Joe Haldeman - Work Done for Hire

The unpainted latticework that formed the base of the sign didn’t really offer more than symbolic privacy. She took the small roll of toilet paper and went behind it. I turned my back to her and watched the road.

A big black SUV slowed as it approached. The passenger window rolled down and a man pointed out a camera with a fat lens. They passed close enough for me to hear the shutter go chop-chop-chop three times, like a newsie covering a game or a speech. “Pervert,” I said.

He lowered the camera and smiled.

It wasn’t a leer. It was a smile of quiet satisfaction. Did I recognize the face? Fat white guy with a dark tan and a shock of white hair. White moustache.

The license plate number was partly hidden behind a crust of mud. But it hadn’t rained in weeks. They rolled to a stop about two hundred yards away.

“Shit,” I said, and unzipped the handlebar bag.

“What’s he doing?” Kit said.

“I don’t know. Get down flat.” I let the bike go, dropped to one knee, and tried to get a sight picture with the stubby revolver. I’d be lucky to hit the car, let alone something the size of a human. I pulled back on the hammer, unnecessarily, and it clicked like a quiet door latch, cocking.

The passenger door opened slightly. I held my breath and squeezed the trigger.

The flat bang was louder than I’d expected. If the bullet hit the car, it wasn’t obvious. The door opened more and then slammed shut, and the tires squealed as the car peeled away. I kept the sight picture but didn’t fire again.

“My god,” she said. “My god.”

I was busy keeping my asshole tight, and didn’t say anything. This was too much like reality. I willed my trigger finger to relax. But I kept the sight picture until the car went over a rise and disappeared.

“Jesus,” she said. “Did you have to do that?”

“I don’t know. If I did have to, it might have saved our lives.” I clicked the cylinder around so the firing pin rested on the empty shell. “If not, I guess we’ll be talking to the cops pretty soon.”

I could hear her pulling up her Lycra shorts. “That’s not something I ever looked forward to before.”

I picked up my bike and put the revolver back in the handlebar bag, but didn’t zip it shut. I studied the map carrier. “Nine or ten miles to the next town. Or should we head back to New Orleans?”

She had picked up her bike and was adjusting her helmet. “Nearest phone. You ought to call Underwood.”

“I guess.” Where had I seen that face behind the lens? Could it have been Springfield? “Did you see the guy?”

“With the camera? Kind of.”

“Look familiar to you?”

She paused. “Just from old movies. A bad guy.”

“Yeah, the enemy spy in James Bond. But somebody real, maybe in New Orleans?”

“I don’t know. I must’ve had ten thousand customers at Mario’s. Maybe a thousand had white hair and tans.”

My ears were still ringing from the gunshot. Hands shook and my chest was so tight I could hardly breathe. “I shouldn’t’ve stomped the phone.”

“As it turns out, no. But how do you think they found us? If it was them.”

“Who else would it be?”

“Ja-ack… I had my bare ass out there in the sunshine. You see it every day, but to some other man it might be worth a picture.”

“All right,” I said lamely, “but someone who had a fancy big-lens DSLR sitting there ready to go? ‘Maybe I’ll see a pretty ass to shoot’? I don’t think so.”

“Okay. But then why didn’t they shoot? I mean with a gun. If they were the bad guys?”

“I don’t think that’s part of the plan. They’ve had all kinds of chances, if they wanted me dead.” I clenched the handlebar to stop my hands from shaking. “Probably didn’t even have a gun in the car, if they were smart.”

She didn’t say anything. I turned and saw that she was crying silently. Dropped the bike and went to hold her. Awkward, with her bike still leaning against her hip. She let it fall away and wrapped her arms around me. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Nothing to be sorry for.” My mind spun out of control. If I’d only had a camera, instead of a gun. A phone with a camera, like normal people. Or both phone and gun; aim both at the same time? Click, bang, click, bang. How the fuck did they find us on a back road in Mississippi, and was anyplace on the planet safe? Hell, if Iowa isn’t safe, where would be?

“You know what you told me about racing cars?” she murmured into my shoulder.

“Racing cars?”

“You said if you’re in a race and the car in front of you gets into trouble, you aim for him. Because he’s liable to go anyplace but straight ahead.”

“That’s right.”

She rubbed her face against my shirt and I could feel the tears. “So we should just keep on. Go the direction they went.”

“What if they double back?”

She looked up at me with bright eyes. “Then shoot the one with the camera.”

We went eighteen map miles down that little road, peanut farms alternating with acres of weeds and spindly trash trees. The motel that was supposed to be at the eighteen-mile mark was a weedy burned ruin with the words “Ffriendly Ffolkes” fading under broken neon tubes. British orthography or Americans trying to be classy? But it was only another four or five miles to a Comfort Inn.

Traveling by car, you can afford to have contempt for chain motels. But when every mile is forty-eight calories, they look pretty good.

There hadn’t been much traffic, not even one car a minute. No black SUVs with bullet holes.

The next motel was still standing, but ramshackle. “Try this one?”

“Anyplace with a bed,” she said. Her color wasn’t good, cheeks pale and forehead flushed, and she was breathing a little too hard. “Let’s get these bikes out of sight.”

The black woman behind the desk was huge and suspicious-looking. “Where’s y’all’s car?”

“We’re on bikes,” Kit said, convincingly clad in bright Lycra and sweat.

“Sure you are.” When I said we’d pay in cash, she nodded with grim satisfaction and handed me a corroded brass key on a plastic tag that might once have borne a number. “You go to Room 14.”

The room had a single low-watt bulb in the ceiling and a TV set that hissed and had no picture. Lots of roach tabs in the bathroom and closet, but no actual bugs. It smelled stale, but there are worse smells.

The drapes were stuck in blackout position. We got a slight breeze going through, with the front door and bathroom window open. The other windows were glued-shut plastic.

The fat lady directed me up to Bradley Road, where there was a mom-and-pop store and a porch where some old characters sat to drink beer and stare at alien invaders on bicycles. I got us a four-pack of tall cold no-name beers and some cheese crackers and a strip of what claimed to be alligator jerky.

Whatever the jerky was made of, it had a soporific effect. Or maybe it was the beer. Or maybe Jane Austen; the five-and-dime notebook had a few freebie book files, and I read about three pages of Pride and Prejudice . Kit was snoring by then, and I joined her.

I woke up about three, restless, mind racing. The hot water from the tap made something like coffee. Back to Hunter’s world.

He had thought they were closing in on him. Twice yesterday morning he had seen unmarked police cars cruise by with men listening through headphones. A good thing his captive was gagged.

But nothing for more than twenty-four hours now. If they had brought in dogs it would not take very long, with all the buried bones around. Dogs would like that. But they didn’t have them, he supposed. Not a rich county.