William Brown - The Undertaker

We drove out on the street and turned right. “It ain't what you got, Talbott, it's knowing how to use it.”

“I suppose you learned that at “Infant Jesus of Prague too?”

“No, tenth grade at Pius the 12th, Sister Mary Boniface, English Lit.”

I turned and looked at her. “All you did was flash the guy.”

“Some people just don't understand art.” She shook her head with a wistful smile. “The guard would remember you, but when I stopped, he never looked at my face, the car, you, or anything else. You may not appreciate them, but he sure did.”

I smiled and looked at my watch. It was almost 2:00. “Let's find the signs for I-80,” I told her as I opened the glove compartment. I pawed through the trash inside. At the bottom, I found a couple of battered road maps and pulled them out.

We had reached an empty stretch of road and she pulled over to the curb. “Turn around,” she told me. I started to turn toward her only to get a slap on the shoulder. “The other way, you moron! I want to put my bra back on.” I turned away as she pulled the lime green top up over her head. “And don't you dare watch me in the window glass, or I'll slap you silly.” She stopped to untangle the bra before she put it back on and I smiled as I watched her in the window glass, then turned my eyes to the Michigan road map. She slapped me on the back. “You turkey! You were watching. I saw that!”

“I was controlling myself just fine until you told me not to look.”

“Talbott, you have more self control in your little finger than all the other guys I've ever met put together,” she said as she pulled the top back over her head. “So suffer!”

The Michigan road map showed the northern tier of Ohio, too. On the back, I found a table with mileage between US cities. “It's nine hundred miles to Boston.”

“There's always Washington DC. We need to call Timmy Hardin tomorrow. We could go there.”

“Maybe, but Boston first.”

Up ahead we saw the first sign for I-80. Sandy pointed. “Isn't the toll road the first place they'll look if they think we're heading east?”

I looked fondly at the sign, but she was right.

“It's going to take us all night to get that far anyway,” she said. “And that's too many hours in a stolen car.”

“Yeah, I know.” I reached in my pocket and pulled out the Amtrak brochures. “There's a train from Chicago to Boston.” I looked at the schedule. “We can catch it in Toledo. No one would be looking for us there.”

“Toledo? You got that right. And the train? Sneaky.”

“It doesn't leave there until 1:30 in the morning and it doesn't get to Boston until 6:30 tomorrow evening.”

“Not exactly like flying, is it?”

“No, but slow and meandering might keep us under Tinkerton's radar.”

“It won't take us six hours to get to Toledo, so we have a lot of time to kill.”

“We'll take the back roads,” I said as I looked down at the map. “You drive for a while and I'll navigate.”

“Sounds like a plan,” she said as she reached for the radio. “Just one little problem, I can't go six hours without a big dose of Merle Haggard.”

I wanted to gag, but I didn't want another bruise so I let it go.

Route 12 ran up along the Lake Michigan shore for twenty miles and then cut across the rolling farmland of southern Michigan through the small towns of Niles, Sturgis, Summerset, and Coldwater, until we dropped south to Toledo. For the first hour, we drove in silence, enjoying the calm and the quiet. The road was flat, boring, and empty.

“Look, Peter, I know you think I'm some kind of air head, a silly ditz, like Parini called me, and most of the time I am.”

“No, I don't.” I sat up and turned toward her.

“Yes you do. But you're going to pretend you don't, and I'm going to pretend I believe you, because it's been a long time since I've had a nice guy around, and I like to pretend too. You pretend and I'll pretend, and sooner or later we're going to pretend ourselves right into the sack. That'll be a lot of fun and something we could both can use, But when the clock strikes midnight, I'm going to be like Cinderella at the end of the ball, alone, with nothing but a couple of mice, a big pumpkin, and some lovely memories to keep me company.”

“That's not going to happen, Sandy.”

“Yes it is. But I'm a big girl, so don't go getting the guilts about me. I'm going to pretend right along with you until that clock strikes twelve, and I'm going to enjoy the hell out of it while it lasts.”

Toledo, where make-overs start, but never end…

Sandy was driving and humming in time with the radio as it played a song about a guy who painted his name and Bobbie Jean's on the water tower in John Deere green. I'll have to remember that the next time I want a date in Iowa, I thought.

“What do you think of Parini?” she looked over and asked.

“Parini?” I shrugged. “That's like asking me what I think of an avalanche.”

“Be serious.”

“I am serious. He's big, he's powerful, and you don't want to get in his way.”

“Then, you think he's a bad guy?”

“Good? Bad? He does what he's told to do. That could be planting flowers, picking them, or stomping the Bejeezuz out of them, but he does what he's told.”

“Well, I like him. I see something in his eyes.”

“Is that the photographer talking? All I see is the chrome-plated. 45 in his hand.”

“Maybe. I just don't think he's all bad.”

“Speaking of bad…” I looked over at the gas gauge and at the clock. “Let's get off at the next exit and get some gas. I need to make a phone call.”

“Your friend in Boston?”

“Yeah.”

“But if he doesn't know anything, why would Tinkerton bother him?”

“Because Tinkerton doesn't think that way. He'll keep his goons stomping around in the dark until they step on something. Then look down and see what it is.”

We found a Shell station in a small town east of Niles. Sandy started filling the tank while I headed for the pay phone. As I dropped in some change and dialed Doug's office number, I watched her check out the car. She looked at the oil and the air pressure in the tires. She even took off the cover the air cleaner and held the filter up to the light, shaking her head disapprovingly. If my car ever was stolen, I hoped it was by a thief with a mechanic fetish like this one. Then I remembered. My car was stolen. By a County Sheriff back in Ohio, about a hundred years ago.

On the third ring, I heard a friendly receptionist's voice say, “Symbiotic Software, how may I help you?”

“Doug's office, please. If he's not in, put me through to Sharon. Tell them it's Pete Talbott and I need to talk to one of them.”

I heard a couple of minutes of what I guessed was a Mozart piano concerto. I didn't call in very often, and it was nice to see Doug had risen from his Grateful Dead phase to a higher intellectual plain. Finally, someone came on the line, but it wasn't Sharon.

“Pete? Hi, this is Jeanie Simpson in HR.” She sounded hesitant, almost unsure. “Doug isn't here. He didn't come in this morning and we're getting worried.”

“What about Sharon? Isn't she there?”

“She didn't come in either,” Jeanie paused, still not sure. “Look, I know you two are old friends or I wouldn't say this, but when Doug and Sharon's desks were both empty this morning… well, the common assumption was they had gone off somewhere together.”

“Doug and Sharon? That didn't happen.”

“I didn't think so either, but it wasn't my place to question. However, he missed two appointments this morning and a conference call with the bankers.”