had taken off at his parents’ house. The coat he had loaned his father in what was supposed to be a short-term switcheroo. Happy happy joy joy indeed, if the FBI got hold of that phone.
“This is no time to be soba,” John agreed. “Better make mine a double.”
11 Via Con Me
“Take the bike.”
“You may not get it back.”
“I’ll build another one. I could use some grease under my nails. Take the bike.”
Standing on the garishly lit tarmac in the wee hours, Jane flicked a skeptical glance at Saki’s fashionably correct if masculine manicure. “Dude, it’s going to be 20 degrees where I’m headed.”
“Boy-toy picking you up? Is that it?”
“He is not even answering my calls,’ Jane was forced to admit. Tit for tat, no doubt. After all, her phone had been on the fritz for almost two weeks. He would be thinking the worst. And if he wasn’t in Detroit… “No,” Jane tried to extricate herself with a canny mix of truth and nostalgia. “I was thinking I’d take a stroll down memory lane and see what turns up. For old times sake.”
“Impoundment lot?” Saki guessed shrewdly.
“Long-term parking,” Jane replied.
“Yeah, well, we know what’s really going on, baby mama,” Saki teased. “How times have changed. For instance, keyless entry is a bitch.” She thrust her hands in her pockets and pretended not to be hurt.
“Keys?” Jane scoffed. “When it comes to car jacking, we don’t need no stinkin’ keys.” No slim jims, no wire tools, no wedges. It was true. “Nowadays,” she flourished the cell phone Saki had reclaimed for her, “there’s an app for that.”
And there was. Originally developed as a government-sponsored undercover surveillance tool, UnZip.car was a big-data, small-screen utility that had somehow found its way to the gray market. Sitting on the Airtrain and circling JFK airport, Jane was able to pull up a list of all remote-assist equipped vehicles within a mile radius, which she then narrowed down to ultimate luxury cars belonging to ultra-high net worth individuals living and working in Manhattan. In the end, it came down to a Pagani Huayra or a Porsche 911. A high-flying private equity shit with scores of over-leveraged bankruptcies smoldering in his wake - or the equally infamous SEC suck-up who refused to regulate him. Jane opted for the Porsche. Because it was the suck-up’s job to know better. Because it was the suck-up’s job to draw the line. And OK OK because, in the good old days, back when their marriage was young and money plentiful, John used to hanker for a 911. “Yeah, Mr. Porsche,” Jane said to herself, clicking on ‘Turbo Carrera S Cabriolet, Platinum Silver, Fully Loaded.’ “Decline to investigate this.”
The parking lot attendant slept soundly in his heated kiosk, head thrown back, dead to the world. Jane strolled by, guided by the Porsche’s GPS coordinates and a walking map, courtesy of Google. When she drew near the Porsche, it flashed its lights, revved its engine, and opened the driver side door in welcome. There was even music all teed up on the sound system: “Damn It Feels Good to Be A Banksta.” Damn it felt good to sink into the black leather seat, supple as the Italian gloves Jane was wearing, and swipe a car from one of the self-serving pricks who was stealing the rest of the world blind.
When Jane coasted silently up to the kiosk, she found the attendant still snoozing. A bullet headed guy in a puffer jacket and knit cap. She didn’t blow the horn, she just rolled down the window and cranked up the volume a decibel or two.
Damn it feels good to be a banksta
Give us all your money or we’ll crash ya.
He almost fell off his chair; it took him a minute to reorient. Then he slid back the little pay window and contemplated Jane with a jaundiced and bleary eye.
“Chu got chur ticket?”
“Will this work?” Jane held out the universal ticket, a crisp hundred dollar bill.
He was all business in a New York minute. Wide awake and giving the Porsche his undivided attention. “Yeah that car been here awhile. Fourteen days at least. Plus a lost ticket penalty. I’d say, at one c-note, chu ‘bout half way home, pretty mama.”
As Jane added another Benjamin, the music changed. Shuffled to the soundtrack from “Wall Street.” David Byrne singing ‘This Must Be the Place.”
“We cool?” Jane asked.
“Chu got the car, I got the money,” he put half the money in the cash drawer, bobbing his head in time to the music. “We anyway chu wanna be, mija.” The barrier arm with its diagonal stripes lifted obligingly out of her path.
Her path. Which basically led around her elbow to get to her ear. Preparing to ease into predawn traffic, Jane reviewed the gymnastic feat that travel had become. Airports, with their hyped up security, were best used sparingly, so it was a no-brainer that she shouldn’t fly to Detroit. Rental cars were similarly monitored and traceable in a situation where it was desirable to leave gaps in one’s itinerary. Identity checks were relatively lax on buses and trains, it was true. But you ran the risk of sitting next to a reality-TV aficionado, a connoisseur of America’s Most Wanted for instance. Moreover, detours and layovers were inevitable. Incredibly, trains no longer ran directly from New York to the Motor City. It wasn’t just Greece that was retrogressing. Ayn Rand’s dystopia was alive and kicking in these United States. And not due to society’s socialist abuse of bankers and industrialists, as Jane was uniquely positioned to know. On the contrary. Von Hayek’s fantasy of serfdom was coming to life courtesy of capitalism and the monied class. After all, financial giants and multinational bigwigs who fly the private skies have no use for public infrastructure, she reflected, as she hit the New Jersey turnpike and swerved to avoid a pothole. There were an increasing number of instances where no, you couldn’t get ‘there’ from ‘here’. Not any more. Not quickly or easily at any rate. Devolution had set in.
And now for 10 hours of uninterrupted interstate bliss, Jane thought. With absolutely no enthusiasm. At least she had slept on the plane, so the sheer monotony did not lull her into the first ditch. Aside from the odd toll-booth pause and gas station fill-up, she drove the I-80 wasteland non-stop through Pennsylvania, passing the time by listening to John’s messages on speaker phone. Which basically told the history of her own despair, in 3-minute increments. Love, loss, his flight to Mexico. Drunken poetry.
“But thanks for letting me save the old homeplace. I know you don’t like my mom-“
“You don’t like your mom,” Jane retorted aloud.
“It does leave a hole in our finances, but I’ll make it up to you. Hey, as long as I’m over here, I could check out the Detroit gig. Those guys are like the Fed. A few clicks on the keyboard and we’re billionaires. Call me back. Please.”
“Not like I haven’t been trying,” Jane said.
“We’re headed for Chicago and Vinnie’s big day as soon as we drop off the deutschmarks. You could call and wish the poor guy luck, you know.”
“Like he cares,” Jane countered. “I mean, we’re talking about the guy who used to say ‘If I ever talk about getting married, I want you to shoot me. I mean it. Put a gun to my head and put me out of my misery.’ That’s what he used to say. Oh hey - you know what?”
Thinking of Vinnie, marriage, and misery reminded her. She needed a gun. At the moment, after successfully running the gauntlet of international airport scrutiny and evading arrest in several countries, she was distressingly desarmado. Nakedly weaponless. In any country known to have more guns than people, this was patently unwise, not to mention downright unprofessional. What was true in Somalia was doubly true in America, where fifty years of bottomless outlays for national defense had somehow made no one safe.
Judging from place names like Cleveland and Cincinnati, and roadside attractions like the Kent State Memorial and the childhood home of Superman, Jane deduced that she was somewhere in Ohio. She had turned north a short while ago and was bending around Lake Erie. Seeing a billboard tha
t shrieked CASH, CASH, CASH FOR ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING-BUY*LOAN*SELL-WE ABOLUTELY WANT YOUR BUSINESS, she absolutely got off at Toledo.
Wooden Indian Gun and Pawn was conveniently located just minutes from the exit ramp. It was tucked away in an otherwise deserted strip mall as advertised, but of the wooden Indian there was no trace. No-nonsense bars protected the entire storefront, breached only by a wrought iron gate that swung back so you could get to the front door. Hub caps glittered in the windows and the first thing Jane noticed when she entered was the sheer mass of every kind of stuff - and the smell of cat. ‘Please Don’t Feed the Tiger’ the sign said. In its zoo-mesh cage, the beast laid its ears back and snarled, then rolled over on its back and batted the air with monstrous velvet paws.
“Nice kitty,” Jane murmured. As her eyes adjusted, she could see a middle American of middle age and considerably above average girth leaning on the back counter. He was wearing a Captain America t-shirt. A western-style holster complete with ivory-handled revolver rode his right hip.
“What can I do you?” he asked, colloquially dropping the word ‘for.’ Jane looked first over his head at the rack of semi-automatic rifles; then dropped her gaze to the glass case under his elbows. In it, against red velvet, the handguns gleamed like jewels. “Maybe the gent needs a
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