CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Spreads”
Wednesday night.
Otto and Steve walked two blocks back to the Best Western. Otto let himself into his room from the patio never passing through the hotel lobby. The little red light on the house phone blinked rapidly.
Otto filled the ice bucket with water for Steve, sat down on the bed, opened a notepad, took out a pen and listened to his messages. First was Stella.
“Just checking to see if everything went okay. Call me.”
The front desk wanted to know if he needed anything.
Otto took off his shoes, got on the bed and pulled out the laptop. He brought up the vic files. Forty-five minutes later he learned that in ‘09 Froines had been a guest at Pawnee Grove, a think tank/campground outside Estes Park.
It rang a bell. Otto set down the file and gazed unfocused at the wall, hearing the whoosh of traffic on nearby Stout Street, faint television chatter through the walls, the clink of dishes in the corridor.
Pawnee Grove. Sen. Darling had also been a guest.
Otto glanced at the clock--nine-thirty. He was usually asleep by now.
But Otto couldn’t sleep. His mind was a roiling sea of conjecture, apprehension and anticipation. Uneasy. He thought about the last time he’d been to confession. Five years ago, was it? Just before the Libya mission. He made the sign of the cross.
He thought about the things he’d done since then. Surely he was damned.
Steve jumped on the bed jolting Otto from his reverie. He automatically ruffled the big dog’s fur, reached for the remote and turned on the TV. He ran through channels until he came to CNN. Fire fighters and pumper trucks arcing water into an Atlanta office building. An unctuous young thing appeared in front of the image.
“Firefighters believe the blaze started on the top floor. We are trying to confirm if Boogie Down Productions President and CEO Fonzelle Armstrong is still in the building. Chet?”
The image switched to the anchor desk, a middle-aged man of serious mien. “Thank you Charlotte. Please keep us updated.”
Otto hit the mute. Fonzelle Armstrong had come up from Atlanta’s hard streets to forge a career as a rapper and a record mogul, signing Los Negativos, Darius Strange, and Little Miss Money Maker. He had signed the bizarre and diminutive Korean hip-hopper Sis Boom Ba, whose eerie wail had even penetrated Otto’s skull during the long wet spring whenever he ventured into town or turned on the truck’s radio. Her noxious ditty “Boom-Ba Style” was everywhere like a jackhammer.
May I please have your atencio! My plan is reprehencio!
Won’t keep you in suspencio, BOOM-Ba BOOM-Ba BOOM-Ba!
Armstrong had since branched out into clothing and become unlikely friends with Richard Branson.
Bad juju.
Otto sensed impending crisis. He’d sensed it all his life and tried not to let it dictate his actions or personality. As the senator once told him, attitude is everything. Paranoids may be right but they were miserable. The history of mankind was one crisis after another.
But something new was in the air--something vile, gelid and unnatural. Otto felt it gathering force in his blood. His instinctive reaction was to stock up on ammo and ready meals and head for the hills. He’d been convinced mankind was on the brink of extinction since he was twelve years old. The Professor was big on Toffler, Malthus, Ehrlich. The sky was always falling. On this, Otto and the Prof saw eye to eye. The Prof installed a bomb shelter the year Reagan was elected, convinced of imminent nuclear conflagration. Otto used to sneak down with his pals to get high.
He got up, let Steve out for a tinkle, stripped off his clothes and got in bed.
Otto tossed and turned. Hornbuckle’s appearance was upsetting. Otto worked his way through a jungle of maybes and might-have-beens before finally vowing to go to confession. Get it off his chest. Come clean. Eventually he fell asleep.
***