He said: ‘You’re the boss. Where do I start looking?’
Ellis said: ‘He’s going west. He had an onward ticket to San Francisco. You know his car. Assume that’s where he’s going. There’s only one road he’s likely to be on. All you have to do is follow it.’
So Sherman did. But at the same time, Sherman made other precautions.
And when, the next time he called the number he had for Ellis, he heard only the long ‘bleeeee’ of a disconnected line, he put those precautions into action.
He had not been surprised. Whatever Ellis had said, things had got too hot. MIC were gamblers, and like any good gamblers, they had decided to quit while they were ahead.
Sherman remembered what, long before he had thumped him, his father had once said to him when drunk: ‘Life is hell, most people are bastards and everything is bullshit.’
‘Disavowed,’ he said to himself. ‘Hell, bastards, bullshit.’ It remained to be seen whether, to extend the figure of speech, he was one of the losses that MIC would be interested in cutting; or whether they were relying on the lumbering local law to do that for them. He didn’t intend to find out.
Don’t assume anything, was what he thought. Options open. Keep some outs.
His iPod was working again. It was playing REO Speedwagon. He thought of Davidoff, mispronouncing the name, and felt an unaccustomed anger. Davidoff had been set-dressing for these creeps, safe at their desks in front of their computer screens, totting up the numbers, playing the percentages.
Sherman dropped the car, picked up another one across town, and headed as far and as fast as he could out of this story: making time, making distance, making – as he always had – his own luck.
Alex stopped in a Motel 6, sometime after dark, and called Carey. It was past eleven, but he didn’t want to go to sleep without hearing another human voice. The phone rang once, twice, three times, and she answered.
‘Care?’
‘Hey, baby.’ Her voice was croaky. ‘It’s late. Where you been?’ she said. She said something in the background he couldn’t hear.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. Just talking to someone. Wait up.’ There was a readjustment. He pictured her wriggling to lodge the phone in the crook of her neck. ‘’Sbetter. Go on. What’s up?’
Alex was leaning against the car. Now he could hear her voice, his earlier panic seemed to calm down. That guy was long gone. Carey’s voice was sleepy. He pictured her in the pyjamas she wore when she slept alone, with the phone crooked into her neck, half paying attention to the television, or yanking open the fridge, or making gestures at him across the room while she talked.
‘I’m in America, Carey.’
‘You’re what?’ Carey spoke the second word in italics.
‘I’m here. I’m in America.’
She seemed to take a moment to take it in.
‘That’s great. I mean – where are you? What? You’re in San Francisco?’
‘No, not quite. I’m more like – I’m in Albuquerque.’
‘Albuquerque?’
‘Well, I was. Few hours back.’
‘What are you doing there?’
‘I’m coming to see you.’
‘Oh my God!’ She sounded like an actress in a teen movie, he thought, the open vowel on the final word like gaahd. Then she said it again, catching herself – that was one of the things he loved about her – sounding like an actress in a teen movie and making herself therefore sound more like one.
‘Oh my Gaahd!’ she said. She was spontaneous the first time. Her voice sounded now like a smile without the eyes going. It was disconcerting.
‘I thought I’d surprise you,’ he muttered.
Now a peal of laughter, unforced. ‘You have surprised me, crazy English boy. Oh my Lord, that is so romantic. And so -’ her voice got muffled momentarily – ‘sorry – shut up – not you – so…’ She had lost her thread.
‘Shit,’ she said. ‘What. I mean, romantic. But stupid. Seriously. What are you doing in Albuquerque?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said truthfully. ‘I was going to surprise you, but I got this flight to Atlanta -’
‘Atlanta?’
‘Courier. It was a hub. It was in the right general direction.’
‘Courier?’
‘The flight was really, really cheap. I just needed the onward ticket, and then I missed the connecting flight, so now I’m in a car.’
‘You drove from Atlanta to Albuquerque?’
‘I always wanted to go on a road trip.’
‘You missed the flight is what. This is such a trip. So you coming to San Francisco?’ Her voice sounded suddenly less sure, a little knocked off balance.
‘I had this idea – you ever been to Vegas?’
Carey laughed. ‘You said it like Vegas, without the “Las”. What a player! Soon you’ll be calling San Francisco “Frisco” and we’ll know you’re from out of town.’ Alex felt a little deflated. ‘I’m sorry, baby. You can pronounce Albuquerque Al-ba-kway-kway and you’ll be fine by me. Yeah, I’ve been to Vegas. My folks drove me up there once when I was like thirteen or something to watch them gamble -’ Carey always called her foster-parents her ‘folks’, never her mom and dad – ‘but I haven’t been since. Don’t think I did much gambling.’
‘You want to go? Meet me there?’
‘Hell yee-ah. What made you think of that? Going to get us married in the Elvis chapel?’ She laughed. Alex didn’t. He hadn’t actually thought of the Elvis chapel. Well, actually, he nearly had. Like with the ring, he wasn’t someone who was very good at feeling his way into whether something was so naff it was cool or just naff. And now there was this awkward dead drop in the conversation. She’d been joking and he hadn’t responded with the proper levity and now – oh God – it was like there was this fucking great dead badger sitting between them.
He had to say something. ‘Of course,’ he said, failing to prevent his voice from sounding serious.
In their relationship there was something, he realised, that caused them to strike each other at near right angles. They didn’t quite get each other; from his point of view, it felt like he was always playing catch-up a little. She was hard to read, but he thought that was what made it work. They missed each other that little bit, and then when they caught up they found the misunderstanding funny. He knew he amused her: otherwise she wouldn’t spend all that time giggling at him. And she amused him, he thought – though the more he thought about it the more he realised that probably he loved her more than he found her funny.
There. An unevenness. An unevenness he could live with.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘In the Elvis chapel. Just like Chris Evans and Billie.’
‘Who?’ she said.
‘Doesn’t matter. Just – can you get the weekend off?’
‘Sure. Yeah. I mean. Yeah.’
‘Well, how long will it take you to get there? I don’t – I mean, I think I’m about a day away.’
‘A day? From New Mexico? That’s a long day.’
‘It’s all I’ve been doing for days. Thinking about stuff.’
‘Hold up,’ Carey said. ‘Just moving into the other room. I’m with someone.’
She covered the handset and he couldn’t hear anything for a moment or two, then he heard a door close.
‘Who are you with?’
‘Nobody,’ she said. ‘Just a friend from work. So, Vegas. Let’s do it. I’ve got air miles. I think they’ve got flights for like a hundred bucks. Wow. It’s hard to imagine you in the States. You’re so… British.’
She didn’t sound overexcited. Alex, for an instant, felt that flatness he had felt at the start of his journey. Not lonely, just numb. Why did anybody do anything?
‘So, er…’ He couldn’t think of anything to say.
‘OK, sweetie, let’s talk tomorrow. I’ll see about flights, yeah? Vegas. I like it. Let’s do it. Two day’s time? Where are you staying?’