Work Done for Hire

  Actually, I had no idea. But a gun in the hand is worth two in the bush, or something, conjuring the pubic ultimate in concealed weapons.

  And I would actually only save about two hours, flying. There weren’t that many flights to Maine from New York. I guess people in Maine took the train or stayed home.

  The only legal gun store in the District of Columbia, according to the computer, was one operating inside the main police station—how handy for them. I’m sure there was a fascinating story behind that. But I just needed a holster, and Googling, found a list of sporting goods stores that sold them, one right in Union Station.

  I got a hot dog and a Coke from a vendor and asked her where the sporting goods store was. She pointed down a long corridor of shopfronts. I sat and finished my lunch contemplating the question, “How do you look innocent while asking to see concealed-weapon accessories?” Then I went off to try it.

  I walked through a huge assortment of balls and bats and gloves and hats, until I got to the very rear of the store, where behind a forest of rifle barrels pointing skyward and a veritable clothing store of desert- and jungle-colored garments, there was a glass case with dozens of bright new airguns. A few aisles down, I found stacks of various holsters.

  The shoulder holsters looked a little too gangster-ish. But I guess gangsters preferred them for a reason.

  “Can I help you decide?” asked a little round man with a nametag.

  “Looking for a holster for a snub-nosed Taurus.”

  “Would that be a 605? An 85?” He looked left and right. “You don’t have it with you?”

  “No. No, it’s for a friend.” Wouldn’t be smart to pull it out, I presumed.

  “Good. Do you know if it’s a .38 Special or a .357 Magnum?”

  “Either, I think. I was told.” By a highly trustworthy arms merchant in a smoky New Orleans dive.

  “Will you be wearing it under your clothing or outside?”

  “Under.” He nodded and didn’t ask to see my permit.

  He picked up two cardboard cartons. “Under the arm or on the belt?”

  “Belt, I suppose.”

  He handed me one. “This is best, I think, for men who aren’t, well, very fat. Some policemen are.”

  “I’ve noticed.” I took it from him. The belt clip seemed to be on the wrong side.

  “It’s not for cross-draw,” he said. “Strong side.”

  I clipped it on my belt on the right hip. “You don’t recommend cross-draw?”

  “Your choice.” He shrugged, I think meaning not for the likes of you. “You might want to wear it with a roomy jacket. Sports coat.” I bought it and went to look for something inconspicuous to put over it.

  There was a clothing store called Next2New less than a mile’s walk away. Plenty of time before the train, so I strolled there, through a part of Washington the guidebooks probably didn’t mention. I got a shabby tweed jacket for less than a hamburger on the train, and a well-worn beige shirt with the monogram MPX on the breast pocket. Michael P. Xavier, if anyone asks.

  I changed clothes in a grubby men’s-room stall at Union Station, throwing away the old shirt. My heart jumped when I did that: before the next time you change clothes, you’ll face down the Enemy. Don’t sweat, now.

  Clipped the holster onto my belt and slid the Taurus into place. In the mirror I looked innocent enough. Would it fool a trained policeman? An untrained one? I put the gun back in the Amtrak bag.

  On the way to the waiting room I passed the sporting goods store and hesitated. I’d reloaded the pistol after the billboard confrontation, but no longer had that box of cartridges. So should I face the bad guys with only five rounds, or go in and buy a new box?

  I didn’t know enough. Could you buy a carton of bullets as casually as a carton of milk here? Or would your face automatically appear on a Homeland Security computer screen with the notation “armed and presumed dangerous”? Escaped from a military hospital where he was being held under armed guard.

  Here’s your change, sir. You might want to run for the door.

  Well, the depressing truth was that one box of cartridges more or less was not going to profoundly affect my fate. If five rounds didn’t do the job, then thirty wouldn’t either. Factor in the time it would take me to shuck out the used shells and reload, cowering behind that Ikea coffee table. Five would have to do.

  If it came down to a firefight, my trusty snub-nose against however many serious weapons they had, I was going to come in second anyway. That didn’t worry me as much as it should have, though; give a man a weapon and he starts to think with his balls.

  Maybe when I get to Maine I can pick up a flamethrower or a machine gun. Or maybe when I pull the snub-nose out of its policeman holster, they’ll all throw up their hands and surrender.

  There were three computers in an alcove off the Union Station waiting room. Pretty shabby ones, keys yellowed with age and the grunge from thousands of random grimy fingers. I made a mental note to autoclave my hands when I was done, and used the Visa card as a key to the wonderful world of global communication.

  Google Earth took ten seconds to show me an aerial view of a cottage with the address on Ring Road. At greatest magnification, the roof of the A-frame was a stark grey rectangle at the end of a brown dirt driveway off the “ring road” that circled the small island’s perimeter. I bought a print of that view and also a map of the island; folded them up and put them in the bag with the other incriminating stuff—carefully saved the foil and rolled it up inside the sling that hid it.

  This part had to be done quickly: I took a cab to the JW Marriott Hotel and waited in line for two minutes. No one sidled up to me. I showed the clerk the reservation receipt from the glove compartment of the car, and he gave me the key to 1138. I declined help with my bag.

  No one else in the elevator. I went up one floor and got out, re-wrapped my hand with the foil, then walked back down to the lobby and went outside to the taxi rank and said “Union Station.”

  If they were able to follow me, well, we’d have our confrontation in a very public place. Not in room 1138.

  Back at the station I found a place to sit with my back to a wall, and tried not to look too furtive while I killed a half hour with the Washington Post and watery coffee. When it was ten minutes to boarding time, I went toward the train. On the way, I stopped at the bookstore and looked for something that might keep me occupied for some hours. Thrillers were a little too close to real life, so I picked up a copy of Stranger in a Strange Land, which I’d read when I was too young. Maybe it would give me some tips for dealing with aliens. Assuming the bad guys were not citizens of the United States.

  My seat was half occupied by a black gentleman who was sound asleep in the window seat, so I went on to the bar car, or “lounge,” where I would have wound up anyhow.

  I got a beer and sat down at a table not too close or too far away from the security guard, a serious-looking woman in a grey uniform with a Glock in a fast-draw holster clamped to her thigh. Had she been trained to detect nervous amateur spies carrying little holsters clipped to their belts? Evidently not.

  I studied the Post editorials long enough to be able to discuss global ocean trash issues or the current revolution in Somalia with her, but she didn’t come over.

  The train was underground for some time, and then spent a few minutes speeding over the suburbs in elevated mode, and then slowed down to connect with the twentieth-century rails that served Amtrak through most of the northeastern corridor. Slowed down regularly for nineteenth-century curves.

  After the Baltimore stop, I checked back in the coach and the black guy was gone; both those seats were empty. Clipped my ticket to the back of the seat in front of me and cranked back the seat; the train wouldn’t reach Boston for another seven hours.

  A conductor woke me up when the train was approaching Boston, abou
t ten at night. I got off and South Station was a huge quiet cavern full of places to eat, all closed.

  A sleepwalking rent-a-cop directed me to a twenty-four-hour place a couple of blocks away, the South Side Diner, which was full of interesting people. I probably was not the only one carrying a gun, but nevertheless felt somewhat out of place, neither intoxicated nor obviously unwashed. Though I wanted a shower so much I might have used the gun to force my way into one.

  I’m sure there were fine restaurants still open in some other part of town, but I only had an hour. I nibbled on a fried-egg sandwich, which seemed safe in all respects other than cardiac, and went back to the station to wait for the late train north.

  I felt like a time traveler marooned in the twentieth century, or the nineteenth.

  The small crowd waiting for the train was mostly old black or Hispanic people. The few who were white or prosperous-looking were absorbed in their readers or papers. How many of them had sought out this slow venue because they were also carrying guns? How many were not? We were a fairly desperate-looking crowd, myself definitely included.

  The gun was chafing my side, so I went into a men’s-room stall and returned it to the Amtrak bag. I doubted there would be a quick-draw situation on the Portland train.

  A good thing, too. I was exhausted from travel, and once I got to Portland it would still be at least four hours to Bangor on the bus.

  When I got to Bangor, what then? Daniel Craig and Sean Connery would always appear all fresh in their tuxedos, with plenty of weaponry and ammo tucked away somehow. I couldn’t visualize either with dark shadows under his eyes and his gun in an Amtrak bag.

  At least I wouldn’t look dangerous. And I could put it back in the holster before I confidently kicked down the door.

  13.

  It was not quite six in the morning when the squeal of the bus brakes woke me up at the bus station in Bangor. There wasn’t an actual station; it was just a Greyhound sign outside a coffee shop. It said 24 HOUR SERVICE, but didn’t look open; to be on the safe side I went to the back of the bus and used the noisome toilet there.

  Good thing. The diner was locked, but when a church bell started tolling at six, a cab pulled up. He had a card on his dash that said BAR HARBOR AIRPORT $25. The window went down as another man and I approached.

  It didn’t look like an actual cab. It didn’t have a meter that I could see.

  “How much to Bass Harbor?” I said. That was where the ferry left for Swan’s Island. The other man said he had to be at the Bar Harbor airport right now and would pay fifty bucks.

  The cabdriver, who looked like a sleepy high-school boy with a fake beard, said to the other guy, “Get in.” He checked a laminated card and said if I went along, he could drive me from the airport to the Bass Harbor ferry for $100.

  I decided not to tell him that I’d have to pay with a dodgy credit card. We could work that out later. He read the other man’s credit card with an iPod attachment.

  The ride alternated between quaint New England hamlets and beautiful dense pine forest, with some neatly planted potato fields and a few random acres of inexplicable desolation. Like a war had happened, but only went for a block or two.

  I tried to ignore how my left hand felt. It was throbbing, baking under the foil cover—closer to braising, I suppose, than actual baking. Cooking with moisture. But I was too close to Kit and her captors to take it off and broadcast my presence.

  The last record they would have of my little beeper would be when I had checked into the Washington Marriott. Of course, by now they might assume I was on the run and could be anywhere.

  We got to the airport, a low brick building with a pretty tall hotel, in about twenty minutes. I got out and stretched while the other passenger collected his bags and ran for the plane.

  “Mind if I sit up front?” I asked. “I’m about to die back there.” The backseat was broken and came forward at a little more than a right angle. That gave me an excuse.

  “Come on up,” he said, and took my card as I got in.

  The iPod read it and beeped. He frowned and tried it again, and it beeped again. “Mister . . .”

  “Be calm,” I said, the .38 pointed at his midsection. “This is serious business. Government business.”

  “I won’t . . . look . . . don’t . . .”

  “I won’t pull the trigger unless you make me do it. I’ll give you a thousand dollars to take me to Bass Harbor, and across to Swan’s Island. A thousand dollars in cash, but I can’t pay you until tomorrow.”

  “What . . . government business?”

  “Homeland Security,” I improvised.

  “Do you have . . . let me see an ID?”

  “Not undercover.”

  He looked at me, and then out the windshield, and then back and forth again. “This is crazy.”

  “Just drive,” I said. “I’ll tell you the whole story. But you have to promise not to tell anyone.”

  “Okay,” he said slowly, and pulled away from the airport loading zone.

  By the time we were back in the potato fields I had told him all about what I’d done to the Polish embassy and about the international espionage ring that had sent a hit man after me when they couldn’t get to me “through channels” in Washington and Krakow. I said I’d give him the whole story once it all came down, in maybe a week. The poop was going to hit the pulverizer, I told him, using authentic spy euphemisms.

  It was forty-six miles from the airport to the ferry boat. I wrote him an IOU for a thousand dollars and signed it, and used a felt-tip marker to put a thumbprint next to the signature. I gave him my Iowa phone number and e-mail address.

  I actually did plan to pay him. And even tell him the real story, eventually. But when he pleaded, “Do y’have to keep pointin’ that gun at me?” I said that in fact I did. Just accept it as a condition of employment.

  We were pretty much in the middle of nowhere when we saw a sign that said five miles to the ferry. Just beyond the sign was a dirt road to the right; I told him to turn down it.

  It was a forest fire road, arrow-straight most of the way. No sign of habitation; a state or federal forest reserve, perhaps. We went a couple of miles and then the road just stopped. Ran out of funds or hit a county line or something. “Back up and turn around,” I said.

  He wasn’t an experienced driver. It took him six or seven sloppy tries. “Okay, stop. Give me the keys. And your cell phone.”

  He looked at me on the verge of tears, mouth trembling. I gave him my water bottle. “Don’t drink this all at once. It will take you a while to get back to the road. I’ll leave the car at the ferry station with the keys and the cell under the floor mat.”

  “What?”

  “Even if you don’t get a ride, you should reach the ferry before dark. That thousand bucks is yours, plus another thousand, if you don’t say anything to anybody. Did you ever make two thousand dollars in a day before?”

  “I don’t, but I don’t get it.”

  “Spy stuff, man. Don’t try to make any sense of it.” I motioned with the gun and he got out. I slid over, and he handed me the cell phone. Gave him a little wave as I drove off and, in the rearview mirror, he waved back weakly.

  How many state and federal laws had I just broken? Steal a car at gunpoint, kidnap the poor schlub who owned it, and abandon him in the woods after threatening murder? Maybe I could write it up as a TV show and use the royalties to hire the best lawyer on the planet.

  The clock was ticking, but I had no faintest idea of how long I had. How likely was it that the kid would take me at my word and become my accomplice? More likely that some forest ranger or farmer would find him out there on that dirt road and he’d spill everything.

  Which might not be bad if the timing was just right. Have a boatload or chopper full of cops coming to back me up at the cabin. But not so soon that they wou
ld arrest me instead.

  I got to the main road and pulled over to the shoulder to think. I looked at the boy’s cell phone. Damn, the battery light was blinking yellow. Kids nowadays.

  Why not just call the cops?

  Well, they might arrest the wrong person. Me. Yes, I took the kid’s cell phone at gunpoint and stole his cab, but you have to understand—

  Even if they did go along with it, a large force converging on that cabin might endanger Kit.

  Or no. If the Enemy hurt her, they would have nothing to bargain with.

  Which presupposed the Enemy would think rationally under stress.

  What about me? Could I think straight? Was I?

  My plan: go to Swan’s Island and sneak up on these desperados with five rounds in a .38 Special peashooter. Brandish the gun and snatch Kit and take her back to safety?

  If that’s the question, the answer is “You and what army?”

  I didn’t have an army, but I did have certain resources, chief among them the ironic one of being a fugitive. And thus perhaps a lure. But again, who would I be luring?

  What I really needed was a pissed-off Sara Underwood, mad enough to rain some serious shit on me, focusing on a tiny island off the coast of Maine. Unfortunately, the phone with her number in its memory was in shards in a dumpster in Louisiana. That had been a smart move.

  I didn’t even know what state her office was in.

  But I did have one name and one place. I started driving and, throwing caution to the winds, picked up the phone and punched 4-1-1. I asked some guy with an Indian accent to put me through to an operator in Springfield, Missouri.

  “That will not be necessary, sir. I have all those numbers right here.”

  “I don’t need a number. I need a human being on the line.”

  “I am a human being, sir.” He did not sound like a friendly one.

  “I need one in Springfield, Missouri.”

  “That will not be possible, sir. If you give me a name in Springfield, Missouri, I will connect you to his phone.”