Utopian Day (12 page)

Chapter Twenty

The alarm on his phone was blaring and Silas wearily
opened his eyes, willing the alarm to silence and allow him another
hour of sleep. After a few seconds of fumbling, he retrieved the
phone and turned off the alarm. He located an energy drink he had
purchased at the airport the day before, opened it up, and drained
the bottle. He was going to need all of his wits about him, and
quickly, if he wanted to get the jump on these guys.

He grabbed a cream-cheese bagel at the continental
breakfast bar provided by the hotel and was finishing off the last
bite as Marty drove up under the awning to pick him up. It was one
of the things he liked about Marty – he was punctual.

He had Marty drive him to the bank and go over
everything, step by step. Next, he had him drive the route that
Thornbacker’s car had taken once they had left the bank. Marty
stopped at the narrow alleyway where he had lost the car the day
before. “And dat is where I stopped following dem,” Marty said,
pointing at the entrance to the alleyway.

“
Drive down the alleyway,” Silas
instructed.

The alleyway led to a small open park where five
other streets dispersed.

“
This is perfect,” Silas said out
loud.

“
What do you mean?” Marty
replied.

“
This is the perfect place to lose
a tail,” Silas replied. “Anyone following them would need to wait
to come down the alleyway or else they would be recognized. Once
they make it here, though, they have five choices to take them
where they really want to go. By the time anyone following them
makes it to the park, they are long gone.” Silas excitedly turned
to Marty. “O.k., here is what I want you to do. They will probably
use this same route every day. You stay here in the park on that
bench over there, facing the alleyway. Once they come out, make
sure you see which street they take next, but don’t make it
obvious. If this is going to work, they can’t know someone is onto
them. I’m going back to the bank and follow them from there as far
as the alley. I’ll call you when they leave the bank.”

Back at the bank a short while later, Silas saw J.T.
Thornbacker and Nick Bartonovich get out of the car with their
escorts at 9:30 a.m. sharp. Nick was carrying a briefcase. The way
the two guards looked around, surveying the area, he would have bet
money they were former military. Silas drove slowly past the front
of the bank and was just able to see J.T. Thornbacker sit down on
one of the couches beside the central desk before he drove out of
range. He turned the van around and positioned it so he could see
their car clearly and follow them when they left.

They were inside the bank for about fifteen minutes
before they came back out, got in the car, and drove away. Silas
thought it was odd that Mr. Thornbacker got in the back, while Nick
sat in the front. “They must not like each other very much,” Silas
thought to himself.

He called Marty to let him know they were on their
way and followed them to the alleyway where Marty had lost them. He
kept his foot off of the accelerator after breaking as the car
carrying J.T. Thornbacker slowed to make the turn down the
alleyway. He wanted to coast past the alleyway slowly, without
needing to break and possibly draw attention to the van. As the
alleyway was almost out of his peripheral vision, he thought he saw
their tail lights go on. He quickly pulled over to the curb and got
out of the van, walking back in the direction of the alley. He
stopped and pretended to be window shopping in front of an old
antique store directly across from the alleyway. He tried to be
nonchalant as he studied the alleyway’s reflection in the store’s
large plate glass window.

The car had indeed stopped. They were close enough
that he could tell that one of the passengers in the back was
putting something on the head of the man next to him. Then they
proceeded down the alleyway. A minute later, his phone rang.

“
I see where dey go, Mr.
Silas.”

“
Yeah, o.k., I’m coming to pick
you up.”

As he drove down the alleyway, he stopped right
where the other car had stopped, got out of the van, and looked
around. There was nothing there. He processed what he had just
seen, trying to make sense out of it. In a few moments, it came to
him. “J.T. Thornbacker was kidnapped,” he said out loud. He smiled
as he jumped back in the van and drove down the alley to pick up
Marty.

“
Did you see anything unusual
about one of the men in the back of the car?” he asked Marty, once
he was back inside the van.

“
Yes, I did. One of dem had a
black cloth over his eyes.”

“
Yes!” Silas exclaimed. “This is
good.”

“
Why is dis good?” asked
Marty.

“
J.T. was kidnapped!” Silas
exclaimed, proclaiming his earlier revelation as if he had just won
the pot at a poker game. “Why else would they blindfold him? Ole’
Nick Bartonovich kidnapped J.T. Thornbacker and is using him to get
the money out of the bank. That explains why he sent me down here
to get the bank documents, the blindfold, the fact that a guard
rides in the back with J.T., the whole business. They aren’t in
business together; J.T. is simply the key to the piggy bank.” He
slammed his hand down on the dashboard of the van for
emphasis.

“
I am glad you are happy, Mr.
Silas,” Marty proclaimed. “Dis is good, yes?”

“
This is very good, Marty, this is
very good!” Silas responded. “Now I need you to find me the best
pick-pocket in all of George Town.”

“
What do you need wit a
pick-pocket, Mr. Silas? A pick-pocket can never get what is in dat
briefcase.”

“
Just trust me, Marty. Just trust
me.”

James had decided to swim around the yacht to see if
he could shake the sense of cabin fever that had been building
since they’d arrived. He had become accustomed to the daily
exercise regime in Utopia and needed to burn off some energy to
calm his nerves. As he swam, he thought about both the future and
the past.

He thought about how he was potentially about to get
the big score he had dreamed of before, when he was planning a bank
robbery. He had thought that would make everything better. He had
thought that his problems would be solved by a big wad of cash. Yet
now that the big score was potentially in his sight, he only wanted
to rewind to a few days earlier when he was serving out the
remainder of his sentence in Utopia, headed for a changed life, a
life free from being chased by law enforcement officers. He’d just
been beginning to believe he could find a better, more peaceful,
and fulfilling way to live. Now all of that seemed so far away.
How do I get back there?
he thought to himself as he
swam.

Even if he got the money, he would never be able to
go back to the States without looking over his shoulder constantly.
And even if he stayed here or somewhere like this, a million
dollars wouldn’t last him forever. He would need to find some other
way to make money eventually, and being a criminal was all he
really knew how to do. He couldn’t think of a way out of it. He
knew in his heart that he couldn’t live the rest of his life on the
run, but he also knew that he couldn’t survive twenty-three more
years in prison – or longer if they threw the book at him once he
got back.

As he swam lap after lap, he came to a decision.
Whatever the consequences, when this was all over, he was going to
turn himself in. If he ever wanted to be free, then he would need
to do the time he had been sentenced to serve. Maybe they would be
lenient on him, maybe they would even reduce his time for having
come back – who knew? And if he ended up getting more time added
on, well, he would cross that bridge when he came to it.

He felt a weight lift off of his shoulders as he
swam a final lap around the yacht and climbed back up the ladder,
where the ubiquitous armed guardian watched his every move. He
grabbed his towel and dried himself off.

Chapter Twenty-One

Laura was curled up on a couch in a spacious room on
the main deck of the yacht, reading a book when James came in from
his swim. He sat down on a chair next to the couch and finished
drying his hair.

“
Are you getting your hour a day
of reading in?” James joked.

Laura smiled as she looked up from her book.

“
Yeah, the habit kind of grew on
me when I was in Utopia. They don’t have much of a selection here,
though.”

“
What did you think about the
program at Utopia?” James inquired.

“
I think it was good for me,”
Laura responded. “My life was definitely a mess when I went there.
I think the structure was good for me. It helped me level out and
clear my head. The twelve step stuff helped me, too. I was a bit
weirded out by the whole ‘Higher Power’ thing to begin with, but
after a while, that sort of began to make sense to me,
too.”

“
So you believe in God?” James
asked.

“
Yeah, I do. I mean, I look around
at all this,” Laura waved her hand at the seascape that could be
seen through the windows, “and I think there definitely must have
been a creative being that made it all. I don’t think it happened
by accident. What about you?”

“
My mom believed in God. She
prayed to Him to heal her when she had cancer and to help me stay
out of trouble – neither one of those prayers were answered. God
certainly doesn’t do things the way I would like Him
to.”

For the first time since they’d known each other,
Laura looked at James and felt empathy with him. She could identify
with feeling like things hadn’t worked out the way she wanted them
to.

“
I guess that’s the reason for
steps two and three,” Laura responded.

James looked at her with a puzzled look.

“
Steps two and three of the twelve
steps,” Laura continued. “Step two is basically believing that
there is a Higher Power Who wants to help straighten our lives out,
and step three is where we make a decision to turn our lives over
to that Higher Power. Thinking back on all of the crappy things
that have happened to me in my life, being sent to Utopia was the
best thing that ever happened to me. I mean, if I hadn’t been sent
there, I’d probably be dead by now.”

“
Yeah,” James concurred, “me, too.
I mean, I believe there is a God, and I want to be a better person
than I was before I went to prison. Like you said, being sent to
Utopia was one of the best things that has happened to me in a long
time. I liked the reading thing, too. I never really read much, but
now that I’m away from Utopia, I miss the books I was
reading.”

“
What were you reading?” Laura
asked.

“
It was a book by William Penn –
the founder of Pennsylvania. It was called
Some Fruits of
Solitude
. I still remember a quote from the introduction of the
book. I wrote it down in my journal and read it over and over. ‘We
understand little of the works of God, either in nature or grace.
We pursue false knowledge, and mistake education extremely. We are
violent in our affections, confused and immethodical in our whole
life; making that a burden, which was given for a blessing; and so
of little comfort to ourselves or others; misapprehending the true
notion of happiness, and so missing of the right use of life, and
way of happy living.’”

There was a long pause after James finished the
quote. Laura felt a hint of something inside that hadn’t been there
for a while. She felt that James might not be that different from
her after all.

“
That’s beautiful, James. That
quote describes what my life was like before Utopia.”

James turned and looked at her, directly in the
eyes.

“
What about now?”

“
What do you mean?” Laura
asked.

“
I mean, what about after this is
all over and we get a load of cash? Then what? How do we get back
on track to learning how to live a better way than we did before?
How do we do that, while we’re fugitives? Money can change a lot of
things, Laura, but I know enough now to understand that money isn’t
going to make me a better person.” James looked down at his feet
and shook his head. “I just don’t know what to do.”

There was another long pause, but the silence was
broken by the sound of the cigarette boat engine approaching the
yacht.

On the boat ride back from the island, J.T. thought
to himself about how the run to the bank had followed the same
routine as the day before. After they entered the car with the
day’s allotment of cash, they had driven to a narrow alleyway where
he was blindfolded. Next, they drove for another fifteen minutes
before stopping, where he was fairly certain that Nick and one of
the commandos got out of the car. After a few minutes, they
returned and drove back to the marina, where the blindfold was
taken off and they boarded the boat for the return trip to the
yacht.

He had been paying close attention to the
surroundings today to see where the best opportunity might be for
delivering a note to someone at the bank to let them know he was
being held prisoner against his will. He thought that the best
candidate was likely the receptionist in the atrium. His main
concern was what she would do with the information. If she took it
to her boss, Mr. Takata, would he tell Nick or go to the
authorities? If Nick had paid him off as part of this whole scheme,
then Nick would be notified. It was risky either way, but then
again, desperate times called for desperate measures. The next
hurdle would be to find some paper on the yacht to write a note on.
The place had been cleaned out of anything to write on – a move no
doubt initiated by Nick in order to prevent just what J.T. was
planning to do.