Deadlock

59

Four San Francisco Fire Department engines screamed past them as they headed up California Street. They had heard the explosion, and Glenn had noted the utter lack of surprise on the face of the man sitting next to him.

Back at the house, it had taken Glenn a few minutes to calm down enough to realise that he knew who the man sitting next to him was. He’d seen his picture on the front page of the newspaper and on the TV news. It was the guy who’d escaped from that trial up north in a helicopter. He was some kind of Nazi or something. He hadn’t caught the guy’s name, only that he was armed and considered highly dangerous, and that members of the public were not to approach him under any circumstances. OK, so you weren’t supposed to approach the guy. But what if the guy broke into your house and threatened to kill your wife and kids? What were you supposed to do then?

Glenn had decided that the best thing, the only thing, he could do was exactly what they told him to do. Right now, with his wife and kids back at the house with the other intruder, if they asked him to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge and into the freezing cold waters of San Francisco Bay, he’d do it.

‘OK, pull up here,’ the guy said, directing him to a spot opposite the front entrance of Grace Cathedral. He’d put on a John Deere tractor ball cap, pulling the brim down low so it was almost touching his eyes. He told Glenn to get out, and as he joined him on the sidewalk said, ‘Now remember, if we don’t call in every ten minutes, you know what happens.’

Glenn did. Unless the woman back at the house heard from him at regular intervals his family would be killed.

‘But what if your cell phone runs out of power, or there’s a network problem?’ Glenn asked, trying to keep the gut-churning fear out of his voice.

‘Over here, I’m gonna show you something,’ the man said, ignoring his question and leading Glenn across the wide street.

They stopped short of the sidewalk by a few feet.

‘Right here,’ he said, looking down.

Glenn was more confused now than ever.

‘You don’t see that?’ the man asked.

All Glenn could see was asphalt on the street. ‘What am I looking for here?’

‘You mean, you don’t see that huge goddamn pothole right there?’

There was no pothole. The road surface was cracked, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Glenn caught on. ‘Oh, yeah, that.’

The man tilted his head slightly so that Glenn could see the light from a nearby store glinting in his dark grey eyes. ‘Needs repairing, don’t you think?’

Glenn fought the urge to laugh. Is this what this is about? They broke into my house, scared me and my family half to death because they want a goddamn pothole that doesn’t even exist repaired? He tried to keep his voice even. ‘You know, you can just call this in. We have a phone number. The city promises to make a repair within forty-eight hours.’

‘Yeah,’ the man said, ‘we did that already. Someone came out, said they couldn’t see anything.’

Maybe that’s because there is no pothole, you psychopath. That was what Glenn felt like saying, but instead he said, ‘Well, I can see that it needs fixing. I can get my crew on it first thing.’

‘Good,’ said the man. He paused and looked at Glenn, and once again Glenn felt a stab of pure terror. ‘So what are you going to say to them?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well,’ said the man, ‘there ain’t no pothole here. Even a blind man can see that. So what you going to say to them?’

Glenn thought fast. ‘I’ll just say that we’ve had a burst water pipe underneath. That’s what has caused these cracks.’ He kicked the toe of his right boot at where the top layer of asphalt had puckered into two ridges. ‘Better to fix it now than let it get worse.’

It was a bunch of baloney but it sounded plausible. Plus, his guys wouldn’t really care too much anyway. They fixed roads. It didn’t really matter to them where or why.

‘Good,’ said the man, patting Glenn on the shoulder. ‘Now, I don’t want a patch job. I’m going to need you to go down a ways. And remember, you breathe a word of this and you’ll never see your family again.’