Double Agent

by Gretchen Archer

  “I can’t even feel it,” I said. “Someone just pull it out.”

  Bradley stopped mid-circle. “No! The minute it’s out, you’ll start bleeding.”

  “The nailses,” Filet said. “You bites the nailses. Filet pullses.”

  “We don’t have any nails and don’t touch my wife.”

  Filet backed off.

  “July.” I reached out to tug one of her corkscrew curls. “Yank it out. Just…go.”

  “The whiskeys!”

  Bradley stopped pacing. “Yes. Whiskey. We’ll sterilize your foot.”

  “To drinkses!” Filet said. “Drinkses the whiskeys!”

  I locked eyes with July. She glanced at Bradley, who was busy pacing again, cupped one hand on the toe and one hand on the heel of the shoe, took a deep breath, squeezed her eyes closed, pressed her lips together, then tore off my shoe. The good news was a second later there wasn’t a dagger of glass in my foot. The bad news was Bradley was right. It started bleeding. To beat the band.

  Bradley ripped off his tuxedo shirt and wrapped it around my foot, scooped me up and ran. I could hear the pound of footsteps and the rattle of the empty buggy behind us.

  We’d forgotten Broom again. We left him sleeping on the floor.

  We were all the way down the lobby for the second time, almost at our impromptu-first-aid destination, Necessities, when the lobby lit with another lightning strike, closely followed by an explosion that would have killed me and Bradley ten minutes earlier, and Broom, had we not remembered him, two minutes earlier.

  FEMA’s car blew up.

  The fireball accompanying the blast lit the entire lobby with a massive rolling comet of flame. We saw the blinding light and felt the flash of heat before it retreated, as fast as it had appeared—whoosh—and that from at least two hundred feet and around a corner away, at which point, we’d officially destroyed the lobby.

  TWENTY-TWO

  We ran the rest of the way.

  Well, I didn’t.

  Dr. Bradley pulled on a Bellissimo GOT MONEY? BRING IT HERE long-sleeved t-shirt as he and Nurse July, by the beam of our last working penlight, cleaned, Neosporined, and bandaged my foot with torn strips of a Bellissimo souvenir golf towel, the whole time, Filet franticly spewing a mixture of broken English and fragmented Vietnamese. The only words I caught were “fireses” and “lửa.” I thought, given that their heated deliveries matched, they probably meant the same thing: Filet was worried the building was on fire. He may have been saying we’d be better off outside in a hurricane instead of inside in an incinerator. But then again, he might have been reciting blazing Vietnamese poetry. It was hard to tell.

  “Filet!” My foot was throbbing. “The building’s not on fire. For one, we’d smell smoke. For another, there’s nothing to burn. The car was sitting on a sea of glass. Glass doesn’t burn. It melts. There’s nothing above the car but glass, nothing on the sides but marble, and ninety percent of the car is outside. That was a chemical blast set off by a lightning strike. If there was a fire, the alarms would be blaring. It’s over. The car isn’t burning, and neither is the building.” I believed every word out of my mouth, because I refused to believe I could single-handedly burn down the Bellissimo in the middle of a hurricane. I also believed the golf towel strips on my foot were too tight.

  It was two in the morning. We’d left the rotary phone and the file folders somewhere in the lobby, and they’d probably been cremated. So we’re back to no communication. I sat up too fast. “The two-way radio.” Everyone stopped what they were doing, not that I knew what they were doing in the dark. “Where’s the two-way radio?”

  No one answered.

  We’d forgotten the two-way radio. Again. We’d left it in Rocks, on our way to Player Services, where it might have been safe from the fireball that torpedoed through the lobby.

  “And another thing.” I said it as our last penlight died. “If we make it back to Rocks for the two-way, we need to keep going.”

  “To where?” July asked.

  “The casino,” I said.

  “How?” July asked.

  “Through Player Services.” Bradley was a mind reader. My mind, anyway. “How far down the crawlspace was the opening, Davis?”

  “Fifteen feet, maybe.”

  “How will being in the casino be any better than being in the lobby?” July asked. “What if we tear it up too?”

  “It could happen.” I wrapped my arms around my husband’s neck as he picked me up again. Because we were going to lure Filet’s boss man, our zip drive thief, the Third Man, to the casino, and in the process, let No Hair and Fantasy know our problems weren’t over. If they didn’t already know.

  Bradley barked orders. “Filet, get the buggy. July, get candles and lighters.”

  Back to Rocks.

  Again, to Rocks.

  All Hurricane Kevin roads led to Rocks.

  * * *

  Thirty hard minutes later, we were in the casino. Hardest on Bradley, because he carried me most of the way and the tunnel was a squeeze for my six-foot-tall husband. The lobby, from what we could see, was charred from the meteorite that blew through and soggy from the automatic sprinklers it triggered. It was freezing cold, drippy, and the winds whipping through smelled like they were straight from a KOA campground.

  It was no longer the Bellissimo lobby. It was a post-apocalyptic war zone.

  We abandoned the buggy at the door of Rocks and dragged Broom between the display cases, and none too gently, because no one had the energy for gentle dragging. The crawl behind the wall to the computer room at the back of Player Services wasn’t too bad, for me, anyway, because I fit and didn’t have to put weight on my foot. Once through the tunnel, we relit our candles, Bradley picked me up again, we made our way past the server, around the corner to the office, then like a hurricane miracle, the swinging Player Services door opened for us. We’d made it to the casino.

  We traveled down the main aisle by candlelight, dodging empty and scattered cash carts, past the craps table we’d taken cover under after Danielle almost drowned, then stumbled our way to a table at Stir, the martini bar, where Bradley pulled an extra chair up for my foot. Filet and July dropped Broom on the floor. That man was going to be one huge bruise when he woke up. If he ever woke up. It was amazing what all he’d slept through, and a big part of me was jealous.

  With three candles around our two-way radio centerpiece, it felt, given the circumstances, like the most normal thing we’d done in hours, sitting in chairs around a table. Given that, I thought it best not to mention there were three dead bodies in an ice bin not too far from where we were. Filet, who was busy knocking dust and crawlspace debris off his new suit, would have a meltdown if he knew. Not knowing, he adjusted his bowtie, tugged his lapels, and smoothed back his hair. He was ready. For what, I didn’t know.

  “Why is the light on the two-way radio yellow?” Another thing I didn’t know.

  “I’m not a two-way radio expert.” Bradley stared at it too. “But I’d say it needs to be charged.”

  “Then we’d better hurry.”

  “Your feetses?” Filet asked.

  “I’ll be fine, Filet.” I added, “Thank you.”

  When Filet smiled, his eyes closed.

  Bradley took a candle behind the bar and returned with napkins, the stub of a black wax pen, four shot glasses, and a bottle of Macallan Scotch. We had two shots each, wrote a script for our favorite thespian, then we were up again, building a maze of cash carts in front of the swinging Player Services door. We stacked them on ends in a snake-shaped domino line. And by we, I mean Bradley, July, and Filet. I, in my Bellissimo towel boot, wasn’t much help. And neither was Broom. Inside the Player Services office, we rearranged the furniture. We tipped two desks on their sides and arranged them in a V. Bradley and Filet anchored a third desk on top. We removed t
he desk drawers for gun embrasures.

  Ambush set, we were ready.

  We made our candlelit way back to Stir. And Broom.

  Bradley took a deep breath. “Davis and I will be in the Player Services office with the door closed.”

  “You two stay here with Broom,” I said.

  “Mop,” Bradley said.

  “You know we’re armed,” I said to July and Filet. “I hope you don’t, but if you hear gunshots, don’t come running.”

  “Listen carefully.” Bradley zeroed in on July. “If you hear the cash carts crash, it means someone made it past us.”

  “If that happens, run the other way,” I said. “If you hear cash carts crash, run as fast as you can.”

  “It’s a big dark casino,” Bradley said. “Find somewhere safe to hide until the storm passes.”

  July nodded along while Filet whimpered along with our every directive.

  Then I remembered our favorite afterthought. “If you have to run,” I said, “don’t forget Broom.”

  “Mop,” Bradley said.

  July and I locked eyes. Hers said, you can do this, Davis. Mine said, help raise our daughters if I can’t.

  “Filet.” Bradley passed him the two-way radio. “You’re on.”

  Filet cleared his throat. He held the two-way to his lips. He pressed the yellow button. “Hello to the alls? Hello?”

  Static.

  “Filet.” He cleared his throat again. “…who is my person, has made the storms snackses for boss manses.”

  Nothing back.

  “Boss manses? Filet has the chickenses in the wrapses with the chipotleses and the cheddars of cheeseses for you.”

  Nothing at all back.

  “Come to the casinoses for the wrapses. Is hot and fresh with the crisps lettuces and choppeded tomatoeses and Filet, who is my person, has made the guaca-guaca-moleses with the fat avocadoses and the diceded red onionses. Please to wash filthy handses.”

  The only chore we had left, other than surviving the storm, was to take down Filet’s boss man and our zip drive thief when he came through the Player Services door to kill us.

  * * *

  Bradley carried me and I carried the two-way radio and our candle past the cash cart trap and through the swinging door to Player Services. We checked our weapons, positioned ourselves behind the desk fort, then blew out the candle. I didn’t know which was worse—the quiet or the dark.

  “Who do you think will come around the corner?” I whispered.

  “I have no idea, Davis.”

  A minute passed.

  Then two more.

  “Maybe no one’s coming.”

  “Someone’s coming,” Bradley said.

  “Will we hear them when they’re in Rocks, do you think? Or will we not hear them until they’re in the tunnel?”

  “Davis, honey, I don’t know. If we keep talking, we won’t hear them at all.”

  “You know what I’m thinking?”

  “That when you’re exhausted, nervous, and need stitches in your foot you think out loud?”

  “That wasn’t what I was thinking, thank you.”

  His whisper softer, he said, “What were you thinking, Davis?”

  “Why is Filet alive?”

  I felt his head turn my way in the dark. “What?”

  “If our zip drive thief has the zip drive, why let Filet live? Or for that matter, Broom? And July?”

  I heard him exhale. “Could you have asked me this earlier? Like before you almost cut your foot off?”

  “I didn’t want to ask in front of Filet.”

  “Like he’d have understood.”

  True.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Bradley whispered. “When Filet’s boss gets here, we’ll ask him.”

  A tense moment passed.

  “I didn’t mean to snap at you,” he said.

  “It’s okay.”

  “What else?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Davis, what else?”

  I couldn’t help myself. “What if there are two parts to this hurricane heist, Bradley?”

  “There are fifty-two parts to it.”

  We listened.

  Nothing.

  “Five hundred and fifty-two parts,” he whispered.

  We listened.

  Nothing.

  “What if stealing the money had nothing to do with stealing the zip drive?” I whispered.

  He didn’t answer.

  “What if we’re dealing with two totally separate crimes committed by two totally different sets of perpetrators?”

  After a listening pause, or maybe a thinking pause, he whispered, “Meaning?”

  “Meaning the pandemonium we’ve been dealing with could be because the cash heist ran headlong into the zip drive heist. These people have been fighting each other and we’ve been caught in the middle. We need to stop thinking in terms of connecting Filet’s boss man to FEMA and Emergency.”

  “And this whole time,” he whispered, “I thought we were trying to survive a hurricane.”

  That too.

  We listened.

  Nothing.

  “The boss man,” I whispered. “Filet’s boss man. Whoever it is, he was probably behind the fake officer’s death. He spiked the lasagna. He’s the one who had Broom move the cash carts around, hiding them from the fake officer, FEMA, and Emergency. He’s who locked us in the casino and turned off the generator on Disaster. All because cash thieves were getting in the way of his zip drive heist. And he still needs or wants something from Filet. And that’s why Filet’s still alive.”

  “Who could it possibly be, Davis? Everyone but us and a woman from Michigan is asleep.”

  Unless they weren’t.

  “And what could he possibly still need or want from Filet?” Bradley asked. “If he has the zip drive, what else could he want?”

  I was about to speculate—the keys to the kingdom, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, superpowers—when my blood stopped pumping.

  Someone was in the tunnel.

  And whoever it was wasn’t moving stealthily. In fact, whoever was in the tunnel was in a big hurry. It was less than a minute before they were in the computer room, just one thin wall away. Our weapons trained a foot above the floor—we were shooting to incapacitate, not kill—it was nothing short of a second hurricane miracle that we didn’t blow Baylor’s legs off as he rounded the corner. And it was a third hurricane miracle that he didn’t shoot us—to kill—and succeed. After a moment of total chaos, Baylor holstered his gun and pointed at the two-way radio on the floor between the desks. “Why is the radio muted?”

  “What does that even mean?” I asked.

  “You have the mute button on. See the yellow light? No transmission,” he said. “Nothing outgoing, nothing incoming. Give it to me. I want to talk to July.”

  When we told him she was just a few feet away in the casino, he ran before we could warn him about the cash cart trap just outside the Player Services door. It might have been acoustics, or how close we were, or how little sleep we’d had, but the cash cart crash was louder than anything before it—the storm, the helicopter, even FEMA’s car blowing up—and it just wouldn’t stop, cart after cart after cart. I wondered if Filet lived through it.

  * * *

  “Are they to the makeses loveses?”

  “What, Filet?” Eww. “No!”

  “They’re talking,” Bradley said.

  From our table at Stir, another shot of Scotch each, and I didn’t even like Scotch, we couldn’t make out anything Baylor and July were saying, and didn’t want to, but were anxious for them to finish saying it. We needed a daughter report, a weather update, our zip drive, the storm over, real food, and sleep. It had only been two minutes, but my
husband, the one who’d accused me of being nervous, was tapping a foot and drumming his fingers on the table. “Baylor,” Bradley said. “Wind it up.”

  Baylor wound it up and the interrogation began. As far as he could see, Biloxi was bent, not yet broken from the storm, the rain was blinding, and he’d driven to the Bellissimo, airborne at times, in Jug Dooley’s black Chrysler van.

  That woke me up.

  “Where’s the money?” I asked.

  “In the back of the van,” he said.

  “Where’s the van?” Bradley asked.

  “At what used to be the front door.”

  “How did you find us?” I asked.

  “You left a trail a mile wide,” he said.

  * * *

  We were in four chairs around the candlelit table at Stir with the Scotch, Baylor and July in one chair, where he ended and she began, a blur. It was 2:50 in the morning on October fourteenth.

  Jug’s van didn’t have a working radio, or a working anything else, so Baylor didn’t have weather details. He hadn’t passed anyone else within twenty miles of Biloxi that he knew of, and if he had, he wouldn’t have seen them because visibility was nothing. Baylor said he drove, as best he could tell, on the road, off the road, over the road, under the road, through standing water too many times to count, and all he could really tell us was, “It’s raining like hell.” Something we already knew.

  Next, we relived the last two hours of our lives for him. When we finished, Baylor said, “Have you seen yourselves?”

  I glanced around the table.

  “Brad, you’re wearing a filthy t-shirt with dress pants. Davis,” he turned to me, “you’re covered in blood, I can see all of your bra, and you’re wearing a towel shoe.” Filet was up next. “You look like an idiot.” Then he kissed July’s neck. “And you look hot.”