The Methuselah Gene Read online

  “Yeah, I get that a lot,” I admitted, lazily. “Michael Keaton.”

  “No, I mean the guy who played Superman.”

  “You mean Batman.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Michael Keaton.”

  “That’s his name?”

  “Was. He’s lost his name, and is losing his hair, too.”

  “Just like you?” Wally sporadic laughter was beginning to annoy me. It sounded as though the chicken bone permanently stuck in his throat had meat on it. “Where ya from?”

  “Richmond, Virginia.”

  “Really? Wow.”

  “Car’s a rental, from the airport in Omaha.”

  “Yeah? Where ya headed?”

  We climbed into the old tow truck, which had little explosions of stuffing where the seat cushion foam had burst from the frayed stitching. “Here, actually,” I said. “A friend moved here recently, thought I’d surprise him.”

  “That right? Well, I sure surprised you, didn’t I? What’s yer friend’s name? I know everybody round here, but then so does everybody else.” He chuckled halfheartedly, winding down from his high of the day. I could see that he only partly understood a foreigner’s point of view, so I didn’t answer him at first, hoping the name question would lose itself. When the truck started up, after a few backfires, we headed north. It was a direction where no one had ever needed to point. “‘Course if you wanna surprise him, well . . .”

  After a too uncomfortable silence, I tried, “You know Walter Mills?”

  “No, can’t say I do. Yet. How long’s he been here?”

  “Not long.” I extended my hand slowly, reluctantly. “I’m Freddy, by the way. Freddy Wilson.”

  We shook hands. Wally’s grasp across the truck’s tight cab was loose and cool, like the blood had lost its way, and only muscle memory remained. He even pumped my hand too, before letting go suddenly, as if remembering not to be too friendly. “Glad to know ya, Freddy. I never forget a name or a face. Sorry ‘bout scarin’ ya, back there.”

  “I’m getting used to it,” I told him, sincerely this time.

  The Taurus was canted into the deepest section of the ditch, undisturbed in the warm afternoon sunlight. Wally pulled alongside, got out, and began to hook up the tow truck’s rigging to the Taurus’s undercarriage, whistling as he worked. Then he saw something, and bent down further for a closer look under the car. Flopping himself down next to it, he put his head all the way to the ground, under the bumper. Then his whistling took a familiar downward note before it stopped.

  “Uh-oh,” Wally announced, and just as I was imagining his head becoming stuck, and the car shifting to decapitate him.

  “What? What is it?”

  “Broken tie rod. Take a while to fix that. Lucky you ain’t just passin’ through.”

  I attempted to peer under the front from the driver’s side, to verify it. But I couldn’t see, and so I couldn’t tell what I was looking at, exactly. “Tie rod?”

  “Yup.” Wally got up with difficulty, dusting his hands, and returned to the tow controls. With the chains taut, he proceeded to activate the truck’s hydraulics to lift the car up. Then he climbed into the cab, gears forward, and finally edged the Taurus out, whistling a loud tuneless tune to himself that conveyed neither rhythm nor reason. When the Taurus was finally free and up into tow position, I climbed into the truck beside my new redneck friend. We drove slowly back to the station.

  “You lived here all your life?” I asked in an attempt to stop his resumed and annoying whistle.

  “Me? Well, no. I’m from Atlantic.”

  “You mean Atlanta? Atlantic City?”

  “No, I mean Atlantic, Iowa. It’s fifty miles northwest a’ here. My uncle Pritchard, who heard about Larry Johnstone wanting to sell the Shell franchise here and retire? Well, he set me onto it. That was four years ago. I was mechanic and part owner at the big Exxon station in Atlantic, but I didn’t get along with Zeke, much.”

  “Zeke,” I repeated, in amazement. “Zeke?”

  “Yup, Zeke was from Cedar Rapids, and I reckon those guys move too fast, there.” Wally clucked, giving his looping whistle, then finished off with a patented chuckle. “Me, I like ta take my time, do it right. Like bein’ my own boss, too. They say I’m kinda like Larry, the townsfolk around here do. So they get along with me pretty good. As fer Larry Johnstone, he moved to Naples, where he be takin’ it slow and easy, now.”

  “Naples, Iowa?”

  Wally looked at me oddly. “Florida. You know, heaven’s waitin’ room.”

  I nodded, visualizing my own retirement, where I’d get to stare out at the tourists and passing RVs like a bone-frozen iguana. “Or hell’s.”

  Wally boomed with laughter, briefly. “Ya didn’t tell me what ya do for a livin.’ Sell insurance, or somethin’?”

  I studied the early corn out the side window, and wondered how Jay Leno would answer the question. “No, I’m just a stand up comic, looking for new material. Corny material, you know?”

  Wally didn’t see any humor in my comment, and that left us with another uneasy silence the rest of the way back.

  At the Shell station, we pulled in alongside the empty bay. “How long, do you think?” I asked him.

  “Ta fix a tie rod? Long as it takes to find the part. You’re a long way from Omaha, but maybe you wanna call Avis there anyway?”

  I suddenly realized that he must have seen the front license plate frame, and read AVIS there. Did it also say Des Moines? I wondered. And why had I lied about that? “You saying that you, ah, can’t do it?” I asked, almost choking on the words.

  “Oh sure, I can do it. There’s a big junk yard down in Creston. Plannin’ a trip down there in the morning, anyway. Ain’t likely ta be factory-authorized, though.” He paused, scrutinizing me. “Ya not plannin’ on tellin’ yer rental company?”

  I smiled nervously. “Well, I . . . I guess I’ll wait and see what kinda job you do.” I felt awkward, wanting to cut this short. “There a bank in town?”

  “We take credit cards. Need a few extra bucks, I can spot ya, too.”

  “Thanks anyway. Post Office?”

  Wally hooked a thumb south, toward that bustling metropolis known as downtown Zion. “See it? Across from the diner? Be another little hole in the wall to you.”

  “What about a motel?”

  “Thought you were staying with your friend . . .”

  I swallowed involuntarily, lowering my head just in time to disguise it. “Well, I’m not sure exactly where Walter lives. Lost the address.”

  “No kiddin’. . . No phone number either, yet?”

  “It was with the address. Unlisted.”

  “Well, ain’t that too bad.” Wally held an odd new look in his eyes now. A steady, unblinking, and liquid gaze that was like a window to another side of him.

  “So, is there a motel?”

  “Nope. There’s a rooming house, though. Mabel’s is a ways past the post office. Look for a left, then a hundred yards or so. Gotta warn ya, nickname for the place is the ‘Black Flag.’ Could be the Heartbreak Hotel too.”

  I frowned despite myself, and went to retrieve my camera and binocular cases from the Taurus. In passing I glanced at the front plate to see if the city of Des Moines was stenciled on the plate holder. It wasn’t.

  “Hey, I’ll watch those for ya,” Wally told me, seeing my intention. “No thieves in these parts, anyways.”

  I smiled my best cheese eating grin. “May need’em, but thanks. See you tomorrow, then?”

  Wally nodded mechanically, then returned my wave as I walked toward the gravel road. But his hand wasn’t pumping anymore. It was limp and stuck, now. Wally watched me walk away with a suspicion alive in his eyes. See nothing, know nothing? Not hardly. In such a tiny town as this, I realized, you saw everything, and knew everyone. Whether you wanted to or not.

  5

  The post office lobby wasn’t much larger than most apartment hallways. There were sixty box
es in all, and Box 16 required me to bend over. I peered into the little square window. A single letter was in there, lit from behind. I strained to read the return address:

  Darryl Alexander

  PO Box 14557

  Alexandria VA 22310

  I stared in shock, blinking at it, as if at a mistake. But there was no mistake. A letter to Walter Mills from Darryl lay in Box 16.

  But why?

  Maybe the letter held nothing in it, I surmised. Maybe Darryl knew I’d be trying to ID Walter, and that it would be helpful if there was a letter in the box because then I might see who Walter is. But the return address . . . why would Darryl put his return address on the envelope? Did he want Walter to write him back? If so, that meant there was a note inside.

  What would such a note say?

  I went to the pay phone on the wall near the front door, picked it up, and then set it down again as a chill radiated out through my shoulders. A bizarre thought flashed into my mind the same instant. What if Darryl knew Walter?

  No, that was silly. Crazy. That would mean Darryl was involved in this thing, whatever it was. That would mean Tactar had . . .

  Had gotten Darryl to convince me to leave town?

  I looked back toward Box 16 as a second wave of icy apprehension flashed under the skin of my cheek. What if Darryl was ‘Cindyboo?’ Because I suddenly realized that Darryl would know how to infect my computer with a virus over the Internet. As Tactar’s computer programmer, Darryl would know how to steal and then delete all records from my office, too. So he had access and opportunity. But what about motive? New baby? Early retirement?

  It seemed ludicrous, even considering it.

  Yet passcodes would be no problem for Darryl, and weren’t always used, anyway. Plus, how difficult was it to break into AOL records? Wasn’t that impossible? Yet Darryl claimed to have done it, with help.

  With Walter Mills?

  This was nuts. I forced a chuckle from my throat at my wild train of thought, set in motion by seeing Darryl’s letter in Box 16. But my levity wouldn’t stick, and seemed unnatural. I tapped at the phone’s headset sharply with one index finger, looking out at Main Street. If Darryl was in cahoots with Walter, why would he give up Mills’ name? Wouldn’t that mean Mills didn’t exist, and that the letter in Box 16 was empty, for this reason? Was Walter Mills only a red herring to keep me out of town, or to put me off the trail?

  My chuckle blossomed into something like an open laugh. The contrivance faded again, though, as a reflected image of myself came into focus in the front window, and that image frowned in memory. How well did I know my car pool buddy, anyway? I wondered, with another wave of uneasy anxiety. I’d never met Darryl’s wife in person, and I’d never been invited over for dinner. Darryl and I had gone out for drinks on occasion, and argued over politics and Tactar S.O.P., but had Darryl ever really opened up to me on personal matters? Then there was that odd period when Darryl became inexplicably depressed after losing a company softball game against visiting Burroughs-Wellcome during a Washington biopharmaceutical convention. Heavy hitters at Eli Lilly eventually won the friendly tournament, in addition to FDA approval for their human recombinant insulin. But Darryl had remained inconsolable for a month, despite my cajoling a long weekend out of Jeffers to drive Darryl up to an Orioles game. Darryl had passed on the strip club idea after that game, but not on the drinks. Never said what else was bothering him, either, although in the middle of one drunken stupor during that summer he’d confessed that his doctor wanted to put him on the MAO inhibitor Nardil, for his depression. For several months afterward Darryl carried a bottle of St. Johns Wort with him everywhere, too, popping the capsules like they were Life Savers, unaware of possible side effects at the time.

  Still, I’d dismissed the episode then, and soon forgot about it. Because Darryl never seemed incapacitated by his temporary affliction, and soon thereafter proved he wasn’t on the way to becoming an alcoholic, either. Besides, millions of Americans suffered from mild depression that had no specific, underlying cause. And herbal antidepressants, along with SAM-e or the aminos L-Carnitine or L-Tyrosine, had become about as popular as Tylenol or Excedrin. In any event, that was that. Darryl went quickly back to his old self. And our friendship—such as it was—went back to its usual rhythm of mutual, good-natured putdowns.

  Until now.

  At this very moment, and in this present situation, I was forced to admit to myself for the first time that I don’t know Darryl well enough to swear there was absolutely no way the man could be involved in something. Maybe even some kind of coverup, setup or theft. But then, who did I know well enough at Tactar to say the same thing?

  Reluctantly, I rapped on the postmaster’s inner door. A moment later the top half of the door unlatched, and the postmaster appeared in the sectioned opening. He was a tall, skinny man with a shrunken, withered face. Perhaps a cancer survivor maintaining a strict diet. “Excuse me, can you help me?” I repeated, hoping for no practical joke this time.

  “Yes, need stamps?” The postmaster’s voice was high and strained.

  “No, I was wondering if you can tell me where I can find boxholder sixteen. I’ve lost Walt’s address.”

  “Sorry, I can’t do that.”

  The reply was matter-of-fact. Friendly, but final. I stared and smiled and . . . and then accepted defeat at last, moving away to check out the notices pinned up on the little bulletin board nearby. As the office door closed and relatched, and while I tried to decide what to do next, I stared at the thin handlebar mustache that had been penciled onto the sullen face of a kidnapper from Sioux City.

  The Slow Poke Diner across the street had the stained glass etching of a bird in its window. I wasn’t up on birds, but my camera and binoculars might come in handy as an alternate cover. The door dinged as I entered, owing to the bell bolted to the inside top of it. Since I was early and therefore the only customer, I was almost immediately approached by a middle-aged waitress wearing the name plate EDIE. She looked like I imagined an Edie might look, too: shoulder length curly red hair, and freckles, possessing a kind face with lots of laugh lines radiating from her startling green eyes.

  “Howdy, stranger,” Edie greeted me, smiling to keep those lines flexed and healthy. “Gonna do some bird watching, are ya?”

  “Yeah,” I joked. “Ever seen a yellow-bellied sapsucker around these parts?” I smiled back, but saw her laugh lines retreat a bit, while her smile froze and then frayed at the edges. Perhaps she thought I was making fun of her, which was not my intention. After taking a seat at one of half a dozen tables in the small room, I opened the menu she handed me. It was handwritten on notebook paper taped in a plastic holder. “I’ll have a western omelet and coffee, please,” I decided.

  Edie frowned at me. “That’s breakfast, honey,” she scolded. “Try the other side?”

  She hooked an index finger over the right side of the menu I held. I scanned the ‘supper’ selections, then looked up into Edie’s inquisitive green eyes. She seemed about to ask me where I was from when I said, “How about the chicken fried steak, with biscuits and gravy.”

  She scribbled my order on her pad, nodding. “And to drink?”

  “Iced tea, sweetened.” I grinned and handed the menu back to her.

  “Comes unsweetened,” she informed me, “but here’s sugar, sugar.” She touched the little chrome cage in front of me, which also held salt, pepper, Tabasco, and napkins.

  “Make that Coke, then,” I told her, visualizing my attempt to make the sugar mix into a tall glass crammed with ice cubes.

  “Bottle or can?”

  “You don’t carry the syrup for fountain drinks?” I waved one hand. “Never mind. Sorry. Bottle.”

  Edie made the note. I glanced at her name tag again, and almost asked her right then if she knew Walter Mills. But it occurred to me that I should probably be more careful than I’d been with Wally. A little less obvious, at least. If my lies got too tangled and out of hand, I might
be introduced to a hanging judge before I unraveled the Mills mystery and thereby restored my shaky reputation. Instead, I substituted, “So you get a lot of birders around here, do you, Edie?”

  Edie stared at my camera and binocular cases first. “We get a few,” she admitted. She met my eyes, doubt forming in her own. “You one of ‘em, are you?”

  Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we . . .

  “No,” I confessed, then added impulsively, “but my friend Walter Mills is. This is his stuff. He left it with me by mistake when he visited me in Richmond. I’m here to return it to him, and to see where he’s moved, now.”

  Edie’s expression never changed. The name Walter Mills hadn’t registered with her. After five long seconds she said, “What does your friend look like?”

  I dodged the question with a sneeze. “You see a lot of newcomers here, do you?” I’d added the ‘do you’ at the last moment, trying to mimic her without being noticed.

  “Not really.” She shrugged. “Let me give your order to Paul, sweetie.” She turned from me, and disappeared through a squeaky swinging door.

  I loved it. She’d called me sweetie and honey and sugar, already. And that, after we both might have appeared to be condescending. It beat the sour glares or the robotic have-a-nice-days one got in cafes around DC, unless your first name was Senator.

  When the bird clock on the wall behind me chirped five times on the hour, I began to wonder who, if anyone, would show up for dinner. If Walter really existed, did he know what I looked like? I had to assume that he did. I glanced down at my buttoned dress shirt and cotton Dockers, my brown socks and Hush Puppy ripoffs. Should I be wearing a brimmed cap? Should I dress in Levi’s and western shirt, with boots? Or maybe a fly fishing cap, with lots of little handmade lures stuck in the wide brim? And dark sunglasses, waders?