You know you've driven too long, too
far when you vision blurs, the roadside markers wobble and that
dammed white line seems to be a revolving ball that you're running
around to chase the horizon. I had to stop and when the Bar and Grill
sign flickered up at me in the twilight I made the choice. The hot
tyres crackled on the gravel in the failing light as I parked up and
stopped dead. The sensation of just sitting and not moving was a deep
physical pleasure. My hands slumped down from the wheel and my head
tipped into the top of the it and I allowed myself just to feel
woozy. I could've slept there, there and then. I was short on
strength and normal sensation but I was also thirsty and hungry. The
five minutes of zoning out in the parking lot was good but I knew I
had to get out, stretch, breath some other air and eat. Then, once
those common drugs had started to work on me I'd get back on the
road.
The diner was run down and friendless.
There would be no food hygiene prizes or fine cuisine here. It was
chow and beer and that hard wooded utilitarian nothingness you get
when you're off the beaten track. This was there. There was a warmth
about it, some evidence of TLC in the paintwork and the pot plants
but any investment or enthusiasm had been sucked right out of the
business a long time ago. The sign said “OPEN” but there were no
other cars parked up. At the side there was a red VW and a while
panel, too far back to be customers I thought. I'd be No1, maybe
first of the day or even the week. I swung open the door, no creak,
no squeak, it was an unexpected welcome of sorts. Then came a female
voice, rising like syrup from beyond the counter and filling the
space where empty tables and chair and sauce bottle decorations were
lined up in anticipation.
“You want a sweet hot coffee or an
ice cold beer before I tell you everything that's on the menu?”
“I'll take that cold beer, any kind
you got and I'll take steak and eggs and fries, any kind you got!”
“Well we've only got one kind of any
of that so you're a very lucky man, just one that's not spoiled for
choice.”
“Choice is the great curse of the
modern world, give a man too much to choose from and he won't know
what he wants, he'll also know what it is he can't have. All that
tends to lead to bad situations and fisticuffs. I'm happy with you're
four things.”
“Oh, we do have others but I'm not
going to bother you with them, find a seat you like and I'll be out
there with you in a moment.”
“I will do that, don't you rush and
hurt yourself!”
I sat down at a table facing the window
and the road, my back to the kitchen. As I leaned back in the chair I
thought about my drive and my flight, my earnest flight to get away,
get away from biggest cyber attack in history (so they said) and the
business, my business that it had been unceremoniously destroyed
before my eyes. I was fleeing the scene of somebody else's crime but
in there I had a share of that crime. I was a third party and my
trader site was wiped, wiped as I'd just handled my biggest
transaction ever. It had all gone my way, the money was there in my
account, over, down and out, I had the money and I also had the
merchandise. Then when the hammer fell, when the Koreans or whoever
it was attacked I had a double blessing; cash and goods. It took me
about five minutes to think it through, to cement the final number,
hide then away and then run as all the other numbers tumbled. Who
would ever follow my tracks or trail. All the blank screens and
flickering lights, all the news and propaganda, all a cover for guys
like me to up and run and wait it out and cash in. Some I'm hiding in
this cafe in the wilderness at the end of the universe, beyond
signals and fibre optics ordering a medium steak. I'm running and I'm
hiding and I'm rich...somewhere.
She appeared from the kitchen gloom
with my brown bottle and a shiny glass. She put down the paper
napkin, screwed the glass onto it and poured the beer. “It'll do
you more good to look at that than it will to drink it but I know
you're gonna drink it.” “I surely am.”
Her name badge said “Rosa” in a
scripted font, she was about thirty five, still pretty, still slim,
still in the wrong place I guessed. She smiled a dark smile as the
bottle emptied. “You're food's gonna take a little time, fire up
the burners you know.” “Business bad?” “Hell no! Business is
business, we do what we can, we feed the hungry and water the
thirsty, there's always that kind here, all the runners come here.
Who you runnin' from?”
I smiled and deliberately supped on the
beer, I wanted to gulp by she was holding me in a tractor gaze. She'd
either read me like a book or she was a keen fisher of men. I tried
in some way to look like I wasn't running and tried to purge my
thoughts just in case they were running across my eyeballs like a
telecaster and she was reading every word. “No time for me to run,
I'm just exploring my business opportunities, here, there and
everywhere. This place is in the right place but I'm sure you know
that.” “Everything is in the right place.” She looked at me
hard and then looked away. “I'll fix your meal.”
Now that the motoring part of my world
had stopped moving I was suddenly swept by tired thoughts that grew
and distorted. Her I was, on the run, looking for cover and somehow
sitting on a fortune. One part in the Cayman Islands, whirring in a
green lit bank server far from the Korean's grasp and a warehouse
full of high quality prescription drugs. Locked, bolted and anonymous
on some tired industrial estate in some tired Mid-Western town. I had
seen neither thing, neither asset but somehow, thanks to a criminal
glitch they were both mine and all I had to do was lay low until the
dust settled, the machines healed themselves and the markets returned
to whatever normal is. That was a lot of hungry thinking but it felt
like I'd sorted it. It was the hundredth time maybe that I'd been
through this, tried to imagine the numbers, the sheds and the
eventual outcome. I had to stop, get control and just quietly much
through the steak that should arrive at any moment.
Rosa brought me the steak. It looked
good, it was big, that's always important when you're hungry.
“Whatever you're trying to get away from...you won't.” Rosa's
pretty face delivered the line completely straight and without
expression. I looked down from looking up at her and then back.
“Rosa, you and I do not need to have this kind of conversation. I'm
hungry and you've brought me a steak, I'm happy, please don't
complicate things with some lines of crazy talk.” She stooped down
and whispered, “they are in a the back of the shop, they're
watching, they're in the shop.” I shuddered but somehow kept it
together. “Who are they?” “The guys you're running from,
they're here.” She quickly turned and headed back to the dim
beyond.
The steak in my mouth was not so tasty.
I was trembling and sweaty. I couldn't quite cut the meat, I couldn't
quite hold the fork. I gulped some beer this time and stood up from
the table. All hell broke loose. Four back Ninja type guys leapt out
from behind the counter, hit me, downed me and pinned me to the
floor. “We follow you Jack with our many satellite and phones, we
see your deals and read your minds. Today we declare a war on all the
dealers and the brokers. We take back your cash and your hot stuff.
Write your access codes on this paper!” He grabbed my right hand
and tugged it over to the paper. “And speak into my device!” He
held up a Samsung phone to my face. “You don't and we chop you up,
good!” I did as I was told.
When I woke they were gone, my car was
gone and my codes and my short lived fortune was gone. Rosa was
standing over me. She didn't look to friendly to me. “You're the
third one today,” she said. “The other two are out back. For
fifty bucks my brother will get you all into town and drop you at the
bus station, he's out there in his truck.”
