The Asset

by Shane Kuhn

  They had another drink and shot the shit for a while. Juarez wasn’t like the other morons he’d grown to hate at the club, the ones who had money and political suck but couldn’t swing a club to break a window, let alone par. Juarez knew the game and didn’t bore Kennedy bragging about what he had or whining about what he didn’t. When they parted ways, they exchanged business cards and promised to try to play a round sometime. Kennedy hoped it wasn’t bullshit, something people in LA had developed into an art. Talking to Juarez made him realize that the one thing he needed to make his life less disconnected and transient was a friend.

  * * *

  Back at the hotel, he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d heard Sierra—Love—on the radio that morning for a reason. Maybe Belle had spirited into the room that night and turned on that goddamned alarm clock? That was definitely her style. And she would be pissed if he wimped out and didn’t at least try to go to the show, after I busted my ass to come back from the dead, she would say.

  Before he could talk himself out of it, he was in the hotel car service, on his way to Venice Beach.

  This is a bad idea.

  It was 9:00 P.M. and the freeway was inexplicably jammed. Kennedy had been in the car for forty-five minutes and they still had a long way to go. The whiskey buzz was starting to wear off and he was getting queasy from the driver stopping and lurching, fighting for every mile.

  “Maybe we should just head back to the hotel,” Kennedy said.

  “At this point, it may take you twice as long to get back as it would to get to your destination, but I can turn around if you like,” the driver said, eyeing Kennedy in the rearview.

  “Fuck it. Let’s stay the course.”

  “Of course. Would you like a mint?”

  “A what?”

  “A mint. Or a stick of gum?”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe you’re meeting a lady tonight?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “No reason, sir. How about some music?”

  Kennedy stared at the parking lot of cars ahead of them on the freeway. He was nervous—but not in the way the driver had implied. He had to admit he’d been avoiding Belle’s best friend ever since his sister died. She reminded him too much of something he could never get back. A month after Belle’s funeral, Sierra had been distraught, unable to sleep or eat, battling severe depression. She had come to Kennedy, driving all the way from Santa Monica to Stanford, saying she needed to talk to someone who felt like she did.

  The problem was, Kennedy had wanted to weld himself shut in his iron grief and had no desire to share feelings. When she arrived at his dorm, looking for a shoulder to cry on, he managed to put on a convincing act that he was there for her, but all of her reminiscing made him want to retreat even further into himself. After that, their communications became less frequent. She’d tried to stay in touch, but Kennedy always made excuses. Until he’d run out, and she stopped calling. And now here he was, at The Sink, wringing his hands like a freshman prom date.

  The show had started by the time Kennedy arrived. It was sold out and the club was full to capacity, so the velvet-rope jockey told him to get lost. Kennedy remembered the kitchen entrance Sierra had shown him and his friends how to break into with a credit card when they were in high school. He crept around back and was blown away to see they hadn’t fixed the lock after all those years. He used one of his many frequent-flier cards to slip in the door and found the last square foot of standing room.

  When the pot haze cleared, he saw her on the stage. He barely recognized her at first. When she was younger, she’d always been a tomboy, an effortless star at every sport she played and quick to eschew the fashion rag trappings of teenhood. But now, with her dark bronze skin covered in exotic tattoos and platinum blond dreadlocks artfully tangled on her head like Medusa’s snakes, she was an otherworldly beauty, radiating cool all over the room. Kennedy was captivated, and “Love” seemed a far more appropriate name for her now. Most of what he’d remembered about Sierra had been consumed by her stage persona. And even more fitting, her music pulled emotional strings in him to the point of breaking.

  By the end of the last encore, he was at a loss as to what to do. Watching the adoring fans who knew every word to her songs made him feel like an imposter and punctuated the fact that he had thrown away what could have been a great friendship over the years. What was he going to say to her, if they could even get five minutes alone? He felt compelled to apologize for his behavior but knew that would only make things more awkward, because then he would be admitting he had avoided her on purpose. The last thing she needed coming off the high of a great show was a pedestrian walk down memory lane. He was an idiot to have thought they could pick up where they’d left off. Too much water under the bridge, he told himself. And Love was curious, like Belle. She would ask him a lot of questions, and the answers would expose his sad, transient existence. He opted to slip out and spare them both the agony.

  He went out the same way he came in, through the back kitchen door.

  “Freeze!” a voice called out behind him as he stepped into the cool night air.

  Love was standing there in the amber glow of a naked bulb hanging over the club’s garbage cans. She smiled at him, the glint in her eye a spark of knowing she had busted him cold.

  “Oh hey,” he said sheepishly.

  “Don’t oh hey me, dude. Trying to sneak out the back. I should punch you.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “Please.” She laughed. “I’m the one who showed you that door the night of the Descendents show when you wanted to burn a joint to get away from Charlotte what’s-her-name who was hammered on the bottle of Rumple Minze she stole from her dad’s liquor cabinet and kept trying to stick her tongue down your throat.”

  “Jesus, how do you remember all of that?”

  She tossed her cigarette aside and hugged him.

  “You’re forgiven,” she said, pulling away to get a good look at him. “Long time. Where the fuck have you been? I thought I was seeing a ghost.”

  “It’s good to see you too . . . Love.”

  “How do you like the new name? Better than dumb old yuppie Sierra, right?”

  “Absolutely. It might take some getting used to, but it suits you . . . and your music.”

  “Oh, so I might see you again this decade?”

  “Yeah, of course.” He wanted to crawl under a rock, and she knew it.

  “You’re a real piece of work, you know that? You come here unannounced, thinking you’re all incognito at the back of the club—the lone tall corporate gunslinger in a sea of drug-addled kidniks—don’t think for a second I didn’t clock you the moment you slunk in, and then you pull this exit-stage-left shit. I’m sorry but what the fuck barely covers it.”

  “Sorry . . . It’s been so long. I didn’t want you to feel, I guess, obligated to talk to me after the show. You know? With all the fans . . . I know, it’s stupid.”

  “Pretty much. Dude, it’s because I haven’t seen you in an eternity that I would want to talk to you. I mean, don’t think for a minute I’m not pissed at you for shining me on all these years. But you and Belle are family. Fuck it, it’s great to see you!”

  She hugged him again and squeezed him so hard he couldn’t breathe. Then she lit them both a cigarette.

  “I don’t—”

  “I hate smoking alone. Just pretend.”

  Kennedy accepted the cigarette and tried to actually smoke it in an attempt to prove to Love that he hadn’t surrendered what was left of his cool to Brooks Brothers. But the coughing fit after the first drag killed that dream.

  “Thanks for playing.” She laughed again.

  “I never could hack those. Not even when I was trying to drink myself to death back in college.”

  “I need to quit so I don’t end up singing through a hole in
my neck with one of those electronic monster boxes.”

  Kennedy laughed. She always could crack him up.

  “What’d you think of the show?” she asked, genuinely interested.

  “I think the roaring garbage fire they call the music business is completely fucked for not making you a megastar.”

  “They don’t like my politics.”

  She pulled open her thin leather vest and revealed a tattoo of Shiva holding the severed heads of Jesus and Michael Jackson just below her collar line and just above the black lace of her camisole.

  “Good for you,” Kennedy said, glowing red. “And for the rest of us. I haven’t seen music that good for . . . ever.”

  “That’s not saying much, is it?” she said.

  “No.” He laughed again. “But you don’t need validation from the square business world. Look at all those adoring fans in there.”

  “Is that where you come from now? Planet Square?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  Love smiled but also looked concerned.

  “Dude, seriously, where have you been?”

  “Where haven’t I been? I pretty much live on an airplane.”

  “That is not healthy.”

  “I know, but that’s my job.”

  “You could quit.”

  “And do what?”

  “I don’t know, anything. You went to Stanford. You’re a successful entrepreneur. Yes, I keep tabs on you, dumbass. You’re smart. You probably have a shitload of money squirreled away because you don’t have a house, a wife with credit cards, and three kids like most guys your age. And with a little work on the wardrobe, you could hop the last shuttle off Planet Square.”

  “Let’s not get carried away.” Kennedy smiled.

  “Do you like it? Your job?”

  “Hmm. Like it . . .”

  She made a loud game show buzzer sound.

  “Yes or no question. Clearly, it’s a no.”

  “It’s important. I like that.”

  “You can be important without spreading yourself so thin there’s nothing but an empty jar left for you . . . and everyone else.”

  “Now you’re speaking in lyrics,” Kennedy chided.

  “Maybe,” she confessed with a shy grin, and lit another cigarette.

  Kennedy pretended to hold a robot speaker box up to his throat.

  “. . . there’s nothing but an empty jar left for you . . .” he sang in his best robot voice, throwing both of them into fits of laughter.

  When they caught their breath, Kennedy took a long look at Love and felt like she was the type of person he needed to help him feel real again, at least once in a while.

  “I’m just going to admit it,” he said. “I’ve been a complete dick.”

  She held up her hand.

  “Water under the bridge. You’re here now. Which is awesome. And I take it you’ve turned over a new leaf and I can count on more of your presence in the future.”

  “Yes,” he said firmly. “Absolutely.”

  “Good,” she said, kissing him on the cheek unexpectedly. “Got to jump. Heading to New York tonight for a few East Coast dates. Maybe we should exchange numbers, like people who don’t hate each other.”

  “We definitely should,” Kennedy said.

  She held out her hand.

  “Phone please.”

  He entered the password and handed it to her. She entered her own number and picked up her phone when it rang. She handed his back.

  “Hello, Kennedy?”

  He held his phone to his ear.

  “Yes, Love.”

  “Call me sometime, you big lug.”

  Belle had always called him that, and hearing it again choked him up a bit.

  “Promise,” he said.

  She smiled and hung up.

  “You better or I’ll hunt you down and have your legs broken.”

  Love slipped back into the club through their secret entrance, leaving a smoke ring halo where she’d been standing.

  Day 4

  Later that night, Kennedy restlessly paced his dark hotel suite. Seeing Love had made him feel more connected, but it had also brought up a lot of pain about Belle. Memories of the three of them kept coming, keeping him awake. And it dawned on him that the reason he’d cut Love off was not so much because she reminded him of Belle, but more because she reminded him of how he was before Belle died. The night before she was killed, he had treated Belle terribly. That wasn’t like him. It was almost as if he’d been stuck for fourteen years in that all-business bullshit martyr role he’d played with her that night. Which was why he felt the need to work himself to death to protect total strangers.

  The idea that his entire career path might be some kind of psychological grief reaction based more in repressed emotions than in logic made him feel like an idiot. He had always prided himself on making rational, fact-based decisions, and now he was questioning one of the biggest ones. And once he got into the second-guessing game, no part of his life was safe. Had he avoided relationships, both platonic and romantic, simply out of fear? The way he had isolated himself was starting to feel more and more pathetic against the foil of Love’s open and truthful personality.

  He was preparing to hold his nose and jump into the deep end of gloom when his mobile phone rang. Blocked number. He ignored it. Couldn’t be bothered in his moment of self-flagellation. Then it rang again and he looked at the time: 3:10 A.M.

  “Who the hell is this?” he answered.

  “Monsieur,” a man with a heavy French accent said on the other end of the line.

  “I said who is this? It’s three in the morning.”

  “My apologies. I work with Direction Générale de l’Aviation Civile in Paris and I am calling about a rather urgent matter. We would like to engage your services.”

  “Now?”

  “As I said, the matter is urgent.”

  “How urgent?”

  “I am unable to discuss it with you over the phone. We would like to fly you to Paris for a meeting. Our private jet is already in Los Angeles and can have you back within twenty-four hours.”

  “That’s a bit presumptuous, don’t you think?”

  “You may name your fee.”

  “Call me back in ten minutes.”

  “Of course.”

  Kennedy hung up and considered the offer. What difference did it make if he went? It’s not like he had anything better to do. And they did say he could name his price. Seemed stupid to shoo away the golden goose for no good reason. And Paris in autumn would be spectacular. This time he would stay for a few days, on their dime of course, and enjoy the city, take a little vacation courtesy of the French government. He might even have time to pop over to London and pick Wes’s brain some more. And the man did say private jet . . . The phone rang again.

  “I can fit it in,” he answered.

  “Very good, monsieur. We will send a car in the morn—”

  “That’s all right. I’ll drive myself. Text me the details.”

  * * *

  Kennedy took an Uber at dawn and gave his driver the directions the Frenchman sent after their phone call. He ended up at a small private terminal just off the Imperial Highway adjacent to LAX. There was no sign of anyone, and the front door was locked. Out on the apron, he saw a Bombardier Global 8000, one of the largest private jets in the world. But it hardly looked ready for flight. The windows were covered, the wheels chocked, and there were no pilots or fuel attendants. He looked at his watch to make sure he had the right time and walked around to the gate. It was open, its heavy padlock dangling.

  “Hello?” he called out.

  The pilots have to be here, he thought. Only an asshole would leave a sixty-­five-million-dollar jet unattended while they went out for a Frappuccino.

 
He walked through the gate, out to the apron.

  “Hello? Anybody here?”

  No response. No sign of anyone.

  “Okay, I’m out of here,” he said to himself.

  “Can I help you?” a man’s voice asked behind him.

  Startled, Kennedy whipped around. The man was wearing a black balaclava, pointing a gun in his face.

  “What the fuck—” Kennedy began.

  “Passport,” the man said sharply.

  Kennedy handed it over. The mask looked at it, then shot him in the chest.

  Kennedy panicked and looked down, but instead of a gaping bullet wound, he saw the red fletch of a tranquilizer dart jutting out just below his collarbone.

  “Have a nice flight,” the mask said.

  Kennedy fell to his knees, his vision blurring. Four more men dressed in black, also wearing balaclavas, surrounded him and held him upright. When he lost consciousness, he fell into a lightless abyss, the voice of Belle echoing around him.

  I don’t want to go alone.

  When Kennedy came to, he was disoriented, blinded by a black canvas sack wrapped around his head, and bound tightly at the wrists and ankles. He felt like he was suffocating and struggled violently to free himself. After a few minutes of bellowing obscenities and thrashing like a caged animal, he heard the sound of the engines and realized he was crammed in the baggage compartment in the tail of the Bombardier Global 8000, and they were airborne.

  He drew in long, ragged breaths to calm his nerves in the claustrophobic space, but the onslaught of worst-case scenarios invading his thoughts held him right on the knife’s edge of panic. He had to force himself to focus on the facts of the situation. Like a golf shot: address every angle independently and avoid the big picture at all costs. Who the fuck were they? No clue. Not enough information. Why did they want him? That was easy. He knew more about US airport security than the head of the TSA. He was a high-value target and he was a civilian—the perfect mark.

  His abductors had access to one of the most expensive private jets in the world, meaning he was dealing with a well-funded group. Maybe they were the ones behind the recent threat? It made sense. If someone wanted to know every possible security weakness at all the major airports in the United States, Kennedy would be the one to beat the information out of. He could also tell them if anything had been done to safeguard airports in response to the threat. He’d have laughed out loud at the irony if he weren’t facing torture. They were going to do all the things to him that he’d read about the CIA doing to terror suspects, things that made him sick to think about.