Lola on Fire Page 13

  “No. He’s my brother,” Molly whispered. She touched the woman’s elbow briefly, gently. “Thank you, though. We just need to get out of town.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  The woman nodded stiffly and returned to her app. “Eighty bucks to Sparrow Hill. Driver will be here in three minutes.”

  “Thank you.” Molly offered her a warm, grateful smile, then she added, not sure if she had to but wanting to be doubly careful, “And please, if anyone asks, you didn’t see us.”

  * * *

  Fifty miles to Sparrow Hill, I-55 most of the way, the highway like the blank, non-REM stages between dreams. Brody and Molly sat in the back so they wouldn’t have to talk to the driver. He was as chirpy as a bird to begin with, but took the hint after a string of uninterested, monosyllabic replies. He dropped them, as requested, at the bus depot on Burlington Avenue. The last thing he said was, “Going anywhere exciting?” To which Brody replied, “I hope not.”

  * * *

  Brody counted his money in the bus depot’s restroom, holding the bills the way he’d hold an injured mouse. $940. Bleak. Very bleak. At this rate, they’d be down to their last few dollars by the end of the week.

  Six buses were leaving in the next hour. Molly wanted to go to New Mexico. Brody opted for Jefferson City, Missouri. A quicker, less expensive ride, and more central—potentially more convenient to wherever they had to travel next.

  “It’s still four hundred miles away,” he said. “That’s a good distance.”

  They paid cash for their tickets and were in Jefferson City by four p.m. the next day.

  * * *

  Brody had slept on the bus. Not well, but better than he expected to, and more than he wanted to. He’d planned to gaze meerkat-like out the rear window to remain certain they weren’t being followed. There was no way, of course—they would have been jumped by now—but better to stay vigilant. It was too dark to see anything but headlights, though. Eventually he gave up. Sleep took him.

  They found a motel called, laughably, Cozies, a step above Motel 15, with its crack whores and gunshots, but not a broad step. Still, it was $48 a night, no credit card required. The beds were as hard as tortoiseshell.

  * * *

  They spent what remained of that day resting. Molly gulped meds. The bus journey, not to mention the miles they’d traveled on foot, had been hard on her. Brody massaged her legs and feet, circled a damp towel around her left thigh. She cried a little bit but tried to hide it.

  They watched shit TV. Ordered Chinese food. Their new life.

  * * *

  And eventually they slept. Brody startled awake in the small hours when headlights swept across the thin curtains.

  They’re here. Oh my God. Jesus Christ—

  He sprang out of bed, rushed to the window, peered between the wall and the curtain. But no, it was just a car turning around. Brody watched as it pulled out of the parking lot and drove away.

  “Jesus.”

  He went to Molly, gazing at her while she slept. “I’m sorry.” He cried, covering his eyes, even though she couldn’t see, then dropped to his knees, placed his head in the nest between her arm and rib cage, and fell asleep.

  He woke several hours later, his head now resting on a fold in the bedsheets. Molly had gone.

  A note on the nightstand read: At library.

  * * *

  The paranoia was hard to shake. He sat in the gloom, curtains drawn, attuned to every sound. Cars hissed. Doors slammed. A couple in an upstairs room fought colorfully, then kissed and made up. Their bed thumped for thirty-seven tireless minutes.

  Brody paced, counted stains on the walls, watched infomercials with the volume down. There were some leftover noodles and he ate them cold, grimacing at every soggy mouthful. He finally left the room and walked with his face turned to the sun, breathing the fumy air and sometimes flinching at the city’s angry clatter.

  * * *

  How?

  That was the question. He and Molly had destroyed their cell phones, ditched the car, paid for transport and accommodation with cash. No footprints. So how could Jimmy’s men track them down?

  “There’s no way.” Brody sat on the bleachers in an empty baseball park, the sun behind him now, throwing his shadow across the diamond. “We lost them in Mississippi. End of story.”

  Right. He’d outmaneuvered them, as improbable as that seemed, and had avoided them for forty-eight hours, 460 miles. With no way to follow, the mobsters had likely resorted to interrogating his and Molly’s few acquaintances: Tyrese, Molly’s colleagues at Arrow Dairy, their handful of friends—who’d hopefully diverted them to “Aunt Cherry” in Maine.

  So . . .

  “There’s no way,” Brody said again. He closed his eyes, though, considering every possibility, however unlikely.

  How?

  * * *

  Brody walked back to Cozies in the near-dark, less wary of every sudden noise and shadow. The time to himself had been needed. He’d had space to think, and had subsequently started to believe they were in the clear.

  At least for now. The moment they showed their faces, used their names, left a footprint, Jimmy’s men would swoop. Maybe they weren’t following, but they were looking.

  Yet another “how” question surfaced when he returned to the motel room, recalling the paranoia like a foul taste: How long did it take Molly to search for someone online?

  “You here, Moll?”

  It was a boxy room with a cramped bathroom attached. He could see she wasn’t there, but anxiety drew the question from him. A dusty alarm clock on the nightstand displayed 17:48 in faded numbers. She’d been gone all day. Brody ran a hand across his face, trying to convince himself that Jimmy’s men were looking for him, not her, but paranoia was a slippery, wicked snake. He turned the TV on, hoping it would distract him, but it didn’t. He imagined how Molly would scream when Jimmy pulled the starter rope on his favorite chainsaw.

  “I can’t stay here,” he said, staggering from the room, slamming the door just as a taxi curved across the lot. It pulled into a space close to their door. Ranchera boomed from the driver’s open window.

  Then a rear window opened and Molly’s face appeared. She looked tired, but never more beautiful. Relief crashed through Brody.

  “Moll. Jesus. You were gone a long time.”

  “Yeah. Digging deep.” She gestured at the empty seat beside her. “Get in. Let’s grab a bite to eat. Talk.”

  “Did you—”

  The window closed again, but before it did he heard her say, “I found Janko.”

  * * *

  King Elvis was a themed burger joint on East High Street—more money than Brody wanted to spend, but Molly insisted. “I’m hungry, dammit, and I’m not going to Mickey-fucking-D’s.” Brody knew better than to argue. The closest he came to an objection was whistling through his teeth when Molly ordered an $18.99 Teddy Bear Burger.

  “Karl Janko is dead,” she said as soon as the waiter had left their table. She pulled several dog-eared sheets of paper, covered with her handwriting, from her purse, and shuffled through them. “Died twelve years ago. Murdered. Beaten up and drowned in a barrel.”

  “Christ,” Brody said. He brought Janko to mind—had a clear memory of playing catch with him in their backyard in Minneapolis. “In a barrel? That’s some medieval shit.”

  “No doubt. But he knew a lot of bad dudes. Shit, he was a bad dude. Some sources claim he was connected to the mob.” Molly riffled through her notes and came up with the page she was looking for. “I started my search the same place everybody searches for people these days: social media. No luck there, so I Googled ‘Karl Janko,’ got half a million hits, then narrowed the field with key words and filters. That’s when I found his obituary.”

  “That’s good work, Moll,” Brody said, and sighed. “Doesn’t help us, though.”

  “The obit led me to other stories: sixteen months served in 1985 for grand theft au
to; another stint in 1988 for aggravated assault. There were several charges he was acquitted of, or that were suddenly dropped, including criminal harassment, arson, and manslaughter in the first degree.”

  “What a swell guy,” Brody said.

  “I know, right? And he must have got in with some bad people. His murder was . . . savage. His thumbs had been cut off, his teeth were smashed in. There were abrasions around his wrists and ankles from where he’d been tied up—”

  Molly stopped suddenly, lowering her notes into her lap. Their server had arrived with their drinks. He set them down mutely, then retreated to the bar. Molly sipped her vanilla milkshake with fluttering eyelids. “Oh wow. Yummy.” She licked her lips, returned her notes to the tabletop, and continued:

  “I read a few articles regarding the investigation. The police had very little evidence, followed a lot of dead ends. They believed—from the deliberate nature of Janko’s injuries—that he’d been tortured for information.”

  Brody sighed again and shook his head. The only reply he could muster.

  “I didn’t dig too deeply,” Molly went on, looking up from her notes. “I figured it was a waste of time. The dude’s dead, right? But from what I could tell, his killer, or killers, were never found.”

  “Too many enemies,” Brody muttered, thinking that he, unjustly, had an enemy, too, and one that was capable of something similar. Or worse.

  “Janko was buried in his hometown of Cambridge, Massachusetts. No wife. No children.” Molly sipped her milkshake, flipped through a few pages. “He was survived only by his stepbrother, Wendell.”

  “Tragic,” Brody said, running his hands through his hair. He wondered how many diners would vacate their tables if he pummeled the back of his skull and screamed his frustrations at the Elvis portraits on the walls. Instead he sipped his Pepsi and whispered, “So what do we do now?”

  “Our options are . . . limited,” Molly said. “And none of them are good.”

  “Tell me about it.” Brody linked his fingers. “We need a miracle.”

  “Exactly. Which brings me to Wendell, the stepbrother. Something he said in one of the articles I read stayed with me—how he and Janko were thick as thieves when they were younger, but drifted apart in later life.”

  Molly sipped her milkshake again, making small delighted sounds. Those sounds alone were worth the price tag, Brody thought.

  “I wondered if he might help us.” Molly shrugged. “We knew his brother, right?”

  “His stepbrother,” Brody said. “And we barely knew him.”

  “Okay, but I figured Wendell doesn’t need to know that. And if they were thick as thieves when they were younger, maybe they moved in similar circles.”

  “Had the same connections.”

  “Right. Someone who could help us disappear.”

  “Okay. A long shot, but worth exploring.” Brody nodded. “Tell me about Wendell.”

  “He was tough to track down. He and Janko had different biological parents. Different surnames. Took a few hours, going through various genealogy and life-hacking sites. But I found him.”

  “And?”

  “He’s a Pentecostal minister.”

  “Aw, fuck.”

  “In Decatur, Illinois.”

  The tables around them had filled. King Elvis was in full swing. The air brimmed with dozens of voices, conversations, rich with aromas of barbecued animal and sarsaparilla. “Suspicious Minds” played through the speakers, just loud enough to hear. An Elvis impersonator sang “Happy Birthday” to a bucktoothed teen three tables away.

  At some point their food arrived. Brody only noticed when Molly aimed ketchup at her fries, hit the table instead.

  “Shit. Not even close.”

  “So what’s Reverend Wendell going to do, Moll?” Brody smeared the ketchup away with a napkin. “Shelter us with angels?”

  “First,” Molly said, popping a fry into her mouth, “he was wrongly imprisoned in 1991, for murder, served eight years of a thirty-year sentence, so he may have some empathy for your—our—situation.”

  Brody looked at his meal—ribs, partly charred, glazed with sauce—with zero appetite.

  “Second, we knew his stepbrother. There’s a family connection. And he’s close; Decatur is half a day’s bus ride.”

  Brody said, “Feels like grasping at straws.”

  “We’re lucky to have a straw to grasp.” Molly went back to her milkshake but this time there were no delighted sounds. “Bottom line: the Reverend Wendell Mathias is duty-bound to provide guidance to those in need. And we are most certainly in need.”

  Brody yanked a rib, looked at it as he might a small, live fish, and dropped it back on the plate.

  “And maybe he can’t help us the way we need to be helped.” Molly inhaled. Her thin chest trembled. “But he can at least pray for us.”

  * * *

  Sleep didn’t come quickly for Brody. It wasn’t paranoia that kept him awake, but the Cadillac-sized concerns regarding their immediate future. The money was only part of it. More urgently, what would they do—where could they turn—after Janko’s stepbrother offered prayer, then shooed them away?

  What an ugly mess, he thought, wondering at which point his life had transitioned from generally shitty to totally fucked up. When he decided to rob Buddy’s? When he—literally—bumped into Blair Latzo? Or maybe it was earlier . . . when his old man committed suicide, or when his mother . . .

  “Mom . . .” he murmured.

  Memories of her shimmered at the edges of his mind, and it occurred to him that maybe . . . he could find her . . .

  “Mom.”

  . . . track her down. She was out there somewhere. She . . .

  It took a long time, but when sleep came, it was as heavy as lead and just as gray.

  * * *

  They were on the road before ten, the first of two buses to Decatur. They faced a ninety-minute layover in Jacksonville, so wouldn’t reach their destination until eight p.m.

  “Prayer won’t cut it,” Brody said sharply.

  They hadn’t spoken much that morning—a few sentences mumbled over breakfast, a couple of grunts and sighs while waiting to board the bus—so this statement rang like a ball-peen hammer on steel.

  “I know,” Molly said.

  Sunlight flashed across the windows, highlighting handprints and grime. Two seats ahead, a little girl pulled bubble gum from beneath the armrest while her mother slept. Somewhere behind, an elderly fellow with an interdental lisp extolled Trump’s qualities in a loud, know-it-all tone of voice.

  “We need money,” Brody whispered. “And soon.”

  “You’re not robbing anyone,” Molly whispered in return.

  “I was actually thinking,” Brody began, “that I—we—could get work on a farm. Picking apples or grapes or whatever. And some farms offer basic lodging—you know, for illegals who don’t have anywhere else to live.”

  “And who work for next to nothing.” Molly shook her head. “It’s a step up from slavery, I guess.”

  “It’s somewhere to start.” Brody shielded his eyes from the sunlight. His forehead accommodated a low, dull ache. “We can slowly get some money behind us. Maybe make new contacts.”

  “Something I considered,” Molly said, and what she offered next made Brody wonder if she’d read his mind as he drifted into sleep the night before. “Wendell and Janko were thick as thieves when they were younger.”

  “You mentioned that.” Brody shrugged. “So?”

  “So Wendell might know Mom.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Eddie the Smoke was an independent. He had preferred clients, but allegiance to no one. Like an assassin, he often thought of himself. He went where the money was, and if this wasn’t the first rule of business, it was certainly the most important one.

  He began his tasteless professional life as a paparazzo (he took the notorious shot of a certain British rock star getting a blow job from a groupie in the parking lot behind th
e Viper Room), then moved from Hollywood to Philadelphia and became a private eye. It was dull, occasionally dangerous work. His clients were primarily insurance companies and lonely, suspicious wives (and in almost every case they had cause to be suspicious). “Cheats and pricks,” he intoned of his job. “But Christ, they pay the bills.” In 2006, he was approached by a well-known property magnate and hired to “tail” a competitor on a month-long tour of the Emirates. “I want to know where he stays, who he meets with, how often he takes a shit.” Eddie the Smoke—then just Edwin Shaw—provided this information, and more besides, and at the end of the job was rewarded with a check for $30,000, plus expenses. At that point he determined that following people might be more lucrative than secretly taking photographs of them.

  Over the years his clients included a former child star, a best-selling novelist, and more than one crooked politician. On official documents, under “occupation,” Eddie usually wrote tailer, and nobody challenged him on the spelling.

  * * *

  He used technology, but didn’t rely on it. Tracking devices were often lost or, worse, discovered. Geolocation was unreliable. Eddie favored the old-fashioned method of physically following his objective. He drove a dependable vehicle and carried a set of license plates from twenty-three states, magnetized for easy switching. He used multiple disguises, mainly hats and glasses. A baseball cap or pair of aviators altered not only his appearance but his character, too.

  Eddie maintained a prudent distance when tailing, of course, but there were times when he couldn’t help but get close. There were also occasions when it paid to get very close. He’d been an Uber driver since 2014, and in that time had given rides to twenty-nine of his targets. Uber was incredibly popular, and Eddie had the smarts to use it to his advantage.

  “Going anywhere exciting?” he’d asked the kid, looking at his sad, purplish eyes in the rearview.

  “I hope not,” the kid had replied.

  Eddie had worked for Jimmy Latzo several times. Knowing the way Jimmy operated, it was safe to assume that excitement was very much in this kid’s future.

  * * *

  Followed State-Ways #1078 to Jacksonville, IL. Objective disembarked at 16:07. He and the cripple ate hoagies from Mac’s on N. Main St. Boarded State-Ways #1211 to Decatur, IL. Disembarked at 20:04. Checked into Overnites on N. Water St. Room #17. Lights out at 23:02.