On the other hand, Huck didn’t have access to those things either, did he? In one morning, Nathan had heard people change their minds about him, just because he talked on the radio. If he could change minds with a single call, what could he do with more calls? He was already the lead story on all the news shows, but television was still portraying him as the bad guy. He had to figure out a way to switch that around. He was a decent guy who’d gotten into trouble. He’d killed only to protect himself. If he could get the opportunity to tell the truth often enough, then people might start believing him. Television commercials did the same thing all the time, didn’t they? If people could accept what a make-believe psychic said, they had to believe his story, didn’t they? It was the truth, after all. All he had to do was call every radio station in the state and tell them his story.
Shit! Cops can trace phone calls!
Sure, The Bitch said they couldn’t trace the calls to her show, but what about the others?
Maybe The Bitch was wrong and the cops were outside waiting for him right now. Maybe there were rules about breaking down the doors to houses this nice. A quick and cautious check of the street from behind the small seam in the living room drapes out front revealed just a normal, empty summer street. Not even any kids running around. He figured that in a neighborhood like this everybody went away to day camp in the summer. That’s what he used to do.
So The Bitch was right after all—at least so far. And if she was wrong and cops were still on the way, well, that wasn’t something he could worry about. But he decided to cancel his planned telephone blitz. No sense taking unnecessary chances.
So now there was the matter of distance. Walking wouldn’t do. Not only was it too slow, but the news had said something about dogs trying to sniff him down. There had to be another solution.
If I could only drive.
Wait a minute! Why couldn’t he drive? Driving Uncle Mark’s pickup truck was what had gotten him into this mess in the first place. And it wasn’t so long ago that Nathan had driven Granddad’s ancient pickup truck around the fun farm in Gainesville. Purchased for a song in 1979, the eighteen-acre spread with its squalid little ranch house and collapsing barn had served as a place for Granddad to play farmer during his retirement years. Nathan loved going out there, mostly for the well-stocked ponds, but also for the old standard-shift ’68 Ford, which he was allowed to drive anywhere on the property so long as he stayed away from the water and the buildings. Granddad had even fashioned some detachable wooden blocks so he could reach the pedals.
After Granddad died, Nathan found out that the fun farm would be his one day, but that he couldn’t visit the place anymore because some lawyer in New York had rented it to somebody who turned it into a bowling alley. Nathan didn’t even like bowling.
A year ago, Nathan had made it nearly twenty-five miles in Uncle Mark’s truck before the cop pulled him over, and that was in the middle of the day when everybody noticed a kid driving a car. He smiled as he remembered dragging Uncle Mark’s prized vehicle along fifty feet of guardrail and into a maple tree before surrendering to the police. He realized that it was this final act of defiance which likely got him thrown into Juvey, but he still thought it was funny.
If he could do his traveling at night and avoid the major roads with their roadblocks, and if he could keep the car on the road, he might just be able to drive himself right out of the country!
Like everything else in this palace, the garage was huge. Closest to the door from the kitchen was a blank space, the home for the vehicle currently in use by the family. Dry stains on the concrete floor told the story of a once-leaky transmission. In the middle slot, there stood a gleaming fiberglass speedboat with twin Evinrude motors, mounted securely on a trailer.
Huck Finn’s book would have been a lot shorter if they had one of those babies, he thought as he ran his fingers wistfully over the slick, sparkle-flecked surface of the hull. Waterskiing was one of the skills his father had promised him, way back when promises were still kept.
The item he’d hoped to find was in the third and final stall, covered by a light-olive tarp. Only the very bottom radius of the wheels showed beneath the cover. Without hesitating a beat, Nathan grabbed the front corner of the tarp and pulled it off the car.
“Wa-hoa!” he exclaimed aloud, showing the purest possible admiration. Before him rested a brand-new cherry-red BMW convertible, the coolest-looking car on the street. The keys, bearing the handwritten tag, BMW, were on a hook labeled KEYS that was mounted on the wall just to the left of the driver’s door. The other keys on the peg were labeled BOAT and RANGE ROVER. He figured they took the Rover on vacation.
The driver’s door was unlocked, so he opened it and slid into the front seat. The leather was softer even than his dad’s old lounge chair, and a hell of a lot more comfortable than the torn vinyl in Uncle Mark’s 61 pickup. His jaw was slack with wonder as he stroked the seats and gripped the steering wheel, navigating the vehicle in his mind through the turns in the highways he’d soon travel. Almost as an afterthought, he put the key in the ignition and turned it just enough to arm the electrical systems. By process of elimination, he found the buttons controlling the seat position and adjusted it all the way forward, till his feet could touch the pedals. It would be a stretch, but at least they reached.
A grin crossed Nathan’s face. This could work. It had to work. As he played the scenario in his mind, he felt his confidence grow geometrically by the second. All the ifs and maybes were of no consequence to him. He’d beaten the odds to this point, and he’d beat them the rest of the way. Whether it would work or not was irrelevant. What mattered was that he had a plan.
Denise felt like dancing. In the hours since she’d signed off the air, she’d received countless phone calls and faxes from people expressing interest one way or another in the day’s show. Each of the three network morning talk shows had asked for live interviews the next day, but only Good Morning America offered to bring her to their Washington studios via limousine, so that was the one she accepted. The rest wanted to interview her from her home, and as someone who obsessed about cleaning up for relatives, she wasn’t equipped to entertain 40 million Americans before dawn.
If Denise looked ecstatic, Enrique looked like he’d taken a beating. The show had been over for hours, yet calls kept pouring in. Denise had only spoken to the people who got past Enrique, and he had personally spoken with over three hundred people. Even his hair was disheveled, and his hair was never anything short of perfect. Per the secret pact he had made with himself at the conclusion of the show, at exactly four o’clock, he laid the receiver on its cradle, with a caller still running her mouth, and turned off his telephone, routing all calls electronically to The Bitch Phone, a glorified answering machine that was billed as a way for people to sound off during hours when the usual lines were jammed.
Relieved at last to be in a quiet room, Enrique rocked lazily back into his leather chair and crossed his feet atop the corner of his desk. He knew about Denise’s agreement to go on the tube tomorrow morning, which meant that she wouldn’t sleep the entire night. Instead, she’d spend the night preparing for her two and a half minutes in the spotlight. As her producer, sounding board and designated hand-holder, he knew that, like it or not, sleep was not in the cards for him, either.
If any rest lay in his immediate future, it would be during the next couple of hours, while Denise was basking in her recent glory. It wouldn’t be till 2:00 A. M. that her serious self-doubt would materialize, and that’s when his real work would begin. He’d never understand why she kept doing this to herself. Before drifting off for his power nap, he checked his watch. It was 5:03.