Toe Popper

by Jonny Tangerine

  Huay sat on the President’s boyhood bed and dangled his feet over the side. It was an incredibly high old-fashioned model, the kind that might break your collarbone if you fell out of it in the middle of the night. Killing time, he counted the squares on its magnificently detailed patchwork quilt -- hand-sewn, he surmised, by some long defunct Quaker bee.

  Originally, Huay had planned to burn the house down to its foundations, but he’d since decided that it would be over-kill. He wanted his opponent to feel vulnerable, but not violated to the point of intractable rage. There were negotiations ahead. The cemetery was risky enough, right on the edge.

  He tensed when he heard a key in the downstairs door. Routine. Just a closing-up sweep around the grounds, he thought. But adrenalin flushed into his heart when he heard the first stair creak. Whoever it was, was coming his way.

  There was only one place to hide. As quietly as he could, Huay slid to the far side of the bed, dropped to the floor, and slid underneath, his head squeezing painfully under the wooden frame. It was dusty under the bed, a fine lint tickled his nose and scratched his eyes.

  The quilt ended three inches from the floor on each side, allowing Huay to watch a pair of plain black tennis shoes walk into the room. They were logoless, like those worn by basketball referees and security guards the world over.

  The shoes paused near the foot of the bed. The edge of the quilt started to move. And Huay began to silently panic. But he was quickly relieved when he realized that the visitor was only smoothing out the wrinkles Huay had made sitting on the top. He hoped whoever it was wouldn’t get the urge to dust.

  Huay watched the black soles leave the room and listened carefully as they descended the steps. He didn’t hear the door as he expected. Instead he heard mysterious clunking and the sound of furniture moving across the floor. The human was still downstairs. What the hell were they doing?

  And then Huay heard it. A sound he’d never expected. He’d planned for months, imagining every careful step he’d take. But he’d never imagined this.

  From down below, timidly at first…and then loud and clear…the familiar notes of, of…what was it called?…C-C-C…C-B-C-D-E-F…E-E-E…Huay finally remembered: “Heart and Soul”…the person…(he didn’t want to think ghost)…was playing both hands perfectly together now…tooling carelessly away on little Richard’s piano.

  Huay listened and a tear snuck out of the corner of his eye and ran down his cheek. He’d heard Dominique play the song a hundred times. Huay told himself the tears were only from the dust. He was lying of course, but he knew that if he looked inside too deeply…well, he just might lose his mind.

  BEVERLY CENTER – 7:09 P.M.

  Lane amused himself at Brookstone for the better part of an hour. He enjoyed gadgets. And there were many items that he had read about in the SkyMall catalog on the plane that he now got to examine first-hand. An ultrasonic stoplight system for the back wall of the garage, a heated ice-scraper, a wireless car key locator, a 12 function programmable lawn sprinkler, a salt-water resistant neoprene football, swimming pool toypedoes, an integrated LED flashlight/screwdriver, a light-activated travel alarm, freezable eye pillows, nightvision scopes, a dozen kinds of electronic masseurs and microscopic personal stereos…he found it all endlessly fascinating.

  Finally, after the fifth time a clerk offered to assist him, and after thoroughly testing six different models, Lane purchased a pair of German-made 7 X 21 binoculars with electronic zoom, justifying the purchase as an expensable item. Then, having been bitten by the shopping bug, Lane walked around to the Eddie Bauer store. It was located directly across the atrium from Brookstone and had served as the background for his binocular focus-testing. Lane didn’t normally enjoy shopping for clothes, having lived in the military for most of his life, but if he had to, Eddie Bauer offered the kind of clean no-nonsense look he preferred. The only casual clothes he had brought from Cambodia consisted of deteriorating beach shorts, flip-flop thongs and faded tank-tops. He’d noticed very few of the FBI folks wore suits, but he knew his casual attire was still a little too casual for the office set.

  At Eddie Bauer, Lane purchased two pairs of Classic-fit jeans from the wall rack, two pairs of heavy cotton twill khakis, a pair of walking shorts, three piqued cotton polo shirts, and seven pairs of plain white boxer shorts that he’d found displayed in a small polished wood canoe. His last purchase, an impulse buy, was a pair of navy blue swim trunks covered with tiny pink lobsters.

  On the first floor, just as he was heading toward the exit, Lane was stopped in his tracks – struck immobile, by a familiar arresting aroma. He looked up. Of course. He was in front of the Coach store. It smelled exactly like Catherine’s car, only without her subtle perfume. Lane looked down at his watch. He still had nothing but time.

  Still thinking of Catherine, Lane went into the Coach store and bought the first thing that caught his eye, paying one hundred and twenty nine dollars (before tax) for a stiff hand-tooled belt to hold his new pants up.

  RICHARD NIXON LIBRARY AND BIRTHPLACE – 11:59 P.M.

  Huay slid out from under the bed, stood up, and brushed off the dust. The impromptu piano recital had lasted only a half-hour, but he had stayed under the bed as a precaution against other unexpected visits. Huay took a moment to shake out the kinks and do a few stretching exercises. Except for two brief bathroom breaks, he had spent nearly six hours in the confined space. He had even dozed off for short periods of time. Huay had been sleeping fitfully lately, and the extra sleep was welcome.

  Huay moved to the small dormer window and looked out. All was dark and quiet. From his earlier reconnaissance he had made a list of the important security features of the facility; it consisted of the following entries:

  1) Two guards on duty

  2) Entire perimeter of the grounds rigged day and night with motion detectors (during the day to stop people from sneaking onto the grounds for free and during the night to stop intruders)

  3) Video surveillance cameras can be adjusted to see all entrances and any point on the perimeter

  4) Doors and windows on the first floor of homestead locked and alarmed

  5) One of the guards takes a leisurely stroll around the grounds every hour from seven at night until seven in the morning.

  6) Security control room located deep in the back of the museum, with a direct phone line to the Yorba Linda city police dispatcher (assumed).

  Huay kept his head down, but still watched the path that led from the museum to the house. At 12:05, a blazered figure made an appearance. The shadow circled the house, and then walked back down the same path. Huay watched as it crossed the amphitheater, and disappeared down the colonnade, which ran along side the reflecting pool and led into the museum. It was now or never.

  Huay pushed open the window (not alarmed on the second story as he had figured) and stepped through. Out on the roof, Huay gently moved the window back down, grabbed the edge of the shingles with his right gloved hand and slowly eased his body down. Cradling his camera bag in his left hand, he let go and dropped six feet, rolling as soon as he hit the ground. Silence. Darkness. No problems on the landing, the ground moist and soft.

  Huay crept down the path the guard had just used, keeping his hat low and sunglasses on. If anyone was watching the video cameras intently they would see his shadow, but the risks were minimal. It was impossible for anyone to watch such boring imagery when there was so much better personal entertainment available – television, walkmans, food, computer games, the telephone. Huay was confident.

  Flowerbeds ran down the space between the colonnade (a wide trellis covered walkway) and the long reflecting pool. Here, among the rose bushes, was where Huay would plant the OZM’s. He knelt down and brought out the garden trowel. Then, digging carefully, he hollowed out a three-inch deep hole and removed the first OZM from its hiding place in the bottom of the camera bag. The electronic fuses on these particular models allowed the user to trigger the mines at a precise moment, lik
e classic time bombs. Unlike most mine fuses, these were designed purely for terrorist purposes (set in crowded places or where you knew a certain person would be at a certain time) and did not require contact to detonate.

  The Western colonnade space was one of the areas available for small event rental. The committee to re-elect Congressman T. Daniel Boone had, in fact, scheduled a fundraising luncheon for this very area. And it was the reason Huay had finally decided to face the multiple risks this target presented. Congressman Boone, (Thomas Daniel Boone, who had dropped the Thomas when he’d entered politics) was perhaps the biggest weapons systems supporter in the history of Congress. Orange County had been built, largely, by aerospace defense contracting money, and Congressmen Boone was an advocate, champion and mouthpiece for these interests --commonly referred to by the nicknames Billion Dollar Boone (for his support of billion dollar bombers) and Boone-doggle by his detractors. To Huay he was a deliciously fat, iconic target.

  Huay had pre-set the timers and needed only to pull the activation pins from the mines. He pulled the pin on the first one, always a tense moment, and placed it carefully in the shallow hole. Two inches of loosely packed earth went on top. At his low level he brushed against the blossom of the nearest rose bush. It was an intoxicatingly fragrant Gertrude Jekyll tea rose. He found the scent calming and breathed deeply. He decided he must bring one of the marvelous stems home to Dominique. Huay moved over to the next bush to plant the second mine and sampled the scent of a flowering Ingrid Bergman. The petals were not nearly as sweet as the first one he’d smelled. He placed the next two mines quickly, smoothing the covering dirt expertly with his trowel and then returned to his original spot and broke off a flowering stem from the Gertrude Jekyll. A barbed thorn pierced his cotton glove in the dark and he could feel its sting puncture the tender skin between his fingers inside. Swearing softly, he put the stolen rose into his camera bag. He smoothed the dirt over one last time. If everything went according to plan, in approximately 13 hours Daniel Boone’s rubber omelet fundraiser would turn out to be more costly than anyone ever imagined. And Congressman Boone would be shocked to discover that the most dire threat to his security came from a weapon system that Huay had purchased for only three easy payments of $29.95.

  As Huay had drawn up this operation he had divided it into three distinct parts. The first; hiding in the house. The second; getting out of the house and setting the mines. And the third; getting away without being discovered or photographed clearly. He figured the third step was probably the most difficult due to the perimeter motion detection. The cameras and the rapid response capabilities of the police were difficult obstacles. It had taken Huay a week of thinking to come up with the proper plan.

  Now Huay moved over to a stand of trees near the parking lot. Two mini-sized pick-up trucks, one of them lowered, were the only vehicles left, and they obviously belonged to the graveyard shift security workers inside. The driveway of the parking lot was closed by a chain and padlocked. Huay leaned against the Eucalyptus trunk and flipped open his pirated cellular phone. He dialed carefully: 1-323-655-9880

  On the sixth ring a voice finally picked up and said: “Domino’s Pizza, may I please take your order?”

  “Yes,” Huay said softly, “I’d like to order a large pizza with pepperoni and pineapple.”

  “Is that regular or thin?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Regular crust or thin crust?”

  “Regular.”

  “Large regular crust with pepperoni and pineapple….Would you like extra cheese with that? We have a special tonight – two free cokes or free garlic bread sticks if you get extra cheese. Do you want extra cheese?”

  Huay tried to imagine what he would do if he were an all night security guard and drove a lowered pick-up truck.

  “O.K. extra cheese” he said.

  “Do you want the Cokes or the garlic bread?”

  “Um, I guess I’ll take the Cokes.”

  “Cokes. Name?”

  “Colson…Chuck Colson”

  “Phone number?”

  “714-993-5075”

  “That’s not the number you’re calling from Mr. Colson.”

  “I know, I’m calling from my cell phone, but I’m working at The Nixon Library. They don’t like us to use the phone for personal calls. Do you know where the Nixon Library is or do you need the address?”

  “I have to have the address, Mr. Colson.”

  “OK, it’s 18001 Yorba Linda Boulevard. The cross-street is Del Mar. And listen, tell the driver he can’t pull into the parking lot because it’s locked. But he can park in the driveway and then come up to the front door. Be sure to tell him to knock real loud so we can hear him.”

  “Got it. Driveway. Knock loud. Do you have any coupons Mr. Colson?”

  “No. No coupons.”

  “Alright. Be there twenty to thirty minutes.”

  “Thank you.”

  Huay pushed the end button on his phone and shook his head. Nothing was easy, nothing.

  The perfect execution of the plan now depended on the speed of the Dominoes organization and the guards not making their next round before one a.m. Huay was confident - he had ordered from Dominoes numerous times and they’d never been late. Not once.

  Huay waited patiently for fifteen minutes. And then began to look alternately at his watch, and the museum for signs of stirring.

  A battered Honda Civic with a lighted sign strapped to the roof, roared past the driveway, slammed on the brakes and then backed up. Huay, hidden in the shadows of the trees, watched as the driver leapt out with a red vinyl pizza warmer, kicked the car door closed and leapt deftly over the parking lot chain.

  The idea was for the pizza guy to set off the perimeter alarm and draw the attention of the surveillance cameras. Huay would wait for the pizza guy to go by him and then walk out the same way he came in, figuring that the alarm wouldn’t be reset quickly enough to register a second intrusion, or in his case, extrusion.

  The pizza guy, in his red white and blue cap, hustled by. Huay was poised to go, but at the last second his subconscious stopped him, instinct kept him frozen in the shadows. He sensed something was wrong. A second later the pizza guy ran back, still carrying the pizza. He stepped back over the chain, put the vinyl pizza container on the roof of the Honda and opened the passenger door. Huay studied him intently and then realized….yes, of course. He had forgotten the Cokes. This time the pizza guy was barely around the corner when Huay took off, head down, hat low. Huay walked through the broken beam, past the idling Honda, and out onto Yorba Linda Boulevard. He didn’t remove his sunglasses for a block. Two blocks from his car he pretended to lean down and tie his shoe, and dropped the cellular phone and the baggy of his urine into the curbside sewer grate. He hadn’t encountered a soul.

  He got back to his car just as the last showing of the movie was getting out. It was “Coriolanus”, set in the twenty-fifth century, and nearly three hours long. The exiting movie patrons walked to their cars in a collective stupor.

  On the short drive home Huay sucked at the irritating puncture wound between his fingers, but also enjoyed the heavenly fragrance of the Gertrude Jekyll wafting around in the interior air currents of the Mercedes. It was very pleasant, yet Huay was anxious to get home to his bed. He would be getting up in three hours to pretend to go fishing on the beach.

  FATBURGER – 1:01 A.M.

  Lane sat at the round concrete table and watched the flies in the lights. At 1:00 A.M. Fatburger was surprisingly active.

  He’d given in back at the Sofitel, popping the second 1 mg. Dilaudid – his last – at around 10:30. After he’d watched the second half of “D4-The Mighty Ducks Quack the Case”, he’d been seized up on the carpet with what could only be described as a full-body Cramp. It had started in his lower intestine and radiated outward, slowly infecting more and more muscle groups with paralyzing tetany. He’d had to literally crawl to the Bible.

  Lane had been scared to de
ath that he would throw it up, but the Dilaudid had soothed away every symptom in seven minutes. He felt fine now, better than ever, except for a creeping fear about where his next hit was coming from. Back in Cambodia it had been so natural, so available, so part of the rhythm of things. Now he was shocked to find out he’d become a cliché addict. It hadn’t affected anything important yet, but he needed desperately to be re-supplied.

  A towering red pick-up truck with plywood sides rising eight feet in the air above the bed and a wooden box jutting out over the cab pulled into the Fatburger lot. The truck was half-filled with corrugated cardboard, lashed down with long bungee cords and a web of frayed climbing rope. Khieu was driving, his wife beside him in the small cab. He creaked the behemoth to a shuttering stop and opened the door.

  Khieu looked exactly the same. His face beaming when he saw Joel Lane. His wife’s greeting was not so warm – more of a chilled civility. She stood holding a spray bottle and returned Lane’s short polite bow. Lane noticed that they wore matching baseball caps – Hollywood Park—and down vests with silver reflective stripes hand sewn all the way around to the back.