Switcheroo (20 page)

Chapter
36

Morning. A small leather bag. 
Toiletries. A clean shirt and khakis. A Rand McNally and a thermos of coffee. A
nervous border collie. These are the things that I piled into the Tarjetta for
my pilgrimage to Mt. Gideon, Ohio.

Why would anyone want to go to Mt. Gideon, you may ask? Well, if you are searching for a mad boy scientist who holds the
key to everything Einstein couldn’t finish, evidently Mt. Gideon is the place
to look.

I didn’t want to go.  I had tried
calling Sally Madison, several times. But she hung up, cussed me, hung up some
more, before I could even say a word.

“You’re not talking to my boy!”
She screamed at me on my final attempt.

“How do you know that’s what I
want?” Amazed I was allowed to speak.

“Everybody who calls from an 865
area code wants to talk to my boy.” Slam, she hung up.

This was a long, boring drive. I
stared at the windshield. The radio helped. The hum of the road eventually
knocked the dog out. He lay on the passenger seat, his head on crossed paws,
eyes wide shut.

Small mountains then bigger
mountains lead to the flats of Lexington and the counterpane of bluegrass. The
rhythmic bump of the VW’s bald tires on the highway expansion joints was about
lull me to sleep just like Bandit.

Right then I saw a brown sign
denoting a Kentucky State Park. The adrenaline from the belly-wracking laughter
kept me going the rest of the way to my destination. The sign read “Big Bone Lick State Park.”

It was a typical three-bedroom
ranch, seventies-style, on a typical tree-lined street, in a typical central
southern Ohio town. It had typical foundation landscaping. It had three small
portal windows in a diagonal on its Brady Bunch-looking front door. The hedges
were mostly holly with some other shiny-leafed shrub mixed in. This worried me
since I recently had my neck slashed in a fall into a nasty hedge. Time to suck
it up anyway. This typical house was my last lead in what had been a very
atypical investigation.

As I approached William Madison’s
family home, the hedge stared at me in a menacing way that only a nasty hedge
can. I touched the jumbo band-aid on my neck nervously and continued forward
down a narrow walk darkened by mold and lichens, to all appearances undaunted,
though my position in this caper had been badly weakened. It began as a crazy
way to try and get a chick half my age into bed (the way all good cases start)
and blossomed into something real that could have been a major money maker. Now
both trucks were gone. No more traces or leads to follow. This last ditch
effort was my only hope to find any connection to the missing trucks.  Other
than that, this was just a typical house.

You could have called them Tweedle
Dee and Tweedle Dum, but there were three of them. The brothers Madison.  The Midwest’s answer to Larry, Daryl and Daryl?  The one with the ridiculous mustache that
nearly grew to meet his chops did most of the talking. Said his name was Ned.  
He invited me through the bagged-out screened door and the orange wooden door
with its three portals.  I followed him to the kitchen where he asked me to sit
down at an old scratched table where the three of them were playing cards.

Ned offered to deal me in.

“We’re just playing for pretzels
because pay day ain’t until next Friday.”

“True dat,” said the second
brother.

“Yeah,” the third in agreed.

I shook my head.  “Thanks for the
invite but I need to speak to your brother, the scientist.”

Ned and his brothers snickered a
bit when I said the word scientist.
            “Something funny?”

“True dat.”

“Yeah.”

“We always wanted him to invent
something really useful, like a beer that makes you feel drunk for a month or a
cigarette that never burns out,” Said Ned. The two other bothers grunted and
nodded.

“I see.”

“Well, yeah. My brother ain’t much
of a scientist anymore. We call him Granny because he is obsessed with
knitting.  Momma wouldn’t want you talking to him anyway because he is soft in
the head.  Stays in his room all day knittin’ and mumblin’. Momma likes it
because we get to spend his government disability check.  He don’t want
anything but yarn, and it turns out yarn is pretty cheap.”

“Besides he ain’t here to talk to
even if we’d let ya,” Ned raised his eyebrows and smirked as he ate one of his
poker chips.

“If he’s so unstable, why’s he
been allowed to go missing?”

“I think it’s really Mom’s fault,”
Ned frowned, leaned back and scratched himself a little. “She forgot to get him
some more yarn at the fabric store and he just walked out while we were all
wasted. Mom took the Caprice to go look for him, plus we were out of Little
Kings,” he said, and looked at me seriously. The remaining brothers snickered.

“What are Little Kings?”

“Cream ale, you idiot. Beer. God,
what are you, a fag?” Ned laughed. Then they all laughed. Guess I’m not as
smart as I thought I was.

“Can I at least see his room?”

“Okay. Hope you like pot holders,”
they all died laughing at this.

The troubled scientist William
Madison was a very prolific knitter.  He had twelve cardboard boxes overflowing
with knitted pot holders. Except for the boxes, the room was orderly. Still the
overall impression was one of clutter since it was only a ten by ten room with
shit load of yarn in it.

I was turning to head for the door
when a fist grabbed a handful of my shirt. The hand jerked down and I was face
to face with Momma Madison.

“You’re that idiot who keeps
calling about my boy!” Her breath almost melted my nose with its combined sour
garlic, cigarette and beer stink.  You noticed it, the way you notice when someone
dropped a cinderblock on your little toe.

“I just want to speak to your boy
for a few minutes.”

“Get the hell outta here!” Her
words were slurred and she whacked me in the nuts with a cardboard suitcase
full of Little Kings Cream Ale.  This furthered my dislike for cream ale.  She
began dragging me toward the front door by my ear.

“You gotta get lost, because we
gotta go look for the boy. Just came back here first so the beer wouldn’t get
warm.”

“True dat.”

“Yeah.”

She led me out the screen door and
with a final push sent me tumbling down the steps.  The overgrown grass padded
my fall.  I looked back as she closed the door and saw that she was barely over
five foot tall. Close up she seemed a lot bigger.

It was easy to get up and limp to
the car without the weight of my dignity and manhood to slow me down.  I
started the Tarjetta and drove off, leaning forward towards the steering wheel
a little. The dog looked at me as though to say in a Bill Clinton voice “I feel
your pain.”

More bad luck, a flat tire at the
edge of downtown. Here the road widened to four lanes and I pulled onto the
shoulder. I began soaking my oxford with sweat as I jacked up the Tarjetta. 
The sun was starting to set and the occasional car or semi whooshing by was a
major distraction.

I looked the flat over - five
framing nails, straight in.  This was not bad luck; this was a present from
Mrs. Madison.  I wrestled the donut spare into place and was ready to put the
lug nuts back on. No lug nuts. I looked under the car and then went behind the
car to check the trunk which I had left open. Absent- mindedness was starting
to set in, along with fatigue and the pounding ache in my nads due to Mrs.
Madison smashing them with a case of beer.

I was startled by the presence of
a man standing behind the car. He was young, with messy hair, and wearing a
parka over a faded golf shirt and loose cargo pants. He had on blue socks and
no shoes. I looked around; he had not come in a vehicle.  I looked into my car.
Bandit was looking out the back window and wagging his tail. So much for the
furry alarm, but this guy was obviously harmless.

“Hi.”

“Hello,” he stood with his hands
in his pockets.

“Can I help you?”

“I was just taking a break. No
shoes, you know. My feet are tired,” he said, looking down at his wiggling
toes.

“And why didn’t you put on your
shoes?”

“Well, I don’t normally go out. I
don’t own any shoes right now. I haven’t needed them.”

“I thought you might be wearing
Nike’s new clear sandals.”

“Ha, that’s a good one,” the laugh
lacked enthusiasm. “Is that a Tarjetta?”

“Yep,” I was distracted. I was
scanning the ground for the misplaced lug nuts.

“I didn’t think they made those
any more.”

“They don’t. This one is used. It
ran hot going up mountains in Jellico and it has really cheap tires, as you can
see.”

I lifted up the loose wheel with
its flat tire and set it in the small trunk.

“Yeah. Those bias-ply tires aren’t
worth a darn. But did you know that if you were in you vehicle and it was
struck by lightning, bias-ply tires are the best insulators? No steel belts,
you see. You’d almost surely survive. The steel belts they build into quality
tires can conduct electricity and make lightning ground out and electrocute
anyone in the car,”  he rocked on his sock feet as he spoke, keeping his hands
deep in his pockets, though it was not cold out.

“Don’t let me stop you. You can
finish changing your tire.”

I dragged a frustrated hand
through my sweaty hair.

“Can’t.  I lost the lug nuts, so
now I can’t mount the spare. Gonna have to call a tow truck.”

“Why don’t you take one lug nut
off the other three wheels?  All four tires will then have four lug nuts each
and you’ll be able to drive to Sears so they can get you fixed up.”

“I am an idiot for not thinking of
that,” I picked up the lug wrench to start work on his suggestion.

“Well, great thinking used to be
my specialty. Now I just knit.”

“William Madison?” I looked up,
incredulous.

“Yeah, how did you know?” He
seemed just as amazed.

“I’m a fan. I’ve got some
questions for you. Let me buy you dinner.”

“No, thanks. I just ate some lug
nuts, but I’ll take a ride.  My feet are killing me.”

Chapter
37

The emergency room was fairly
quiet at the small hospital in Mt. Gideon. A skate board accident, food
poisoning, fevers, etc.  There was only one patient with lug nuts from a VW in
his gut and I was talking to him.

“Any discomfort or pain?” I asked
William Madison.

“None at all,” He said, shifting
in the cheap vinyl waiting room chair. “I am feeling a little hungry.”

He poked his flat stomach.

Just then the doctor walked in. A
frazzled resident he looked like a hung-over frat boy dressed as a physician.

“These lug nuts came from a car?”
He asked, pointing to little white spots on a black x-ray.

“Yes,” I answered.

“They’re so small; I thought they
might be from a riding lawnmower or something.”

“Well, it’s a cheap foreign
import.”

“Okay.  Mr. Madison, pumping your
stomach could further damage your esophagus. Luckily, the lug nuts are too
small to require surgical removal. You’ll just have to pass them.  This may cause
some discomfort and cramping. I have two prescriptions: one a potent laxative
and the other a little something for pain. Eat lots of fiber this week. I
recommend that you have a follow up x-ray in a week to make sure the lug nuts
have passed,” the doctor frowned as he concluded. “Are you going to do this
again?”

“No, it was a one-time thing. I
just thought those lug nuts didn’t belong there,” William Madison said blandly.

“So you ate them?”

“It was the quickest way to make
them vanish. Plus I’m insane.”

In the waiting room, William
explained to me that he had run away from Oakridge National Labs because his
invention had failed to make the trucks switch places.  Madison believed that
he had set them to teleport at 3:17 p.m. In his fatigue he overlooked the fact
that the trucks’ cheap digital clocks used twenty-four hour military time. The
trucks had been switching places in the middle of the night and he had been
missing it each night. Bummer.

The doctor turned to me. “Get this
man home and make sure he sees his shrink.”

So much for county hospitals.  He
turned and left me with young Mr. Madison. What to do?

“IHOP?” I suggested and patted my
jelly roll.

Chapter
38

One day later.  Monday. I was back
in Tennessee and staying in my childhood bedroom (now a guest room) at Mom’s
since I had let Fred Smithey move into my house.   I was out of my routine
getting ready at Mom’s house but Ruby’s coffee was excellent and I was
refreshed for my drive to Oakridge.

Yes, Oakridge again.  This case
kept coming back to Oakridge. I was hoping that it would end there. Cranking my
hand in party- shaker fashion, I opened the VW’s manual sunroof to the
beautiful fall colors above. Then I corrected the Tarjetta’s course as I was
headed off the road. I enjoyed my new CD player in this car but the new
speakers I had bought sounded a little tinny.  I was determined, though, to
hold out another week before upgrading again just to see if this car was
wrecked or burnt or otherwise destroyed.

I wormed my way into Randall
Kendrick’s office again with more vague threats.

“I had a talk with William
Madison. Very interesting,” I let Kendrick stew for a minute.

“You made it past that his bitch
of a mother?” Kendrick oozed resentment.

“Oh yeah, and I am here to ask for
more cooperation from you. It seems that the two trucks I am looking for speak
to each other using satellite phones. Basically fancy cell phones.  These phone
records can be used to track down these vehicles. I am going to need to see
your phone records.”

“No way.  How could I possibly
explain your presence in our records office? You need to leave now, before I
call security.”

“Go ahead, and I can tell them
about how you had Darin Mosley kill Tammy’s husband,” I smirked wisely.

Kendrick was looking through his
desk drawer.  He pulled out a bottle of pink liquid and poured himself a shot.
He downed it.  He peered at me past his eye luggage.

“Get the records. Explain that you
need to verify some numbers on one of the experiments.  I will read them in
here. No one will know,” I said.

“I’ll be right back.”

Resigned, he dragged himself out
of his chair and was gone.