Lawless Sign Part Fourteen (Fiction)

Chapter 21: One Never Knows

“So what you’re saying is that you don’t have a better idea. Thanks for holding me up, Sparky. Rots of ruck with the space pirate,” Leon said, hitting his cell phone’s dump button. He glanced across the broad back seat at Emile, who did look like a drowned rat. He shifted his considerable bulk forward and projected in the direction of the driver “Where’s the nearest hotel?”

“Hotel?” Greg said in a confused tone. “I think we passed one. I could turn around.”

Leon asked “Isn’t there one ahead?”

Greg had no idea. He didn’t take Caldwell that often. This road was a four lane, mid urban boulevard lined with low slung clumps of strip malls. “I’m a little unclear as to how we’re supposed to get where we’re going. Is it downtown? Should I get on the Kennedy?”

“Nah. Don’t take the Kennedy. I want to get there,” Leon said. “Don’t we have a hair dryer in this thing?”

“Not up here,” Greg said, having quickly examined the passenger seat beside him. Driving the stretch Mercedes was difficult enough without the distractions. “I could check the glove box at the light. Or, if you want, I could check the trunk.”

Emile’s head was lolling against the window. Her short, black hair was matted, resembling a rose bud about to sprout. She was a small woman to begin with and seemed smaller still with her soaked pants suit clinging to her. At the moment, she hardly appeared awake, with one eye shut and the other tracing circles.

Cole was right, Leon Bernstein concluded. Emile was not at all ready for prime time. Promising the police that she would surrender within the hour now seemed like an overreach. His meaty paw cupped her shoulder, jostling it lightly. He said “Doctor Colbert. Doctor Colbert. Wake up.”

“You’re an evil… glob,” she mumbled. “Get your hands off me, you filthy, stinking meat thing…”

“You’re going to do what I tell you,” Leon said, trying to make eye contact with her.

“What is it this time? Where am I?” she asked, her eyes still not moving together.

Leon asked “What dress size are you?”

“It depends on what you’re talking about,” Emile said mid yawn. She turned her face away from him and pressed it into the seat. “It’s either two, four or five. What are you buying me? Is it my birthday? If it is, I want a dog. I’ll do my own damn dress shopping, thank you.”

“I think we are going to have to pour some coffee into Doctor Colbert here,” Leon said. His eyes searched the bench seat facing them. Lying across the black leather seat were his briefcase, tough book and massive black top coat. He leaned forward and snapped open the briefcase. Due to time constraints, he had forgotten to pack a thermos. He projected to Greg “There’s a Spunky Dunkers up ahead. I need you to pull in there.”

Greg scanned out the windshield, reporting “Spunky Dunkers? I’m not seeing anything.”

“Pink cursive lettering. Brown sign. It’s going to be just past the next light,” Leon reported, wagging a finger into the driver’s compartment.

Greg couldn’t discern the finger’s direction and asked “Right or left? I’m not seeing anything.”

“Right. Just past the light. Trust me,” Leon said.

“I’m trusting, I’m just not seeing. Oh wait. Never mind,” Greg said. He abruptly applied the brake and cut the wheel to the right. Then he triggered the turn signal.

“Problem?” Leon asked.

“I can’t make the turn in,” Greg said.

Leon directed “Pull up to the fire plug. Right in front of the bus stop.”

“I’m still kind of blocking the driveway,” Greg said.

“That’s fine. Turn on the hazards,” Leon said, swinging open the limo’s door and shifting to get out.

It was coming on noon and the October skies were grey and heavy with low lying clouds. Taking a deliberate step over an  ice laden puddle, Leon Bernstein gained the curb. He waddled in the direction of the glass vestibule to Spunky Dunkers donut shop some thirty-five feet away. Despite the wind and chill, Leon had left the car’s black back door wide open.  

Greg waited a moment before triggering his cell phone. “We’ve stopped at the Spunky Dunkers on Caldwell. He said he wants us to stop at a hotel, but hasn’t said where yet. And I’m not sure which police station we’re going to.”

“I’m on my way,” I told him. “Hold on.”

“On your way where?” Greg asked.

“Out the windshield,” I said. “Look up.”

Honey completed her five thousand foot silent descent and touched down in the bus lane. Her prow was pointed at the hood of the Mercedes. I popped her canopy. Greg swung out of the limo’s door. We met in steps.

I heard the first tire squeal. A horn sounded. For those who were aware of it, my sudden appearance had disrupted their routine. Most of the commuters, however, didn’t seem to notice anything more than two vehicles parked in the bus lane.

“Get in,” I said, heading to the limo’s rear left door.

Greg was about to climb back into the limo. I told him “No, the ship. My ship.”

Emile spilled out of the seat and I swept her dank body up. She chose that moment to become squirmy. I carried her off, trying to calm her with “Pete sent me.”

“Pete?”

“Pierre. Your husband.”

“Pierre? You’re not Pierre.”

“Pierre sent me.” Greg had just settled into Honey when I dumped Emile into his lap.

I climbed into Honey’s other side and we lifted off. Total elapsed time was forty-five seconds. Within the minute, we were fifteen thousand feet up. I hit the toggle to warm up the asteroid clearing device and then pulled out the scope.

Emile dangled a hand across at me. Lightly touching my mirrored blast shield, she muttered “On sait jamais.”

I had Leon Bernstein’s black pinstripe clad, bowling bowl shaped form centered in my scope. In his hands was a cardboard tray carrying six cups of coffee and a jumbo box of donuts. I tracked him as he made his plodding way from the glass door and across the parking lot.

The limo’s rear passenger door was still wide open. Black glass windows rendered the vehicle otherwise opaque. Leon would have to be  a few feet closer before I had to worry about him detecting anything amiss—about the car, at least.

The middle-aged attorney seemed otherwise oblivious to the events going on about him. A fender-bender had just occurred at the edge of the lot. Cars in the intersection had slowed. Traffic on both sides of Caldwell was halted, the lines of cars askew and straying over their lanes. At least a dozen people around him were looking straight up, perhaps registering some awareness of Honey’s sudden take off.

There was slight hesitation in Leon’s stride as he got within spitting distance of the open limo door. In an instant all 345 pounds of Leon Bernstein, his clothing, the tray and his box of donuts were carried off in a breeze, having been rendered into a cloud of fine ash by an invisible beam spat down from Honey’s asteroid remover. I set the scope aside.

For all I knew Leon Bernstein had nothing to do with the massacre on Tiamore. This wasn’t about guilt or justice or vengeance. I needed him to be gone now. Operationally it was for the best that he never came back.  

I had a plan. This was not it. As per procedure, mine, I do not fight fate.

My plan, such as it was, had gone out the window the moment I left the pyramids. I had to assume that the aspect of Cole I had met informed the others in its group of what it knew of me. And I could not predict what the two wild actors I had encountered—Countess Rezvulga’s Brain Box and Sulfur—would do. If anything, I was in the process of scaling down my objectives.

Grab Greg and his family. Salt them and Pierre Colbert and the Goodmans away through Margo Pines. Vanish. That was the new plan. I had been setting that up with Margo Pines, back while Pierre Colbert was treating my burns at the bank.  

Pierre Colbert had picked up the drift of my telephone conversation with Margo and wasn’t liking it. I sent him off to gather the others. Alone in the vault, I asked Windy for her advice. She concurred emphatically, putting better words to the reasons which I could only vaguely cite. My soul screamed that I was turning coward—losing my nerve, fleeing when I should have been fighting.

“I have no doubt that you’ve been motivated by a desire to contrive something to confront. Now your desires have won. Extraneous to that, the truth is, the people of Tiamore did not kill themselves. We know who did it. We may not know why. And we may not be able to do much about it. We have done what we can. This is as far as we can go, special one,” Windy said. “I can explain it to our human friends, if you like?”

No. If there was any explaining to do, I would do it. It was getting on time to abandon the bank as it was. Pierre, Joyce and Stan converged on the vault’s round opening. I leaned back, opened my hands and absorbed Windy. Her cloud congealed, rushing into my skin.

I sat up at the edge of the mattress. “All packed up?” I asked.

“Fairly much ready to go. From what Windy and I have put together, these zoologists and veterinarians are going to be heading to the hospital within the hour,” Pierre said. “I am at a loss as to what they might be up to, but most of them have some surgical expertise. If that means anything.”

I explained “It means that they are going to be stuck in a Voliant Wave event for at least an hour. Hopefully Cole will be stuck there with them.”

Joyce asked “Do you know where this Margo person is going to be spiriting us off to?”

“Out of the country. She’s going to move you around in corporate jets, tack you south. There are some connections she has in Central America,” I said.

Joyce said “I don’t want to be petty here. Nor ask for more than you have to give. But what are we running to?”

“I’ve seen to it that you won’t have any financial issues—or Windy has. Mrs. Pines has assured me that you should be able to get by at your destination. I did inform her that you are fleeing with the clothes on your back and she said that she would make arrangements,” I said.

Stan said “Those addresses you gave me. Where the tubes are being sent. I’m half way through, but so far all of them are self storage places.”

“You can take the lap top with you, Stan,” I said.

Stan said “I don’t want the damn lap top.”

“You said you knew where Emile was. And the girls. You said you had a lead,” Pierre added.

Joyce wrapped herself around Stan and then turned to me, saying “Look, our daughters are idiots. They really are. They’re sharing a brain between them. They think that people will just give them things because they’re pretty—because that’s worked their entire lives. And they’re never going to amount to anything other than maybe growing out of being bimbos, but they’re all Stan and I have. Do you have any kids, Captain?”

I shook my head and explained “You were all the captives of a long standing black operation conducted by an American defense contractor. The weapons deployed to massacre the people of Tiamore were commissioned by your government through this contractor. I have every reason to believe that your government’s relationship with this organization is continual and ongoing. Sadly for us, this relationship is of extremely high value. The contractor is in possession of certain fantastic alien technologies and is headed up by an immortal supernatural being. An unquestionably patriotic supernatural being who has a seventy year track record of actionable  results. My odds of success in any effort against this person and his organization are negligible. And I have probably just set off any alarms it has and triggered whatever reactions it can take. Moreover, whatever actions it wishes to take against me would be lawful and with the full active cooperation of your intelligence community. If you do not take off with Mrs. Pines, now, you will be recaptured. And I will have come across thousands of light years for nothing.”

Had I waited another seven seconds I could have spared everyone that blast of hyperactive negativity. I soon received a phone call from Greg. He was at the hospital where Leon Bernstein was about to release someone named Emile from Bio One. Greg’s subsequent calls went about as well as his driving, but we did figure it out.

Also at about the same time Honey’s sensors began detecting an emanation from the Roymarillo Building. I was able to contact Sulfur at this point and he came through with some late breaking vital information.

So twenty seconds after throwing a wet blanket over everything, I told my gathered human friends “Strike that. Whoever is doing the praying here, keep it up.”

That may have been a bit premature on my part. Nothing said I would actually be able to retrieve Emile. Up until the moment I dropped down on the donut shop, I had no idea how I was going to extract either Emile or Greg.

I was still flying blind, even at the moment I returned to the bank with Emile and Greg. Honey landed in the bank’s alley, right behind a brown delivery van. The van had shown up ten minutes before my return and was one of several operated by Nedor Services. Pierre, Joyce and Stan were stepping into its back just as I was landing.

A moment after I had the canopy open, Pierre bolted from the van. He engulfed Emile’s torso and improbably lifted her off of Greg’s lap and clear out of Honey. They stood motionless, her body perched into his torso,  arms and legs entwined about him.

“I want a dog,” Emile said.

Pierre responded “You can have it. Even a toy poodle purse dog. I don’t care.”

Emile added “And a child. We can adopt.”

“Fine,” he said, carrying her off.

A thin, tall man in head to toe brown emerged from the back door of the bank. He was Ajay Hanley, one of Mrs. Pines’ assistants. The man explained that Mrs. Pines was off with one of the other teams. Ajay himself would be leading the team positioned near the hospital and wanted to know if I had any special instructions.

Stan had left the van and was lingering a few feet away. After Hanley stepped off, he came up to me.

“The next time you see me, I’ll be with your daughters,” I told him. That may not have been a promise. I retain the option of having spoken metaphysically. “Trust Captain Meteor.”