Tailed (15 page)

chapter 19

I
t felt great to have Angie with me, so I was a little more willing to go along with the Three Musketeers' scheme than I might have been otherwise. Not that I really had a lot of choice. I have an inherent distrust of the police to begin with, so it didn't take much of a stretch to make me suspicious of Colonel Lanston and the FBI. Historically, the cops have paid me undue scrutiny—I've surmised it has something to do with genetics, or pheromones. As a lad growing up, me and my pal “Mushy” Mochulski were just bug collectors chasing luna moths in the moonlit backyards of suburbia when a string of calls buzzed in to the police about a pair of Peeping Toms. For a relatively innocent teen, I must have found myself at the police station ten or twelve times. Once out of college, that stopped for about twenty years, but I still attracted undue scrutiny by passing highway patrolmen and beat cops. Nicholas has the same affliction, though in his case their attention was and is often warranted, even though these days he no longer perpetrates Ponzi schemes or kites checks to buy penny stocks. The previous year I'd learned from my morning paper that he was a murder suspect and possible art thief. It wasn't true, but one detects a pattern just the same.

Anyway, I always end up being suspected of something. When there's the least sign of impropriety in my proximity, the Man sees fit to direct me toward the hoosegow. I've come to resent it.

So going to the cops was out. Going home was out because the killer would know where to find me. Would he think to find me out in the flat expanses of Kansas, in north Texas? At least I was a moving target, harder to hit. What I didn't like was that having Angie with me was more or less collateral damage waiting to happen. Of course, back home the Coyotes might have kidnapped her to get to me, so I supposed it wasn't all bad: at least here I could watch out for her.

And then there was Otto. In the past, he'd proved useful in the path of danger, once even taking a bullet in the heat of battle. You wouldn't know it to look at the runt, in his boxy woolen Soviet-era suit and flowery tie, but the guy was like a taut spring ready to snap at the first sign of danger. Then, of course, we had Flat Face Norman, Linebacker Timmy, and Droopy Brutus. Somehow, I felt Timmy and Brutus must have gotten their names mixed up. So I was flanked by a full contingent, safety in numbers and all that. How battle tested my three kidnappers were in the face of menace I had no idea. All I knew was that Timmy could do a mean choke hold.

But look at the alternative. I could have been with Nicholas and Vargas and J. C. Fowler, not to mention the FBI and the Air Force. I would have been in the midst of suspects. So by default, without viable alternatives, I decided to play along and appease this idiotic Tupelca trio. Angie was right: if the Coyotes were so deluded as to believe enough in this claptrap about vuka spirits in jars to kill, they were just as dangerous as if it were all true.

It was crazy, to be sure. Crazy as a goose sleeping on a down pillow. Crazy as a frog in a shower cap. OK, perhaps even crazy as a loon. But as I stared across the plains zipping by in the orange gush of the rising sun, Angie asleep in my arms, I figured the Tupelcas were no loonier than a lot of fanatics out there. People have to believe in something. And some beliefs are a little more out there than going to church on Sundays or believing nakedness is the solution to the human plight. And what with the cyberworld encroaching on the real world, I'd sensed mankind getting a little bit more estranged, a little more alienated, a little more delusional than before.

Of course, sitting there scrunched in the front seat of the van, looking at all the little drab houses spread so far apart, all the open space and seeming monotony, I was reminded that a lot of hoi polloi think guys like me are crazy just for living in New York. I have to admit that sometimes when I'm crossing the street, and the jackhammers are going, the subway is rumbling, fire trucks are wailing, helicopters and jet planes are zooming, horns and neon lights are blaring, I do look around and go:
Wow, this is kind of intense
. But I usually screen it all out. Maybe the prairie proletariat of these expanses screen it all in.

At the same time, the great void out my window was quashing my hopes and dreams about Middle America: where were the malls? I'd seen so many to the north. I admit that I have the New Yorker's typical disdain of the mall-centricity that is the backbone of most of America's culture, but my hypocrisy was seeping out. I longed for one now. For the mega-store, the megamart, the mega everything that is the contemporary mall. My companions all had their luggage with them. Not steamer trunks or anything, just overnight-type bags, but mine was back in my hotel room in Omaha. As Angie slept, she was slumping lower and lower in my arms, and I was afraid if she reached my armpit, she might wake up thinking we were under an anthrax attack. I was due for a change of clothes and a shower. I felt pretty grungy. I couldn't see the collar of my white oxford shirt, but didn't want to, and I dared not remove my running shoes without proper ventilation. A shopping list was going through my head: socks, cheap long sleeve shirts, cheap chinos, underwear, toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, deodorant, foot powder…

“Timmy? I need to stop at the next mall.”

“Whut?”

I think I awoke the hulking driver from a white-line trance. He blinked sleepily.

“And it probably wouldn't be bad to change drivers. I need to stop at a mall to buy some clothes, and if there's any way I could catch a shower somehow…Where does one go for a shower out here?”

“Truck plaza. There's one coming up.”

“Shower at a truck stop?”

“Uh huh.”

“In the gas station bathroom sink?”

“Real truck plazas have showers, rooms, all that. There's one up ahead.”

We veered off at the next exit, and sure enough we spiraled in on a sprawling truck plaza as big as some small towns. It boasted of showers, bunks, and home-cooked meals. I always wondered who was fooled by the notion that anyplace that wasn't home could deliver to you a home-cooked meal.

We squeaked to a stop amid several dozen big rigs.

“
Dyepteyah
…Garv, vere to be?” Otto stuck his head between me and Timmy, rubbing his eyes.

“Stopping for gas and a shower…” I caught a whiff of him. “You and I will both take a shower,
da
?”

“Ah very nice! With weemin?”

“No, Otto, with truckers.”

“I dunno, Garv.” He scanned the big rigs and shook his head. “Not lookink. Maybe veemin truck drivers?”

“Where are we?” Angie uncurled from my arms as I opened the door. Wilco spilled out and wasted no time in lifting a leg on the nearest truck tire.

“A truck plaza. Otto and I are going to take a shower.”

Her eyes widened.

“Not
together
. I desperately need to bathe and so does he—in his own shower, far from mine if it can be arranged.”

“At a truck stop?”

“So it seems. For the long-haul truckers.”

I could hear the others in back moving about, then heard the back door open, saw the light spill forward.

“Good idea.” Angie rubbed her nose sleepily. “You have PU pits.”

I stepped out of the panel truck and for the first time saw it from the outside. On the side was a cartoon of a grinning elf, with the words:
PIXIE CLEAN! DRY-CLEANING. COLD STORAGE
. There was a phone number with an Omaha exchange.

Norman was just striding around from the back of the van.

“Where'd you get this van, anyway, Norm?”

He yawned, his irises sparking with streaks of gold. “Fellow Tupelca lent it to us.”

“With dry-cleaning boxes still in back?”

“Those are empty, for cold storage. If you're going to take that shower, let's get a move on. I want to stay ahead of the game, reach New Mexico before anybody else, and get this over with. My wife is wondering where the heck I am.”

Otto and I cruised the aisles of the truck plaza store. In truth, I could probably have bought my clothes there, except I would have ended up looking like one of your more avid racing fans. In New York, there's none of this Nascar fever. By contrast, Middle America seems awash in posters, endorsements, and hats for all kinds of race car heroes. At least I think they were. Some of them looked like country singers, of whom I am also utterly ignorant. This stuff just doesn't exist east of the Hudson, and it made me feel pretty out of my element. Which I was.

I grabbed two Dale Earnhardt Jr. shaving kits, some Rusty Wallace shampoos, two Jeremy Mayfield deodorants, and two Kasey Kahne toothpaste kits. After I bought this stuff, and a couple coffees with a picture of someone named Jamie McMurray on the cups, a soap opera magazine for Otto, and an
America Today
newspaper, I handed half of my haul to Otto and led the way back to the shower rooms.

Otto handed back the Jeremy Mayfield deodorant. “For Otto, is not important.”

“Oh, very, very important…”

He made a proud and dismissive grin. “Otto smell like man, not
goluboy.
”

“It's not perfume, Otto. It stops you from smelling at all.”

“But what is?” A dismissive pout screwed onto his goateed face. “Smell is good. Veemin, they like man smell like man. It make bazooms heavy and the peach ripe, eh?”

“Bazooms? Ripe peaches? Where do you pick up this stuff?” I gave his impish beard a reprimanding tug. “
Man
not like
man
to smell like man. It makes my nose heavy when you smell ripe. C'mon, nincompoop.”

“Why say to Otto ninnypoop? Not nice…bazooms and peaches very nice.”

We paid a fee to an attendant, were handed a key for a locker and some white towels with a single blue stripe down the center. Clothes stored in lockers and towels around our waists, we went down the line of partitioned shower stalls looking for two empty ones.

I'm happy, even a little bit proud, to say I don't spend a lot of time in locker rooms and public showers. But when I find myself in those environs, I'm always a little taken aback by how hairy most men are. Sure, I have my share of body hair, but compared to most, I'm the dunes next to the rain forest. Locker rooms are always a potent reminder that men are primates in the most primal, fur-bearing sense. It was like walking into a Dian Fossey research facility, shaggy truckers trundling to and from their lockers like simians in their day to day.

There's something about a shower that makes me contemplative, and as I lathered up, I began to wonder where Nicholas was. Had he gone back to New York? Probably not. He didn't know whether I had been abducted by ne'er-do-wells and was probably doggedly trying to figure out what happened to me. At least I hoped he cared enough to do so. Then again, he had his future bride to think about back home, who was probably anxious to have him back. I wondered idly if Nicholas had come out to Omaha because he had cold feet. Were my troubles a convenient reason to postpone the nuptials? And was what Fowler said true, that Nicholas was his son? If I ever made it to that wedding maybe I'd find out. And Vargas: would he have gone back home to the pie stand and Amber the nymphomaniac by now? The FBI would definitely still be on the case. Did they have any idea who had abducted me? Would they be waiting in New Mexico? Should I be wearing a disguise?

Even as I succumbed to musing as I bathed, Otto succumbed to his lyrical impulses and launched into song. At first I thought it was one of his soaring Soviet anthems, but suddenly recognized it by the tune as a popular trucking song. As usual, he made a complete hash of the English lyrics:

East hound is down, boarded up, and stuck in!

Wagon donut they say can't be gone

We get along, way to go, and quarter of nine is better

I am easy hound, just wash up panda fun

Keep full heart, hound, never metal

Sun never shines in flakes

Letting hands on deck, a causeway fun to make

The buoys are first of Atlantic

And fear of the sharks banana

We fling them back does not matter the flakes

The other higher primates in the room took notice, and one in a cowboy hat and his birthday suit approached Otto's stall. He had a prodigious belly and looked unhappy.

“Garv, eetz fat cowboy!” Otto pointed gleefully, and the trucker looked even less happy than before.

“Uh, don't mind him…” I began.

Bloodshot eyes beheld me from under the brim of the well-loved cowboy hat.

“This little feller makes a lot of noise. He makin' some kinda joke?”

Another trucker stepped next to him, a soggy Sasquatch buttoning his shirt, but no less friendly than the nekked cowboy.

I hurriedly rinsed the soap from my body, talking almost as quickly. “Honest, guys, he's just a crazy Russian, doesn't know the language. He's harmless. A child, really. Not quite right in the head. Tortured by the KGB. So, you know, if you could just cut him some slack…”

“Russian?” Nekked Cowboy rumbled.

“Garv, Otto to get cowboy hat, yes? Like our friend.”

“See? He's like a child.”

The two truckers looked from one to the other, then slowly turned back to their lockers.

That's when Otto broke back into a new song:

“Like a rimjob cowboy…”

“Otto, shut the hell up!” I grabbed my towel. “Please?”

Nekked Cowboy was back. “Whaddid he say?”

“I apologize, really, he doesn't know what he's saying, he gets all his lyrics wrong. You should hear him sing Meatloaf. He-he-he. Otto—come on, let's be going.”

“
Sing
Meatloaf?”

“Yeah, you know, ‘By the Dashboard Light'…”

Cowboy just knit his brow at Otto as the latter smiled up at him and made his way to the lockers. There was a moment there when I thought Nekked Cowboy would grab Otto and bounce him around like a tire. But he let him pass.