Black Balloon

Chapter 27

It took me several minutes to get reoriented to the fact I had slept in a castle. In my alcohol-soaked brain fog, the events of yesterday all felt like some strange dream, distant and surreal. This was a feeling I was getting used to. It was now July 6th, 1958, the day AFTER Zero Hour. I had crossed the Rubicon and came out the other side in one piece, confused as hell but in one piece. After eventually remembering where I was and how I'd gotten there, I dressed and crept to the door. Friendly chatter came from somewhere down the hall. Dressed in silk pajamas and displaying a matted crow's nest of shaggy bedhead (the result of falling asleep with wet chlorine-soaked hair) I wandered into the dining area.

"Morning, son. How are ya?" barked a very loud dude holding a cup of coffee. "Richard Bryer. Call me Rich."

He was a little much first thing in the morning, especially with a hangover.

"Good morning," I muttered in return.

He was tall with a neatly trimmed beard and salt and pepper hair. He wore expensive clothes that were trying very hard to appear 'working class'; cowboy boots and a flannel button-up tucked into crisp Levis.

"Welcome to the ranch. Would you like anything for breakfast?"

Seated at the table were Angella and one of the cowboy butlers.

"Just some coffee would be nice, please."

The cowboy butler rose to retrieve a cup for me and filled it to the brim with steaming brown liquid. On the floor beside Rich was a leather briefcase. He picked it up and handed it to one of his helpers:

"Hey, put this in my office, will ya'? Thanks, Allan," and then turned back towards me: "Have a seat, young man. Take a load off."

I sat myself at the table which was situated in a stone nook jutting out from the side of the house. The alcove was mostly made of giant windows which overlooked the gardens. In the distance the sun was just breaking over the hills.

"You know," said Rich, "you're very important to a good friend of mine, and I happen to owe him a favor. So that makes you very important to me."

"Who?" I asked.

Bryer wouldn't tell me.

"That's the thing. He asked me not to say. All he told me was there's a 'slim chance' you'd be arriving at my house on the 5th and asked if I could take you to New York on the 6th. He said if you didn't show up, no big deal, but be ready in just case. I have a meeting in New York this afternoon, so I said sure. I've gotten weirder requests before. How's the coffee?"

"It's fine. Um...so we're going to New York? The city?"

"I am. You're just there to catch another flight. Not sure where you're going"

I was even more confused.

"We'll leave here about twelve. How's that suit ya'?"

I replied that it was all the same to me, which was true. I had nary a clue what was happening to me; where I was going or for what purpose, so what difference did it make? And even if I'd known, I didn't have any control over the matter.

We sat there shooting the breeze for a while, him doing most of the talking and me grunting in reply. Over breakfast I learned that Mr. Bryer had just gotten in from Chicago that morning and we would be taking his private jet to Laguardia that afternoon, formerly called The New York Municipal Airport until they renamed it in honor of that, quote, 'scumbag guinea piece of shit.' I don't know what happened between Fiorello La Guardia and Richard Bryer, but there was no love lost between the two, that much was clear. A mutual friend had requested a huge favor, Bryer told me: that I be picked up in downtown Whitefish at an exact spot and an exact time and transported under an assumed name: "Saul Giancarlo", to the airport in New York and then beyond that...well he didn't know, didn't seem interested really. Bryer told me that Svenn, the courier, had arranged all the details at the instruction of this mysterious mutual 'friend' (the term they both kept using) including buying clothing in my size and supplies, picking me up in Whitefish, and securing the false documentation. The man with no name: Miles, Werner, Hank, Saul. Even I was losing track of who I was.