Retribution: The Second Chances Trilogy Book Three (17 page)

Nate restates his and his cohorts’ compliance with the gag order and ends the call before Grillo can add anything more.

Upon supplying the details she hasn’t already deduced, he leads Amanda back to the chesterfield. They pour more wine and silently absorb news that’s both unsurprising and unsettling.

“Question,” Nate breaks the prolonged silence. “Can you be ready to leave by tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow? I thought I had two weeks at the very least. What about all the loose ends? It could take that long just to—”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m only cutting back on the North American operation, not shutting down. The office here can take care of anything that can’t be handled by phone or fax.”

On a Sunday, midway through September, Hoop takes a last look around the motel room. With two exceptions, he’s leaving behind the exact same kind of trash he used to pick through in the lost and found cartons in the supply room—soap, shampoo, toothpaste, a comb, a dulled plastic razor. The exceptions are the battered bike and the cheap coffee maker.

He takes a last look in the dimly lit bathroom mirror and wouldn’t recognize himself if it weren’t for the color of his skin and the ridged scar on his chin. He runs a hand over his shaved-bald head and adjusts the bought-over-the-counter eyeglasses he has actual need for. Both will take some getting used to, as will the tight collared shirt and the clip-on necktie he’s wearing under the jacket that matches his pants. He may never get used to the slip-on shoes and lightweight black socks that reach up to his knees.

Because a backpack wouldn’t look right with this getup, it’s an imitation leather valise he hefts when he starts out on the journey that will take him to the Chink restaurant and the storage unit before the worrisome part begins.

By prearrangement, he goes in the deliveries door of the restaurant. The bartender’s contact is waiting for him in the kitchen, where Hoop tries not to gawk at crates of strange-looking cabbages, cellobags of worm-like sprouts, and trays of raw meats he can’t identify. He tries not to scowl overmuch at the din made by a half-dozen or so Orientals shouting their annoying squawk-talk and clattering knives and cleavers against queer round-bottomed cooking pans. He tries not to gag at the stink of old grease and old sweat that makes him want to stay near the outside door, and he pretends not to feel like he’s being tested when he sees how close the contact is watching his reactions.

The contact stays glued to a spot next to a pallet piled waist-high with huge bags of rice. Hoop has no choice but join him there.

“Cash money,” the contact says in a soft voice that barely carries above the cooking noises.

“Documents,” Hoop says without making a move to open the valise.

For some reason this makes the contact giggle—giggle without cracking a smile. But it also makes him bring out a thick envelope from inside his suit coat and hand it over on faith.

Hoop takes his time examining the set of papers that say he’s now Hector Sandoval, a carpet salesman from Albany, New York, instead of Hoople Jakeway, a part-time meat cutter and supermarket worker from Bimmerman, Michigan. This isn’t one of those ghost identities the bartender told him about a few weeks ago; this is a made-up identity that was agreed upon when the contact said it could take weeks or months to find just the right dead person to ghost. This set of papers cost more because forgers and other behind-the-scenes experts demanded a lot. So did the photographer, the contact, and the bartender, who called his hefty share a finder’s fee.

Hoop holds the social security card up to the light. It looks like his real one except it isn’t as wallet-worn. The driver’s license looks real enough, and so does the certified birth certificate with the raised seal on it. Because he’s never seen one before, he can’t judge if the passport will stand close inspection. But the picture inside will; he holds open the page showing him as he appears now, with the difference he wasn’t wearing a necktie when the picture was taken.

The contact brings out the plane ticket thrown in as part of the deal. “Jenwin articaw,” he says and hands it over like Hoop would know a fake plane ticket if he saw one. Truth is he wouldn’t, so he takes only a quick gander, mainly to check that the departure date is Sunday, September 13, 1987—today—and stuffs the stapled set of cards inside the passport like he’s done it dozens of times before. Like air travel is old hat and so is forking over large amounts of money to enable it.

He stays with the casual relaxed pose—good practice for later—as he dips into a pocket for the balance owed. But when he hands over the cash, his insides tense up and something tells him he won’t see any of it again—or see the contact again—if $5,000 worth of phony documents aren’t good enough to fool the experts.

Money’s not the big worry, though; it’s the chance he’s taking. He’s just hours away from taking the biggest chance of his whole entire life. Bigger even than the drive across the country that came to nothing. And a lot bigger than the chance taken in the lawyerwoman’s attic when things didn’t turn out quite right, or the chance taken in her garage when nothing turned out right. Thought of those failures join with worry about what will happen if an airport gatekeeper sees through his ruse and combine to wet the underarms of his new shirt. He’s so stirred up he’s unaware of the bartender’s arrival till he’s thumped on the back and shown an uneven row of tombstone-like teeth bared in a wide grin.

“Ode father come next week,” the bartender announces. “Thanks you.” He bows to Hoop. “And thanks you.” He bows even deeper to the contact. “Go caw taxi airport now.”

The bartender scuttles away before Hoop can explain that he planned on taking a bus to the airport. And that would only be after he went by the storage facility, double-checked on everything there and had a talk with Audrey.

The contact motions Hoop to leave by the deliveries door. He’s barely gone three steps into the outside when a taxicab comes roaring around the side of the building and skids to a stop. The driver leaning out the window could be the bartender’s twin, right down to the skimpy hair, tobacco-colored skin, and squared-off snaggleteeth.

“Hop in,” the driver says. “Awe yours. Free ride airport. Goodbye present him.” He waves an arm in the direction of the restaurant and motions Hoop to get in.

Assuming at least one set of eyes is still watching his every move and testing his worthiness, Hoop shrugs and climbs into the back of the taxi with his valise. He’ll ride till the restaurant’s out of sight and have the driver let him out at the first bus stop they come to. Then again, maybe not. The one worry he’s without is that any of those involved with supplying the phony papers are going to rat on him. To rat on him is to rat on themselves and the guy driving the rattletrap taxicab is clearly one of them. So why not go along with the free ride? Why not see this as a boon and maybe even a sign his luck is finally changing for the better?

He tells the driver to take him to the storage yard, right here on Route 22, before they go to the airport. For reply the driver only grunts, but shows he understood the request by daredeviling across three lanes of traffic to get to the first crossover they come to. They arrive at the storage facility in record time and the Chink driver again shows understanding when told to wait at the gate.

“Yah, yah, yah, wait at gate no meter run,” the driver squawks, bobs his head around like it’s loose and pats the place on the dashboard where a meter would be in a real taxicab.

Hoop laughs for the first time in weeks. Months, even. His spirits are still high when he reaches his unit, works the locks, and lifts the overhead door with the purpose of stocktaking his possessions one last time and having a few more words with Audrey.

After last week’s sorting-through there’s not a lot left to take stock of. And there’s not much to say to Audrey he hasn’t already said during the nighttime visits that got more frequent after the setback in the Glen Abbey garage. She’s already been told he can’t take her with him—same as he can’t take the dope or the entire supply of money. And he’s already told her the rental fee for the unit has been paid a full year in advance, so she won’t be evicted while he’s away. He assured her of that the same night he told her about braving himself to go to a dry goods store and outfit himself for his new identity.

He shuts himself into the unit, flicks on the light and opens the rear compartment of the El Camino. He climbs onto the load bed, taking care not to snag his new clothes, and raps on the lid of the paint can to let her know he’s there. In a low voice he tells her that the paid-up rent doesn’t mean he’ll be gone a full year. It only means he’s taking no more chances than he has to. He reminds her that he wouldn’t have dipped into the supply of dirty money if there had been any other quick way to pay for the trip.

He doesn’t say anything about what using that money could do to his luck. He doesn’t say anything about luck at all, as he looks at the plastic bins holding the stuff he didn’t get rid of last week. He doesn’t look too close or ask himself why he’s hanging on to those things wrung dry of whatever luck they once possessed. He doesn’t give a reason for selecting a couple of those things to take with him. But if he had to give a reason, he’d say the stolen diary and pocket photo album were going along as make-do amulets.

Hoop maneuvers the bins into a more secure arrangement around the paint bucket and says a hurried goodbye to Audrey. What would be the point in dragging this out any longer? What would be the point in making more promises when so many have been broken? He can’t guarantee success and he was a jackassed-fool for ever thinking he could. He can’t even tell her when he’ll be back, for gosh sake.

The El Camino could present another parting wrench if that hadn’t already been felt when he took it off the road as too attention-grabbing and sapping of luck. He locks up the back and checks that the cab is secure with about the same amount of feeling he’d show a rundown Jimmy.

On the ride to the airport he has plenty of time to load his pockets with only what’s needed to get through the checkpoints and onto the plane. Everything else he stows in the valise that he’ll carry on the plane with him.

He’s fighting off another case of nerves when they cross a bridge that must be as big and long as the Mackinac Bridge back in Michigan. As if he needed a reminder of how poorly he does with heights—of how just thinking about the height planes fly at could turn his bowels to water.

The driver grunts when traffic comes to a standstill and grunts again when it breaks loose. This goes on the rest of the way to the airport, where Hoop grunts at one of the queerest looking buildings of all time.

“This it,” the driver says and jerks the taxicab with no meter into the curb lane. “This tee-dubbow-ay,” he says maybe three times before Hoop catches on that this building that looks like a science fiction bird of prey is where he’s supposed to go—the TWA terminal leading to his last chance to settle the score.

Shortly before midnight, Colin begins closing down the studio. He goes about it as would an oaf unfamiliar with the procedure. But the slow bumbling approach doesn’t work as intended; the frustration that’s been building all along fails to dissipate through long drawn-out process.

He locks the door to the ancient building that may as well revert to being a dairy for all the good it’s done lately as a state-of-the-art recording studio. Squeezing milk from cows is a dead sure thing compared to extracting music from keyboard or guitar—especially when you’re not giving it much of a go.

Frustration is now a full-fledged black mood that shadows him along the graveled path leading to the terrace and the manor house beyond. If he’s honest, he’ll admit his frustration predates tonight’s halfhearted attempt to bring order to a chaos of chords and riffs. He’ll also admit that the black mood’s been threatening for a fortnight at least—for however long it’s been since Laurel took on the task of helping him find just the right words, as she put it the day she came across the archive of Rayce’s self-styled lecture series.

Colin mounts the steps to the terrace, grimaces in the glare of mercury vapor lamps that were part of the latest security mandate. He quick ducks into the arcade as though the lights might reveal uncharitable thoughts massing in the name of honesty. To enter the house, he’ll have to walk the length of the arcade because the casement doors are bolted this time of night. When he does reach an accessible door, he’ll have to enter a code on a keypad and repeat the bothersome process on the other side before an alarm can sound.

One of the hounds catches his scent and lopes after him, ever alert to an opportunity to slip indoors, score a handout and a soft spot to sleep. Colin crowds him out of the way, gives his massive head a scratch. “Could be worse, couldn’t it Angus? If I’d agreed to motion sensors you and your mates’d be holed up in the barn for the duration.”

The usual lights are burning in the kitchen and at either end of the first floor hallway when he reaches that level. The dim glow coming from the winter parlor is standard, and on the second floor the similar glow coming from the boy’s bathroom is a regular sight. So are the little puddles of illumination—the nightlights Laurel insisted on—that mark the distance between the children’s suite and the master suite.