My left leg swung forward with my left arm—and Redhead’s grip on that elbow. As my left shoe hit the school hall tile, I dropped all my weight through that foot, wheeled my waist to my right. That whirl snapped my right hand like a whip into the face of my other CIA escort. A firebomb exploded his nose. I spun my waist back, a change that scooped my right foot under his floating shoe and dropped him to the tiles.
Even before I swept his partner, Redhead was reacting, pulling on my left elbow—a force I rode with my wheeling waist, my left arm turning free from his elbow-grip as my blood-flecked right hand surfed off my spin in a rising palm strike towards his eyes.
Give him this: he was quick. His left hand arced in a cross block—that I let contact my strike, that my right arm merged with as I sank back. His right hand slammed a low punch straight at me that I caught, pulled, felt him pull back. I flowed forward/sent both our energies through my push. He would have flown backwards except I held onto him with my left hand. His weight slamming down through his shoes jarred his spine. As he staggered, fought falling, my right hand ripped his pistol from its left-side holster, then my left palm pushed his center so he truly flew away.
Gun, in my right hand, a beautiful Sig Sauer automatic. I thumb-cocked the hammer as my mouth opened and slid around steel oil tang. I jammed the gun bore on the roof of my mouth—pulled the trigger.
CLICK!
Perfect! I thought as I jerked the gun out of my mouth, my left hand flying to grab the pistol’s slide and jack a round from the magazine into firing position: Mister CIA, great gun, no bang in the barrel.
Last thing I heard that day was the Sig rack a bullet into ready, then the taser knocked me back-to-whacko-world with a jillion electric volts of shock and awe.
39
On Day Five of our mad dogs’ run, morning found me sitting in a dark New Jersey bedroom that smelled of dust and sweat-caked clothing. I matched my breathing to the rise and fall of a cocooned bed.
Outside, a newspaper thunked on the wooden porch.
Zane flipped the switch on the bedroom wall. The light came on.
He grinned. “So far, so good.”
Cari’d been feigning sleep. Zane’s light meant she couldn’t pretend anymore. “Are you always so damn happy when you wake up?”
Zane shrugged. “Hope so.”
Her bloodshot green eyes found me: “Have you been there all night?”
“I relieved Hailey early so I could be here when you woke up.”
Cari’s eyes closed. “Please say that I smell coffee! I promise I won’t escape or capture you while I go downstairs to the kitchen and have just one cup of coffee.”
“Of course you can have coffee!” I said.
“Don’t promise the obvious,” Zane told her. “You’re better than that.”
“Speaking of obvious,” said Hailey as she walked into the room, “first thing in the morning, everybody’s got to go. As a woman, I say she gets privacy—with me.”
Took us 15 minutes to unwrap Cari’s cocoon. We untied the line belting her cuffed wrists to her waist, but kept her ankles tethered: she could walk, go up and down stairs, but running would be a joke, her knee strike would lack power, and the only kick she could deliver was the movie-awesome, street-silly, jump double push.
Hailey passed me her pistol, followed Cari into the bathroom, closed the door.
Zane leaned there.
I leaned on the opposite wall.
We could hear the shape of words inside the closed bathroom. Hear any danger.
Sounds of a zipper, clothing hitting the bathroom floor.
Sounds of liquid.
“So,” said Zane.
“Yeah,” I said.
“You get any sleep?”
Our sentry plan was two hours at the windows, then two hours in Cari’s room. Who cared that I’d jumped cycle?
“Got some,” I told Zane. “You?”
“Guess so.”
Toilet flushed.
I shrugged. “Weird dreams.”
“’Xactly.”
Water rushed into a sink.
Bathroom door clicked open. Cari shuffled into the hall.
Hailey looked at Zane and me: “You guys ready?”
All of us trooped downstairs.
“So what I’m wondering,” said Russell 20 minutes later as all six of us sat in the dead man’s living room, “is why do we got her?”
‘Her’ sat on the couch, poker faced, a steaming cup of coffee in her cuffed hands as she calculated turning that boiling liquid into a projectile weapon, leaping to her tethered feet, and hearing the gunshots of her own certain death.
She sipped her coffee that she took with milk. Just like me.
“Can’t call her a hostage,” said Hailey. “If they catch up to us… You don’t negotiate with mad dogs.”
“Can’t call her a prisoner,” said Russell. “That’s not our mission.”
Eric said: “Shouldn’t plan’n front of her.”
“No,” I said. “We have to do all this in front of her. She’s our witness.”
“What?” said Russell.
“Our only way free of everything is if the Agency believes us,” I said.
Hailey shook her head. “We’re ‘mad dogs.’”
“’Xactly,” said Zane. “So Victor’s right. We can’t run forever and it won’t matter if we nail Kyle Russo or whoever Dr. F’s killer is. The good guys will still hunt us down.”
“But if we have a witness,” I said. “Someone who the Agency believes, then…”
Russell’s gesture revealed the pistol in his belt. “Then what?”
“We haven’t gotten that far yet,” said Zane. “But at least ‘then’ is somewhere.”
Cari cleared her throat, said: “Or—”
“You got something to offer we ain’t already heard?” said Russell.
Cari shook her head.
“Then,” he said, drawing that word out, “you got nothing to say.”
Eric told Hailey: “He’s still mad about last night.”
“I was going to get laid!”
My voice said: “Nothing personal! This is about us and what we’ve got to do.”
“‘About us’?” said Russell. “Then why don’t we vote? Hell, we all pledged our lives to uphold truth, justice and the American way of democracy.”
Hailey shrugged. “Sounds reasonable.”
No words came out of my mouth. What could I say that wouldn’t shatter us?
Zane shared my predicament. Shrugged. “We’re all the boss.”
Eric sighed. “Can’t… vote.”
He pressed his hands over his ears, scrunched his eyes shut. “Hear orders both ways from all of you an’ me voting… Tear me apart.”
Hailey patted his arm.
“So,” said Russell: “All those in favor of making her our witness.”
Zane and I held up our right hands.
“All those opposed.”
Russell and Hailey held up their right hands.
Eric pressed both his hands tighter over his ears.
“It’s a tie,” said Russell. “And that leaves us stuck sitting here.”
Cari said: “What about me? Don’t I get to vote?”
Her five captors stared at each other.
Hailey shrugged. “A scientific study in the 1970s proved that the mentally ill are as likely to make rational electoral decisions as the average American voter.
“Given everything,” she told Cari, a blonde warrior handcuffed and tethered and holding a cup of steaming coffee on a dead man’s couch, “you look sufficiently average.”
“Wild,” said Russell. “So your vote is whether or not you get to be our witness.”
“Excuse me, guys,” said Cari. “But… What happens if
‘not’ wins the election?”
Brows wrinkled. Mouths frowned.
“Well,” said Zane, “most likely, ‘not’ won’t include murder.”
“Such certainty is comforting,” said Cari.
“That’s politics,” I said.
“Hell, I was on my way to a promotion, but I’ll be your witness if you want.”
“Wild,” said Russell—but sarcastically, grudgingly, not like he meant cool.
“So… now we can lose the handcuffs?” Cari gave us an angel smile.
Earned our laughter.
“Witness is one thing,” said Zane. “Walking free you have to earn.”
“We’re crazy,” said Russell, “not stupid.”
“Oh.” Cari shrugged. “OK. But where are we going? And when?”
“Nowhere until long after dark,” I said.
“I’ve got an idea,” said Hailey. “But we can’t try it until just before we leave.”
Cari looked at us: “So… tonight?”
Zane and I shrugged.
Our witness said: “What are we going to do until then?”
40
Imagine Cari taking a shower.
Upstairs bathroom. Eric nailed the window shut. Cari couldn’t break that glass or tear the shower curtain rod out of the wall without making a racket. The top of a toilet tank is great for whacking somebody from behind, but cumbersome for face-to-face combat. We removed all the dead man’s aerosol spray cans and caustic bath potions.
I sat with my back against the wall in the upstairs hall, my eyes on the closed bathroom door that was near enough so I could hear running water/yells/breaking glass/tussle, but far enough away so that a charge sprung from inside that closed room couldn’t catch me by surprise. Because I cared, I held the tranquilizer dart gun, not the Glock .45 from the holster on my hip or Hailey’s 9 mic-mic Sig-Sauer tucked in my belt.
Imagine Cari taking a shower.
I couldn’t stop that movie playing in my head.
I wouldn’t have stopped that movie if I could.
Hailey was in there, our added check on Cari’s nature. Hailey sat on the vanity by the closed door, out of striking range from anyone standing in the tub shower, someone inside that clear plastic curtain, a pink flesh blur turning and twisting in rising steam.
Cari raised her face into the nozzle’s rain. Pounding water darkened her blonde hair. Beads of water rolled down her naked spine. Hot rain washed over Cari’s face, over her closed eyes, the steam clearing her sinuses, a cleansing mist that slickened the skin of her bare shoulders, her neck, that trickled down to wet—
Rattling like a prairie snake!
Zane: walking up the stairs, shaking a white coffee mug.
My buddy came and stood above me, said: “I thought this was Russell’s post.”
“Was,” I said. Kept my seat. Kept casual. “But with what he’s angry about, with what’s going on in there…”
I nodded toward beyond the bathroom door.
“You don’t need to worry,” said Zane. “She’s not his type.”
“Yeah, but it’s been a long time, and if you can’t be with the one you love…”
“You wait.”
You poor guy, I thought.
Water pounding in the shower.
“Think she’s bought into our program?” I asked.
“No. But she’s along for the ride.”
Zane shook the mug that he held at my eye level, made it rattle like coins in a cup.
“Hailey sorted these out for you before she went in there,” he said, his nod again keying our glance at closed shower room door.
The mug held three colored pills.
“Last dose for all of us,” said Zane.
“Then what?”
“’Xactly.”
I downed the pills with a swallow from Zane’s water bottle.
The shower shut off with a shuddering clank of pipes.
Water gurgled down a drain.
“You need to see what we found.” Zane angled his head towards the stairs.
“Great,” I said. “I’ll—we’ll be right down. You go on ahead.”
“That’s OK.” He leaned on the wall. “I’ll hang here. Back you up.”
He nodded to the closed steamy door. “Gotta be careful. She’s a lot to handle.”
I was on my feet when the door clicked, swung open.
Cari wore a blue denim shirt from the dead man’s closet, her own black slacks and his two-sizes-too-big white sneakers. She rolled the drooping cuffs up her bare arms.
Said: “I feel like a clown.”
Zane said: “Everybody does.”
“You look fine,” I told her. “You smell great, too. Clean. Fresh.”
“Good thing the guy had a spare toothbrush.”
Hailey followed her out, stood clear.
I clicked steel bracelets on Cari. Tethered her ankles. Tied the rope dangling from her handcuffs to her tether.
When I was done shackling her, Cari said: “I prefer a natural look.”
Simultaneously, Zane said: “Good for you,” and I said: “Me, too.”
Hailey shook her head. “You two got it now. My turn to shower.”
We had Cari lead us downstairs, one shuffling step at a time.
As Zane told me: “Putting together our cash, the $123 we found here—”
“Leave a few bucks in his wallet,” I said. “When the cops find him, we don’t want them to think people have been here, cleaning him out.”
“People maybe, us no. With the bankrolls from Cari’s crew, we’ve got $4100, plus a jar of coins. We found no guns.”
“What kind of American was he?” said Cari.
We watched her clump down the stairs, one at a time.
“Eric found enough food to rustle up a few home-cooked meals,” said Zane. “Bottled water we can take, granola bars, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Vitamins.”
“No Valium? No Prozac or Librium or Sonatas or—”
“No.”
Echoing Cari, I said: “What kind of American was he?”
Zane pointed for her to go right as we came downstairs. We followed Cari into the house’s small study. An ancient rolltop desk stood opposite the door.
Zane picked up a shoebox that rattled as he passed it to me. “He does have lots of headache pills, and the documents I found in his desk match these.”
Sunglasses. Dozens of sunglasses. Aviator sunglasses in mirror and flat black lenses. Wrap-around sunglasses sporting Beatnick era solid frames and cyber cool metal girder frames. Discount store box lens sunglasses with imitation tortoise shell brown and cheap black frames. Men’s granny sunglasses like John Lennon wore. Blind bluesman wrap-arounds that optometrists put on their patients after an eye exam. Clip-on sunglasses, one pair clipped on regular sunglasses for extra dark vision.
“He had Nonspecific Umbra Logarithmic Loss.”
“What?”
Zane nodded past Cari to the rolltop desk and its stacks of paper. “He had a condition called NULL. According to doctors’ reports, insurance forms, lab work…
“Everything is white or black or a blend from them,” said Zane. “Like day and night, or that Chinese yin-yang symbol of two teardrop half circles snaking each other.”
“The T’ai Chi T’u symbol,” I said. “But each extreme contains a dot of the other.”
“Not if you have NULL. ‘Umbra’ is the darkest part of the shadowed area. In your—in our—eyes, that means the darkest part of where light comes in—and the coming in of that light. He was losing his umbra.”
“He was going blind?”
“Yeah, but not to dark. Every day he saw light getting brighter. Soon it would blind out all shapes, all color. All his eyes would see was burning white.”
/> Cari shifted from tethered foot to tethered foot. Watching us.
“Blinded by light,” I said. “But then—”
“Hey guys,” said Cari. “Do you mind if I sit down?”
She nodded at the wheeled wooden chair pushed into the well of the rolltop desk.
I looked at Zane. He looked at me.
“Look,” she said, “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
She glared at me. “Remember? You were there.”
I scanned the desk for what might hide amidst stacks of letters, paperclipped receipts, medical reports, and tax forms. A stack of utility bills from the era of America’s first President George Bush lay in the shadows under the desk’s cubby-holed face. Buried under that stack of paper was a long lump.
Under the bills I found a letter opener given to service station owners like our dead host. The blade was brass with dull dagger edges, though a powerful thrust might drive its six inches into soft tissue. Inscribed on one side of the handle was an oil company’s slogan—“Good for your car wherever you are!”—a promise expanded with a second line: “So what we do is good for you!” The other side held the corporate logo and the date “1963”—the dawn of The Beatles and Lee Harvey Oswald.
My hand weighed the letter opener while Cari watched. “This wouldn’t have been much use.”
“You use what you get.”
Zane put the letter opener in the box of sunglasses. I swiveled the chair out from the desk well, directed Cari to sit.
“Be good,” I told her as she looked up at me.
“What else is on the ballot?”
Zane led me to the other side of the room where a giant colored map of America’s land-locked 48 states filled the wall. Cities and towns—especially near this New Jersey home—were spiked by blue thumbtacks. Red thumbtacks spiked places like San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, a pink stretch of Arizona where I guessed the Grand Canyon waited and a tan corner of Montana that Zane said was Glacier National Park.
“More red than blue,” said Zane.
“Bet you blue is been there, red is wanna go. But he was going blind.”
“More every day,” said Zane. “Like pushing down on the Cadillac’s accelerator.”
“He could never go to the places he’d never been. Never see them.”