The Exceptions Page 6

  And regardless of the level of his current debt, even if he had been paid in full he would have done as we asked. We owned him at that point. We had become bullies who treated him with a neutral spirit as long as he always forked over his lunch money without dispute.

  The lunch money he gave us that early summer day: Shelly Jones, Lawrenceburg, Kentucky.

  SIX

  The drive was far more enjoyable without my psycho cousin. Being alone with my thoughts outranked being alone with Ettore. The journey was taken in the promised reward from my father for my attempts on the McCartneys: a late-model black Ford Mustang convertible, a car representing something I constantly wanted to forget. It did, however, move. Once I’d escaped New York and suffered through the overburdened New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland highways, entering West Virginia couldn’t have felt more welcome if the state had opened its lonely arms and pulled me to its chest. Interstate 79, which cuts a swath through the center of the state like a giant comma, might be the most abandoned road you can travel, the road cresting and descending countless mountaintops, where the speed limit was seventy miles per hour and where my speed was limited only by what the car felt comfortable delivering. The Mustang never complained.

  Even if I’d not seen the WELCOME TO KENTUCKY sign as I crossed the line, I would have known I’d arrived. Traveling west out of Huntington, West Virginia, on Interstate 64, you can sense the change in the environment, as though those who settled Kentucky looked over their shoulders and casually said to the east, “You can keep all of that.” Kentucky fields really are green, smooth and curved like the terrain of a woman’s body, blemished only by horses of random size and color. This land of horse racing and whiskey gave me the sense that people here were healthy and happy—happy supplying the raw materials for the addictions my family kept alive and well in those beneath us. And as I made my way westward, I became increasingly pleased that Melody would be able to reside here for whatever amount of time was allowed.

  I’d left New York at six in the morning on that Saturday in late June. By the time I was nearing Lawrenceburg, it was only five-thirty that afternoon. The anticipation of seeing Melody deepened in my chest as each mile drew closer, a sensation I didn’t understand then, like retrieving a long-missed lover from the airport. I knew I could essentially hide in plain sight around her. She would have no idea who I was, what I looked like, what car I might drive, no sense that any threat was present. I had no nagging duty to truly eliminate her—just the pretend one serving as my purpose for being there—and no nagging partner trying to manage the operation.

  When I finally arrived in Lawrenceburg, it seemed clear the government had actually figured a way to deposit Melody directly into the Middle of Nowhere. If there was a welcome sign on the edge of town, I’d missed it. Even the courthouse failed to have the word Lawrenceburg on it, merely the county name. What a perfect place to dump her—in a town with no identity of its own. And as I drifted through the maze of humble streets, Justice’s strategy of relocating witnesses came together as though I’d solved a clever mystery before its end: Every town was the same. If you could take a giant iron and flatten the hills of Mineral Point, you would have Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. There was little to distinguish these villages other than the natural topography of the land; their interiors were almost identical.

  I unintentionally slowed as I drove closer to Melody’s address, holding the directions in one hand and alternately steering and downshifting with the other. I wound down a side street of fresh gravel that left a cloud of white smoke in my trail, the only cloud drifting toward an empty sky. Then, with a drop of the directions to the floor of the car, there I was, at my final destination.

  Randall Gardner was a dead man.

  The building residing at the address he gave me—901 New Frankfort Road—was an aged redbrick building with the words GREENFIELD ELEMENTARY etched into a concrete cornice, green mold outlining the shaded letters, and a fungus-stained roof. I parked my car tightly between two enormous pickup trucks, lit a cigarette, filled my lungs, and cracked the window to let the smoke escape. At first glance the building still appeared to be an elementary school, right down to the basketball courts off to its side and the American flag flying in front. It wasn’t until I watched an older lady carry a full laundry basket back toward the double doors of the main entrance that I realized this place was something other than it appeared. I watched a few minutes more as two other people came and went, concluded the school had been converted into apartments or condos. That being the case, what Randall had failed to give me was an apartment number. Still dead. The place was undeniably depressing, though, residents living in a school, as though having been forced to relive childhood embarrassments and shortcomings, serving a life sentence of detention.

  So what choice did I have? I sat and waited and hoped I’d know what Melody might look like now. My glimpses of her had always been fleeting, mere seconds or minutes each time. In my mind, I had burned an indelible image, an amalgam of little bits and pieces I managed to capture over my distant views, no more accurate than a rendering drawn by a sketch artist. But it wouldn’t have taken much to throw me—shorter or longer hair, an extra twenty-five pounds, an excessive tan—and she’d walk right by me, nothing more than the strangers we should have been to each other.

  The few people who did come and go were all elderly, and I thought perhaps this place was some form of a residence for seniors, a small-town version of a retirement community for the forgotten, the local elders who arrived at the end of their childless lives. You didn’t have to go any farther than the parking lot to sense that this facility was used to tuck people away until they passed on, a building full of temporary compartments for inconvenient people.

  I suppose this place was perfect for Melody.

  But when the young woman opened the door and slowly walked out, I knew the picture in my mind was more accurate than I could have imagined. Even from my distance of a hundred feet or so, there was no doubt that I had just found Melody Grace McCartney, no matter what name showed on her mail at this address.

  I immediately snuffed my smoke and closed my window.

  She walked far enough from the doorway to stand in the evening sun, and it illuminated the latest color of her hair—bright blond—which had been styled into a cut much shorter than when I last saw her. She wore a short sundress that could’ve been confused for a camisole, and as she stood in the sun, she tugged down on the edge of the dress, trying to pull it lower, as though the purpose of the outfit was more important than her comfort in wearing it. She looked at her sandals for a second, then sort of glanced up at the sky in a curious way. She straightened her posture and slowly smoothed out her sundress with the palm of her hand and I could see her chest rise with a deep breath. I slithered down in my seat as I watched. And as she let out that breath, it appeared she exhaled all of her intentions along with it; her shoulders deflated just like her lungs. She looked over her shoulder at the front door of the school with an it’s-not-too-late reticence.

  Whatever held her back eventually set her free. She made her way to a Honda Civic parked three spots behind me, tugging on the hem of her dress the entire walk. I slid even farther down, as far as possible while still maintaining sight of her car in my side-view mirror.

  I let her pull out of her parking place and drive some distance before starting my car and casually catching up, keeping a few cars between us.

  We ended up driving for a decent duration. She made her way to Route 62 and started heading east, tracing the journey I’d just completed, in reverse. The last thing I wanted was more time cramped in the cab of my Mustang, but sitting and waiting for her return didn’t really make sense; my need was to make sure she was okay, and watching her walk in and out of her apartment wouldn’t fill the requirement. I needed to see her live.

  After twenty minutes or so, I began praying her destination was Versailles, but the town served as nothing more than a place to change directions, sh
ifting from Route 62 to Route 60, pointing us both in the direction of Lexington.

  You would think after all the years of casually watching federal agents staked out on our perimeters, I might have picked up some minor techniques for tailing someone, but I proved to be a lousy student. I found it quite a challenge to keep Melody’s car in view while remaining far enough behind that I wasn’t in waving distance every time she looked in her rearview mirror. Worse, I hadn’t planned well: I was down to a single cigarette and not a drop of fluid to quench my burgeoning thirst.

  And then came another unexpected turn. On the outskirts of Versailles, Melody pulled into a Chevron station, parked in front of one of the pumps in the middle of three aisles. Once we were on the road, here was something I’d not considered: stopping. I drifted into the parking lot of the neighboring Arby’s and watched her get out of her car and walk into the convenience store of the gas station—except it was more of a nervous jog. Though the air that day was very warm and moist, she moved at a pace more reserved for days with wind chills.

  I sat in my car, tapping my fingers on the steering wheel and staring at her Civic. A strange pull came upon me and I felt a gulp in my throat I could not swallow down. Before I could make sense of my actions, I threw the car in gear and slowly made my way to the Chevron, slithered around the lines of gas pumps until I’d positioned myself the perfect angle and distance from Melody’s car. I got out and played with my gas cap a little—the most I could really do since I’d filled my tank outside Lawrenceburg just before finding Melody’s address. I fiddled with the pump for a moment before the knot in my stomach and the lump in my throat returned and the drug of adrenaline began flooding my veins again. I watched the door of the convenience store, and without understanding the implication of my amateurish bravado, I was getting closer to it with every step.

  I opened the door, hit sideways by a stench of stale coffee and onions, greeted with a nod from the clerk behind the counter, a scrawny guy who sported a thinning mullet and so many earrings across his face that it looked as though he’d been blasted with buckshot. He and I were alone in the store; Melody had vanished.

  I quickly looked over my shoulder to make sure her Civic remained at the pump, then started walking around the store trying to figure out what to do with all the adrenaline, when it crystallized: I looked toward the pumps again, checking for any vehicle that seemed vaguely official, that maybe she had spotted me in her rearview, that she’d been supplied year after year with a cache of photos of our family and crew along with the statement If you see any of these guys then page us, that she called the feds on her cell, that they told her, Keep driving, that this was the reason she drove so far, that they would be waiting at the Chevron in Versailles. When you get to the station, Melody, run inside and we will be waiting for you.

  As I assembled these thoughts—and the respective dread—I went to the refrigerated section and pulled out a massive bottle of water and walked around as though the biker mags and lottery tickets were really what had drawn me to this place.

  I took my water to the counter and asked Mullet if he’d seen a girl come in.

  “Girl?” Mullet’s muted response came with a glance to a small television below the counter where I could hear a crowd cheering. “Reds suck.”

  “Not a girl. A young woman.” I nodded to the case behind him. “Four packs of Marlboros, quickly.”

  Mullet mumbled as he placed the packs on the counter next to my water. “Woman?”

  I started eyeing the store. “Where’s the back door?”

  That snapped Mullet to attention. “Come again?”

  My first thought was, That was how they got her out. My second thought was, That is how I’m getting out, too.

  Mullet continued, “Why do you need to know where the back—”

  “Listen, bumpkin, did a girl just come in here and magically disappear? Is it really possible, as the sole operator of this store, that you managed to miss a customer both arriving and departing?”

  “I don’t think I saw—I don’t really know—”

  “I don’t I don’t I don’t. Listen, you friggin’ hick, I’m only gonna ask you once more: Did you—”

  My rant was squelched out by a piercing screech of hinges, then a quick slam of a door from an overly tightened spring. I looked up, and straight over Mullet’s head in the dim reflection of the window behind the counter I watched Melody step out of the restroom.

  I stared at her image in the glass, said to Mullet with quiet anger, “How ’bout now. You see her now?”

  She paused in front of the Hostess display, picked up a package of orange cupcakes and studied it as though looking for an expiration date. I always wondered who ate those things. My senses sharpened; I became so aware.

  I could hear the gentle crinkling of the cellophane as she turned over each package.

  I could see the shape of her face change as she licked her teeth.

  I could feel the sweat arrive in my palms.

  Mullet struggled to glance at the television out of the corner of his eye like a seventh-grader cheating off a neighbor’s test. I snapped my fingers a few times and whispered, “What do I owe you?”

  As Mullet punched the keys on the register, Melody meandered toward the counter, glancing at various food products on her way. Mullet tossed a number my direction and I missed it. I couldn’t take my eyes off the reflection in the glass. Melody reached into a plastic barrel filled with ice and sodas and pulled out a Diet Coke, shook a small cube off the top of the can, and ran the cold residue between her fingers until it was dry.

  I tried again. “What do I owe you?”

  Mullet leaned forward and curled his hook-filled lip. “I’m only gonna tell you once more.”

  I think he did tell me again. Who knows; my attention was elsewhere.

  Melody slid right behind me and the front of air she shoved my way was laced with sweet flowers. It came and went within two or three seconds.

  Then Mullet: “How about a third time, partner. Easier if I write it down?”

  I slowly reached behind me and lifted my wallet from my jeans, so near to Melody that I could have opened my hand with the fantasy that she would put hers in mine; it was the closest I’d ever been to her in my life. At that moment, I didn’t try to comprehend why the thought of holding her hand went through my head, but it was distinct and undeniable.

  I pulled out some bills and tossed them to Mullet. As he gave me my change, he smiled and said, “Thank you, sir, for your kind patronage of our country convenience store and gas station!”

  I walked from the store head down, facing away from Melody, and returned to my car. I tossed the smokes and water on the passenger seat and slid down on the driver’s side as I spied her through the window of the store, handing over her orange cupcakes, watching her smile as she had casual conversation with Mullet. I made sure, too, that Mullet wasn’t pointing in my direction, with a that guy was looking for you demeanor. I watched her walk out and the urgency in her pace was gone. She drifted lightly, the hem of her dress bouncing in time with each step.

  When Melody returned to the pumps, she swiped her card into the reader and began filling her tank. Remember the threshold, the next step? It came upon me here:

  I took a huge swig of water and exited my car and began to top off my already full tank. I stood at the end of the Mustang, this time in clear view of Melody, making sure I did not stare at her directly. Once she set the lock on the pump handle, she crossed her arms and closed her eyes as a warm breeze blew over her. After she let out a sigh, her eyes began to drift around the station. She glanced at the couple arguing over a map in a late-model Lincoln. She stared a moment at the farmer boy standing beside his father’s muddy pickup. She watched the door of the convenience store, as if expecting a close friend or relative to emerge at any second.

  Then, with a slow turn, she faced me. Her eyes landed directly on my face, and no amount of strength, courage, or common sense could preven
t the magnetic pull that forced me to twist my face and body so that we were staring directly at each other. Eye to eye. I could feel the corners of my mouth twist into a weak smile as we looked at each other.

  And then: nothing.

  Melody did not respond to my smile. She didn’t even respond to the fact that there was some stimulus in her field of view. Her eyes drifted on to the next person, an overweight businessman struggling to keep his tie from getting dirty as he filled his front tire with air. I meant nothing to her, just a patron of a gas station. There was no outward opinion of my appearance or who I might be, no implication that I was any more worth talking to than the farmer boy or the overweight businessman. There was definitely no love at first sight. I was nothing. Nobody. A stranger.

  If only she knew.

  Stocked with nicotine and water, I tailed her twenty-five minutes to what was thankfully her final destination: the city center of Lexington. We settled in a parking garage in the downtown area adjacent to the convention center, a part of town that appeared renovated and expanded over the last two decades, based on the designs of the buildings. It looked like any city’s financial center—like all the ones I’d passed on the way from New York, really—but with its integrated parks and walkways, the design came across as part of a grander plan as opposed to a reaction to growth and sprawl.