Bad Radio (8 page)

In my mind I could hear Shadroe Decatur’s slow drawl.
You gonna get that little girl killed, Sarge. She ain’t never seen a hard corner in her entire life and you’re gonna bring her right into the grinder with you.

“Everybody starts out looking soft on the outside,” I said out loud.

“But you look under that, and I bet there’s steel in this one. I’m sure Patrick saw to that.” Shad’s memory was silent, but I could picture his weasel face pinched in disapproval.

I closed my eyes and tried not to remember how he died. In seconds I was fast asleep.

When I woke up, it was late afternoon, and I was starving. My clothes were dry and stiff and smelled a hell of a lot better. I put them on thinking about steak and knowing that Anne must be as hungry as I was.

I pocketed my key and stepped out into the cool wind and butter-yellow afternoon sunlight. I stood in front of her door for the long moments necessary for me to kick down my pride and knocked.

She answered immediately. Her hair looked damp, but she was dressed. The bed was rumpled and I noticed that she had also distrusted the comforter. She had folded it neatly and set it on the chair by the door.

“Hey,” I said, trying to gauge her mood. She didn’t look angry.

“Hey.”

“You get some rest?”

“Yes. You?”

I nodded and rubbed at my stubbly chin. I needed to remember to buy a razor. And clothes. I took a deep breath. “Look, Anne. I’m sorry about earlier. How about I spring for dinner to make it up to you?”

Her lips twitched up at the corners. “That must have been pretty hard to get out, you looked like you were going to choke for a minute there.”

“I did not.”

“Yes, you did. Now it’s my turn. It’s been a really bad couple of days for me, even before I came out to your house. I don’t normally bite people’s heads off like that.” She ducked inside and grabbed her purse and keys, and then stepped past me towards the car. “But you were still totally wrong.”

“That’s big of you, thanks.”

We wound up at a steakhouse a few miles from the motel. The large dining room was mostly empty since dinner was still two hours away for most folks. I asked for a table by the window so I could keep an eye on the car and got it with a gracious smile.

Anne snapped her menu shut and said, “I’m picking the next place.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m a vegetarian, and so far you’ve picked a burger joint and a steakhouse, that’s why.”

“Well why didn’t you say something when we drove up?”

She shrugged. “Maybe you’re buying dinner because you’re sorry, and maybe I’m letting you drag me to a steakhouse because I’m sorry.”

“They say you can tell a good compromise because nobody is happy.”

She laughed. “So true.”

To honor her gift to me, and because I didn’t know how long it was going to be before I saw another steak, I ordered a giant porterhouse, rare. She made do with a salad and some side dishes, which made me feel a little guilty, but it passed pretty quickly.

When the steak came it was bigger than my head and nearly hanging off the sides of the plate. The outside was seared to a perfect crust and the inside was reddish-pink and so tender I almost didn’t need a knife. I went in and didn’t come up for air until half of it was gone.

“So, about what we’re doing,” I said when I slowed down. “We need to catch a plane to North Carolina to see Henry. I’d like to do it tonight, if that’s okay with you.”

“Why not just call him?”

“I’ll call him. But we need to see him in person, too.”

“To get his piece, right?”

I chewed a piece of steak instead of answering.

“I can’t afford a plane ticket, Abe. Why don’t we just drive down there? It’ll just take a couple of days, we can even drive in shifts and make in one long day if you want.”

“No time. If those men left from my house or the retirement home and started driving, they could be there tomorrow. It’s a little over a twenty-hour drive from my place. We have to get there first. Don’t worry about the money, I’ll buy the tickets. I have some money saved up.”

“You think they’re already heading there? Right now?”

“I’ve been thinking about the timing, between the nursing home and my farm. If those two groups of men had left at the same time from somewhere west of here, they would have arrived at the home, and then at my farm at just the right times.

“Now, if that’s true, maybe there’s more than just two groups. Why not one group for each piece, each setting off from the same location at the same time? If so, then Henry’s group has already been traveling the distance from the farm to Henry’s house since last night. That means that they could arrive as early as tomorrow evening.”

“Well, couldn’t they already be there? I mean, what if they took a plane, too?”

I shook my head. “They can’t pass for regular people in good light, or close up. No way they could make it through an airport or sit on a plane.”

“They looked pretty normal to me. For crazed murderers, anyway.”

“It’s the worms. They’re never still, and they go everywhere. We saw a couple of ‘em in the daytime once, and you could see these thin little lines curling and wiggling under the skin of their faces and on their arms. I swear I saw something flick past the inside of an eye once, too.” Anne shuddered and looked away from her plate.

“Their color isn’t right, either. Plus, you saw their eyes back at the home. At the very least, they look crazy and drugged up. You think the airline folks will let them get on a plane like that? No, they’ll have to drive it, so we have a chance to get there first. Especially since they’ll have to steal gas or swap cars on the way, which might slow them down.”

“I don’t want this to be real.” I noticed that she was twisting and wringing her cloth napkin in her lap. “My grandfather was murdered right in front of me. In my whole life, I’ve never even known anyone who was murdered, or even anyone who knew someone who was murdered. I never saw a house burn down, either. It’s like I went to sleep yesterday, and when I woke up my world was stolen away and a different one was left in its place. A broken one.”

I knew that sense of betrayal very well. I remembered vividly the angry shock when I found out what the world was really like some sixty years ago. I still feel it today. “I’m sorry. I can go visit Henry alone if you like, and come back here to get you afterwards. I’m sure you have people you need to see, like a boyfriend or a boss or something.”

“You can stop that, I’m going. And I don’t have a boyfriend anymore, not for a couple of months now. Apparently, taking care of my grandfather was a real downer, so he split. And now I don’t have any real family left, either. I guess I could call my boss at the restaurant I work at, but fuck him. He’s a jerk anyway.”

Hearing about lost boyfriends and restaurant jobs made me nostalgic for my own youth, or at least my innocence, before I went overseas. It was like looking through an ancient soda shop window and seeing yourself seated at the counter, just a kid, laughing with your buddies. I didn’t have the right to drag her out of the light, but if I didn’t, things were going to go badly for a whole lot of people. I don’t understand why the world always seems to require sacrifice to do the right thing, but even after all these years I still had every intention of avoiding it. I haven’t managed it yet, but there’s always a first time.

There wasn’t anything else to say, so we finished eating in silence.

9

W
e stopped at a store on the way to the airport so that I could get two duffel bags and fill one of them with toiletries and clothes. The store was too big and sterile, and the shirts seemed like they were made of less fabric than they used to be. In fact, everything seemed to be TV props of the real thing, brighter and slicker, but also flimsy and insubstantial. Disposable. Anne geared up as well, just with more clothes and double the toiletries. I paid for everything.

Standing out in the parking lot, I transferred the remaining contents of the battered metal toolbox to the empty duffel. An early fall rain was coming, and streamers of cool air whipped past me, carrying fine droplets and the scent of electricity.

I borrowed Anne’s cell phone as we drove towards the airport and dialed Henry’s number from memory. Anne kept glancing at me as she drove, then looking away as if she weren’t curious.

“Henry, it’s Abe. I’m coming to see you tonight. Yep. That’s right. You’re still as sharp as you ever were. See you tonight.” I handed the phone back.

“What did he say?”

“He said he’d be ready for us.”

“You didn’t warn him about the bags, that they were going to his house.”

“I didn’t have to, he knew as soon as he heard my voice. We haven’t spoken in thirty years, and all of a sudden I call him out of the blue and say I’m on my way to his house?” I looked out of the rain-flecked window and watched the thunderheads flicker with internal lights overhead. “No matter what else he might be, Henry’s still the smartest man I ever met.”

As with most daytime showers, the sun was still shining between the thin clouds, painting the gray cotton with summits of liquid gold. A faint rainbow shone in the distance, seeming to pace the car as I watched out of the speckled window.

“Abe, what’s going on?”

I shrugged. “Let’s hope Henry can tell us both. And that we get there in time to hear it.”

“I hope the bags do show up. I owe them for my grandfather.”

“Yeah, that’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you about. That shot with my gun was pretty impressive.”

She shrugged and looked away.

“I’m serious. Tell me about it.”

“Not much to tell. My grandfather taught me to shoot, and then had me enrolled in classes and signed up for competitions pretty much the whole time I was growing up. I was at the range every weekend when my friends were all at the mall, which did wonders for my social status. He even insisted I learn some hand to hand stuff from his Army training, which seemed pretty pointless. I asked what it was all for, and he said that in his day, men were better behaved, but now he figured I needed to be able to explain to a date that no means no. Preferably while I was driving him to the emergency room.”

I had to laugh at that. Getting grabby with Patty’s granddaughter would have led to quite the exciting evening for her dates, just not in the way they imagined.

“That’s a great idea, but I don’t think that’s really why he did it. I think that the old bastard knew all along that you had his gift. He was preparing you to do what he used to do, if it came down to that. Patty was pretty good in a scrape himself, but of course he got his training from the Brits at Achnacarry with the rest of us. Maybe he didn’t go through the whole course, but he did enough.”

“Achnacarry?”

“Scotland. It’s where all of us were trained, back in the ‘40s. The British had real commandos and we didn’t, so Uncle Sam pulled a bunch of us from the 34th Infantry and gave us to the Brits to train. Your grandfather and the Professor showed up at the end. They were more honorary Rangers than anything else. We had four head-kickers plus those two, whom we were assigned to protect.”

“My grandfather was in for his nose, right? Why Henry?”

“Doesn’t do much good to find the bad stuff if you don’t know what it is or what to do about it when you get there. Didn’t Patrick ever tell you any of this?”

“He didn’t like to talk about it.”

“Me neither to tell the truth.”

“Oh. Sorry.” And just like that, she turned on the radio and dropped it. I was both surprised and grateful for the gesture.

Austin Straubel International Airport was originally named for the first aviator from Brown County to die in the war, back in 1942. I didn’t know if the stream of people that swirled around us like we were a rock in a current knew that, but it was kind of a big deal back then. No matter what branch you served in, or where you lived or fought, he was one of us. It was satisfying to see him remembered, as if that remembrance were for us as well.

Of course, the noble history of the airport didn’t make up for the reality of modern air travel. We spent the next five hours in a cramped flying bus full of people studiously ignoring the undignified accommodations and each other.