Well, if Nightcrawler is going to put up a sample of book III, I probably should too:
“Welcome to St. Carl!” The waitress said with extra cheer. Those simple words got my attention. St. Carl was a small enough island that anyone who wasn’t a regular got that greeting, especially during the off season, when tourists were few, and the staff were hungry for tips. The room was kept dark, in sharp contrast to the bright Caribbean sunshine trying to force its way through the now open entrance. The lunch patrons were sitting in a few tight clusters, mostly workers from the nearby docks, and a handful of others, all of whom I recognized, but I did not know the three newcomers standing in the doorway.
The lead was a striking woman of Asian descent, dressed casually, but not casually enough to pass for a St. Carl resident. Her black eyes were scanning across the room, looking for something, or someone. She was flanked by two brutes, one short Chinese guy, built like a cage fighter, and the other, a black man, so tall he almost had to duck to get through the door, with a shaved head and more muscle than a side of beef.
Tourists, my ass. The door closed behind the three, plunging the room back into a nice, muted grey. I like grey. People like me just kind of fade away. I went back to my lunch, enjoying the spices, and the ache in my muscles. Unable to go back to sleep this morning, I had put in an extra hard work out. I wasn’t close to my peak, but I had still managed to do a couple hundred pull-ups, several hundred push-ups, and thirty minutes straight on an eighty pound punching bag. Not bad for a guy pushing forty.
The woman said something, quietly enough that I couldn’t hear, and the waitress waved them towards the bar. I noted that the woman kept scanning, always looking, dividing the room into quadrants, and giving every occupant a once over. She made eye contact with me, but I just kept chewing my food like any other slack jawed yokel, just another nebulous face in the crowd, just everyman, not worthy of any attention. Or at least that was the ability that I had developed over my lifetime.
On the other hand, I was a master of reading people. It was a gift. Two seconds of eye contact told me everything that I needed to know about her. She was a killer, and she was hard. But I didn’t get the vibe that she was here to kill anyone in particular. She was here on business.
The woman broke away, and headed for the bar. She stopped while the tall man pulled a wicker stool out and waited for her to sit. She crossed her legs gracefully, smiled at the bartender like a lion would smile at a gazelle, and placed several folded pieces of currency onto the bar. She beckoned him closer, conspiratorially, and started asking questions. The bartender, always a sucker for a pretty girl, took the money, scratched his head, looked around the room, shrugged, and pointed right at me.
So it begins again.
The woman stood, delicately adjusted her blouse, and walked toward me. Her men took up positions at the bar, still close enough to shoot me if necessary. I waited for her to approach, the weight of my .45 reassuring on my belt under my untucked cotton shirt.
She stopped, hovering next to my table, while I nonchalantly finished my larb. Why Thai food in a hole in the wall restaurant, on a fly speck island, in the middle of nowhere? Because I said so.
Of course the bartender knew me. I own this place. I own this whole island.
“Are you Lorenzo?” She asked politely in perfectly nuanced English. Such a mundane statement seemed vaguely threatening when she said it.
I made her wait while I took a long drink of water. Most everything I ate was seasoned to be lethally hot. “At times,” I replied, pushing my dish away, and wiping my mouth on a napkin. “Have a seat.”
She did. I waited. It had been a year since anyone other than my wife had called me that name on St. Carl.
“My name is Song-Ling. I have need of your services.” She got right down to business.
“You must’ve not gotten the memo. I’m retired,” I answered. She ignored me, reached slowly into a pocket and pulled out a business size envelope.
“You will want to see this.” She held it out to me, her blood red fingernails bright over the white paper.
It had been two years since I had been forced into my last job. Strangely enough, it too had started with a messenger giving me an envelope, though Ling was far more attractive than the psychotic Fat Man that had served Big Eddie Montalban. That particular envelope had been filled with information on my extended family and threats against their lives. I had pulled off one of the most daring heists of my career, but the costs had been far too high. Too many people, friends and enemies both, had died because of the contents of that last envelope.
I didn’t take it.
“Miss Ling, I’m sorry that you came all this way for nothing, but I’m not interested.” I pushed back my chair and stood. I could see both of Ling’s goons tense up. “I hope you enjoy your stay on St. Carl, the rock shrimp really is wonderful this time of year, and have a nice trip home.”
“Bob said you would react like this.” She didn’t even look at me. She placed the envelope on the table and spun it. “I didn’t pick you out of the crowd. You look nothing at all like your brother. I was expecting a man of greater... stature.”
I paused. That would explain how she found me. Son of a bitch.
“I was a foster kid.” I sat back down. The envelope sat between us. Ling didn’t speak. I had been correct in my earlier assessment. She was a hard one. “How do you know Bob?” For some reason she didn’t strike me as the type of person that ran in the same social circles as my straight-laced, honorable, FBI agent, older brother.
She opened the envelope and pulled out a torn paper napkin. It had been written on with black ink. She shoved it toward me.
“He gave this to me, right before he was chased down, beaten unconscious, and taken away by very evil men. That was seventy-two hours ago. I do not know if he is alive or dead.”
“What?” I blurted. I had spoken to him on the phone less than a week ago. I snatched the napkin from her. I recognized the blocky handwriting.
HECTOR – NEED HELP. REMEMBER Q? THEY KNOW.
DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME.
HE IS IN REACH.
HE IS THE KEY.
ONLY YOU CAN SAVE HIM.
The bottom half of the napkin was missing, torn off.
Q? Quagmire. Quagmire, Nevada. They know? Eddie’s dead. His organization is destroyed. Gordon... The shadow government types. They must have found out about Bob helping us in Quagmire. Oh no.
“Who’s in reach? What does that mean?”
“Reach is an abandoned Air Force radar station in Montana. It is now used by a covert organization within the United States Government. It serves as a secret prison and interrogation center. I’m here to offer you a trade, Mr. Lorenzo. You help me rescue someone from this facility, and I’ll give you all of the information I can to help you find your brother. We will lend you our full assistance and allow you to use our intelligence network to this end.”
“Where’s the second half of Bob’s note?” I fingered the torn edge of the napkin.
“It is stored someplace far away. I do not know the location.”
“What does the rest of the note say?”
“I do not know, nor do my men, so it will be futile for you to attempt to find out from us, but it will be given to you after my superiors have evidence that you have helped us.”
I could feel the anger bubbling to the surface, the same killing anger that I had used for so long, the same evil that I had kept locked up, and thrown into the deepest darkest well of my mind for the last year. “How about you tell me where my brother is right now, or I cut your eyes out?” I hissed. Her men sensed the change, and started to rise from the bar, hands moving under their shirts.
Ling didn’t flinch. She casually raised her hand, and her goons grudgingly lowered themselves. The rest of the patrons kept eating, unaware that for a split second the room had teetered on the edge of a gunfight.
“Read your brother’s words. That isn’t what he wants. This is bigger than your brother. Greater than you, than me, than all of us.” She spoke with the sincerity of a true believer, and those were the most dangerous kind of all. Ling pulled the second and final item from the envelope. It was a photograph.
“Do you know this man, Mr. Lorenzo?” I looked at the picture.
“Yeah... I know him.”
Ling leaned forward, and stabbed her fingernail into the photo. “One life for another. Your brother is an honorable man, Mr. Lorenzo. I want no harm to come for him. Right now, my people are doing everything they can to locate him. But your brother insisted that finding him was more important. Please. We need your help.”
The picture was old. A young man with glasses wasn’t quite looking at the camera, stupid grin on his face. He held up a bottle of water and had a Band-Aid on his forehead. He looked younger, almost happy. Not torn down and broken and…empty would be the word. He didn’t even have the scars I’d given him.
Nightcrawler.
