City Out of Time. William Robison III
some meaning for you. But as for me, I’m only the messenger – and my job here is done. Goodbye, good luck, and God speed, Lanz Franco.”
The Colonel turned so fast that Lanz was still trying to get his hand up for a salute when the Colonel hobbled through the front door of the restaurant and was gone.
Lanz turned back to the envelope on the table. It was plain and blank. He reached out and flipped it gently over. Something inside the envelope made a rattling noise as it hit the table top, but other than that, there was no indication whatsoever as to the contents of the envelope – no writing, no stamps, nothing.
Lanz took a bite of the pie, but it didn’t distract him from the envelope. Finally, he could stand the suspense no longer. He gently put down the pie fork, moved the pie and the milk to the side, and slid the envelope directly in front of him.
Lanz pried up the metal flanges that clasped the envelope shut and lifted the flap before shaking the contents on to the table. One piece of paper and a round object that turned out to be a compass slipped out.
Lanz slid the compass into his hands. It was a military issued compass. There were no nicks or markings and nothing to indicate that it was anything other than a compass. Lanz put the compass on the table and then picked up the single piece of paper and held it up to see what it said.
Lanz,
35529391 -116124235
Seth
Lanz felt a deep kick to his stomach. This was it? Some sort of mathematical joke? After all that Seth and Lanz had been through, all Seth had given him was a compass and some numbers… compass… numbers? Lanz rolled his eyes. The numbers were map coordinates.
Seth had loved the outdoors. Uncle Pete had taken them camping when they’d first moved to Las Vegas and taught them how to read a map, how to make a tent, how to navigate by compass. Seth had joined the Scouts and even become an Eagle Scout. Lanz had hated camping, at first, but had eventually embraced it for the time it allowed him to spend with his brother.
“What the hell?” Lanz muttered under his breath.
“Everything all right?” asked the waiter from behind the counter.
Lanz looked up and then slowly nodded, “I’m fine.”
All the same, he gathered the paper and the compass and then stood up and left the rest of his pie and milk on the table. He walked quickly out of the restaurant and went to his car.
He drove down Baker Blvd to the parking lot of the Bun Boy restaurant and pulled into the parking lot near the giant thermometer. By the light of a street lamp, he looked at the piece of paper again.
There was nothing more to the paper than coordinates - directions to some mysterious wilderness location. No hidden message. Had Seth left something for Lanz out in the middle of nowhere? Some buried treasure? Or was this some sort of practical joke from beyond the grave?
Lanz put the paper back in the envelope and added the compass as well. He was going to drive back to Las Vegas and sort this all out after a good nights rest and…
On the passenger’s seat was a folded up map that Lanz hadn’t seen before. Lanz could clearly tell that it was a government survey map like those used by the military. By the coordinates listed at the top of the map, Lanz knew that the map had to be of the same area where Seth’s paper indicated. Someone had put the map on Lanz’s passenger seat back at the restaurant and Lanz didn’t need to take two guesses to figure out who it had been.
Lanz looked at the paper again and then at the nearby I-15 highway that would take him back to Las Vegas. One direction led to a wild goose chase, the other took him back to his old life in Vegas.
“Damn it, Seth… you know this isn’t my thing,” Lanz muttered with frustration.
Lanz watched the trucks roll by on the highway for a minute more before he opened the map. The map showed the Death Valley area not ten miles from Baker. If Lanz started driving, he could be there in less than an hour. It was nearly ten o’clock at night.
In the back of his mind, Lanz could clearly hear his brother’s voice say, “Then there’s no time like the present!”
Lanz smiled to himself, threw the envelope and the map in the seat next to him, and started up the car. Somehow, no matter how screwed up his life was at that moment, it felt good to be going along on some sort of mad adventure one last time… for Seth’s sake.
He drove for nearly half an hour before he saw a place to pull off the road. It was the start of a hiking trail that led off into the desert.
Lanz kept the engine running while he found where he was currently on the map and made a note of the coordinates. From this point on the map, if he headed ENE for about ten miles he’d be pretty darn close to wherever Seth was sending him.
Lanz folded up the map and stuck it and the piece of paper with the destination coordinates into his pocket. He reached into his glove box and dug out an old flashlight. There was an old canteen in the trunk and he managed to find a nearly full bottle of water that he dumped into the canteen. He wrapped the canteen over one shoulder, took an old sweatshirt out of the pile of junk in the backseat. He locked the car doors and turned towards the desert.
The heat of the desert was still there, even at 11pm, but it was already starting to cool down. There were a few clouds, but Lanz didn’t see anything he had to worry about. Ten miles – a mile an hour – he thought he could reach his destination early the next morning. He’d conserve his water until the trip back.
Lanz took one last look at his car – most of his life packed into the trunk and the back seat. He switched on the flashlight and without another backwards glance walked off into the desert.
Chapter Three
Death Valley, California
April 9, 1996
“Is it possible to have a mid-life crisis at 26?” Lanz asked out loud.
The sounds of predators and prey played like muzac around him, but nobody answered him.
Lanz wasn’t sure why he was doing this. When he had finally gotten his driver’s license, he used to take off and head to Baker for pie with Seth. And when they were old enough for fake ID’s and mischief, they had often walked into the desert at night to share a six pack of beer and to lie about the girls they were interested in conquering. Lanz supposed it was the closest thing to bonding the two brothers had ever experienced -- wandering off into the desert alone at night in hopes of finding… what?
In truth, at the end of this particular treasure hunt Lanz half-expected to find a long buried six pack of beer. Though why Seth would hide such a mundane prize so far from the highway, Lanz hadn’t yet figured out.
Lanz checked his watch and realized that he’d already been walking for three hours. It was well past two in the morning. The long strides through dusty deer paths with the occasional stumble over rocks and low lying brush had started to take its toll. His flashlight had failed after only a half hour and Lanz had no idea how far he’d walked. The low hills where Seth had hidden his treasure still loomed ahead of him, rising out of the desert floor. At the rate he was going, Lanz suspected he wouldn’t reach the hills before dawn.
“I’ll go faster if I stay hydrated,” Lanz muttered through dry lips.
He eagerly opened the canteen and took a long sip, sloshing the water around the inside of his mouth to wash away all the dust before swallowing. He hardly felt better.
“Gotta conserve,” he said as he screwed the cap back on and started walking again.
Lanz couldn’t ignore the danger here. Uncle Pete had taken him and Seth camping in the desert when they’d been younger and impressed upon them the basics of survival. You didn’t ever take the desert lightly.
Lanz was older now and wiser. Lanz had had desert survival training