Ask the Parrot

15

Tom Lindahl drove past the main entrance to Gro-More, with its outlined stylized bulls on the gates, then drove on past the dirt road, unmarked except for the Dead End sign, that he should have taken down to the end of the clubhouse. But he just kept driving.

For a mile or two, he didn’t even think about what he was doing, but just drove on as though that were his only purpose in being out here, to drive aimlessly, forever. It was easy, and it was comforting, and it didn’t make any sense.

After a couple of miles, he came to himself enough to realize this wasn’t going to work. He hadn’t seen Smith anywhere on the long drive down, he’d come to believe he’d never see Smith again, but that didn’t mean he could just drive on and on. Where to? For what?

I can’t go back, he thought for the very first time.

That was a chilling thought. He was on a dark country road, and up ahead there was an intersection with a lit-up diner on the right. Refusing to think, clenching his teeth to hold back the floodgates of thought, he waited till he reached the diner, pulled in, stopped in the semidark around at the rear, opened his window, and shut off the engine. Then he slumped and stared at the back of the building, the Dumpster, the screen door closed over the glaringly bright kitchen.

I can’t go back there. He meant Pooley, he meant the little converted garage he’d been living in, he meant that whole life.

He didn’t think, I can’t go home. That wasn’t home, he hadn’t had a home for years. That was where he’d camped out, waiting for something to happen, although, until Smith had come along, there was never anything going to happen except one day he wouldn’t be waiting any more.

But Smith had come along and riled up the waters. Tom had met him, and hooked up with him, and told him about this racetrack opportunity, because he’d thought he wanted revenge and money, but he’d been wrong. He’d wanted a hand grenade to throw into the middle of his empty unbearable life, and boy, he’d sure found one.

He couldn’t go back because too many people had seen him with Smith, and, one way or another, who Smith really was would be bound to come out. If somehow they went ahead with this robbery, the police would automatically look at Tom Lindahl, simply because he was a former employee with a grudge, and what would they find? The mysterious Ed Smith, come and gone at just the exact right moment.

But even without the robbery, how long would Smith’s identity stay hidden? Fred Thiemann suspected something, though he wasn’t sure yet just what it was. Fred’s wife, Jane, was smarter and more persistent than Fred, and if she started to wonder about Smith, that would be the end of it. And weren’t Cory and Cal Dennison poking their noses in somehow?

So the only thing for Tom to do was what he’d instinctively started to do. Just drive, keep driving south, try to find somebody else to be, somebody else in some other place. Smith had told him it was impossible to disappear like that today, but that couldn’t be true. People vanished. And God knows, if there was one thing Tom Lindahl wanted to do, it was vanish.

The only question was, should he go back to the track, just to see if Smith showed up? Without Smith, he knew he wouldn’t be doing any robbery here tonight, wouldn’t even go into the clubhouse, wouldn’t even get out of the car. But at least he should go back, look at Gro-More one last time before closing that part of his life at last. He’d give Smith, say, half an hour, then drive away from here and never be Tom Lindahl again.

Once the decision was made, it was easy, as though it had always been easy; he’d just been too close to it to see the path. Now he could see it. He started the engine, drove back to Dead End, and this time headed on in. He went to where there was the right turn to the chain-link fence, and stopped at the gate there. He didn’t get out of the car but looked through the fence at the clubhouse and after a minute switched off the headlights. He didn’t need them to know where he was.

Smith, in the dark beside Tom’s open window, said, “Time to get started.”