Chapter 12

Exit Strategy

by A.J. Kohlhepp

I stared at my phone in disbelief. Was she really alive, and was that really her voice, and did she really have the hots for the elusive Liberian scientist? And what about the gunshot?

All of a sudden, the half bath in the safe house felt a bit cramped.

“You okay, kiddo,” called my dad.

“Fine, Dad,” I replied as breezily as I could. “You know about women and bathrooms.”

Pocketing my phone, I flushed the unused toilet, ran some water in the sink, and dried my hands hastily on a Laura Ashley hand towel that was probably the height of homemaker fashion when this house was set up during the Cold War.

“Living as a bachelor – I mean widower – all these years, I kind of forget,” he laughed, seated comfortably in an armchair near the gas fireplace. Somehow the gunplay on the other side of the house had not impacted the den. I guess that “the company” was pretty good at integrating bullet-proof firewalls into structures meant to shelter their inhabitants.

“Do you miss mom as much as I do,” I probed, hoping to confirm the electronic tidings I had just received.

“Once we made the decision –“

“Decision,” I interjected.

“The decision to take her off life support – after the accident,” he continued. “I found it easier just to move ahead with life, rather than wading about in death.”

Funny, I reflected. You don’t seem to have any troubling wading in, or bringing about, the deaths of others. And you didn’t even contact your living daughter until it became professionally expedient… .

“I think I need a drink,” I exclaimed. “I wonder where that pinot – “

“Already cleaned up,” he said breezily. “But there’s a bottle of single malt in the Audi. Why don’t you grab it and we can toast your professional success?” Dad beamed in the direction of the basement door, with Ollie’s body a staircase below.

Was he joking? Was he so coarsened by years of “professional success” that a fresh corpse a flight of stairs away was stimulus for libation rather than revulsion?

“Great idea,” I brightened, playing along as best I could. The “safe” house in Tarrytown was feeling about as secure as a bad boast at the Tournament of Champions.

“Keys,” I inquired, flashing back to an inquiry I had deployed frequently while on break from St. Exodus.

My dad flipped them to me with the good-natured warning he had offered every time I had taken his car as a teen: “Don’t use up all the gas having fun.”

“Don’t worry dad. Not much chance of that,” I laughed, feeling sicker by the minute. “Hey, can I borrow your lighter?”

This was a guess, but it turned out to be a good one. My dad cocked an eyebrow as he reached into his breast pocket, taking out the monogramed Alfred Dunhill he still carried to ignite contraband cigars on special occasions.

“Didn’t know you smoked, kiddo,” a hint of paternal concern creeping into his voice.

“Holidays, funerals, you know the drill. Never close to a tournament,” I assured him. “I’m a pack-a-year girl. And that pack is in a kitchen drawer – just in case.”

Keys in one hand and lighter in the other, I headed toward the garage. “Hurry back now, Hayden,” he called behind me. “We have lots of catching up to do.”

Striding into the kitchen, I slowed a bit to negotiate the wreckage. The place looked like the set of “Mr & Mrs Smith” just before the hottest scene. But my very own Brad Pitt lay dead in the basement. And I had too much meat on my bones to squeeze into any of Angelina Jolie’s haute couture.

A drawer next to the stove offered a neatly-folded assortment of tea towels. Laura Ashley again. Somebody ought to burn this place down and start over.

I walked past Steve, still under the watchful eye of Jack’s henchman. Noticing their gaze directed at the tea towel, I brought it up to my eyes and was surprised when it came away wet. A faint smile and a half-hearted shrug were enough to get them to turn away as I opened the door to the garage, then shut it firmly behind me.

The black Audi was safely stowed where we had parked it. Pressing twice on the appropriate button, I heard the reassuring ker-tweet. I popped the trunk, pulled out my Black Knight racket bag, and looked around for a little liquid to get the party started. Nothing.

Opening the passenger door and sliding into the seat, I checked the glove compartment. And there it was: 70 cl of Springbank 12 Year Old 100 Proof. Old enough to be the best and strong enough to burn.

I reached past the steering wheel and hit the fuel cover release, uncapping the scotch with my other hand. Leaning out of the car door, I took a swig of the Springbank and poured a healthy helping onto the towel. Two steps had me positioned by the fuel door which, opened, allowed access to the tank.

“You find it, Hayden,” inquired my dad, barely audible from the other end of the house. I wondered whether it was me, or the Springbank, or the lighter he was worried about. Dad always did enjoy a good drink and smoke after work.

“Mission accomplished,” I replied, pushing the tea towel as far into the fuel tank as I could get it. One more splash of scotch to prime the pump. I grabbed my gear and, about to cast the Springbank aside, thought better and stowed it in my bag.

Lighter out, towel on fire, and I was out the back door into the yard. Good thing it was getting dark. Jogging now, I reached Franklin Street as I hear the Audi rocked by cataclysms of flame. A funeral pyre for Ollie, perhaps, or a fiery end for Jack Vaughn and his crew.

Three minutes later, I was boarding a Metro-North train southbound for Manhattan.

Hood up and sunglasses on, I took out my phone and redialed the number Ted had called from. Straight to an automated response. “The voice mail for this number has never been set up.”

GOOD TO HEAR FROM YOU, TEDDY BOY, I typed into my phone.

Now what? Needing space and time, I made a snap decision: to return to the place where I had first picked up squash and, a decade later, Ollie. The two best things in my increasingly grim life.

After a hasty descent into the bowels of Grand Central – no time to stop and peek at the ToC practice sessions -- and a short hop on the Blue line, I was in the Port Authority. And my timing continued to be lucky, as Greyhound #428 was boarding. Northeast to New England, with stops in Hartford, Litchfield, Pittsfield, Williamstown, Bennington and Concord. We Exies used to call it the Transcendental Special, though whether that had more to do with psychotropic recreation or literary heritage is hard to say.

PURSUING EXIT STRATEGY NOW. SEE YOU SOON. And… send.

If mom was really alive, she would understand and enjoy “exit strategy” -- our code name for St. Exodus. She too had lost and found herself, a generation earlier, amidst the Georgian brick quadrangles and pastoral enclosures of the “finest preparatory school in New England.” The best place I could think of for a midwinter reunion between a mother long dead and a daughter on the run.

A.J. Kohlhepp first picked up a squash racquet at Trinity College (before the Bantams’ perennial championships commenced).

An English teacher by trade, he has coached boys’ and girls’ squash over the past dozen years in addition to various other duties at Berkshire School (Massachusetts USA), where he resides about 100 meters from the squash courts, with his wife (a real writer) and children (beginning squashers).