Remember the Future (3 page)

6

Grant dragged himself back through the airport, his head down and shoulders slumped.

“Hard day?”

Grant stopped and glanced back at the dark-jacketed man leaning casually against the railing of the airport concourse, while passengers dashed by anxiously all around him.  He lowered his head again and gave the man a single frustrating shake.

“Looks like you need a pick-me-up.  Let’s you and me have a coffee,” Rudy said, taking him casually by the arm.

Grant instinctively brushed his hand away—like a fly from his skin--but fell into step beside him.

Minutes later, Rudy was sliding into a booth of the small coffee shop just inside the entrance to the airport.  After a moment, Grant followed suit opposite him.

“Do you really expect to intimidate me?” Grant said through gritted teeth.  “You people have taken everything that matters to me in this world.  I no longer have anything worth losing.”

Wearing a moist apron over her wrinkled clothes, Maddy materialized at the table, set two mugs down and began to pour coffee from a fresh pot, her ever-present blue satchel swinging from the crook of her arm.

Rudy and Grant stared blankly at her.

“Didn’t I ask?  Sorry.  I’m new here.”

“That is the best customer service I’ve ever seen,” Grant commented flatly, taking his mug in his hands but keeping his eyes on Rudy.

“Thanks,” Maddy chirped, her attention fully on Grant.

After a few awkward moments, Rudy sighed heavily and focused his hard eyes onto her.

“If you need anything else, just let me know,” she said cheerily, pointing up at the nametag with the coffee shop’s logo perched on her chest.  “My name is Maddy.”

“Thank you, Maddy,” Grant replied, glancing up.

Maddy locked eyes with Grant and for a moment Grant felt a subtle confusion.  She was acting as if she recognized him and expected him to recognize her.  Finally, Grant dropped his eyes with embarrassment back to his coffee and Maddy backed away from the table, running into an empty chair behind her.

Rudy looked from Maddy to Grant.  “Friend of yours?”

Grant started to shake his head then glared at the other man.  “Weren’t you here to threaten me or something?”

Rudy stared evenly at Grant, then slowly reached into his fashionable jacket and pulled out a familiar small package.  He placed it on the table between them.

Grant stared down.  “I thought I made myself clear.”

Rudy shrugged.  “You don’t have the money.  Apparently this is the only other option.”

“What is this anyway?” Grant asked, taking the package and flipping it casually over with the distaste of a man kicking over a dry cow paddy.  “Drugs?  Electronics?  Pictures?”

Rudy gave another shrug and smiled.  He took an amiable sip of his coffee and finally commented: “Look, Torres makes the rules and I follow them to the letter without question. It's non-negotiable.”

Grant gave him an ironic snort.  “Y’know, you’re the second one to tell me that today.  I’ve just been put on administrative leave for three weeks.”

“Not my problem.”

“Just a reminder that even if I wanted to pay your boss anything more, I couldn’t.”

“Yeah, I’m afraid the option to pay us is off the table.”  Rudy swept a hand across the table with a dapper little whistle.  He tapped the package with one finger.  “Unless you do this thing for us, you’ll be dead within the next twenty four hours.”

Grant unsuccessfully attempted to resist the urge to swallow back his anxiety.

Rudy stared boldly at him, awaiting a response.

How convenient
, Grant considered. 
After all, I told him just this morning that the money I had given him was all he would ever see.

Now the rules change again.

But Grant wouldn’t budge.  He was done with the death march.

Willing his shaking hands back under control, Grant reached down and brought the mug to his lips for a quick nervous slurp.  He set the mug down and looked up at the other man.  “How’s it going to happen?” he managed.  “Will it be you, Rudy?”

Rudy flinched slightly, broke into a smile and sat casually back in the booth with a forced chuckle.  “You are one morbid son-of-a-bitch, Frederickson.  You know that?”

“Y’see, I understand the concept of a debt,” Grant said, leaning forward almost aggressively.  “This little thing has nothing at all to do with the money I borrowed.”

“So, how about you tell me what this is all about then?” Rudy replied, leaning forward to meet him.

“I figure if he wanted me dead, he could have done it a year ago and saved me a lot of pain and suffering.  So, this is obviously something else.”  Grant relaxed back against the cushions of the booth.  “What’s your opinion?  What do you think this is about?”

Rudy studied Grant seriously for a moment then turned his attention to his coffee.  He drained half the cup in a single gulp.  “They don’t pay me to speculate.”

“He wants to demoralize me.”  Grant turned his palms up atop the table.  “I’ve nothing left to bargain with but my pride and that’s non-negotiable.”

Rudy took a long hard look at Grant, finished the last of the coffee and removed a bulging leather wallet that matched his jacket exactly, Grant noted.  He turned his side to Grant and silently slipped the package back into his jacket without looking at him.  “So, run,” he murmured under his breath.

Grant frowned.  “What?”

“Look, I don’t care a good goddamn about your soapbox morals.  I’ve got a job and I do it.  You’ve got twenty-four hours, Frederickson,” the other man said sternly, his hard eyes sliding over Grant one last time.  “Choose how you want to spend it.  I don’t give a shit.”

He rose and tossed a couple of wadded bills to the table.  “Enjoy your coffee.”

Rudy started out, revealing Maddy wiping down the table just behind him.  She glanced over her shoulder at Grant.

“Refill?”

“No thank you,” Grant replied, rising and staring down at the two lonely wadded bills on the table slowly opening like dirty flowers.  He sighed and drew his wallet from his pocket.

Maddy sidled closer.  “You have to excuse me, but did that man just threaten you?”

Grant studied her for the first time and finally smiled disarmingly.  The young woman was actually quite striking, he decided.  She didn’t seem to fit this depressing little coffee shop.

Maddy smiled back, the tension on her face lifting somewhat.

Grant chuckled and gave a shake of his head as he removed a single bill from his wallet and slid it across the table, his hand hesitating a moment before releasing it.  “Nah, he was just having fun with me.”  He started away, then paused at Maddy’s side.  Without looking up at her, he murmured, “Don’t ask to see the other player’s cards unless you know the stakes.”

Maddy watched as Grant left the coffee shop.  She turned to the table and gasped at the hundred dollar bill on the table between the two crumbled dollar bills.  Setting her satchel on the table, she unzipped it, revealing the contents, a disorganized pile of multi-denominational cash and tossed the hundred-dollar tip in with the others.

The well-dressed cashier paused just behind her, running a tube of gloss across her lips in the reflection of the mirrored glass over the booth. “How did your first table go?” she asked.

An anxious expression appeared on Maddy’s face as she zipped up the bag.  Tucking the satchel back into the crook of her arm, she slowly untied her apron.  “I’m afraid I have to go now,” she said, sincerely apologetic, handing the cashier her neatly-folded apron.

The woman stared at Maddy in disbelief as she walked out of the empty coffee shop.  “One table?  Seriously?”

7

When Grant arrived at the second floor landing of his apartment, little Justin was sitting out on the front stoop of his apartment under the shelter of the roof, his bare feet dangling out into the pouring rain and scissoring back and forth with the enthusiasm only a seven-year-old could muster.

“Hi Justin,” Grant murmured under his breath.  Oblivious to the current climactic conditions, he was dripping wet, a soggy cigarette dangled from his lips.

Justin clambered up and padded over to Grant.  “Hey, Mr. Fred!  Did those cops ever find out who busted into your place?”

“Oh, they were old friends of mine,” Grant replied.  “Don’t worry about it.  They won’t bother anyone else.”

Justin stared up at the cigarette as Grant opened his unlocked door, a puddle forming on his ratty welcome mat—one which the same “friends” had felt fit to slash into slivers.  “Hey, I didn’t know you smoked too.”

Grant looked down at Justin with confusion before reaching up and retrieving the drooping white stick from his mouth.  “This?  I used to smoke a long, long time ago,” he answered.  “But I quit.”

“Why?”

“Because my wife asked me to.”

Standing at the threshold to his apartment, Grant sighed and turned instead to the railing.  He tossed the cigarette out into the night and held his left hand out into the rain, watching as the rain washed over the band of white gold on his second finger.

“You were married, Mr. Fred?” Justin asked.

“I am.”

“What happened?” Justin asked, taking a position next to Grant at the railing.

“She died.”

“Was it the cancer?”

Grant peered down at Justin.  “What do you know about that?”

“My Paw Paw died from it,” Justin replied.  “He got so tired that mama said that it was better that he just go ahead and went to sleep forever.”

Grant withdrew his hand and shook off the rainwater, bringing it to his breast and buffing the ring against his shirt gently.  “I figure that I was the one who brought the cancer to my wife,” Grant told him.  “I was the weak one.”

Justin seemed to consider this then said, “My MeeMaw says that if you ain’t got the strength to get over the hill, you get trapped in the shadows where the sun can’t find you.  Is that what’s happening to you?”

Grant stared down at Justin, his mind blanking on a sufficient answer.

“Hey, Justin!”  A hefty black woman stood at the door to the apartment next door, her brow knotted in frustration.  “Get yo ass inside fore you catch yo death!”  She gave Grant a glare of warning.

In return, Grant gave her a friendly nod and a slight smile.

She gave him a grunt and disappeared back inside.

“Sounds like your Mee Maw is a very smart woman, Justin.  You listen to her.”

Justin nodded and gave Grant a parting wave before returning to his apartment.

8

A uniformed airport security guard shook Maddy awake in her seat.  “Excuse me, ma’am.”

Maddy, though disoriented from sleep, straightened immediately out of sheer instinct and found the floor with her feet in preparation to flee.

An imposing security guard, with a scowl honed from years of doing the same job well and enjoying the ego boost that came with intimidation, stood over her chair in the terminal.  Just behind her, several airport female workers watched the scene with morbid interest.

“It’s been reported to me that you’ve been asleep here for most of the night and concern has been expressed if perhaps you may have missed your boarding call,” he said flatly as if reading a memorized speech.  “May I please see your ticket, ma’am?”

Maddy patted herself down and rose from her seat, nearly tripping over the satchel at her feet.  She retrieved a mangled ticket from the inside of her wrinkled green jacket.  She slapped it to the security guard’s chest roughly and scanned the airport concourse like a scared animal.  “What time is it?”

“Quarter to six, ma’am.”

“Oh God,” she snapped.  “I never meant to sleep that long.”

The security guard nodded back to the airport workers behind him, as if to say,
False alarm, folks.  There will be no bloodletting this morning.

“Yes, ma’am.  This ticket was for last night.  These ladies behind me can help you re-schedule your flight,” the guard said instead, his eyes already scanning the adjacent waiting areas for other possible victims.

“No, that’s okay.  I just need to orient myself first,” Maddy murmured in obvious confusion.  She started away then turned and took the ticket back from the guard as an afterthought.

When she was sure that the guard was out of sight, she tossed the ticket in the nearest trash.  She had purchased the ticket to Dallas-Fort Worth with cash knowing that she would never actually board the plane, but thinking that using her own name might throw them off her trail.  Who knows?  Maybe it had actually bought her some time.

She realized now only in retrospect that she had needed the ticket for that exchange with the security guard.  She had only really sought a public place to stay for the night and the airport was obviously the most convenient.

Stepping to the nearest restroom wash basin, she set the bag on the floor securely beneath her feet and splashed several handfuls of cold water on her tired face.

She silently chastised herself. 
Focus!  Wake up!
 
Remember.  White Toyota.  Dent on left side of rear bumper.  Jazz Fest sticker on back windshield.  Jazz Fest.

“How cool is that, right?”  She looked up suddenly in the mirror, realizing that she had said the last bit out loud.  In the last stall, she saw two dusty sneakers dangling below the door.  Snatching her bag off the floor, she rushed outside.

Maddy lowered her head and marched onward.  She couldn’t afford to jump at shadows.  When the real threat appeared, she had to be prepared to react.  She must trust her instincts and push the fear aside.

Fear equaled sloppy.  Sloppy equaled dead.