Deceit

THIRTY-NINE

It had gotten dark almost without me knowing it.

One minute it was light enough to easily make out passing license plates-Dennis had begun reading them off again in lieu of road signs-then it wasn’t.

He had to lean forward and squint, each license suddenly immersed in individual pools of sickly yellow light.

“Speed up,” he said. “Can’t see the last number.”

I told Dennis he might want to give it a rest-eventually it grated on you, being assaulted by the constant drone of numbers and letters, the only relief provided by vanity plates like IAMGR8T and LUV2BWL.

Dennis was oblivious to my entreaties; I didn’t press the matter since it gave him something to do, at least.

M65LK1…

RLN895…

I’m not exactly sure when it occurred to me.

L983HT4…

K61MN0…

Have you ever had the car radio on and begun listening to a certain song only when the next one’s already playing? Your mind meandering down its own roads, and the music far away as if it’s coming from a half-open window?

VML254…

HG54MT…

Dennis’s litany of licenses was a kind of music-steady, low, and rhythmic. A tune I mostly tuned out, but half didn’t.

QR327N9…

KL61WT…

At some point, I began to actually hear it, at least become cognizant of a certain repeat phrase.

MH92TV…

Something about those letters and numbers. They seemed, okay, familiar. As if he’d mumbled them before, and before that, too.

MH92TV.

Twenty minutes ago, maybe, then sometime later, and then now.

MH92TV.

So what? There were hundreds of cars on this highway going in exactly the same direction we were-even all the way to Tellings. Even as I attempted to placate a bad case of the jitters, I knew that I’d heard those numbers before twenty minutes ago.

Dennis had been reading license plates since Iowa.

“Dennis… that license plate-which car?”

“Huh?”

“MH92TV? Which car?”

He seemed pleasantly surprised that something I’d previously expressed annoyance at had suddenly captivated my attention. Cool.

“Over there,” he said.

“Over where?”

“There.” He motioned to his immediate left, but when I slowed to let the red Mitsubishi to our left inch forward, its license plate said GAYSROK.

“That’s not it, Dennis.”

He shrugged. “No, not that one. Behind us, I think.”

“Where behind us?” I scanned the side- and rearview mirrors, but it was pitch black and all I saw were vague shapes obliterated by crossing high beams.

“Dunno, man. Maybe it’s in front of us.”

“Okay. What kind of car is it?”

I knew what his answer would be before he said it.

I was Karnak the Magnificent, the answer already pressed against my forehead, even though I was praying for something else, any other car on earth, really. A Honda Accord, a Saturn or Caddy, a sensible Dodge minivan or VW bus or Volvo.

No such luck.

“Pickup,” he said.

My hands gripped the steering wheel so tight that my knuckles went white.

“You’re sure?”

“Uh-huh. He’s been following us since we left, man.”

“Since Iowa? Why didn’t you say something?”

“Well, you know. Maybe I wasn’t seeing what I was seeing.”

“Okay. What color? What color pickup has been following us since Iowa?”

“You’re getting kind of specific, man.”

I threw out pretty much every possibility I could think of, every color in the rainbow-Dennis shaking his head at each one, uh-uh, nope, don’t think so-until the inevitable process of elimination led me to the last color I wanted to hear.

“Blue? Was it blue, Dennis?”

“Uh-huh,” Dennis said. “That’s right, sure. Blue.”

You’re it.

Standing at the bottom of the stairs with a metal tool in his hands.

Playing Auto Tag with me on a desert highway.

Trolling down Third Street while he sighted a.38 Smith amp; Wesson through the window. My Smith amp; Wesson.

Bang.

I checked the rearview mirror.

Then the sides. Right, then left.

My heart was jackhammering. It was going to do an Alien and burst right out of my chest. I veered into the next lane, nearly got obliterated by an eighteen-wheeler hauling toilet fixtures, swerved back, slowed down, worked my way to the exit lane.

“Hey… what are you doing? We stopping?”

The next exit was coming up. Dennis had dutifully read it out loud two miles back.

Wohop Road.

“I need to pee,” Dennis said.

Back to my left side mirror. I wanted to see if someone crossed lanes. There were several cars in the next lane-two separate and distinct pair of headlights. Then, suddenly, there was one.

I squinted into the mirror. What happened?

“I need to pee like a motherfucker, Tom.”

He’d turned off his lights.

There were two pair of headlights and now there was one.

He’d turned off his lights.

I floored the gas. Passed eighty and kept going.

“I don’t need to pee that bad,” Dennis said. “I won’t do it in the car.”

Eighty-five… ninety… ninety-five…

“Maybe I will.”

When the turnoff for Wohop Road appeared, Dennis didn’t bother reading it. He couldn’t. He was crouching down with his hands up over his eyes-the crash position familiar to any airline passenger.

Wait… wait…

Now.

I yanked the steering wheel hard to the right.

I’d almost passed the exit-on my way to the next one for sure. I took the turn on two wheels-my first wheelie since fourth grade-barely held the curve, then flipped back on all fours and rolled onto a mercifully empty service road where I kept right on going.

Listen.

Nothing.

How was it possible?

How could he know I was here?

At the trailer park in Iowa?

On the road to Tellings?

How?

Think.

Okay. There was one way. Sure there was. Assuming he hadn’t followed me all the way from Littleton-one way.

My ATM withdrawals.

My credit card.

The one I’d used at gas stations, at the Nevada Stop ’n’ Shop and the Sioux Nation Motel in North Dakota.

Like big, fat crumbs any good bird dog could follow with his eyes closed.

All the way from Iowa to Seattle to here.

Only…

You would need a special kind of access.

To get that kind of information-private bank records, credit card receipts, the kind of stuff they’re supposed to guard with their lives-you would need a special sort of access for that.

“Uh, I really got to pee, man.”

“A few minutes, Dennis.”

I was getting there-I was close. I’d sat down on a stool at Muhammed Alley and begun drawing something, and now it was beginning to emerge. If I peered really hard at it, maybe I could even whisper what it was.

I had to move faster. I had to Texas two-step.

As far as I could tell, the plumber hadn’t made the turnoff.

I’d shaken him.

I drove another twenty miles before I gave in to Dennis’s increasingly pitiful demands-I have to goooo, man-and turned in to a twenty-four-hour Exxon station.