Lost Friday

by Michael Bronte

  “Yeah? Like what?”

  “Like Kelli Remington.”

  Shit. Why couldn’t he have picked Romano? He must have sensed that I was thinking about her. “Let me tell you something about Kelli Remington. You couldn’t get within ten feet of her without her knowing you’re not me.”

  Darlon’s eyes dropped to the Glock. “I don’t need to.”

  Wait a minute. The Glock. If Darlon’s DNA was engineered to be the same as mine, didn’t that mean I could fire that weapon? I had to get my hands on that gun. “What if I tell you I know where some of those formulas are?”

  That got Darlon’s attention all right, and I suddenly saw my intense look staring back at me. I figured I had to control my own expression, otherwise he’d know what I was thinking.

  “Some of them?” Darlon questioned.

  “I know David kept a spiral notebook where he compiled his formulas. He calls them proofs. I also know they’re not finished.” Darlon got even more intense. “That’s all I know about them.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Not so fast, numb-nuts.” Darlon’s eyes narrowed. “If I lead you to those formulas, does that mean everything would go back to normal, and we’d never see or hear from you assholes again?” I mean, I was setting him up but I didn’t want to be obvious about it. I figured insulting him would be a good distraction.

  He smiled. “Of course.”

  Right. Now he was setting me up, but he sucked at it. I guess all those years of worming my way through canned press conferences, reading between the lines on press releases, and asking questions that kept subjects off balance, was paying off for me. I figured as soon as he had those formulas, David and I would both be dead. “I need to take you to them,” I said, knowing Darlon’s instincts were probably pretty sharp.

  I wasn’t wrong. He smelled a rat and put the Glock to my head, saying in a voice that let me know it, “We’re only doing this once, so don’t try to deceive me. I can always go back to another time and try this again, but you’ll always be dead from this point forward.”

  I swallowed real hard, and said, “Fine.”

  “Where are we going?”

  Not bluffing, I said, “Take that thing away from my head or we’re not moving.” Darlon lowered the Glock. “You must think I’m as big an idiot as you are. If I tell you where we’re going, what do you need me for?”

  Darlon looked at the dashboard, and said, “Please operate this vehicle.”

  Please operate this vehicle? I thought: what the hell was that? A normal person would have said, “Drive.” He didn’t know the terminology, so I figured he probably didn’t know how to drive. Okay, maybe that’s what he needed me for. I surmised that he probably didn’t know anything about twenty-first century vehicles, except that they were an antiquated form of transportation. I fired up the news van and slowly backed out of the parking space. As I notched it into drive, having no clue about what I was saying and just trying to keep his mind occupied with something besides me, I said, “You know, we may have to take those formulas by force.”

  Darlon waved the Glock, and said, “Not a problem.”

  “No, but two of us showing up could be a huge problem. How are we going to explain that?”

  “We’ll worry about that when the time comes.”

  Well, there was a real plan. “Listen, Sparky, why don’t you let me handle it if there’s any talking to do, okay? You may look like me, but you come off like a dork and heaven knows that could never be me.”

  “A dork?”

  “Never mind. Just let me take care of it.” Darlon didn’t say anything, but I knew that if he was anything at all like me, there was no way he was going to just back off and wait for me to bring him the formulas. I cruised onto Route 66 in Neptune toward the parkway with the Glock still pointed at me, but now it was pointed at my stomach.

  I debated going for it, and Darlon must have seen my eyes wander because he said, “Don’t even think about it.”

  Okay, that I understood. I shifted my gaze back to the roadway, but not before noticing that old Darlon wasn’t wearing his seatbelt. Gee, I was. I came off the traffic circle where Route 66 crossed Route 35, and I punched the van toward the ramp to the parkway. Now, this particular van was one of those Econoline models that could carry cargo, or a whole bunch of passengers. It was used if for all kinds of things, and while it wasn’t, like, from NASCAR or anything, it had a V-8 in it, and with its high center of gravity you could really get it to rock and roll if you put the pedal to the metal, especially on a circular on-ramp. So, that’s what I did. I hit the base of the ramp doing about sixty, and wheeled that thing so that it had to be on two wheels going around that ramp. Problem was, the centrifugal force propelled Darlon toward me, and that’s not what I wanted to accomplish. What I wanted to accomplish was to splatter him all over the windshield.

  “Please operate with less force,” Darlon ordered, once again raising the Glock and putting it an inch from my head.

  “Yeah, operate this,” I hollered over the roar of the engine.

  Darlon’s eyes shifted between the roadway and me as I tore in and out between cars. Horns and middle fingers were going off all over the place.

  “Go ahead, shoot,” I hollered. “Then we’ll both be dead.”

  “Reduce your speed!” he ordered.

  “Okay!” I put it to the floor and looked at the speedometer needle, which was eating up numbers. I swerved in front of an old Camaro and blasted around a couple of SUVs as I hit the rumble strip at the edge of the emergency lane. It was like a machine gun going off inside the van, and Darlon must have realized what I was about to do because he tried to steady himself by wrapping his arm around his seat. He still didn’t go for his seatbelt, which was fine with me. I spotted a tree that looked like it would do the job, and I swung the van onto the median strip, heading right for it. Grass and mud flying, I braced myself for impact, knowing my airbag would knock the shit out of me as soon as we hit. Darlon had an airbag too, but he didn’t know it, and it was much further away from his body, it being situated in the dash as opposed to the steering wheel. He was sitting sideways in his seat, and I could see him panicking. I figured, or, more accurately, I hoped, that the exploding airbag would hit him with enough force to break his arm and maybe knock him out. In any case, I couldn’t afford to let myself go unconscious, and I planned on putting both arms up in front of my face just before impact. He cocked the hammer on the Glock and screamed something I don’t remember, probably because I was concentrating on hitting that tree with the passenger side of the van, which—BLAM!—I did.

  Chapter 33… Baklava

  Well, that worked better than I thought because, (a) I didn’t kill myself, and (b) Darlon actually broke a couple of bones—in his neck. I had, in fact, managed to cross my arms in front of me just before impact; he didn’t. I was alive; he was fish food. The putz just couldn’t think as fast as the original, I guess. It seems he actually fired off a round from the Glock because there was a hole in the top of the van about the size of a freakin’ melon. Talk about literally dodging a bullet; I don’t even want to think about what it would have done to my head. In any case, I don’t think I ever went unconscious. I mean, I’d definitely gotten my bell rung, but I managed to regain my senses well enough to determine that Darlon’s neck had snapped sideways, probably because of the way he was sitting. Like, his head was just dangling off the end of his neck. I found the Glock on the dashboard where I presume it landed after flying out of his hand and smashing into the windshield. I grabbed it just as I heard voices outside the van. I don’t know how I did it, but I had the cognizance to shove the weapon into the small of my back and squeeze between the seats into the back of the van. I scrunched down low behind the middle row of seats, and I worked desperately to catch my breath and calm myself. Luckily for me, everyone who’d seen the crash and stopped maintained their distance, and only
a couple of people had the fortitude to look into the front seat. I saw several people on cell phones as I peeked through back window. I figured they were calling 9-1-1.

  “There’s only one person in the van,” I heard someone shout back to the people grouped near the roadway. “Looks like he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.”

  I knew I didn’t have much time. Luckily, one side of the van was facing away from the assembled gawkers, and I popped the side door and slid it back just enough that I could slither a few feet into the bushes. The median strip was pretty wide at that point, and I noticed that more cars were coming to a stop on the other side of the parkway. A couple of guys in plaid shirts hopped out of a pickup and jogged toward the wreck, their big stomachs bouncing like beach balls as they ran. I looked down and didn’t see any blood on me, and I ran my hands over my head and face to check there as well. Not finding any, I tried to stop my hands from shaking, and, as best I could, I just walked out of the bushes like I belonged there.

  “Hell of a crash,” I called shakily just as they came up on me. “I was just driving down the road when that jackass blew past me and lost control. Sonofabitch almost hit me. My hands are still shaking.” I held out my hand for them to see. “The guy was flying.”

  Gomer and Jethro glanced past me and wrinkled their faces as their eyes settled on the van. One of them said, “Jesus.”

  “My cell phone is on the blink,” I said, pointing over my shoulder as if my car was behind me. “Mind if I use yours? I’m sure someone over there has already called 9-1-1, but I’d like to call that newspaper and report this to them.” I pointed to the van which had Asbury Park Press printed on its side. “I just might sue the bastards.”

  “Cell phone’s in the truck,” said Jethro. “Help yourself.”

  Perfect. I walked over to their truck, which was still running, hopped in, and took off.

  * * * * *

  It was very kind of Gomer and Jethro to leave their cell phone in the truck for me, charging itself on a dashboard charger no less. I headed north on the parkway as a couple of state police cruisers headed the other way, lights blazing, speeding toward the crash. With all the cell phones present on the scene, I’m sure Gomer and Jethro probably asked to borrow one to call 9-1-1 again, this time to report a stolen truck. From my experience at the paper, however, I knew that a stolen vehicle call wasn’t normally something that was communicated immediately to cops on the street unless it was something critical like a robbery or a life-threatening situation. Usually, a report had to be filed, and the information would then become part of the normal briefings that jurisdictions conducted on a daily basis. That meant that I had some time—maybe—and I figured I’d be better off on the local roads as opposed to the parkway. I pulled off onto Route 70 in Brick Township and found a shady spot near a Wal-Mart where I tried to figure out my next move. I checked the time and saw that it was coming up on noon, discovering that I was actually hungry. Must have been the adrenalin. I spotted a pizza joint, and figured that getting away from that truck might not be a bad idea. I always carry my money in a money clip, so luckily I didn’t lose it when I gave Darlon my wallet. I got myself a slice and a Coke, and took a booth, putting the Glock on the seat next to me. I munched my pizza and decided to call Romano first, Remington second, and Roy Mulroney third.

  * * * * *

  Romano said, “Is this some kind of sick fucking joke?”

  I said, “What are you talking about, boss?”

  “I just got a call from the state police about an accident on the parkway.”

  I could almost see Romano’s neck turning red on the other end of the line. “Listen, boss, I can explain.”

  “You can explain a dead guy in a company vehicle, who looks just like you and has your ID? Who is this?”

  “Boss, it’s Pappas. Doesn’t it sound like me?”

  Silence. “Who’s the source at the statehouse who gave us DiBenedetto?”

  I knew exactly what Romano was doing. DiBenedetto was a state senator from Monmouth County who got caught up in a gay sex-for-money scandal about a year earlier. Our source gave us his lover, who agreed to wear a wire during a romantic interlude with the good senator in exchange for his own name staying out of the paper. Romano and I had both worked the source, and he knew I was the only person in the world besides himself who knew the answer to that question. I said, “Paul McMillan.”

  “Goddamn it, Pappas. I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, but this is some serious shit here. Do you know what kind of liability you’ve opened us up to? Where the fuck are you?”

  I looked at the placemat underneath my pizza crust. “I’m at 47 Chambers Bridge Road in Brick Township, Antonio’s Pizza.”

  “Don’t you dare move from there, Pappas. I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”

  * * * * *

  “Why aren’t you answering your damned phone?”

  “Because my damned phone is on a dead guy on the parkway.”

  “Well I’ve been trying to call you for over an hour, and…. A dead guy? Is that why I’m calling you?”

  “I don’t know, Remington, and actually, I called you.”

  “Oh. Who’s Earl Harrison?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  “That’s the name that came up on my caller ID.”

  “Oh. I’m using someone else’s cell phone, but I can explain about that later. What’s got you all hot-to-trot?”

  “I ran it.”

  “It… what?”

  “Your DNA, brainiac. Don’t you remember?”

  “No shit.” My voice must have carried because the guy behind the counter cut a look at me. I indicated the paper plate in front of me and ordered another slice.

  Remington said, “I got a sample of the guy’s DNA just like you said to do, and—”

  “Wait a minute. He showed up there, in the newsroom?”

  “Well, no, not exactly. While you were inside brown-nosing with Romano—”

  “I wasn’t brown-nosing. I was getting his autho to sign out a van.”

  “Whatever. I had to go to my car to get some notes I’d left there. Anyway, who’s poking around the parking lot but guess who. Jesus, Pappas, it was creepy. He even dressed like you.”

  “Yeah, but he really wasn’t as good looking as me, right?”

  She ignored me. She was good at that. “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “If these guys could get some false IDs, they could really clean out some bank accounts.”

  Remington was still thinking she was dealing with an identity theft ring. “Was he looking for the ’Vette?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, maybe. I think I almost scared him off.”

  “What’d you do, take the bag off your head?” In my mind’s eye, I could see her giving me an eye roll.

  “Are you finished?”

  “You’re lucky you’re not a two-bagger, Remington. Have I ever told you what a two-bagger is?” Total... fucking... silence. “Okay, I’m finished. How did you almost scare him off?”

  “Well, I just walked up to him and said, ‘Hey Johnny, wanna go out for a couple of drinks after work?’ Being the horny toad that you are, you’d have been all over that like hot gravy.”

  I could just imagine old Darlon standing there like he was caught in the headlights while Remington played a mind game on him. It had to be sad. “So what happened?”

  “He just stood there with his mouth open.”

  Told you.

  “I’ve never seen you at a loss for words, Pappas. I knew it wasn’t you.”

  I guess that was a compliment. “So how’d you get his DNA?”

  I could almost hear Remington smile on the other end of the line. “I took him to my car and gave him a hand job.”

  Now, she was playing a mind game on me. “No really, how’d you get his DNA?”

  “I told you. Got enough stuff to…. Well, never mind.”

 
“C’mon Remington. Stop pulling my shish kabob.”

  “What, you don’t believe me?”

  I paused. “Listen, this isn’t exactly an identity theft story.”

  She paused. “Then what is it?”

  “Find Romano. He’s coming to meet me. I’ll explain when you get here.” Click. The bitch. She knew exactly what she was doing to me.

  * * * * *

  I had to remember that the day I was reliving was before Lost Friday, and, to Roy, I was still just Johnny Pappas who worked at the Press. Luckily, he was at the station when I called. I didn’t have to wait long.

  “Who is this?” he asked when he picked up.

  “Johnny Pappas. I work up at the Asbury Park Press.”

  Long silence. “I know who you are. How’s your mom?” he asked, tiptoeing into the conversation.

  My mom? “She’s fine, Chief.”

  “Good, good, glad to hear it. Good woman, your mom. Does she still make that real sweet, what’s it called... baklava?”

  “Yeah, she does.” What the…?

  “Good, good. Real good stuff that baklava. Sweet though. Makes me think about going to the dentist whenever I eat it.”

  The dentist. “Yeah, Chief. It’s sweet, all right. Listen, Chief, I need to—”

  “Well that’s what you get when you use real ingredients, and I’m sure your mom uses real ingredients, none of that synthetic stuff, right Johnny?”

  Synthetic stuff. “Right, Chief. Only the real thing.”

  Pause. “Good, good. That synthetic stuff will kill you.”

  I don’t know, was it just me, or was I picking up on something? I said, “One thing about that baklava, though. It keeps coming back on you, you know what I mean, Chief?”

  “I sure do, Johnny. Some things are like that; they repeat themselves over and over again.”

  Huh. “Do you have trouble with that, Chief? Things coming back on you and repeating themselves?”

  “Sure do,” said Roy. “Thing is, I always end up eating the baklava, no matter what. It’s like destiny, you know what I mean, Johnny?”

  I dug a little deeper. “When was the last time you ate baklava, Chief?”