Tuesday, June 15th 6:00 A.M.
Dean had arisen thousands of times in his nearly 40 years; risen to the fear of final examinations, to the anxiety of court appearances, to the dreaded knowledge there was a war going on outside. He had risen in the arms of beautiful women, after nights on the town when headaches would make you scream for mercy, and on a fifth-grade morning when Frankie Cataldo had bragged to the world he would kick the shit out of David Dean. He had woken the morning after a doctor had excised tonsils from his sixyear-old throat. He had risen to fear, heartache, anxiety, bliss, pain and a hundred other feelings that made you beg to be able to bury your head beneath the covers and stay in the warm cocoon of sleep forever. But never, never, never in his entire life had David Dean felt less like crawling out of his sleeping bag and mounting his bicycle than on the misty Colorado morning of June fifteenth.
Betty had murmured something about jogging, kissed him on the nose, wiggled on her meager duds and left the tent, with the flap open just enough to admit the predawn chill and a red glow that would soon be sunrise. Dean only half remembered hastily packing his tent and gear, washing up and putting away a plate of waffles and fruit. The emerging brightness of the new day, while inviting, did nothing to sort out the tangle of thoughts crowding his brain like the line of a snarled fishing reel.
Dean was one of the earliest bikers on the road. It wasn't unbridled ambition that put him at the head of the pack-he knew if he didn't get a jump on the crowd he wouldn't see the town of Alamosa before sunset. He was hardly underway before he geared down for the long climb and gradually fell into a rhythm of sorts, muscle-pulling pain and gasps of breath as he inched his way up the first long incline.
A part of him kept asking why he was doing this-not the biking but chasing after a ghost wearing number 888 who was probably hundreds of miles away. There was no police case, nothing official about the person he was pursuing-Byrne or Brunel, or some unknown soul who was simply the culmination of a series of incredible coincidences. Who really cared who wore number 888 anyhow? Let him, whoever has the millions, keep it and leave us peons in peace.
Dean could be back on Collingswood Avenue, listening to John Coltrane or Charlie Parker and patting Mrs. Lincoln, or catching a Phillies game on the tube, or eating pizza and slugging down a cold Coors beer. Instead, he was working his backside off trying to climb an 11,000-foot mountain that never ended with the only power provided by his two aching legs. It did no good to protest. Every time Dean argued with himself, he lost.