by C. F. Waller
“Regime change,” I mouth silently.”
On my phone are pictures of yesterday’s mystery woman. Rahnee had snapped them before she left her men alone with the captive. Turning the phone sideways I scroll through them. She’s unique looking. Long brown hair wadded up on the top of her head in braids, pasty white skin, round eyes that appear to be brown, but it’s hard to say for sure. If I had to guess, I would say late thirties or early forties. She’s wearing a long maroon dress, very plain, that stops between her knees and feet. The shoes are black and huge. A tall square heel with a silver buckle in the middle. They look awful in contrast to her white nylons, although given her complexion it’s hard to say if that’s her or the leggings. I forwarded these to my contact, but have also received no reply receipt from him. Flipping through the pictures, it’s hard to imagine her slaughtering the three men left to watch her.
“Looks like a frigging school teacher,” I whisper to myself, but am startled by Rahnee leaning over the table.
“She’s not,” Rahnee smirks.
The first thing I notice is the smell of lilacs in the air. Not too sweet, but flowery just the same. Her perfume is elegant and enticing. A sheer white blouse with a somewhat low neckline causes me to avert my eyes, but she sees this and shakes her head. Her hair is still pulled back in a tight ponytail, but today it’s braided with a tiny red bow at the tail. She has makeup on for the first time, although it’s very light.
“Stalking me now?” I inquire, waving a hand at the other side of the booth.
She slides in just as the waitress brings my pancakes. Rahnee orders a coffee and then we sit and stare at each other. I unfold my napkin and start to eat. She adds an obscene amount of sugar to her coffee, making it practically a dessert item. Once the waitress excuses herself, I eat and Rahnee simply sips and waits. When I have had enough, I push my half-eaten plate forward.
“I presume you followed me here for a reason?” I ask, wiping my mouth on a napkin.
“Any leads on our girl?”
“Not thus far. We are looking into it.”
“Really,” she sighs and cocks her head to the side. “I don’t think you are.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because no one’s taking your calls. Don’t feel bad, they aren’t taking mine either.”
“Fair enough. If that’s the case, what do you want with me?”
She sips her coffee and glances around at the other booths near us, before settling back on me.
“You know what they do to them after we turn them over, right?”
This startles me. I do know, but I’m surprised Rahnee does. It dawns on me that she might be playing me. Pretending to know and hoping I will reveal secrets to her.
“How is this relevant?”
“They chop-em up,” she goes on. “In the name of science and discovery of course. Still that’s pretty dark. Cutting pieces off people and putting them in a blender.”
A woman a few booths down shoots Rahnee an angry glance to which she holds up her palms and rolls her eyes.
“Blender is a bit medieval,” I shrug. “I think it’s a centrifuge, but I’m not in the scientific field.”
“They wind up dead just the same,” she counters.
“Again, I have to ask why this is a relevant topic over pancakes?”
“How many?”
“How many what?” I fire back in frustration.
“How many have you turned over?” she demands and then waits for me to speak, but I don’t. “How many human milkshakes.”
“How many did you catch for them?” I ask, turning the question back on her.
“Caught?” she pauses, glancing over my shoulder in thought. “Three. Turned over, two.”
“Why only two?”
“I don’t do kids,” she declares, tapping a finger on the table top. “No kids, no dogs.”
“One of them was a child?” I ponder, also wondering what this has to do with dogs.
“Yup, that’s why I got out. No kids.”
“Or dogs?”
“That’s what I said.”
“How old?” I demand, taken aback by the direction this conversation has taken. “Like young adult?”
“Eight or ten,” she replies, leveling her eyes at me. “Little red-haired moppet named Michelle.”
This information chills me. All the targets I have tracked down were adults. I have no delusions about who I work for. I am well aware they are using these people for research, but a little girl. This is a disturbing revelation. The next thing that flies across my mind is the idea of a ten-year-old immortal.
“How can you be sure she’s one of them? If she’s only ten?”
“Looks ten, apparently older,” she explains and takes a long sip. “Much, much older.”
My experience has been limited to middle age persons. I had assumed they just stopped aging between thirty and forty. The idea that one stopped growing old at ten is new to me. To be fair, I’m still on the fence regarding my belief in immortals, but I plan to ask about this when my employer calls back.
“And you did what when you found her?”
“Had a conversation,” Rahnee explains, lowering her voice. “A little girl talk.”
“Anything interesting come up?”
“Plenty,” she nods. “But you never told me your number.”
“Where is the girl now?” I press, still wondering what actually happened. “Do you think she was actual---?”
“Hundreds of years old?” she interrupts me sarcastically and then pauses.
“Sure, whatever.”
“I think you know the answer to that already,” Rahnee declares as she taps a finger on her cup.
“And you let her go?”
“Didn’t get the chance. We were in a hotel in Zurich and when I woke up she was gone,” she explains. “No note, no clues.”
“And you didn’t go after her?”
“No dogs, no kids,” she repeats.
“What’s with the dog thing?”
“No dogs,” she repeats, in a way that makes me think she simply likes dogs.
“Okay, whatever. What did she tell you?”
“Plenty,” she assures me. “You were going to tell me your number?”
She waits and we fall into silence. I’m not sure I want to share any of this with her. However, she may know something I’d like to know. I am trying to decide how to get this information, when the waitress comes back by and I motion for her to take my half-eaten plate. She re-fills our coffee and disappears behind the counter.
“Twenty-eight,” I finally admit.
“All from that map you found in Sweden?” she inquires. “The Calling Tree or whatever they call it?”
“That has been very helpful,” I admit, recalling the night I snapped the pictures of the family tree scribblings on the walls. “I had forgotten you were there.”
“I doubt that,” she smirks. “After all, how many times do you find patient zero.”
“That was quite a night,” I agree, then try to steer her back to something I can use. “Tell me about the young girl?”
“Like I said. It was girl talk,” she replies, dodging my question. “I do however know where the gal from yesterday is going.”
“You what?” I blurt out. “Sort of buried the lead, didn’t you?”
“Probably.”
“How?”
“I gave her picture to a friend of mine. He plugged her face into the network,” she explains, sipping her coffee. “Facial recognition got a hit this morning.”
“You pulling my leg? You could never hack that system.”
“I don’t have to hack anything,” she replies, giving me a self-satisfied grin. “I have a friend who knows someone. It pays to be nice to people.”
“And I suppose you’re nice?”
“I am especially nice,” she replies in a throaty sensual voice.
“Oh, I can just picture that.”
“I doubt it,” she groans
, flipping back to her normal cadence.
“Your friend work for the CIA?” I ask. “FBI, Homeland Defense?”
“Nothing that fancy. He works for Maersk on a container ship.”
“And he has access to the nationwide grid?”
“He’s a sailor,” she sighs and rolls her eyes. “A girl in every port.”
“You’re pulling my leg?”
“You’re drifting off point,” she reminds me, taking out her phone and holding it out so I can see the picture on the screen. “She was at George Bush International Airport in Houston this morning.”
On her phone is a blurry image from a security camera. Leaning closer, I can see the shot was taken from above as our mystery woman passed through the TSA checkpoint.
“Where did she fly to?”
“No idea,” she admits, putting her phone away. “We know she didn’t leave the country. The checkpoint wasn’t in the International Terminal. We are still narrowing down the flights that left at the time she was there.”
“Run her name for Christ’s sake,” I suggest loudly and then lower my voice. “Her names on the letter she wrote you.”
“Yeah, Beatrix A. Moffatt, she’s not travelling under that name.”
“How many possible flights?” I demand, already knowing its’ a huge number.
“Too many, but she’s going to pop up on another security cam wherever she lands,” Rahnee explains. “She has to get off the plane somewhere.”
“She doesn’t have to pass through a security checkpoint when she gets off the plane,” I assert. “You might not catch her face on the other end.”
“True, thus we are still working on the flights,” she explains. “Hey, you’d know better than me, but I didn’t think they liked planes?”
“Excuse me?”
“The immortals,” she clarifies. “I thought they didn’t fly?”
She’s right on this point. As a rule, the so-called immortals do not travel by air. On occasion they are forced, but if this Beatrix wasn’t going out of the country, thus needing to fly, they almost always choose a bus or a train.
“They don’t, unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
“So, this is unusual?” she queries and watches my face to see how I react.
“It is,” I pause and then have a new thought. “Any of yours ever get violent?”
“No, but I only had three. How about your twenty-eight?”
“Not one,” I mumble. “Gentle as lambs”
“Led to slaughter,” she adds.
“Enough with the pity party for the deceased. Suffice it to say our girl is in flight mode.”
“More like fight, then flight,” she offers.
We sit and smiles fade, leaving us in silence once again. The waitress brings the bill and Rahnee scoops it up before I can get to it. I follow her to the cashier where she pays. In my experience, grabbing someone’s bill is an effort to place them in a subservient role. I note this and ponder if she’s that smart. Outside the restaurant she wanders down the sidewalk a bit, before turning back.
“You want to stick together on this?” she asks.
“Just call it in when you track her down and I’ll come meet you.”
“Might get her tonight or tomorrow,” she argues. “Stick with me until we find out what flight she was on. Probably save us both a lot of time.”
What she’s trying to sell me makes sense, but it’s not how this works. She is supposed to call it in when she gets a hold of them. Then our employer calls me and I go out and collect. Is she simply trying to save time, or is she angling for something else? The truth is, I just don’t trust her.
“How long ‘til your guy gets back to you?”
“Today, tomorrow at the latest,” she assures me.
“Alright, I’ll stay at the hotel one more night. Call me if you hear anything.”
“You got it,” she assures me, pointing her finger as she backs away into the parking lot. “Need a ride?”
“It’s only a few blocks back,” I tell her, seeing the silver Chrysler sitting in the lot. “I can walk it.”
“Are you sure?” she asks as she stands there with her hand on her hip in a somewhat provocative way. “I’m the only person you know in this town.”
“The valet and I go way back,” I joke.
“Suit yourself,” she frowns, spinning about and heading to the car, heels clicking the pavement.
Watching Rahnee walk to the car I get the feeling she wanted me to go with her. Studying her graceful gate, I am reminded how nice it might be to pass the time with company. She seems to be deliberately walking slowly, giving me a chance to reconsider, but that just might be wishful thinking. Trying to gauge her interest, I run over the conversation in my mind. As I do, she slips in her car and disappears out the drive behind the Denny’s.
“Stay away from that one,” I whisper to myself. “Somewhere there is a huge spider web full of past lovers.”
Chapter Six
Arron Wessker
I am up early and pass by my lady friends in front of the office. Having smoked my last cigarette in the shower, I don’t have any to share. I do promise to bring them back a carton later, which is greeted with a chorus of Oh sure you will from women used to being lied to.
At the bus stop, the crowd is mostly people making their way to work on the strip. Waitress, cook and maid uniforms indicate job title. These folks have iPod’s in their ears or are surfing the web on their phones. There isn’t any chit chat as we all ride the bus in equally condemned silence.
With my forehead pressed on the glass I see the Waffle House come into view. Do I want him to be there or not? I didn’t quit my job as he suggested. If he’s not there I can just go to work later as if this never happened. I could chat with Darla or go over across the street and try and talk to Tiffany. These thoughts calm me temporarily. Scanning around the bus I see plenty of other Casino workers sitting emotionless, faces staring at the backs of other people’s heads as the bus bounces along.
“All of sudden I am hoping he’s there,” I whisper.
No one else gets off at the corner near the Waffle House. The sun is bright and I shade my eyes, recalling my lost sunglasses and making a note to replace them. A group of young people who clearly have not been home yet stumble out the front door, forcing me to step back and out of the way. These aren’t the wealthy tourist types. That lot wouldn’t be caught dead on this side of town. These are what I call HTL’s or more commonly referred to as Home Town Losers. Townies that never quite grew up and got out of Vegas. They revolve around the city, trapped in its gravity. That or the fear of leaving what feels safe and comfortable. Every town across America has them. If you and two previous generations of your family all live in your hometown, congratulations you’re part of their club. I receive several annoyed looks and at least one under the breath suggestion to look where I am going, before they disappear down the street without incident.
Inside, cooled by chilled air, I am happy to see Mr. Gates sitting in a booth chewing on a slice of toast. He smiles and raises a hand, but I pause and back track. Past the front door going the other way is an ATM machine. I slide my card through the reader and punch in my password. When prompted, I ask for an account balance. The screen flickers and then displays my account information.
“Thirty thousand, three hundred and six dollars,” I whisper under my breath, not bothering with the loose change.
I had promised myself to make sure the money was there before jumping through any hoops today. I was sure it would take two or three days for a money transfer to clear that much cash into my account, but there it is.
“Bluff called,” I smirk, requesting a three-hundred-dollar withdrawal from the ATM.
The money spits out in twenties and I fold them over into a nice roll. Spinning around in excitement I bump into a guy waiting to use the machine. He frowns at me, but I recognize him as one of the young adults who sneered at me outside. He glances down at my withdrawa
l as I push past him. Hanging from his pants pocket is a blue bowtie. No so high and mighty after all.
“Loser,” I cough under my breath, recalling that the MGM staff wears blue ties.
When I get to the table Gates is shaking his head. Ignoring him, I slide into the booth. Before we can talk, a waitress that is not Aimee scoots over, pen and paper in hand to take my order. I ask for plain coffee and wait for her to leave.
“Is everything as promised?” he inquires.
“It is. Can’t blame me for checking.”
“I suppose not.”
“Where’s Aimee?” I grin, glancing around the dining area. “Tell me you didn’t kill her and hide her body in the dumpster out back.”
“You’re very funny,” he groans as the waitress drops my coffee on the table when she passes. “You never put the whole body in the same dumpster. You have to spread it around town and keep the authorities guessing.”
“You what?” I stammer, before realizing he’s pulling my leg.
He doesn’t say anything, but the gloating is implied by his expression.
“You did go out last night, didn’t you?” I press him, having loaned him my phone to call her.
“We did.”
“And?” I pause, adding sugar and cream from table top dispensers, before stirring with a bent metal fork. “Do tell.”
“I was under the impression it was I who hired you,” he bristles at the perceived interrogation. “Not the other way around.”
“Woke up alone then,” I frown, taking a sip of coffee. “No shame in that.”
“For the record, we had a late dinner, danced a bit and then I escorted her home at a little before one this morning,” he explains quietly and then pauses.
“And?” I beg slowly, letting it hang in the air.
“There is more to life than that,” he scoffs, folding his napkin and tossing it over his plate. “After you live a bit longer, you may realize that.”
