Chapter Fourteen

Fourteen

Jerry’s phone vibrated across the top of his desk sounding like the warning of a reptile. The tiny mechanism inside propelled it in a half circle with each alert. He watched it come to life and die again from his supine position, sunken deep into the buttery softness of the leather couch and waited for the drop in the bucket ping that signaled a voice mail had been left.

The windowless office was dark, illuminated solely by a goose neck lamp arched over the drinks trolley; it could be any time from 10 am to 4 pm he thought as he finished off another glass of whiskey and set the empty cut crystal tumbler on the cork floor. He hadn’t been home in four days and that was just a stop in for fresh clothes and mail. He was more or less living here in his basement office and had been since the night of his daughter’s murder months before. True he spent the evening meeting and greeting upstairs in the bar and restaurant but he remembered little of what he said or did by that time and the receipts reflected this.

He had been totally neglecting his main business, his birthright; the company his grandfather had built from nothing and his father expanded over five decades and which he had been gutting for two in order to pay for his own bad decisions. He was a poor businessman that was for sure, even his restaurant, for all its seeming success, hemorrhaged money. Money that had been coming from Air Port Cartage and from now on would come from where?

He sat up and took the framed photo of Jenny, tilting it in his hand so that it caught the light. Sweet Jenny Whitman, 17 years old, had beamed like the glow of a candle in a dark world. With a smile that never failed to ease his day no matter how hard it was. Murdered like a rodent in a back alley. Defiled and mutilated by animals not fit to breathe the same air as she. He held the photo in his lap and sobbed as he had almost every day since they found her, drunkenly and without restraint.

Later when he had showered and dressed, preparing for his evening role as host, he checked his voice mails and found that almost all of them were from creditors except the last from his office at APC.

‘Hi, Jer, its Linda, we gotta crate here for Lon. It’s from Thailand? I was wondering if you knew when he was coming back or what’s going on with him? Gives a call, we miss seeing you 'round the office.’

‘I don’t miss seeing you.’ Jerry mumbled as he hit return call and waited wondering if anyone would still be there.

‘APC’, Linda picked up

‘Hey honey it's Jerry, got your message.’

‘Hi Jer, good to hear from you, you know we don’t see much of you around here lately.’

‘Yeah I know, busy, busy, busy, so a crate from Thailand uh?’

‘Sure it’s here, is it for you? I mean it’s got Lonny’s name on it and I thought what-a he do get one of them mail order brides from over there? Huh.’

‘That sounds like Lonny. No its got his name on it cause I wanted him to deliver it, that’s how long ago since I ordered it. No, its just some gear for the boat. Is anyone around, anyone coming in late?’

‘I don’t know, I can go out and look but you know none of these guys tells us nothing. They don’t never answer their phones, you can’t reschedule them or nothing, the whole place is going to hell Jer.’

‘I know it, I wish there was something I could do about it. If anyone’s still around tell them there’s a hundred cash for anyone who’ll bring the crate over to the docks this evening. Call me back on this OK?’

‘I’ll try, but you know most’a these guys don’t really speak English, I mean not much.’

‘All right let me know.’

‘So when you gonna' come around Jer, lots of mail piling up, lots of paper work and everything, things getting out of hand.’

‘Ok, I hear you, gotta go but let me know about that, see ya soon.’

He hung up before she could go on. He didn’t want to hear it. What could you expect when you fired your entire labor force and replaced them with identical looking square heads from some former communist hell hole at half the wages? Not one of them was the equal of the drivers he had before and they were just run of the mill mooks to begin with but he hadn’t had a choice. He got in bed with Russian money and that was that. He should be the one complaining the most as he was promised 10% right out of each of their checks, but of course that never materialized.

He was no stranger to dealing with the mob. He had grown up with wise guys around, put the words air and transport together and you attract that kind of scum no matter where. His dad did business with them for forty years and though they were cut throats and chiselers at least they spoke your language and once you struck a deal with them they usually kept up their end. The Russians though were different, no sense of fairness, no give and take – only take. They saw themselves wholly as outsiders. Jerry was American, they were Russians and when he ran afoul of them they had gutted him right to the spine.

He sat at his desk and drank one more whiskey to steady himself for the after work meet and greet. The bar would start filling up by 5:30 and he was expected to glad hand all the regulars. The local elite; ordering martinis or Pinot and discussing deals to increase their fortunes. Some of the old timers would already be there drinking beers, watching whatever game happened to be playing on the T.V.’s that he had once refused to put in, they destroyed the ambiance he had wanted for the place, but were demanded by all and he so he finally gave into the costumer's wishes to stare dumbly at the silent glowing boxes.

The crate from Thailand could only be one thing. It was amazing that Lonny had done his job, and more, the kidnapping was in the papers. Killed the kid, Ed and some cops and then disappeared with the ransom. That was incredible. But now he had sent a souvenir, proof of the deed done as well. It was like he had unleashed a monster sending him over there.

Of course there was a hitch to it all. Lonny could some day reappear maybe, and hold his feet to the fire. He must have enough evidence to get Jerry sent away for life.

He left his office and walked into the store room where he snagged a bottle of Black Bush and climbed the stairs to the kitchen which was stoked to full per-dinner rush. A deafening clatter of open flame and crashing stainless steel and shouted Spanish echoed around the crowded room, the wet heat and rich cooking smells were a barrier he had to force himself through.

It had been his normal routine to have a quick chat with the chef, learn what the night’s specials were. To find out what they needed to push on the floor but recently he just stalked through, creating suspicious silence among the illegal staff in his wake.

The dynamic had become too complicated in the aftermath of Jenny’s death. Two bus boys went upstate for life and all the rest of the kitchen staff had been shit canned except the chef who threatened to quit in protest. Jerry fantasized about that moment now. When the chef whined about their team, how they were a family, of beating the flippant piss-ant to death. Standing up for a crew of wet backs who had protected the murderers of his daughter. He saw himself bashing the man’s head on the hot grill, sending his brains sizzling across the expanse of the oily bed. Of course when it came down to it the chef stayed and trained the new crew, his outrage not quite piqued enough to go and try for a new job in the recession market.

He went through the saloon doors into the end of the bar. The bartenders moved around the long elbow bend of mahogany that faced the entrance in crisp white shirts and black pants. Maroon aprons, the bar's Cuttlefish logo stitched on the front, cinched at the waist. The first costumers of the evening , two men and two women sat facing each other across the crook. The women with wine, the men with beers, no one Jerry knew, or at least that he needed to remember.

He handed the bottle of Black Bush to Craig his head bar tender who understood that it was private stock not to be rung up. Jerry wondered what kind of night it would be; recently they had all been full bottle nights; if not more.

‘What’s happening so far?’ Jerry asked Craig.

‘Not much, still early, we won’t see the crowd for another thirty, forty minutes. The bar’s stocked, the tables are set, everyone’s here.’

‘What were the receipts last night?’

Craig nodded, but his face showed they were sub-par.

‘I guess the freak show’s over then,’ Jerry said.

After the murder, for the first couple of weeks the place had been packed as the investigation went on revealing the gruesome nature of the crime. People who had never set foot in the place came for the circus. Jerry’s friends, the group of lawyers, real estate people, investment brokers and assorted moneyed Great Beach residents he had cultivated over the years with special seatings and complimentary bottles of wine and champagne had been in every evening, staying late to show support, to vent or simply to gossip and network.

After the trial things quieted and in the months following quieted still. The quality of the food and service hadn’t changed, the bar was still the best stocked in town but the crowds had thinned and the regulars he had seen three and four times a week came less and less and some not at all. The atmosphere had been sullied, it was a place of tragedy and he himself the walking dead; embalming himself nightly with ceaseless tumblers of Irish whiskey and raving late into the night in his alcoholic grief.

His lawyer, himself once a regular who rarely saw a bill, had hinted at a management change; maybe bring someone in to handle the place, for a while, just until Jerry felt better. Exactly what they had done at Airport Cartage and the way that was going they’d be cutting it up and selling it for scrap in another six months.

He would run the Cuttlefish into the ground, would strip away all the niceties and return it to the dive bar it was when his own father bought it as a workingman’s hang out before he would let it go. He had lost enough, but tonight maybe he was getting something back.

His phone made the drop in the bucket sound again. He sat at the still empty sidebar where his full tumbler already awaited him and played the message.

‘Hey Jer, so we got one of the drivers to bring the crate to the marina, I gave the fella the hundred from petty cash and made an IOU out for you. He said he knew where to take it but I don’t know with these guys. I hope it’s not precious cause the way things is going here, you're just as liable to lose it as get it. Anyway should be there in about thirty, let’s see you soon Ok, be good hun.’

Jerry called the docks and arranged one of the hands to get the crate on board his boat. He wouldn’t call the place a marina just as he wouldn’t refer to his boat as a yacht and these were the values that had kept him in touch with his staff.

‘Kinda late Jerry,’ the yard manager complained

‘Hey, I realize Tommy, tell whoever wants to do it there’s an extra hundred in it from me. And Tom, I’m gonna be coming by later.’

‘Tonight? Well, you know we’re closed at eight.’

‘Give me some slack Ok, I’m excited to see this, it’s a teak bow sprint I had carved in Thailand, gonna have your boys install it before the summer starts.’

‘Alright Jer, but you’re just coming right, you’re not going out tonight OK, the harbor master will have my ass.'

‘No, just want to take a peak, thanks a million, come for a drink later huh?’

‘Sure thanks, see ya’s.’

Jerry snapped his phone off, 'yeah, see ya dick.’ He up ended his whiskey and signaled the bar man at the same time for a refill.

He went from table to table greeting diners and trading quips with the few regulars who showed, and still received bids of condolence from others he could barely place. The long looks of derision weren’t lost on him. He knew he was drunk. He heard his own voice caroming around the too mellow dining room and caught the delicate suggestions of the wait staff but it was a night to celebrate, it was just that no one else knew it.

At ten he told Craig to have his car brought around the front, load a bucket of ice and put a fresh bottle of whiskey into a paper bag.

‘You want me to get one of the valets to drive you home?’

‘No Craig, I want what I asked for, why would I need a ride?’

‘Well, you're drunk Jer, and we have a policy about that.’

‘How’s your old man, Craig.’ Jerry looked him coldly in the eye and Craig, tight lipped in anger, went about setting up the bottle and ice.

Jerry sat waiting, thinking how he had helped Craig’s family. He was a good kid, the family fell on hard times, father out of work, things were tough. He loaned them some money, had made some payments, now Jerry held the papers on their house, put the kid in a job where he earned more than he could have on any construction or labor job, more than he was worth. But he wasn’t the first good kid, Great Beach kid, to piss on Jerry’s generosity. What Craig didn’t know was that the other was in a crate sitting on the deck of Jerry’s boat right then.

‘All set.’

Craig placed the ice and paper wrapped bottle on the bar in front of Jerry.

‘That’s what I wanted to hear. You look tired, maybe you should take a week or so off.’

Jerry wasn’t letting Craig’s insolence slip away to the favor of being delivered his own whiskey.

‘I’m all right, Mr. Whitman.’ He answered quietly.

‘So am I.’ Jerry held his eye until Craig blinked and turned away to wipe down the bar.

Mr. Whitman, that was good. Jerry took his supplies and left out the front without looking back at whatever scene he had created.

When the money was flowing rich and fast he had resisted buying a limp dick replacement and kept to the regime his father had started, buying a new Cadillac every eighteen months. His CTS V coup sat idling at the sidewalk. A Caddy didn’t bring the attention or the problems of a Porsche or even a Lexus but he would put this supercharged V8 566hp luxury ride against anything on the street. It was 70k friend price and Jerry had paid with his platinum Express card and then drank a bottle of champagne with his wife after an inaugural ride out to Montauk. Some place that had been listed as three star; but the champagne was lukewarm and the glasses had come from the Dollar store. They laughed about it then, in that previous reality.

He ran the car through the dark side streets back towards the mainland and the bay where the entrance to the marina came off the bridge to Island Park. He knew every curve and stop sign in Great Beach but even if some kid with a badge pulled him over he wouldn’t dare call it in, Jerry knew every law enforcement official that mattered on the Island and the windshield of his car wore the static stickers that identified him as a friend. He ran the car fast and despite drink taken felt at one with the machine, guiding its twin lights with faultless acumen block after block then onto the JFK highway for a minute before taking a hard right that dropped him down along the bay side.

At the gate he barely slowed to wave as the guard lifted the barrier, recognizing the sleek graphite black car and the importance of its owner.

The Marina was dark and empty, lit only by scattered security lights that sat high on invisible poles. When he parked in his numbered slot and cut the engine he could hear the steady slop and suck of the tide as it raised the boats heaving on either side of the docks against their bumpers.

The upper deck of Jerry’s forty foot Bayliner was visible, slowly tilting in the gloaming at the far end of the dock. It was a big powerful boat he had bought ostensibly for deep sea fishing trips with pals and power-brokers but had rarely seen much use and now would have to be let go for the outrageous upkeep. Still it was a beautiful sight cutting through the water in the bright morning sun with rods shot out from its sides and it was a heady feeling to guide it through the pitch of waves from the height of the captain’s seat.

With his bottle in hand he strode down the dark aisle of wooden planks between the bows nosing up on the waters steady chop. Two lights cast overlapping yellow circles on the end of the dock just in front of Jerry’s own gang plank and he walked just a little unsteady towards them.

The crate on the rear deck was bigger than he had imagined. It was a badly crafted looking box made of cheap materials. Not a right angle or a clean edge on the whole thing but it had survived the nine thousand mile journey intact. Why Lonny had felt the need to send some proof, or keepsake or whatever it was he didn't know. Wouldn’t have thought it was in him in fact. To crate up and ship the remains of the kid, but there was no way of finding out now; Lonny was gone. First Jenny, then Tanner, and Eddy and by all reports Lonny too; a lot of blood had been shed. He set his bottle and ice on top of the crate and then knocked against the thin wood of the lid.

Jerry switched the boats central power on, lit the cabin lights and powered up the stereo. He put on a Credence CD, Run Through The Jungle, Bad Moon Rising, Born On The Bayou; eerie, loud music filled with hoodoo and superstition seemed right for the occasion.

With the lights on the box was smaller than it had seemed in the dark and now he could see the bottom edge was water stained. He grabbed the crate and put his weight into the corner to try and spin it around but it was heavy and he strained until he heard the blocks on the bottom scuffing the finish of his deck. He stepped away and then leaned into the top edge at an angle that gave him full leverage and tilted the box up on its opposite edge, hefted it once to its pinnacle, balanced it momentarily weightless, then received the weight again as it dropped. Well over 300 pounds he guessed, maybe even 4.

He dropped into one of the deck chairs and poured more whiskey. There was a noticeable stench above the fish and sea smell of the marina itself. A heavier order of decay that Jerry became aware of and then was sure emanated from the crate.

The reality of what was inside the box struck him. What would a body look like after the blistering heat and 90 percent humidity of Bangkok then flying across the greatest part of the world and sitting on the dock at APC for a couple of weeks? The mess it would be, the mess it was going to make on the boat.

He got up and took the keys from the cabin door and climbed to the flying bridge. He powered up the generator, lit the running lights and started the little trolling motor that would get the boat out of the harbor and into open water. He cast off the mooring lines and guided the bow out of its birth and into the dark chop of the bay. Idling slowly past the beacon that marked the no wake zone he was aware of a warning blowing at the end of the jetty but fired up the dual one hundred horse power engines, spitting a flume of white water and pulled the throttle back heading due east.

Piss on the harbor master, the marina’s rules and the whole of fucking yachting society Jerry thought holding his glass of Black Bush aloft in a left-handed toast to the mainland as it slipped into darkness behind him.

He let the boat run along at about three quarters throttle sitting back in the tilt of his captains chair draining the whiskey and listening to the boom of the music coming off the black sea around him. He vaguely scanned for the lights of other boats but besides the distant points of container ships far out in the sea lanes the expanse was empty and the boat cut along in a powerful line leaving a just visible streak of white foam in its wake.

As the vaporous glow of the city’s dirty halo vanished over the horizon Jerry cut the engine and let the boat glide to a rest on the chop. He came down from the flying deck with his bottle grasped in one hand and the empty glass in his other and fell into the red and white striped fighting chair and swiveled it around to face the crate then let his feet come to rest on the chair’s foot pedal and poured his glass full. After a long steady pull on the whiskey he smiled at the face of the box and called out.

‘Can you hear me in there Tanner? You’ve been out here on the boat with me before, remember? Fishing, I brought you out here, Jenny too. Were you already fucking her then? Already taking advantage of her, telling nasty stories about my girl behind our backs?’

He kicked the plywood side and leaned back in the chair looking up at the stars hanging so low in the sky he felt he could swipe his hand through the clusters and disturb their timeless order. The boat rocked easily, a steady lulling tempo. The music had stopped and there was no other sound to disturb the rhythmic slop of water rinsing the sides as the hull rode the tide.

‘I was going to kill you myself, you know that? I was standing in the parking lot at the police station the second time they had you there for questioning. I was going to wrap it all up. Give Jenny’s mother some closure. Do it like Ruby did, as a martyr, put one in your head in front of the press and the cops and everyone. I stood there with my Walther P99 in my pocket and watched you come down the steps and suddenly I had a flash of sitting in an 8 X 10 cell for rest of my life like some fucking loser. I lost my nerve, got in my car and drove back to the bar. It worked out fine this way though, huh?’

‘I suppose it wasn’t fair. I suppose you think you didn’t deserve this. But then, Jenny didn’t deserve being beaten to death, raped and brutalized either and then on top of that having her name besmirched by those she trusted. How did Lonny do it? gunshot? Knife? With his bare hands?

The kidnapping thing was a good cover, never would have thought of it myself.’

He drained his glass and poured another, nearly finishing the bottle. ‘However he did it I imagine it was a lot nicer than the way Jenny was done, the way those fucking spics tortured her.’

He paused to drink, scanning the sky again, re-measuring the unreasonable closeness of the stars.‘ I know you didn’t have anything to do with it. The murder, I know that. But what you did was bad. What you said about my little girl, already dead and you had to debase her even further. Tell reporters; tell the police… those things, those lies! Slut, druggie, saying she would fuck anything that moved. Did you think I was going to just let that ride?That’s why you had to die.’

He got up from the chair, weaving and lurching on the unsteady deck and pulled the long handled gaff from its clasps along the gunwale.

‘Let’s have a look at what Lonny did to you.’Jerry took long overhead swings at the crate with the big hook which easily punched through the thin plywood and stuck to its arc and tore chunks of the laminate and Styrofoam away as he pried it out and sent it falling again. After ten minutes of hacking at the side and making no real progress in getting the box open he collapsed back into the fighting chair breathing heavily, his body damp with sea mist and whiskey sweat. He snatched the bottle up and drained the last inch from the bottom in one smooth swallow and leaned back in the chair again letting his pulse settle.

He had spent his whole life around wooden crates, ordering them, organizing their transport, stamping and labeling them, but he couldn’t get this shitty one open. He closed his eyes and chuckled to himself as his breathing settled, steadied, and went shallow.

When he woke the sun had risen and the air was already heating up. The sunlight reflecting off the water was blinding. All around the foot of the chair were splintered hunks of plywood and blue Styrofoam insulation. The crate sat where he had hacked and tore at it. Through the gaping holes he could see the freezer inside.

The smell of decomposition seeped from the crate, strong and gut wrenching above the clean salt smell of the sea air. Jerry’s stomach rolled once and he stepped back from the box to steady himself against the railing. When he felt grounded he went down the three steps to the galley and searched for something to drink, but the boat hadn’t been stocked for summer yet and all he found was instant coffee and bottled water which he put together, shook and drank from the plastic mouth. The acrid bitter mixture did the job of coating his booze scorched palate.

Back on deck, now armed with hammer and a long flat screw driver Jerry took the crate apart from the seams in minutes to reveal the dirty, dented ice cream freezer inside. The smell freed from the crate rose up like a force that physically hampered his movements and hung all around him like a black shroud. The thickest death reek, like a thousand dead mice packed in the walls of a railroad apartment. He had never experienced anything like it and within two breaths heaved black streaks of near coffee against the side of the freezer.

The glass panels at the top of the freezer were coated opaque with a thick layer of some white substance, like bacon fat left to congeal in a frying pan. He wanted to see the condition of Tanner's body but the smell of the deliquesce happening inside the ice cream box repelled his mind. He got to one side and began to push the improvised coffin across the deck, sliding along on its plywood bottom.

He dumped it overboard through the railing slot and the once festive thing splashed and rolled, righted itself and floated up against the side of the boat.

‘Son of a bitch,’ Jerry called out at it.

He picked up the gaff from where he had let it fall the night before and hung it over the glass top, angling it to catch one of the aluminum handles and yanked. Water poured in flooding and weighing the freezer down, it listed and began to sink. The smell of rotted human rose up fresh and sickening as the pink and blue box dove sputtering bubbles and leaking clotted, greasy rainbow streaks in the water. Amidst the gurgling, two scum coated plastic wrapped packages bobbed to the surface and floated away from the boat on its wake.

Jerry swung the gaff out and snagged the nearest telephone book sized bundle with the hook of the gaff tearing a hole in the plastic wrap and sending it beneath the surface again. It bobbed up a second later and Jerry took another swing at it, tearing the plastic in a long run that furled at the edge of the package where the hook caught it wobbling in the current. He didn’t pull it in for fear he would free the hooks tenuous hold on the thin lip of plastic. Straining over the side of the boat, extending himself over the water as far as he could, trying to see what Lonny had thought to send home but he still couldn’t make out any detail through the scum coated and layered cling film.

Carefully he pulled the package in, keeping a steady pressure pushing down against its own buoyancy. Water sloshed over the surface and soaked into the slit plastic, for a second Jerry saw the bundles layered inside, stumbled on the decking and lost the gaff in his grasp for the rail.

The gaff floated still stuck into the plastic and spiraled away widely on the current.

‘It’s money, fucking money!’

He kicked his shoes off and jumped into the water, swimming for the floating handle of the gaff thinking of how this could be his saving grace, could bring him out of the debt pit he had dug for himself in the last three months wallowing in his drunken grief.

He flailed in the water, pulling the shaft of the gaff towards him and reaching for the already sodden package. The coating of decomposed flesh and fat was slick on the surface and Jerry thrashed around trying to free the hook of the gaff and get a hand hold on the pack while treading water at the same time. When he had it firmly against his chest he back floated to the boats side and slung the water heavy cash onto the deck. He held the railing and pulled himself to sit beside it. It was three widths by four lengths and about four inches thick. Hundred dollar bills bound in bank wrappers. Each half inch equal to ten thousand dollars, he knew from his many recent cash transactions with the holding company who had taken over ACP.

‘Lonny’ he mumbled grinning, shaking his head in awe of the good luck. Then he saw the other, no more than a dot on the water but still not so far away. He dove into the sea and began swimming towards it. His crawl stroke had been powerful once, breathing under alternate arms on the three but within a few chops he realized that months of sitting in the dark with his bottles of Irish whiskey had taken their toll. Still he swam on, checking every few strokes on the location and distance of the pack which continued to move away as he came after it. He swam, taking a breath on the two then on the one stroke. Coughing and sputtering with mistimed breaths, he switched to a breast stroke that soon deteriorated to a kind of doggy paddle. Still the pack kept its distance.

The boat he thought. Get back to the boat. He stopped swimming and turned to float on his back, let his breathing ease. Swim back to the boat and chase it down. He turned in the water and found that he had come a long way from the boat without ever getting near the pack.

‘Shit’, he shouted up to the morning sky. He and the pack both were in some kind of rip tide running perpendicular to the boat. He cursed himself for stupidity as he began to chop at the water again. His arms were dead and his ass was like lead weighing him down. He chopped again, made three strokes and came up gagging. Another pause on his back and then turned to side stroke for what seemed like half an hour but when he looked up the boat remained far off like a toy rocking on the waves in the never reachable distance.

He turned on his back and floated on the rolling surface. Water had seeped down his nasal passages and filled the back of his throat and he coughed and choked but couldn’t clear his breathing. Rising and falling on the waves he concentrated on getting his breathing under control.

It was no time to panic, he knew what to do, he had to swim through the tide and then circle back to the boat, it was going to take a while but if he remained calm and focused he would make it. He saw in his mind the line of bright orange life jackets lined up in the galley and again cursed himself for a dolt.

From the corner of his eye he saw the blur of angular black and white darting but before he could react the shape slammed into the side of his face and sent him rolling in the sea.

He fought his way up sputtering, dazed by the impact and searched the horizon but there was nothing. Then a high pitched call and this time he saw the bird diving at his face and ducked below the surface away from its talons. He took two strokes below and surfaced, his heart pounding, his lungs aching. He searched the sky and found the V shaped bird hovering about twenty feet above his head. ‘Get the fuck away from me!’ he screamed at the silent gliding shape, spiraling down, pin pointing his face.

In panicked, utterly frustrated fear he flipped on to his belly and chopped his hands franticly into the coming waves and kicked his dead legs and breathed in anyway he could. Swimming with total determination to gain the boat, to live. Blood was running down his face and he could taste it distinctly apart from the salt of the water.

Rolling and struggling against the current with the phantom threat of the attacking bird hunting him from above he swam hard, already beyond exhaustion, until the break of one small wave coincided perfectly with him tilting his head for breath. He took in a full mouthful of seawater that stopped him dead and sent him down beneath where he choked silently and instinctively inhaled, filling his lungs with the sea's brine. Heaving noiselessly and doubled over in aquatic suspension he grasped at his throat as the last tiny bubbles of air escaped his nose then tilted his head and had one final look at the sun through the wavering lens of the Atlantic.

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.

Chapter Twelve

Twelve

Lonny woke in daylight for the first time since he had arrived in country to the phone buzzing. He slept a solid 12 hours and felt rested and somewhat healed of the aches and pains from his numerous beatings. He found the receiver on the bedside table and put it to his ear without stirring from beneath the comforter that was keeping him warm in the luxurious 60 degree coolness of the room.‘Hello?’

‘Mr. Doyle, this is Brent Lorne, assistant US consul calling. How are you this morning?’

Lonny pictured the schizophrenic change Brent’s face had gone through the night before and cringed, but Toy had laughed him off and told him not to worry. He was just another tool in her kit, bought and paid for.

‘Fine,’ he answered.

‘So, incredible progress over night, the ransom has come through, it’s here at CIB headquarters and we’ll need you to come down as soon as, with any luck we’ll have Tanner back this afternoon.’

‘What’s the ransom got to do with me?’

‘You’re going on the drop. We feel it would be best to have you there as an impartial witness.’

Lonny sat up, gripping the receiver hard to his ear.

‘Don’t you have cops and fucking embassy staff for this kind of shit, I’m a god damned US tax payer not a secret agent.’

‘We both know what you are, and if you know what’s good for you you’ll get the fuck over here double time.’ Brent’s voice went hard over the line.

‘And we both know what you are.’ Lonny dropped the receiver onto the cradle.

It felt good telling the smooth punk off and he squirmed in the bed like a dog getting its belly rubbed. He knew he was going to have to get up. That Lek probably would be there any minute to escort him back to the headquarters but he wanted to prolong the feeling of ease he had and mired deeper into the sheets relishing the clean comfort for another moment.

The room was cold once he got out of bed but the shower was minutely controllable and a steady stream of water at the perfect temperature washed over him as he lathered himself with the assortment of gels and creams that were tucked into a bed of excelsior in a tiny wooden box on a shelf in the shower stall.

Wrapped in the lush toweling of the robe he picked his clothes up off the floor where he had dropped them the night before, mostly drunk on Toy's tequila. They felt stale if not exactly dirty and he wished he had thought about having them laundered. Wherever his luggage had got to he was sure to never see it again. In fact didn’t want to see it. The thought of being burdened with the old case filled with his jeans and jersey’s exhausted him.

‘That’s your doing girl, part of the new me,’ he told Pearl, knowing she couldn’t hear him from there, but just wanting to include her.

He ordered his all time second room service meal from the breakfast menu lay back on the bed and turned on the TV. It was just after seven. He wasn’t going to rush out for the consul twerp.

He ate in bed, the still warm toast, two fried eggs, roasted potatoes and a strip of tough steak. But the coffee was good and he had never eaten a meal in bed except soup his ma brought him when he was sick. He flipped through the seemingly endless channels where nothing quite leapt out at him as needing to be watched until he hit upon the Fishing Show. Two men sat in a bass boat discussing extravagant tackle for a half hour adrift on a boggy and evidently fish free lake.

At eight he closed the door behind him and descended in the gleaming elevator. He held onto his key seeing no reason why he shouldn’t return that same night when all the kidnapping nonsense was finished and over. He would stop and see Pearl for a while, but she would understand that he needed another night of decent rest. They had been trying days up until now and maybe worse to come.

Lek was sitting in the Lobby facing the elevator bank waiting expectantly. He nodded when he saw Lonny and Lonny nodded back and followed him out to the waiting car where he got in the back seat again. He was enjoying this new level of respect, as basic as it might be; it was a change from getting kicked around and mocked and laughed at.

After a few minutes they arrived at CIB headquarters and Lek dropped him at the tinted double doors that led to the main Lobby where he could see the outline of Brent waiting just on the other side of the threshold. Brent greeted him politely when the doors parted.‘Good morning Mr. Doyle.’

‘Yea.’ Lonny answered.

‘Let’s go right down.’

They walked the same long immaculate corridor as they had the day before and entered if not the same then a room so similar it made no difference. This morning it was crowded with men in uniforms absorbed in the many tasks of kidnap control. They played with electronic surveillance gear and tried on body armor and compared side arms and joked and play fought. Lonny wondered why all the acting when at the very least the main cops had to be in the know, but there would be press and lots of technical devices and serious looking uniforms were good publicity.

Lonny sat down in one of the six leather chairs without being asked. Brent loomed over him with one leg up on the table half sitting and half leaning. The officers paid neither of them any attention while Brent laid out the drop off plan.

Lonny was going so that Brent could assure the Bloodwrights that there had been no corruption and that the drop had been made. He was to ride along and that was all, the kidnappers knew he was coming and he would be in no danger.

‘Yeah, no shit they know I’m coming.’ Lonny mumbled. 

Brent stared down at him furiously. ‘This is a serious situation,’ he began, but his tone and the drama of his body language were undercut by the frivolous behavior and general amount of laughter in the room. He pushed himself off the table and strode out of the room putting his phone to his ear as if it had rung, and wandered out of sight. Either he was ashamed of his collusion or didn’t feel like wasting any more time on the ruse in the face of Lonny’s knowledge of it.

The amount of action in the room, the equipment, the special police, the three higher ups, the assistant consul, seemed a lot for 150 K. Cut up five ways it was less then Jerry had offered Lonny in cash up front.

Lonny was left to wait as hours went by and the men in the room rotated in and out, all in all ignoring his presence except for a cup of coffee one young uniform brought him smiling, which Lonny took with a nod sipped at and set aside. He was no coffee snob but the sugary mauve liquid in the cup was nothing like even the most basic combination of brewed water and beans he had ever tasted.

He nodded off and slept in the soft chair with his chin resting in the cup of his hand, leaned over the table. When he woke he was joined by the three older officers from the day before along with two young men in black uniforms standing at attention. Brent sat across from him, sneering at his sloth.

Lonny rubbed his eyes and grinned a little self consciously at those around him. On the table was a black duffel bag, unzipped, revealing bound stacks of American bills. One of the uniformed men was filming the conversation taking place between the officers and the troops. The money was counted out, piled in stacks, and documents were signed. Hands were shook and the two young men took the bag with the ransom and walked out. ‘That’s it Mr. Doyle, it’s a go.’ Brent said

'Why American?'

'Excuse me?'

'Why are they doing this with American money?'

Brent smiled and nodded at the bag. 'The hundred dollar bill is the most sought after denomination in the most sought after currency in the world Mr. Doyle.'

'Seems like it would damned hard to spend here.'

'Luckily that's none of your concern, now lets go.'

Lonny stood from the table and stretched and nodded to the older men and followed Brent out to the corridor and back to reception where he paused at the automatic door. ‘Good luck, there’s your transport, The US Consular service appreciates your help.’ Brent smiled and extended his hand.

‘Sure, anything to help such an honorable institution.’ Lonny said ignoring his hand.

Brent’s staring eyes burned into him, and finally unsettled him so that he turned from the confrontation and walked towards the giant black truck that sat waiting for him.

The men in the truck were bulked up, clean cut, sharp looking guys in immaculate para-military style uniforms. They introduced themselves, name, rank and nickname in well rehearsed English; almost like a chant without the guffaws and nervous giggling he had gotten from most other Thai men he had met.

He sat in the back of the king cab, the duffel bag full of money on the floor by his feet. The truck headed directly out of the tangled streets of the city which quickly dissipated into near rural looking areas of wooden houses on dirt properties laid up against fish ponds but intermixed with factories and warehouses. They navigated through tiny dirt lanes which cut along fields of weeds and rubble which became tarmac every few kilometers to cross wide intersections jammed with traffic before dissolving back to rutted tracks. Then a few turns, another huge intersection running up the double clover leaf ramp to a six lane highway that circled the city. The driver jumped the truck up to the far limits of the speedometer, using the break down lane to pass slower traffic.

When they exited the raised highway Lonny recognized the area as the dusty industrial waste land where Toy's thugs had brought him for their first meeting. The truck pulled up to the gate of the wrecking yard and one of the cops made a call on his cell phone. As the gate pulled back on its track Lek stood holding two huge dogs by their collars. They were identical cross bred mutts with patch work coats; panting in the heat but not yet barking. He pointed, not to the main building, but towards a shipping container that had been customized as an office.

Lek and the cops greeted each other with friendly smiles and the prayer like gesture Thais use instead of handshakes. Lonny got out of the back and followed the others in without being acknowledged.

The trailer was made usable by a powerful air conditioner installed in the far well, yet the corrugated metal sides were still hot to the touch. It was outfitted with a couple of desks and a spattering of chairs. Two long florescent lights had been hung from the ceiling. A still and quiet Tanner was bound to a chair against the far wall. Strangely an open fifty gallon drum full of water sat just inside the door. It didn’t look like any place Toy would spend time. On one of the desks was a bottle of whiskey and an ice bucket with glasses around it.

Tanner was sat in a desk chair at the far end facing the corner, unconscious but obviously breathing. The men all sat waiting, for what Lonny wasn’t yet sure until the door opened and Toy came in with the other thug he had no name for.

She breezed by him, made a halfhearted prayer motion to the cops who returned it reverently. They spoke briefly out of Lonny’s ear shot, one of the officers left while the other took his camera and videoed the impromptu office, the desks, the ceiling and chairs. Then to the rear where he made a video confirmation of a drugged Tanner, checking his vitals and raising his eyelids for the camera.

The second cop returned with a briefcase Lonny hadn’t seen before and set it on the desk. Lek opened it and quickly counted out the stacks of bills. Riffling each bound bundle with his thumb, set two aside, returned the rest and snapped the case closed.

Toy took the case and invited the cops to sit, smiling. Lek handed each of the cops one of the two bundles of bills he had separated and poured out whiskey. The men clinked their glasses and called out ‘chock dee’ their own version of cheers. Toy turned towards the door calling ‘Lonny you can come with me’ as she passed.

At the door Toy set the case down, looked up and winked at Lonny while she reached into her bag that was shaped like the face of a Bunny rabbit, its pink ears sewn together to make the shoulder strap, and unfolded a quilted silver glove, like something an astronaut or chemical engineer might use. She slipped this on and reached behind the plastic drum picking up a chunk of what looked like rock salt that was bigger than her own head. She pushed Lonny through the door and following him out tossed the chunk into the drum of water and slammed the door, fixing the hasp. Yelling ‘ better-make-a-run-for-it.’ She turned on her heel and took off with the case toward a bulldozer some fifty feet away, laughing.

The explosion, though contained by the trailer, jolted the earth beneath the two as they squatted behind the tracks of the machine. The air conditioning unit blew from its brackets off the rear end and spiraled high in the air before crashing into the towers of crushed cars.

Lonny felt the smack of the concussion in his gut the way he had during artillery drills thirty years earlier, the sensation immediately familiar. The container rocked on the ground kicking up a wave of rock, dirt and debris that swelled for fifty feet and then broke over the bulldozer, crashing on their heads. White smoke poured from the bent double doors of the loading end and in the rear where the air unit had left a gaping hole.

Lonny sat with his back against the treads, his mind clearing, but the blast still echoed in his ears. He choked on the dust that had kicked up thick in the air. Toy was already surveying the destruction. ‘What the fuck was that?’ Lonny said.

‘Sodium. Wow, it made the biggest boom!’

Toy smiled at her handy work until she examined her outfit and grunted. Her gold and blue silk pantaloons and white embroidered half shirt outfit was smeared with red dust, and paint particles. Her hair was in tangles and her face grubby. Her smile drooped. ‘I need to change my clothes,’ she complained.

In the cool white of Toy’s loft within the main building Lonny had stripped and showered and dressed in a suit that was both too wide and too short but clean. Toy sat on her white couch in a pair of thin cotton trousers and a white spaghetti strapped blouse that showed off her breasts to the best effect possible.

‘Ok, we’re all done, you can go home now or when you like.’

Lonny’s passport sat on the glass table in front of the couch. Toy was drinking a glass of white wine from a bottle she had taken already cold from the refrigerator. ‘Are you hungry?’ She asked.

He shook his head and sat down on the adjoining square backed chair. ‘You killed everyone in that trailer.’

Toy sighed, twisted a lock of her hair between her fingers examining the ends, sighed again and looked at Lonny like a child. ‘I had to make my deal with police, not about money you see? I can’t explain, is very difficult. Tanner wasn’t going to live. He broke my heart, he said I old already.’ She put on a pained face still holding the ends of her hair up for inspection.

‘The cops and Lek?’

‘Two police were not my responsibility; part of my contract with the big police. Lek was cheating, taking too much money, getting his face too big. You see this way everything works easy. Police and kidnapper die in explosion; one witness see everything, you. No one live, money gone. By tonight container and police truck are far away from here.’

Lonny looked around the loft, at the other thug, at the bleached wood floor.

‘I didn’t kill you Lonny, you see I told you, we’re like best friend. You go home and forget-about-it.’

Thug #2 led him out of the building to the car. He would drive him to the BTS. Brent was going to take care of his statement. Toy promised to have his box picked up the next day, she would take care of the shipping. Lonny wrote out the delivery information. He returned the cheap pre-paid phone she had given him and all ties were severed.

In the dazzling heat of the yard he looked out over the top of the car at the shipping container still emitting steady streams of white smoke. The police truck sat in the middle distance. Its windows blown out and its side blasted with stone and debris.

Thug #2 had already started the car. Lonny ducked his head in. ‘Hold on a second, I need my bag.’ He held up a pausing finger.

‘Just a moment?’ Thug # 2 nodded his understanding.

Lonny trotted over to the truck and opened the rear door. The blue bag sat on the floor under an inch of shattered safety glass. He pulled it out and thrashed the glass fragments from it against the side of the truck, slung it over his shoulder and returned to the car, slipping into the rear seat running with sweat.

*

At Pearl's apartment Lonny headed straight for the shower, stripping off the ill-fitting damp suit, letting each piece fall to the floor as he walked. Rinsed again and wrapped in one of Pearl's tiny towels he slid the glass panel of her freezer back and looked down on her sitting up-right with the red silk wrap draped over her shoulders like a cape, the ends tied in a simple knot above her perfect breasts. Her skin was like chalk, smooth and icy to the touch. The thin flesh around her eyes and lips had turned pale lavender against the pallor of her blemish free face, framed in her thick, ink black hair and streaked with ice crystals. He ran his finger tips from the top of her cheek bone to the line of her jaw, feeling the moisture of condensation already collecting on her skin in the heat of the little room.

‘You look beautiful; I wish you could see yourself.’ He told her drawing up her plastic desk chair and lowering his bulk onto it carefully so as not to crush its legs beneath him. He set the duffel bag on the closed side of the freezer top and unsealed a box of clear plastic wrap he picked up at Seven Eleven and set it next to the bag.

‘Things have changed honey, this was a terrible day, but one that is going to set us up for the future.’ He unzipped the duffel and turned it over letting the banded bank notes tumble out, thumping on the glass.

‘I know, but listen I didn’t do nothing. That girl Toy, she’s a freakin’ psycho, I mean Jesus how does someone end up like that? The whole thing was a kind of set up, the kidnapping was just a scam for the police to get rid of two of their own and the ransom, the drop was the payoff. She blew the trailer up, they had the meeting in a container and she threw a goddamned bomb in it, killed the kid, two cops and her own guy, Lek, did I tell you about him?’

He took the first bundle and turned it over a couple of times in the plastic wrap, closing it head and tail just as he wrapped the bluefish he caught surf casting when they ran in late summer. He reached far into the freezer and tucked the pack between Pearls thighs.

‘It’s bad, I know, but what could I do?’ He wrapped another bundle and jammed it down into the foot of the freezer.

‘Soon enough though we’ll be home, and I ain’t going back to work. We can just hang out all day, watch TV, have lunch with Ma. Wait till you meet her, I think you’re gonna get along good. I’m still gonna go out sometimes to have a beer but don’t worry about that. I don’t get into trouble, just go out have a couple, watch a game and come home, you won’t be lonely.’

He shut up and concentrated on wrapping the money. With the last bundle stuffed in between her thighs Pearl reclined in the ice cream freezer like some antediluvian princess being prepared for the afterlife with all she would need to be comfortable.

Lonny slid back the glass top and watched as delicate crystals formed in the moisture that clung to the underside of it. Slowly trapping Pearl beneath the glaze, he placed his hand on the glass and felt the cold come up and wondered how she was going to keep in transit.

He made his way around the plywood and sheets of pink two inch Styrofoam that leaned against the walls and sat on the single bed now stripped to the bare hard mattress and stretched out with the slight breeze of the fan blowing across him. He was tired; it had been a staggering day in which he had witnessed atrocities carried out in so casual a fashion they seemed almost not to have happened. He shut his eyes against the weariness. He needed to close the crate but his head was heavy and his eyes refused to re-open and soon his sonorous noises echoed in the room.

He woke with a start; early morning light was already filling the room. Toy told him the truck would come early and it was already nearly seven. He stretched and yawned and slid back the glass panel and planted a kiss on the top of pearls head. ‘This is it; don’t be afraid, I’ll see you in a few.’ Standing there looking down on her he couldn't hold it in any longer and finally said it aloud, 'Pearl, I love you.' Then closed her up and pulled the plug from the wall socket and curled it on top of the panels. He fitted the two sheets of insulation on top sealing her in and zipped the crate top closed with as many screws as the faulty machine would drive in. He gave the flimsy thing a kick.

‘Christ I hope it holds.’ He had been on too many air port cargo docks to think that writing things like FRAGILE or HANDLE WITH CARE meant anything to a fork lift. He simply wrote APC's address with a fat black marker along the side and kissed the tips of his fingers and planted that kiss on the lid for safe passage.

Standing in the shower he heard pounding on the door and rushed to get his pants on over his still wet legs before opening it to the three workmen whose faces dropped when they saw the size of the box. Lonny followed them down the stairs as they strained beneath it making sure they neither dropped nor slid it down the steps as he knew so many he had worked with would have. They bashed it into the walls of the narrow stairway landing, and dropped a corner against the steps a couple of times but there was no real damage to the crate.

The men got it out to their truck and hefted it onto the bed without the assistance of any tools. Pained smiles creased their streaming faces when Lonny handed each of them one of the pink bills and mimicked how fragile the contents of the box was. They nodded and pointed and showed how careful they would be and then drove off with his Pearl frozen stiff and surrounded by cash.

Lonny walked to Seven Eleven for his morning coffee and hotdog. This new ritual had become comforting though this would be his last time observing it. It was later in the morning than usual so the pedestrian traffic was heavy and by the time he arrived at the super cooled store his shirt was wet from the walk. The girls recognized him, and one pointed to the dogs rolling on their heated steel bed and asked ‘hotdog?’ He nodded and continued to the coffee station and made a cup of the instant brew. He had sought out the familiar like any immigrant in a new land. Who had brought the hot dog here he wondered, American GI’s? Or did it make its way here the same way it arrived in America? As a kind of German sausage bastardized and made generic on a white bread roll covered in Ketchup?

Outside the store he put the paper wrapped dog and coffee on top of the phone and dialed his mother’s number. He counted seven rings before she picked up and said ‘Hello.’

He thought at first he had dialed the wrong number but the voice was his mother’s nasal whine. ‘Ma?’

‘Lonny, that you?’

‘Yeah Ma, you answered the phone, I mean you said hello.’

‘What you expect me to say?’

‘No that’s great is all. Listen Ma, I’m gonna be home in a couple days, and I’m bringing 
someone with me, someone special I want you to meet.’

‘What? Don’t talk crazy. But I need to tell you something. Things are going to be a little different when you get back, I got a boyfriend now and he’s staying here.’

‘Where’d you get a boyfriend from? No, listen Ma, I’m trying to tell you. Wait, you telling me you got a man living there? Who? The nurse?’

‘His name is Angel, and he aint just a nurse to me no more, he’s my fella. And I don’t want you feelin prejudiced against him when you get back cause he's a spic either.’

‘What are you talking about Ma? He’s your nurse; he’s like forty years old.’

‘He’s my lover.’

‘Jesus Ma, don’t say stuff like that. Look I gotta go. We’ll talk about this in a couple days.’

He ate the sandwich in three bites and washed it down with the tepid coffee while returning to Pearl's building. He wanted to give the place a wash down, clean up the construction materials and gather up whatever clothes he had left there to try and erase his presence altogether.

In the pre-work crush of foot traffic Lonny came shoulder to shoulder with him and John The Complainer grabbed him by the bicep and pulled him out of the flow of bodies before Lonny truly recognized him. He tensed as if for a fight and wrenched his arm away before he knew the face, almost disfigured with booze bloat and streaming with sweat, the eyes squinting and glazed by the early sun.'Lonny.'

'Jesus John, you okay? What are you doing around here?'

John shook his head, looked around at the street and turned back to Lonny again, 'What do you mean? I live here. I’m going home man. What the fuck are you doing here?'

'My girlfriend lives near by, well I mean not any more, anyway you alright? You look, you know, you don’t look good.'

John was dressed in casually stylish clothes that would've served in almost any situation except that they hadn't been changed in days and were stained and crusted with the remnants of all the hours he had spent wandering from bar to bar wearing them.

'No, I’m not alright man, I can't figure out what happened the other day. I cant figure out why the cops picked us up and then, you know just let us fucking go. I can't figure out why they're fucking with me. I been going over every story I worked on in the last year and there's nothing man, nothing there.'

His fingers twitched and seized in spasms as he went through the motions of lighting a cigarette that he caught between his teeth and inhaled deeply on, burning it a quarter down with the first drag.

It took Lonny a second before he laughed. The arrest seemed so long ago, so insignificant that John's phrase the other day made it comical. 'Are you still thinking about that?'

'Yeah I’m still thinking about that, you don't understand this shit man.'

'Listen, that had nothing to do with you. That was for me. You were just in the wrong place with the wrong guy. Don’t worry about it anymore.'

Now it was John's turn to laugh but there was nothing but scorn in it. 'Yeah? They were after you? You were what, like Jay walking or something? So they pulled us in and then you disappear out the back and my editors telling me not to come to work until I figure out what the fuck I did. And you say I didn’t do nothing but be in the wrong place with the wrong fucking tourist?'

John pinched the cigarette to his lips and sucked on it until the cherry burned into the filter and then flicked it hard at the sidewalk between his feet and exhaled a long plume of smoke into the already hot, hazy air.

Lonny thought a second before speaking, organizing his story and then he let it flow out of him in a kind of stream of conscious ramble.

'I’m not just a tourist, I'm a hit man. My boss sent me here to kill this kid that he thinks killed his daughter, now this kid was hooked up with this like high level criminal girl, then I guess he sort of insulted her so she kidnapped him and so I helped with that but it all turned out to be some kinda double cross between her and the cops, who she killed with some kind of king sized water bomb and she's got this jerk that works at the embassy under her thumb. So anyway I think they're all going to be looking for me, the kids dead, did I say? Yeah, so I’m on my way out of the country, me and my girl, she's gone already, but I’m leaving soon as possible. So you see that thing with the cops, that was all between me and her.'

The two stood face to face with the day workers maneuvering around them on the sidewalk. Sweat trickling into their eyes, collecting in the pits of their necks, soaking into the fronts of their shirts.'

John lifted an eyebrow ' You're a hit-man? You been here what like a week and your already talking this kind of shit, CIA, NSA what firm you with?'

'No not like that, like a regular, you know trigger man, not even a professional or anything, I mean I was a truck driver but I got fired.'

'I'm trying to talk to you and your giving me this shit?'

'Alright never mind, I gotta go, see ya.'

Lonny moved into the crowd leaving John leaning against the building calling out after him, 'Yeah go check in CIA man, see what mission your handler has for you now; fucking secret agent Lonny.'

*

When Lonny reached the corner of the block Pearl’s neighbor was coming out of the building. Lonny ducked his head and continued on towards the sky train station, mingling with the pedestrians as best he could. He would return later, for now a good rest in the luxury of a hotel, a place like where Brent had put him up. He had his passport again and could check-in anywhere he wanted. Sleep and make his flight arrangements. There was nothing at the Mansion worth retrieving and if Toy hadn’t discovered the money switch yet there was nothing to worry about, just lay low until departure.

*

Sitting at the bar looking over the pool where a few foreign women were laid out in bikinis catching the morning sun Lonny was having an actual drink, not a beer, but a cocktail of juices and alcohol. He could taste the reason people enjoyed them, the sweet tang followed by the hit of vodka, they gave you a good buzz and were easy to drink. It was his last morning in the city and he had no intention of moving from the bar until it was time to get a taxi to the airport.

He made small talk with the bartender and laughed at the well trod witticisms the boy repeated. A banter pieced together over years of listening to the jokes and one liners of men who had their two weeks in fun city, the world's largest adult play ground and could now speak of the complicated system of bar fines and various merits of Walking street in Pattaya versus Soi Cowboy in Bangkok with the weariness of a professional whore hopper. ‘One more?’

‘Sure, why not, this time give me a Mai Tai. Is that from Thailand?’

‘ I think so.’ The bartender nodded and mixed the opulent, sugary drink.

Lonny scanned the pool again and let his eyes wander over to the lobby and there was Brent Lorne and three other suited white men moving swiftly across the floor.

Lonny dropped a pile of bills on the bar and walked the long way round the pool, entering the lobby through a thicket of potted plants and made his way straight out the front doors and into a waiting cab.