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Rational Conduct

By Kevin Tatro (US)

Chapter Six

The Importance of Friends

Chapter 6 – The Importance of Friends

The Black BMW had been parked in the left turn lane of the intersection for a good five minutes when David realized where he was.  He hadn’t moved since he spoke to his wife.   An entire generation of nightmares had passed since then.  Had it been days?   A look at the clock and he realized it had been only five minutes.  Impossible.  He had already been to the funeral with an empty casket.  He had seen his wife’s aging parents in the hospital dying from the shock.  The little kid’s bedroom had dust in it where she hadn’t been playing, and her computer keyboard looked like an antique. The other kids were out of college, still being kind to the crippled parents who had never recovered.  Five minutes?

“What the hell are you doing?” 

“Josh?  How’d you find me?”

“I work for the government you moron.  Now just what the hell are you doing?”

“I guess I’m just having a meltdown here by the side of the road.”

“Like hell you are. You’ve got every fax machine and computer in the nation spittin' out pictures of your daughter with three million dollar reward posters.  Are you crazy!  You don’t have that kind of money or….How the hell did you do that?   We can’t do that.  It’s gotta be against laws that haven’t even been invented yet.”

David started to protest.  To say he had nothing to do with it when he stopped.  Wow.  Artie was untouchable.  Could he actually have a hard-wired connection to the big guy upstairs?  He could touch everyone in the nation in less than three minutes.  Don’t even think about it.  Probably already tapped into satellites, radio, TV, everything.  Wow.  Fuckin' Artie!

“Josh… Gotta go.  Thanks for your help.”

 Artie.  What a pisser.

“Don’t worry about it.  I’ve got more money than I’ll ever know what to do with.  The Feds will never figure out how to hang this on me, and I’ll bring Johnny Cochran back from the dead to defend me if they ever catch me.  Come to think of it, I don’t think they could ever prosecute me.  I don’t even exist.  Ya know. … Wiped out my birth records, social security number, etcetera.  Cool what ya can do when you have huge money and no friends.”

“Artie… Ya know I love you.”

“What are friends for?  You’ll be able to use your phone for about another three hours before the Feds figure out how to trace it through the routing I’ve done, but you’ll need to ditch the car real soon.  Even I can’t make them think it’s a Chevy.  I’ve got a car in Manhattan that nobody can trace….well….because it technically doesn’t exist.  And even if it did, it would have full diplomatic immunity.  There’s a phone in it that even I can’t trace, and a bunch of cash under the rear seat.  Ya know simple supplies in the event of a quick getaway or angry girlfriend.  Been sittin' in the lot for four years, but gets serviced every six months.  And I’ve even got some Pop Tarts in the glove box.  You’ll need to get a new car soon to get there.  The Feds are gonna be pissed at my broadcast tricks and they are definitely out to find you.  I’d guess you only have minutes before they find you.  Take the cell phone and hoof it if you have to.”

            Fuckin' Artie.  How cool can a computer super geek be?   More words out of him then David had heard in the past seven years.  Funny, he even remembered the Pop Tarts.  David’s oldest daughter Jamie loved 'em.  Years ago she put some in his briefcase with a note he could have them for breakfast because he wouldn’t get home in time to have breakfast.  David and Artie had eaten them about five in the morning when David had run out of brainpower, and Artie had desired a moment of friendship.  The three minute discourse on the perfection of a Pop Tart had bound Artie and David.  Now Artie kept them in glove box in a getaway car.  David hoped they were the brown sugar frosted one and not the strawberry ones Jamie and Artie both preferred.

            By this time numerous cars had passed the Black BMW parked in the left turn lane at the end of the exit ramp. David didn’t know how long he had been there or how many cars had stopped behind him and then driven around him as the lights turned green.  He now became paranoid, and began to scan his memories of the cars that had passed.  Were people staring at him?  Did they call into the authorities?  Had people been listening to the radio and slowed to pass, looking into the windows to see if he was a pervert kidnapper?  Did they already call the police who were on their way to pick him up for questioning?

            A gold Pontiac was beside him now and the car was gradually passing around him to make for the green light at the intersection ahead of them.  Frozen in the newly found paranoia, David had no intention of moving.  He slowly depressed the clutch and slipped into first gear, intending to blast out of there and drive crazy if needed.  The gold Pontiac moved forward, a foot from the passenger side of David’s car.  The windshield of the Pontiac was coming into line with the BMW, with the driver coming into view through David’s peripheral vision.  Gearshift in hand and left hand clasping the steering wheel with crazy white knuckles David turned to look at the driver who was at a full stare in his direction.

The thirty something male driver was staring right at the fugitive father.  Staring right into his eyes.  Glaring.  Surely he had been listening to the radio and was now deciding what to do.   The Drivers side window of the Pontiac was now lowering with the precision of the steady electric motor that operated it.  How slow and steady it moved.  So Slow.  God.  Why can’t they make a window that just goes down!

“Open your window,” said the voice of the thirty something guy with wavy uncombed blond hair.  Waving frantically, he again encouraged the fugitive to lower the window.  The fugitive was now wanted by the FBI because they think he was Godlike and could run fax machines and TV stations from his car while chasing a bad guy kidnapper whom nobody but a twelve year old child had ever seen.  Surely a thirty-something guy with scruffy blond hair, and a so-so car couldn’t be his potential captor.

The passenger window of the BMW lowered at a slightly faster methodical slow pace similar to the Pontiac.  Likely the same Japanese motors in both of them thought the fugitive.

“You’re the guy on the radio.  The guy with the missing kid!”

The heart started moving again, and raced now.  This blond guy can’t be a threat.  What is he a, thrill seeker?  David could hear the guy at his pizza party for his kids: “I met the guy with the kidnapped kid.  Yah … He was stopped right in the middle of the road.  I talked to him.  Then he sped away super fast.  Right through the red light and into this big red truck.  Incredible flames.  No way anybody could have lived through that.”

“What can I do to help?”

What?  David hadn’t actually said a word outside his own head, and he heard it again, only louder.

“What can I do to help?  Someone took your kid.  Right.  What can I do to help?”

A Good Samaritan.  He wanted to help.  Yeah … help.

The blond guy sat there staring at David as if looking for instructions.

Without much thought, the fugitive responded.  “Give me your car.”

“OK”

No hesitation and Mr. thirty-something was out of his car leaving the door open and standing there like a doorman at an expensive hotel.  Shit.  What a country.  No wonder we kick butt on everybody else in the world.  Mr. thirty-something was pissed.  Some asshole had taken a little kid, and this guy could care less if he ever saw his car again.  Whether or not David was a fugitive or a victim, Mr. thirty-something didn’t care, and he obviously hadn’t thought about how he was getting home.

The two of them drove the fifteen minutes it took to get blond haired, thirty something, Joseph Prescott to a local bar.  He now had sixty dollars he hadn’t had fifteen minutes earlier, and he was about to watch a ball game at a sports bar, like he hadn’t done in years.  He had been a little nervous telling his wife he wouldn’t be coming right home from work, but she had been great.  Understanding his request to spend some time with his old buddies at a bar watching a game.  She had actually been happy he asked, since all he ever seemed to do was work overtime and drive the kids to ballet practice and ball games.  Joe was happy too.  He was watching a game, feeling great that he had just given up his car and later that night would have to report it stolen.  Knowing he had helped out a fugitive, and that he may never see his car again.  Knowing he may have to hold a lie to his wife for the next fifty or sixty years didn’t feel too good, but he couldn’t tell her what had really happened, and he knew that she wouldn’t take kindly to his committing perjury and insurance fraud reporting a car stolen when he had freely given it to a fugitive. 

Joe felt a bit bad about the wife issue.  She would probably have been fine with his decision, but explaining it over a phone at a bar was a bad idea.  He bought beers for a couple of guys around him, complained about the umpires last call, and really, really enjoyed a baseball game like he hadn’t in many, many years.

David felt bad about only giving Joe sixty bucks.  But that’s all he had in his pocket and Joe didn’t even want to take the sixty.  Several weeks later when an envelope came to Joe’s house with tickets to Disney, hotel rooms, and airfare in his family’s name, he told her he won them in a raffle at his shop.  He was pretty sure where they really came from. He never did meet anyone but the fugitive.  He had no idea who had hacked into his personal files located his social security numbers and bank accounts.  Heck he didn’t even know there was five grand in spending money in the checking account until several days before he stepped on the plane for vacation.

The police found the black BMW almost twenty minutes after it has been left sitting in the middle of the road, with the keys still in the ignition.  David’s call to his wife to tell her he was fine and had a different car had been routed through a neighbor.  It was too bad he couldn’t think of a way to include his wife in his quest.  She was smart, strong and sensible.  Much more sensible than he.  But she was needed at home, and would do an amazing job of taking care of the family while he did whatever it was he was trying to do.  He might do some good and he might not, but she knew he had to do something.  And although she asked him to come home, she didn’t really mean it, as she knew he would go crazy staying there, answering question after question, blowing up at everybody around him and screaming how he should be out there looking for his daughter.

David was out there all right.  He was hunting bear.  He was a tad angrier than when he was racing around scared, and now he was on a search with vengeance on his mind.  The attitude had changed when he switched cars with Joe.  It wasn’t the change of car or the hospitality of the thirty something rental car guy that did it, it was the present that came with the car. 

When Joe got out and turned over his keys to the fugitive, he first used the keys to unlock the truck and hand over a gift to his new found friend.  He had never used it himself and had meant to get rid of it when he had kids, but I guess there is a purpose for every strange turn of events and this must all make sense in the grand scheme.  Maybe it was fate.

David hadn’t looked at it but for a moment, and had been horrified when it was first presented.  But now, beneath the seat, was a weapon.  David had fired weapons as a kid.  At camp, and in the woods with friends.  But under his seat, was a gun meant solely for killing people, and there was a fair chance he was going to use it if given the chance.

Joe had bought the gun before he was married.  He had watched a movie where a guy blew away really bad guys.  The hero had confronted a rapist he caught and asked him “Do you believe in Jesus?”  When the rapist answered yes, the hero told him he was going to meet him, and the camera turned to the face of the vigilante, hero, killer who stared at the dead man and barely flinched as the gunshot resounded.

 Joe wanted to be a hero and blow away really bad guys.  Nothing like real life where the distinction between good and evil is hard to tell.  Nothing like work where David made more than he deserved, his bosses ripped him off by paying him a mere fraction of what he made for them, the salesmen ripped off buyers by convincing them to pay more than the bonds were worth, the buyers ripped off their bosses by demanding exorbitant salaries for simply making a phone call and doing what a crook told them to do, or like the buyers bosses who then ripped off eight dollar an hour factory workers by giving them so much less in their retirement accounts than they could of if the bankers didn’t take a ridiculously large cut while knowingly allowing the original sellers to rip them off. 

No, Joe didn’t meet any obviously bad guys.  No rapists, murderers, child beaters, etc, etc.  He had met a lot of bad guys in his life, but none obviously worth killing.  And the gun sat there, making him a potentially bader guy than most everyone he had ever met.  Now the handgun made a normal incompetent father a potential killer.  What a turn of events.  But Joe felt good about it.  He hadn’t thought out the purchase of the gun to start with, and now all he thought was that some guy may actually use it for good.  To kill a really bad guy.  Joe probably didn’t think about the possibility that his actions could make him a bad guy.  He probably couldn’t imagine the newspaper headlines where a local man supplies crazy psychopath father with weapon used to accidentally kill elderly couple in a Black Mercedes.  David thought of this, but hoped Joe would enjoy himself for several hours, and maybe get stone drunk before this thought came to him.  Just long enough for David to have switched cars again. Besides, David would claim temporary insanity and admit he had stolen the gun from the trunk of an old care he stole.