Chapter 16

January 7, 1:00 a.m., Tuesday, Union Station, Chicago

Larson settled into his seat in the half filled passenger car and decided to get some sleep. The lump was almost gone, it was less than a pimple, and his headache was a distant memory. He had brought a paperback novel to read, but had decided to sleep instead. He had a feeling a good night’s rest was going to be rare on his coming adventure. He preferred thinking of what he and Marajo were going to do as an adventure, rather than a fool’s attempt to expose an evil society of power mad, greedy men with almost unlimited resources. That way he didn’t feel so afraid. He wondered as he drifted off to sleep if he was going to have to kill someone. Killing people in novels was easy. All he had to do was think up some exciting, sexy way to do it to please his readers and keep them reading the novel. But he knew a real life killing wasn’t easy, sexy, or exciting it was just disgusting especially to someone like him who had never killed anyone. Even the thought of killing someone turned his stomach.

It took six hours and thirty minutes for the train to reach Wichita. Larson slept five of the six hours. The rest of the time he looked out the window at the snow covered landscape and tried to be as inconspicuous as possible. Even when he got off the train in the station, he acted like he was as unimportant as possible. He hoped the aged, faded blue parka he was wearing, back home it was his snow shoveling parka, black gloves with wool inserts, scuffed brown L.L. Bean insulated leather boots, jeans and a faded green John Deere cap he wore under the parka’s hood helped him achieve an inconspicuous look. He would have worn a White Sox’ cap if he had one, but he didn’t have a White Sox’ cap or any cap with a professional team’s logo on it because he had no interest in sports. He had acquired the John Deere cap ten years ago from a very nice and sweet lady friend who sold John Deere tractors. He had met her at a book signing in a small town bookstore in southern Illinois. She had given him the cap as a gesture of friendship. He wore it only during the summers when he mowed his front and back lawns or washed his car, which he hadn’t done it two years because it was easier to take it to a car wash.

He smiled a slight smile when he thought of the over six thousand dollars in five, tens, and twenties he carried in a fanny pouch around his waist under his shirt, and wondered how inconspicuous he’d be if people knew how much money he was carrying? Thank God the metal detector he’d walked through to board the train in Chicago didn’t detect it. But he was sure the x-ray machine had. But the security guards hadn’t said anything to him, because she probably saw a lot of fanny packs under people’s clothes.

Religious terrorists were no longer a problem in the late twenty-first century. Middle Eastern religious leaders had finally risen up against those of the Islamic Religion who had made Islam, a religion of peace, into a religion of murderers and fanatics and forced the authorities in the Mid-East nations to arrest them. Political terrorists in the other nations of the world had gotten the same message and disappeared. Killing innocent people was real easy when fanatics had a safe place to run and hide, but when they didn’t retirement and disappearing into the masses was much better. At least the fanatics, political or religious, got a chance to die of old age, along with their violent beliefs.

Well, he wasn’t going to tell anyone about the money as he walked from the platform to the main lobby and stopped and looked up at a large clock hanging high on the stone wall of the late nineteenth century restored station. It read 12:30. He slung the thick brown canvas overnight bag that he carried over his left shoulder and adjusted his Timex watch to Mountain Time.

I’m nervous, he thought. I’m still in the Central Time Zone. He adjusted his watch back to Central Time.

Then he looked around the large lobby until he found a Wichita Public Transportation machine that sold bus tickets and walked over to it and bought one, paying cash for it. He had almost five hundred dollars in his wallet. Next to it on the wall was a transit map that showed the various Wichita City bus routes.

Up until he saw the map everything was going easy. When he saw the map he realize he didn’t know where the Green Motel was, and he certainly couldn’t call information to ask. Nor was he going to ask one of the two women at the information stand in the center of the train station. Attention he didn’t need or want. He thought for a minute before he noticed the brochures lining the sides of the information stand. He walked over to it and hoped the women at the stand didn’t speak to him. If they did, he’d just mumble something stupid like a confused tourist and look at the brochures.

He looked at the various brochures until he saw one that read ‘Inexpensive Lodging’ Marajo wouldn’t be staying at an expensive hotel it would attract too much attention to her, he thought.

He plucked it from the stack and opened it and began to read. He breathed a quiet sigh of relief when he saw the name Green Motel with the address next to it. He walked back to the bus ticket machine and looked at the transit map on the wall next to it. He located the street the Green Motel was on and then looked at the street numbers on the map to see exactly where he’d have to get off the bus to reach the Green Motel. Then he walked toward the station exit. Wondering how he would find Marajo? And praying she hadn’t abandoned him.

Larson didn’t want to think about what he’d do if she had abandoned him and gone into hiding somewhere. If what she had told him in that cabin was right, she had managed to hide from the Hidden Society for years. So he didn’t think about it. There was nothing he could do if she had abandoned him, but go home and await the arrival of the Society’s killers. So he walked to the exit and out onto the street, and looked around for the bus stop. He saw one at the end of the block to his left and walked toward it. He looked up at the sign on the pole with the bus stop sign on it.

Luck was still with him.

Bus number 172 went to the street the Green Motel was on.

He looked to his left and saw a bus approaching.

It was 183.

Fifteen minutes of standing in the plastic shelter of the bus stop which had heat lamps in the top with four other people was rewarded when bus 172 pulled up in front of the stop and opened its doors. Three people got off. He followed a woman onto the half-filled bus and did the same with his bus ticket that she did with hers and found a seat on the right side of the bus next to a window. Larson sat down and opened the brochure that had a small map in it marking the location of the various inexpensive two star motels. When the bus started to move, he looked out the window at the street signs. The bus had passed one of the streets on the map. He relaxed and hoped he was on the right bus. He wondered if he asked the driver if the bus stopped in front of the Green Motel if the driver would remember him asking. He decided just to trust to luck and his own sense of direction. Anyway, Marajo hadn’t told him the exact time to arrive at the Green Motel. But he knew she’d disappear if he didn’t show up today if she hadn’t already disappeared.

Larson rode in silence twenty-three minutes while the bus made its regular stops. It was nearly filled with riders, before he saw a street sign marked on the map that indicated he was close to the motel.

“Pardon, me,” he said to the woman sitting next to him. “My stop’s coming up.”

The woman turned ninety degrees to her left, and Larson moved pass her with as little discomfort to her as possible making sure not to hit her with the canvas overnight bag he held in his right hand. He walked to the rear exit and waited until the bus stopped before he pushed against the door, it opened automatically, and he got off. He was four blocks away from the Green Motel.

He heard the sound of a jet plane flying overheard and looked up. He had been so busy watching street signs he hadn’t noticed the bus was heading in the direction of the airport. He had gotten off the bus four blocks short of his destination to frustrate anyone who may be following him. He had seen a detective in a movie on TV do that, and thought it was a smart move.

He looked around to see if anyone was watching him, no one was, and then started walking in the direction the bus had gone. He had the feeling of being paranoid as well as scared.

Larson walked four blocks west, crossing three busy streets, and stopping twice to check the map to make sure he was going in the right direction and to look around for what the movie he’d seen on TV called a ‘shadow’ following him. He didn’t see anyone and looked down the street and saw the Green Motel sign less than fifty feet ahead.

Larson didn’t care whether Marajo was there or not. It was cold, he was hungry, and he wanted a hot meal and warm place to eat it. He walked the fifty feet thinking about breakfast.

The Green Motel sign was on the western edge of its parking lot with the noise of commercial jets passing overheard. He had heard three in the time it took him to walk the six blocks.

When he reached the sign he looked to his right and saw a restaurant with an electric sign that read ‘Green Motel Restaurant Finest Country Breakfasts, Lunches, and Dinners in Kansas’ He walked toward the restaurant not caring whether he was being followed or not. He was tired of the cloak and dagger nonsense.

There might be chance to expose the Hidden Society after all, Marajo thought as she watched Larson from her booth in the restaurant. She had no idea when Larson would arrive she just hoped he’d arrive within a day, and didn’t act like some damn fool and ask the motel desk clerk if a Marajo Smith had registered because she’d registered under a fake name with fake ID. She had hoped he’d show up the way she had last night without attracting any attention. This was her second meal in the restaurant, but now that he’d shown up she wouldn’t have to have dinner there, too, or walk around on the streets like some streetwalker.

Larson entered the restaurant feeling a bit out of place, but mostly hungry. He waited to be greeted by a maître d, but when none showed up he looked around for an empty table and when he saw an empty booth near the back he walked toward it. He had just sat down when a woman stopped next to his table, opened her purse, and pulled out a tissue dropping a ball point pen in the process. Larson, like a true gentleman, leaned over to pick it up for her.

The woman knelt down to pick up her pen. “Room 244 in the back. We’re registered as husband and wife,” she whispered a she stood up, taking the pen from him.

“You’re welcome,” he replied.

She walked away.

He thought it would look odd if he suddenly got up and followed her so he looked around for a waitress as Marajo walked off. Anyway he was hungry.

After a leisurely forty-five minute late breakfast, in which he read the Wichita Times, he paid his bill, left a large tip, and walked out of the restaurant with a full belly and feeling warmer and for some reason which he didn’t know, less scared.

***