Lostport

Lostport Chapter 1

“What about women?” asked Ed Larkin. “Ever been married?”

Ben liked Larkin the best of the three. He was the straightest of the straight shooters.  Never a word of bullshit or the least bit of spin. A man in his early fifties with his hair shorn as short as it could get. Down to the wood, as Ben’s mother would have said; his real mother, not the fictional one.

“My wife passed away two years ago, Ed. Breast cancer.”

“Oh. Sorry to hear that. You did that very well, by the way.”

“Did what?”

“Looked away when you said your wife died. I was a woman, I’d be outside your door with a casserole.”

“I don’t know if I should say fuck off or thanks.”

“You can thank me when you’re safely relocated, so fuck off is fine for now. So is that why you left Tampa, Ben?  To get away from those sad memories of your late wife?”

That wasn’t it and the marshals all knew it. The man now calling himself Ben McBride was a dead man if certain people in Tampa ever found him.

The three of them kept at him with questions about his past—his new one, the one contained in a sealed envelope in Larkin’s briefcase, this cooked-up story of a kid who grew up in Pomona, California, the youngest of three. Father ran a plumbing supply business, mother taught elementary school. Two older sisters, one of whom had the adorable niece; the other had the boisterous nephews. They ran through his grades, his sports accomplishments and injuries, Mom and Dad’s extended families, his scars and the one tattoo.

College? He finished one year at Cal Tech, where he studied geology and planetary sciences, then dropped out, disappointing both himself and his parents. Worked for his dad’s company for a couple of years and saved enough money to start his own business. House renovations, mostly. Sometimes framing work, but mostly building and installing kitchen cabinets, decks, porches.

“Isn’t it time to go to the airport yet?” he said. “You guys are giving me a headache.”

“You want to know a headache?” Larkin said. “A pathologist digging slugs out of your brain and dropping them in a metal pan.”

*          *          *

Larkin made him sit in the back seat for the ride to the airport. Gunnarson and Hernandez had said their goodbyes inside.

“Is this really necessary?” Ben asked. “It’s what, a twenty-minute drive?”

“It’s not a necessity, it’s a rule. Statistically the back seat is the safest place for you to be if we get rammed or rolled.”

“Come on, Ed. No one’s ramming or rolling us. No one knows I’m here.”

“That you’re aware of.”

“It’s our last ride together.”

“All the more reason to follow the rules. That’s what keeps guys like you alive.”

Larkin got onto the Dulles access road, his eyes roaming from mirror to mirror, the rearview and both sides. “You want to go through it again?”

“Christ, no.”

“All right. You did well back at the center. Just stick to the facts and follow the rules. Know them and live by them. What did I tell you when we started? Twenty-thousand people—”