Chapter 36

I left in a wheelchair. Hospital rules required it anyway, but even if they hadn’t, I still had very little use of my left leg. Susan and Hawk and Dr. Marinaro and I went down in a freight elevator and into a basement garage with Dr. Marinaro pushing the wheelchair.

“Morgue’s over there,” Marinaro said, nodding toward a pair of double doors. He grinned. “Our mistakes go out this way,” he said.

“How cheery,” I said.

Quirk and Belson were leaning on the front fender of a black Ford Explorer near the overhead doors. Pearl the Wonder Dog was in the backseat, looking out the window. The rest of the garage was empty. We wheeled over to them. Belson opened the front door of the Explorer.

“I can stand,” I said, “and walk a little. I’ll need a little help getting in.”

Hawk came around and picked me up and put me in the front seat. Pearl began to lap the back of my neck. There was luggage in the storage space in back.

“I didn’t need that much help,” I said.

“He ain’t heavy,” Hawk said. “He’s my brother.”

“And he’s lost thirty pounds,” Susan said.

“Can you shoot left handed?” he said.

“Some.”

He handed me a short-barreled Colt Detective Special and I stuck it into my left-hand jacket pocket.

“Guy will have to be pretty close for me to hit him left handed with this,” I said.

“He’ll be close,” Hawk said, “’cause he’ll have gotten by me.”

“Unlikely,” I said.

“Very,” Hawk said.

“Where’d you get the car,” I said to Susan.

“Hawk arranged it,” she said.

I looked at Hawk. He smiled.

“Oh, never mind,” I said.

Marinaro said, “You’ve got my number. Call me if you need to.”

I said, “Thank you.”

He gave a small thumbs-up gesture, like the RAF pilots used to do when they were climbing into their Spitfires. Susan went around and got in the driver’s side. Hawk got in back with Pearl. Belson closed the front door and stepped away. Susan started the car. Marinaro pressed a button and the garage door went up. It was dark outside. Quirk and Belson went outside and stood at each side of the doorway looking into the darkness. Quirk waved us forward and Susan drove the Explorer out of the garage. Quirk and Belson went back inside. The garage door closed. Susan drove down an alley and turned out onto a side street and then onto Cambridge Street heading toward Storrow Drive with the river on our right, looking as hostile as I remembered. I patted Pearl over my shoulder with my left hand. There was ice on the river now, and the Esplanade was snowy. Across the river the lights around Kendall Square looked cheerful.

“Where we going,” I said.

“Santa Barbara,” Susan said.

“California?”

“Yes.”

“We’re driving.”

“Yes. It’s safer.”

“You mind if I sing ‘California Here I Come’ as we roll along?” I said.

“You’re in a weakened condition,” Susan said. “It’s better if you rest.”

“I’m just thinking of you,” I said. “It’s a long ride.”

“Remember I got a gun,” Hawk said.

“You’d shoot me if I sing? Your brother?”

“Shoot myself,” Hawk said, “you sing a lot.”

Pearl stopped lapping my neck finally and settled against the backseat and looked out the window.

“We’re not flying because someone might see us?” I said.

“And also because we can’t leave the baby behind,” Susan said. “It will take you a long time to rehab... and she obviously isn’t going in a crate in the belly of an airplane.”

“Of course not,” I said. “Why Santa Barbara?”

“It’s far away, it’s not a place anyone would look for you. It’s warm. I have a friend who knows a person who knows a real estate broker out there. I was able to rent a house.”

“In your name?”

“Mr. and Mrs. James Butler Hickock,” Susan said.

I jerked my head toward Hawk. “Who’s he,” I said, “Deadwood Dick?”

“That ain’t what the ladies call me,” Hawk said.

“Are you guys going to talk dirty all the way across the country?” Susan said.

“I was planning to,” Hawk said.

“Me too,” I said.

“Oh, good,” Susan said.

“What about your patients,” I said.

“I have two colleagues covering for me,” she said. “I’ve had a bit of time to arrange things.”

“Good we didn’t adopt that kid yet,” I said.

“Yes.”

We were on the Mass Pike now, heading west slowly in heavy traffic. The dashboard clock said 5:27. It had been dark for nearly an hour.

“What route we taking?”

Susan said, “Hawk?”

“Out 84 to Scranton. Down 81 to Knoxville. Turn right, take Route 40 across. Figure to reach Scranton tonight.”

“Route 40 replaces stretches of the old Route 66 west of Oklahoma City,” I said. “I know all the lyrics to ‘Route 66.’”

“Bobby Troup be glad to know that,” Hawk said.

We crept into the toll booths in Weston and Susan picked up a toll ticket. Then we were through them and the traffic thinned as the commuters peeled off into the western suburbs.

“You go to St. Louie, Joplin, Missouri, and Oklahoma City is mighty pretty...”

We slept in Holiday Inns. Me and Hawk in one room, Susan and Pearl next door. I felt that Pearl was getting the better of the deal. With Hawk holding my arm, I could shuffle in and out of the hotels and rest stops and Petro Stations.

“See Amarillo; Gallup, New Mexico; Flagstaff, Arizona; now don’t forget Winona; Kingman; Barstow; San Bernardino...”

Susan and Hawk took turns driving. Susan drove faster than Hawk, and maybe faster than Mario Andretti. Pearl and I sat and gazed in semicatatonia out the window at the American continent as it scrolled past. Pearl had, quite early in the trip, edged over closer to Hawk whenever he was in the back, and leaned heavily into him and with her head on his shoulder.

“She ain’t heavy, she’s my sister?” I said.

Hawk sighed.

“Be a long trip,” he said.

“Get hip to this friendly tip, when you take that California trip...”

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