Joe Haldeman - Work Done for Hire

I sure was worth a lot of money for a guy who barely had cab fare. Even in mundane reality. I had plenty of credit cards in my wallet; that was a couple of grand that I could tap at usurious rates, if I were standing in a bank in Iowa City. But between me and MidWestOne were plenty of search engines where my name would ring a bell. Or start up a siren.

I sat down in the hospital lobby for a minute, trying to come up with a plan. Went through everything in my wallet.

At the bottom of the stack of credit cards was a Visa I’d never used. It was from a dumb promotion thing where I’d get $10 of free merchandise at a Hy-Vee in Coralville—but that store was just a hole in the ground now; they’d closed it last year.

I’d never used the card because it had the wrong middle initial: “John B.” All my other cards were for “C. Jack.” When it came, I hung onto it with a vague idea of doing an experiment; see what happened if I tried it in a cash machine when I was broke.

Might as well be hung for a sheep as a goat, though I wasn’t really sure what that meant. Might as well be hung for a John as a Jack.

I used the pen at the sign-in desk and scrawled “John B. Daley” on the card’s signature block. Then I went outside and got in the next cab. “Bus station, please.” The driver was a girl who looked about twelve.

“You want the one at the Amtrak station?”

“Yeah, sure.” The cab had a beat-up card reading machine. I handed her the new one. She slid it through without bells or sirens.

“You got ID?” I showed her my driver’s license and she scrutinized the picture and then studied my face. “You look better with the beard,” she said, and handed it back. I guess Visa-Jack would pass for Visa-John if there were no computers involved, or sufficiently old ones.

She dropped me at the bus station annex. I watched her pick up a fare and drive away, then made a snap decision and crossed over to the train station.

I used the same Visa in a ticket machine, ready to run if it started beeping, but it obediently booked me to Washington. From there I could book to New York, and then up to Maine. The last Maine bit on the bus. How to get from Bangor to Swan’s Island without any money was a problem I’d have to deal with when I got there.

It wouldn’t be smart to push my luck charging a restaurant meal. With cash, I got a handful of power bars and a hot dog. Still a few hours before the train. I picked up a discarded Times-Picayune and sat on a bench outside, reading with one eye and watching with the other.

I didn’t suppose a police car would pull up with lights flashing. If a cop car did come up, I could slip off in a cab to nowhere and start over.

The breeze died and I realized I smelled too strong to sit next to anyone who didn’t have a real bad cold. What performers call “flop sweat,” I supposed. A difficult role, pretending to be an innocent writer from Iowa City who had no connection with murderous assholes or people with good plain haircuts from three-initialed agencies.

The men’s room had a cologne dispenser that took a dollar coin. So I could at least disguise myself as a weary traveler who knew how bad he smelled.

The crossword puzzle in the paper was too easy. I did about half of it and quit out of nervous boredom. Then I picked it back up and filled in all the blanks with random words. That was a little more challenging. I got to cross AXOLOTL with LYNX, a biology experiment that would probably never actually happen.

It was three and a half hours till the train. I got up to look at the map on the wall and with a shock realized I was only twenty miles from the motel where I’d been kidnapped.

I hurried outside and went to the first cab in line. He looked like a cliché New York cabbie, fat and grizzled and unfriendly, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lip. In actual New York, I realized, he’d be from the Indian subcontinent or Northern Africa. Maybe that’s why he moved to Mississippi. I tapped on the window.

“Yeah?”

“Could you take me to a motel in Quigman and back in two hours? Mom’s Home Away from Home, off 85?”

“Twenty-some miles? Sure. Cost ya.”

“How much, about?”

He tapped the dash map a couple of times and entered some number into his meter box. “Fifty-mile round trip… call it $250 plus waiting time?”

I handed him the card. “Give you three hundred if you can get me there and back in an hour, and you never saw me?”

He took the card and the back door sprang open. “Never saw who? I been off duty since ten seconds ago. Gonna drive the long way home.”

I was sure the meter box would keep a record, but hell. The back of the cab smelled of stale cigarette smoke, which made me think of Kit, trapped somewhere with her face down by that overflowing ashtray.

My eyes stung and I closed them during the drive, just to rest them, but was sound asleep when he pulled up at Mom’s Home Away from Home. “Here you go, buddy.”

“Thanks. Back in a minute.” I got out and stretched. Against all odds, the hatchback was still in front of number 15.

I went into the office and the querulous old man looked up. “Well, finally,” he said. “Where the hell have you been?”

“In the hospital in Biloxi. Not sure how I wound up there.”

“Oh. You okay now?”

“Still sore from where someone hit me over the head. Look, I left a suitcase and stuff in that room.”

He stared at me with a mixture of confusion and suspicion. “Maid cleaned up. Guess you can take a look. You got your key?”

I took it out of the plastic bag and jiggled it. He decided to follow me to the room, putting a BACK IN FIVE sign on his door. The cabbie joined us, I guess to protect his investment.

The door to room 15 was locked, which gave me a moment of optimism. But the pink suitcase wasn’t anywhere to be seen, nor the dime store computer. The Dexter Filkins book was on the floor, open, its hollowed-out pages empty.

“What happened to that book?” the old man asked.

“I don’t know. Someone got mad at it.”

I knelt down to pick up the book and yes, the .38 was still down there, not visible behind the bedspread. I swept it out and into my pocket as I stood. The old man hadn’t been looking at me, and the cabbie developed a sudden interest in the ceiling.

Checked the bathroom and retrieved the shaving kit I’d gotten from the casino.

Nothing in the car but some road maps and a box of stale cookies. Aluminum foil and masking tape. A coffee cup with dried-up mold in it.

“You gonna take the car? This ain’t no parkin’ lot.”

“Somebody’ll be by for it tomorrow.” State police or Homeland Security, but maybe not tomorrow. I wasn’t going to take it and drive to Maine with a beacon: Come shoot me again; maybe a bullet this time.

On the cab ride back to Biloxi, the cabdriver and I listened to music on a country station. We didn’t talk until we got to the train station and he opened the door. The cab machine took my card with no protest, and I tipped him up to three hundred.

“It’s none of my business,” he said, “but you better watch your ass. Listen to a fellow vet. Guns are never nothin’ but trouble. Haven’t we had enough trouble?”

“Yeah,” I said. “We shouldn’t go looking for it.” He nodded and drove off shaking his head.

When trouble comes looking for you, though, best to be ready. A little revolver with five shells is five shots better than a pocket full of nothing. On cue, a train whistled in the distance. The train to Maine, soon enough.

I’ll come to thee by moonlight, the poet said, though hell should bar the way.

Iprobably could have upgraded my ticket to a sleeper compartment, but didn’t want to push the one credit card too high. I did nurse a couple of glasses of wine, watching TV movies in the bar car.