John Gapper - A Fatal Debt

Holding my phone, I climbed out onto the fire escape platform and punched in Anna’s number, then placed it to my ear to hear the tone. It went on for six rings and then switched to voice mail. Her voice invited me to leave a message and I vacillated for what felt like several seconds but was only a fraction of one before pressing the icon to end the call. I couldn’t confront her on voice mail: it had to be done in the flesh.

It was a pristine day with a blue bowl of sky as I drove out from the city with the afternoon sun behind me. The temperature was in the seventies and it had been like walking into a refrigerator when I’d entered the air-conditioned hospital earlier in the day. Independence Day was near but the traffic was sparse on the Long Island Expressway once I’d made it out of the city. There weren’t many cars, which was why I noticed the one behind me.

It was a dark Mercedes crossover, but I couldn’t see enough in my rearview mirror to know who was driving. It was trailing me about two hundred yards back, staying in position as I passed trucks. I eased my speed up and down a few times to see whether I might leave it behind or trigger it into passing, but it stuck there. After a while, with nothing happening and no sign of it catching up, I wondered if I was being paranoid. It couldn’t be Pagonis-not in a Mercedes-and who else was interested in me? But Lauren’s threat lingered in my mind.

After a while, I decided I had to discover if I was imagining the whole thing. I had plenty of gas, but I joined the exit lane at a refueling stop. I looked in my mirror to see the Mercedes still following me at the same distance. As I stopped by a pump and climbed out, it parked about fifty yards from me in the lot. There was no movement from inside, and the sunlight glinting off the windshield prevented me from seeing the driver. I went into the gas station to pay and to use the restroom, hoping vaguely that when I came back out it would have gone. It hadn’t, and I saw it ease out after me as I drove away, getting caught briefly behind another car as we rejoined the expressway but reappearing in the same place as before.

I knew then who the driver was-and that he wasn’t going to stop. He would trail me all the way to East Hampton, right to the Shapiros’ house. Unless I confronted him, he’d follow me to Anna and I’d have to face them together. I knew he wasn’t acting rationally, that he’d lost all self-control since I’d first encountered him. He wasn’t a danger to others, just to me. The miles went by accompanied by the steady thump-thump of the tarmac, and nothing altered except for the air, which became sweeter. With my window open, I smelled the heather by the side of the road and a hint of ocean air. We slowed together off the expressway and joined the single-lane road for the last few miles to our destination.

We drove past Bridgehampton without any break in the invisible link between us, although he was farther back now-it was too obvious out here in the potato fields and woods to be as close as he’d been before. I had no idea how to shake him off, but I didn’t want to lead him to her. My opportunity came before I’d had a chance to plan anything, or even to think about it. The highway bent in an S curve, first right and then left, and as I came around the second bend, I saw roadworks ahead of me and a man letting a line of cars through a single-lane gap. He signaled for me to stop, but I spurted through the small gap instead.

I saw the Mercedes being forced to halt behind me. The driver had no choice because the man had blocked his path. He flashed his lights with annoyance, but the man wouldn’t give way. I had a minute before he’d be after me again, and I accelerated around another curve through a forest. I needed a hiding place, but I didn’t see anything that would work until I passed an old Sherman tank on the side of the road, its barrel trained uselessly toward the sea. It was a war memorial, and just beyond it was a lane into the woods.

Glancing in my mirror, I saw nothing, so I swung left and sped around a bend that hid me from the main road. There was nothing to do but keep going, and I drove as fast as I could through thick woods, with the plain brown trunks of trees poking through hilly outcrops. There was nothing there-just a few houses in patches of land cut into the woods-and I wondered if the road would lead anywhere. After five minutes, the woods thinned out on my left into a field leading to an airstrip, with three small jets near a clapboard building.

There was a parking lot between the building and me. It was empty apart from a single vehicle, a Lexus SUV parked by the entrance. I checked ahead of me to where the road thinned further and turned into a track leading through fields. I didn’t have time to think, and on instinct I swung the wheel and headed toward the airstrip. My plan, such as it was, was to find someone to be with-preferably a group with whom I could mingle to protect me from my follower-but the Lexus was empty. As I got out of my car, I remembered seeing Anna here, standing by the Shapiros’ Range Rover. It was the airport where I’d landed in Harry’s Gulfstream, before it jetted away without me. That felt like a very long time ago.

I headed at a trot into the building to discover only an empty atrium with a flight of model aircraft hanging decoratively from its rafters. “Hello?” I shouted, walking to the side of the building nearest the strip. There was no reply, and I couldn’t see anyone in the offices by the hallway. I walked onto the tarmac and looked around. The aircraft I’d observed from the road had been parked and left for their owners’ eventual return. There was no sign of life on the runway.

Then I saw a dot in the distance above the fields and woods, and as it grew, I realized it was a helicopter approaching. I stood watching as it descended about thirty yards from me and settled on the ground. It was a dark green Sikorsky-a solid-looking beast-with two uniformed pilots. They waited for the blades to slow and then one took off his headphones, climbed out, and walked to the side of the aircraft, where he stood as a door opened and some steps folded down. An odd group emerged: a tall man, wearing a suit as if he’d come straight from the office, and two children-a girl and a boy, both maybe seven or eight years old. They were in tartan school uniforms and the boy had a tennis racket over his shoulder. The man waved briefly to the pilot and then the trio strolled across the tarmac toward me.

The pilot walked around the aircraft, his ceremonial duty done, and climbed back into the cockpit to start the engine again. By the time the party had reached me, the helicopter had lifted off into the sky, its passengers safely deposited.

“Excuse me,” I said as the man approached. “Could I speak to you?”

“What is it?” he said, slowing his walk slightly but not stopping as the children ran ahead into the building.

“I need help.”

I could see his eyes glaze over as he glanced at me, still moving, as if I were a loser whom he had to shake off.

“Sorry, buddy. Next time,” he said.

Before I could say anything else, he’d walked past me and through the building with the children. I trailed after him helplessly, as if drawn in his wake, and saw him raise the back gate of the Lexus to put the boy’s tennis racket inside before driving away. I stood there feeling dazed and humiliated. He’d just treated me as if I were some beggar in the street with a sob story about losing his MetroCard and needing a fare home. I suppose when you’re rich enough to commute to the Hamptons in a helicopter, every passerby looks like a panhandler.

Humiliation, however, wasn’t my biggest problem. As I looked up the hill after him, I saw another vehicle come through the trees and halt on the slope above me-the Mercedes. The driver paused, and I imagined him scanning the scene as I had done and then seeing my car-now the only one in the parking lot. I was still inside the building, so I probably wasn’t visible to him, but I soon would be.