The maneuver, according to Lucien’s calculations, would add anything from ten to sixteen extra hours to his journey, not ideal by any means, but in Lucien’s world, ‘cautious’ would win over ‘ideal’ any day. In total, including the long way around, Lucien had estimated that if he averaged between 45 and 50mph, he’d be driving for a maximum of thirty-two hours before he reached his remote wooden shack in southern Louisiana. He had more than enough water to last him the trip. If hunger became a problem, he had the candy bars and the beef jerky he had bought in the grocery store back in Knoxville.
Lucien had also noticed that one of the computer dashboard displays in the Audi indicated how far the vehicle should go on the amount of gas in its tank. It was a big car, with a big tank; when full, it would cover around six hundred miles before it needed refueling. With about half a tank still left in the Audi, Lucien would only need to make about two gas stops, three at a push, before he reached his final destination.
Once he got back to the Audi, Lucien placed both of his shopping bags on the passenger seat, jumped back behind the wheel and fired up its engine. As he began moving the car out of its parking spot, Lucien checked the satnav map on the dashboard just to make sure which way to turn once he’d left the garage. His attention diverted from driving for only a split second, enough to cause him to fail to notice the silver BMW that had just turned the corner and was moving toward him at speed. The BMW honked loudly while swerving hard left, barely missing another parked car. Lucien immediately slammed on the brakes, bringing the Audi to an instant halt. The contents of both shopping bags on his passenger seat shot forward and onto the floor.
‘Sonofabitch!’ Lucien said to himself. ‘That was a close call.’
‘You motherfucker!’ Lucien heard the driver of the BMW yell from inside his car.
He had pulled into an empty parking space, a few yards ahead of the Audi. Lucien saw the BMW driver’s door open and a tall and very muscular figure emerge.
‘You motherfucker!’ the man yelled again, this time pointing an angry finger at Lucien, while making his way toward him.
Lucien unclipped his seatbelt and quickly jumped out of his car.
‘Are you fucking blind, you bald-headed lump of fuck?’
Lucien barely had time to close his door before ‘muscleman’ got to him.
‘Who the fuck taught you to drive,’ the man said, his finger about an inch from Lucien’s face, ‘Stevie Wonder?’
The man looked to be in his early forties, with a military haircut and a curved nose that had been broken at least a couple of times, a clear giveaway that he was no stranger to fighting. He wore a white T-shirt that was visibly a size too small, making his already large biceps, triceps and pecs stretch out the thin fabric to just a hair from ripping, enhancing his bloated physique even more.
Lucien took a step back and kept his composure. There was no need to get into an argument.
‘I’m terribly sorry, sir,’ he said in a shy and apologetic voice. ‘It was my fault. I wasn’t looking and I didn’t see you coming.’
‘How can you not have seen me coming?’ the man asked, his anger still at top notch. ‘Look at the size of my car. Are you blind as well as stupid?’
Lucien breathed in the man’s rage. ‘Once again, I’m very sorry. I should’ve been more attentive.’ He gave the man a timid smile. ‘Thankfully we’ve escaped a collision and no harm has come to either of us.’
‘No harm?’ The man’s voice was still a few decibels louder than normal. ‘You made me spill my coffee all over my fucking trousers, you imbecile. Look at this.’ He pointed to a wet patch over his left thigh no bigger than two inches.
Lucien looked at it and bit his tongue so as not to make a sarcastic comment.
‘I’m very sorry for that too, sir.’
This was taking too long already.
So he could end the silly argument and be on his way, Lucien was about to offer to pay for the man’s laundry, but the man beat him to the punch.
‘Sorry will not cut it, buddy,’ he said, looking Lucien straight in the eye, his demeanor becoming even more aggressive. ‘This is gonna have to go to a dry-cleaners and guess who’s gonna pay for it.’ He poked Lucien’s chest with his index finger. ‘That’s right, fuckface . . . you. You are paying for my dry-cleaners.’
Lucien’s eyes filled with fire.
The chest poking was a mistake.
A very bad mistake.
Thirteen
Lucien held the man’s stare for a short while. He’d met plenty of people like him before. The world was full of them, actually – bullies who, due to their muscle size, enjoyed intimidating others just for the fun of it. They were the ones who, even if they could, even if they had the ability to, had no interest in arguing a point using reason and conversation because they took pleasure in terrorizing others. It fed their egos. It gave them a sense of belonging. It made them feel superior, but the reality was that in almost one hundred percent of the cases, the bullying, the terrorizing, the intimidation was just something those people did to make up for some sort of inadequacy in their lives. More often than not, that inadequacy could be traced back to a point in their childhood.
It was obvious that the BMW driver didn’t really need or care for the dry-cleaners money. His trousers probably wouldn’t even be taken to a dry-cleaners. He demanded it because bullies like him would never miss an opportunity to intimidate others.
Yes, Lucien had met plenty of people like him before – in school, in college, on the streets, at work, at home . . . and he had hated them all.
‘Give me your wallet,’ the musclebound man ordered.
Lucien frowned at the man while taking another step backwards.
‘Your wallet, asshole.’ The man turned the palm of his right hand up and motioned his fingers. ‘Give it to me. Now’
Lucien hesitated.
‘You better give me your goddamn wallet right now, or this is gonna end up very bad for you.’
Lucien glanced left. There were no cars coming their way. No one else other than the two of them on that third floor.
‘I don’t have a wallet,’ he replied.
The man fixed Lucien with a dead cold stare. ‘You drive an Audi A6 and you don’t have a wallet?’ He smiled sarcastically while nodding. ‘OK . . . OK.’ He pretended to look away for an instant before his right hand shot toward Lucien, grabbing him by the shirt at chest height. ‘Look here, you shiny-head cocksucker.’ The man brought Lucien’s face to about two inches from his. ‘If you don’t give me your fucking wallet, I will fuck you up right here, right now. Do you know what I’m saying?’
If poking Lucien on his chest had been a bad mistake, grabbing him by his shirt had been a fatal one, but Lucien didn’t get angry. He was actually enjoying the ‘macho’ display. He was confident that those theatrics would work on most people – having a mammoth of a man grab you by the shirt and threaten to beat you up in an isolated spot inside a parking garage probably had a way of making a lot of people wet themselves.
Lucien’s composure stayed solid, but he injected just the right amount of trepidation into his voice to convince the man that he was scared.