Black Water Transit

The Taconic Parkway New York State Wednesday, June 21 0930 Hours It's the first day of summer, New York State a hot clear sun and the trees all greening out under a sky as blue as Bombay gin this hard case named Pike Earl V. Pike he's doing ninety in a big navy-blue Benz 600, northbound in the cruise lane of the Taconic, listening to a tape of African drums, has it cranked up so loud the windows are vibrating it doesn't bother him because his hearing is totally shot too many years of small-arms fire popping off right next to his skull. The trees and the towns are just black-and-green blurs racing past his window, the incoming lane markers are hot yellow bars that make him think of tracer rounds. Pike is looking at his rearview mirror again, he's been checking it every few seconds, thinking very hard about a black GMC truck, windows tinted dark, hanging there in the cruise lane, rock steady, floating there like a big fat deerfly in the mirror, seven cars back. He speeds up, the Jimmy speeds up. He slows, the Jimmy slows. Earl Pike does not like this. He takes a deep breath, lets it out slow, shifts his position. Under the blue dress shirt, plates of heavy chest muscle flex as he moves. He's got five circular scars big as silver dollars stitched across his belly in an arc from right to left. He can feel them tug like fishhooks in the muscle. His blunt face is seamed and cracked, his white hair short, a military cut, and his hands on the leather-wrapped wheel are corded and thick, the forearms ropy, veined, bared to his rolled-up sleeves. He has the build of a guy who works against the weight of things, but he's older now and the wear and tear is showing. As he reaches the Gallatin exit brake lights flash on up ahead, hundreds of ruby lights against the forest green. The cars and vans back up fast and now he's down to a crawl in a mile-long caravan of cars and trucks. He pulls to the right far enough to get a view up the parkway. All he can see is an endless chain of traffic. Some feckless mutt in a fender-bender, he figures, and then he sees the exit sign for Highway 82. Maybe he can flank this tangle, go north on the back roads, get onto the Taconic somewhere farther on. A man named Jack Vermillion was going to be at the Frontenac Hotel just outside of Albany in the early afternoon. Pike had a four-hour safety zone, but he was a meticulous man, and it has been his experience that the devil who lives in the details never sleeps. Pike cuts the wheel of the Benz hard and bounces over the curb, accelerates up the ramp. As he reaches the top of the exit and comes to a stop, he sees the same black Jimmy pulling up quickly behind him, a brand-new SLT. It's up too close for him to get the plates. The windshield is filled with a reflection of leafy branches from the trees all around them. All he can see through the tint are two vague shapes. He has no particular reason to be worried, but it's an operational habit with him. He tended to notice things like that. The Jimmy has no signal on. Pike waits at the stop sign for a flatbed trailer to pass through and then signals a left turn onto 82 in the direction of Blue Stores. He watches the Jimmy's lights and sees the turn signals come on. He's also making a left. Pike thinks some more about the black Jimmy as he pulls out onto Highway 82 and crosses over the Taconic. The northbound traffic on the parkway was jammed solid as far as he could see. He moves out fast, passing the flatbed in a quarter mile. In a few minutes he's far from the sound of the highway and traveling at a steady seventy down a two-lane blacktop that curves and twists over rolling countryside. The Jimmy has also passed the flatbed truck and is now a half-mileStroud, Carsten is the author of 'Black Water Transit' with ISBN 9780385335782 and ISBN 0385335784.