A steady gray rain fell, the kind of cold pelting rain that made everyone who was forced to be out in it miserable, and everyone who had a roof glad to huddle under it, preferably in front of a heater or a fireplace.
It drummed off my helmet and streaked down the visor. It kept up a steady noise that must’ve driven my boss, on the open end of a phone call via the helmet’s Bluetooth, nuts.
I couldn’t have been happier.
Despite only having owned It for a couple of months, I found riding so infinitely preferable to driving that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t bought a motorcycle sooner. I’d thought all the talk about the freedom and comfort and joy of it to be just so much bullshit, but every bit of it turned out to be true for me. The bike—a recent, not vintage, Indian Scout—had proven to be as right for me as living on my boat had been.
So, naturally, my boss found ways to take advantage of it at every turn.
“You got the tracker on yet or what?”
Jason’s voice crackled inside my helmet. There was an echoey quality to it that told me he had it on speakerphone. Our principal was probably in the room with him. Maybe another employee.
“I can get it at the next traffic light.” I was on Route 40 in Cecil County, Maryland, but probably heading for the Hatem bridge and the Harford County line. “Why don’t I just follow this guy all the way to his destination?”
“Because he’ll notice the biker in the nerd helmet following him eventually. Especially if you pull into the same parking lot he does. And because this isn’t about confronting him.”
“Fine, fine.” By then the light had changed and the sedan I was tailing from two cars and one lane away had started off again.
I picked up speed, signaled to get into his lane with one hand, and hoped the driver that stood in my way wasn’t the kind who aimed at motorcyclists. They were out there, or so I’d been told, but I had yet to experience that kind of malice, only the occasional moment of negligence. Usually when a driver was looking at their phone instead of me.
From what I could see in the front of the Audi I was tailing, the driver was not busy with his phone. He was distracted, certainly, but it seemed more to do with the woman in the passenger seat. At least one of her hands was in his lap, and one of his hands roamed freely inside her coat.
“I don’t think he’s gonna notice me,” I said. “He, uh, seems pretty occupied.” There was a discreet cough over the phone connection.
Oh, I thought. Right. His wife is listening.
I took it pretty slow to stay behind him. I was pretty sure I could’ve taken care of this and sped off with a backfire and as much rumble as I could pull out of my bike’s engine, but orders were orders.
We were coming up on another red light. He was going slow enough now—his head was rolling back on the headrest—that the other cars behind us had long since shifted into other lanes and passed. The light was barely yellow but he stopped anyway. Probably on the edge of losing fine motor control. His companion’s arm was pumping a little more furiously now.
The driver’s seat was, in fact, rocking a bit.
As we stopped at the light I inched up closer and closer. Then I bent down as if I had to check my boot laces or something on my bike.
And while I bent down, I slipped a small magnetic case out of my pocket. I leaned forward and slipped it under the bumper of the Audi. It seated home easily.
The light changed. The car took off.
“Is it broadcasting?”
“U-turn at the next opportunity and we’ll be sure.”
I did as he asked, turning onto a mostly empty road. Early Tuesday afternoons as gray and cold and miserable as this one don’t often see a lot of traffic.
“We got him.”
“Am I off the clock, then?”
“Seeing as how you can’t take photos worth a damn on your phone, and there’s no room on that ridiculous vehicle for a camera bag, yes. We’ll have someone else stake out the stopping point.”
Given the number of motels, hotels, and B&Bs in the direction that Audi had been headed, the couple with cheating on their minds was limited only by their budget and imagination. And since it was a late model Audi with what appeared to be lots of bells and whistles, budget didn’t seem like a problem.
“Thank you, Mr. Dixon,” said an unfamiliar voice. The wife who was, even now, being humiliated while her husband broke vows they’d made together. She seemed to be holding it together well.
“You’re welcome, Mrs. Jackson,” I said.
“We’re signing off now, Jack,” Jason said. Then the line went dead.
Suddenly the rain felt a lot colder and I was glad to be heading home.