Plum crazy was a color that Chrysler unveiled for the Plymouth Barracuda, though Rachael Brodzinski had no idea what year that was. She just bought a purple ’69 Cuda at a used car lot outside Chicago’s South side. It had white vinyl interior, a screaming 340 cubic inch V-8 and lots of attitude that went well with hers. It was after all a bit of a graduation present her dad Bill Brodzinski helped with the down payment after she completed her stint with the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia.
Rachael was no longer the awkward looking teenager with braces and coke bottle lens glasses, though she still had to wear contacts that seemingly enhanced her emerald hued eyes. Her dad teased her that she possessed cat eyes.
“I wish these cat eyes could see better,” she bitterly complained to him after completing the test drive she took the car on before signing the paperwork.
“You don’t need to have great vision honey. Your instinct are spot on as it is,” Bill replied as he smoothed back his windblown shock of red hair in the style of Ivy leaguers and a neatly trimmed beard. Like his daughter he appeared athletic and trim, a tall, confident man.
“I hope you’re right. I just wish Mom was here to see me graduate from FBI Academy.”
“She’s with us in spirit, honey. So, do you like it enough to make monthly payment and insurance and upkeep on the maintenance?”
“You sure are asking a lot, Dad, but yeah it’s a dream of mine to have a muscle car like this.
“Any idea where you’re going to be assigned?” He asked her as they walked back inside the showroom where the young and eager looking salesman was waiting for them to return. Contracts waited for her and Bill.
“You both have excellent credit,” he beamed with enthusiasm. A nametag read Josh pinned to his white shirt collar. His dark colored tie reminded Rachael of a noose she saw from one of those training films she had to sit through and watch. It sent a chill down her spine.
“Thanks, we pride ourselves on being thrifty. Isn’t that right honey?” Bill stated with pride.
“Yes of course, or we wouldn’t be able to buy a nice car like this.”
“And a nice car it is too,” Josh stated as though he made the car himself out of thin air. “Now if you’d sit here and you Dad sit here we can proceed with signing the paperwork.”
Both sat in chairs next to each other and began the process of signing contracts. When it was all finished they both sighed in relief and Bill handed Josh a company credit card. “The downpayment is all in there,” he told the salesman. “One thousand six hundred dollars.”
“Very sound investment for a very beautiful daughter,” Josh stated, his face flushing noticeably.
“Well thank you. My boyfriend says the same thing.” The comment got a befuddled expression from her father.
“That just leaves you with eight thousand dollars to pay it off in four years.”
“Yes, the fun part begins now,” she told the men ironically. They both chuckled while the salesman gave her an additional set of keys, a screwdriver and two license plates.
“You’ll have to take me out on a date sometime,” Josh hinted at her as though he didn’t believe she actually had a boyfriend.
“Maybe,” she replied coyly. They went outside together and he got to work putting the temporary plates on and taking off the dealer plates. She watched him with disinterest screwing in the screws and finally standing up, brushing the dust off his trousers knees.
“All done, Rachael. It’s been really neat doing business with you.”
“Likewise, Josh. Good luck with your future.” She opened the car door and got inside the car that smelled of some blended perfume these places sprayed on the interior. The car started right up, and she shifted it into reverse, backed up and turned the steering wheel to the right and shifted into first and released the clutch, waving back at the salesman and breathing a sigh of relief.
Later that evening, after dinner they sat in the kitchen going over her budget for the next four years. Bill was an accountant by trade and very good at that. He had spreadsheets laid out and potential earnings of future incomes coming in and expenditures going out.
“Stay within this budget amount and you should do just fine. If you can get away with it, make two payments every six months, Rachael.”
“Okay, sure,” Rachael replied. The house phone rang and she went to the base and picked it up the Caller ID said “Unknown.” “Hello?”
“Hi, it’s Josh. Look I’m just about done here. Let’s say you come by and pick me up and we can have a couple drinks.”
“No, that’s not a good idea Josh. But thanks, goodbye.”
“Look I know you don’t have no boyfriend. I like you and I want you to like me too. Is it too much to ask for a couple drinks?”
“I’m sure you’re a nice guy Josh but I’m not interested in you. You’re right I don’t have a boyfriend, but someday someone will find his way into my heart. Just not going to be you. Goodbye.” She hung up on him as he was trying to continue pleading his case.
“Josh? That salesman?”
“Yes, he won’t accept no for an answer,” Rachael said in frustration.
“Well, I can put a stop to that right now and talk to Carl the general manager.”
“Well, I don’t want him losing his job over this.”
“A talking will get the correct head thinking,” Bill stated with conviction. “I’m glad you told him the truth about your lack of engagement, though.”
“He said he knew I didn’t have one as if it’s written all over my face.”
“Don’t let people like that get under your skin. Where has the time gone? It’s already after nine and we need to go to bed. Goodnight darling I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Goodnight Dad, love you.”
“Love you too sweetheart.”
They both walked together up the stairs and down a narrow hallway to their rooms that sat across from each other’s. Rachael’s was the one that overlooked Walnut Lane, where other nice homes sat. They hugged briefly then she left him and went into her room. She instinctively closed the drapes to her room. She took one last peek outside, but saw nothing at first, but then noticed a lone figure standing by a telephone pole.
II
Rachael ruminated in her mind about this Josh character; whether a harmless young man wanting to score a date or someone more dangerous. The thoughts, the lectures in classes of what a potential stalker should appear like, her own gut instincts that told her this man was dearly missing something inside his mind.
She finally fell asleep about two hours before she was to go to an interview at the Chicago office of the Federal Bureau of Investigations. She felt like a neurotic zombie. Bill, her dad noticed it too.
“Are you okay?” He asked with concern etched on his face and voice. He cooked over the stove top cooking eggs and Polish sausage. On an ancient skillet with burnt residue on the outside surface. He claimed to her it added flavor to the dishes he made.
“I’m a bit-tired Dad. That salesman kept me awake most of the night.”
“I’ll call Carl when I get to the office and tell him about Josh. Did he even read your credit application? He had to have known you just graduated from the academy. You aren’t a wilting violet…”
“That’s what I’ll name my new car! Violet, yes that fits her perfectly. Sorry Dad, but I guess if he overlooked that key fact than I have a rude awakening for him if he tries to do something I don’t want.”
“True, but isn’t that a last resort?”
“Daddy, of course it is. You negotiate, set up a rapport with him and if that doesn’t work then I have to become more assertive using my skills in self-defense to subdue and apprehend him.”
“So long as you are on an even plain and don’t do something you’ll regret later.”
“That smells good. Did you make enough for two?”
“Of course, yours is already on the table waiting for you to dig in.”
“Thanks Dad. You’re the best.”
III
The interview went even better than she hoped. The job landed on her like a ton of steel girders. She signed the paperwork and the station chief, Ms. Lawrence, who was a bit wider in the hips than she was used to seeing at the academy, gave her a brief tour and met a team that she would work with. Those trainers were physical specimens of strength and endurance. Ms. Lawrence appeared as though she was on the verge of retirement. Rachael assumed that was the reasoning.
“Y’all start tomorrow morning, Ms. Brodzinski,” she told her in a very southern drawl that reminded Rachael of Tara, magnolias and mint juleps.
“Where were you from originally? Ms. Lawrence?”
She pulled back a stubborn strand of gray hair and looked at her with her cat eye framed glasses, and replied, “New Jersey; just joshing you, Ms. Brodzinski. I come originally from by god Alabama home of the Crimson Tide, Ya!”
“It must’ve been quite the shock coming all the way up here then.”
“Honey, you get used to it. You’ll be moved around so much it will make your head swim. You won’t know what city is what after a while. Then you come to realize they are all pretty much the same: same buildings, same people, same crimes.”
“I guess that will get bit of getting used to.”
“It’s all part of the job you signed on for. Now is there anything else I should know before I send you home and get yourself ready for tomorrow?”
“No, everything else is fine.”
“Don’t be late then. We start at eight.”
“I’ll be here at seven!” She waved at her new boss as she left the FBI field office that hummed with activity.
“I am so jacked Dad,” Rachael announced over the phone from her car. “She, the supervisor who hired me, Ms. Lawrence, she’s from Alabama. Gosh what an accent she has. I thought I was in Hazard County. Remember Dukes of Hazard Daddy? Anyway, I better let you go.”
She disconnected the call when she spotted Josh following her in her rearview mirror. She slowed at the traffic signal and then took an abrupt right turn and speeding along Cicero Avenue, then she spotted Cicero Park and pulled into the lot there and parked her car. She waited until she saw him slow down and pulled into the park’s parking lot too. “You got a GPS tracker, asshole!”
He came right up next to her and announced, “My, it’s a small world! How have you been? Let’s go and have a couple of drinks. What do you say? Rachael.”
“Look, I guess I should warn you that I am an FBI agent, recently hired and what you are doing is plainly illegal. I suggest now you leave Josh before I have to do something you won’t like.”
“Oh, come on, you know you want me. I’m irresistible and you know it. There’s a nice bar up the street a ways and a hotel across the street we can go and have fun.”
“I said no and now I am going to call 9-1-1 and report you.”
“Goddamn uptight bitch.” He pushed his car door opened and grabbed her door handle, but she peeled away before he had a grip on it and the result he fell stumbling onto the pavement and rolling two times. She stopped the car and made the call as she stepped out from the car and walked toward him. “Yes, this is Rachael Brodzinski I’m at Cicero Park and a man is stalking me and harassing me. I’m in the FBI and wish to have an officer come and arrest him.”
He showed an ugly mask of pure rage and hatred, as if her actions were unacceptable and his were. He lunged toward her, knocking her to the ground. “If I’m going to jail I’m going for a reason, bitch!” He cocked his arm back in a balled fist and struct at her.
Using her training she countered by throwing her right arm up and catching the fist, twisted his wrist, feeling the tendons strain from the opposing torquing motions of his movement going toward her face and her struggling forcing the arm and fist away from her face. The blow was buffered and merely grazed her mouth and jaw. She then turned her body to the left and pushed him away. Arising fully, hearing approaching siren wails, she threw three well aimed kicks at his solar plexus and groin.
He curled up in a ball as his face went from rage to pain. Just then two Chicago Police vehicles pulled inside the park and wrestled him onto his stomach and placed cuffs on his wrists.
“He had a GPS tracker on my car. I bought it yesterday,” she explained to the officers after they placed him inside the Ford Fusion Police Cruiser. “Where is it?” She demanded Josh.
“Go to hell!” He replied screaming at her through the closed back cage window. He wore the same shirt and tie as the day before.
“The license plates!” She surmised quickly and went to her car. One of the officers followed behind her, pulled a ring of keys that happened to have a screwdriver attached. He helped her remove both license plates when they spotted the nickel sized disk magnetized to the license plate’s inside.
“You did it, ma’am,” the African American officer exclaimed. “This case was a hard one to crack. That guy apparently sold these women cars, and he stalked them until he either got them to willingly go out with him or got raped, but they couldn’t figure out how he knew where they lived or worked. Complaints were filed but like I said they were reluctant to go further or press charges. You should join the police and be a detective.”
“I’m already in the FBI, Officer Jenkins.”
“That’s plum crazy, him thinking you was this poor and innocent girl all vulnerable and everything. You showed him today.”
