Toe Popper

by Jonny Tangerine

  “Yes. Generally I prefer to work alone.”

  “I assume you have a contingency for leaving the country?”

  “I can’t tell you where the mines are. I didn’t keep track. On purpose.”

  “I’m not asking you where they are. I’m asking you how long it would take you to leave the country.”

  The wounds on his face must have been from the Forest Lawn funeral mines. Huay decided to be honest - mostly because he couldn’t come up with a lie and figure the angles of a lie at the same time.

  “I have a jet-share account. I’ve been promised that I can have a plane with international range at the Orange County Airport in a few hours.” Huay had opened a private charter account with Jet Set – a $125,000 deposit, the Silver Cloud Plan.

  “Good.” Lane said. A truck of porta potties drove across the parking lot. “Now I’m going to get out and go back to my car. You’re going to pick up your daughter, drive home, pack, and then I’m going to watch you get on the plane. If you go anywhere but home, I’m going to call 911 on this phone and it will end poorly for you.”

  He was compromised. But this man was doing him a huge favor. And he was being given a way out. Ridiculous luck, both good and bad.

  Huay said, “Why are you doing this? Why isn’t the FBI here?”

  “Because I understand your position. But I can’t support your tactics.”

  Huay saw an opening, maybe. He had to press, test him. “If you understand my position then maybe you’ve thought of other ways you could help me. From the inside.”

  “I’m not negotiating. And I forgot to mention, if anything happens to my friend Khieu, I’ll not only give up your name, I’ll hunt you down myself.”

  Huay nodded once. He was not in a powerful bargaining position.

  “And just so you’re not confused, yes, I understand your frustration. But what you’re doing is wrong. The only reason I’m giving you a second chance at your life is because I think your daughter needs her father.”

  Huay looked in the mirror. The Major’s face twitched. “Okay Mr. Lane.” He said.

  NEWPORT BEACH – 11:00 A.M.

  Huay sat in his kitchen nook and watched ESPN News on the television. He had packed a bag weeks ago and only needed to add toiletries. He’d phoned the Jet Set rep and his plane was already waiting for him. Now he was trying to figure out if he should proceed with the evacuation or go outside and shoot the soldier in the face.

  But the man was ultimately right. They would come for him eventually. He needed to stay a step ahead. And leaving today, perhaps he would be two steps.

  Dominique was upstairs packing. He could feel her anger through the floorboards. She probably thought this was about the blepharoplasty.

  Nean was at the stove preparing food for the flight, huffing and puffing over the pots and pans, she didn’t like surprises either. But he knew she and Hok, the driver, would enjoy having the house to themselves for awhile. Maybe permanently.

  Huay stood up and pressed the intercom. He needed Dominique to run an errand.

  LEXUS – 11:00 A.M.

  Lane sat in Catherine’s car across from Huay’s house on Del Mar Circle. He kept the Beretta in his lap as a precaution. After ten minutes of air conditioned idling he realized the gas gauge showed less than a quarter tank so he powered down the windows and turned off the motor. There wasn’t much shade and the temperature inside the car rose quickly under the fierce summer sun.

  Lane was contemplating using the unlisted number Alan had given him when he saw Huay’s daughter walking down the front walk toward him. Instantly wary, he picked up the Beretta and muted the stereo.

  Dominique crossed the street and said, “Would you like to come in for coffee? My father’s finishing up some details.”

  “No thanks, I’ll wait here.”

  She handed him two keys on an orange and white Public Storage key chain.

  “My father wanted you to have these. He said to tell you that everything you need is in this space. And the address is on the key chain.”

  Lane took the keys. “Thanks. Are you almost ready?”

  “I don’t know,” she said and walked back toward the house.

  CATHERINE’S BACKYARD – 11:55 A.M.

  The most creative act of Vadim Marks’ life was thinking up the name for his penis. The second was when he would pull Groucho out and micturate into the pools he was allegedly cleaning, and then check the box for “adjusted ph level” on the card that he placed around the front door knobs after each service call.

  His penis used to be named Yuri, after Yuri Gagarin, the first cosmonaut to orbit the earth. He would introduce him and tell girls not to worry; Yuri would take them around the world and then bring them home safely. No one laughed at this joke in America because the girls here had never heard of Yuri Gagarin. So he changed it, and now he only had to say the name Groucho and American girls would laugh. American girls liked jokes. Even schlong jokes.

  When he was a schoolboy in Moskva, marching in his scarlet scarf, convinced that U.S. atomic bombs could rain down from the sky at any second, he never dreamed he could ever live in California. And at first things had gone well, an engineering scholarship at a prestigious university, an apartment with a dishwasher, but he’d flunked out. And then he’d lost all his savings day-trading - left a position in a company that made RAM chips for digital cameras sit open overnight. He woke up broke. After-hours trading had killed him.

  Things were going increasingly bad. He was upside down in his Suzuki Samurai, i.e. he owed more than the car was worth, and he had twenty-one payments left. He’d recently lost the Hustler Channel. And now he was cleaning pools for people who were never home to use them. And this one, heart-shaped.

  Although ever since he’d found out the lady was an FBI agent, he got extra pleasure peeing into it (she was never home and he always checked the side garage window for her car just in case.) But it was dehydratingly hot today and after cleaning the pool, he didn’t have to go. He had a long drink from the hose (after draining the first solar heated burst off into the kumquat tree) and then decided to expand the marking of his territory.

  Now, as Vadim pulled Groucho out above the Jacuzzi Quantum 2100, he noticed something sitting on the bottom. He reached for the leaf skimmer.

  JOHN WAYNE AIRPORT – 12:15 P.M.

  Lane sat in the Lexus and watched Huay’s driver carry their suitcases into the private jet. Dominique emerged from the back of the Mercedes balancing a covered pan on top of a small lunch cooler. Huay conferred with a woman in a pilot’s uniform at the base of the steps and then walked toward Lane’s car.

  Lane got out and immediately felt the wind blowing through his scrubs. He kept the gun in his right hand.

  Huay stopped three feet in front of him. Lane let him speak first.

  “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  Lane nodded.

  “I didn’t put the one on the horse trail. I don’t know anything about it.”

  “Interesting.” Lane said.

  “And if you change your mind…you have the keys to my storage locker.”

  Lane shook his head. “That’s over.”

  Huay glanced over his shoulder. Dominique waited for her father on the steps of the Dassault Falcon.

  Huay smiled. “See you, Major.” He stuck out his hand.

  Lane ignored the hand, kept the Beretta at his side, muzzle pointed at the ground.

  “Have a nice flight.”

  * * *

  Hok the driver backed-up the Mercedes and pulled away. Lane stood beside the Lexus and watched as the plane taxied toward the run-up area. He stayed until the aircraft was wheels-up, and then watched until it was a white cross receding into the clear sky above the Pacific Ocean. Lane checked the safety and stuck his gun in his boot.

  405 NORTH – 12:45 P.M.

  Lane took Macarthur Boulevard to the 405 North and kept it at 85 in the fast lane. Traffic had evaporated. As he passed the Ikea in Carson
his phone began to play Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night.” It took him a moment to realize that meant it was ringing.

  It was Catherine Mills. She said, “I can’t believe you stole my car.”

  “I thought you might sleep the whole day. Don’t worry, I’m going to fill the tank.”

  “Get your ass back here.” She said. “Now.”

  The phone went dead and for a brief moment Lane wondered why she didn’t ask him where he was.

  DASSAULT FALCON 900EX

  Huay sipped naturally carbonated water from the French Alps, the tri-jet cruising at 45,000 feet, five hundred miles per hour. They’d be over Hawaii soon. Refuel in Guam.

  Dominique was sullen. Huay promised her that as soon as they got to Cambodia, she could make arrangements to see her Bollywood friend again. But this seemed to do little to improve her mood.

  As for the Special Forces Major…if the motion detector mine in the storage space didn’t get him…well, he would have to be eliminated later. He could not be trusted. And the recycler and his wife killed also. It would be expensive, but it had to be done. Overall it was a mild set-back. His campaign would regroup, there were contingencies in place. Huay took a deep cleansing breath. So many details.

  HOTEL SOFITEL – 2:01 P.M.

  Lane could tell Catherine was serious, but he desperately needed to clean-up before he hit the “home” button on the in-dash navigator. In the bathroom he tossed the scrubs in the trash, quickly field-stripped his Beretta, used a French facemit to buff his boots and took a two-minute shower. He put on a new pair of white boxers from Eddie Bauer and a fresh uniform. There was an iron in the closet that he could use to touch up the wrinkles, but he decided they weren’t that bad.

  Huay’s storage space keys were on the bed and Lane wondered what he should do with them. A real case could be made for the U.S.’s bumbling in Cambodia. A simple rural community with plenty of food had been turned into an inferno, and then the devils and demons had ruled, killing the near-sighted, the educated, the retarded, turning the clock of human evolution back centuries. And the evil had stayed, planted in the ground, harvested randomly in little tragic blasts. Perhaps it was time to rip out these roots and truly dismantle the apparatus of the people making the seeds. Would it make a difference? Violence had the power to change things, America was created from violence – by men labeled terrorists - brave men who unchivalrously hid behind trees and picked off lines of redcoats. Was it really the only way to make people understand? No, he couldn’t kill innocent people. But of course he had in the past, inadvertently, as part of his job. Was it now Major Lane’s duty as a warrior to reform his society?

  Another of the Irish chaplain’s favorite verses came from Ecclesiastes 4:5 -

  The fool foldeth his hands together, and eateth his own flesh. Better is a handful with quietness, than both the hands full with travail and vexation of spirit.

  The old codger had taped that one to the beer cooler. Lane read the verse and then inserted his opium supply into the folds of the book. He put the keys in his pocket. No, Lane decided. He could never be a terrorist.

  Right before he left, Lane phoned down to the valet to bring his car up. Then he removed a Dilaudid caplet from the hospital envelope and washed it down with a glass of tepid tap from the LA Municipal water system.

  WOODLAND HILLS – 3:00 P.M.

  Lane walked out into the sunny patio of Catherine’s backyard. From the amount of police vehicles parked in the cul-de-sac he was not surprised to see the crime scene tape threaded through her landscaping. FBI technicians in their sleeve-less nylon vests and bush jackets busied themselves with fistfuls of plastic evidence bags.

  Catherine stood on the deck holding an MP5 submachine gun, almost like a casual accessory. Lane noted that the safety was off.

  She saw him and said, “Hello Major. Your friend put a mine in my spa.”

  Friend? Lane looked into her Jacuzzi Quantum 2100. It contained a grisly gazpacho.

  “And I found this in my kitchen trash.”

  He looked at the crumpled can of Diet Coke – the blackened holes poked in the crevice. It had somehow materialized in her hand.

  She smiled. “I wouldn’t have noticed except that I usually recycle.”

  Lane’s mind raced.

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “I had some gigs devoted to you in ECHELON. It took a little while to translate the Khmer language, but after you put in the name with Alan, I made sure the translations were done live. Our probability projections for this case included a possibility of someone with your experience showing sympathy for the perpetrator. There were similar problems with the Unabomber investigation. Frankly, sympathetic libertarians are always a concern in law enforcement.”

  Lane felt the sun beating down on his back. Like a wounded ant under a magnifying glass.

  “So then you know he’s gone.”

  “No. We got him. I just got the call. His plane has been intercepted by F-15’s. They’re going to make it land in Hawaii. Pearl Harbor. Very dramatic, it will make us look really good. And we have an interrogation team flying in from Diego Garcia.”

  Lane stared at her.

  “Your cellphone is bugged. It’s on, even when you think it’s not.”

  Lane glanced down at the side pocket where he carried the Nokia.

  “Deactivated now of course.”

  “They’ll never get anything from him.” Lane said.

  “I think they will. Or we’ll charge his daughter as an accomplice. Send her to a locked down youth authority, maybe a state hospital. I understand she’s a boarding school ballerina, I’m sure he’ll tell us everything we need to know. Anyway, it’s a prosecutor’s dream case - a guy in custody continues to kill people. Every time a mine goes off you get to charge him with another crime.”

  A scene-tech fished a sliver of pink flesh out of the spa. Earlier, Groucho had departed in his own zip-loc’ed baggie.

  “I guess I thought he might be making a valid point.”

  “Major, I have to assume that’s your drug addiction talking. Blake’s dead. Ten cops are dead. Tourists from the Midwest who came to see Mickey Mouse and get a tan are turning into amputees. And I guess maybe I’d have a lot more sympathy if he didn’t try to kill me twice.”

  Alan the whistler approached carrying a bag of Togo’s. He held it out.

  “I got you the #6 combo, turkey-avo.” Lane gave him a blank look. “I’m going to need those keys.” Lane handed him the keys to the Lexus and took the Togo’s bag.

  “I mean the other keys.” For a moment Lane thought about ripping the submachine gun out of Catherine’s hand and emptying it into Alan. He wondered how many shots he could get off. Lane handed him the Public Storage keys.

  Alan nodded to some FBI personnel wearing windbreakers and walked quickly away.

  “Did you have a warrant? “

  “Technically I was only monitoring the performance of an employee. There’s ample legal precedent. I didn’t realize it at first, but I’ve depo’ed a lot of addicts and your eyes were textbook. Mostly I wanted to make sure you didn’t do anything to screw up our case.”

  Lane began to feel like an untethered astronaut spinning off into space.

  “But don’t worry, I told Zimmerman you were deep cover, that we wanted to make sure we had all the evidence we needed. He doesn’t really care at this point.”

  Lane could sense his Togo’s bag getting damp in his hand. Alan had put the drink inside the bag.

  “So, I guess I’ll be going back to Cambodia now.”

  “Oh no, we need you to find Valentino’s killer. Did you know that poor little girl’s dad is head of business affairs at one of the studios? We can’t have something like that happen again. And I’m sure there are still mines to be recovered on the beach.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “I don’t lack for leverage, Major. I’ve got the recordings. And I could make life extremely uncomfortable for your frien
d Khieu. On the other hand I owe you. Without your predilection for dereliction of duty, those would likely be my guts in the spa. And I’ve been very impressed by the way you accomplished, in just a few days, what might have taken us months.” She smiled. “Plus I like you. A lot.”

  Lane watched the robot tirelessly suction the bottom of the heart-shaped pool, heard a distant siren drift up from the valley. He nodded, took off his sunglasses and looked up into the sky, focusing his scorched retinas on the sun.