Conspiracy of Angels (3 page)

Damn, damn, damn!

“Gotta go,” I said hastily, hanging up the phone and snagging my coat in one swift movement. Then I headed for the door as quickly as I could without attracting any further attention. I kept Ms. Bad Dye Job in sight out of the corner of my eye. She was talking rapidly and urgently on her phone as I slipped out to the parking lot.

It wasn’t like I had anywhere to go. No getaway car. Not even a good pair of running shoes.

Fuck my life.

I
stood on the small patch of concrete that seemed to serve the Pub n’ Sub as a patio in warmer weather, wracking my brain for what to do. I scanned the night, looking for flashes of blue and red. Nothing so far, but with the way my luck was running, that wasn’t going to last.

My gaze fell to the three bikes parked in front of the bar. According to the card in my wallet, I was insured to drive a motorcycle. Did that mean I knew how to steal one? At least I wouldn’t have to break into it, like I would a car. Of course, these three were right out front, in full view of the windows. There were about ten guys in there, not counting Biker Santa of the beard net, and some of them were as big as he was. None of them seemed kindly disposed toward my person, and I didn’t think their opinions of me would improve if they caught me stealing one of their bikes.

Catching some angry yokel’s bullet struck me as a pretty rotten way to die.

That was when I spied the tarp. Sun-bleached and covered in a fine layer of dust, almost the same color as the dead stalks of corn lining the field behind the bar. Crabgrass and Queen Anne’s Lace had grown thick around the bottom edges, dried to a yellow tangle now that summer had come and gone. The bike beneath the tarp hadn’t moved in a while, tucked halfway behind the building, but it was out of sight of both the road and the front windows.

“Best chance you got,” I muttered, shrugging into my damp leather and trotting along the thin strip of concrete that hugged the side wall. I whipped off the tarp, scattering a wave of dust, seeds, and field spiders. It was a beautiful old Harley, the casing over its gas tank a deep, rich red. Betting it belonged to Biker Santa, I honestly felt bad at the thought of stealing it. It looked like something from the late ’70s or early ’80s, but was in pristine condition.

Someone loved this bike.

Still, I needed wheels, and fast.

“I’ll get it back to him,” I promised myself, and I meant it, too. Which made me wonder about the police bulletin. Armed and dangerous. Seriously? I was agonizing over a motorcycle. “Feel bad once you’ve managed to steal it,” I chided myself.

Disengaging the stand and trying to ignore the spiders underfoot, I swung my leg over the bike and settled onto the seat. I was a little too tall for the thing, and if I managed to get it going, I was risking the loss of my toes by riding barefoot, but I gripped the handlebars tightly, getting a feel for the controls.

As soon as I did, I was inundated with impressions—riding with someone clinging to my back, the welcome warmth of her nearness eclipsing even the exhilaration of the open road. Younger times, the days spent riding and the nights spent tangled together, often under the open stars. Then a crushing sense of absence. Impossible to ride the bike without wrestling with her ghost. Revisiting it to polish and care for it every anniversary, then mournfully returning the tarp. A sense of loss so sharp, there was no surcease.

“Not my feelings, not my feelings,” I whispered, fiercely willing the emotions away. In that instant, there was no denying what they were—psychic impressions of some sort. I wanted to ask Biker Santa about his wife—if they had ridden together, and how long ago she had died.

Yet I already knew the answers.

Gripping the handlebars that somehow still held cherished memories of his long-dead lady, I fought to focus on the here-and-now. Dried-out strands of crabgrass rasped against my ankle. It took all of about thirty seconds for me to realize that I didn’t know the first thing about how to steal a motorcycle.

Sirens wailed in the distance.

“Dammit!” I snarled. It was a kick-start bike, so I tried forcing it into neutral and rolling forward as I jammed my foot down on the starter. With the way my feet were chewed up from walking, that hurt about as much as I thought it would. The pain was hardly a deterrent, though. I did it a second time and fiercely willed the thing to go.

The engine growled to life.

Astonished, I gaped at the controls. Down the road, the sirens blared ever closer, overpowering the pulse of the engine.

“Not the time for questions,” I mumbled.

Readjusting my grip on the handlebars, I pulled out of the lot just in time to see a bunch of guys spilling out of the front of the bar. They were led by Biker Santa. His face was scarlet as he aimed a shotgun at me, and he wasn’t the least bit jolly. Police lights flashed against the buildings south of the pub and the sirens ratcheted up to a deafening wail. My bad luck was holding. The cop cars were effectively cutting me off from the direction I needed to go.

“Move now, think later,” I snarled, then swung the growling bike around and sped into the cornfield behind the bar.

R
iding a motorcycle through a cornfield without protective gear is a recipe for pain. Doing it while
barefoot
ranks right up there with rappelling down razor wire or wrestling a rabid porcupine. I was cruising for a Darwin Award. Add in the after-effects of weird psychic visions, pursuit by the local authorities, and being chased by a pack of gun-toting bikers, and my day was rapidly approaching nightmare status.

Somehow I managed to lose them.

More astonishing than that, I managed to find a road. It was little more than a narrow strip of asphalt running between whispering fields of dried corn, but it headed in the right direction. I leaned forward on the Harley, rocketing along as fast as I dared on the lonely country lane. Once in a while I passed houses, but they were all an acre back or more, their lights shaping dim constellations in an otherwise starless night.

I continued like that for several miles, keeping an eye out for any cross street that was bigger than a driveway. Finally I came to Route 20. Given that this was the first intersection that had a stoplight, albeit a blinking one, it had to be a major road for this lonely corner of the Buckeye State. Swinging right, I followed 20 for a while as the clusters of houses became more frequent.

Up ahead, fields and houses gave way to a wide and brightly lit expanse of asphalt. A monolithic building sat back from the road, squat and unattractive. From the look and size of it, I first thought it was an institution. As I drew closer, however, I spied the fluorescent lights spilling out from glass shop windows and automatic doors. A strip of navy-blue signage running across the entire upper portion of the building declared it to be a Wal-Mart. There were perhaps sixteen cars in the parking lot.

Though desolate, it looked open.

I slowed as I approached the turn-off, mentally tallying the remainder of my cash. If the police were looking for me, I didn’t dare use that platinum card in my wallet, however tempting it might be to procure a fresh set of clothes. But I needed footwear badly. I probably had enough cash to get a cheap but serviceable pair of boots, some socks, and maybe even a package of bandages. My feet were pretty chewed up at this point, so cramming them into boots wasn’t really a delightful prospect.

Still, it was better than the alternative. I was lucky so far to have only scrapes and blisters, and if things were cheap enough, I might even have some money left over to feed the gas tank. Biker Santa had seen fit to keep it topped off, so that wasn’t yet a priority.

I pulled up to the front of the store and started to park. Then I realized there was a serious flaw in my plan. Dumb luck and desperation were the only things that had got the Harley running in the first place, so I didn’t dare turn it off.

“Well, crap,” I muttered to myself, glancing around the lot. No one in sight. Empty fields stretching to either side. “Not much choice,” I observed with a shrug. Then I coasted up to a display at the front of the building.

Dying mums in battered plastic containers sat beside a boldly lettered sign proclaiming them “On Sale.” I maneuvered the motorcycle close to the half-dead flowers and set the kickstand, leaving the vintage machine idling in neutral. The area was brightly lit, and I hoped this would have the effect of deterring potential thieves, rather than calling attention to the unattended bike. Reluctantly stepping away from it, I cast a glance heavenward.

“If you’ve got any mercy at all, let this thing be here when I get back.”

Regarding the mute expanse of the sky, I was overcome with a near-crushing awareness that nothing up there was listening to me. I blinked with the force of it, tearing my eyes away from the reflective bellies of the clouds. Mercifully, the feeling passed. Swiping at some of the cornfield detritus still lingering on my jacket and in my hair, I scowled.

“Boots now,” I told myself. “Existential meltdown later.” I padded into the store, leaving russet smears on the tile as I went.

Management was going to love me.

As it turned out, I didn’t have to worry. No one I encountered was out to win any beauty pageants. There were three solitary souls browsing the aisles, and if I’d been clean-shaven and less rumpled, I would have stood out more. I kept my head down anyway, and headed for the footwear section.

Looking over a rack of reasonably sturdy work boots—“Prices Slashed! Now only 29.95!”—I realized that I had no idea what size I wore. The amnesia thing was really starting to get on my nerves.

I yanked off what was left of my socks and studied my poor abused feet.
Probably a twelve.
I had long, thin toes to match my long, thin fingers, so maybe it was more like a thirteen. I grabbed a three-pack of athletic socks and tore a pair from the plastic. Looking around for sales associates or security cameras, I eased my feet into the fresh socks, then started trying on boots.

After three attempts I got the right size, or at least close enough. I laced up the boots, grabbed the box and the remaining socks, and carried them over toward the single open register. No one looked twice, not even the gaunt-faced fellow wearing deer-hunter orange who was walking in circles near the housewares, muttering to himself about elephant guns.

I
so
didn’t want to know.

At the counter, the bleary-eyed girl with a torn-out eyebrow piercing held up the empty shoebox and shook it at me.

“I gotta scan the boots for you to buy them.” She almost touched my hand and I jerked back. She gaped at me like a carp.

“That’s too bad,” I said impatiently. “I’m wearing them. That’s why I brought the box.”

“But the box is empty,” she argued.

“That’s because I’m wearing them!” I said again. We went round and round like this for a couple of minutes, and it felt like being caught in the loop of some old comedy, only it didn’t feel at all funny. I gritted my teeth, resisting the urge to reach over the counter and shake her.

Elephant-gun man began wandering toward the register, and he looked way too interested in our conversation.

“Look,” I said, trying to keep my voice down, “I wrecked my boots out in the mud. I got socks here and I got boots. The boots came in that box, which has a bar code. All you have to do is scan the fucking bar code. I just want to pay and get out of here.”

Frowning, she set the empty box down and picked up the three-pack of athletic socks. She poked at the ragged edges where I’d torn open the packaging. “This is already open. You wanna go back and get a new one?”

I felt my eye twitch.

“It’s fine,” I managed. “Just scan it, and scan that box. I’m buying the box, too.”

Looking at me like I was the one with the mental deficiency, she took her little gun and ran the laser scanner over the bar codes. I shoved money at her before she finished ringing up the total, which made her pause again and almost lose track of what she was doing. With agonizing care she slipped both the empty shoebox and the opened package of socks into a thin plastic bag. Only then did she take my money and cash me out.

I fought the urge to grab the package and bolt from the store, instead forcing myself to walk slowly back to the entrance. I thought a series of very unkind things about her parents as I pulled the socks from the bag on my way out of the store. I tossed the bag into a nearby trash bin, stuffing the two extra pairs of socks into an inner pocket of my jacket.

The Harley still rested next to the bedraggled mums, its engine humming softly.

“Thank goodness for small favors,” I muttered, then swung back onto the motorcycle and resumed my trip toward Cleveland, now about 35 miles away. Then all I had to do was find a club I didn’t remember in a city whose streets were forgotten to me, as well.

O
nce I got onto I-90, it took me straight into the city. As I drove through the eastern suburbs, the highway split off into a bewildering number of alternate freeways. I followed my instincts, surrendering to the feel of what seemed right, and by eleven-thirty I was within sight of the Cleveland skyline.

The skyscrapers were lit from below with candy-colored floods of red, blue, and gold. Gleaming lights illuminated the downtown bridges as well, making the art deco giants flanking their arches come ominously to life.

A wealth of apparently random facts spun through my brain—the foibles of the Van Sweringen brothers, pride in native son Bob Hope, and rueful memories of J.D. Rockefeller’s cutthroat tactics. I found myself wondering about my curiously selective amnesia. Everything was poignantly familiar. I knew the shape of the Terminal Tower, the tales of the Detroit Avenue Bridge, the fervor sports-minded locals held for the stadium that was home of the Cleveland Tribe.

As long I didn’t think too hard about it, I knew where every street led. I took the exit that funneled me down a winding path from the overpass to the Flats. I found myself on River Road, got routed around a drawbridge that was undergoing repairs, passed the Nautica stage, then drew up short at a sleek black sign with familiar silver letters.