The Trans Am passed a tollbooth sign that said to get seventy-five cents ready. A shaking hand rubbed makeup onto the bruised thighs. Her window went down. Change flew into a toll basket, and the Trans Am accelerated. The makeup compact flew into an oversized purse on the passenger seat, then she jerked the whole thing into her lap and rummaged. The handbag’s organizational system was shot, the entire contents dumped out and thrown back in twice already tonight. She found a cigarette, lit it with the car lighter and coughed. She had just un-quit smoking with the pack bought back in Delray. The nicotine slowed her rampaging imagination, but it couldn’t block the involuntary images: what she’d seen when she opened the bathroom door. And again at the second place. That’s what really shook her, besides all the blood. How on earth did they know about the second place? It meant she wasn’t safe anywhere. She looked in the rearview. No sign of the white Mercedes with tinted windows.
The Trans Am passed the Kendall exit and a blue info sign. She waited for a tanker to go by and slid over a lane.
The Snapper Creek Service Plaza was at Mile Nineteen. Nineteen miles till the end of the turnpike, then just two isolated lanes through mangroves as the mainland seeps into the part of the map with those spongy symbols before reaching the drawbridge to Key Largo.
Only a few vehicles at the plaza. An unattended Nissan with no tag. A security car with a sleeping guard in the driver’s seat and an emblem on the door of an irritable eagle and lightning bolts. A Peterbilt tractor-trailer, dark in the cab but the engine still on, along with hundreds of amber running lights that traced the entire outline of the truck in a manner that said someone was getting rich on amber running lights.
The Trans Am pulled into the space closest the building. The woman forced her legs out of the car. She walked stiffly to the pay phones, pushed coins in a slot and dialed an exchange in the lower Keys. “Come on!” Three no-answers at the last three service plazas. Now ten rings and counting. The exposure time out of the Trans Am seemed eternal. A car door opened. Her eyes shot toward the sound. The night guard smiled like a sex offender.
Thirteen rings, about to call it quits. A sleepy voice answered. The woman jumped. “Don’t hang up! It’s me!”
BELOW MIAMI, YOU’RE on your own. Dixie Highway slants across a hot, dusty wasteland of Mad Max predators, where the famous roadside “Coral Castle” is now ringed with razor wire, and copulating dogs tumble past the doors of Cash Advance Nation. Above all this, another world away, are the elevated lanes of the Florida Turnpike. A metallic green Trans Am raced south just before dawn until the lanes ended and twisted their way down to merge with U.S. 1. Welcome to Florida City, a franchised boomtown decided by automatic traffic counters and satellite imagery. Mobil, Exxon, Wendy’s, Denny’s, Baskin-Robbins and a continuous row of chain motel signs indicating that the cornerstones of the white race are free breakfast and AARP rates.
A maid pushed her cleaning cart and sang a merry Spanish song. Room doors opened; Middle America herded kids into cars. Lobbies filled with people grabbing Pop-Tarts and sticking paper cups under spigots.
Two sedans went by, then a metallic green Trans Am. The coast was clear. The Jeep took off with a wallet on the roof and shaving cream on the back window: “Key West or Bust!”
COLEMAN CHECKED HIS rearview. No witnesses from the Great Escape. He continued through some modest new construction in the wake of Hurricane Andrew until the city of Homestead eventually dwindled out in a quilt of vacant lots.
The Buick rolled to a stop at the intersection with U.S. 1. Coleman’s windows were down, letting in morning sounds that emphasized how quiet it was. A bird chirping, a far-off diesel getting a punch of fuel. Coleman opened a bag of peanuts and waited for some last cars to pass. A metallic green Trans Am and college students in a Jeep Grand Cherokee. He turned right.
