No Quit

Chapter 4

She took her eyes off the road and glanced over at him. His mouth hung open and a soft snore issued from inside. She hadn't even had one day of freedom before she was a prisoner again and that had been nearly a year ago. Gabe Tucker had turned out to be a little more than just another stud on the make. He had shown her a violent side that even the woman at Caulfied didn't exhibit and in spite of the occasional whacks and punches, she felt a vicarious thrill being in his company.

The robberies were repeated several times in a series of small towns, each one netting little more than enough to buy food, gas and crummy lodging, as they travelled nowhere in particular. It seemed that their whole existence was to find a place, rob it and move on to another... no goal, no purpose. Sandra sighed and watched the road again, bored and unhappy, resigned to being Gabe Tucker's whore and accomplice.

She reconsidered the feeling she attributed to his company. Since the heist at the diner, she wondered about the shot she'd heard while getting the car; up to now he had never fired the gun, never hurt anyone they robbed—not really hurt anyway. He must have been showing off. She let her eyes wander over his sleeping face and then down to his waist where the butt of the gun protruded from his jeans.

She snickered as she pictured it going off and Gabe being neutered. What did they call them... eunuchs? She could use one of them. She laughed aloud and covered her mouth, throwing him a worried glance.

******

Ted paid his fee to a multi-pierced, gelled-haired technobot at the counter of the local cyber café and settled down behind the rental computer. The town might be small but technology had spread its roots throughout the country like the cracks in a frozen lake. He logged onto the web and began a search for the car that he'd seen leave the diner.

Matching up the colour and make with the year and the partial number from the plate he'd glimpsed before the dust obscured everything was a long tedious exercise. His familiarity with searches for research material came in handy and he looked in a number of areas that normal searches might have ignored, narrowing his goal down to about sixty cars in five provinces. Not a comforting sign.

He looked up at the young kid minding the shop and quickly slipped in his personal disk that allowed him access to several different government departments, one being motor vehicle licensing. A friend from an insurance company had burned the disk for him when he complained about having to make tedious applications for his research to various archives for information, waiting months for a response if ever.

The friend had warned him that he could get into major hot water if he got caught using it but then laughed and said his company and all their competition did it all the time.

Ownership paper files appeared on screen for forty-three of the vehicles and moments later his bootleg program brought up the photo identification for each. Ted scanned the pictures closely and hissed a soft yes when he recognized the picture of the shooter in the diner. Ted's description to the police had not included the car plate information or the fact that the woman had called him, Gabe, because Ted was going to find the man himself and extract his own justice for Nadine.

Old habits died hard. He slipped in a blank disc and copied the screen info then put in his personal program again and ran a special scrubber that removed the critical information that it had loaded onto the drive. Next he printed out his information, paid the extra for the paper and time and left feeling a little revved over finding what he wanted so quickly.

Back in his hotel room, Ted read over the information he'd gathered and began plotting his next course of action.

******

Edward Wagner, entered the world on the last day of the year nineteen seventy-one, a screaming, red-faced eight pound, four ounce only child of newly married Eleanor and Donald Wagner; the fact that he'd been conceived before the contemplation of marriage mattered little to the events that dogged his early years.

Donald Wagner was an unemployed automotive worker with less than an honourable commitment to his vows, spending most of his time and what little money the family had on booze and gambling with his out of work buddies. When the landlord of the single room flat they called home posted a notice on the door from the bailiff for evacuation of the premises, Donald packed his things and complied with glee, leaving Eleanor and three year old Edward hung right out to dry.

Fourteen years later after a hard struggle providing some semblance of existence for she and her son, Eleanor died of breast cancer and Donald suddenly showed up at the funeral looking for the insurance they'd had when he was gainfully employed. When Edward saw him standing by the minister, displaying a blatantly false sense of grief, he confronted him right in the middle of the minister's oration and in front of the stunned gathering.

Taken completely by surprise, Donald cried out for help from the minister, who made futile attempts for the Lord to intervene, and was pounded to a sorry mess, finally being knocked into the open grave where he landed awkwardly, breaking his femur. Edward stared down at the man he'd never really known as his father and swore to kill him if he ever came near he or his mother's grave again.

The pallbearers extricated Donald from the grave and the minister, giving up on divine intervention, summoned the police with a call to 911. Edward remained at the grave and was detained by police who permitted him to linger long enough for an abbreviated ceremony, which finished with an additional prayer for the still living members of the family.

Charges were never laid, in spite of advice from the police, because Donald was too intimidated to have anything more to do with his son and after his brief stay in hospital, limped off into an unknown sunset sans insurance money and any further thought of knowing the young man he'd spawned. The violent reaction was the one lingering aspect that attached itself to any and all discussions about Edward.

He was deemed a short fuse when it came to personal causes; it was a reputation that followed him from as far back as public school. Bullies and baddies messed with Edward Wagner at their peril. He was released and after finding a pro bono lawyer to help settle his mother's estate, took the remaining money and enrolled in an adult writing course at a local college. He worked as many different jobs as he could both for the experience and the necessity to eat and provide a roof over his head.

The course finished with his achievement of an above average mark and a couple of letters of recommendation, despite the fact he'd been responsible for the football captain's wired jaw—a result of the footballer humiliating a young female student with lies about her sexual activities. With the letters and enough money saved from his various terms of employment, he hit the road and began his quest for atmosphere for the novel he intended to write.

After two or three years the glamour of the Hemingway-esque lifestyle he'd chosen failed to materialize and his old letters of recommendation managed to provide little more than gopher jobs on several small papers. During this period of resignation and defeat, Edward stepped into two separate situations that gave his life a new direction.

The first was the physical apprehension of a drug hungry purse-snatcher who pummeled an eighty-two year old lady to the sidewalk and then tried to run from the scene ahead of a determined Edward who'd witnessed the whole event. The police commended his actions but warned him that if the thief chose, he could press assault charges for excessive force, and that Edward should consider a little anger management.

The second occurred when two wannabe thugs began terrorizing a young woman on the subway car he was riding in. After advising them to stop, which they didn't, Edward was once again advised about his penchant for over-the-top reactions and this time had to pay a stiff fine and serve probation for a year over the reassembly of one bully's shattered arm and the necessary kidney operation for the other.

The young woman offered to help with his fine, which he refused, but asked instead for a dinner date. She declined but thanked him profusely for his intervention and vanished from his life. Everything Edward learned from these experiences became the fodder for the new theme of his intended novel and with his year's probation served he collected his meager belongings, closed his bank account and bought a bus ticket west. Edward was thirty-seven.