The Legend of Kareem (6 page)

“What have they done?”

Omar paused, gripping a pair of slacks in his hands. “Kareem did not tell you?”

“Kareem didn’t tell me much of anything. He just said to stay away, but then I got mixed up in the whole thing anyway, and now I’m here to get you. Because he wanted me to.”

“What he did not tell you was for your own safety.”

He went back to packing, his hands clumsily transferring everything out of each drawer and into the suitcase.

“Why now?” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“You’ve known whatever it is that IntelliCraft is doing, right? You’ve been hiding out here in Austin, so why haven’t you done anything before?”

“He did not want me to get involved. He said they would not hurt me as long as they thought I would stay quiet. And he said he had a plan. But now that he is gone, there is no one left. There is only me. I am the only one who knows how to stop them, and I will hide no longer. You must take me to Dallas.”

I shook my head. “I can’t do that. Your brother’s last request was that I take you somewhere safe. We go rushing into the IntelliCraft office flinging accusations, they’ll just have us arrested.”

“Then what are we to do?” he said as he emptied the last drawer and moved on to a desk.

I had to make a snap judgment. I’d only intended to warn him and then leave, but somehow I found myself saying, “I think we need to get you to Mexico.”

“I don’t have a passport anymore,” Omar said.

“Right. We’ll worry about that when we get there. The first step is to get out of Austin.”

Omar sat in the desk chair and lifted a framed picture of two young Middle Eastern boys. He smiled. “Kareem was never not in trouble. My mother, she was always so furious. She said she had one gray hair for each time he made her angry. I was too scared of her to disobey, but Kareem could make an art form of it.” He held out the picture to me. “The same day we took this photograph, Kareem later stole the neighbor’s motorcycle, and he crashed it into a building in town. I could not believe he even dared. Mother screamed for days.”

Omar didn’t seem too broken up over the news of his brother’s death. “Are you okay, Omar?”

His smile flattened. “I knew they would come for him. He also knew they would come for him, and he told so me often. Now that he is gone, they will come for me. Does not matter how little or how much I know. I cannot hide any longer.”

“That’s why we need to get you out of the country, and away from all this. Maybe there are things you can do to stop them once you’re safely at a distance.”

Omar set down the picture. “I will come with you and go to Mexico.”

A wave of relief blanketed me. “Okay, great, do you need help packing?”

“No, but I do need help leaving.”

“Sorry, what?”

“I’m not supposed to leave the home. You will have to help me escape.”

***

Omar took me into his bathroom and used a red crayon to draw the layout of the house across the mirror. Three stories, seven bedrooms. All the doors on the first floor locked from the outside. The windows on the first and second floors were also restricted. The third-floor windows were unlocked, but the house had no trellises or vines or anything convenient like that to descend.

The tricky part, he said, was that the on-site nurse lived in a bedroom on the first floor, so trying to escape from that level would be nearly impossible.

Omar did not explain to me why we had to flee, or even why he was a resident here. I’d save that conversation for another time.

He ran the faucet and splashed water over his crayon schematics, then smeared them into a circular mess.

The plan, as he described it, seemed a little unusual, but he spoke with confidence and passion about each step, and I had to believe he knew what he was doing. The step where he would jump out the window seemed ill-conceived, but he assured me he’d done it before and everything would be okay.

“Once we go down this road, there is no turning back,” he said.

After he’d explained what we should do, we walked down the hall to the first bedroom on the floor. He leaned against the door for a moment, then turned to me. “I do not want to give you the impression, based on the motorcycle story, that my brother was some kind of teenage miscreant. He was rebellious, but also terribly smart. Always first in class at school. We all knew he would be successful in business someday, no matter which avenue. He seemed destined for great wealth.”

“Okay.”

Omar nodded, then entered the room. A man with wild hair and deep wrinkles on his face sat in a chair, staring out the window. A White Widow poster hung on the wall. This band had fans everywhere, it seemed.

“Bernard,” Omar said.

This man, Bernard, did not turn to look. He grunted, then leaned in his chair to fart. Omar pursed his lips and glanced at me, and I shrugged. This was his plan, so I didn’t know what I was supposed to say.

Omar knelt next to him and whispered into Bernard’s ear for a few seconds. Bernard nodded, reached out, and patted Omar on top of the head. Seemed to be a done deal.

“Okay,” Omar said to me. “We are ready to execute the plan.”

I followed Omar and Bernard down the stairs to the living room. The two ping pong players were now eating soup at a table, and three others were reading in chairs. A man wearing blue scrubs was scribbling on a clipboard, standing next to the front door. Elevator music drifted through the air from some other room.

Omar put a hand on my arm. “It’s time.” Then he disappeared back up the stairs. The two soup-eaters stared at me.

Bernard walked to the center of the room and stood there for a few seconds, looking a little confused. He coughed, then immediately crumpled into a heap on the floor and started writhing and foaming at the mouth. When no one paid attention to him, he screamed and kicked his legs out, knocking over a lamp.

The man in scrubs dropped the clipboard and rushed to Bernard’s side. Bernard twisted, gasping, gurgling, and generally over-acting the part. But it seemed to work.

The other inhabitants of the room started jumping around, yelling for help, and in the chaos of the scene, I did my part: I walked calmly to the front door and waited.

The door opened in front of me as two men in scrubs rushed past, walkie-talkies on their hips squawking. With the door open, I walked through, not turning to glance back at the station with the glass booth. Everything was happening a little too easily, but I kept playing along anyway.

I exited the house, and Omar was standing on the street corner, grin on his face and his bags under his arms.

“Wait a second,” I said, “are you okay? Did you literally jump from the third story?”

He hesitated, then nodded.

The door opened behind us, and the woman with the wire-rimmed glasses rushed out, headed straight for us. She held a clipboard out in front of her as she hurried down the steps.

“Oh, shit,” I said.

But Omar did not run. He kept his head high and stared flat-faced at the woman in the glasses.

“Omar,” she said, “if you’re leaving, you need to sign yourself out.”

Omar accepted a pen and scribbled his name on the clipboard. Then he placed the pen in her waiting palm.

She glanced at me, then jogged back to the house without a word.

“What the hell was that?” I said. “I’m totally lost.”

“That was the perfect execution of a masterful plan,” Omar said.

“You didn’t really jump out of the window, did you? Those doors weren’t locked at all. You just walked out a back door.”

Omar wore no expression on his face. “The plan worked. There is no need to discuss it any further. What is our next step?”

I wanted to back up a bit but didn’t think Omar would oblige. “I don’t think public transportation or flying is a good idea, so we need a car. The sooner we can get on the road, the better.”

“I have a car,” Omar said. “I am not allowed to drive it, but I definitely have a car.”

CHAPTER NINE

Omar wouldn’t tell me where the car was, but he said we could walk there. I followed this curious little man down the street while he hummed to himself, occasionally tossing a glance left or right. After that scene back at the group home, I didn’t know how much to trust him. Or how much of what I was seeing and hearing to believe, either.

I watched a group of kids on the lawn at the edge of the St. Edwards campus toss a football. Made me wish I’d played sports in college, more than just Judo. Throwing other guys around on a foam mat hadn’t ever instilled the same kind of camaraderie the regular jocks seemed to enjoy.

Omar changed from humming to whistling as we walked, and I once heard him whispering, then chuckling to himself.

“Are you sure you’re okay, Omar? I know I just gave you some terrible news, and, to be honest, you don’t seem all that upset about it.”

He stopped short, spun, and leaned close to me. “I loved my brother with all my heart. After we came to this country, we were not as close as we had once been. I saw him sparingly over the last few years. Unfortunately, we did not leave things between us on a positive note.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I knew what he was doing, and I knew they would catch him and kill him for it. What could I do but love him and let him follow his own path? I made peace with his inevitable end long ago.”

“I see.”

“Am I upset? A piece of my family has been ripped away from me. I knew it would happen, but I cannot change it. I will mourn him for the rest of my days. But not today.”

I studied him closely. “And why not today?”

“Because today we have a purpose. Today we will escape, and I will continue the work Kareem has done. I will set right all of the things they have sullied.”

This man could speak in vague riddles just as well as his brother. No surprise there. But, he’d also revived his talk of confronting IntelliCraft, or at least it seemed that way. Had he forgotten I’d talked him into letting that go for now?

Or maybe he didn’t understand the difference.

We rounded a corner and he led me to a concrete parking garage. At the entrance, he took a card from his pocket and pressed it against a sensor to raise the gate. I hadn’t been sure if he’d told the truth about owning a car, but it started to seem more likely.

We hiked up the concrete ramp to the third story, then he pointed at a late-model Toyota Camry, which looked clean and well-kept. “There she is,” he said, beaming like a proud father.

He fished a set of keys from his bag and tossed them to me. The keyring had only one key, and a bottle opener emblazoned with a Custer State Park logo. I twisted the thing in my hand.

“Have you ever been to South Dakota?” he said.

“Mount Rushmore, once, when I was a kid. My mom took me.”

“The bison of the Dakotas is such a majestic animal. So strong and patient.”

Didn’t know what to say to that. As I loaded his bags into the trunk, he ran a hand along the curve of the windshield, smiling to himself.

“Omar, why do you have a car if you’re not allowed to drive it?”

Footsteps echoed on the other end of the parking level. The first other people I’d heard since we’d entered the garage.

“Kareem bought me the car.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I said as we both got in.

But before he could answer, the lights in the garage cut out, and a blast cracked the windshield. Gunshot.

“What was that?” he shouted.

I threw the car into reverse and screamed out of the spot, with a tire squeal echoing along the concrete parking garage. I fumbled for the lights at the side of the steering wheel while trying to put the car into gear.

Omar leaned forward, his head between his knees. He put his hands over his head.

“Are you okay? Omar, can you hear me?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I am okay, what is happening?”

Glenning had happened. There was no other explanation. “I think the people looking for us are closer than I thought.”

I swerved through a line of parked cars, trying to locate the exit sign. It was too dark in the garage to make out anything outside of the headlights of the car. No sign of the shooter.

I saw the ramp ahead and floored the gas to get there. When the turn came, I yanked the steering wheel, and the shrieking of the tires made me momentarily dizzy. My head pulsed.

But the ramp led down to a light, and then outside. I didn’t bother to stop at the gate. There was no attendant in the little booth to give a ticket, so I kept the accelerator down and busted through the wooden gate. It flew up onto the windshield, then crashed behind us as I turned onto the adjoining street. Omar yelped.

“We’re okay,” I said. “We’re outside.”

I raced down the street, trying to shift the manual transmission and having some trouble. Sticky gearshift, and I didn’t exactly have time to familiarize myself with it.