Chapter 23 - Directions to Nowhere

Jack’s audio cd arrived exactly nine weeks to the day after he shipped the diamond-studded hot sauce to New Delhi. Big Jim was on vacation at the time, so the small package arrived in his mailbox much to his dismay. “What if the diamonds are traced back to me because the Big Idiot sent my instructions to my home address?” he wondered to himself. Jack threw the package in the back seat with the rest of the junk mail. He was upset and wanted to get out of town.
After a few minutes of driving around town and avoiding his apartment altogether. He drove to a fast food joint, ordered and then ate the greasiest nastiest item he could find on the menu, a deep fried cheese burger. It calmed him down immediately after coating his conscience-inflamed stomach ulcer with nice, warm grease.
Not many fast food restaurants offer the deep fried cheese burger. You can get your chicken fried steak burger or your chicken fried chicken sandwich, but for an establishment to throw caution into the wind and just deep fry the whole cheese burger was unheard of. They didn’t fry it for very long however. Instead of the thick breading used on chicken fried chicken sandwiches, they used a thinner tempura-like batter and quickly fried the entire thing for exactly one minute. It was long enough to get the shell of the cheese burger nice and crispy yet allow hot fat to work its way deep into the middle of the cheese burger. You had to have guts to eat this monstrosity. Guts and a lot of napkins because when you bit into the crispy outer shell, you got a mouthful of gooey goodness and chinful of wet grease.
Jack wiped his chin and realized that he could not go back to his apartment. Yes, the audio cd was in his hands, but the risk of someone else possibly talking too much gave him the willies. He decided to move into the roach motel next to Pops Waffle Stop for the time being. He would keep a low profile, as best he could and wait it out.
About two weeks went by and the junk mail and other oddities of Jack’s backseat began to pile up. He finally decided it was now or never. He was going to listen to the audio cd and get his instructions. He hadn’t heard anything from Big Jim, Poonam or the others, so that meant they were either caught and spilling their guts or not caught and enjoying their money.
Jack put the cd in the Malibu’s audio deck and waited for the chanting to begin. The first thing he heard, or thought he heard was the word “eternal” repeated four or five times. It was so heavily accented though, that he was unsure if the person was saying “he turned all” or if he had inadverdently found a fellow word-experiementer. Then Jack wasn’t sure if the first sounds were chanting or instructions. He wrote the word “eternal” down anyway. After hours of chanting and scribbling down the words he thought he heard in between each track he had compiled the following list of words:
“eternal, life, building, keys, top, exit, light, rock, second street, main, awaits, you.”
Jack was highly perplexed. This useless list of words that he was unsure of in its entirety or accuracy was all that stood in the way between him and his loot. He felt as if he should have left the disc in the backseat with the rest of his trash. He looked at the list of words and wondered at what they meant. What the hell was an eternal life building? Unless it was just supposed to be “life building.” He gathered that he was going to have to use some brain power to decipher this message. Clearly, he saw that the building at the intersection of second street and main near the Foxtrot Community College would have to be the logical place to start. The only other building nearby that might have an exit on the top of it would be the Taco Bell on the opposite corner. The life sciences building would have to do.
Jack replayed the events in his head. Why did he have to go through hell to get to heaven? All he wanted was a few extra bucks to help out a friend and possibly check himself into Thousand Oaks. Yeah, right he thought. He wanted the money so he could quit pushing cardboard boxes around and retire on a beach somewhere. He was kicking himself for not being more careful when he heard the two people in the front get out of the van and slam their doors shut.