Allegiance: A Jackson Quick Adventure Page 12

  “I really don’t—” he stops mid-sentence. There’s worry in his silence. “I don’t know how much I should say. I don’t know what they know. They could be listening to this conversation. They were very persuasive about why I should cooperate with them. ” “Was there a woman?”

  “I’m a scientist,” he pleads. “I deal with a world on a much smaller scale than the one into which you’ve apparently fallen. These are dangerous people, I believe.”

  “Was there a woman?” I persist.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. There’s an audible tremble in his voice. “I can’t say anymore. Please don’t contact me again.”

  There’s a click and the line goes dead. His refusal to respond answers my question.

  I shove the phone back into my pocket and there’s a sharp pain in my side. My ribs are bruised or fractured. I never found out before I left the hospital. My head still hurts.

  The bathroom feels much smaller than when I stepped into it. The crack in the glass appears wider. My face is more gray than pale now. My Kinky T-shirt is stained brown with Bobby’s blood. I’m not sure what to do.

  Think, Jackson, think…

  Slowly, still having to go to the bathroom, but knowing I’ve got urgent issues, I unlock the door and step out into the convenience store. Charlie’s car is parked against the building. She can’t see me. Given how long I’ve been in here, I figure she’s getting impatient. Or suspicious.

  Or both.

  At the front of the store, behind the counter, are a couple of clerks talking to one another. The door to the right of the store chimes open. A short, well-dressed man walks in with a Bluetooth earpiece in his left ear. He’s wearing dark pants, a white shirt, and a dark tie. He looks like a driver.

  A chauffeur!

  I step over to him on the candy aisle. He’s choosing between an Almond Joy and a Snickers when he notices I’m standing a little too close for his liking.

  “Can I help you?” He turns to face me and takes a simultaneous step back.

  “I hope so. You’re a driver, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I need a ride to the airport. Do you have a fare with you right now or could you take me?”

  “He flips his wrist to look at his watch. “I think I could. What terminal?”

  “I’m flying United Express.”

  “Okay. Cash?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let me get these candy bars and we can go.” He points toward the door opposite Charlie’s car. “You can wait over there by the black Lincoln.”

  I thank him and slide out the door to his car, which is still running. The windows are tinted what I imagine is as dark as the law will allow. I try the rear driver’s side door and find it unlocked. I get in and pull my wallet from my back pocket. There’s one hundred and twenty dollars inside, more than enough to get me to the airport.

  The driver pushes through the door of the convenience store and plops into his seat a few moments later. He glances at me in his rearview mirror without saying anything. His right hand slips the car into reverse, then into drive, and we pull past the gas pumps, past Charlie sitting in her car, and out onto the feeder road.

  As we pull away, I see Charlie get out of her car, tucking a handgun into her pants at the small of her back. I guess we’re officially broken up.

  ***

  She knows where I’m going. Not good.

  I can’t go to Midland.

  What do I do?

  My mind is racing to the point that all I can think about is how my mind is racing. I need to focus.

  The driver slows at a stop light before the entrance to the beltway. To the right is Rick’s Cabaret, the strip club where Anna Nicole Smith got her start. To the left, on the other side of the beltway, is an Amegy bank. My bank.

  Perfect.

  “Can we make a couple of stops before hitting the airport?” I ask the driver.

  He glances at me in the rearview mirror and sighs.

  “Please?” I ask. “I’ll pay cash and I’ll tip really well.”

  “I really don’t have much extra time. I’ve got a pickup in The Woodlands in ninety minutes.”

  “No problem.” I point across the freeway to the bank. “I need to go there first.”

  The driver looks over his left shoulder to merge into the turn lane before the light turns green. He steers the car onto Imperial Valley, crosses under the beltway, and swings into the bank’s nearly empty parking lot next to a small Hyatt hotel. I thank him and run into the bank where I find a single teller behind the desk.

  The woman looks to be around thirty maybe, and her brown roots need coloring to match the strawberry blonde covering the rest of her head.

  “May I help you?” she asks.

  “Yes please.” I hand her my driver’s license. “I need to withdraw six thousand dollars please.”

  The woman’s eyes widen. She looks at my license and then at me. I approximate the smile on the card and she smiles back before placing the ID on the keyboard of her computer.

  Without looking up from the monitor in front of her she says, “I need to check your account Mr…”

  “Quick.”

  “Yes,” she says. “Quick.”

  A second teller has appeared to help with the drive through lane, dressed similarly to the first one. It’s funny the things I notice.

  “Is there a problem?” I ask the strawberry blonde.

  “No sir,” she says. “It’s a large amount. I need to check on a couple of things.”

  Her fingers type away. I’m beginning to sweat, beads forming at my temples.

  “Just a moment,” she says. She turns to the other teller, whispers something, and hurriedly walks through a door at the end of the counter. I’m guessing it’s a manager’s office or something.

  I dig into my front pocket and pull out my cell phone to check the time. This is taking too long, but I need the money. It’s the only way my plan will work. I can’t use ATMs, I can’t use my debit card. Cash is my only option to avoid Charlie and whoever else it is who wants me dead.

  The teller emerges from behind the door with a tall, thin man. He’s in a short-sleeved pale blue dress shirt with a dark blue tie and pants tightly buckled at his waist. His hair is thinning, but he’s done a respectable job of camouflaging it with creative combing. He’s a modern version of Ichabod Crane, holding a slip of paper in his hand as he approaches me from the other side of the counter.

  “Mr. Quick? Becky here tells me you’d like to make a large withdrawal from your account.”

  “Becky is right,” I smile at the ineffectual teller. “Six thousand dollars.”

  “Yes,” he says, sliding the piece of paper onto the counter in front of me. “That’s what Becky indicated.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  “Oh no,” he furrows his brow. “There’s no problem, sir, but for withdrawals of that size, we typically need to go through a few extra steps.”

  “What extra steps?”

  “Well,” he pulls a pen from his shirt pocket and uses it as a pointer on the slip of paper in front of me, “I’ll need you to fill out this withdrawal slip first.”

  I take his pen to begin filling out the form.

  “Now may I ask, if a cashier’s check will be sufficient for your needs?”

  “No,” I say without looking up from the form, “it will not. I’d like cash. It doesn’t matter if it’s twenties, fifties, or hundred dollar bills. I don’t want a check.”

  “I see.” He slips into Becky’s spot at the computer and begins typing. Becky’s looking at my shirt. She looks away when my eyes briefly meet hers.

  I get it. My shirt has blood on it, my face is bruised, and I have bandages on both arms from the IVs at the hospital. Here I come, death warmed over, looking for six grand in cash. No wonder they’re skittish.

  “Look,” I say, trying to ease the unspoken tension, “I was in a car accident. Totaled my car. I got released from the ER, where they di
dn’t bother to wash my clothes, and I need to get another car.”

  Ichabod Crane stares at me blankly.

  “I’m in sales,” I lie. “I can’t be without a car. I don’t want to waste money on a rental while I sort through the insurance mess, so I’m buying a used car. A two-year old Camry. I like to pay cash because I get a better deal at the lot. I’d go home and change, but the meter on the Town Car is running.”

  “I understand, Mr. Quick,” says Ichabod. “I don’t need an explanation. It’s your money.”

  I lean on the desk and slide the withdrawal slip back to him. “I know I look like crap, I know it’s a lot of money, and you’re protecting my account. I appreciate that.”

  I don’t know whether he buys what I’m selling or not. I don’t care. I need this expedited.

  “I’ll be back in a moment,” he says. He takes the slip from the counter and retreats back to his office. After a lot longer than a moment, he returns with a white envelope.

  “Let me count this for you,” he says. He opens the envelope and thumbs through a stack of fifties and hundreds, counting out loud.

  “…fifty-eight fifty, fifty-nine, fifty-nine fifty, six thousand.” He organizes the stack and shoves it back into the thick envelope, which he lays on the counter in front of me.

  “Thank you.” I pull the envelope off of the counter. It’s surprisingly heavy.

  “Do you need a balance?”

  “No, thank you.” I turn to leave. “I’m good.”

  ***

  “You’ve got thirty minutes,” the driver announces as he pulls into a parking spot on the east side of Greenspoint Mall. He’d cut across Benmar Drive to what was effectively the backside of the mall.

  Greenspoint, which is framed to the west by I-45 and to the south by the north beltway, was not in a great part of town. The mall is known by police and reporters as “Gunspoint” after a sheriff’s deputy was kidnapped from the mall parking lot and later killed. That had happened in 1991 and the mall was never the same. It always looked half-abandoned when I would drive by it, and I had never once thought of shopping here until now.

  I tell the driver, “Be back in twenty-five.”

  I hop out of the car, feel a slight ache at my bruised ribs, and jog through the entrance to the left of the movie theatre. Once inside, I spot a mall directory and scan for the stores I need. The first stop is Radio Shack. I need a new phone.

  “I need a Smartphone,” I tell the first customer service rep I see. “Something that lets me download apps, surf the net, that kind of thing.”

  Ten minutes later I’ve got a new phone, a new number, a new email account.

  “It’ll be a few minutes for me to set up the phone for you and activate the account,” the rep tells me as she sets the phone, charger, and Bluetooth headset on the counter by her register.

  “That’s fine,” I say. “I’ve only got a few minutes and I need to grab some other stuff. Can I pay for it now and pick it up in ten?”

  “Sure,” she tells me. “Not a problem. That’ll be three hundred dollars, plus the tax.”

  I point to a pair of sunglasses in the display case next to her. “What are those?”

  “Oh,” she lights up. “Those are the super cool POV ACG-20 3 megapixel Action Video Camera Sunglasses.”

  “What do they do?” I ask, half knowing the answer. She pulls them from the case and hands them to me. I put them on. They’re comfortable.

  “They can record up to two hours of video. They have a rechargeable battery. You can download the video to your computer with a USB connection.”

  “I’ll take them,” I put them back on the counter next to the phone. If there’s a connection that can make them download video into my phone, I want that too.

  “The glasses are one fifty,” she says. “There is a connector we have in stock. It’s probably around fifty dollars.”

  I hand her six one hundred dollar bills and tell her she can keep the change if she’s ready with the phone when I get back.

  Next door to the Radio Shack is a Champs Sporting Goods store. I immediately pull an extra-large white and red University of Houston T-shirt from a hanger on the wall inside the doorway. It’s an extra large. I find a blue and gray Texans’ hoodie and some matching fleece sweatpants. With those tucked under my arm, I grab a pair of gray basketball shorts from a display table and pile it on the checkout counter.

  “I need some shoes,” I tell the kid behind the counter. “Size eleven please. I don’t care what brand. Nike’s fine. Adidas. Whatever.”

  “How much do you want to spend?” he asks, standing up from the small stool on which he was sitting, texting on his iPhone.

  “Doesn’t matter,” I say.

  “Okay.” He smiles and disappears behind a curtain leading to the back of the store. In three minutes he’s back with three boxes. Two of them are Nike and one is Under Armour.

  “I’ll take them.”

  “All of them?” He looks surprised. “Don’t you want to try them on?”

  “No,” I say. “I’m good. How much?”

  He takes a small electronic scanner and beeps the prices into the register. $279.58 appears on the green LED register display facing me. He scans the clothing and a small black backpack I toss on the counter. $394.53. I thumb out four one hundred dollar bills.

  “Keep the change.”

  I pull the boxes off the counter. I can’t hear what he’s saying to me as I bolt out of the store and back into the Radio Shack. I’ve got five minutes and five thousand dollars in my pocket.

  “I’m back,” I say to the rep at Radio Shack as I stride toward the counter.

  “It’s all ready to go,” she tells me, swinging her body from behind the counter and walking toward me with a small plastic bag in one hand and the phone in the other.

  I thank her, grab the bag and the phone. I pull all three pairs of shoes from their boxes and stuff everything but the phone into my new backpack.

  “Do you need me to get those?” The rep gestures to the three shoe boxes I dropped to the floor. Before I can say anything she’s already bent down to pick them up.

  “Thanks,” I say. “I’m in a hurry.” I sling the backpack over my left shoulder and turn to leave.

  “I can tell,” she looks up at me as she gathers the boxes. “Be careful.”

  Be careful.

  “Too late,” I snicker. “Way too late.”

  ***

  “I’m not meeting you in Midland,” I tell George. “It’s not safe.”

  “What do you mean?” he asks. I can hear the public address speaker in the background. He must be at Hobby airport.

  “Charlie, my girlfriend, is one of them.” I’m standing in a bathroom stall inside Terminal B at Bush Intercontinental Airport trying to speak softly. “She knows I’m going there. I mean, was going there.”

  “What are you going to do? I mean, I’m boarding the plane in, like, five minutes.”

  “I’m flying to El Paso.”

  “El Paso? Why?”

  “Dr. Aglo mentioned Midland or El Paso were good airports to get to the observatory,” I remind him. “I am on a US Airways flight. I need you to do me a favor before I land.”

  “What?” He’s irritated. I can tell.

  “I need you to reserve a car for me with your credit card. I can’t use mine.”

  “Okay,” he sounds relieved the favor is no more dangerous than a rental car deposit. “Leave it in your name?”

  “Leave it for Jackson Ellsworth.” I unzip the backpack full of clothing I have hanging on the back of the stall door.

  “Ellsworth?”

  “It’s my middle name. It’s on my driver’s license. Don’t leave it in my last name. They’ll find me. Use Advantage Rent a Car.” I give him the phone number.

  “Okay. Anything else?”

  “Yeah,” I rip the tag off of the new T shirt, “I have a new phone number. After I hang up with you, this phone goes in the trash. I called Char
lie with it. She’s been trying to call me. I don’t know if she can track me. I’ve got to ditch it.”

  “Good idea,” he says. He tells me he’s got the new number, he’ll arrange for my car, and he’ll talk to me once I’ve landed in El Paso.

  I hang up and toss the phone into the toilet, then pull the Kinky T-shirt over my head and toss it onto the floor along with my shoes and pants. I’ve spent a lot of time in public bathrooms these last two days; none of it good and none of it to actually go to the bathroom.

  It feels good to slip on a clean shirt and shorts. I pick a pair of black and white Nike shoes from the bag and lace them up. They’re a little tight, but they’ll be fine.

  I make sure my wallet and cash envelope are in the backpack before I zip it closed and put it over my left shoulder. It’s considerably lighter now, loaded with two pairs of shoes, the hoodie, the sweatpants, and the small Radio Shack bag. I put the new Smartphone into the backpack’s outer pocket and exit the stall.

  My flight boards in a half hour, and I still have to switch terminals, buy a ticket, and get through security. Right now, more than making my flight, I am concerned with avoiding Charlie.

  The realization our relationship is a lie, or was a lie, is disorienting. I’m not sure how to process it, really. I loved her. I thought she loved me. Until a couple of hours ago, I imagined the two of us together for the rest of our lives. Marriage, kids, family, the whole bit.

  Family. My Achilles heel.

  Years of therapy have made me incredibly self-aware. They’ve blinded me too. I want so badly to have what I lost when my parents died, I’m not discerning enough to distinguish reality from desire.

  When the desire involves a lifetime with a smart, engaging, gorgeous woman, I should know better than to ever think it involves reality.

  My reality is that I need to catch a flight, get to Ripley, and figure out why I am a target. I take the elevator to the lowest level in the terminal to catch the intra-terminal train.

  The train looks more like a people mover from Disney World. That’s because it is from Disney World. I read once the same engineering firm that created the people mover in Tomorrowland designed the intra-terminal train. Bizarre.