I Don't Like Where This Is Going (10 page)

“Have you gone to the police?”

“Need to make sure that the girls are safe before I write anything. Just remember, when you see a prostitute, don't think
criminal
; think
victim
. Some of the women you see working the streets of Vegas were shipped there in box trucks from the tomato fields of Florida.”

“I can't believe this.”

“The Islamists kidnap three hundred girls at a time. Here we do it one by one.” Donny ordered two more beers and went off on Muslim fundamentalists, eviscerating the medieval barbarians who degrade women, murder those who believe in any deity but their own, a god who's nothing more than a nightmarish invention of some delusional pigs needing an excuse to justify their lust for plunder, slaughter, and oppression. The Koran, Donny said, spends more time telling Muslim men they can keep women as slaves than it does telling them they need to pray five times a day.

When I suggested that not all Muslims agreed with the fundamentalists and had condemned the atrocities, Donny said he was sick of cultural relativism that defended the deprivation of human rights, murder, and intolerance in the name of respect for religious beliefs and cultural tradition. Religion, he said, doesn't deserve respect.

PATIENCE CALLED TO SAY
she'd meet me in an hour at the Wayside. I'd been coming to the Wayside my whole adult life. First with my ex, Georgia, often with Bay, and at times with my dad, both in his vigorous and stocious days and in his sundown days of dementia.
The Wayside ignores the state's smoking ban, which makes it a favorite of the folks from the mission on Main and the backsliding folks from the AA meeting at the Episcopal church across the street.

Not very long after I'd moved out of our house, Georgia called to tell me that she had a stack of mail waiting for me and that she was dating a fellow with the rhyming name Marty Hardy, a Realtor, divorced with two kids. She said she could do without the kids, quite frankly, but Marty was a garrulous fellow, not given to fits of melancholia like someone she knew. And then she got around to talking about us. She wondered if we hadn't been too hasty in our separation. Maybe we should, you know, talk. By then I had settled into a solitary life in a studio apartment on the beach over a Mexican restaurant run by Persians. We agreed to meet Saturday afternoon at the Wayside, which was around the corner from Georgia's.

I kissed her on the cheek, sat, and asked her how she was doing.

“All in all,” she said, “comme ci, comme ça. Good days, bad days. Ups and downs.” She handed me Marty's business card. “He wants you to have it. You can't be renting forever.”

There was a picture of a stout, bearded fellow, wearing a
TRUST ME, I'M A REALTOR
T-shirt and the slogan
WE KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE
across the bottom.

Georgia looked around at the half dozen shabby tables, at the torn vinyl chairs, at the Alonzo Mourning poster, at two of the six Boswell brothers playing cribbage at a pub table, at the dented cigarette machine, and at Twyla behind the bar, smoking a cigarette, sipping a Tom Collins, and watching NASCAR on TV, and said, “A lot of memories here.”

We ended up at Georgia's. We ordered lamb shawarma and Moroccan fish, and we drank even more. We looked through a photo album of our life together and grew mawkish. Nothing
had changed in the house except my cluttered office. Now my books were in a storage unit on Lantana, and the office had been converted into what Georgia called a meditation room. Mats and cushions on the floor, potted plants in every corner, candles on the windowsills, Japanese prints on the walls, and a hand-of-Buddha indoor water fountain on the coffee table, burbling away. Eventually, Georgia cut Marty loose and found the man she would marry, Tripp Morris, and had two kids of her own. Georgia and I were like DeFonda and Abrel and should never have been together to begin with. She was Beatles; I was Stones.

TWO WOMEN OF MY
casual acquaintance, Desirée and Baby, were sitting at a shaded table on the Wayside patio enjoying their highballs and a blunt. Baby had her shoes off and her feet up on a chair. Desirée wore a hairnet.

Baby held up the blunt and said, “Kind bud, Wylie.”

Desirée said, “Hawaiian black.”

I thanked them for their thoughtfulness, walked into the bar, ordered a Bloody Mary, and asked Zeke, the bartender, what was up with the eye patch. He said it helped with his double vision. “The headaches are a bitch.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Six, seven weeks.”

“This is serious.”

“No shit.” He stuck a celery stalk in my drink on the second try and slid the glass to my hand.

“You need to see a doctor.”

“Or two.” He smiled and held up his hands. “No dinero.”

I told him I was calling a doctor friend to make an appointment. “Won't cost you.”

While I was on hold, Baby and Desirée came in and sat at the bar. Baby handed Zeke a plastic sack full of meat ends from the Italian market where she worked, and he poured them each a Dewar's and water.

I explained to Zeke that Dr. Chao was a holistic ophthalmologist and would probably talk with him about his diet and his supplements, so he might want to keep the meat ends a secret. I told Walter to send me the bill, but he probably wouldn't—he'd be so fascinated with the mystery of Zeke's vision that he'd consider it a privilege to have a go at him.

Patience walked in and gave me a kiss. I ordered another Bloody Mary, and we went to a table. She slid her hand over mine and squeezed. We toasted our reunion. I said, “When are you coming to visit?”

“Soon, I hope.”

An orbiculate fellow wearing a
VIRGINITY ROCKS!
T-shirt and carrying a tub of fried chicken from Chicken Lickin' (
It's So Clucking Good!
) under his arm, walked in, put the tub on the bar, pulled up a stool, and asked Zeke to turn on the bowling channel. He ordered a pitcher of beer.

Zeke said, “Don't you have high cholesterol, Warren?”

“If you call six forty-seven high.”

“How the hell are you even standing?”

“In fact, I'm sitting.” Warren pulled a drumstick from the tub, held it up, and admired its succulence.

And that's when my cell phone played “Abracadabra.” I answered. Bay had some distressing news. My grainy face was all over the Vegas TV newscasts. My young friend Ruby, whose real name, at least for now, was Misty Roses, had gone to the police with a story of her rape by an anonymous-looking man she met on the street. That much we knew.

I said, “
Anonymous
hurts.”

Bay said that surveillance videos of me and Misty on the boulevard were the lead story on every channel. The authorities had trouble getting my name at first because I'd been fortunate enough to have paid for the pizza and room in cash, but it had been only a matter of time before someone in our neighborhood or the Crisis Center recognized me and called the cops. And, in fact, as soon as he saw the story, Gene Woodling did call the police. He gave them my name and said I could not have done what the girl they were calling Misty, but whose real name was Audrey Blick, said I had done. I was a straight shooter, one of the good guys.

“This is ludicrous, Bay. They'll ask the hotel clerk, and he'll tell them I left her there.”

“Unless he's been persuaded otherwise.”

“They won't find my DNA on her.” Then I remembered. “Well, I did shake her hand. Why would she do this?”

“Maybe someone wants to fuck with you.”

“Cops?”

“No, but someone else who put them on your trail.”

I told Bay that I was sure the girl had recognized Blythe from the photo.

Bay told me not to fly. As soon as my name turned up on a flight manifest, I'd be scooped up. Better to walk into the Vegas Metro Police Department with my lawyer than be caught by surprise. My lawyer's name was Meyer Cohen, Bay told me, a crackerjack attorney but a mediocre poker player who owed Bay a favor. “Open Mike's going to pick you up at six
A.M.
It's a thirty-eight-and-a-half-hour drive, give or take. See you Thursday.”

I let Patience know the developing complications and the disappointing but necessary travel plans. Our reunion would be short-lived. She asked about Venise, and I told her about the overeating and the
emotional outburst. I'd called Venise's heart specialist, Dr. Wasgatt, while I was still at the hospital, but he couldn't tell me anything: the HIPAA rules and all. He did give me the number of the Obesity Clinic at Florida International University. He said to think of it as a last chance and then he said he didn't say that. I called and got Venise a bed in their thirty-day inpatient holistic bariatric clinic. I called Oliver and left the info on his voice mail. “Don't let her tantrum her way out of this, Oliver.”

I lay in bed with a copy of
Travel
+
Leisure
unfolded on my chest while Patience showered. I told myself not to worry. They couldn't prove I did something in one place while I was busy in another.

Whenever I have to wake up early I have trouble getting to sleep and staying asleep. I drift off to dreamland only to resurface reluctantly minutes later, and in this restless way I seldom reach the third act of my dreams. I felt someone shaking my leg, and I opened my eyes, and Patience said, “Wake up. Mike's downstairs.”

“He's early.”

“He brought coffee and doughnuts.”

“I guess I fell asleep before you came to bed.”

“And you were talking in your sleep.”

“What did I say?”

“You said you put Venise on ice so she wouldn't spoil.”

“Damn! I'd better call Venise.”

“I'll pay her a visit after work.”

6

“I
'VE DONE SOME
bad things in my life,” I heard Mike tell Patience as I walked into the kitchen. “But I've learned to accept myself, warts and all. This is who I am.” He spooned honey onto his strawberry-frosted doughnut and licked the spoon.

Patience said, “You've got yourself one righteous sweet tooth there, Michael Lynch.”

I poured myself a coffee and sat down.

Mike said, “I've stopped holding on to my unworthiness.”

I reached for a cinnamon doughnut and asked Mike if he was quoting Thich Nhat Hanh.

“Goldie Hawn,” he said. “I just go with the flow, you could say.”

“Like a dead fish,” I said.

“Resistance only creates sorrow,” he said.

“Like a fallen leaf in the current,” Patience said.

Mike said, “Are you ready to do this, Coyote?”

“I am.”

“Back to the belly of the beast.”

“I haven't done anything wrong.”

“We all have.”

“I've got a lawyer. An alibi.”

“And yet the cops are on your trail.”

“You're not being very comforting.”

He asked me for my cell phone and took a flip phone from his pocket and slid it to me. “I got you a burner. Leave your cell here. Cops can get your call activity from the cell. Every call you've ever made, your contact lists, voice mails, photos, videos, messages, apps, your passwords, your geolocation points—all without a warrant.” He handed the cell phone to Patience. “Patience can bring it when she visits.”

I said, “Pretty soon we'll need IT support to get lost.”

Mike said, “I've got my GPS locked into your Vegas address. I've got a cooler full of Italian sandwiches from Stranieri's Market, a thermos of coffee with cream, a case of Red Bull, a six-pack of beer, a first-aid kit, and I filled the car with gas.” He put down his doughnut and wiped his mouth with the napkin. “We'll want to evacuate our bowels and bladders before hitting the road. I plan on making good time.”

MIKE HAD RENTED
a gleaming graphite-blue Nissan Rogue. Patience said, “You really did fill your car up with gas.” She opened the back door and I peeked inside. The cargo space was crammed with five-gallon plastic gas cans.

Mike said, “Eighteen cans. You're looking at ninety gallons of high-test right there.”

I said, “We have gas stations in America.”

“They can't beat my price.” He explained that the Rogue got thirty-three miles to the gallon, had a twenty-two gallon tank, and we had 2,259 miles to go, give or take. Eighty gallons should do it. “We have more than enough.”

I said, “We'll have to drive with the windows open.”

Patience said, “What price is that?”

Mike said, “I've got an associate in security at the tank farm over at the port who was willing to look the other way in exchange for future services rendered.”

Patience clapped her hands. “Okay, then. I've heard enough. Good luck, boys.” She kissed me goodbye and waved to us as we backed out of her driveway. Mike grazed the mailbox and said, “No harm, no foul.”

The overwhelming smell of the gasoline was already assaulting my sinuses. Could a throbbing headache be far behind? I leaned my head out the window and sucked in the relatively fresh air.

“Satellite radio,” Mike said. “Watch this.” He powered the radio on and told it to go to
The Richie Mulhearn Show
, which turned out to be a sports talk show. Richie's guest prattled on about parity in the Association. And then followed fifteen minutes of commercials for erectile dysfunction medications and personal injury attorneys. We merged with the turnpike north, and I asked Mike what the other smell was.

“My new scent.” He held out his wrist for me to sniff. “Kon-Kwest. They call the fragrance
animalic
. It drives the female of the species wild.”

“What species?” I sneezed. “I think I may pass out.”

“You'll get used to it.”

“What if we get stopped?” I said. “What happens? All this fuel can't be legal.”