by James Kent
‘Of course my hunch was correct, you damn fool!’ replied Silva, staring back at Cricket as though he was insane to imply there was a chance it couldn’t be correct.
Cricket ignored the barb and continued explaining, ‘He’s somewhere in Boulder City of all places . . . looks like he’s been ringing a number in South Korea, from what I can tell. But no luck yet with his old computer and hard drive, so I can’t do much more than that.’ There was silence for a few seconds and then Silva nodded as he thought about it. He smiled inwardly at the news because it confirmed his suspicions. I’m always right! Why don’t people appreciate that? He poured himself a decent whiskey and lit up a fat stogie to celebrate the little breakthrough. Cheeky little bastard rat! he thought. Then he sat down on the large sofa and started thinking through the implications of the news and what he should do about it.
*
And then Pedro and Randall got back to the ranch from their trip to New Mexico with more bad news, despite some small success they’d had. They had managed to get Eddie’s personal cell phone number, if not Eddie himself. That means he must have bought himself a new burner prepay and stopped using his other one. That at least was something.
19
Pedro strode inside fed up from what had been a pointless goose chase. Randall went off to his room to sleep. After handing Cricket a yellow note with Eddie’s new cell phone number scrawled on it, Pedro confronted Silva who was sitting on the sofa with a Jack Daniels on ice and a fat stogie that was way too big for his mouth or his short fingers. Silva was staring out the window to the dry mountains in the distance. He was wearing his ugly light blue suit again, with the trousers that were too short, exposing unmatched socks. The bulge from the heavy nine-mil in the suit coat pocket was obvious. Filaments of blue smoke curled up from the stogie and orbited Silva’s head like a demonic halo; the stogie held captive between the two middle fingers of his right hand. Who the hell holds a cigar like that? thought Pedro who also observed that some cigar ash had ended up floating in the whiskey.
It was a bizarre scene that confronted him. A black fly had dropped anchor on Silva’s right ear like it belonged there, but he didn’t seem to notice it. For some reason, Pedro felt even more annoyed by what he was seeing. Yet Silva was oblivious; he was transfixed instead by the beautiful scene out the windows as though he had never noticed it before. He seemed in a trance and held captive, like his stogie, by things beyond his control . . . like some kind of messed up monk! thought Pedro who turned to look out the window to see what it was that Silva was so mesmerized by. Then he turned back and stared at the fly on Silva’s ear, reminding him of Austen Powers staring at the mole in Goldmember.
Silva suddenly looked up as Pedro muttered something unintelligible . . . he heard it, but he wasn’t sure what exactly had been said; something about a fly? And then the spell was broken. The fly gave up and buzzed off to alight somewhere else more affable. Silva took a few seconds to register who was standing there, as though he had just come back from visiting the shades of his ancestors. Pedro sighed and reminded him of where he and Randall had been for the last two days because he seemed to have forgotten, or maybe he just didn’t care. ‘I said we’ve just got back from looking for Eddie again, hoping we’d find him bumming around in his home town in New Mexico . . .’ So, he proceeded to tell him what had happened there.
*
Eddie’s parents weren’t home when they’d finally pulled up in Alamogordo after driving for the last ten hours straight. Randall had managed to locate the exact address online while they were on their way east. Pedro wanted to put the screws on them. Maybe they were at church, he thought. It was Sunday morning after all.
After asking around at their local diner and at the nearby service station, showing a photo of Eddie, it was apparent he hadn’t been seen by anybody in the neighborhood. Yet Pedro reckoned everyone would have known who Eddie was, or who his parents were because it was a small town. So they waited until later in the day, watching his parent’s house from down the street. Eventually, a small blue Civic pulled up the driveway and disgorged two older people, Eddie’s folks. And no Eddie.
‘Stuff it!’ said Pedro to Randall. ‘Let’s go kick their door in and see if the sonbitch is hiding out in there anyway!’ They got out of the car and walked the few yards up the street, then up the elderly couple’s driveway and politely knocked on the front door like a pair of disheveled salesmen selling some newfangled religion. The flag was hanging limply from a short white pole screwed to one of the verandah posts. ‘Patriots!’ said Randall, stating the obvious. Pedro turned to look at him, but said nothing. Then the door opened and a tall elderly man bearing a striking resemblance to Eddie stood there and asked, ‘What’s up folks? If you sellin’ something, we ‘aint buyin’ so you might as well clear off!’
Pedro was momentarily lost for words and stammered out a bumbling reply. ‘Yeah, we just passin’ through this here town and wondered if y’all seen our colleague, Eddie. Old friend of ours so we thought we’d catch up with him is all . . . old times sake, you know how it is.’ The old guy said nothing, just raised his eyebrows and stared down at Pedro. He looked at Randall then back at Pedro as though they were a couple of lost aliens from a distant planet speaking gibberish.
‘A “colleague”? Are you retarded boy? There ain’t no “colleagues” of Eddie’s, that’s for darn sure! He never went to no college, boy! Too darn lazy for that. Too busy messin’ round with them computers of his to do any real work! Waste of goddam time if you ask me. Besides, we ‘aint seen Eddie for two years! Who the hell are you boys anyways?’ he asked aggressively.
Randall leaned in to Pedro and whispered, ‘This is a waste of time! He ‘aint here! Let’s go!’’
Pedro looked up at the old man and said, ‘Well I mean “friend” more than “colleague”. But you sure he ‘aint been here recently? We heard he was heading this way, as in heading home. So you sure ‘bout that, old man?’
‘You calling me a liar boy?’ he replied as he took a step down towards Pedro who backed off a foot. It was broad daylight and he didn’t need another mess to clean up and the cops on their asses if it all went south, which it would. The old lady’s probably ringing them now from inside the house. Shit! Ok time to get lost.
‘No, it’s cool. Thanks anyway,’ he said as he turned to walk away. Then he had a thought and turned back, ‘We mean no disrespect, but I don’t s’pose he rang and left a number where he could be reached, did he?’
The old man looked at them both for a few seconds, then he nodded. ‘He might have,’ he said, not offering anything more. They waited for him to continue, but he stayed silent and looked off into the distance like he was bored.
‘Sorry to be a bother,’ said Pedro, now all contrite and polite which wasn’t easy for someone like him, ‘but would it be ok if we got the number? We would love to catch up with him is all. Catch up over a beer and all.’ Jeez, why is everything so difficult these days? he thought.
The man stared back at them again, obviously weighing it up, then he went back in the house, leaving the door open slightly, but not enough for them to see what was happening inside. Then after nearly a minute, he came back out with a small piece of yellow paper, curled and stained as though a coffee mug had sat on it. Maybe he no longer cared who Eddie hung out with, or what he was doing with his useless excuse for a life, and who these two bums were who were looking for him. Maybe he’d given up on him . . . Eddie was just another sad story not worth telling.
‘That’s the only number we have,’ he said, clutching the note with a crooked hand that had all the signs of advanced arthritis from years of hard work, maybe from chopping wood or from wielding a meat cleaver or digging holes in the ground. Whatever. Then he continued on without handing over the note, ‘Eddie rang a couple of times recently, but we didn’t know who it was at the time so we didn’t answer. We don’t answer the darn phone unless we know who it is . . . too many creeps around these days fixin’ to ro
b ya!’ he said with emphasis, looking at both Pedro and Randall as though they too were a couple of creeps fixing to rob him. Then he said, ‘But I wrote down the number on the display.’
Pedro reached out and gently teased the note from the old guy’s gnarled, clutching hand. He turned it around and studied it. The digits were scrawled and spidery, but still legible. A new number.
‘How do you know it was him?’ Pedro asked, looking up at the old guy.
‘He left a message.’
‘What did he say?’
‘None of your damn business!’ Then the old man went back inside and slammed the door shut in Pedro’s face.
‘Well that was a waste of time!’ muttered Randall more to himself. Pedro looked at him as he pocketed the note, but said nothing in reply. There was nothing for it then but to turn around and drive back to Kingman.
Randall asked, ‘Why couldn’t we have just rung the stupid bastards and asked if Eddie was there by any chance? Would have saved all this driving to nowhere and finding nothin’ ‘cept another cell phone number!’
‘Because, you fool,’ replied Pedro, ‘calling up his folks would have given the game away that we were onto him and we would still be no closer to catching him! So that obviously wouldn’t have been a good idea!’ But yeah, driving for ten hours one way, finding nothing and then driving another ten hours back again is infuriating to say the least. Ends up being two full days plus some, thought Pedro in agreement.
So it’s no surprise that Pedro was extremely short-tempered by the time they got back to Kingman. No surprise that he was very wound up when he walked in and saw Silva sitting there looking like a moron with a fly on his damn ear. He wanted to shoot the dumb bastard right in the face there and then for wasting his time. And for holding his cigar all wrong.
*
‘What was that you said?’ asked Silva as he snapped out of his trance. Something about a fly?? Eh?? What??’
‘No, goddamit! What the hell is wrong with you? I said we drove to Eddie’s home town in New Mexico to find him, but he’s not there either. We visited his folks who gave us his mobile number, a new one, which I gave to Cricket. Means he’s obviously stopped using his usual number so there’s no point trying to pinpoint it. But his folks didn’t know where he was. The old geezer didn’t like the look of us and got a bit cantankerous, like most old fogies get . . .’
He gave up explaining it all again. He was too tired to be bothered.
‘Hardly surprising!’ replied Silva who suddenly remembered the whiskey that he’d hardly touched. He stuck the stogie back in his mouth and picked the whiskey up off to sofa seat where it had been sitting beside his hand holding the cigar. When he realized it had ash floating in it, he turned his nose up and put it down again. Then he took a long pull on the cigar instead, trying to reactivate it, and looked up at Pedro. ‘I don’t think he even went there,’ he said coughing, as more bluish smoke curled up around his head. He started waving it away with his other hand. ‘But it’s good you got the little bastard’s other number! Now we can have Cricket track his ass down even quicker!’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ asked Pedro. ‘If you knew he never even went there, why didn’t you say something before we wasted our goddam time driving all that way?’
‘Because I only just twigged to it. And besides, it wasn’t a wasted trip was it? You got his number! Good result, so get over it!’
Pedro raised his eyes then he went and sat down on the other sofa, exhausted. He was exhausted from the long trip, from the frustration of getting precisely nowhere, and exhausted from listening to Silva’s blathering nonsense. He was sick of it and ready to break something. But instead, he got up again and went over to Silva’s whiskey cabinet. He fetched out the most expensive looking bottle he could find, banged it down hard on the counter top, twisted the cork out and tossed it aside, poured himself a generous amount in a large tumbler with no ice like it was tea. Then he went and sat down again. Silva watched him and frowned. ‘You’re welcome!’ he said sarcastically, looking at Pedro with his small black dagger eyes. ‘Help yourself why don’t ya!”
‘Cheers!’ was all Pedro said in reply as he downed a large gulp. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He was so agitated and wound up, he considered polishing off the rest of the whiskey and throwing the empty tumbler at Silva. He wanted to get up off the couch, go over and kick his head in; finish the fat little bastard off. He’d love to do that! He could feel it coursing through his veins. Even the way Silva held a cigar, in that weird way of his, was pissing him off. But he took another gulp instead and stared out at the mountains in the distance, watching the heat shimmer and the haze in the air, the great emptiness. It started to have a calming effect, like the whiskey. Just as well.
After a couple of minutes with neither of them saying anything, Pedro looked at Silva and said, ‘So how did you find out Eddie wasn’t even in New Mexico?’
‘Cricket!’ he answered.
‘Cricket? What the hell does that mean?’
Then Silva launched into a raging tirade without taking a breath. ‘It means,’ he said, ‘that Cricket found out where Eddie is, or was, hanging out by tracing my old cell phone which Eddie the goddam Ferret stole and has been using to screw me over! I told him to throw it away when he found it in a box of old springs or whatever, since it had been compromised by the damn Feds a few years ago if you remember. And obviously I stopped using it for that reason. But then I got suspicious and it occurred to me . . . just a hunch like . . . that the little rat bastard probably kept it anyway and that he’s probably using it to get back at me for whatever reason. Who knows how that asshole thinks? But it explains why my friends in South Korea have gone quiet on me. Eddie’s been ringing them apparently, poisoning the nest, telling his filthy lies and screwing me, making them think I’d changed my mind. I was wondering why they wouldn’t take my calls anymore, or answer emails or anything else. It appears that our Eddie has sabotaged my relationship with them! That effectively kills my original plan of getting those North Korean guys on our side to screw over Uncle Sam with my cyber-attack plan doesn’t it? We would have been rich! . . . I had wanted to involve Eddie in that scheme, but he got all self-righteous and slunk off into the night like the stinking ferret he is. An ungrateful damn coward is what he is! Then I planned for Cricket to take over and now that’s screwed too because of Eddie messing around with my old cell phone, ringing my friends in Korea!’ Silva was getting hysterical and agitated, spitting consonants again like a garden sprinkler and waving his stogie around, dropping ash all over himself. His whiskey, which was still sitting on the sofa seat, was in danger of toppling off onto the floor. It caught Pedro’s eye, but he said nothing, hoping it would. He was just pleased to be out of range of Silva’s wet consonants being sprayed around like confetti.
Then Silva was off again. ‘But now we have two numbers to track the little rat bastard down, don’t we? My old cell and now, thanks to his lovely folks in New Mexico, his new phone! Bingo! So, Cricket can pin-point his whereabouts every time he turns one of them on and you can go get him and sling his scrawny little rat ass in a sack for me to set fire to! Amen!’ And then he picked up his forgotten whiskey again and downed the lot, ash and all without batting an eyelid.
‘Jesus Christ!’ said Pedro. This guy is completely unhinged! Who the hell drinks good whiskey with cigar ash floating in it?
‘That’s why I’ve been sitting here thinking about it and waiting for your sorry ass to get back from buggering about in bloody New Mexico!’ he said, putting the empty whiskey tumbler back down beside him. It rolled off the couch onto the floor, but he didn’t seem to notice. Then he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and stared up at Pedro waiting for him to say something.
Pedro just shook his head at Silva’s demented raging and his ungratefulness, but he let it go. Besides, the expensive whiskey was starting to kick in, starting to chill him out, which was fortunate because he had been very on edge a
nd much more crap from Silva might have pushed him over it, into very dark territory.
20
Boulder City, Nevada.
After what Sally had told him about Lavinia, Swann decided to recruit Eddie to do some (illegal) digging into who she was and what she was up to. He was now curious and even beginning to wonder if bumping into her the other day was a coincidence. At the time, he’d thought it was too good to be true, and even said as much to her, but he was kind of joking. It was just the sort of complimentary thing you say when you meet someone stunning of the opposite sex who seems to have taken a liking to you. Doesn’t happen often in real life. So, when it did, Swann didn’t think twice. Maybe didn’t think at all. Next thing you know, they were in the sack together after a night out on the town.
He’d been sitting in the bar in central L.A., minding his own business, enjoying his downtime with a fine Japanese whiskey, a seventeen-year-old pure malt Nikka, the one to get after the world went crazy for the twenty-one. Now you can’t get that for love or money; you have to know someone who knows someone in Japan type thing. Then a similarly rare and fine-looking woman materialized out of the darkened heartland of the bar and sat on the stool one over from him, on his left. A cascade of golden locks. A short, red dress. He noticed her out the corner of his eye, in his peripheral vision, could tell she was stunning, but he didn’t turn his head to look at her. All his male instincts told him to, but he ignored them. Didn’t want to make it obvious, didn’t want to appear rude, so he stared straight ahead like he hadn’t noticed her. Don’t even think about it Swann! he thought. Out of your league. He took another sip of his Nikka, just like before. No big deal. Next thing you know . . .
