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Caleb nodded. “Identical. Mort took a test showing him to be a match just before their mom died. Merl was executor of her will and took some family hunting property that Mort thought should go to him. Angry words were exchanged. Mort declared he was keeping his blankety-blank kidney and stopped taking Merl’s calls. But Merl’s condition is getting worse, and he would like someone to find Mort and persuade him to come back. See, it’s almost humanitarian. We’re helping to save a life.”
“Wait, so we’re tracking someone down so he can have a kidney removed by force? Why don’t we just get a Coleman cooler and yank the sucker out ourselves?”
“I’ve never been that good with anatomy.” When Caleb saw my distressed expression, he added, “I’m just kidding!”
“No, you’re not.”
“Fifty-fifty,” he admitted, waggling his hand. “Look, all we have to do is walk in there, talk him into the car, and drive him to the airfield.”
“Where twenty-four hours from now, he’ll wake up in a tub full of ice with a mysterious pain in his side.”
“No,” Caleb said, indignant. “He’ll be flown to Portland for the procedure. As long as he’s in reasonably good health, he’ll be in and out in no time.”
“OK, I’ve been a little wishy-washy in voicing my disapproval for your job in the past couple of weeks, but let me spell it out for you. We can’t do this. We cannot use another human being for spare parts,” I told him, lowering my voice when I realized the waitress was staring at me. “It’s ghoulish.”
“Don’t you think Merl should have a shot at living?” he asked.
“I just think Mort should be able to make the decision for himself.” I sighed.
“Come on, Rabbit,” he said, jostling my shoulder. I glowered at him. “If it makes you feel any better, Merl promised that if Mort donates his kidney, he’ll pay about twenty thousand dollars in back child support to Mort’s ex. See? It’s a win-win.”
“I still think it’s pretty messed-up,” I grumbled, sneaking a piece of bacon from his plate. The fact that he let me get away with it was a testament to his either liking me or feeling guilty for being a kidney snatcher.
Mort proved to be a wilier target than we anticipated. It took more than a week to track him from his snowmobile dealership in Delta Junction. Caleb grew more and more focused. He would disappear from our motel room for the night, coming back smelling of the woods. He wandered the town, searching for any hint of Mort’s scent. No one in town would give up information about Mort, either out of solidarity or because they honestly didn’t know. His live-in girlfriend, Monica, told me in no uncertain terms to kiss her ass and then slammed the door in my face. None of his employees would say anything besides telling us Mort was ice-fishing “somewhere.” Frankly, I was cheering Mort’s wily ass on. As far as I was concerned, I’d be happy if we never tracked the ginger escape artist down.
Caleb decided to move on to the nearest lake to scout ice-fishing camps, getting as far as a gas station ten miles outside of Delta Junction. The moment we stopped in the gas-station parking lot, his whole posture changed. His neck craned forward, and his nostrils flared. He jammed the truck into park, throwing me against the seatbelt. Caleb threw his arm across me in the classic “mom brake” maneuver, which I thought was gentlemanly until I looked down to where his hand was clasping my left breast. I cleared my throat. He glanced down, and his eyes went wide.
“What’s going on with you?” I asked as he moved his hand.
“Thought I saw something,” he said.
“The opportunity to cop a feel?”
“I would say I was sorry, but it would be a lie,” he said.
“OK, well, while you search the parking lot for ‘something,’ I’m going to go get some more jerky. We’re down to one bag, and I know that makes you nervous.”
I hopped out of the truck and walked into the station. It was a mom-and-pop operation in a two-story building called Mo-Mo’s Gas-n-Go. Given the porch structure on the second story, I guessed that the owner lived in the apartment over the store.
After visiting one of the cleaner—if overly bright—gas-station stalls in the Greater Northwest, I visited the jerky display to determine whether I could sneak a similarly packaged, low-sodium version under Caleb’s radar. I picked over the cellophane-wrapped tubes of meat, wrinkling my nose at the very idea of jalapeño-nacho-cheese beef jerky.
“Oh, don’t even think about it,” an amused voice sounded behind me. “If they have to spend that much time doctoring it up to make you want to eat it, you should just stick with corn chips.”
“It’s not for me, trust me.” I turned to share a chuckle with my helpful jerky Samaritan . . . and came face-to-face with the elusive Mort Johanssen. Jowly, bedraggled Mort Johanssen, in a green hunter’s jacket, was offering me a friendly smile and advice on meat snacks.
“Oh, nooo,” I groaned, dropping my jerky to the gas-station floor. “It’s you.”
Mort frowned. “Well, that’s not very nice.”
I pushed him none too gently away from the front window toward the little alcove where the restrooms were, so Caleb couldn’t see him. There was a fire exit beyond the restrooms, half-hidden behind giant stacks of milk crates. Unfortunately, Mort was a little too much man for me to move all the way into the alcove, and we stopped just in front of the potato chip display. “You have to get out of here, preferably out that fire exit.”
“Wh-who the hell are you, lady?” he spluttered, batting my hands away.
“Look, I know this is going to sound weird and suspicious. But I happen to be traveling with someone who was sent by your brother—”
Mort actually shoved me away from him, paling even more under his decidedly wintry skin tone. “Merl’s still after my damn kidney?”
I nodded. “It would seem so.”
