Earth Thirst

by Mark Teppo

  I get off on four, and discover there is no place for me to go but back down. There is no waiting area; instead, there's a nursing station right in front of the door, and the single nurse sitting at it has already spotted me. “Can I help you?” she asks.

  “Hi,” I say, spontaneously deciding to be the sort of guy who asks for directions. “I'm trying to find a client of mine,” I say. “His name is Morse. I'm with—” I rattle off the long name of Prime Earth's legal team, adding an extra partner for good measure. “They told me he's on the third floor. ‘Get off the elevator and turn right. You can't miss them.' That's what they said.”

  “This is the fourth floor,” she says.

  “It is?” I glance around, as if I don't quite understand how I managed to arrive where I'm at. “So confusing—kind of like casinos in the US. They want you to come in, but they don't want you to leave.”

  The nurse's nametag reads Kelly, and her long brown hair has been clipped back into a loose bun. It hasn't started to escape her efforts at restraining it, which suggests she hasn't been on shift too long. “There are no patient rooms up here,” she says.

  I try for charming, recollecting that Callis had always been the ladies' man between the two of us. I've done my fair share of playing the rake over the centuries, but I've fallen out of practice since World War II. “I was just down on the ground floor,” I say, leaning on the counter, “and my client—Morse—wasn't there.”

  “He wouldn't be on the third either,” she says. “He's probably on the second floor.” She slides her chair over in front of the computer monitor. “Morse,” she says, tapping the keys. “What was the first name?”

  “Thaddeus,” I reply reflexively, recalling the news article I read earlier.

  Her eyebrows pull together slightly as she reads the results of her database search. “Who did you say you were with again?” she asks.

  I repeat the law firm's name, reducing it to just the first two partners' names. Like someone who says it over and over again would. They probably even reduce it to a three-letter acronym, but that might be selling the lie a bit hard.

  She looks at me again, and I can tell she's actually looking at me this time instead of the cursory boredom elicited from staff by the sight of the lost and aimless. “I'm sorry,” she says. “You've been given some wrong information somewhere. There aren't any patients by that name in the ward.”

  “Well, goddamn it,” I say. “Those sons of bitches!”

  She pushes her chair back from the desk, startled by my invective. “Excuse me?”

  “Listen,” I say, leaning forward. “Can you do me a favor?” When she doesn't immediately flee, I take that as a yes. “Look, I'm not really with that firm. I'm an independent. I do personal injury. You know, fighting the insurance companies—those bastards who turn everything into a shit show of red tape, you know?” She nods slightly. “Here's the thing. I got a call from Sally Morse—Thaddeus's wife, back in San Diego, California. She told me her husband—Thaddeus, though everyone calls him Capt'n actually—was going to get screwed by these other guys. She asked me to come down and straighten things out for Thaddeus—for Captain Morse. I get here, and these two dickheads downstairs try to tell me that Captain Morse isn't here—that none of them are here—and I can't believe it. Where the hell did they go? And why the hell doesn't his wife know?”

  She's trying to follow all of this, and I can tell from her expression that she's following the important part—that Morse isn't here anymore. “Which guys?” she asks.

  “Downstairs,” I reiterate. “Look, call down and see if they're still there. I just saw them not five minutes ago. They got off on the second floor as I was coming up.”

  Somewhat automatically, she reaches for the phone. I pretend to fume, but I'm keeping an eye on her fingers as they move across the keypad. She dials an extension and it's picked up almost immediately on the other end. “Hi,” she says. “It's Kelly up on four. Listen, can you do me a favor?” Her eyes flick up at me and I smile. “Are there two guys just… I don't know…” Her back stiffens slightly. “In the waiting area?” she says. “Are they—?” She looks at me.

  “Dickheads,” I say. “One and two. You can't tell them apart.”

  A tiny smile catches the edge of her mouth, and she relaxes slightly. “Yeah,” she says, listening. “Yeah, that sounds like them.” She looks up at me again, the smile still there. “Secutores,” she says, repeating what she has just been told.

  It's been a long time since I've heard that word, but I smack the counter as if it is confirmation of what I had been telling her.

  “Okay. Thanks, Shelli.” She hangs up the phone. “I don't know what's going on, Mr.…”

  “Mickelli,” I say, falling back on an alias I haven't used in decades. “David Mickelli.” From Florence, of course. The thing with creating aliases that stick over time is to make them easy to remember.

  “Mr. Mickelli,” she repeats. “I can't reveal anything about patient data, and I don't want to get involved in whatever is going on with the insurance companies and any law firm that might be representing patients. It's probably best if you just called—”

  “No,” I say, nodding. “I get it. I'll totally forget I was up here, okay?” I take a step back from the counter, far enough that I can't see her name tag any more. “What was your name? See? I've forgotten already.” I keep backing up until I reach the elevator, and I reach over and push the button. “I'll call Sally. I guess I'll have to call those bastards at the firm too, even though they're just going to give me the runaround. And these guys—Hippocampus, Hoplomachus—”

  “Secutores,” she corrects me.

  I wave a hand. “Secutores,” I say. “They're just being dickheads, right? There's no reason for that.” The elevator arrives, and I stomp into it theatrically. “I'm not going to cause a scene,” I tell her. “I'm just going to talk to them. Tell them I don't appreciate them fucking with me like that. There's no reason at all for it.” I press the button for the second floor.

  “Good luck,” she offers as the door starts to close. I smile and nod.

  My smile disappears as soon as the doors close. I press the ground floor button too, and then position myself against the back of the elevator. It trundles down two floors and then opens. I stare at the pair in the lobby, assessing them.

  They stare back, and none of us blink until the elevator doors close.

  The secutores were Roman gladiators, back in the day. They fought in the Grecian style—sword or spear and shield. I knew the techniques as readily as I knew how to breathe.

  Those two aren't lawyers.

  * * *

  One of the things I had Rupert at the bank procure for me was a pay-as-you-go phone. It's as cheap and disposable as they get, but it has a working phone number. I leave the hospital and find a judiciously situated internet café within line of sight of the P wing. I do a quick search for Secutores with a couple other key words and am not surprised at what I find. I do a bit of reading, which only serves to amuse me.

  They have no idea who the secutores really were. Still, the name serves its purpose.

  I open another tab and click through the website of The Independent until I find an email address for the journalist—Ralph Abernathy—who wrote the articles about the Cetacean Liberty. I have to sign up for a free webmail service and that takes longer than I'd like, but I finally get a screen where I can send an email. I title it “Secutores,” and keep the note brief. “Why does the Royal Adelaide Hospital not have any patients from the Cetacean Liberty? And why are there men from Secutores Security hanging around the burn ward if there are no patients?”

  I sign it with my new cell phone number, hit send, and wander over to the counter and order a cup of herb tea.

  Fifteen minutes later my phone rings. “It's the wrong time of year to be fishing,” says a male voice when I answer.

  “Same could be said for whaling,” I reply.

  He's quiet for a minute. “There
's no story here,” he says.

  “No? Then why did you call me?” I ask.

  “I'm recording this call,” he says. “I'll be sending a copy to my editor immediately after we're done.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  He's a little put off when I don't offer anything else, and after another long silence, he clears his throat. “So, ah, why did you send me that email?”

  “Where are they?” I ask.

  “Who?”

  “The survivors.”

  “What survivors?”

  I hang up the phone. This game is silly, and I don't really have time for it, but I don't have any other leads.

  I have never been very good at investigative work; I have always had a different role in field work. It's always been that way, even before I became an Arcadian. I was the one who read the signs in the wind and the waves, who listened to bird song, and who saw the patterns in viscera. After lying with Mother, she showed me I no longer needed those skills; she wanted me for other reasons. I was happy to oblige her and my new family. I became tooth and claw—a sword for Arcadia. Being polite and knowing how to ask questions were not part of my requisite skill set.

  Mere, though, is good at this sort of thing. During the time I had been watching her, I'd seen her play a version of this with a number of contacts. Her trick was always to play hard to get, to suggest she knew more than she did, and to get them to come to her.

  As I wait for Ralph to get with the game, I recall the first time we had seen Mere on the Cetacean Liberty. The rest of the team had played her game so readily.

  My phone rings again. “Give me something,” he says.

  “Kyodo Kujira,” I reply. “Your turn.”

  “Not yet,” Ralph says. “What's your connection?”

  “One of Kyodo Kujira's vessels was a harpoon boat with a name that translates to Cherry Blossom.”

  “Was,” he says, picking up on my verb tense.

  “I know what happened to it.”

  He breathes heavily into the phone, and I hear the distant sound of his fingers hitting keys on a laptop. “Okay,” he says after a minute. “Not on the phone, though.”

  “Of course not,” I reply. I glance over at the café's counter and read him the name that runs across the top of the reader board behind the counter. “I look like any other hipster in here, but older. And I'm drinking tea.”

  “Very Colonial of you.”

  “Old habits,” I reply. “I know what you look like. The paper very conveniently posts a picture next to your articles.”

  “It's… that picture was taken a few years ago.”

  “I'll extrapolate.”

  “I'll… uh, I'll be there in a half-hour.”

  That's a lot of tea to drink, I think as we end the call.

  Patience. Time enough.

  I kind of hope one of the Secutores guys shows up while I'm waiting. That would be more fun than sitting here.

  ELEVEN

  Ralph Abernathy takes closer to forty-five to find the café. He wasn't kidding when he said his press picture was several years old. The last few turns around the sun haven't been kind to him. He stands near the entrance of the café, fussing with his cell phone while trying to be surreptitious in his examination of the room. I'm the only one paying him any sort of attention, and after a few minutes of pretending to be coy, he shoves his phone into his pocket and marches up to the counter.

  Mid-forties. Divorced or never married. Certainly single. Obsessive about all the wrong things. Good shoes, though. The man knows the importance of decent footwear. His coat is an old leather bombardier jacket, nicely distressed and worn in. It's a little snug across the back, and I doubt he can zip it up anymore, but it's clearly the one aspect of his old life—his wistfully remembered twenties—that he can't quite let go of.

  He sits down heavily across from me—a complicated espresso drink in a wide ceramic cup, a half-eaten cookie in his hand. He needs a haircut more than he needs a shave; more than both, he looks like he could use a break from the relentless of his life.

  I wonder if this is what I'll look like in a few months, or if it'll happen more quickly.

  “Fishing,” he says by way of greeting. “Shall I call you Fisherman?” He's given this some thought on the drive over.

  “David is fine.”

  He takes a big bite of the cookie. “You don't look like a David,” he says, trying to hide his disappointment that I'm not keen on his code name.

  I don't have the heart to tell him about the statue in Florence that I modeled for once upon a time.

  “You wrote the stories about the Cetacean Liberty,” I say, getting to the point. “I read all the press. You were the one who kept asking questions.”

  He nods, sitting up in his chair—pleased that I know his work. “It never made sense, and then, yeah, I did some digging and found about the tragedy in Japan, with Kyodo Kujira.” He shoved the rest of the cookie in his mouth and leaned forward. “I paid a translator for some port reports. Out of my own pocket. I knew Kyodo had put a fleet in the water. In June. They'd been out for nearly a month when the accident on the Liberty happened.”

  “A long time when you're not actually catching whales,” I say.

  “Exactly.” His head bobs up and down again. “The reports are gone now. Kyodo's fleet is now listed as having been moved from Ishinomaki to Shimonoseki, which is bullshit. They've never had boats in Shimonoseki.”

  “New management,” I suggest.

  He chokes on a laugh, and covers it up by taking a drink from his beverage. “That's not funny,” he protests when he has recovered. He glances around. “Do you know who these Secutores guys are?”

  “They're independent contractors,” I say, using the phrase that is de rigueur in this decade for mercenaries. “I suppose they can work in Japan as readily as they can here in Adelaide, yes?”

  “Jesus,” he swears, putting his hands on the table and stiffening his fingers to gesture at me to keep my voice down.

  I lean forward. “Why do they have two guys sitting in the second floor waiting area of the P wing at the hospital?” I ask.

  “They're still there?” When I nod, he shakes his head. “Why? There's no one there any more.”

  “Who isn't there?”

  “The people from the Liberty.”

  “How many?”

  “I don't know. I could never find out. That's where they went, though. I talked to a couple of the pilots who airlifted people out of the rafts. Some of them in pretty bad shape. Burns and exposure. Somewhere around twenty is my guess.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. Prime Earth's lawyers showed up.” He tries to rattle off the firm's name but gets it wrong. He nods when I correct him. “Yeah, bunch of tight-assed corporate hacks from the US. Flown in. Didn't give a shit that they had no clue about Australian law. Buried the hospital in a ton of paperwork, and threatened litigation on everyone—down to the fucking interns who were emptying bedpans. A couple of days later, these other guys show up—Secutores—and everyone's asshole puckers even more.”

  “Why does Prime Earth send in independent security consultants if they've already gotten everyone running scared with lawyers?”

  “Oh, these guys aren't with Prime Earth.” He shakes his head. “No, no. Prime Earth takes off as soon as these guys arrive. They're still dumping paperwork on the hospital, but it's all hands-off now. Secutores is in charge.”

  “And then?”

  “A week ago, I manage to get one of the nurses to talk to me. She won't tell me anything useful, but she tells me the ward has gotten really quiet. Like ‘no one there' sort of quiet.”

  “They released them?”

  “How? And where did they go?”

  “They moved them, then.”

  “Again: How? And where?”

  “I don't know, Ralph. That's why I'm asking you.”

  He fidgets in his chair, one of his legs bouncing up and down. Arguing with himself. “Ah,
fuck,” he whispers, shaking his head. “Look—” he starts.

  I pick up my mug and take a swallow of tea. “I'm almost done with my tea,” I say. “When I finish, I'm leaving.” He needs a push.

  “Okay, okay,” he says. “There's this guy. I don't know what happened, but somehow he got lost in the shuffle when everyone was being brought in. He says he just got up and walked out of the ER. Came back the next day with some story about an accident in his garage.” He shakes his head. “I don't know how he got away with it, but they didn't make the connection. Old dude. Veteran of some kind. Vietnam, I think.”

  I know who he's referring to, but I let him continue. Gus had been one of the engineers on the boat, a retired Navy enlisted man. As a young man, he had been a Riverine in Vietnam, running the engines on one of the converted monitors that harried the Viet Cong in the Mekong Delta. His boat had been overrun one night, and he and three other Navy men disappeared into the jungle for five years as POWs. A lot of the crew thought Gus was the craggiest bad-ass that had ever lived, and he certainly leaned into the part, but I knew from the tremor in his hands and the way he pressed himself against the bulkhead, eyes downcast, the few times I had passed him in the ship that his bad-ass days were far behind him.

  “I was looking for anything, any sort of lead that I could use to convince my editor this story was worth following up. That there was more going on than some bullshit US company getting all squirrelly about getting sued. I got in and found this guy. Talked to him one night. He was going to be my source to blow the whole thing wide open…”

  “They figure it out and disappear him too?”

  Ralph shakes his head. “He died. In his sleep, I guess. His room was just empty one morning.”

  Death. It comes quickly to some. I suppress a shudder. “What was he going to tell you?” I ask. “He give you any hint?”

  “You read my last story,” Ralph snorts. “What do you think?”

  I had, and knowing about Gus's death, I understood the underlying bitterness that ran through the story. No reporter likes losing a source, especially when the story they know is there suddenly slips away from them. However, I know how to reel him back in.