Chapter Thirteen

Thirteen

Lonny returned to Pearl’s in order to gather a few keep sakes that would remind her of home and maybe help her adjust to living in their house in Great Beach. He still had six hours until his flight took off but Pearl would have landed already. If all went smoothly at customs she would be waiting on the cargo dock at JFK to be picked up and in thirty hours or so they would be together.

The empty apartment seemed so small and poor looking after a couple nights in a real hotel it struck Lonny as shameful that she had lived here for so long but also proud that he was taking her away from it. He scanned the place, noting and judging each of her possessions, wondering what she would want.

He selected two of the stuffed animals from her bed, the ones he thought he would able stand to see every morning. Went through the plastic cupboard she used as a closet and selected a couple of her sexiest tops but left the rest as too cheap for her new life in New York. There was plenty of money for clothes and trinkets and whatever she wanted now.

He pulled open the desk drawers that he hadn’t yet looked into out of respect for her privacy and found a small stack of photos tied in a ribbon with a sprig of dried flowers. He sat on the bed to carefully untie the bundle and laid the photos out on the mattress like a solitaire game.

The pictures lost tone and color saturation as they traveled back in time. There were portraits of couples with frozen faces staring dead into the camera wearing clothes that looked rented. Shots of wooden houses surrounded by jungle with crowds of people gathered in front. Random babies and children hung in hammocks from beams under a sala. One captured a mud wallow with the heads of what might be a hundred long horned buffalo jutting out.

At the bottom of the stack were four wallet sized modern studio photos of a little girl posed in front of a backdrop of pink balloons rising into a blue sky. She held a ball in her hands and smiled toothlessly at the camera.

Once they got settled maybe they would have her come to live with them. Lonny had never wanted to be a father, children seemed impossible to him. His friends who had kids didn’t like their own much, and complained bitterly about the time and expense it took to raise them. She was Pearl's daughter though and he imagined she couldn’t be very happy in a far off land unless she had her there. It would be good for the kid too; she would have a better life with them. He would make this sacrifice for Pearl, to make up for what he had done to her.

He stacked the photos and put them with the dolls and clothes except for the ones of Pearl's baby which he slipped into his wallet as the thin laminated plastic front door exploded from its hinges.

Thug #2 came across the small room at a steady menacing gait. Lonny jumped from the bed and threw the first punch of his adult life which missed both far and wide. Blows rained across his face and head, dropping him flat on his back.

He choked on the blood filling his mouth and nose and tried to sit up but the thug’s foot came down on his chest crushing him to the floor. Lonny made a grab at the man’s knee with an idea to buckle it, but the thug bent down and slammed his fist into Lonny’s solar plexus taking the wind out of him completely.

As he labored to breathe and strained against the foot he heard the clicking of heels crossing the linoleum. The two conversed in the cats’ language, the sounds now familiar yet the meanings still a complete mystery.

Toy's bare legs appeared blurred, but still shapely in his tear washed vision. She squatted down and Lonny turned his head to meet her look. She smiled, reaching out with her left hand and wiped away some of the blood that was leaking out of his mouth.‘Hello Lonny, I’m glad we can see each other again. How are you- I am fine thanks.’

Lonny laughed as best he could under the weight of thug #2’s foot.‘We can still work-this-out but you must tell me where the good money.’

Lonny licked the blood from his lips and muttered ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Toy stood and spoke some to thug #2 then stepped back as his foot came down on Lonny’s chest and sides; again and again. Lonny thrashed and squirmed trying to curl into a defensive ball but each time he exposed some new vulnerable spot and the foot found his soft places. He heard the internal fracturing, felt the concussions raining down but there was no real pain yet.

The Thug stopped kicking. Still using his foot he rolled Lonny on to his back. Lonny concentrated on breathing. Sucking air through his mouth he managed short rattling gasps that sprayed blood between his lips which fell back and stippled his face.

Toy squatted again and wiped blood from his mouth and eyes with one of the shirts he had chosen to take for Pearl and then tossed it aside.

‘I’m not here to kill you, Lonny, we still need you. We shouldn’t be here any way but Brent is stupid, can’t find you. So easy, if you hiding Lonny why come here?’

Lonny gasped and coughed and watched her talk through his already swollen eyes.

‘But it didn’t matter, if you get to the airport the police take you, every one looking for you Lonny, you kidnap and kill that boy. Tanner, his name Tanner, I feel bad for him cause he so young and cute too. The police find your partner, Eddy, why you kill him so bad? Why you leave all you email with him and Jerry, that evidence, you not a good criminal Lonny. You see, you teach me the word and I remember.’

Lonny nodded his full understanding. It couldn’t have been any other way. Of course she had chosen him to be her patsy just as Jerry had.

‘Ok, let’s not-fuck-around, tell me where is the good money. We’re supposed to be like best friend’ Toy put her finger to her lips the same way she had the first time she told him about their friendship.

‘You tell me and I won’t kill you here. You go to Jail, but not die. Don’t worry, Thailand jail is not so bad as people say. Many Farang come out early too.’

Lonny turned his head and spat out a thick glob of blood that smeared across Toys suede opened toed shoes and rasped. ‘We're not friends you crazy bitch.’

Toy bent over and used the shirt to wipe the blood from her toes, but the shoe was soaked with it and the stain only spread. She stood, said something to thug # 2 and walked to the toilet. Lonny heard the water running for a second before Thug #2 came down on him with his fist, collapsing his lungs again and then jammed his foot behind his neck and with his fingers buried to their second knuckles inside his nostrils pulled his head back forcing his mouth open. He flailed at the man with his arms but every twist created a debilitating pain through his neck and in seconds he gave up the resistance.

Toy returned, her hair pinned up in a bun on the top of her head and a plastic apron covering her front. She squatted and took him by the limp arms and zip tied his wrists together. In his peripheral vision he watched as she rolled out the bulky leather case, revealing the hammer heads one by one. ‘Ok, I’m crazy bitch, I show you how a crazy bitch act means.’

She removed the largest mallet and a tiny, stainless steel, chisel headed geologists sample hammer. Lonny flopped and weakly struggled as she inserted the sharp chisel head in to his mouth and pressed its edge against the gum above his eye tooth and then whacked the back of it with the mallet sending its cutting edge deep into the roots and breaking the hidden ends of his teeth off. The unknowable pain jerked Lonny forward against the pressure holding him back so that his nostrils ripped at either side against the girth of Thug # 2’s fingers.

He didn’t scream, only shook deeply in the core of his nerve bundle, until she wriggled the hammers edge out. Then he screamed, even gagging on the fresh current of blood he screamed and stomped his feet, and arched his back and fought against the hand holding him down. He thrashed his arms until the plastic ties cut through the skin to the knobby bones in his wrists.

‘Where my money.’ Toy yelled down at him, flashing the big mallet in his face. Her feelings hurt, her patience finished. Lonny swallowed as much blood as he could choke down, spat out another wad and forced himself to say ‘Pearl.’

Toy dropped both hammers, threw her hands above her head and laughed. ‘You give it to your ladyboy? You know Pearl, this Pearl.’ Toy reached out to indicate the room and all its lacy feminine contents. ‘She a tranny. Fucking Farang, Katoy, we call Katoy, for fun, not to live with, not to give money. You give her my money and she not even real lady.’

Toy laughed again and then explained to Thug #2, who joined her.

‘I so worried, I thought you sent it in the box, but you gave it to your ladyboy.’ Toy still laughing looked down at Lonny’s ruined face.

‘I know what she is. She’s more of a woman than you’ll ever be, you can’t even get a boyfriend.’ Lonny's voice gurgled in his throat through the pain. Coughing and choking on his own blood.

The insult cut Toy to the bone. She couldn't stand the idea of getting old. Even in her own estimation 36 was over the hill and though she still proclaimed ‘forever young’ she owned a mirror, she knew her own face. The game was over. ‘Ok, now is very easy to find Pearl, we go to her job, talk to her friend, see her father and mother. We find her; find my money, no problem.' Toy spoke calmly.

Straddling his chest She hefted the heavy, deeply scarred machinists’ mallet in two hands and brought it down hitting Lonny between the eyes, splitting his forehead vertically like an animal killed for meat. His body jerked once and blood spurted from his ears.