Chapter 16

Patty and Shorty had moved out to their lawn chairs. Patty was staring at the view, which contained the dead Honda in the stony lot, and then the flat two acres, and then the dark belt of trees beyond, implacable, like a wall.

She looked at her watch.

She said, “Why is it when someone says between two hours and four hours it’s always nearer four hours than two hours?”

“Parkinson’s disease,” Shorty said. “Work expands to take up as much time as there is.”

“Law,” Patty said. “Not disease. That’s when you get the shakes.”

“I thought that was when you quit drinking.”

“It’s a lot of things.”

“How much longer has he got?”

Patty looked at her watch again, and did a sum in her head.

“Thirty-three minutes,” she said.

“Maybe he didn’t mean to be exactly precise.”

“He said two hours minimum and four hours maximum. That sounds exactly precise to me. Then he said, I promise I’ll get you on your way, cross my heart. With his accent.”

Shorty watched the dark space where the track came out of the woods.

He said, “Tell me about the mechanic things he told you.”

“Best part was he said he had to pay the bills. He said he was going to head out to the highway and maybe he would get lucky with a wreck. The way he said it sounded professional. It was the kind of thing only a mechanic would say. Who else would say lucky about a wreck?”

“He sounds real,” Shorty said.

“I think he’s real,” Patty said. “I think he’s coming.”

They watched the track. The sun was higher and the front rank of trees was lit up bright. Solid trunks, packed together, with more behind, with brush between, and brambles, and fallen branches propped at crazy angles.

Shorty said, “How long has he got now?”

Patty checked her watch.

“Twenty-four minutes,” she said.

Shorty said nothing.

“He promised,” she said.

They watched the track.

And he came.

They felt it before they saw it. There was gradually a deep bass presence in the air, in the distance, like a shuddering, like a tense moment in a movie, as if huge volumes of air were being bludgeoned aside. Then it resolved into the hammer-heavy throb of a giant diesel engine, and the subsonic pulse of fat tires and tremendous weight. Then they saw it drive out of the trees. A tow truck. A huge one. Industrial size. Heavy duty. It was the kind of thing that could haul an eighteen-wheeler off the highway. It was bright red. Its engine was roaring and it was grinding along in low gear.

Patty stood up and waved.

The truck bumped down off the blacktop into the lot. She had said it would be the shiniest truck you ever saw, purely from the guy’s voice alone, and she had guessed exactly right. It was as bright as a carnival float. The red paint was waxed and polished. It had pinstripes and coachlines painted in gold. There were chrome lids and levers, all polished to a blinding shine. The guy’s name was written on the side, proudly, a foot high, in a copperplate style. It was Karel, not Carol.

“Wow,” Shorty said. “This is great.”

“Sure seems to be,” Patty said.

“Finally we’re out of here.”

“If he can fix it.”

“We’re out of here either way. He doesn’t leave here without us. OK? Either he fixes our car or he gives us a ride. No matter what the assholes say. Deal?”

“Deal,” Patty said.

The truck came to a stop behind the Honda, and it settled back to a grumbling idle. Way up high the door opened and a guy used one step of the ladder and then jumped the rest of the way down. He was medium sized and wiry, bouncing on his toes, full of get-up-and-go. He had a shaved head. He looked like a photo in a war crimes trial. Like a stone-faced lieutenant behind a renegade colonel in a black beret. But he was smiling. He had a twinkle in his eye.

“Ms. Sundstrom?” he said. “Mr. Fleck?”

Patty said, “Call us Patty and Shorty.”

He said, “I’m Karel.”

She said, “Thank you so much for coming.”

He pulled an object from his pocket. It was a dirty black box the size of a deck of cards, with stubs of disconnected wires coming out. He said, “We got lucky with a wreck. Way in back of the junkyard. Same model as yours. Same color, even. Rear-ended by a gravel truck six months ago. But the front part was still OK.”

Then he smiled encouragingly and shooed them toward their door.

“Go inside and pack your stuff,” he said. “This is a two-minute job.”

“We packed already,” Patty said. “We’re good to go.”

“Really?”

“We packed early this morning. Or late last night. We wanted to be ready.”

“Have you not enjoyed your stay?”

“We’re anxious to get going. We should be somewhere else by now. That’s all. Apart from that, it’s a great place. Your friends have been very kind to us.”

“No, I’m the new guy. They’re not my friends yet. I think the last guy they used was their friend. But I think they had a falling out. So they started calling me instead. Which was great. I wanted the business. I’m an ambitious guy.”

Shorty said, “I wouldn’t want to work for them.”

“Why not?”

“I think they’re weird.”

Karel smiled.

“They’re clients on a list,” he said. “The longer the list, the better I get through the hungry months.”

“I still wouldn’t,” Shorty said.

“It’s nine quad-bikes and five cars. Guaranteed work. I can put up with a little weirdness in exchange for that.”

“Five cars?”

“As of now. Plus a ride-on lawnmower.”

“They told us one car,” Shorty said. “We saw it.”

“Which one?”

“An old pick-up truck.”

“That’s the beater they use around the property. On top of that they got Mercedes-Benz SUVs, one apiece.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Totally loaded.”

“Where are they?”

“In the barn.”

Shorty said nothing.

Patty said, “I have a question.”

Karel said, “Go ahead.”

“How long have they been here?”

“This was their first season.”

She said, “Please fix our car now.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Karel said.

He opened the Honda’s hood, with deft and practiced movements. He leaned forward and held the new black box down low, as if trying it for size. Then he backed off an inch and squinted, as if trying to get a better look. He extricated himself and stood up straight.

He said, “Actually your relay is in good shape.”

Patty said, “Then why won’t it start?”

“Must be a different problem.”

Karel put the black box with the disconnected wires back in his pocket. He shuffled around the fender and approached from a different angle.

“Try the key one more time,” he said. “I want to hear how dead it is.”

Shorty got in behind the wheel and flipped the key, on, off, on, off, click, click, click. Karel said, “OK, I get it.”

He shuffled a full 180, all the way around to the opposite fender, and he bent down again, where the battery was bolted into a skeletal cradle. He stuck his face right down and twisted his neck so he could see underneath. He brought his hand down and felt with his fingertip. Then he backed out and straightened up and stood still for a second. He glanced at the woods, and then the other way, at room twelve’s corner. He stepped out until he could see beyond it. To the barn, and the house. He came back and shooed Patty and Shorty up on their boardwalk, over toward their door, looking back all the time as he came, as if checking they were all safely out of some theoretical line of vision.

He said, quietly, “Did any of these guys work on your car?”

“Peter did,” Shorty said.

“Why?”

“He said he looked after the quad-bikes, so we asked him to take a look.”

“He doesn’t look after the quad-bikes.”

“Did he screw it up?”

Karel looked left and right.

“He cut the main positive feed coming out of the battery.”

“How? By accident?”

“Not possible by accident,” Karel said. “It’s a pure copper wire thicker than your finger. You would need a big pair of pliers with a wirecutter blade. It would take some strength. You would definitely know you were doing it. It would be an act of deliberate sabotage.”

“Peter had a pair of pliers. Yesterday morning. I saw him.”

“It’s like disconnecting the battery completely. Zero electrical activity anywhere. The vehicle is paralyzed. Which is exactly your symptom.”

“I want to see,” Shorty said.

“Me too,” Patty said.

Karel said, “Look underneath.”

They took it in turns, leaning deep over the engine bay, ducking down, twisting their necks. They saw a stiff black wire, clearly chopped in half, the ends displaced, the cut faces gleaming as fresh as new pennies. They walked back to where Karel was standing. He said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t really know these guys very well. I have to assume this was their idea of a practical joke. But it’s a really stupid one. It won’t be cheap to fix. That kind of wire is almost rigid. It’s like plumbing. You have to remove a whole bunch of other components just to get near it.”

“Don’t fix it,” Patty said. “Don’t even think about it. Just get us out of here this minute. Give us a ride right now.”

“Why?”

“It wasn’t a practical joke. They’re keeping us here. They won’t let us leave. We’re like prisoners.”

“That sounds pretty weird.”

“But it’s true. They’re stringing us along. Everything they tell us is lies.”

“Like what?”

“They said we were the first guests in this room, but I don’t think we are.”

“That’s totally weird.”

“Why?”

“There were people in this room a month ago. I know that for sure, because I had to bring a tire to a guy in room nine.”

“They said you were their good friend.”

“That was the second time I ever met them.”

“They implied they had been here at least three years.”

“That’s not right. They showed up a year and a half ago. There was a big fight over a building permit.”

“They said their phone was out yesterday. But I bet it wasn’t. They just wanted to keep us here.”

“But why would they? Money?”

“We thought of that,” Shorty said. “We were about to run out. Anyone would run out sooner or later. Then what would they do?”

“This is very weird,” Karel said.

He stood there, uncertain.

“Please give us a ride,” Patty said. “Please. We have to get out of here. We’ll pay you fifty bucks.”

“What about your car?”

“We’ll leave it here. We were going to sell it anyway.”

“It wouldn’t be worth much.”

“Exactly. We don’t care what happens to it. But we’ve got to go. We have to get out. Right now, this minute. You’re our only hope. We’re prisoners here.”

She stared at him. He nodded, slowly. Then again, taking charge. He stepped back, and looked left and right, craning over both his shoulders. He glanced at his giant truck, and the dimensions of the lot, measuring it, scoping it out, and then he glanced into the room, at the neat arrangement of luggage.

“OK,” he said. “Time to arrange a jailbreak.”

“Thank you,” Patty said.

“But first I need to ask an embarrassing question.”

“What?”

“Did you pay your bill? I would get in trouble if I helped you skip out in secret. There are innkeeper laws here.”

“We paid last night,” Shorty said. “We’re good until noon.”

“OK,” Karel said. “So let’s think for a minute. We should err on the side of caution. We should assume the worst case. We don’t know how they’re going to react to this. Therefore it’s probably better if they don’t see it happening. Agreed?”

“Much better,” Patty said.

“So you guys stay out of sight, while I turn the truck around, so it’s facing in the right direction, then you guys grab your bags and hop on board, and away we go. By which time nothing will be able to stop us. Even a Mercedes-Benz would bounce right off. OK?”

“We’re good to go,” Shorty said.

Karel looked in the door at the suitcase.

“That’s pretty big,” he said. “Can you lift it? Want me to come back and help?”

“I can do it.”

“Show me. A delay could screw this up.”

Patty went in first. She picked up the overnight bags, one in each hand, and stood out the way, so Shorty could get to the main attraction. He wrapped both fists around the new rope handle, and hauled, and the case came up six inches in the air. Karel watched from the doorway, as if judging.

He said, “How fast can you move with it?”

“Don’t worry,” Shorty said. “I won’t screw up.”

Karel looked at him, and then at Patty, she with a small bag in each hand, he with the big bag in both, the two of them standing there side by side in the space between the bed and the AC. He said, “OK, wait there, and don’t come out until I get turned around. Then Patty comes out first. She throws the small bags up in the cab and climbs in after them. Then Shorty comes out and boosts the suitcase up and Patty leans down and hauls it in, and then Shorty climbs up. Does that make sense?”

“Sounds good,” Shorty said.

“OK,” Karel said. “Be ready.”

He leaned in the doorway and grabbed the knob and closed the door on them. Through the window they saw him hustle across the dirt and climb the ladder to the cab. They heard the engine roar and saw the truck jerk into gear and move slowly away, right to left, out of sight.

They waited.

It didn’t come back.

They waited.

Nothing.

No sound, no movement. Nothing out the window except the view as before. The Honda, the lot, the grass, the wall of trees.

Shorty said, “Maybe he got hung up for a minute. Maybe the assholes came out and started talking to him.”

“He’s been gone longer than a minute,” Patty said. She put her bags down and stepped closer to the window. She craned her neck and peered out.

“Can’t see anything,” she said.

Shorty put the suitcase down. He joined her at the window. He said, “I could go check from the corner.”

“They might see you. They’re probably all standing around talking. What else can they be doing? How long does it take to turn a truck around?”

“I’ll be careful,” Shorty said.

He stepped to the door. He turned the knob and pulled. But the door was stuck. It wouldn’t move at all. He checked it was properly unlocked from the inside, and he tried the knob both ways. Nothing happened. Patty stared at him. He pulled harder. He put one meaty palm flat on the wall and hauled.

Nothing.

“They locked us in,” Patty said.

“How?”

“They must have a button in the house. Like remote control. I think they’ve been messing with it all along.”

“That’s completely crazy.”

“What isn’t here?”

They stared out the window. The Honda, the lot, the grass, the wall of trees. Nothing else.

Then the window blind motored down in front of them and the room went dark.