Burn Zone

by James O. Born

  ***

  Pelly stopped at a bar very close to Colonel Staub's hotel-wouldn't it be a kick if his boss were in there and didn't recognize him? The big Marriott would have cast a shadow over the little club at the right time of the day. He nodded at the bouncer as he entered, detecting no scorn or jokes from the thick man. If he had to, Pelly knew he could make the power lifter regret he had such big, slow muscles, but he didn't have to. The large man didn't say anything but "ten-dollar cover."

  He moved through the crowded dance floor and to the less-busy bar. He rubbed his face out of habit and felt some slight bristles but no real hair yet. It had been thirty-five minutes since he shaved. He thought he had at least another hour and a half before things got out of control and he started getting looks again. He had a razor in his pocket for a touch-up if needed.

  He looked around, and at the end of the bar he saw a single woman with an empty bar stool next to her. Conveniently, it was the only empty one at the bar. He approached it casually and said in his best English, "Is this stool available?"

  The woman looked up from her drink and nodded her head.

  Pelly smiled, trying to figure out if the woman was attractive. She had dark, seductive eyes and a sharp jawline, but there was something asymmetrical about her face that seemed odd. Pelly knew the feeling and thought fate might have put him next to this woman.

  He leaned into her, catching a whiff of the straight bourbon in her glass. "Are you visiting New Orleans?" He spoke just loud enough to be heard over the sound system that was playing some dance mix he had not heard before.

  The woman looked up. "I don't live here. No." She gave him a crooked smile. "What about you?"

  "I am from," he paused because he didn't want to give too much information, but he didn't want to be a peasant from Panama to this American bourbon-drinking woman. "Spain. I am from Spain in Europe." He smiled as he unconsciously rubbed his face with his right hand.

  "Where in Spain?" She turned to face him as he had hoped.

  "Madrid."

  "Oh, Madrid is beautiful."

  "Yes, yes, it is. And that is where I was born. Madrid."

  She smiled and held out her hand. "Hi."

  Pelly took her somewhat large hand and said, "My name is Arturo Pelligrino, but my friends call me Pelly."

  "Hello, Pelly. I'm Lina."

  38

  WILLIAM "IKE" FLOYD PULLED THE RYDER VAN INTO THE PARKING lot of a diner on the outskirts of Houston. It wasn't dark yet, but he was a little tired. His run-in with Pelly as he was about to leave Lafayette had spooked him, but the hairy Panamanian had not seemed to care too much where Ike had slept. What did it matter, really? He had to wait until Mr. Ortíz contacted the person here in Houston who knew what to do with the damn thing in the van. He had told Ike it would be a few days. He obviously didn't expect Ike to go without sleep and food for a few days, so what did it matter if he was in Louisiana or Texas? The locals all acted the same down in this end of the country. The accents were hard to tell apart, and it seemed like everyone wanted to pick a fight or steal your stuff. Ike didn't think he'd miss Omaha and its steady, comfortable life, but after the beating Craig had given him and then the comments Mr. Ortíz had made, Ike wondered if he wouldn't have been better off staying at home and just trying to expand his chapter of the National Army of White Americans. Or maybe just getting a promotion to major.

  Ike did wonder what would happen to him if he was caught on this mission. This time he hadn't already fucked up and been forced to do what he had done. This time there were no excuses. He would carry this out, and things would change. Things would change, and he'd be famous.

  He just didn't see how he would be able to enjoy it at all.

  ***

  Inside the diner, he picked at a cheeseburger and thick, undercooked French fries. He still had to find a computer to check the e-mail account, get a hotel room that would be secure for the van, too, and then worry about Mr. Ortíz contacting the guy who knew what to do with his cargo.

  As Ike ate, three men came in the front door. Two were older than Ike, in their late thirties. The third was a decade younger and seemed to have a little more interest in fitness. The trio were all in dirty jeans and filthy T-shirts. Each had a small backpack. The younger one wore a T-shirt with no sleeves, and his large upper arm bore an intricate tattoo with a swastika in the center.

  They started to sit at the counter, but the man behind it held his nose and sent them to the booth next to Ike's, as far from the counter as they could go. All three shambled along, as one patron or waitress after another gave them dirty looks. Ike knew the looks well. They were not being shunned because they were dirty or possibly homeless. It was the tattoo and the fact that the oldest of the three had a German cross around his neck on a leather string. These men were being discriminated against for pride in their race.

  As they came closer, Ike looked them in the eye and smiled. The oldest one, with a shabby mustache, saw the gesture and returned it, nudging his friends so they would also see the friendly face.

  They stopped in front of Ike. "Hey, brother," said the older, scruffy one, "you recognize the symbols of race and power?"

  It was the slogan of the White Aryan Men of America, an organization that tried to unify all the splintered white-power groups.

  He answered with the second part of the slogan. "And I adhere to the laws of God's selection." It was the first time something like that had ever happened to him. He felt like beaming. Like he had stumbled on allies in the midst of a war.

  The man asked, "Can we join you?"

  Ike held out a welcoming hand.

  "I'm Charlie. This here is Chuck and Charles."

  "You're kidding, right?"

  "Nope. Just chance that we all met up at a rally in Little Rock a month or so back. We all used 'Charlie,' but thought it'd get confusing if we called each other Charlie all the time. We rolled dice to see who got what handle." He smiled, showing missing teeth all across his upper plate.

  The younger man eyed Ike's food like a wolf on a farm. The waitress didn't seem interested in visiting the table again.

  Ike slid the plate to the center of the table. "You guys want some?"

  All three men reached at the same time. After a minute of concentrated munching, Charlie looked at Ike. "Thanks, brother. We're mighty hungry. Not many people stop for three grown men hitchhiking. Best we get is the back of a produce truck once in a while."

  "Where are you heading?"

  "West, maybe California. We been stuck here in Houston, working as day laborers for the past week." He looked around like someone might wait on them. "What about you? Live here or visiting?"

  "Just got into Houston now."

  All three men eyed him. Charlie said, "This ain't no place for a white man, brother. We been ousted from a shelter, robbed twice and generally treated like turds. This here place is full of them Katrina refugees, and let me tell ya, they are a rough bunch. New Orleans must be paradise with all their hoodlums over here."

  Ike shook his head. "I can tell you from recent experience that New Orleans is no paradise."

  "What are you doin' here?"

  "Working for the Cause."

  Charlie smiled again. "No shit? Need any help? We're outta work. You know how people discriminate against us."

  Ike thought about his run-in with Craig and those disastrous results. Then he thought about keeping an eye on the truck. These tired, hungry men weren't predators. They were members of the same kind of outfit as Ike.

  "What if I told you I'd pay you in a couple of days for helping me? Would you be interested?"

  "We gotta work with niggers?"

  "Nope."

  "We gotta get up early?"

  "Maybe one of you at a time."

  "We gotta lift anything heavy?"

  "Nope,"

  "Then we're your men."

  Ike realized that the early schedule and hard labor were what really bothered these men, but it didn't matter. H
e just needed someone to tell him if the rental van was being bothered. He nodded approval at his new friends.

  ***

  Staub may not have been in this bar, but Pelly certainly didn't consider it time wasted. He couldn't believe this attractive girl with the broken nose named Lina had sat at the end of the bar, leaned in close to him and talked over the music for almost an hour now. She was fascinating in that she loved to do all sorts of sports and didn't seem to notice his condition in the least. Of course, he had already shaved twice in the past hour. Every time he went to the bathroom, he ran his razor over his stubble.

  Lina had seemed very open to him except for what she did for a living. He didn't believe she was a female kickboxing champion, but he didn't want to risk calling her a liar. Not when she was being so friendly.

  A song that Pelly did not recognize blared over the speakers, and Lina stood with a bright smile across her crooked mouth. "This is my favorite song."

  Pelly said, "I am not familiar with it."

  "You will be," said Lina as she took his hand and jerked him onto his feet. "We're dancing." It was a direct order, and she tugged him along behind her like a mother would a child.

  He had not danced since one had been arranged for his grade school with the girls from a small school run by nuns. He remembered he liked the smell on one small girl with long, rich hair. Other than that, his experience with dancing was what he caught on MTV when he was somewhere with a satellite.

  Lina held his hand as she started to bounce to the rhythm of the music. He felt the bass and instinctively knew to bob to the beat. Shuffling his feet slightly, he felt like no one could identify him as a hairy policeman/killer from Panama. Although he doubted that Lina had completely bought his story of being an art historian from Madrid.

  They danced through the song, and then another, older-sounding song called "Shout" came on and everyone seemed to know how to dance to it. He just followed Lina's example.

  A drunken woman with outrageously large, fake breasts, kept bumping into Lina and him during the song as her tall boyfriend attempted to spin her every so often. Pelly didn't mind it. In fact, he was enjoying his first night out on the town in the United States. Maybe this wasn't such a bad assignment after all.

  Pelly found the rhythm to the song and enjoyed seeing Lina's form move to the beat. He felt his hair below his face mat with sweat, but knew it was unnoticeable under his long-sleeved shirt. He had shaved a small circle near his throat so he could leave his shirt opened one button.

  Then the drunken, top-heavy woman seemed to turn an ankle and started to go down hard. Pelly twisted to catch her at an awkward angle, but it was too late. With her long nails she groped out, looking for a way to keep from falling on the dance floor.

  She found his collar and grabbed on instinctively.

  He felt his shirt start to tear and buttons start to pop even as he tried to catch the woman.

  As she landed and rolled slightly, he felt the front of his shirt fall open before he could stop it. Even in the low light of the dance floor, he knew everyone could see him. He felt his thick chest hair untangle and fall out of the tear in his shirt. He touched his chest and realized the shirt was open almost to his stomach. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the hair near his shoulder start to pop straight up now that it was free. Dark, tall, proud strands of hair he battled with daily. Now, when he needed to win the battle most, the hair had defeated him and escaped.

  Then he heard someone with a thick New Orleans accent say, "Jesus, would ya look at that boy. He must be part monkey."

  Pelly's fist was in the man's mouth before he could follow up the comment. Someone stepped up to grab Pelly, then fell to one side. Pelly turned and saw Lina, the girl he had just met, standing over him, her foot coming back to the ground after kicking the man who tried to accost him from behind.

  Maybe she really was a kickboxing champ.

  39

  BACK IN HIS HOTEL ROOM IN NEW ORLEANS, ALEX DUARTE HAD tossed and turned for the few hours he laid in bed. He got up before dawn and turned on the TV, wondering if there would be any stories about the killing of Forrest Jessup just outside Biloxi, Mississippi. Now he saw some good reasons to have called the cops and explain what he had seen, but it was too late. He'd be tied up for days in the investigation. He wanted to find William Floyd and that truck and its cargo, then get Floyd to explain this whole plan and why so many people had died for it. Duarte had a hard time conceiving of people killing over a load of pot. He knew it had to be more. Cal Linley's idea that it would start a revolution was as cryptic as the kid in Omaha saying it had to do with cranes.

  He kept in his mind the connection to oil and the Houston address of Forrest Jessup that the ATF analyst had found. The old man had been in the oil business as a "wildcat" or independent operator. It didn't look like the racist leader had ever made a lot of money in the business. Maybe the item Cal Linley had unloaded at the port had been for the oil business. He had to keep an open mind.

  He stretched as he watched CNN until the earliest local news popped on. Shortly after seven, while he was up in the army resting position of a push-up, his three hundredth, his cell phone rang.

  He popped up off the floor and found the Nextel with his ID and gun on the small desk in the room.

  "Duarte."

  "Even at seven in the morning, you answer like that?"

  He smiled at Alice's voice.

  "Even at midnight. Just habit."

  "You doing okay?"

  He thought about his night and then said, "Yeah, nothing new, really." His eyes moved over to the baggie with a blood sample in it. Was this the right time?

  "Well, I have a couple of reasons to call other than just missing you and wanting to hear your voice."

  He smiled. "It's nice to hear your voice, too."

  "That's sweet." There was a pause until she realized he wasn't going to speak again. "I have two things to tell you. First, the DNA sample was not in the Florida Department of Law Enforcement database."

  "Does that mean if I have a comparison sample I could send it to you?"

  "If you had a sample, yes."

  "I'll get it out this morning."

  "How'd you get a sample so fast?"

  "Don't ask."

  She paused and then said, "I also found out that the shipping notices you packed the lock in are radioactive."

  Duarte paused and considered this. "What form of radioactivity?"

  "You know about all that stuff? I'm impressed."

  "Did you get a particle spectrum?"

  "Not yet. I wanted to ask you. First, a Geiger counter noticed them, then I took them to U.S. Customs to get a confirmation from one of their pagers."

  "That's smart, Alice. Now I'm impressed. Did the customs guy give you a particle spectrum?"

  "No, he just said they were probably around tile or something and, I quote, 'not to worry my pretty little head about it.'"

  "Is he still alive?"

  "He was too cute to punch. But it still scared me about the reading. You want me to insist he get a particle spectrum?"

  "No, not yet. That calls in a whole bunch of other agencies. I want to find a reason that might get them moving from here and leave you out of the mix."

  "Now tell me something besides work."

  "Like what?"

  "I'm your girlfriend, Alex. I don't care."

  And to his surprise he did talk to her about things unrelated to the Department of Justice.

  ***

  Alex Duarte sat at a booth in the outrageously overpriced restaurant inside the Marriott. It was nearly ten in the morning, and he was still waiting for Félix Baez to meet him. As he sat alone, he sketched out a little diagram with some of the major players in the case to see if he noticed any links he had missed before. He wrote in "B.G." for poor, dead Byron Gastlin and "W.F." for William Floyd. He just wrote a big "O" at the top. He felt certain the shadowy Mr. Ortíz had something to do with the overall scheme.

&nb
sp; His concern came when he wrote "L.C." for Lina Cirillo at the bottom of the page. She knew more than she claimed. He also wrote "L.S." next to Lina's initials. Colonel Lázaro Staub appeared legit, but his trip to New Orleans and lingering presence had set off an alarm inside Duarte's head. Not a serious one yet, but the colonel might also be better informed than he claimed. His English had improved drastically in his short visit to New Orleans, and every day he seemed to disappear with someone for a while. Duarte decided he didn't want to take his eye off the colonel.

  He looked up from his diagram and saw Félix crossing the restaurant.

  Duarte saw the look on his face and said, "What's wrong?"

  "I got more bad news from Panama."

  "What's that?"

  "First I spoke to Staub, then I asked my buddy with the DEA down there, John Morales, to find out about the first mate of the Flame of Panama."

  "Yeah."

  "The captain was found dead on the ship. Two bullets in his face. No one knew anything about the crew. No records, no payroll, nothing. They already renamed the ship, and it's hauling something else."

  "Dammit." He looked up at his friend. "Félix, does it seem like everyone involved in this case dies violently?"

  Félix seemed to flinch as he slid into the booth. "As long as it's not you or me."

  Duarte looked at the DEA man. "You okay? You hurt yourself?"

  "Just banged up my arm a little. Out late on Bourbon Street."

  "That why you look like you haven't slept?"

  "I haven't."

  "You look rough."

  "C'mon, bro, we almost got blown up yesterday. I mean you flew across the parking lot on a door. Neither of us should look good."

  Duarte nodded. He wanted to tell him about his visit to Jessup's house in Biloxi, but he didn't want to put Félix in the position of hearing about a crime and not being free to tell anyone. Duarte knew he had gone off the books on this case, and if he was going to get in trouble he didn't want to hurt his friend, too.