she’ll say to Peanut Williams when she shows him six million dollars in pure dope plus a mountain of cash. Thinks again about the senator, in a morgue somewhere, his blood hardly cold. Thinks about the people hunting her.

  Thinks about the camera she’s standing in front of right now.

  • • •

  Andy is still passed out on the queen-size bed, still doped up from Darian Stanwell’s groovy drugs. Mark is sitting in the kid’s chair again. She leans over Andy and whispers that she loves him, running her hand across his thick cowlick, smiling like a mom.

  She tells him they are going away soon, that they’ll be safe. Kisses his forehead—the unbandaged part, which is still unburned and not bloody. There will be time to fix the rest. He just smiles and lies there, zonked. Not even a weak booyah for old time’s sake. The flight forward will be dark and uncertain.

  Mark watches her love him, with very sad eyes.

  Jollie can hardly look at him now.

  • • •

  The next day, they move to a fleabag off South Lamar. The Happy Texan Motor Lodge—free cable/free ice! A smaller sign by the main office actually proclaims in large green letters—super cheap rates! less expensive than apartments!

  The man who takes Jollie’s money is half-asleep. The room smells like rat turds and turpentine. The water is brown and the TV was manufactured in 1993, but it does have free cable, as advertised. There’s a phone too. Good luck getting an outside line on the fucking thing. Twin beds this time, both queens. CNN is still talking about the shocking suicide death of Senator Bob Wilson. Andy is still in a semi-coma.

  Mark paces in front of the TV, nervous as hell.

  • • •

  Senator Bob’s death is not being treated like anything but what it appears to be. Nobody is screaming assassination. The family is shocked, the nation is grieving. The funeral will be held tomorrow, with full military service. It all looks eerily just like this sort of thing is supposed to, and Mark is almost certain that was the whole plan, but he can’t figure out how it ties in with anything or what it has to do with him, or Darian, or anything METRO was up to before the shit hit the fan back at the Kingdom.

  Why would they kill Bob?

  What would they gain?

  He just can’t understand it.

  • • •

  Jollie says she wants to go out for supplies in the afternoon—clean clothes, food, some other things they will need to make it out of the city. Mark doesn’t want to let her go by herself, but she doesn’t want to leave Andy alone either. So they all go together. Andy slumps in the backseat of the Spider. Mark drives the car. The package is in the trunk. Jollie feels exposed in broad daylight. They hit a costume shop on Congress, a Walgreens six blocks from that, and a Goodwill and a fast-food drive-thru on the way back to the fleabag.

  It’s almost five in the afternoon when they unlock the door.

  Jollie expects someone to be waiting for them, sitting at the edge of the bed with a shotgun, aimed for the kill.

  But no.

  They all eat and rest. Everyone gets a new change of clothes. Mark even gets a new pair of cargo pants, with plenty of pockets. Not shorts this time—pants. Like he’s all grown up now. His neck still feels really weird. He chews two more Dilaudids.

  Jollie gets a new button-up blouse—a pink one, very cute—and new jeans that barely fit over her hips. Sneakers that go with the pants. Mark can’t help but notice how womanly she looks in clothes like that—how the collar frames her neck and peeks her large breasts just right. Andy slips on a bowling shirt and baggy corduroys. He looks like the same old kid, only with lots of white bandages on his face. And Jollie watches over Andy, as he passes out one more time and snores in drugged-out oblivion. Jollie finds some Norco in Darian’s drug stash—they threw everything he had in a big plastic bag—and downs two of them to calm her nerves.

  She doesn’t want to look at Mark anymore.

  She doesn’t want to feel anything.

  CNN is still telling lies about Senator Bob.

  Maybe.

  • • •

  At twelve midnight, she turns off the TV and finally looks at Mark again. He’s slumped against the headboard of his own queen-size bed, alone. Jollie lies next to Andy, who snores in oblivion.

  “It’s just now November eleventh,” Jollie says. “Happy almost-birthday.”

  “What are the odds?”

  “It’s all pretty cosmic, Mark. I think it probably means something. We’ll be getting on that plane tomorrow at one in the morning, an hour into November twelfth.”

  “Maybe it’s cosmic, maybe it isn’t. I wasn’t really born on that day. It’s just the day he assigned me. Darian’s birthday.”

  “Wouldn’t it be funny if you actually were born then?”

  “Hilarious.”

  “Mark . . . I want you to make me a promise.”

  “I’ll promise you anything.”

  “I know you will. But I also want you to keep the promise. Stuff is going down in the world. Big stuff. All this business with Senator Bob, God knows what else. I want you to stand by me from now on. I need you to do that. Do you think you can?”

  “You want to expose METRO, don’t you? With you and your band of merry men?”

  “We have to, Mark.”

  “You think it’s the only way I can repent or whatever?”

  “Maybe. But this is so much bigger than us. Look at what they can do, just because they think they can get away with it. Those men came into my home and found out I was behind that man’s filibuster, and then they went and killed him—maybe just to send a message to us.”

  “You don’t know that. Not for sure.”

  “I feel it, Mark. Don’t you?”

  “It does smell like METRO. And it is damn scary.”

  “We can’t be scared of it. We have to take the battle to them. This is something that controls the fate of the entire world. It’s the true face of everything. I’ve been searching for it all my life.”

  “It might be too big. Too scary. It’s a machine that makes new monsters and bad guys like Darian Stanwell every day.”

  “We can use what we know about them, Mark. Peanut can use it. We can work the system back the other way, find out who the bosses really are. We can go straight to the
top with a machine gun, just like you said.”

  “I did say that.”

  “Were you serious, Mark?”

  “Of course I was. And I think you could do it. I’ll help you however I can.”

  “That’s not good enough. You have to go beyond that. You have to go with us. You and me and Peanut. Even if it means we go straight to our deaths.”

  “I could do that too. I owe you.”

  “We’ll use Peanut’s contacts with the Senate. We’ll find out who killed Bob. Then we’ll work the plot back to the other dictators. We’ll smoke out as many operatives as we can along the way. They’ll all know something. We’ll trace it to the highest level. And when we find out who’s really running the whole show . . . you’ll kill them for me, Mark. That’s how you’ll pay me back. That’s how you’ll pay Jackie back.”

  “What if we shouldn’t?”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “What if the world doesn’t want to be saved from METRO? What if they were the glue holding the whole damn system together all along? What if every little thing is something they control? Somehow.”

  “One agency couldn’t possibly have that kind of power, Mark.”

  “Yeah they could. If they’re not an agency. I think you’re coming at this from the wrong perspective, Jollie. You’re thinking in terms of traditional politics and black ops. The CIA and all their dirty tricks subbasement bad guys. That’s never been the way METRO worked. They’re more direct. More brutal. Like a league of super villains.”

  “And they all meet in a big ops room in some James Bond super fortress somewhere and tell their underlings where to strike? That’s ridiculous.”

  “No it isn’t. People never see the obvious. Not until that obvious thing is blowing them away in the dark. Or smashing into the World Trade Center.”

  “You think 9/11 was METRO?”

  “I know it was METRO, Jollie. Just like you know they could have killed that senator and made it look like a suicide. That’s why the bad guys succeed in controlling everything so well. So what happens if we find that super fortress and destroy it—and then the whole world falls apart around our ears?”

  “These people are maniacs and killers, funded by drug money. I’ve thought a lot about all this. No matter what Darian Stanwell says, even if METRO has been saving us from ourselves for decades, they’re still thugs and murderers.”