Five Uneasy Pieces

DEADLY DETOUR

Late July is no time to be sitting in a car, in a parking lot, in Ocean City, Maryland. It was stinking hot, and moist air pressed in through the open windows and enveloped me like a blanket. I glanced at my watch and cursed Mendez for her lateness.

I’m too old for this, I thought. Women pushing forty should be working in offices, not in the field. Sure, work in an office. Answer phones, attend meetings, push paper—sounded like slow death by boredom. Of course, how exciting was waiting for someone outside a seedy hotel, an unringing cell phone in my lap. Intelligence work is so glamorous, providing the chance to visit so many exotic locales, such as this one. Such as the many I had visited during my 15-year stint with the agency.

“Doomed,” I said, aloud, to no one. I wasn’t sure if I was talking about myself or the Bayside Villas.

A set of low, rectangular white stucco boxes, the Bayside Villas looked strangely like white frosted cakes in the moonlight, their windows trimmed in “food coloring” blue. The sound of a yapping dog and a TV set blaring somewhere did little to lift the status of the place.

“What a dump!” I said, imitating Elizabeth Taylor’s imitation of Bette Davis in the movie Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

I stared at the door to Unit 8, as if that would make Mendez appear sooner. So far, it wasn’t working. In the window to Unit 7, the curtain moved for the second time. I smiled.

“Nervous?” I said. Probably afraid I was casing the joint. As if any sane burglar would waste his time here.

A jazz piano tune floated from the dashboard radio. I closed my eyes, opened them a second later. Not good to keep your eyes closed too long at this job. The distant neon circles of a double-decker Ferris wheel bobbed with numbing regularity over the flat rooftops. The bay waters swooshed at intervals against a nearby bulkhead.

Another twenty minutes ticked by. A breeze fragile as a kitten’s breath eased through the car, carrying with it the scent of creosote-treated wood. Sweat tickled my neck. Wearily, I wiped it away. The Ferris wheel went through countless cycles.

The Unit 7 curtain moved again, was held longer this time, then dropped.

So what was that all about? Surreptitious interest? Paranoia? Maybe my paranoia. Maybe it had nothing to do with me. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to leave for a while. Nothing was up here. And, unless she was in some sort of huge trouble, Mendez should eventually return the message I’d left on her cell phone, let me know she got in okay.

As I turned the ignition key, the door to Unit 7 flew open. A young woman shot out and ran toward my car. Her face was pale, her hair long and dark. She wore a baggy dress, several sizes too large, out of which her skinny arms and legs stuck ridiculously. A large plastic purse on her arm slapped her side as she ran.

I realized that the immense dress was accommodating an immensely-pregnant belly. She moved with amazing speed for one so far along in her maternity. She ran up to my window and leaned in, gasping. She was just a kid, complete with button nose and freckles.

“Help,” she screamed.

A tall and thin, but muscular, man in a tank top and olive green pants appeared in the open doorway. The light from the room revealed something tucked in his waistband—a gun.

“Get in,” I said. As she ran to the passenger’s side, I leaned over to unlock the door. Meanwhile, the man had bolted from the room and was racing toward my car. He had the gun in his hand now.

“Hurry,” I yelled. She opened the door and flung herself inside. I took off, tires squealing. I made a mental note of the man’s white-blonde hair, dark complexion, and the deep scar on his left cheek, in case I ever had to pick him out of a line-up. A line-up was the kind of place I would have expected to see such a face. He did me the kindnes

s of not shooting holes in my car as we sped off.

I made an arbitrary right into the great traffic riptide of Ocean Highway in mid-season.

“Where to?” I said, keeping my eyes on the road and looking out for the occasional idiot tourist that might choose to do a jack rabbit run across my path.

“Make a U-turn. Now.”

She spoke with incongruous authority. I glanced at her long enough to see that she had a gun trained on me.

“Firearms,” I said, affecting an air of unconcern. “Must we?” I was a bit surprised. Not because she was a kid with a gun. In my line of work, I’ve seen kids younger than her running around with guns that would make an NRA member weep with envy. And I’ve been on the wrong end of a gun barrel before. It’s just that she really didn’t look like that kind of kid. There was nothing street-wise about the face, the attitude, or the way her gun hand shook.