Metro (28 page)

S
he leaves Mark with his tears.

Tries not to think about him.

Sick to her stomach.

She remembers that the ring is still on her finger and takes it off, disgusted. Shoves it deep in her pocket, amazed that she still doesn't have it in her to throw the fucking thing on the ground and stomp on it.

She can't. Just can't.

She walks a block away from the motel and hits the Shell station on the corner. Two pay phones there. No prying eyes.

Okay. Time to bust my own fucking move.

The cold morning air tingles her skin as she picks up the receiver and dials. She doesn't even need her Google cloud to get at the important numbers she requires—all those are memorized.

Peanut Williams answers after just one ring, his white-boy rapper voice like some annoying reminder that the whole world is fucked.

• • •

“H
ey, girl. You missed a big one the other day.”

“So did you.”

“Yeah.
I was wondering when I was gonna hear from you.”

“Not if? Just when?”

“It was inevitable, girl.”

“It's been on the news then? About the Kingdom?”

“On every damn channel. And a few that don't exist too. The cops think you're probably dead in a ditch somewhere. Like all those other motherfuckers.”

“The
real
cops?”

“Shit, girl. You wanna tell me what happened?”

“I can't talk long. And the less you know the better. For now anyway. Can you bring us in?”

“What, in the air?”

“I need three plane tickets and ID.”

“Dangerous. You got a car? You could just drive here. Do the cheap-motel tour.”

“Can't do that. Too many eyes on the road. It's complicated. I need to get on a plane and be in Philly tomorrow. I need twenty-four-hour guard in one of your safe houses.”

“Christ, girl. You're asking a lot.”

“I've got money. A huge score. This is big, Peanut. You have to bring us in.”

“Okay, calm down. What kind of score?”

“Just get us the tickets, okay? I'm really scared.”

“What kind of score, Jollie?”

“Millions. It's millions. I have it stashed. Money and dope.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? Is that what this is all about? Is that why all those people ended up dead at your house?
A fucking drug deal?”

“It's complicated and big. I can't explain it now. But I can take care of you if you help us. I need to get to a safe place and I need you to make it happen.”

“Millions?”

“Millions.”

“Shit. You are one crazy bitch.”

“Make it happen, Peanut. I'm serious.”

“Okay. But can YOU make it happen?”

“What's that mean? I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Do you even know what's going on right now?
We're sitting inside a multilingual clusterfuck. You and your friends are officially missing persons. Your house is the scene of a mass murder and they've got the state police combing the whole county for whoever did it. That's only gonna get worse in the next twenty-four hours. They'll have yellow alerts up at the airport too.
Major Big Brother action.”

“So what?”

“So I'm asking you a real important question: Can YOU make it happen? Because if you blow it at the metal detectors, all of us go up the creek. I can get the papers, but they'll only fool the Feds at a glance. You gotta go in there like fuckin' Baretta, baby. You gotta be super cool.”

“I can do it.”

“What about your friends?”

“They're dinged up pretty bad. It might raise suspicion.”

“How bad?”

“Bad.”

“Then you gotta take the long way. The cheap-motel tour.”

“And I'm telling you, Peanut, that
can't happen
. I am running the fuck away from extremely connected, very high-tech people. They'd have any number of ways they could track us out of here, if we decided to spend three days driving in a car.”

“What's that mean?”

“It means just what I said. The airport is the only way out of this city. And if the above-radar cops think me and Andy are dead, or at least presumed dead, well, that gives us an edge of at least
semi
-invisibility. Even with the bandages on their faces.”

“This is still freaky-risky shit you're talking about.”

“We live in a freaky-risky world, Peanut.”

“Where are you now
?”

“I can't tell you that . . . but I'll tell you where to send the papers. Call me back when you have it all arranged. Do it right now.”

“I'm on it. But I still have to ask the big question, Jollie.”

“I told you, I can't—”

“I just wanna know if this is about the senator.”

“What? Why?”

“Jollie . . . you really haven't heard, have you?”

“I haven't had access to . . . Peanut, what are you talking about?”

“It's bad, girl. We
might all be in serious trouble by sunrise.”

“Peanut . . .”

“Senator Bob shot himself last night.”

• • •

J
ollie hangs up a minute later, the shock wave hammering her hard.

She can't even remember much of anything Peanut said to her after the big question. Just remembers what he said about Bob. Found dead in his own car in a government parking lot, still clutching the .45 he used to end his own life, just one mile from the halls of justice.

Christ.

Who do you trust now? Who do you fucking trust?

• • •

J
ollie thinks about the years at Wildcat River, how crazy and freak-flaggy they've always been. She thinks about organizing the filibuster and Peanut bragging on putting the senator in his pocket. How awesome it was all gonna be, jacking up those smug-ass Washington motherfuckers. And now she's waiting by the phone.

Think it through. Put it in perspective. Analyze what you know about the situation and use it to your advantage.

She sees one possible version: The cleaning agents of METRO scanning and scouring all possible records at the Kingdom. Finding every bit of fact-checking and background on the senator she dug up. All her millions of words and databases, back there in her room—encrypted, sure, but not so hard for the right techies to crack. She sees them connecting the dots to Peanut's people. She sees them working their way easy to the senator, who was still on TV spewing the Wildcat manifesto when the shit came down in the House of JAM. They would have grabbed him as soon as he left the building. Stuck him in one of those deep dark holes. Made him talk about whatever it was they thought he might be up to. Because it all must mean
something
, right?

They could have done it simple, then dumped his body in a car and made it look like a suicide. Men like Darian Stanwell could have executed that. It wouldn't even be a hard day at the office.

But then . . . why isn't Peanut dead too?

Or is Peanut still what he says he is?

Another possibility is that it's all some giant freaky coincidence—that the senator was headed for a flameout and this just happened to be the moment when it all went down. She laughs at herself for even thinking that, for being so incredibly, mind-fuckingly naive. But it
is
a possibility. He really might have whacked himself. His career was sure as hell over. Was that his exit plan? Blow the whistle and pop himself in the parking lot? Goddamn.

Just God fucking DAMN.

• • •

S
he waits by the phone for nearly a half-hour.

The street is almost empty in front of the gas station. This intersection is busy as hell during the day. Only a few early birds out now. A bum stumbles by and asks for a quarter. Jollie pretends to ignore him and he weaves away. She looks at the stoplights cycling at the intersection—sees the little black globes whirring silently in their perches.

Say cheese, you dumb fucking bitch.

She is about to walk away when she gets the call back. It's good news. But the eye in the sky still sees all.

• • •

T
hey're booked on the red-eye to Philly in forty-eight hours. A FedEx letter will arrive at the front desk of the downtown Hilton in twenty-four with their new papers. The letter will be addressed to a ghost named Catherine Tanner—with a room booked, of course. Catherine can check in for the night and get her shit together, along with her husband, Joe Tanner (Mark), and traveling companion Rand Nichols (Andy). That's what the record will show. Philly ID cards for the three of them will be their only backup, but it's the best Peanut's people can do on short notice. The fake names are ridiculous, of course, and she asks if his guys are good at what they do about a second before he laughs and says
Are you kidding me, girl?
The tickets will match spot-on with the cards they hand the transit cops, guaranteed. Just don't do anything dumb at the metal detectors.

That scares the hell out of her.

He asks her again if what she said was true—about the money and the dope.

She says it's true.

He asks again if she can do it—if she can be fuckin' Baretta at the checkpoints. And she realizes something really comforting when he says that for the second time. Realizes that he's quoting Mister Orange from
Reservoir Dogs
. That scene where Tim Roth looked himself in the mirror and said he wasn't gonna get hurt, and that the bad guys believed every word he said because he was
super cool
. It makes her smile. She wonders why she never noticed before. She holds on to that feeling of comfort like a desperate child. Like she's still the Princess of the Kingdom.

She tells herself that this will work. The package will buy their freedom. Peanut will have the right connections. He's friends with scary people who can move the shit. He's the
man
in Philly, and she's his best girl and they have to come in now because it's life-and-death multilingual serious.

He tells her to stay cool.

The FedEx is on the way, and so is the jet. Just be at the Austin-Bergstrom airport in forty-eight hours.

• • •

S
he hangs up and stands there. Thinks about what she'll say to Peanut Williams when she shows him six million dollars in pure dope plus a mountain of cash. Thinks again about the senator, in a morgue somewhere, his blood hardly cold. Thinks about the people hunting her.

Thinks about the camera she's standing in front of right now.

• • •

A
ndy is still passed out on the queen-size bed, still doped up from Darian Stanwell's groovy drugs. Mark is sitting in the kid's chair again. She leans over Andy and whispers that she loves him, running her hand across his thick cowlick, smiling like a mom.

She tells him they are going away soon, that they'll be safe. Kisses his forehead—the unbandaged part, which is still unburned and not bloody. There will be time to fix the rest. He just smiles and lies there, zonked. Not even a weak
booyah
for old time's sake. The flight forward will be dark and uncertain.

Mark watches her love him, with very sad eyes.

Jollie can hardly look at him now.

• • •

T
he next day, they move to a fleabag off South Lamar. The Happy Texan Motor Lodge—
free cable/free ice!
A smaller sign by the main office actually proclaims in large green letters—
super cheap rates! less expensive than apartments!

The man who takes Jollie's money is half-asleep. The room smells like rat turds and turpentine. The water is brown and the TV was manufactured in 1993, but it does have free cable, as advertised. There's a phone too. Good luck getting an outside line on the fucking thing. Twin beds this time, both queens. CNN is still talking about the shocking suicide death of Senator Bob Wilson. Andy is still in a semi-coma.

Mark paces in front of the TV, nervous as hell.

• • •

S
enator Bob's death is not being treated like anything but what it appears to be. Nobody is screaming assassination. The family is shocked, the nation is grieving. The funeral will be held tomorrow, with full military service. It all looks eerily just like this sort of thing is supposed to, and Mark is almost certain that was the whole plan, but he can't figure out how it ties in with anything or what it has to do with him, or Darian, or anything METRO was up to before the shit hit the fan back at the Kingdom.

Why would they kill Bob?

What would they gain?

He just can't understand it.

• • •

J
ollie says she wants to go out for supplies in the afternoon—clean clothes, food, some other things they will need to make it out of the city. Mark doesn't want to let her go by herself, but she doesn't want to leave Andy alone either. So they all go together. Andy slumps in the backseat of the Spider. Mark drives the car. The package is in the trunk. Jollie feels exposed in broad daylight. They hit a costume shop on Congress, a Walgreens six blocks from that, and a Goodwill and a fast-food drive-thru on the way back to the fleabag.

It's almost five in the afternoon when they unlock the door.

Jollie expects someone to be waiting for them, sitting at the edge of the bed with a shotgun, aimed for the kill.