Drunk on a Plane

by Zane Mitchell

  “Umm…” I snuck a quick glance down at the registration I’d found in the glove compartment box. “Malakai Charles.” I swallowed hard as I stared at him.

  He pulled his ball cap off and scratched the back of his sweaty head. “Well, alright. I guess I’ll just get the paperwork ready, then. You’ll have to come into the office and sign some stuff.”

  “Sure thing, boss,” I said with a nod as I began to climb out of the truck. “Say, where’d they find my truck at, anyway?”

  “We towed it out of the Tally’s Discount Liquor parking lot.”

  “Right.” I scratched the side of my head. “And where’s that at again?”

  He puffed air out his nose. “You’re an islander and you don’t know where Tally’s is at?”

  I pointed at him like he’d gotten me. “Oh, Tally’s! I thought you said Bally’s. I was like, what? Yeah, no, never mind. I know exactly where Tally’s is. Yeah. Yup. Good to go. Thanks so much.”

  He looked at me as if I were cracked and took off towards his office. “I’ll meet you in the office,” he threw back over his shoulder as he lumbered away.

  I’d already slipped down out of the truck, through the aisle, and back towards the open gate. I heard the office door slam shut just before I jumped back into the resort’s car.

  “Akoni, do you know where Tally’s Discount Liquor is?”

  “Sure thing, Mr. Drunk.”

  36

  A lanky man with a slouchy Rastafarian beanie and dreadlocks sat behind the counter at Tally’s Discount Liquor, watching a sitcom on an old tube-style television set with rabbit ears. It was one of those shows that were filmed before a live studio audience, because I could hear the laughter emanating from the box as I entered. The stale smell of cigar smoke hung in the air, and a purring fan on the counter did little to dissipate the smell.

  The clerk paid no attention to me when I walked past him and down the far aisle to grab a bottle of Dr. Pepper out of a cooler and a Snickers bar from the candy aisle. I quietly browsed the gin section and then rounded the aisle and cruised down the tequila and bourbon aisle for a few more minutes, just to seem casual, and then finally I walked to the front, dropping the candy and the pop on the counter along with a five-dollar bill.

  I’m pretty sure I could have gotten out of there without either of us exchanging a single syllable, but I had questions that needed answers.

  “Hey, man.”

  Slouchy beanie man gave me a wassup nod but didn’t utter so much as a single pleasantry.

  “You work last night?”

  “Yeah.”

  He speaks. “Cool. You didn’t happen to see a black Chevy getting towed, did you?”

  “Mmm-mmm.” The sound that came out of his throat, a sort of mumbled I don’t know, was the same kind of sound I used to make when I was trying to lie to my mother without actually having lied to my mother.

  “Just wondering if you happened to see who left it there?”

  He pursed his lips and raised one thin eyebrow at me. “I’ll tell ya what I told da cops. I didn’t see anyting.”

  “Oh, come on, man. Help me out. It was my truck. Some guys, they stole it from me.”

  He shrugged one bony shoulder. “Tough break, but I don’t know nuttin’.”

  I pulled my wallet out of my back pocket and dropped a hundy onto the counter. With one finger, I slid it over to him.

  He picked it up and folded it neatly before sliding it into the front pocket of his shorts. “Green house, five blocks down on da right.”

  “Much appreciated,” I said with a nod.

  “Ya didn’t hear it from me.”

  I grinned. “I’ve never even been in here before. How could I have heard it from you?”

  Without another word, slouchy hat man sat back down on his stool and turned his attention back to the television, and I went back outside.

  Unwrapping the Snickers, I sidled up to Akoni, still parked outside. “I guess I’ll walk from here.”

  Akoni hung his elbow out the window and looked around. “I can’t leave you here, Mr. Drunk.”

  “Just Drunk, and it’s fine. I know some fellas down the street. I’m just gonna go hang out with them.”

  “This is a bad neighborhood. Mr. Balladares would not like knowing I left a resort guest here.”

  I patted his shoulder. “I appreciate the concern, Akoni, but I’ll be fine. I swear. I know how to handle myself.”

  “I can come back and get you.” He looked at his watch. “In an hour or so?”

  I shook my head. “I’m hoping I’ll find my way back with someone else. But I’ll call if I need a ride.”

  Akoni handed me a resort business card. “It has my cell phone number on the back. I do pickups anytime before ten p.m.”

  I winked at him and made a little clicking sound with my mouth. “Got it. Thanks, buddy.”

  Against his better judgment, Akoni drove away, leaving me to eat my Snickers bar alone in the Tally’s Discount Liquor parking lot. I consumed it in three bites before turning around to face the street the clerk had gestured towards. I took a deep breath.

  “What’s your plan?” had been Al’s final words to me before I’d gotten into the waiting car just before leaving the resort.

  “Not to get killed,” had been my only answer. I’d tried to come up with a plan on the ride over, but without knowing where I was going, who I was going to encounter, and what they were going to be doing, how could I possibly have a plan? I was flying blind.

  I rolled my head and shoulders, trying to loosen up. “Don’t get killed,” I muttered to myself as my heart pattered in my chest. Oh, I wished I had a partner next to me. And as highly as I thought of Al, I still found myself wishing for a younger, less frail partner. I would’ve felt a whole hell of a lot better had Mikey been by my side.

  Taking two big swigs of my Dr. Pepper, I started down the road. Old broken-down cars lined the narrow side street. The houses were in poor repair, with crumbling foundations and porches, broken windows, and decrepit fences that did little to offer protection. I couldn’t see any people, but I could hear children playing in a nearby backyard. I didn’t make a conscious attempt at staying out of the limelight until I was two blocks away from the location, at which point I ducked into the shadows on the other side of the street and walked lightly with my hand at the ready. I figured whoever had had the phone probably wasn’t looking out their windows waiting for me to chase them down, but I did have a gut feeling that Nicolette Dominion wasn’t far away. It was as if I could smell the spicy scent of her perfume riding in on the island air.

  I took another couple of steps towards the green house and realized that my imagination certainly had a good sense of smell. It was as if that spicy perfume were really right next to me. I stopped walking, closed my eyes, and inhaled. Opening them, I shook my head as a light smile covered my face. It wasn’t my imagination. The scent was real. Nicolette Dominion was nearby.

  Stealthily, I slid over to the tree closest to me and clung to its shadowy cover. Carefully, I peeked around the trunk. Where was she hiding? I wanted to sing to her. Come out, come out, wherever you are. I still couldn’t see her, but my nose could most definitely smell her. Was she sitting in a parked car? There were many of them, but only one had its window down. It was a four-door Chrysler 200. Two cars away, its dark grey paint job blended easily into the neighborhood. It was too dark inside to tell if anyone was sitting in the car. I had to get closer.

  With my heart throbbing against my chest wall, I put my hand on my weapon and began to ease myself towards the open window. She had to be in there. Ever so slowly I crept towards it, trying not to make a sound. Just as I was about to draw my weapon, I heard a twig snap behind me.

  “Hands up, nice and slow.”

  I closed my eyes and dropped my Dr. Pepper bottle on the ground.

  Fuck.

  37

  “Nicolette,” I said, turning around even though I hadn’t been invited to do so
.

  “Nicolette? Well,” she said, with an undertone of appreciation, “you’ve done a little research, haven’t you Drunk?”

  I looked down the muzzle of the same gun I’d seen only a day and a half before. This time, in the shade and behind my dark sunglasses, the gun was hazier and seemingly less threatening. Maybe it was because I’d seen it before and she hadn’t pulled the trigger. Or maybe it was because Nicolette was looking extra sexy in her hiking boots, shorts, and white tank top with the trimmings of a lacy black bra peeking out.

  Either way, I smiled at her. Like she was my best friend, and I was thrilled to see her. “Well, hey there, sugar. I’d done gone almost a full twenty-four hours without bein’ harassed by you. I was just needin’ myself a fix. Now come on over here and give Big Daddy Drunk a hug.” I reserved my Southern accent for when I wanted to be extra cheeky. Whether women thought it to be charming or it got under their skin, I always managed to get a reaction out of them. I threw my arms out on either side of myself and lumbered towards her.

  With the gun extended out in front of her, she didn’t flinch. “Stay where you are. Don’t move a muscle.”

  I made a face and froze. “Now, you know you don’t mean that.”

  “I do mean that.” Even behind my shades, I could see that Nicolette wasn’t playing. “What do you want, Drunk?”

  “Who said I wanted anything?”

  “You’re here.”

  “So are you.”

  She snuffed air out her nose. “I was here first.”

  I shrugged. “I was here second, and two’s a bigger number.”

  Nicolette shook her head, but a small smile finally played around the corners of her mouth. “Oh my God, are you serious right now? How old are you?”

  “Younger than I look.” I gave her a smarmy grin.

  “Obviously.”

  “So tell me, Nicolette. What’s a beautiful lady such as yourself doing in a place like this?”

  She cocked her hip out and rested the insignificant brunt of her weight on her right leg. “I can only assume you know exactly what I’m doing here.”

  “As a matter of fact, that’s where the details get cloudy. I was hoping I might bump into you here and you might fill in the missing spots.”

  She squinted at me. “And why in God’s name would I do that?”

  “Because we’re old pals, Nicolette. We go way back.”

  “Do we?”

  I nodded. “We do. But you know, old pals generally know more about one another. I feel like we should take a moment to get to know each other better.”

  “You think so?” Sarcasm dripped from the corners of her mouth.

  “I do. First of all, there’s this little issue of your name. Now, if it were up to you, you’d have me still believing that your name was Natasha Prince, but lo and behold, I happened to find out that there was not a Natasha Prince on my flight in from Atlanta.” I grinned at her then. “You remember that flight? The one where you throat-punched me?”

  She rolled her eyes and groaned. “Are we seriously dealing with that again? You can’t get over it? Maybe I should knee you in the balls just so you have some new material to talk about.”

  I took a confident step closer to her and pulled my sunglasses off. “Or maybe we should take this to a bedroom and you can give me something much more memorable to talk about?”

  She reached a hand over the top of the gun and pulled the slide back. “Another step closer and I’m blowing your fucking head off, Drunk.”

  I stopped and put my hands up, my sunglasses dangling between two fingers. “Oh, come on now, sugar. Is that how you talk to an old friend? Back to what we were talking about. Imagine my surprise to find out that there wasn’t a Natasha Prince on the flight, but there was a Nicolette Dominion.”

  Nicolette stared at me, unmoving.

  “And then imagine my surprise to discover that Nicolette Dominion is ex-CIA cyber security. She gave up her job to work for a private company in Maryland of all places.”

  Nicolette rolled her eyes. “Oh, so now you think you know all about me, do you? Did you get my Social Security number and bra size while you were at it?”

  “I’m pretty sure I can wrangle up your Social Security number, but you might have to help me with that bra size thing. What are you? A 34C?” I shook my head. “I mean, that’s just an educated guess. You know, a hypothesis.”

  “Oh, look, Drunk knows a big word.” Her tone was patronizing. Then she smiled at me. “What do you want, Drunk? A cookie? You solved the mystery of what my real name is? You think that’s gonna make these fools inside there want to kill you any less?”

  I folded my glasses and tucked them into my pants pockets and let my hands fall down by my side. “So they do want to kill me?”

  “Of course they do. Did you think they wanted to play patty-cake with you?”

  “I didn’t know what they wanted.”

  She grunted. “As if I believe that. You’re here, which means you know more than you let on before.”

  “Barely. I’m not an idiot. I put together a few pieces, but I’d like to know more. I’m being serious now.” I took the smallest step towards her, making it look like I’d merely shifted my stance. “Can’t we go somewhere that we can talk and you can tell me all about what’s going on? The cops on this island think I killed Jimmie. They don’t want me going back to the States until I’m cleared. I could use a little help.”

  She choked back a laugh. “You want my help? I knew you were crazy, but I didn’t realize you were insane.”

  “Oh, come on, Nicolette.”

  “Stop calling me Nicolette, alright? It’s Nico. Just call me Nico.”

  I smiled at her. “See? Look at us, getting all cozy and intimate with each other.”

  “Shut up,” she growled, still holding the gun on me, though I could see she was starting to let her guard down a little bit the more we talked. “Listen, I’m not going anywhere. You need to leave.”

  “Leave? But I just got here!” I had my eyes trained on hers. She kept glancing over my shoulder at the green house across the street. She was getting more and more distracted. At any moment I was going to make my move.

  “Listen, Drunk. I don’t know what to tell you about the island cops. It’s really not my problem. But you need to go. We can’t be out here talking like this. Those guys in there might see us, and then bang bang, we’re both dead.” She glanced over my shoulder again. This time she shifted her weight.

  I took that as my cue.

  Without hesitation, I pounced.

  38

  My pulse thundered in my ears, its rhythmic beat drowning out everything else when I made my move.

  I lunged towards Nico.

  Pivoting sideways on my left leg, I slid my head out of the line of fire. Then I shoved the gun away from me with my left hand while my right hand grabbed hold of the grip. My charm tactic had caught her off guard. She wasn’t holding it as tightly as she had been, and it came out of her hand easier than I’d anticipated.

  With a big smile on my face, I spun it around and held it on her.

  She trained her narrowed eyes on me. “You think you’re so smart, don’t you?”

  A cheesy shit-eating grin covered my face. “Like taking candy from a—”

  Without warning, her own arms flared out, and before I could finish my sentence, one of her hands struck my wrist and the other struck the gun in the opposite direction, sending it flying out of my hands and clattering to the ground. She wasted no time in launching a jab intended for my jaw.

  My hands went up defensively, blocking her shot.

  She fired off a second jab.

  I blocked it too and then leaned over and kicked out my leg, landing it squarely against the side of her knee.

  She stumbled to the ground. Even though I had my own gun, I went for hers. I wanted to retrieve it before she could, but before I could reach it, she was back on her feet with the lid of a metal garbage can in her hand.
She lifted it over her head, charging at me with a howl emanating from her throat.

  “What the fuck, Nico?” I hollered, ducking out of the way. The lid grazed the back of my neck and shoulders but did little damage.

  “You started this, Drunk.” Circling me, she held the lid in front of her like a shield.

  Breathing heavily, I reached for the weapon under my shirt. “Yeah, well, I’m about to finish it.”

  I’d just lifted my shirt when she rushed me. Ducking behind the lid, she put her weight into plowing into my body, forcing me backwards to the edge of the curb, where she pinned me against the side of a grey Honda Accord parallel parked along the street. The jolt knocked my hat off my head, and it rolled onto the curb.

  Grunting, I shoved her off of me. “You’re a crazy bitch, you know that?”

  She dumped the lid and went for my legs. Plowing her shoulders into them, she swept me off my feet and body-slammed me down onto the hood of the Honda, setting off the car alarm immediately. I felt an immediate burst of pain in the back of my skull, and the impact knocked the wind out of me. I gasped for breath as the car horn blared and the lights flashed, lighting up the neighborhood.

  “Oh, good going, asshole,” she muttered, flicking her eyes up to check out the house she’d been surveilling.

  “My fault?” I gasped through wheezes of air. I struggled to climb off the car, holding my chest.

  “Oh fuck, they’re coming,” she murmured before falling to her knees behind the Honda.

  Wincing in pain, I rolled off the hood of the car to the pavement, where I found partial protection behind the car in front of me.

  I glanced over my shoulder to see Nico army-crawling for her gun, still on the pavement.

  “What the fuck?” came an Aussie voice from across the street.

  Once Nico had reached her gun, I pulled out my own gun and carefully peered over the trunk of the car towards the green house. The two men I’d seen breaking into my room were storming down the porch stairs of the green two-story house towards us.