Biker by Mike; Baron Page B

to his feet. Putting the spiral pad in a hip pocket, he headed toward the visitor’s parking lot along the lakefront.
    Pratt found a pay phone in the Union, which he preferred to his cell phone for sound quality. Included in the papers Ginger had given him was Eric’s birth certificate at Our Lady of the Redeemer Hospital in Beloit. He bounced from administrator to administrator before landing with a woman in Records.
    â€œExcuse me, what is your interest?” the woman said.
    Pratt explained.
    â€œWell there’s a problem. The hospital moved in 1998 and the old building was demolished. A lot of records were lost.”
    â€œDidn’t you put the records on a computer?”
    â€œThey should have, but I’m not finding anything. They could be in there but who knows under what program or heading? I’m sorry Mr. Pratt. We don’t have the time to conduct an exhaustive search. We have our hands full just keeping up with the flow of patients.”
    Pratt thanked the woman and hung up. He stopped at the bank on the way home, deposited his two checks and took out two thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills. When he got home he phoned Ginger. She sounded weak.
    â€œHello?”
    â€œGinger, Josh Pratt. Sorry to bother you.”
    â€œNo bother. What can I do for you?”
    â€œYou said Moon was an Indian.”
    â€œHe claimed to be part Lakota, and he did have an Indian cast to his features. The dark hair and complexion. He used to scare the bejeezus out of grown men with his crazy Sioux witch doctor act.”
    â€œDid he mention what tribe? Any relatives?”
    â€œNo. He never said. All I know it was in South Dakota somewhere.”
    â€œThank you.”
    Pratt was feverish with excitement. It was almost as if Jesus had given him this assignment to pull him out of his funk and point him in the right direction. To find a little boy stolen sixteen years ago. It was a hell of a lot more satisfying than finding a couple of schnauzers or even the Ducatis. Pratt’s own father had abandoned him at a Bosselman’s truck stop one frigid December evening in Nebraska when he was sixteen, the year Eric was born.
    It was one-thirty in the evening and they were on the move, running from angry women, bill collectors and the police. Omaha. Duane had been running his roofing scam, duping little old ladies out of their life’s savings in exchange for little to no work on their roofs. They lived out of Duane’s old F-150. Duane got drunk, got in a fight with a bouncer at the Dew Drop Inn, got his face smashed in and his ass thrown out the door. Pratt watched it all from a booth in the deepest part of the bar, trying to withdraw in upon himself, trying to be invisible.
    Pratt followed Duane out the door, helped him up from the trash-strewn gutter. As Pratt seized his father’s arm and lifted, Duane looked up with an expression of hatred and disgust. An icicle pierced Pratt’s heart. His father was no good.
    â€œYou!” Duane spat, shoving Pratt away and regaining his feet. “Why the fuck did I bring you along? Remind me.”
    A couple late-night tokers watched from the front of the building. Pratt wished he could pull in upon himself and disappear like a singularity.
    Duane stumbled for the truck. He’d narrowly avoided arrest that day when he saw the OPD car pulling into the trailer park where he rented space.
    Time to blow this town.
    Pratt barely made it around and into the passenger seat before Duane goosed the engine. The old Ford sounded like Pratt felt. It sounded like it was about to tear itself apart. Duane paused once to snort meth off his thumb and then they were outta there, endless Interstate 80 where the plains stretched to infinity on either side of the road. At night, with truck stops and towns appearing as gleaming jewel cluster mother ships against an onyx sky, it was easy to believe they were a spaceship traveling through an infinite