Gagliano,Anthony - Straits of Fortune.wps (14 page)

"I don't see you leaving, but don't worry, we'll take good care of you." I didn't say anything. They fed me a bologna sandwich and a cup of vegetable soup, after which the same guard led me back to the yard, and I walked around the perimeter of the fence for about half an hour, scoping out the barbed wire and not seeing any way through it. There was not much to like about the situation I was in. Williams was still on the loose and no doubt looking for Vivian and her brother, if indeed he hadn't already found them. Why he was after them, I didn't know. Then there was the question of the other fifty grand the Colonel owed me. If Williams had been telling the truth and he had ordered me killed, then the Colonel and I were overdue for a little chat. I was involved in some kind of scam, and I needed answers, none of which I was going to find at Krome. The smart thing to do was to wait it out for a few days and hope for low bail. That's what I would have recommended to anyone else. The problem was, it required the kind of patience I didn't have in my DNA. There had to be another option. Suddenly there were the sounds of sirens coming from beyond the fence. I turned and saw a crowd beginning to gather around a man lying on the ground over near the Quonset hut where I'd been sitting. It was the crazy German. He was on his back, his long, angular body possessed, it seemed, by spasms that were causing his legs to jerk and twitch every which way. The guards were blowing their whistles and trying to force the inmates away. Other guards were trying to hold the twitching man down. The gates on the other side of the yard swung open, and a red-and-white ambulance, its lights flashing, its sirens wail- ing, came rushing through. I glanced around. The guards and the other inmates were all distracted. I knew I was look- ing at the best chance of getting out of that place I was likely 118

to get. There would be trouble later, but later could wait. I began to walk as nonchalantly as I could toward the ambu- lance, just another curious man in a pale orange jumpsuit. The paramedics were very good, very fast. People don't give them enough credit. They had the German on a gurney within a minute of jumping out of the van. No one paid any attention to me as I edged ever so slowly toward the far side of the ambulance. All eyes were focused on the mad German. They were having a hard time strapping him down. He was screaming in his native tongue and thrashing around like a lunatic. I took a quick look around, then dropped to my knees, flattened myself out straight on the hot pavement, and rolled as quickly as I could under the ambulance. As I said, the paramedics were very good, very fast. The van bounced as they lifted and slid the gurney up and into the ambulance. I held on to the underside of the van and kept myself off the ground as much as possible by wedging my feet alongside the transmission and by using my arms to lift my back. Otherwise someone standing a bit away from the van might see me if they happened to look down. But luck- ily for me the van rode rather low to the ground and cast a considerable shadow. It was a hundred yards of hard, hot asphalt and potholes to the gate, and I knew I was going to lose some skin. If they hit a bump the wrong way, I might shake loose, but there was nothing else to do except try. I heard the driver's-side door open and close, then the same thing on the passenger side. The van sank a bit and bounced. I got ready. I reached up and got hold of a piece of the chassis and hoisted my back off the ground. The damned thing burned my hands, but I held on. The van shifted into gear and surged forward. We were moving fast now. My forearms were starting to ache from the strain of holding myself up, and I was be- 119

ginning to sag at the middle. For the briefest of moments, my shoulders touched the ground, and if I hadn't found the strength to pull myself up again, my back would have been scraped down clean to the spine. Then we were through the gate. The muscles in my arms and legs were all used up, and I was going to have to let go whether I wanted to or not--but not at sixty-five miles an hour. What I needed was a stop sign or a traffic light or a sharp curve. Then I felt the van slow and veer slightly left, and I knew I had to let go then, before they came out of the turn. I let my feet hit the ground. My arms were over my head, and I was being dragged. Maybe we were doing thirty. I closed my eyes, let go, rolled to one side, and prayed that nothing on the chassis took my face off. Suddenly I was on my back in the middle of the road. I sat up in time to see an eighteen-wheeler coming fast. Maybe he saw me and maybe he didn't, but he didn't slow down. There was no time to stand up. I rolled left, and the truck went by like a giant bull. I got slowly to my feet and looked around. I was on a two- way road with nothing on either side of me except mangrove swamp. There were no streets signs, but I had a fairly good idea of where I was--in the middle of nowhere. The long day, the longest I'd had in quite a while, was heading west where the slate-colored storm clouds were massing and gathering their strength. It was still hot, but an unexpected breeze swirled through the air. It was going to rain big time, and soon. That far south there was very little traffic on the roads. It would be mostly trucks hauling produce up from the farms in the southern part of Miami-Dade County and maybe a few vans full of migrant laborers heading home. It didn't matter much. In my orange jumpsuit, the official uniform of illegal aliens, I couldn't afford to hitchhike. That meant I had 120

to walk--but not along the road. The cops would be look- ing for me soon; that was for sure. There was also the truck driver of the eighteen-wheeler that had nearly flattened me to think about. He had probably seen me roll out of the way at the last moment, in which case he would simply be glad to have missed hitting me. Or he might decide to use his radio and call it in. Either way I had to get off the road. I limped into the mangrove swamp and headed east. It began to rain. I had no money, no ride, and no idea what I was going to do. It was slow going, and after an hour I began wondering if I'd made a mistake by busting out of Krome. But there was no way I could have sat still in there for days without going crazy. At least now I had a chance to get some answers. I could worry about the trouble I was in later. I was tired, thirsty, and, despite the soup and sandwich, still a bit weak from hunger, but at least I was moving. After another mile of the swamp, I came out onto a side road across the street from a shopping mall that with its neon lights and parking lot full of cars seemed like an oasis. I had never been so glad to see and smell a Burger King in my entire life. What I wanted most was a Whopper, a Coke, and a giant order of fries, but I was broke and still dressed in orange. That was going to have to change. I ran across the street and stood between a corrugated shed and the loading dock of a Kmart, where six or seven work- ers were loading boxes into the back of a trailer. A security guard appeared at the edge of the bay and looked casually in my direction. I nearly stopped walking. I wondered if he could see me from where he stood. I was almost tempted to turn around and look when he disappeared back inside the warehouse. My next concern was clothing. The orange jumpsuit I was wearing was a police magnet, and I needed to get rid of it as 121

soon as possible. Then, across the lot, over near the fence, I spotted one of those giant green metal bins put out by the Police Athletic League for people to donate their old clothes. I headed for it through the last of the rain. There were only a few cars at that far end of the lot, mainly because it was exactly the kind of place where they tell you not to park if you want to avoid getting hit in the head and robbed. I was fairly certain that there were surveil- lance cameras covering the lot, but I was equally certain that the men watching them were not terribly observant. I reached the bin and casually stuck my hand into the opening, like a man trying to find a bar of soap in a bathtub filled with bubbles. I couldn't afford to be too selective, but all the same I needed something that fit. The clothes were just jammed in there, and it took me a while to find a shirt I could wear. It was one of those sky blue polyester num- bers out of the seventies that looked as though it were made of neon, complete with an extra-wide pimp collar and two missing buttons. I stared at it for a second and was tempted to try my luck again. Then I decided that this was no time to get picky and threw it on the ground, then reached back into the bin and tried to score a pair of pants. I had just gotten hold of a promising pair when a police car cruised silently into the parking lot. Luckily, I was looking in that direction when it appeared; otherwise he might have caught me with my back turned. Even so, I had just enough time to get behind the bin before the cop car turned right and edged slowly around the perimeter of the lot. I crouched there for five minutes, waiting for him to complete his tor- tured sweep of the area, and then I heard his car's radio on the other side of the bin. He seemed to stay there a long time, but it was only because he was moving so slowly. A moment later he slid past where I was, and eventually the sound of the radio dispatcher's voice faded away. 122

Somebody must have found a cache of polyester in an attic somewhere, because the pants were as synthetic as the shirt I had found. The only good thing about them was that they were black. I went behind the bin and changed clothes quickly. It was only then I realized that the pants were too short by a good five inches. It was as though a levee had busted and I had just recently emerged from the flood zone. I decided I could live with them and hurriedly stuffed the jumpsuit into the bin. In five minutes time, I had gone from looking like an escaped illegal alien to looking like an es- caped mental patient--not exactly the transformation I'd hoped for, but still an improvement. Now I needed some money. I went around to the other side of the mall and into the Winn Dixie supermarket. I didn't like what I was about to do, but I really didn't have much choice. I found the aisle with the canned meats, took a can of Spam down off the shelf, tore the little key off the top, put it in my pocket and walked out the front door. No one gave me a second look. Then I went outside and began looking for a parking meter. I had to walk a few blocks in the rain, but I finally found a row of them behind a post office. I was about to commit my third felony in twenty-four hours. I got out the little T-shaped key and jimmied open the meter. I knew how to do it because in my rookie year as a cop I had busted a homeless guy who was using the same method up in Manhattan. He and his buddies had stolen over six thousand dollars in quarters by the time we caught them, and it had cost the borough a pretty penny to alter the meters to keep that from happening again. Five minutes and a little finagling later, I had ten dollars in quarters weighing me down. I could have taken more, but I felt bad enough taking what I did. I went back to the mall and found myself at the rear en- 123

trance of the food court. People flashed by without looking at me. I glanced around in search of the restrooms. I had an irresistible urge to see what I looked like, mainly be- cause I was feeling somewhat maniacal and wanted to know whether I looked that way as well. There was no one in the men's room, so I was able to check myself out in the mirror without interruption. I was dark and windburned, like a man who has walked a long way through a desert without adequate water, and my cheekbones were getting close to the outside air. I needed a shave and my hair was sticking out in various directions, but it was my eyes that scared me the most. They were feral eyes, the eyes of a desperate man. Any cop worth his pay would just get a look at them and his radar sense would be immediately set off. If the eyes really are the windows to the soul, then I needed to find some shades pretty fast. I washed my face in the sink and used the water to smooth down my hair, which helped some but did nothing about my expression. I went into a stall and sat down on the bowl, although not for the usual reason. The men's room in your average American mall is hardly the best place for meditat- ing, and the smell of shit does not entice the spirit, but it was as close to an ashram as I was going to find. I shut my eyes and got my breathing under control until my heart rate was the only sound in the universe. Being tired helped, and I nearly fell asleep, but I managed to get to the place where I was floating, where the world was gone. I stayed there for ten minutes, coming out of it only when a man let himself into the stall next to mine and began farting like a Gatling gun. I looked in the mirror before I left and was pleased to see that the animal sheen had died down a bit. I needed a glass of bourbon to brace me, but I had to settle for a pair of very thin hamburgers, some fries, and a small Pepsi. I counted out the change with the patience of a man 124

about to be broke. I took the tray of food, sat at a small table fastened to the wall, and ate while watching the entrance with all the intensity of the fugitive I had become. A skinny black kid with his pants hanging half off his ass went by me. I read the front of his T-shirt as he approached and the back as he was going away. The front of the shirt said kill all the white people. The back said but buy my cd first. Maybe it was the mood I was in, but I started laughing. In fact, I laughed a little bit too much, so much so that I started to worry about myself, as though I were both lunatic and at- tending physician. It was worth the worry, though, because by the time I'd stopped chuckling in my little corner, it had come to me who it was I needed to call for help. There are people you call when you're in trouble and people you call when the trouble involves the police. The Sheik would have come or sent someone in five minutes, but he was on his way to the Bahamas on his private jet. I might have called Johnny Bingo, a Seminole Indian with his own helicopter, but I hadn't seen or heard from him in two years, besides which I didn't have his private number on permanent file in my brain. That left the Space Man. It was his T-shirt the teenager in the food court had been wearing. I wasted money calling his house, but then the numbers to his cell phone rolled up in front of my eyes. I knew I had them right, except that the sequence of the last two digits wouldn't stay still in my head. It was either 46 or 64, and both looked equally right and equally wrong, so I spun the wheel and dialed the first pair. The phone rang ten times, and I was an inch away from hanging up when a voice out of an oaken barrel answered. "Yo," the voice said. It was not a query but a statement. "I need to speak with the Space Man." "For what?" "Business." 125