He got back into the driver’s seat and waited for my decision. I flipped open the knife and noticed it was sticky along the edge. Red and sticky. Maybe it was jelly. He could be the sort to butter and jelly his toast with a pocketknife. I cut my hands free and got into the front passenger’s seat. I thought about running, but he didn’t seem threatening really. Creepy, but not threatening.
I handed him his knife back and said, “Sticky.”
“Told you I had a body in my car,” he said.
So that was it then. The only question remained was whether I was going to be a victim or accomplice. When my seat belt was snapped and my door shut, Rickard pulled my car back onto the freeway and drove south I think. We were into Ohio before I began really wondering where we were going.
“Am I going to need to put plastic in my trunk?” I asked.
He ignored me so I went back inside my head to figure out where I was mentally, physically, and emotionally. I wasn’t able to get a very good bead on the other two, but a few short minutes later, physically, I was in the parking lot of a storage facility that looked like it had been attacked by a gang with baseball bats and spray paint and then abandoned.
“Here,” Rickard said, “is where shit gets interesting.”
I couldn’t help but note that could easily mean the physical location of the storage facility, and the current point in the narration that was my life. I just had to hope his definition of interesting was on the same page as my definition of interesting.
The only storage facility I’d ever visited at that point in my life was one of those sterile, over-lit, aluminum frame places with a vaguely nautical theme that existed to house the excess furniture of wealthy couples, degenerate spouses between marriages, wealthy college students on their third colleges, and the occasional homeless person from a well-to-do but emotionally bankrupt family.
This storage facility seemed to exist only as a modular and easy to clean meth lab complex. Instead of long rows of storage cabinets like I’d seen in other facilities on television and from the expressway, this facility was a weedy concrete garden sprouting small metal sheds in even intervals. The entire complex was fenced off with razor wire and that seemed to be the sturdiest structure in the area. Rickard drove my car around to the back parking lot where we had a good view down the rows of sheds to the entrance gate and cut the engine. Outside the temperature was on its way down as the sun ended its brief appearance, replaced by the dark, rolling gray clouds that are the trademark of Detroit winters.
“This is your hideout?” I asked.
“In one of these lockers is a suitcase containing exactly 25 uncirculated packs of 100 two dollar bills that represent payment from a publisher for a book Parker Farmington wrote, with me, based on my life.”
“Why would anybody care about the life of a security guard?” I asked, regretting it immediately.
“Security guard is but one of many faces my true identity takes. More will be revealed as we grow together on our journeys.”
My WTF meter was off the charts but I suspected my own quirks were enough to creep out others so I gave him the benefit of the doubt temporarily.
“So we’re stealing the money?”
“You want Farmington, fine, I’ll help you snag the twee little buffoon, but the bills are mine.”
“Twenty-five hundred bucks seems a bit skimpy to be getting so worked up over.”
“The publisher is an odd fellow, loves the number 2, loves $2 bills, but doesn’t care anything about numismatics.”
“So he pays in cash? Whatever, right?”
“If we’re to be paired, our focus must be in sync.”
“I’m focused. I’m ready.”
“A man who cares more about the denomination of a bill than the bill itself is a fool. Are you a fool?”
I wasn’t in any mood for mind games and I kept watching Rickard, wondering how he was connected to this and why he’d be helping Parker with anything, but I was out of good options and this seemed the least awful of my bad options.
“The bills are worth more than $2500,” I said.
Rickard smiled a wide beaming smile and looked down at a plastic children’s watch with the Detroit Tigers logo on it and said, “We go in ten minutes.”
“How much are they worth?”
“Forty dollars,” he said.
“Jesus Christ,” I said. “You’re a loon.” You’d rather have $40 in cash rather than $2500 just because it doesn’t match the denomination? I love quirks but this is too much. I’m done. Jesus.”
I took seven steps and turned around to give one more last zinger when he said:
“Each.”
Oh.
I did the math in my head and came up with $100,000. Not a fortune, but enough to make a difference.
“I’m supposed to give Parker a vial of my blood,” he said, tapping his wrist and holding it up for me to see.
“Blood?”
“For the book.”
“You talk about my focus and what I need to be doing, but you gotta stop talking in riddles, man. My brain is fried. I’m an emotional grenade and I just candle handle this shit.
“The publisher specializes in rare production techniques to make boring books special. In this case, he’s adding a vial of my blood to the printing ink for the book. It’s not as creepy as you’d think and is quite common in comic books. Shit. Duck down. He’s here.”
I should have been worrying about the mental state of the guy I was hitching my future to, but for some reason the only thought running through my mind was that I still couldn’t believe that a pretentious hack like Parker Farmington had a book deal.
RICKARD HANDED me the sticky knife again.
“In case,” he said.
He reached in front of me into the glove box and took out a small revolver that looked like it had been pulled from a swamp. It was faded and crusted with gunk and looked like the only danger it posed was tetanus.
“What’s the plan?” I asked.
“We’ll go down there, do what I’m supposed to do and wait for a good time to hit him.”
There was a gusty wind whipping around outside, making it even colder than it looked. I had on a wool pea coat I’d purchased at a military surplus store and for once, my choice to look artsy paid practical dividends. I was still wearing the red Flash t-shirt I’d worn to the department party and over that I had a hooded gray Detroit State University
