Exit Strategy

Chapter 3

Their meeting had been unlikely at best, Roderick Malone and Austin Daley. It was a convergence of two people with little in common, lives tracking in opposite trajectories. Less than twenty-four hours after Roderick’s escape from his fourth-floor office, he sat in a bar two hundred miles away. Rebranded as Irish Mike’s, it had been one of those ubiquitous franchise joints popular twenty years ago—brass railings, silk plants, an incessantly-gurgling fountain. The subdued lighting did little to disguise the ambiance of imminent failure.

Their meeting had been unlikely The night before, a series of phone calls and three crisp one-hundred-dollar bills had netted Roderick a bottle of Vicodin. Supposedly. The pills had been delivered by a skinny, tattooed woman: “a friend of a friend,” with skin the color of death. She handed him an unlabeled orange vial—he handed her the cash.

No assurance of the contents, but, if he didn’t move around too much, the pills rendered the pain barely tolerable. The tradeoff was twofold: the fog in his head and the relentless beckon of sleep. He’d spent the night in a motel, one that had no qualms taking cash, with parking off the street in a room that smelled of Lysol. Roderick managed three hours of interrupted sleep. His decision to stop at Irish Mike’s at 2:30 p.m. on a Wednesday had been born from fatigue. He figured 2:30 was the sweet spot, after the lunch crowd, and before anyone less than ninety years old would consider dinner. The place was nearly empty. Roderick sat in a booth next to the window, his back to the wall. His eyes swept back and forth between the front door and the mostly-deserted parking lot. Next to him, resting on the worn, red vinyl seat was the vintage S & W .38 he’d taken off the security guard. Roderick had never fired a gun. Prior to yesterday he’d held those who used them for nefarious purposes in great distain. Today, he felt better having the .38 within arm’s reach.

On the booth’s scarred wooden table, a half-empty mug of light beer sweated into a cork coaster. Roderick wasn’t much of a beer drinker, particularly light beer, but at that moment, it seemed a prudent choice. A stiff drink on top of the pain killer might put him over the edge. The last thing he needed was to awaken to a local cop telling him to blow into a tube or asking him to walk a straight line. He took a sip of beer and thought back to the phone call just before the rhinos had shown up. The voice echoed in his still-tender head. He wondered, after his fall and the pain killers, if the voice he remembered sounded anything like the actual voice. Look out your window. Nearly twenty-four hours later it remained sage advice.

last Look out your window.Roderick worried about the security guard, not about the guard in particular, but if the old guy had been conscious enough to recognize him. There were the cameras, too. Possible recordings of the rhinos headed up to his office—and Roderick hobbling off with the old guy’s cane and gun. Roderick’s original plan, to disappear into the Black Hills for a few weeks seemed now implausible. Time to adapt and improvise.

As he nursed the beer, trying not to think too much about his damaged ankle, a road-weary Pontiac Sunbird rolled into Irish Mike’s. It parked at the edge of the lot, near the line of diseased-looking evergreens. The car had faded to an awful shade of pink. A young woman climbed out of the driver’s seat and moved across the parking lot with short, purposeful strides. She wore form-fitting jeans and a red sweater, loose at the neck, snug everywhere else. Her strawberry-blonde hair, pulled back in a pony tail, glistened in the sunlight. She wore aviator-style sunglasses. The young woman was deliciously curvy, and even in heels, short.

Roderick lost sight of her as she approached the entrance, then she reappeared near the deserted hostess station. She pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head—scrunched her face and squinted, probably letting her eyes adjust to the gloom of the restaurant. A waiter with a long pony tail of his own approached her. Dressed in black, he reminded Roderick of a Ninja—with a serving tray.

“Is Heather working tonight?” Roderick heard the strawberry-blonde ask. Her voice had a girlish lilt Roderick found pleasant and slightly seductive.

The waiter shook his head and said something Roderick couldn’t make out. The woman stood for a moment, looked back towards the parking lot, looked at her watch, and back to the parking lot. Then she slid her phone from the back pocket of her jeans, swiped it and stared at the screen for a moment. She raised her shoulders and took a deep breath that pleasantly expanded the fabric of the red sweater. Then she walked over to the bar area and sat with her back to Roderick, two booths away.

Before she took her seat, Austin Daley glanced at the man in the back booth. He was still handsome but starting to show some age. He wore his salt-and-pepper hair longish, brushed back from his tanned, angular face with a day’s worth of grayish stubble. Scruffy, she thought—but scruffy with a bank account. He wore a Greg Norman golf shirt the color of eggplant and the watch on his right wrist looked like a Rolex. A cane leaned on the wall next to him.

Before she took her seat, He looked her over, but Austin Daley was used to that—that’s what men did when she was around. At least he wasn’t leering—more subtle—trying not to stare. She slid into the booth and busied herself with the lunch menu. In a couple of minutes, the waiter she’d talked to about Heather came to the booth.

“What can I get ya’?” he asked, pad and pen in hand.

Austin glanced over the brightly-colored menu. “Rum and Coke,” she said, then remembering she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. “….and a baked potato.”

“Loaded?” he asked.

“Do you have broccoli?”

“Sure.”

“Can you put that on the potato?”

“Sure. Anything else?”

“Mushrooms?”

“Got that, too,” he replied. “On the potato?”

“Please.”

“No butter, cheese, or sour cream?”

Austin gave the phone another glance, then answered, “Just the broccoli and the mushrooms. A dollop of sour cream on the side.”

The waiter replied, “You got it.”

A few minutes later, he delivered her drink, and left. She heard the man in the booth behind her say, “I know that rum is the only drink suitable to mankind.”

I know that rum is the only drink suitable to mankindPhone still in hand, Austin twisted the upper half of her body to look over her left shoulder.

“Sorry,” he said, flashing a quick smile. “Whenever I hear someone order rum, it reminds me of an old song.”

His voice had a refined quality, not quite Shakespearean actor, but maybe the timbre of someone who was paid to speak.

“James Taylor,” Austin said quietly, thought a moment, then added, “Captain Jim’s Drunken Dream”.

The man in the back booth raised his eyebrows half an inch. “You are correct,” he replied in a game-show host tone. “But that was waayy before your time.”

waayy Austin, still contorted, stretching the red sweater across her torso, looked directly at him. “My mom had good taste in music.” The sting of her words registered in the stranger’s expression. “That’s probably where you heard it, too,” she added with a conciliatory smile. “On your parent’s old stereo.”

“Yes,” he replied, clearly amused. “I’m sure you’re right.”

The waiter came back and told her, “Potato will be out in a few minutes.”

She nodded then turned back to her table. Using her thumbs, she fired off a quick text:

Where r u.

Where r uRoderick studied the strawberry blonde ponytail and the sliver of red sweater that appeared over the horizon of the bench. A glimmer of an idea was beginning to form. “Are you from around here?” he asked the back of her head.

Roderick studied the strawberry Again, she turned to face him, mildly evasive and answered, “Not really.”

Roderick nodded. “Okay,” he replied, like she’d missed the test question, but that he was willing to give her partial credit.

“What about you?” she asked. “From around here?”

“No.”

“Didn’t think so.”

“Why is that?”

“I’ve seen plenty of people from around here,” she said flatly. “You don’t have the look.”

Roderick offered a quizzical expression.

“Take it as a compliment,” she said as she turned back in her seat.

“Would you care to join me? I’m certain there are plenty of complimentary things I could say about you.”