Root (21 page)

“
James, that was years
ago.”

“
It was last Christmas.”

“
Listen. A lot has happened since
then. The economy here’s kinda imploded. Hardly any clients sign up
for our enhanced services anymore. I’ve had to scale back. No more
fancy gardening. It’s mostly just mowing and blowing now. That’s
90% of what we do. I got three teams of Dominicans working and
that’s all I can handle. It’s hard enough some weeks keeping all of
them busy.”

“
I see.”

“
Things could get better I suppose,
but right now…? I’m sorry, James, but I got nothing to offer you. I
wish you would’ve called ahead first. It’s a shame for you to come
all the way up here for nothing. But give us a call after the
weekend. I’ll talk to Helen. Maybe we can have you over for dinner
or something. It’d be great to see you.”

I sank lower in my seat, staring at the
reflectors separating the lanes.

“
James?”

I could have sworn that seat belt cinched me
down and the shoulder strap made a move to strangle me.

***

The instant I crossed into Ohio, a warble from
Jared’s cell phone heralded the arrival of his promised
text:

77 to 490W Exit 1B R on
7
^th
. R
on Jefferson. R on 3
^rd
1054 W. 3
^rd
St.

It looked jumbled and cryptic at first glance,
but when I parsed it, I found it to be a simple series of
directions ending with an address.

The traffic thickened as I approached
Cleveland. There were no jams, just slowdowns and bumper to bumper
traffic going fifty. I was going to be late and there was nothing I
could do but minimize the damage.

It was cool enough that I opened my
windows for the first time since leaving Florida. I got off at the
right exit, made all the correct turns and it was still 5:45 when I
found 3
^rd
Street. It was in a transition residential and industrial zone
near the river and train depot. Little factories and warehouses
mixed with occasional apartment houses, only a block away from some
green residential streets.

The place was an auto body shop, a plain,
squared-off building of concrete block with three service bays side
by side. A guy in Carhartts stood on the corner. When he saw me
coming he stepped out into the street and waved me into the
lot.

He was tall and bald and ripped, with a
millimeter of shadow on his cheeks and cold, probing eyes with not
a hint of humor behind them. He jabbed his finger at the closed
bay.

“
That door opens, you pull in and
get your ass out of the truck!”

***

I rolled into a drive-through garage that
opened front and back. Once the overhead door came down behind me I
was boxed in, though the back door the next bay over remained open.
It looked out into a muddy junkyard full of stripped down hulks of
every make and model. There were a couple sheds and a construction
trailer in the middle of the desolation.

The guys hanging around were not the Mexican
mafia types I expected. They were just a bunch of middle-American
Anglos. They were quite a bit older than Jared and me. Maybe they
had nicer clothes and a few more tattoos and earrings than the
average Joe who worked in a garage, but not by much.

A guy in an over-sized trucker’s cap came up
to my window and handed me an envelope.

“
Cut the engine. Leave the keys.
Robbie will give you a ride wherever you need to go.”

“
What about my truck?”

“
You can pick it up tomorrow. The
Walmart on Steelyard.”

I opened the envelope. It held two hundred
dollar bills.

“
What the heck? I was supposed to
get five hundred.” I kept the truck running.

“
Since when?”

“
Jared said—”

“
Who the fuck’s Jared? Listen mule,
get your ass out of that fucking truck.”

He had just pissed me off big time. I could
almost feel the hormones oozing from my adrenal glands.

“
Get out of that cab or I’ll drag
you out by your fucking scrotum!

The truck was still in gear. My foot rested on
the brake. I gunned the engine and veered hard left. I clipped the
guy’s hip and sent him flying into a stack of cardboard boxes. The
overhead door in the next bay started coming down. A guy scrambled
out of my way.

I surged through the opening. The hood
cleared, but the door scraped the roof and ripped off the antenna.
I careened into the junkyard and roared around the side of the
building. A guy in a suit and tie burst out of a trailer. Weapons
appeared from pockets and jackets.

Another guy tried to swing a chain link gate
closed. I slammed into it before it could latch. The gate flew
open, rebounded back and slapped against my bumper. I could see
guns pointing at me in the rear view. I expected bullets to fly any
moment. I braced myself, wincing, for the inevitable as I stomped
on the gas.

Burning rubber, I fish-tailed into the
opposite lane. A UPS truck blasted its horn at me as I cut across
its lane and screamed through an underpass, squealing around a
hidden curve to find myself on a long straightaway flanked by a
massive rail yard.

My heart couldn’t beat any faster. I was
shocked to have made it this far without getting my ass
perforated.

***

They must have chased me, but I saw no signs
of it. It probably helped that I had switched roads and reversed
directions at least a dozen times, spiraling ever so gradually away
from Cleveland.

I had just passed a sign for Solon when the
phone went off. It was Jared.

“
Oh man. You’re dead meat. You’d
better stop that truck right now if you want to live.”

“
What makes you think I want to
live?”

“
Don’t fuck with me. We know you’re
in Akron. Those guys are closing in on you as we speak.”

Dang. I had forgotten to look for the GPS
transponder.

“
James. Say something. Have you gone
nutso?”

“
Yeah. I’m nuts.”

“
Why’d you do it? I mean you were
right there.”

“
They stiffed me.”

“
That’s not what they said. They
said they paid you. And you took the money and made off with their
stuff.”

“
They only gave me two
hundred.”

“
You’re lucky they gave you anything
with all the shit you pulled.”

“
Huh? What shit?”

“
James. You turn that truck around
and go back to Cleveland. Forget the money. I’ll make up the
difference. I’ll give you three hundred of my own if you just go
back.”

“
Nuh-uh,” I said. “I ain’t never
going back.”

“
Christ, James, pull the fuck over!
I’ll make them promise not to hurt you.”

“
Too late,” I said. “They fucked
up.”

“
THEY?
They
fucked up?”

Another call clicked in on call waiting. “Hey,
someone else is trying to reach me, hang on.” I switched
over.

“
Joe’s Pizza,” I
answered.

“
Asshole. Think you’re
funny?”

“
Not particularly,” I said. “Who is
this?”

“
You want to live. You park that
truck somewhere quiet and wait for us to get there. Otherwise, you
die.”

“
Promises, promises.

“
Listen asshole. Doesn’t matter
where you go. We got a wide net. We got your name, your license,
your picture, even your fucking fingerprints and DNA if we need it.
We’re gonna find you. And when we take you out it ain’t gonna be
quick or pretty.”

I pulled off an exit behind a flatbed hauling
a bulldozer.

“
Yeah? Well, happy hunting.” I
tossed the phone out the window and onto the flatbed. I squeezed by
on the right, turning south while the flatbed went
north.

Chapter 20:
Backslide

I wound my way out of Cleveland, sticking as
much as possible to the smaller county roads. I was too visible on
the interstate, too catchable by the fleet of Escalades with tinted
windows I imagined speeding after me, though I had no way of
knowing who might actually be chasing. But I sure freaked out every
time another car came up on my bumper.

These slow roads sometimes led me into
potential traps—miracle miles clogged with Walmart and Kroger’s
traffic. I felt less exposed and more in control, my direction less
predictable among the corn fields and wood lots.

I had no particular direction or destination
in mind. Getting away from Cleveland was my only goal. That I
seemed to be gravitating south and east was more by accident than
any conscious aim.

When it got dark, I stopped for fuel in a town
called Warren. I circled the truck under a fluorescent lighted
awning thick with gnats and got my first look at the damage taken
in the escape.

It wasn’t quite as bad as I had expected. The
roof and back quarter panel taken the brunt, the roof all dented
and scraped, while deep scratches scored the right rear fender.
Only the stub of the FM antenna remained. That explained why the
reception had gone to crap.

As I rounded the bumper, I saw some wires
sticking out of a shattered brake light. I went to stuff them back
in, but it was clear that these were not part of the standard
equipment.

I tugged on one and out came a little black
box the size of a deck of credit cards. ‘WorldTracker SMS’ was
inked in white on the front. It was the freaking GPS
unit!

It meant they knew I was in Warren, that all
my evasive maneuvers had been for naught. They were probably homing
in on this gas station this very moment.

I stomped the tracker to bits on the pavement,
got back in the truck and squealed out of the station. I drove like
a madman, doubling back, circling blocks, cutting through parking
lots.

Wouldn’t you know, as I was screaming through
Youngstown on 289, there came this charcoal Escalade in the other
direction. An Escalade with tinted windows! It slowed abruptly as I
passed. And in my rear view I caught them waiting for a line of
traffic to clear so they could make a U-turn.

I couldn’t be sure they were Jared’s crowd but
I wasn’t about to stick around to find out. I slammed my foot on
the gas and surged down that road taking the first Y into an area
with lots of tightly packed houses.

I plied a twisty route through the
neighborhoods, and promptly got myself stuck in a cul-de-sac. I
didn’t panic. I got turned around, facing the main road and turned
off my lights. It might be the last place they would expect to find
me, assuming there were no more trackers stashed on this truck.
Maybe this dead-end was not a refuge but a trap.

I sat there, watching and waiting until some
lady with a garden hose started giving me the evil eye. I took a
deep breath, flicked on my lights and moved along.

I thought for sure they would be on my tail as
soon as I back on a through road, but I found myself on a lonely,
windy state highway with a single set of tail lights way up ahead,
and no one behind me.

I seemed to have lost them, if indeed that
Escalade was ‘them,’ and not simply my paranoia. Still, I couldn’t
relax. My palms stayed slippery. I could still hear my pulse
pounding in my head.

I wished to hell now that I had never left
Florida. But how could I have stayed? What was left for me there,
but to wither and die?

No one had forced me to become a mule. A
simple call to Uncle Ed would have let me know his job offer was a
sham. I could have gone someplace else—some place without drug
smugglers out to kill me. Some place interesting, like New Orleans
or Manhattan.

Wet stuff started streaking down my cheeks. I
had no idea why. Who cared if life was hard or unfair? If life
wanted to be that way, then so be it. I just wished my fucking eyes
would dry so I could see where I was going. Tears refracted the
heck out of oncoming headlights.

A couple hours later, I had finally calmed
down. I was sick of driving. My eyes stung. My back ached. I was
wired, wrung out and starving. I rolled into this place called
Beaver Falls, full of rusting crucibles on rail cars and spooky,
abandoned steel mills, rows of them, with banks of windows all
smashed. I turned the corner and a neon vacancy sign for a Super 8
appeared like magic. It lured me into its lot.

I parked in the far back corner, behind this
big Ryder moving van that screened it from the road, and wandered
the grounds for a bit, making sure no one was already here watching
me. Visions of that psychopathic villain from ‘No Country for Old
Men’ haunted me. Now I wish I had never watched that
movie.

I registered under the name ‘Jerry Johnson.’
When I got to my room, I considered getting a pizza delivered, but
the image of opening the door to Javier Bardem’s automatic pistol
put an end to my cravings. I made do with some pretzels and a Coke
from the vending machines down the hall.