Max

  Chapter 14

  In the stadium’s players’ parking lot, Max Aries retrieved his motorcycle after a full day’s practice with the team. He turned toward home. It was the day after Editor Thompson’s conversation with the newspaper’s publisher.

  As Max approached the on-ramp to the highway, the cycle’s engine began to splutter. By the time he maneuvered to the curb, the motor had stalled. He kicked the starter but after a few wheezes the motor failed to turn over. He flicked a glanced at the gas tank gauge: empty. Empty? How did that happen. He remembered filling the gas tank this morning. Could there be a leak? He looked down at the pavement under the cycle, but there was no sign of leaking gasoline. Whatever the reason, he had a dead cycle. And no service station in sight. First his team lost a vital game, now this. The day was turning into a full blown bummer.

  A long black sedan with darkly-tinted windows pulled up alongside Max and his crippled cycle. A window slid down and a voice from inside called, “Need help?”

  Max removed his helmet and leaned into the open window. In the car were two men in their thirties, the driver and passenger. “I’m out of gas. If you could give me a lift to the nearest service station I’d appreciate it.”

  The man seated in the passenger’s seat said, “Hey, we’ll do even better. I’ll give you a hand, and we can put your motorcycle into this car’s king-sized trunk. Take you anywhere you want to go.”

  “There’s a gas station about a mile ahead off the interstate,” said Max. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you guys stopped to help.

  The passenger, a stocky, muscular man got out of the car, and he and Max lifted the cycle into the car trunk. The passenger fished a bungee cord out of the well in the trunk and fastened the lid over the portion of the cycle that protruded. “Okay, that’ll take care of it. Let’s get—.” He stopped in mid-sentence, stared at Max and poked a finger in his chest. “Hey, aren’t you Max Aries?”

  Max smiled sheepishly. “Guilty.”

  “Wow! We’re big fans of yours.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Billy Joe and my partner’s called Silky. Can’t tell you how disappointed we were when the league suspended you. What did you do?”

  Max shook his hand. He explained that he hadn’t done anything illegal, but it’s history now that I’m back on the team.

  Billy Joe said, “We’re sure glad it’s over. The team needs you badly.”

  After they got in the car, Silky, the driver, said, “I can drive you home if you’d like.”

  “Gee, I don’t want to take you out of your way. Just drop me off a the service sta—.”

  “Where do you live?”

  Max was hesitant to give out his address. He knew Gleason and others had tried to find it, but he’d resisted because of the possibility they might discover it was a “safe house.” Then the true nature of his presence on Earth could be jeopardized. On the other hand, these guys looked harmless. It seemed unlikely they would divulge his secret. To be on the safe side, gave Silky an address a few houses from his own and figured once they let him off, he’d walk the cycle down the street to his own house.

  Silky said, “That’s not out of our way at all. No problem.”

  When they arrived at the address Max had given, they unloaded the cycle. Max stood holding the motorcycle. “I can’t thank you guys enough. I can handle it from here.” He shook hands with Billy Joe and Silky, then waved as they drove away. When he was sure they were out of sight, he wheeled the cycle to his own driveway, clicked opened the garage door and breathed a sigh of relief as he entered the house.

  A block away around a corner, Billy Joe and Silky sat in their car. They had watched Max wheel his cycle down the street and up his driveway. Billy Joe raised his hand and Silky slapped it, a “high-five.”

  “We did it!” Billy Joe said.

  Silky chuckled. “Your idea about draining most of the gasoline out of that motorcycle while it was in the players’ parking lot was pure genius.”

  “Yeah, but your surveillance to learn it was Aries’ cycle, made the rest of it possible,” said Billy Joe. He rubbed his hands together. “Now, let’s collect our ten grand and let the other guys finish the job.”

  Max’s safe house was one of a dozen similarly undistinguished homes on either side of Andreason, a short street between Central Parkway and Water Avenue. For a block-long street less than an eighth of a mile in length, the City of Cincinnati seemed to give Andreason more attention than it deserved.

  On Monday morning, two men in hard hats exited a van bearing on its side the city seal and letters designating it Department of Streets. One man removed from the back of the van a jack hammer, and with his partner, spent most of the day taking turns at breaking up the asphalt over a three square-foot part of the street opposite the driveway of Max’s house. At 9:30 a.m., Max, on his way to Paul Brown Stadium for a practice session, rolled his cycle down the driveway. Reaching the street he had to maneuver the cycle around the orange cones the workers had set out to protect drivers from the hole they created.

  During a lull in the jack-hammering while the workers were eating their lunch in the van, Jane Rollins, a sixty-year-old widow asked one of the men the reason for the racquet.

  “Pot hole.”

  Jane shook her head. “What pot hole? I didn’t see any pot hole before you dug one.”

  “Prevention,” was the terse reply.

  On Tuesday morning, another two-man crew arrived and spent the day filling in the hole.

  On Wednesday morning, the van bore the designation Metropolitan Sewer District. By quitting time at 5pm, they had removed the manhole covers, and with a motorized pump, flushed out the sewers along the length of Andreason Street.

  The bulbs on the street lights along Andreason Street were changed on Thursday. This was accomplished using a small truck with a cherry picker type of lift. Of course, it took the whole day to do the job. One of the residents of Andreason Street, Sam Jackson, a seventy-year-old retired steel worker, watched for a while before asking the man operating the cherry picker what was wrong with the bulbs that had been in place. The answer was, “Lower wattage.” Jackson shrugged. The old bulbs looked no different from the replacements, but what did he know.

  Friday it was searching for gas leaks. Two men spent the day walking around each of the houses, aiming hand-held instruments that looked like large TV remote controls, at the gas lines that ran into each house.

  At 5 p.m., the men got back in their van. While one man drove, the other pulled out a cell phone and punched in a number. He spoke into the phone. “Our man is the only occupant. Leaves by motorcycle around 9:30 every morning, returns around 4:30 in the afternoon. Three mornings a week some old broad walks from the bus stop on Central and goes into the house using her own key. Always carries a grocery bag from Safeway. She leaves around three. I think she cleans and cooks for the guy.”

  “Alarm?”

  “Negative.”

  “You sure?”

  “BillyJoe rang the bell one day when the old lady was in the house doing her thing. Gave her some bullshit about checking for a gas leak. She don’t speak English that good, but he got her to understand. He looked around for an alarm control box, wired windows, watchdog, all that stuff. Nothing.”

  “Sounds good. We’re on it.”

  On Saturday morning, a van pulled across the street from Max’s house. A sign on the side of the van identified it as “Elite Courier Service.” The driver glanced at his watch: 9 A.M.. Over his shoulder he spoke to someone in the interior of the van.

  “He should be leaving pretty soon. Practice starts at 10, right?”

  A voice from the back of the van answered. “Yeah. And he likes to get there early.”

  “Uh-oh,” said the driver. “The garage door just went up.”

  A moment later, Max Aries drove his motorcycle down the driveway. When he reached the street he took a fleeting look at the van, then gunned the cycle down the street.


  The man seated next to the van driver put on a uniform visored cap and climbed down from his seat. Holding a clipboard and large manila envelope, he ambled across the street, glanced at his clipboard then at the house number. If anyone had been watching, they would have assumed he was checking the address. He walked up to the front door and pushed the bell button. He waited half a minute to be sure no one was home. Standing close to the door, he took a small metal lock pick from his pocket and in a few seconds had the door open. He removed his cap and stood at the threshold. To an observer, he appeared to be talking to someone inside the door, then, smiling, stepped in the house and closed the door behind him.

  Once inside, he called, “Hello. Anybody home?” As expected, there was no answer.

  The small vestibule opened into a living room, furnished with a couch, several easy chairs and a coffee table. In the corner was a desk. The intruder spoke into a small microphone attached to a shoulder of his uniform. “I’m in. About to start with the desk.”

  A voice in his ear bud said, “Don’t forget the bugs, Silky.”

  “Right. I’ll take care…”

  On the planet Oh Ess Yew, a man sat in front of a large screen in a control room. Suddenly, a bell rang and on the screen a flashing red light and message appeared. The message read: “UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY EARTH SAFE HOUSE 4.” The man at the screen flipped a switch.

  In the Earth safe house, Silky pulled open the desk drawer. Suddenly, a loud siren blasted his ears. “Jesus!”

  Grabbing the clipboard and envelope, he dashed from the house and headed for the van yelling “Get moving!”

  The passenger side door flew open and Silky barely jumped in when the van took off.