Mr. And Miss Anonymous (23 page)

He’d certainly find out at five thirty. He wondered which banana republic he’d end up in. Or would they simply kill him? He had no way of knowing.

With nothing else to occupy his time, Hudson took a shower and dressed in a running out-fit. The last time he’d run or jogged was when he was seven years old. He slicked back his hair, shaved, and went to the kitchen in search of food.

As Hudson bit into his ham-and-cheese sandwich, he wondered if it would literally be his last meal.

I
t was a little after four when Charlie Garrison pronounced the TracFone sufficiently charged to start making calls. He felt excited for the boy and hoped something good would come of everything. He was going to miss the youngster when he left, but there was no need to fool himself—the boy
would
leave.

For some reason Charlie felt close to him, almost paternal where the young man was concerned.
He could be my grandson,
he told himself
. He asked me to be his grandfather. It would be nice to be able to spend time with him, to watch him through his college years, maybe visit him on campus, go to dinner with him, send e-mails back and forth. Maybe play a game of chess once in a while, confer about the
Times’
crossword puzzles. Maybe just to love him because no one else did.
The bottom line was, Charlie realized just how lonely he really was. In less than twenty-four hours he realized something else: he loved this kid with the curly hair and dark eyes and quaintly old-fashioned way of looking at things.

He wanted to take Josh to ball games, to get a pizza, to buy him a dog that would love him to death. All the things he never got to do with his own kids or grandkids.

Josh stunned the old man when he asked, “Charlie, why can’t I work at your hot dog place and stay here with you? I can sleep on the couch. I won’t bother you. I need to get a job so I can go to college. I was going to ask you if I could go online to apply for aid. Maybe you could help me. I’d really like to continue my education here at Berkeley.”

“Youngster, I don’t know if that’s a good idea until all this mess is sorted out. You can work at Hotdog Haven if you want, and, yes, you can stay with me, but you deserve more than this. Don’t worry, we’re going to work it all out.” Charlie’s voice turned ferocious and yet proud-sounding when he said, “If I have anything to say about it, your running days are over. I might be old, but I learned a thing or two in the navy I can use to protect you.”

The boy was nervous, Charlie could tell. “Have you…uh, talked to Tom lately?”

“As a matter of fact I haven’t. The last time I talked to Tom, he said I have you now to help me, and he’d go into a wait-and-see mode. He’s like that. If I need him, I just call his name, and he’s right there. I miss him a lot. Sheila, too. I bet Tom or I would have married Sheila someday. She said she wanted us to fight over her. Tom and I said we wouldn’t fight each other over her, and she didn’t speak to us for a whole week, so we said okay, we’d fight over her, but she had to marry someone else.” This was all said in one breathless burst of words.

Charlie laughed. “Women are at the root of all evil. You have a whole life ahead of you before you can think about marrying. Eventually you’ll meet some nice girl in college who will blow your socks off, and that will be it. Love comes around when you least expect it. First things first, you have to get a fine education so you can take care of a wife and kids and probably her mother. Girls always come with a mother, for some strange reason.”

“No, the first thing I have to do is save enough money to buy a tombstone for all my friends. I’m thinking just one with all their names on it. What do you think, Charlie? How long will it take me to earn enough money at your hot dog place to do that?”

Charlie’s eyes started to burn. “Not that long,” he said gruffly.

“Then that’s what we’ll do. You’ll help me with that, won’t you, Charlie?”

“I will, youngster, I will. Are you ready to make the call?”

Josh disconnected the charger and turned on the TracFone. He turned around to look at the kitchen clock. It was four thirty. “Let’s go over it one more time so I don’t foul things up. Jeez, this is like debating class. I was never good at that. Sheila was a whiz. She always won.”

“You’re going to call and ask for Mr. Kelly. Tell them who you are and say you saw Mr. Kelly on television. Tell them your number. If you want, tell them about your book. Ask why Mr. Kelly is looking for you. Then you hang up. If you want them to return your call, you’ll have to give them the TracFone number. Or tell them you’ll call back in a half hour to get a number where he can be reached. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, Josh. We can just throw the phone away.”

“No, I have to do this, Charlie. I have to do it for Tom, Sheila, Jesse, all the others, too, as well as Mr. Dickey and Miss Carmody. Okay, here goes.”

Charlie sat back in his chair and watched the boy as he punched in the numbers to PAK Industries. He wished he was clairvoyant.

Josh listened to the operator say, “PAK Industries, how may I direct your call?”

“Hello. My name is Josh Baer, and I’d like to speak to Mr. Kelly, please.”

“Mr. Kelly isn’t in the office. Can I put you through to his assistant, Marty Bronson, sir?”

Josh smiled and mouthed the words,
“She called me ‘sir.’ ”

“No…. Wait a minute. Okay, I can talk tohim.”

“Just a minute, sir.”

“Marty Bronson.”

“Hi, Mr. Bronson. Can you tell me how I can get in touch with Mr. Kelly? My name is Josh Baer. I also have a number that is 8446. I saw him on television, and he said he was looking for 8446.”

The voice on the other end of the phone was smooth as silk and didn’t miss a beat. “Mr. Kelly is in California but I can have him call you, Josh. Is it okay to call you Josh?”

“Sure. I know Mr. Kelly is in California. Do you know why he’s trying to find me?”

“I’m sorry, Josh, I don’t know the answer to your question. I’m assuming it’s personal. If you give me your phone number, I will try and reach Mr. Kelly. I’m sure he’ll return your call as soon as I reach him. He’s a prompt kind of guy, if you know what I mean.” When Josh didn’t respond, Marty Bronson said, “Josh, are you there? Did you hear what I just said?”

“I heard what you said, and I’m still here. I’m thinking. Why don’t you give me his cell phone number? In the interest of expediency. Are you still there, Mr. Bronson? Did you hear me?”

Josh was rewarded with a chuckle on the other end of the phone.
“Touché,
Josh.”

“Hang up now, Josh.”

Josh whirled around. “Tom! Why?” he mouthed the question.

“Towers. He’s trying to track your location.”

“Oh, shit!” Josh broke the connection as he struggled to take a deep breath.

“What happened?” Charlie demanded.

“Tom told me to hang up. Something about the towers the cell phone signals go through. They can find me that way.”

“He’s right, son. I’m sorry, I didn’t think about that. Maybe I’m not the right person to be helping you. Guess that means I have to relocate you. That’s not going to be a problem. I’ll just call Dorothy and tell her she’s going to have a few guests for a while. Get your stuff together. We should leave now. I have a key to her house.”

“I don’t have any stuff, Charlie. Just the book, and it’s stuck in my pants. Why do you have a key to Dorothy’s house? Won’t she mind if we go there?”

Charlie put his hands on his hips. “Now why do you
think
I have a key to her house?”

“I thought…maybe she had a cat or a dog or something.”

“Sometimes you are so slow you make me crazy. Try the birds and the bees, buddy. Remember that sex education class when Mr. Dickey said there could be snow on the roof and fire in the chimney. It took us five days to figure out what he was talking about, and even then it was Sheila who got the answer,”
Tom said.

Josh turned pink. “I get it. Dorothy is your sweetheart.”

“Among other things,” Charlie muttered, as he started throwing things into a bag.

“Will we be safe at Dorothy’s house?”

“Youngster, when you meet Dorothy, you’ll know nothing is going to happen to you. She can be a one-man, er, one-woman army. Matter of fact, she was in the army once. She’s a crack shot, too. Wears combat boots all the time. If she decides to kick ass and take names later, that person is never seen or heard of again. She cooks like an angel. She has two dogs and two cats, and her place still smells like Ivory Soap. You ready?”

“Yeah, I’m ready.”

“Then let’s hit the road.”

The time was five ten.

Hudson Preston checked to make sure he had his keys deep in his pockets. He took a last look around the house he knew he would never see again. His gaze raked the photos on the mantel and then the huge painting of his father over the mantel. “Rot in hell, you bastard!”

He was almost to the door when he turned around and headed back to the bar, where he poured one last drink of the vintage cognac. As he gulped the fiery liquid, he realized he was too nervous to enjoy it.
Another time, another place,
he told himself as he walked back through the rooms and out the kitchen door. If he didn’t make a sound and walked through his neighbor’s yard and exited on the cross street, his security detail would never know he’d left the house. He’d eluded this particular bunch in the past, so he saw no cause for worry this time.

His heart thundering in his chest, Hudson played the instructions over and over in his mind as he trotted along.
Don’t make eye contact with anyone, don’t look to the right or the left. Don’t speak to anyone. A car will stop, the door will open, and you get in.
Even an idiot could follow those simple instructions.

Five minutes later, Hudson heard the sound of a car behind him. His feet picked up speed, but he didn’t look up. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the black nose of the car slow and pull to the curb. When he heard the sound of the door sliding open, he stepped to the curb and climbed in. The automatic lock slammed home.

Safe.

Twenty minutes later, the privacy partition slid open. The driver turned slightly. “Are you comfortable, Senator?”

There was something familiar about the voice asking the polite question, but Hudson couldn’t place it. “Yes,” he said curtly.

Another twenty minutes went by before the driver made a sudden stop and pulled to the curb in front of an identical-looking car. “I’ll just be a moment, sir. I have to speak to a colleague.”

Hudson watched as the driver climbed out of the car and walked around to the back so that he could approach the parked vehicle behind him. He opened the door, looked in, and turned to face Hudson Preston at the same time the automatic doors slid open.

“How’s it going, old chum?” Diesel Morgan asked.

“You!”

“Well, not exactly. I’m the new you from here on in. See that car? That was supposed to be your getaway car, but now it’s my getaway car. Like I said, I’m the new you. And don’t you worry that fat little head of yours, I’m going to pop your old man as soon as I get done with you. Any last words, Senator?”

“It was all my father’s idea. He’s to blame for all this. Go on, shoot me, get it over with.”

Morgan obliged.

Pete Kelly pounced on his cell phone like it was a lost contact lens. “What the hell do you mean he hung up on you? Marty…”

“Pete, I told him I’d have you call, and then the kid asked for your cell number when all of a sudden I could feel this intake of breath, and he froze on me. I think he was with someone. Just like that he cut me off. I did hear him say, ‘Oh, shit!’ before he hung up. I’m sorry, boss.”

“No caller ID?” Pete asked.

“No, a TracFone, I assume. You know how those things work. The kid is smart, but I can guarantee you he’s got some help. He knows you’re in California. And he saw you on television. He also said he’s Number 8446. That’s it, boss.”

Pete broke the connection. He felt like crying. “We lost him again. He called. Marty thinks he has help now. That’s probably a good thing if it’s the right kind of help. We need to think about that. Up until last night the boy was flying blind. Now, where in this short span of time did he come up with help? You wanna know what I think, Lily? I think that old guy at the Castle Gate Apartments is helping him. He snookered us. And we damn well fell for it. Son of a bitch!” Pete seethed as he banged his fist into the wall.

“The best part is this. He said he was 8446. That’s all I needed to hear. He’s my kid! He’s mine, Lily! No more guessing. He’s mine!”

Lily ran to him and put her arms around him. “Tell me, Pete, what’s it feel like?” she whispered.

Pete looked down into Lily’s questioning eyes. “Like a thousand Christmas mornings all rolled into one. It’s a high and a low all at the same time. I want to tell the world I have a son. Although he probably hates my guts or will if he doesn’t already. I don’t even care about that. It’s the same overwhelming feeling as the one I had when I realized I loved you. Your turn is coming. I promise. I never break a promise, just so you know, Lily.”

“I know that, Pete. I’m a patient person. Now, let’s put our heads together and see what we come up with.”

Pete nodded. “First I have to call Marty and tell him to run an extensive check on that old guy. While he’s doing that, I think we should go back to the Castle Gate Apartments as soon as it gets dark. My gut tells me the boy is with him.”

“Why wait for darkness, Pete? Let’s be brazen and walk right up to the door and knock. I see no reason to let more hours go by when we’re so close to finding him.”

The phone call made, Zolly at the wheel, the trio, along with Winston, set off for the Castle Gate Apartments. By the time Zolly parked the car, Marty Bronson was on the phone.

“You want to write this down or will you remember it, boss?”

“Just give it to me now, Marty, then text message it, okay?”

“You got it. Charlie Garrison has a few navy buddies. I have two addresses. He owns the Hotdog Haven and works for ten bucks an hour. That’s all he takes out of the business. There’s a rift between him and his family. Yeah, I know I gave you some of this before. He has four employees, and here are their addresses. My gut tells me to go with Miss Dorothy since she seems to be of an age with Charlie. Maybe they’re an item. Women are sympathetic to kids and old men. Start with her. I did a MapQuest check and she lives about six blocks from the Castle Gate Apartments. She’s a widow and works the day shift at the Hotdog Haven three days a week and one day every other weekend. She’s ex-army, so watch it, or she might wipe up the floor with you. She lives at 982 Sawmill Road. If there’s anything else you need me for, just call.”