Barry Eisler
The Lost Coast: A Larison Short Story
The Lost Coast
The sun was setting on the redwoods and Larison thought it was time to find a place to stop. He’d been driving north from Los Angeles for ten days, sometimes moving continuously during the daylight hours, other times going not very far at all, never more than one night in the same place. He knew the people looking for him had no way to track him, but even if they did, there would inevitably be some lag between the moment they could find and fix him and the deployment of actual forces. The more he kept moving, the more any information his pursuers managed to develop would be useless by the time they could do anything to act on it.
He’d been traveling the coastal highway, but north of Westport it had turned inland, the terrain apparently too rugged for the road to continue along the Pacific, and not long after it had died without fanfare, collapsing into Route 101. He knew from the map on the passenger seat that 101, also called the Redwood Highway, would meander northwest along the King mountain range before reuniting with the Pacific somewhere north of Ferndale. The area in between, cut off from coastal access, was known colloquially as the Lost Coast, a name Larison had found strangely alluring when he’d first heard it years before. He imagined black sand beaches, prehistoric redwood forests, towns as remote and strange as creatures from the Galapagos. Maybe he would spend a few days in the area, passing through disconnected burgs like Petrolia and Honeydew and Shelter Cove, dots on the map next to him. He felt secretly pleased at the notion of a man like himself disappearing in a place that by its name declared it couldn’t be found.
A road sign told him he was thirty miles from Arcata. He’d never been there, but he knew of it. An old mining and then timber nexus on Arcata Bay, now mostly a college town. He’d find a hotel that would take cash and not demand ID. If that didn’t pan out, he’d keep going and find something else. There was always another town.
It was nearly dark as he left the highway, the sliver of a crescent moon hanging low in the sky. He didn’t have a car navigation system or even a cell phone, either of which could be tracked, but he didn’t really need the technology, either. There was usually a logic in the layout of small towns, with independent restaurants and retail establishments in the center, gas stations, supermarkets, and other chains farther out, and the more sprawling single family dwellings on the periphery. Some were easier to navigate than others, but it didn’t matter one way or the other. He was rarely in a hurry.
He found his way by the usual signs to the center of Arcata, which, as it happened, was impossible to miss: a large square plaza surrounded by bars, restaurants, and small shops. At one corner was a three-story brick building he judged to be about a hundred years old. A faded sign jutting from halfway up its side proclaimed that this was the Hotel Arcata.
He might have driven back to the periphery and found a more anonymous chain establishment, but there was something about the hotel that he liked, something that struck him as simultaneously stalwart and seedy. Certainly it didn’t look like the kind of place where anyone would ask a lot of questions.
He drove slowly around the plaza, logging his surroundings. Four bars alongside the hotel, the buildings mostly one or at most three stories, the clapboard facades against surrounding hills all straight out of the gold rush. Clusters of hobos, some standing, some sprawled on benches, looking in their languorous ease at least semi- permanent. College kids, from the signs Larison had seen probably from Humboldt State University, aping the hobos’ style, tooling around on skateboards and mountain bikes, probably stoned from good, locally-grown Humboldt County weed. He thought about scoring some himself and momentarily longed for a relaxing, solitary high, but knew he couldn’t. He needed to stay sharp. Just in case.
No sense in allowing anyone to connect him to the vehicle, so he found an unregulated stretch of street a half mile from the hotel and parked there. He got out and started walking away from the hotel. No one was watching him, but if they were, they’d describe him heading in the wrong direction. In a few blocks, he’d turn and start to move obliquely toward his intended destination. He didn’t mind the walk. It had been a long drive and the early evening was pleasantly cool. He watched his breath fogging in the moist air and enjoyed the scent of the nearby forest. Outside the town center, the streets were exceptionally quiet, even lonely, the evening mist swirling slowly under intermittent lamplights. Other than the soft crunch of his boots on the sidewalk there was no sound at all.
The entrance to the hotel was a step back in time: an intricately tiled floor; a great, winding staircase; lights the hue of candles strung in a line along the ceiling. The clerk, pony-tailed, bearded, and pierced through his left nostril, offered no objections to Larison’s story about the loss of a wallet and accompanying ID. Maybe the situation struck the guy as strange, but so what? If anyone asked, he would describe a solid man of about forty, dark hair, dark skin, a stubble of beard, and Larison doubted whether after the passage of a few hours or a day the guy would be able to offer even that much. The guy accepted cash for a single night in a second-floor room as Larison requested, gave Larison an old-fashioned key on a chain, and bid him a good evening.
Larison took the stairway to the second floor and let himself into the room without turning on the light. He closed the door behind him, double locked it, and crossed the short distance to the large windows. He noted that, unlike what was commonly found in more modern hotel fare, these windows were designed to be raised completely, and he opened each to confirm. He looked down and saw a closed Dumpster in the alley directly below him. In a pinch, he’d be able to hang from the window and jump, which was why he’d wanted this floor. Low enough to get down from; too high to easily get into. Of course, the people he was up against would know to have the alley covered while they breached the front door, but it could never hurt to have more options. At a minimum, the presence of an escape hatch would compel them to divide their forces, improving his odds of blitzing through the segment attacking at the door or through the segment covering the alley.
But he reminded himself that no one had followed him, no one knew he was here. The precautions were smart, but in the end, they wouldn’t be necessary. And Arcata itself was a sleepy little town. He wasn’t going to have any trouble here.
He closed the windows, then the blinds, and then turned on the lights. The room was Spartan: a single bed under a faded spread; a tiny nightstand hosting a plastic alarm clock; a rickety-looking wooden table and matching chair. It was fine. It was all he needed.
He went to the bathroom and flicked on the light. Just a pygmy-sized toilet, sink, and a claw foot tub with a curtain wrapped around it so it could double as a shower. He removed from the cross-draw shoulder holster the Glock C18C machine pistol he always kept at hand and placed it on the toilet tank within easy reach. Then he took a toothbrush and travel-sized toothpaste from his pocket and brushed his teeth. Everything else he had with him, and it wasn’t much — just a second pair of jeans, a few clean shirts, and a half dozen pairs of socks and underwear — were in the trunk of the car. Enough to keep going for at least a week before it was time to look for a coin-operated laundry. If he ever had to bug out, he didn’t want to have to come back to a hotel room, or leave anything behind if he couldn’t.
When he was done with his teeth, he undressed and took a long, hot shower. Then he got dressed again, holstered the Glock under his dark wool jacket, checked the Emerson Commander BTS folding knife in his front jeans pocket, hung the Do Not Disturb sign from the doorknob, and went down to the lobby. He’d noticed a sushi restaurant called Tomo there on the way in, and sushi sounded as good as anything else for dinner. He sat at the bar and ordered miso soup, edamame, an unagi handroll, and toro sashimi. The decor was utterly ersatz — Larison had been to Japan — but the food was good enough.
He paid cash when he was done and returned to the lobby, planning to take the stairs back to his room. The less he went out, the less likely it was that he would be seen by anyone who might recognize him. A pretty remote chance, of course, but when you’ve managed to fake your own death, there wasn’t much available explanation in the event of a unlucky encounter. The only real possibility
Still, he paused in the antique lobby, the thought of returning to the dreary little room suddenly unappealing. Who could possibly recognize, or even notice him, in the sleepy town of Arcata, perched on the edge of the Lost
