For Whom the Minivan Rolls (16 page)

He pretended to be distraught, but she’d done this
before, and he knew the drill. She expected a number of things from
him, beginning with a limo to pick her up and take her wherever she
wanted to go, a credit card in her name on Gary’s account, and his
presence as soon as possible.

When he arrived on the second day, everything was
the way she wanted it. The sex was amazing, and if a married couple
can’t get away and remember what their dating days were like, then
what was left of the American Dream?

She had stayed here the whole time, but they
couldn’t always be together. The pretense that she was missing had
to be preserved to save everyone a lot of embarrassment.

The very thought of it made her feel lightheaded.
She was watching the door closely now. Gary had called about 20
minutes ago from the car with the update. She should expect to see
that door open any minute, and to feel again the things she’d
dreamt about all week long.

I had spent a good portion of the past week staring
at the phone-set in my hand, and here I was, doing it again. Only
one sentence uttered by the “Mystery Woman” on the phone, and then
silence. Hell, Westbrook could have done that well. At least Gary
Beckwirth would be able to tell from that short clip if it was his
wife’s voice. That would be the “cheerful news” he had
requested—Madlyn was still alive.

I was supposed to find Madlyn Beckwirth, but she had
found me. “They” had told her I was looking for her, and she had
called me to put an end to my search, and to get me to leave her
alone. And she had done a hell of a job, too. She’d managed to get
her message across without directly answering a single question.
Madlyn should have been running for office herself, not getting
someone else elected.

Feeling stupid, I was about to hang up the phone
when a nagging little feeling in the back of my mind leapt to the
front, and instead, I hit the flash button.

“Dave?”

“Well waddaya know,” came back my editor’s voice.
“He
did
remember there was another human being waiting on
the line.”

“Jesus, I’m sorry,” I blabbered. “It
was. . .”

What was I going to tell him? That I was about to
resign from the story he’d given me—which meant I’d probably never
get any work from Dave or his paper again—but decided against it
when the woman I was supposed to locate had located me instead? In
that case, he’d hire Madlyn to write the story, and cut me out of
it entirely. She called me—it was embarrassing. Did Richard Nixon
call Bob Woodward and let him in on the whole Watergate thing?
Well, they never
did
find out who “Deep Throat”
was. . .

“Spare me the details,” Harrington said. “You were
about to explain to me why this
thousand-dollar
story you’re
working on isn’t going to be in my computer by tomorrow.”

Wait a second. That was the point, exactly. Madlyn
had called
me,
not the other way around. And that
meant. . .

“Dave,” I told him, “forget everything I was about
to tell you. You’ll have a story on your screen tomorrow, and it’s
going to be much better than you have any reason to expect.”

“Well, how hard is that to do?”

“I’ll talk to you later,” I said, and hung up on him
before he could commit another atrocity of wit. Immediately
afterward, I pressed the line button for incoming calls on the
phone and dialed *69.

“This is—your return-call service,” the automated
voice said. I held my breath. If the number was out of the area,
like MacKenzie’s, I was completely screwed, and would have to call
Harrington back and offer to wax his car by hand every week until
Leah got out of graduate school. “The number of your last incoming
call is: Six-zero-nine. . .” A sigh of relief was heard
in houses up and down my street.

So there it was, I thought, jotting down the entire
ten digit phone number on the back of yesterday’s sheet-a-day
calendar, the official Aaron Tucker Editorial Services scratch
paper. A six-zero-nine area code meant South Jersey, and this
exchange sounded like Atlantic City, which was easily a two-hour
drive away. But I couldn’t just call Madlyn back. She might flee. I
needed to see her, bring her back, show everyone that I could, in
fact, do the job I was asked, however mistakenly, to do.

The phone number I’d gotten ended in a hundred, so
it had to be a business, and, if Madlyn was holed-up in Atlantic
City, probably a hotel. I dialed the number.

“Bally’s Casino Hotel.”

It’s hard to talk when you’re holding your breath,
but I managed. “What room is Madlyn Beckwirth in?” I asked. “Don’t
connect me,” I added quickly.

“There’s no Madlyn Beckwirth registered here, sir,
and even if there were, it’s our policy not to give out room
numbers over the phone.”

“Well, I just received an abusive phone call from
your hotel, and I’d like very much to know who might have called
and threatened the lives of my children,” I scolded. The operator,
if I was lucky, wouldn’t know it was against the law to make such
calls and immediately insist the cops be brought in.

“Oh, my!” she said. “Well, I can access the phone
records to see which room called your number, sir.” Once in a
while, I get lucky.

“That’s better,” I said, and gave her my number. It
took a few seconds.

“I have it. A call made about eight minutes ago,”
said the operator proudly. Way to get around the hotel rules,
Tucker. “That’s room twenty-two-oh-three, but there’s no Madlyn
Beckwirth registered there, sir.”

“Who is registered in that room? Maybe there’s been
a mistake.”

“That room is registered to Mrs. Milton Ladowski.” I
almost dropped the phone, but managed to thank the operator, and
hung up.

I ran across the street and asked Miriam to watch
the kids until Abby got home. She said her daughter Melissa would
be glad to play with Leah. Ethan, I informed her, would do his
homework and then disappear into the land of Nintendo, emerging
only for sustenance. In other words, Miriam said it was no problem.
I was in the car before I really knew what I was doing.

Once on the road, I plugged the cell phone into the
cigarette lighter and called Abby in her office. She was on the
phone, but I told her assistant Lorraine it was important, and gave
her the cell phone number to call back. I’d barely gotten two miles
before the phone rang. I pushed the “hands-off” button.

“Hi, Sweetie,” I said.

“Is everybody okay?” The mother lion was in no mood
to be called “Sweetie.”

“As far as I know. They’re not home yet.”

“Then what are you doing in the car?”

“If you’ll shut up for a minute, I’ll tell you!” She
did, and I did.

“Wow,” Abby said when I was done.

“Yeah, wow,” I agreed. “So, can you get home a
little early? Miriam doesn’t mind watching the kids for awhile, but
you know how Ethan’s been. . . and I forgot to tell
Miriam he can’t play Nintendo, so if you find him up
there. . .”

“We’ll let it go until I get home,” she said. “I’m
out of here at four.”

“Real four, or Abby-four?”

“Don’t be funny, Aaron, or I’ll be forced to
withhold sex. And you know how cranky you get when that
happens.”

“Yeah, like you could.”

“Let me know what you find out.” And she hung up.
Probably someone walked into her office and asked her why she was
having erotic conversations on company time.

Motoring along on the Garden State Parkway, an hour
and a half from Atlantic City, it occurred to me that I might call
Westbrook and let him know what I’d found out. But since I’d gotten
such a prompt response to my similar request, I decided he could
wait.

He could wait until I found out what was on the
other end of this highway, on a peninsula where there’s gambling,
cheap buffets, high-class entertainment, and the Miss America
Pageant. And, it would seem, Madlyn Beckwirth.

Atlantic City, New Jersey is a town badly in need of
a lithium prescription. Its manic side features all the same
thrilling high spots found in Las Vegas—gambling, drinking,
all-you-can-eat buffets, elaborate productions with topless women,
prostitution—without the class, if you can believe that.

Its depressed side, which is where the actual
residents of Atlantic City live, has abject poverty, violence,
domestic desperation, and drugs. So when you’re visiting, stay
close to the water, which is manic, and away from the land, which
is depressed. Unless you happen to like abject poverty, violence,
domestic desperation, and drugs.

At about 4:15 that afternoon, I was sticking close
to the water. I had driven like a madman on the way here, forcing
myself to stay below 85 mph in the ’97 Saturn we had bought (used)
the year before. The sun wasn’t even beginning to set yet, as the
days were beginning to lengthen some, so my view of the Atlantic
Ocean was clear. I realized somewhere around Camden that I’d
forgotten to MapQuest myself into Bally’s itself, but that proved
not to be much of a problem. Once you’re in Atlantic City itself,
the casinos all make a very strong effort to ensure that you can’t
miss them, and Bally’s was no exception. There were signs about
every eight feet.

So I drove into the parking lot, which like most of
the casino lots was large and underused. On my way to the hotel’s
main lobby, I first had to pass through the casino, and since I had
all of $14 in my pocket, did my best to resist the lure of the slot
machines, blackjack tables, and $4 Diet Cokes.

I also wanted to avoid the front desk, which is
where they ask questions and alert guests to unexpected visitors,
so I adopted my patented “I-Know-Where-I’m-Going” face and marched
at an accelerated clip toward the elevators. This led to some
confusion, since there are several banks of elevators at the
casino, and they go to several separate banks of floors. I rode up
and down to the ninth floor before I figured out exactly where I
was going and how to get there.

A mere fifteen minutes later, I was on the
twenty-second floor, trying to decipher the signs posted to help
mentally challenged visitors like myself find the room they’re
looking for. These are, of course, the same rooms in which most
room searchers would actually be staying, but after an active night
in the casino with all the complimentary drinks, it can be hard to
remember where you’re going.

The carpet, although thick, was a bit squishy, and
of course red, since red appears to be the official color of
gambling casinos worldwide. I’ve never been to the casino at Monte
Carlo, but I’ll bet you it’s heavily decorated in red. That’s how
you can tell the casinos are in the black.

There were a number of things to be thankful for in
this hotel. For one, there was no enormous oil portrait of Donald
Trump, alongside similar ones of Benjamin Franklin and George
Washington, like in one of Trump’s many high-class buildings here
in Atlantic City. This hotel also had not been designed with one of
those fabulous space-wasting configurations that allows for a guard
rail about chest high overlooking a drop of several hundred feet to
the casino floor, presumably to take in all the grandeur of the
surroundings, but enough to turn anyone into Jimmy Stewart in
Vertigo.

Instead, there were aisles and aisles of nondescript
hotel room doors, and they didn’t seem to be numbered in any
recognizable pattern, or maybe it was just my level of
anticipation. My heart was racing a bit, I was sweating (despite
the air conditioning, which brought the hallway to a comfortable
Antarctic level), and my mind was reeling. All the way down here in
the car, my only thought was to get to Madlyn Beckwirth’s door. Now
I was practically there (if I could ever figure out the pattern),
and I had absolutely no idea how to proceed beyond knocking.

In my mind’s eye was a picture of me walking into
Gary Beckwirth’s living room, more or less carrying his errant wife
by the scruff of the neck like a truant child, and depositing her
on his incredibly expensive Persian rug. But first I had to
persuade the elusive Mrs. Beckwirth to return, since I had no
intention (nor, in all likelihood, ability) to force her
physically. And Madlyn had sounded on the phone very much like
someone who was not in any hurry to come home.

If I were Elvis Cole, I could just get Joe Pike to
stand guard at the door, and if Madlyn got past me and tried to run
out, he could give her a casual forearm to the forehead and we’d
both carry her (or Joe could sling her over his shoulder) to the
car and drive her home, all the while philosophizing about how a
woman’s place is with her husband and child, and how we sometimes
had to bend the rules a little to suit our own unique moral
code.

But I wasn’t Elvis Cole. I wasn’t even Nat “King”
Cole, and I’ll bet
he
would have had a better plan to get
Madlyn out of the room, even if he has been dead since the 1960s.
Anyone who could sing “The Ballad Of Cat Ballou,” “Those Lazy Hazy
Crazy Days of Summer,” and “Mona Lisa” all in one career was
clearly a man of broad and varied talents.

Lost in these deep and helpful thoughts, I flinched
a bit when I looked up and saw the number “2203” to my immediate
left. Through sheer chance, I had found the correct room. Great.
Now all I had to do was formulate a plan, convince Madlyn Beckwirth
to come with me, and then figure out how in the name of Ferdinand
Magellan to get back to the elevators. Maybe I should have stopped
at the $6.99 all-you-can-eat buffet for some bread crumbs to
drop.

I had gotten this far without a plan, so I decided
to proceed without a plan, and raised my hand to knock on the door.
But I froze. Suppose someone else was in there with Madlyn. I mean,
suppose someone else was in there, you know,
with
Madlyn. I
guess that’s why God invented knocking, so he’d have time to find
his pants. The guy with Madlyn, I mean, not God.