~ Bitsy And The Biker ~

by

Walter L. Kleine and Linda Suzane

Jake, where are you?

Bitsy Morrissey paced her living room, hardly hearing Letterman trading bad jokes with some rock star she’d never heard of. She tried not to look at the grandfather clock that Jake’s great-great-grandfather brought with him from Boston in 1849.

12:16.

Jake had called at ten to say he was leaving Ron Reddick’s office. It shouldn’t have taken him more than half an hour to get home.

Viciously, she punched the button on the remote. The television clicked off.

Silence was worse than meaningless noise.

“Calm down!” she told herself.

Jake always called when he was going to be delayed.

His father had been the first contractor in California’s Central Valley to put a two-way radio in his truck. When Bitsy came to work for Jake, fresh out of San Francisco State with her nice new MBA, hardly expecting to fall in love with the boss and marry him, the radio had been replaced by a cell phone. It wasn’t just because, as he said, communication was vital to their business. His dad bought the radio all those years ago, because sometimes he had to be late and couldn’t get to a regular phone. Jake cared about Bitsy worrying about him, same as his dad had cared about Jake’s mother worrying when he was late.

After Jake’s call, Bitsy put on her blue nightgown, the one that drove him crazy. It was two layers of sheer silk chiffon, the inner layer streaked with shades of red. The outer blue layer matched her eyes, and the secretive red flowed into the red highlights in her hair. Cut low and snug to emphasize her small breasts, it flared below, giving the illusion of more height than her five feet and slenderizing her hips and shoulders. She thought of herself as looking athletic; small and wiry. This gown made her feel deliciously sexy, just like the first time she wore it when Jake gave it to her during their romantic weekend at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco on their tenth wedding anniversary.

As she paced, the gossamer layers of her gown alternately floated and clung to her body, a seductive caress she no longer noticed.

She paused in her pacing and hit redial. Jake’s cell phone rang until it clicked over to voice mail.

The office phone rang out on the converted porch. It was probably a wrong number. They’d had a lot of those lately. Bitsy ran to the office, heart pounding. She picked up the receiver and automatically hit the “memo-record” button on the answering machine in case it was a crank call or a telemarketer. “Morrissey Construction,” she said, working to keep her voice cool and professional.

She heard cellular static, the sound of a screaming engine, and Jake’s slurred, urgent voice, “Bits, I know who…”

His voice was cut off by a thump like a sack of concrete being dropped on a wooden floor, a long second of wailing engine-scream, and the crunch of impact and rending metal.

“Jake!” Bitsy screamed. “Jake! What happened? Where are you? Answer me! Please Jake! Jake, Jake! Say something!”

~ * ~

Malcolm O’Toole slowed his black Harley and looked over his shoulder to confirm what he’d seen in the mirrors. Snake Road shone silver in the moonlight, twisting and turning like the serpent for which it was named. A quarter of a mile behind, headlights, now stopped, angled toward the sky.

Damn fool! Driving too fast. Probably drunk.

The Harley flowed through the curve, smooth as an ice dancer. Malcolm looked back again. Trees blocked the view. He touched the brakes, preparing to go back. At the speed the idiot had been going, it was no minor fender-bender.

It’s not your problem, O’Toole.

He let up on the brakes, cracked the throttle and hit the 911 preset on the cell phone that was always available to his BlueTooth headset.

He’d been enjoying the ride, the moonlight, and the feel of his Harley smoothly attacking each curve, knowing that by dawn he’d be alone, deep in Yosemite back country that tourists didn’t know about. Distant headlights had appeared in his mirrors, coming from nowhere, moving way too fast. He’d opened the throttle wider, not wanting to be overtaken by anyone driving at that speed on this road. With practiced, automatic skill, he watched the curves ahead and the lights behind, driving just fast enough to maintain distance between them. Once, he thought he saw a second pair of headlights.

Then the lights slewed wildly, as if up the canal embankment, and came to a stop, obscured by a sudden haze.

A 911 dispatcher responded, crisp and efficient. Malcolm reported the accident.

“Anyone hurt?” the voice inquired.

“I don’t know.” He felt guilty for not knowing. “I saw it in my mirrors.” His Harley carried him farther away.

The dispatcher said, “We’ll have a car there in six or seven minutes. Can you confirm the need for an ambulance?”

You’ve done your part, O’Toole, he tried to reassure himself. You’ve sworn off the Good Samaritan thing. People keep dying when you get involved.

“That’s an R-Roger,” he said, releasing the throttle and hitting the brakes, hard. “I’ll be on the scene in less than one.”

~ * ~

“Jake!” Bitsy screamed at the unresponsive phone.

The line stayed open, silent but for faint sounds she couldn’t identify. The tape in her answering machine turned slowly.

“Jake!”

Her free hand picked up the private line phone and dialed 911.

“Jake,” she said urgently, knowing with chilling certainty what she’d just heard. “Say something! Anything! Jake, I love you! Say something!”

On the other phone, a cool voice said, “Sheriff’s Department, 911 emergency line, Deputy Thomas speaking.”

“This is Bitsy Morrissey, Will,” she said, grateful for someone familiar. They’d done an addition to Will Thomas’s house last summer. “I just heard Jake have an accident. He called me on his cell. I heard him hit something. The line’s open. He isn’t responding.” A distant part of her mind was amazed she could speak calmly.

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know. He called before he left Ron Reddick’s office on I Street, about ten. He should have been home in half an hour.”

“We have no reports of an accident, Bitsy, but if it just happened that may take a few minutes. I’ll call you the instant I hear anything.”

“He sounded strange. He was trying to tell me something, but he never finished.”

“Wait a minute. What you got, Marge?” A short pause, and the murmur of another voice in the background. “Just got a report of a possible accident on Snake Road. Citizen saw it happen in his mirror. No confirmation or ID on the vehicle.”

“I’m on my way,” said Bitsy, wondering how she could be so certain.

“Wait,” said Will. “We’ll have a crew on the scene in a few minutes.”

“I have my cell.” She gave Will the number.

“Got it.” Will hung up.

She thought she heard distant, muttering voices on the other phone. “Jake,” she said again, urgently, “Jake please tell me where you are!”

Silence.

Bitsy left the phone off the hook with the tape running. She threw a raincoat over her nightgown, shoved her feet into boots without bothering about socks, grabbed her cell phone, and ran.

Oh Jake, please be all right. Please!

~ * ~

Malcolm turned quickly and opened the throttle wide, conscious of how far he’d traveled.

Okay, dammit!

This wasn’t his problem—but the minutes before the sheriff arrived could be the difference between life and death. If someone had been on the scene soon enough, maybe Rebecca would have survived.

When the sheriff gets here, I’m gone! No more Good Samaritan. No more getting involved in other people’s disasters.

For the rest of his life, he’d be haunted by Grace’s face when she told him that her only son had committed suicide in jail; would hear the second woman he’d ever loved accuse him of murdering Benny. It didn’t matter that Benny had been into dope big time, robbing the company to support his habit, or that Ray Rivers and others in the company had no choice but to step in and try to help the kid, since the kid refused to help himself or let himself be helped. Grace had been Malcolm’s friend, even more than his lover. It didn’t matter that she overcame her grief and apologized. He’d been part of destroying her only son, who’d been his friend, too, just as surely as he’d killed ’Becca, in another time and another place...by trying to “do the right thing.”

He’d stopped believing in “right things.”

He’d never, ever again love anyone as he’d loved ’Becca, or even Grace, whose love, though amazing, was not the same. It seemed as if ’Becca died in another life; that the Malcolm O’Toole who rode out of New Jersey, after, was someone entirely different than the man who loved ’Becca Kreigbaum, who put his life on the line for her...and lost.

All he ever meant to do was help.

Lost ’Becca.

Lost Grace.

Lost himself.

The instant the ambulance gets here, I’m gone! The repeated thought wore a groove in his brain, like some damnfool mantra.

His Harley devoured the distance. He could see headlights again.

A blue Buick sat halfway up the canal embankment, headlights shining skyward. Malcolm’s first thought was that maybe it wasn’t too bad. Then he saw a pickup crushed against a giant oak on the other side of the road, barely visible in the moonlight.

Oh, Lord! Lord have mercy!

“Confirm the ambulance,” Malcolm said, into his open 911 connection. “You’ll need the Jaws of Life. You’ve got a pickup wrapped around a tree, broadside. Red Toyota, recent. The other vehicle is a blue Buick, recent, run up the canal embankment. The Buick has a tire rolled off the rim, but doesn’t look like anything serious. I’ll check.”

He eased to a stop by the Buick. Its left front fender and bumper were crumpled.

A man in a gray suit appeared from near the truck and ran toward Malcolm, waving his arms frantically. He shrieked, “There’s gas leaking! It’s gonna blow!”

There was an odd familiarity to the voice, an accent that spoke East Coast, not California.

“Slow down, friend,” said Malcolm, soothingly, as he unfastened the straps holding his first-aid kit and flashlight. “Just because the truck crashed doesn’t mean it’ll burn.” After ’Becca’s accident, he learned that, unlike Hollywood, cars and trucks don’t automatically burst into flames when they hit something. “You were in the Buick? You all right?”

“Crazy fool din’t have no lights on! Din’t never see him ’til he runned me off da road!”

The man looked pale, eyes darting erratically, but otherwise fine. No cuts or bruises; tie straight as if he’d just checked it in a mirror.

“Take it easy, friend. Do you have a cell phone?” Malcolm asked, to give the man something to do, to calm him down.

Gray Suit nodded. “Wouldn’t be on the road without one!” He clutched a cigarette lighter in one hand.

“Call 911. Update them on what happened. Don’t light any cigarettes, okay?”

“O-okay,” said Gray Suit.

“Call. Then just sit down. The sheriff and paramedics will be here in a few minutes. I’ll do what I can.” Malcolm grabbed his first-aid kit and scrambled down the embankment. He didn’t bother taking off his helmet.

A big man, shirtless and covered in blood, was pinned in the ruined cab, pushed against the passenger side door by the impact, a deflated airbag lying limp behind him. The seatbelt hung uselessly, failed or never used. A cell phone, clutched in his right hand, was jammed between his head and the door.

No first-aid kit would do any good; no more than the airbag had helped when the truck hit the tree sideways. At a glance, Malcolm could see a crushed chest and major head injuries. Blood ran out the man’s ears, nose, and mouth.

Gray Suit was right about leaking gas. The tank must have split to smell so strong. He thought he smelled alcohol, but couldn’t be sure over the pervading stench of gasoline. The dash lights were out, but red warning lights glared balefully. Quickly, Malcolm reached past the man and turned off the ignition. He checked the headlight switch. It was off.

He’d been driving without lights, like Grey Suit said. Why?

Against all reason, the man moved, turning his ruined face toward Malcolm’s flashlight. “Bitzzz...” he said, faint and thick, and mumbled something Malcolm couldn’t understand.

“Take it easy,” said Malcolm, putting pressure on two spurting wounds. “Relax. Help’s coming.” Silently, he mouthed words learned as an altar boy in his long-abandoned Catholic childhood, feeling as if with his own two hands and life-force he held the man to this world; held him so he could say something vitally important.

“What’d he say?” Gray Suit tugged his shoulder. “Ya gotta get back, man! It’ll blow any second!” The man tugged harder. “C’mon!”

A siren wailed in the distance.

Malcolm said, “I’ll take the risk. Put away that Goddamned lighter! Go meet the sheriff.”