You Don't Know About Me (24 page)

“Ow!” a voice yelled. A freaky-looking man leapt to his feet. He wore a ragged coat. His dirt-caked face peeked through a hedge of wild hair and a bushy beard. His eyebrows looked like mini woolly mammoths stampeding across his forehead.

“Sorry,” I sputtered. I picked up the bike and tried to back it out. The bike clanged against the Dumpster.

The man grabbed the handlebars and slapped a thick finger to his lips. “Keep it down, Lance flippin' Armstrong.” He tried to whisper, but his voice was so gravelly it came out like a growl.

I stared at his dirty hand on the handlebars. Below it, the ground was strewn with ripped-open garbage bags.

“What's the matter,” he grumbled, “never seen anyone Dumpster dining?”

For the first time I noticed his eyes peeking out from under his woolly-mammoth eyebrows. They were as blue as robin's eggs.

“I asked a question, Lance.” His free hand poked me in the chest. “Did your mama forget to teach you manners?”

“No, sir,” I blurted. “And, yes, sir, I've seen homeless people before.”

His eyes rolled. “Oh, nice. Call me ‘homeless.' Rob the penniless of the only thing we have left: dignity.”

“I'm sorry.”

“You keep saying that, Lance. But if you were really sorry you'd park your bike, march into Kings, order me a
steak 'n' egg on a roll, with salsa, and march it back out here before I die of starvation and the buzzards eat my eyeballs for brunch.”

He didn't look like he was starving. He didn't even look like he was scrounging for food. Most of the stuff spilling out of the garbage bags was paperwork and receipts.

A door slammed above us. We snapped toward the sound. A deck railing jutted above the restaurant roofline. A man in a white apron appeared at the railing lighting a cigar. The homeless man grabbed my shirt, yanking me down. It was too late.

“Son of a bitch!” the man on the deck yelled. “I told you if you came back—LouAnn, call the sheriff!” The man disappeared; the door slammed again, his voice trailing inside. “Tell 'im to come and arrest me for second-degree murder!”

The homeless man grabbed something on his coat collar. “Eighty-six, Mo. Eighty-six!” I noticed a tiny wire and a microphone in his beard.

Tires squealed in the alley behind Kings. An engine roared down the alley. A second later a van did a one-eighty in the lot behind Kings and rocked to a stop in front of the Dumpster. Its side door was open. The homeless man jumped inside and spun around. He grabbed a bundle of rags off the floor, thrust it toward the driver. When it came back into view, the rag bundle was on fire. He tossed it into the Dumpster and flames mushroomed out. I jumped away.

“Whoa, hit the grease bucket!” the man shouted. “Three choices, Lance! Eat buckshot for breakfast, get arrested”—he
yanked a fistful of receipts from under his coat—“for attempted identity theft, or take a ride with Bonnie and Clyde!”

I heard shouts. The guys who'd been smoking came around the corner. The first one had a tire iron. It was the only kick I needed. I grabbed my pack and jumped in the van. It took off like a missile. I crashed into the bench seat in the back.

As we shot down the alley, the driver, a woman in a floppy hat, jerked the wheel. We careened around several corners and I got thrown from side to side on the seat. The man, braced in a wide stance in the middle of the van, rode the corners like a surfer. It looked like he'd done it before. As the van tore down a street he stripped off his coat, beard, and wig. The coat's inside pockets overflowed with credit-card receipts. The man was dressed in black Under Armour and was trimmer than the padded coat made him look. He had a white ponytail.

He grabbed a wet towel hanging from a hook and scrubbed his face and hands. He threw open a long box behind the front seats and tossed in the towel, along with the coat, beard, and wig. Then he shut the box and locked it with a padlock. “Cat's in the bag,” he told the woman.

“And the dog's aren't howling,” she said, checking the rearview mirrors. “Nothing like a little fire to keep 'em minding the store.” She pulled off her floppy hat. Long blond hair tumbled over the seatback.

As we shot into the countryside, I looked out the back window. Notus retreated under a rising trail of black smoke.

The man sat on the long box, cocked his head, and stared at me with his twinkling eyes. They were even bluer under his salt-and-pepper eyebrows. His weathered skin was deeply lined. He had a solid nose, like the kind you see in pictures of Roman emperors.

“Mo,” he said to the driver, “I want you to meet Lance flippin' Armstrong.”

“You mean
the
Lance flippin' Armstrong?” She looked back. Her face was leathery from too much sun, but she was still pretty.

The man leaned forward with a wink. “Do we call you Lance, Lance? Or do we go on a real-name basis?”

The woman answered for me. “I like Lance.”

The man jumped over the box into the passenger seat. For a white-haired guy, he was in good shape. “Not sure it fits him anymore,” he said. “He lost the bike he rode in on.”

She flapped a hand. “Nico, you don't need a bike to be on the tour.”

“Last time I checked you did.”

“But he's not on the Tour de France. He's on the Tour de
Fleece
.”

“The Tour de Fleece!” the man shouted, cracking up. “That's my Mo!” His shoulders pumped up and down as he laughed.

While they were having their fun, I slipped the
Huck
page with the business card on it from my pocket and flipped the card over. Taped to the back was a key. Below the key were some scribbled coordinates. Under the card, on the page, another poem was scrawled. I didn't get a chance to read it.

“You're not one of those kids who's always texting and Twittering behind people's backs, are you?” the man asked.

I crammed the page back in my pocket and looked up. The man squinted at me like I'd blown a gnarly fart. “No,” I told him. “I've never owned a cell phone.”

“Alright!” He gave me a fist pump. “My man! We used to have one, but we're always giving stuff away.”

The woman looked back and flashed a smile. “It's so true, Lance. We just can't hold on to things.”

“My name isn't Lance.”

“Tut-tut,” the man said to the woman. “Turns out he's one of those real-name-basis guys.” He turned back. “So what is it?”

“Billy.”

His eyebrows jumped. “What about last?”

The woman turned quickly, making her hair dance. “Don't answer that, William.” She spoke rapid fire. “You have the right to remain silent—anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law—you have the right to speak to an attorney and to have an attorney present during any questioning—if you cannot afford a lawyer one will be provided for you at government expense.”

I'd heard the cops read Mom her rights before, but it was doubly weird hearing it from a crook.

The man nodded seriously. “You're right, Mo. We've sucked too much four-one-one outta him already.” He extended his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Billy William Whoever-You-Are. I'm Nico Potlatcher.” We shook hands.

“I'm his partner in pranksterism,” the woman said. “Momi.”

“What's pranksterism?”

Nico grinned. “It's a school of filmmaking.”

“You make movies?”

“Yes, but we call them un-movies.”

“What's an un-movie?”

Momi hit the horn. “Time's up! Our turn. We've never seen you in Notus, William. Did you just move there or were you passing through?”

“Passing through,” I said.

“To where?”

“Portland, Oregon.”

Nico did a double take. “You're kidding.”

Momi looked back with bugged-out eyes. “This is
so
freaky.”

“What's so freaky about going to Portland?” I asked.

Nico turned to Momi. “Didn't I tell you the planets were aligning?”

She nodded. “You did.”

“Didn't I say something wonderful was going to happen to us?”

She lifted a finger. “But, Nikki, it's happening to
him
, not us.”

“C'mon, Mo,” he said, raising his hands. “How many times have I told you? We're all part of the same cosmic
body.” He threw his hands at me—“He is us”—then slapped his chest—“we is him!”

She sighed and looked at me in the rearview mirror. “Please excuse my dear mentally departed husband, William. Sometimes he gets so far ahead of himself his head runs right up his ass. What he's trying to say is that
we're
going to Portland too.”

Nico bounced in his seat. “That's right! We're taking our new film to the film festival there.”

Momi turned with a friendly smile. “And it would be totally cool if you went along for the ride.”

I didn't know whether to be thrilled or terrified. I had a ride to Portland, with
crooks
. “Okay,” I said, returning her smile. “Thank you.” When it's not clear who's throwing you the good luck, God or Satan, it's good to do a little investigating. “If you guys are moviemakers—”

“
Un-
moviemakers,” Nico corrected.

“Right. Why were you acting like a homeless man and going through people's garbage?”

“It's called fund-raising.”

“I thought you called it ‘identity theft.' ”

“That's what the pigs call it,” Momi said. “We think of it as robbing from the rich and giving to the poor in imagination.”

“Right. We're not really Bonnie and Clyde.” Nico's eyes twinkled. “We're Robin Hood and Maid Marian with a thirty-five millimeter.”

I should've been scared driving up into barren hills with a couple of criminal nutcases. Surprisingly, I felt weirdly calm. Maybe it was because they were a little like Mom.
They ran around breaking the law for a cause. They were antinomians from a different church: the Church of Moviemaking, or Un-Moviemaking, whatever that was. And there was another thing that made me feel okay. They were married. They were straight. There was one thing that worried me, though. Except for the long box behind the front seats, the van was empty. There were no suitcases or anything else that people would take on a long trip.

“Are you going to Portland right now?” I asked.

Nico grinned. “We've got a stop to make: Earth Wars Productions.”

“Also known as our house and hideout,” Momi added.

“And then you're driving to Portland?” I pressed.

“Absolutely. But not in this junker.” Nico beamed. “When we do a film festival, we go styling!”

“What's styling?”

“You'll see.”

We drove higher into a range of sunbaked hills. Gulches turned into small canyons, and every road we turned on got smaller and dustier. I tried to memorize the turns in case “You'll see” was something I didn't want to see.

The dirt track we were on became wheel ruts. The van bounced along for another mile, passing canyon openings.
We turned into the mouth of a tight canyon blocked by a wall of brush, and stopped in front of the brush.

Nico jumped out. “C'mon, Billy. Help me with the gate.”

“The gate?”

“Yeah, it's our brush picket fence.”

I got out. “You live here?”

He waved at the brush. “No, rabbits and rattlesnakes live in the fence.”

I stopped and saw a rusty box half hidden in the brush. “Is that a mailbox?”

He laughed. “They don't deliver mail up here.”

“Then why do you have a mailbox?”

“It's a FedEx box. He's the only deliveryman we need.” Nico stuck his hand in the brush. I heard the beeps of a keypad. He grabbed something and pulled. The brush started to swing out. “Are you gonna help or not? Don't worry, the rattlers are cooling their heads under rocks this time of day.”

I helped open the gate. Momi drove the van through. Beyond it there were tire tracks curving around a bend in the canyon. I started forward.

Nico held up a hand. “You need to wait here.”

Momi jumped out of the van, carrying my backpack. “It's a little trust exercise, William.” She handed me the pack. “We don't take your personal stuff, and you wait for us here. I mean, for all we know you might be some teenage serial killer who has a thing for murdering people in their home canyon.”

Nico's wild eyebrows slammed together. “Or worse, you
could be a spy from Hollywood sent to destroy our un-movie before we get it to the festival.”

I understood why they might think I was some serial killer: I had the same thought about them. “Why would anyone wanna destroy your un-movie?”

“Because when it hits the theaters it's going to turn Holly wood into a ghost town. No one will ever want to see another blockbuster again.
Batman, Spiderman, Iron Man
, they'll all be vaporized from the collective consciousness.”

“It's going to undo the old and bring in the new!” Momi added.

“Popular culture will be replaced with a new paradigm,” Nico declared. “Unpopular culture!”

I didn't have a clue what they were talking about. “Okay, I probably don't wanna see your canyon. I'll wait here.”

Nico slapped me on the back. “Knew you'd see it our way. We'll be back in a jiff with the styling-mobile.”

“And we'll bring you a sandwich,” Momi yelled as she climbed back in the van.

I stepped back as they disappeared behind the swinging brush gate. It closed with a dry
shush
and a metallic
click.

Standing there in the hot sun, I felt pretty dumb. For all I knew there was no canyon. It was really a road and this whacked-out couple really were killers. They had a thing for abandoning kids in the desert, watching them die of heatstroke and get pecked to the bone by buzzards.