or robes in the bathroom, but clean sheets and a television that gets forty-eight channels, including both ESPN and ESPN2.
Adam and I are tired, but we go out to grab a quick bite to eat. I’m forced to grudgingly admit that Laurie’s hometown is not totally without culture when we find a Taco Bell that’s open late. When Adam tells me he can charge it back to the studio, I order an extra grilled stuffed burrito to take back to the hotel.
When I’m traveling, I usually call Laurie before I go to sleep, but I avoid the temptation this time. I don’t want to lie to her about where I am, and I certainly don’t want to tell the truth, so conversation at this point could be a little difficult.
In the morning we have the buffet breakfast in the hotel. I try the fruit, which appears to have ripened about midway through the first term of the Clinton administration. The biscuits are the consistency of something Mario Lemieux would shoot from just inside the red line. But the coffee is good, and I’m able to use the time to tell Adam where we’re going.
It’s the “why” I’m not quite so forthcoming about. I tell him I want to surreptitiously check out this guy Sandy Walsh, but I imply that it has to do with a case. Adam can hang out in town while I do it, and he’s not to say anything to anyone about it when we get back. I think he knows I’m full of shit, but he’s nice enough to just shrug and go along.
Findlay is a small town but considerably bigger than I expected and much nicer than Hemmings. It has a four-block shopping area of treelined streets, where cars park headfirst at an angle. All in all, a nice town… a nice place to have grown up… I’m afraid a nice place to go back to.
I was hoping for a lot worse. I was hoping there would be a sign when we pulled in saying “Welcome to Findlay, Pedophilia Capital of the World.” Or “Welcome to Findlay, World’s Leading Fungus Producer.”
I’m feeling uncomfortable with this whole thing. Laurie’s actions remind me of The Wizard of Oz, like she’s going to click her heels and say, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.” Which is bullshit, or Dorothy wouldn’t have run away from the dump in the first place.
I ask Adam, “If Dorothy ran away from home because the dog catcher was going to ice Toto, how come she clicks her heels and goes back? And what happens to Toto when she gets there? Can we assume he gets a needle in the arm?”
He has no idea what brought this on, but it’s about movies, so he’s into it. “You know something, you’re probably right. They should do a sequel, The Wizard of Oz 2: Toto’s Revenge.”
“You should write it.”
“Maybe I will,” he says, but I can’t tell if he’s serious.
Once I leave Adam in the shopping area, I call one of the rental car offices that Sam told me Walsh owned. The office I reach is the one about five miles out of town. They tell me that Walsh is not there, but at the office in the center of Findlay. It turns out to be a few stores down from where I left Adam. I don’t even have to get back in the car; I just walk down the street and go in.
My plan is to ask for him and then hit him with a diversion I’ve created about my company and its need to rent a large amount of cars in a small time frame. By presenting such a lucrative opportunity, I figure I can engage him in conversation, then see where it goes from there.
I enter the small office and approach the counter, an ingratiating smile on my face. “Hi,” I say to the young woman, “I’m looking for a Sandy Walsh.”
As I am saying this, I can see into the office behind her, where a man is sitting at a desk. He gets up and walks toward me, a little better-looking and in better shape than I would prefer. I was hoping for someone a little more on the grotesque side, with some open, oozing sores on his face.
“Who shall I say is here?” the clerk asks.
I’m about to tell her a made-up name when the man from the office approaches, extends his hand, and says, “Andy Carpenter?”
This