A Reason to Live (Marty Singer1) (24 page)

"Can you take the time off?" I asked him.

"Yeah," he said. "It'd be better if we didn't have to chase around GW, though. With you gone, I've got no backup."

"Amanda?" I asked.

She said, "My classes are done for the week and I can cancel office hours. What about Pierre?"

I turned to Jim.

"You've got to be kidding," he said.

"I'll take care of him," Amanda said quickly. "You won't even know he's there."

"That's it, then," I said, ignoring the look on Jim's face. "You two hole up. The Counselor and I are heading south. And Layla Green is going to tell us everything she knows about her brother."

vii.

"He had nothing?"

"We've only skimmed the files," the man said. He took a deep breath and got ready to take a verbal beating. It wasn't the news he'd been told to get. "But, no. Nothing off the top."

But instead of swearing, the old man simply grunted. A minute passed with only rasping, labored breathing coming over the line.

"Chief?"

"We're in good shape, Taylor," the old man said. "Or at least we're not in bad. Singer doesn't have a clue. It would've been nice if he'd had a map, I suppose, and painted a big red X telling us right where we wanted to go, but this news...it makes me realize we're all in the same boat."

"What about...?"

"The girl's with Singer, right?"

"Her stuff was there."

"So, she hasn't been found. Which means all three of us are operating in the dark. But those two more than us. And maybe we can use that."

"What do we need Singer for, then? Take him out, grab the girl, make the rest happen the way we want it to."

"Maybe," the old man said slowly, considering. "But I like having Marty as a control. I know how he thinks. How he works. It's what let me lead him around by the nose twelve years ago. Plus he'll keep my...he'll keep the target occupied, distracted."

"Removing the problem worked last time," Taylor offered.

"Because nobody gave a damn," the old man said, his voice calm. "That's not the case with Singer. The man's got friends. His body turns up somewhere and we'll have a load of hurt. No, keep an eye on the girl. Put Jackson back on patrol. We just might get lucky."

The next morning, I packed a day bag for the trip south to Waynesboro. It should've been three hours away--and in most parts of the country, I could get there and back in a day--but in our neck of the woods, traffic could turn the trip into a full day extravaganza.

Julie and I met at the parking garage for the Vienna Metro Station, as innocuous a spot as we could think of to stow her car while I drove us to Waynesboro. She was waiting for me in the multi-day parking area, looking preppy in jeans, black boots, and a fleece. I popped the trunk so she could chuck her overnight roller-bag into the car. She slammed the trunk shut, then flopped down in the passenger's seat.

"Hey," I said.

"Hey." She had wide, dark aviator sunglasses on that gave her a sophisticated look. Her hair was held back by a simple band. "Ready for some answers?"

"If we get lucky," I said, then tried to backpedal when I saw her smile. "You know, with what we're trying to find out."

She reached over and patted my hand. "Why don't you just drive, Singer?"

Any drive south and west of DC starts with Route 66 West which, around DC isn't the romantic highway of song and film, it's more like the world's largest continuous strip mall. Green trees arched into sight over the highway wall from time to time, but more often we were treated to unending stretches of shopping centers that could've been airlifted from anywhere in the U.S. There were so many pizza joints, nail salons, and big box stores that I wondered who went there. If everyone worked at these places, who was left to go shopping?

In time, the malls released their hold on the land and gave way to farms and the kind of grassy, green hills you typically only find on postcards. When we saw horses grazing and running through fields on either side of the highway, I knew we'd left the parts of Virginia that are really just suburban extensions of DC. The Blue Ridge swelled on the right, the hills layered in the distance like two-dimensional cutouts, with one set of slopes giving way to a larger, smokier, more beautiful set right behind them. Weathered plaques along the side of the road marked the sites where Civil War battles had been forgotten, Confederate flags flew in yards where they hadn't. Julie spent most of the drive on her cell phone, doing lawyer-type things and arguing with people while I concentrated on driving. When signs for Waynesboro starting showing, however, she ended her last call, snapped the phone shut, and looked over at me.

"What's the plan?" she asked

I scrounged around a pocket near the arm rest and handed her a map. "Kransky wrote down where she lived. We can try and find it on the map or we could go to the Visitors Center and ask--"

I stopped because she'd tossed the map on the backseat and had pulled her phone out again. "What's the address?" she asked.

"460 Catalpa Street."

"Hold on," she said and peered at the two-inch screen of her phone, biting her lip as she concentrated. She typed into the phone with two thumbs faster than I could with ten fingers. "Got it. When you hit Market Street, turn right at the light, go three blocks. Take a left, then go about two miles."

"You sure we don't want to go to the Visitors Center?"

She shot me a look. "I'm sure, Singer. It's GPS, for Pete's sake."

We followed Waynesboro's broad, sleepy streets to the historic town center with its red brick Federal-style homes and right out the other side. Main Street fell behind as the road snaked its way to the outskirts of town where homes became modest and modern. Brick and wood gave way to vinyl and plastic, front porches and gliders to cement steps and folding chairs. The lawns were larger, but more apt to have pink flamingos and gazing balls in them. We pulled onto Catalpa and counted house numbers until we neared the one that Kransky had given me. I eased up onto the gravel shoulder when I was fifty yards away and we took a long look.

The house was like the others in the neighborhood, a two or three bedroom rancher with a cracked asphalt driveway and in desperate need of landscaping. An ugly, half-height cyclone fence surrounded the property. Fake shutters screwed into the siding made a passing attempt at colonial respectability that was obliterated by a herd of plastic deer arranged in a semi-circle around a birdbath. The lawn had been cut recently, though weeds and grass grew in the no-man's land between the fence and the street. A beat-up blue Chrysler mini-van rusted away in the driveway with a license plate too far away to make out clearly. A robin took a crap on the front porch. There was no one in the yard and no movement from inside that I could see. I shut the car off and unlatched my seat belt.

We sat for ten minutes.

Julie wriggled in her seat, trying to get comfortable. After five more minutes, she asked, "What are we doing, exactly?"

"We're waiting."

"For how long?"

"For a while," I said. "Wheeler could be sitting behind the door with a shotgun. It would kind of ruin my day if I got smoked strolling down the driveway."

"We'd have our man, at least."

"
You
would have your man," I said. "I would have a whole new set of medical bills."

She sighed and folded her arms across her chest and we both stared across the road some more. The highlight was when a Mazda RX-7 with custom rims and a pimped-out spoiler sailed by, going too fast, barely keeping it on the road. The drone of its muffler hung on long after it disappeared from view. It got chilly sitting there, so I started the car to turn the heat on for a minute, then shut it off. The hot air accentuated the light perfume Julie was wearing. I cleared my throat and cracked the window.

A minute passed and she sighed again. "Did you bring anything to drink?"

"A couple of sodas," I said. "Cooler's behind your seat."

I expected her to get out and open the back door, but instead she climbed onto the console between the seats and rummaged around the backseat from there, trying to open the cooler lid from the wrong direction. Her hip was pressed up hard against my shoulder as she leaned into me, while her butt was next to my face, waggling back and forth as she struggled to get the cooler open. I tried to keep my attention on the house across the street.

"What the hell is wrong with this thing?" she asked, her voice muffled but peeved.

"Let me get it," I said and put my seat back so I could reach the cooler. She yanked back on the lid at the same time. With the support of my shoulder gone, her momentum tumbled her backwards onto the steering wheel, where her butt landed on the horn, honking it. She said, "Shit!", jerked away from the horn like she'd been burnt, and slid from the steering wheel directly onto my lap.

I froze. She froze. Her face was three inches away from mine. Her sunglasses had slipped so that they now dangled from her ears and under chin. Wild strands of hair had come loose from the band and they hung down over her eyes and across her face. I had a hand on her back and another on her knee. I guess I'd put them there when she'd dropped into my lap. We sat there for a long moment. I raised the hand that was on her knee and gently removed her sunglasses. Folded them and put them on the console. Raised my hand again and brushed the strands of hair away from her eyes. Her lips were full and parted and I could see her nostrils flare minutely as she breathed.

"I've never made out in a car," she said. "I've led a sheltered life."

"Would you like to break out of your shell?"

"Yes," she said, breathing the word and leaning in.

. . .

So much for our stakeout.

It had been thirty years since I'd tried getting it on in a car and it wasn't any easier now than it was then. And that had been in a back seat. We squirmed around like two sardines in a can, honking the horn once more in our passion, until Julie found the lever that reclines the entire seat. We fell back with a grunt. She straddled me and worked at the buttons and zippers of her clothes while our mouths were glued together like we would stop breathing if we ever separated. I got myself in disarray before she did and helped her with the fleece, shirt, and bra. The jeans were the hardest part and I thought one of us was going to pull a muscle trying to shuck her pants off until she slapped my hands away, rolled onto the passenger seat, slithered out of them, and crawled back on top of me. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was nervous, self-conscious, wondering what the cancer would do to me or what it had already done. I'd become weaker, fatigued, less of myself than I was used to in every other way, why would this be any different?

But her hunger and mine overrode it all. My worries faded as she set the pace, straddling me, biting her lip, clutching at my shoulders. I let her go, enjoying it, conserving myself, until it wasn't my choice to make anymore and I became a part of it. Months of anxiety spent worrying about death and illness and fear were wiped away as we clutched and pushed and exploded with each other. I slipped into a heavy waking dream, content and blank and exhausted.

. . .

I moved as she stirred under my hands. She lifted her head from my chest and looked at me with a neutral expression on her face--wary--until I smiled. She smiled back, then took a deep breath. I glanced at the clock. Our episode had lasted for all of ten minutes. I'd slept for about two more, though it had felt like an hour.

"Do you think Wheeler was watching?" she asked, stretching and arching her back.

I let my eyes follow her body, watching with interest what the stretching did. She still wore the fleece, but was bare from the waist down. It was a wonderful style, one that I thought women everywhere should adopt. "I don't know. I'm more worried about some country cop catching us like we're two seventeen year olds after prom."

"That was more action than Catalpa Street has seen for a long time," she said, then grinned.

I laughed. "Forget Catalpa Street. That was more action than I've seen in a long time."

"Not counting people breaking into your house."

"I can do without that kind of action."

She gently eased herself off me and clambered to the passenger seat, giving the outside world a few choice glimpses in the process. In a minute she was put back together like nothing had ever happened, though that's not how I preferred to think of it.

I cleared my throat. "I like looking for sodas in the cooler. I think we should do it again."

She raised her eyebrows. "Right now?"

"Jesus, no. Not right now. Soon."

She smiled. "Good."

"So, not weird?"

She leaned back over the seat and said, "Not weird." Then kissed me.

When we came up for air, I coughed and said, "I don't care if Wheeler is sitting behind the door with a bazooka, there's no way I can sit in the car for another half hour."

I started the car and we eased past the house. Nothing jumped out at me, but I noticed that the yard kept going behind the house for an acre or three, which was disappointing, since I'd wanted to circle around and maybe get a look at the back. I did a quick U-turn and parked right outside the house. Julie and I got out.

Next to the road was a mailbox with the address and the name "Green" in cheap, stick-on letters that were peeling away like sunburned skin. Below it sat a bright yellow box holding two old copies of the town newspaper, still in their plastic bags. I opened the gate and walked up the cracked concrete path to the front door, taking my time and watching the windows.