Unloaded

by Eric Beetner

  I got used to the Friday night errands, enjoying the extra pay. Then, they stopped all together. I once again pushed Ioki and the fat Japanese businessman to the back of my mind.

  “Mr. Potts? This is Special Agent Reilkoff from the F.B.I.”

  I thought maybe it was a prank, but the voice on the phone had an officious tone. I could hear typing, coughing, and the echo of leather shoes slapping linoleum.

  “Have you had any contact with Haru Nakamura?”

  I’d never heard the name. “No,” I answered without confidence.

  “Are you sure?”

  It sounded like a test.

  “No.”

  “No, you have not had contact, or no you’re not sure?” He knew exactly what I meant. “Mr. Potts, Haru Nakamura is a dangerous criminal and an international fugitive.”

  There was a long and pregnant pause. I could still hear the echoes of phones ringing and other office sounds being bounced off the high walls and ceilings of the room he was in.

  Reilkoff began to tell me what the F.B.I. knew—what I already knew: I’d been in an accident with Mr. Nakamura and a payment schedule was set up. How he knew these things, he didn’t say. The debriefing was one-way and Special Agent Reilkoff didn’t pause to allow any questions. He told me how this Nakamura had made a career of embezzling partners and defrauding travel businesses. He didn’t say how Nakamura had done this, he only gave me astronomical totals from his crimes.

  When he concluded, he said, “Mr. Potts, we need your help in catching this criminal.”

  “How can I help? He stopped showing up here weeks ago.”

  “Oh, he’ll be back. We know he’ll be back.”

  “Why would he come back to me?”

  “Because…” The agent sounded annoyed that I hadn’t been able to follow the breadcrumbs he’d laid down for me. “Because of Ioki. He has to find Ioki.”

  “His brother?”

  I heard Agent Reilkoff snicker. “Ioki isn’t his brother—he’s his lover.”

  Suddenly things made more sense. It seemed the subservient young man had broken his bonds. On the run from Japan, he had grown tired of the tyrannical Nakamura and escaped here in California. Ioki wasn’t missing—he was hiding. Hiding from the fat, sweating, lecherous, desperate Nakamura. Images lighted my imagination: a terrified Ioki submitting to the clumsy fondling of Nakamura; shutting his mind off; letting his body be used until the day fate would allow him a chance to flee.

  Nakamura was in love. He was like a truck stuck in the mud, spinning his wheels in desperation. The man who had made his living by slipping away with other people’s money was exposed, unable to flee with a broken heart. His obsessive, controlling love was going to be his downfall.

  I was drawn into the intrigue, pulled by my inflated civic duty and the duty to do what’s right. I put aside my nihilist punk-ethos and tried to think of what my father would do. I told the agent I’d help.

  “Good,” he said, welcoming me aboard. He gave me the number of a travel agent who’d fallen victim to Nakamura and told me that the travel agent would call to help set up a sting.

  “The travel agent is gonna set up the sting?”

  “Look, these guys have been hurt by this asshole more than anybody. They have the initiative and the desire. This guy I’m tellin’ you about has lost more than three hundred thousand dollars and he’s got a vested interest in bringing this fat prick to justice. Now if you can help us, Tim, there might be a sizable reward in it for you.”

  That was it. The scales had been tipped.

  “But you want me to contact the travel agent?”

  “This guy has our complete backing, just follow his lead. When Nakamura calls, just call that number and tell him what Nakamura has instructed you to do. He’ll let you know what to do next.”

  He gave me his own number, repeated the contact information of the travel agent, and told me they’d be “in touch.”

  I hung up the phone feeling inflated. Had the F.B.I. just asked me for help? They needed me to close a case. After my being in this country less than a year, the U.S. Government had solicited me to help solve a problem. The excitement overrode the facts. I was being sucked further into a mystery, an adventure. I sat staring at the phone, waiting for it to ring. I was ready to kick down doors, exchange envelopes, and play both sides against the middle. All the phone had to do was ring.

  It didn’t. It didn’t ring for another two weeks. Finally, on a Wednesday, I got the call. Haru Nakamura’s voice came over the phone with its familiar, heavily accented, feminine gate and told me he wanted to meet at the Cathedral Hill Hotel in two days. He’d never asked me to meet him before. He’d always picked me up at home. He’d never called me in advance before, preferring to show up unannounced in his town car on Friday evenings. His voice sounded different. There was apprehension coiled in his words. Did he know that I’d been contacted by the F.B.I.?

  “Tim, you will be there?” He wanted it to sound like a command, but it was a question, a plea.

  “Yes, I told you, I’ll be there.” I felt like Judas accepting a dinner invitation to the last supper. I wanted to get off the phone.

  Before he hung up, he asked, “Tim…have you seen him?”

  He knew the answer, but had to ask. I felt sorry for him.

  As soon as I hung up the phone, I called the number the F.B.I. agent had given me. The voice on the other end sounded like the agent’s. Was it the agent? I felt my heart sink. Had I been duped a second time? Was a con man using me to set up another con man?

  “We’ll be there. You just do what you are supposed to do. We’ll take care of the rest.”

  “Who? The F.B.I.? Who’s gonna be there if things get weird?”

  “Nothing’s going to get weird. Just show up and we’ll take care of you.”

  It occurred to me that I was being reassured by a travel agent, helping him take his vengeance. I didn’t know who was who anymore. I didn’t care. I was going through with it just to see what would happen next.

  I showed up at the Cathedral Hill Hotel at the appointed time, locked my bicycle to a parking meter outside, and walked up to the revolving doors. Entering the huge, expansive lobby, I looked for signs of my protectors. I saw none. I took a seat on a large, white couch and waited. I watched for Nakamura, I watched for agents. I wasn’t sure anymore if they’d be F.B.I. agents or travel agents. Minutes crawled by. Should I be wearing a wire, I wondered, or perhaps a bulletproof vest? I imagined Nakamura wandering in and being tackled by a team of agents. I saw guns drawn, badges flash, a glint of steel glancing off the handcuffs as they came clamping down on the fat man’s wrists. I thought about how much the reward might be. I calculated percentages from the astronomical totals from Nakamura’s crimes.

  After half an hour, I imagined what else I’d be doing right then, where I’d go afterward, what I would eat. I yawned. The traffic in the lobby was constant. A steady stream of new faces let me know that none of them were the slightest bit interested in my intrigue. I yawned again. The couch felt comfortable.

  After forty-five minutes, I decided that Haru Nakamura was a no-show. He’d been spooked. Perhaps he had a sixth sense that tipped him off, or maybe he’d found Ioki and no longer needed me.

  I headed to the bank of pay phones across from the elevators and dialed the travel agent’s number.

  “He’s not here.”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” said an angry voice on the other end. I thought it was a little harsh considering I’d done my part, cast my web. Something had tipped Nakamura off. The fat man had slipped away again. An image of his greased, naked body flashed in my mind.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  The voice seemed resigned to failure. “Just go home,” it said.

  Months later, letters began to arrive at my apartment, forwarded from address after address. Osaka, Tokyo, Daly City, Redwood City. All of them in Japanese. A gentle calligraphy adorne
d the expensive parchment. The paper was transparent and fibers frayed from the edges. It felt expensive, important. There were exotic postage marks, colorful, indecipherable. Some envelopes were small like wedding invitations; some were wide and serious like wills and deeds. A few had different surnames, but they all ended with:

  Ioki Yoshida c/o Tim Potts

  137 Pierce

  San Francisco, California

  USA

  There it was. Ioki and I were inextricably tied. I knew it; the senders of these letters knew it. The thread of my life had been knotted forever with this wayward son, this sad, abused soul; running from that greasy monster, that fish-lipped Napoleon, the clown sadist. I looked down at the letters in my hand and wondered if they were from his family, desperately trying to recover their lost boy; messages of forgiveness, the all-clear to return home.

  There was a grocery bag on my floor brimming with empty aluminum cans, sixteen-ounce Budweisers. I gave each envelope one clean rip before sticking it between the cans.

  Back to TOC

  THE TIP

  Tim O’Mara

  Even before Joe took a seat, he knew something didn’t feel right.

  Most times he was greeted by a “Hey, sweetie” within five seconds of entering the place. Tonight he slid into his usual booth—“usual” in the sense that he sat there three or four times a month on his way down to take care of some business in the lower part of Florida—and the dinner menu was in his hand before he even got settled.

  It took a good half-minute before he saw Stephanie coming out of the kitchen holding a tray with at least a half dozen tall glasses. She didn’t notice him as she brought the drinks over to the table ten feet away.

  He detected a slight limp when she walked and she was wearing long sleeves. He’d never seen that before: she had the most beautiful tattoos on her upper arms and loved showing them off. And what was up with the jeans? This time of year Stephanie liked to show off her tanned, almost flawless legs. Not tattoos down there, but the beauty mark two inches above her left knee did draw one’s eye.

  “This one’s my baby girl, Jessica,” she said the first time he’d eaten there three years ago. The way she turned to show him the artwork you’d have thought she was a supermodel. And with that face, she could have been. Maybe a few years ago, anyway, before the little cracks of hardness showed up. “And this one’s Jesus Christ, of course.”

  As soon as she saw him, her face brightened. She came over to the booth.

  “Hey, sweetie,” but there was a fatigue in her voice, not like she was tired, more like she’d had enough. Of what? And then he knew.

  Joe looked her up and down—not in that creepy customer/waitress way, more like a friend or a concerned older brother—and said, “Hurt yourself?”

  She forced a smile. “Bumped into the knife drawer in the kitchen a few days ago,” she said. “Too damned spacy to keep my eyes in front of me.”

  The way her eyes checked out the ceiling tiles when she explained that told him she was lying. And the sleeves?

  “Got a little summer cold. Been feeling chilly the last few days.” She accented that with a bad imitation of an exaggerated shiver, selling it too hard.

  Her boyfriend’s back in the world.

  She’d hinted a few times in the past that he was quick with the temper and even quicker with his hands. Never to the face, though. Always the arms and the legs. Probably like his father had taught him.

  She shrugged whenever Joe asked why she stayed with him, and said he was the father of her baby and was hoping they’d get married someday.

  Those two tattoos.

  Joe had heard that answer in so many varieties from so many women over the years. Why does every asshole out there seem to have a woman who loves him, and just knows she can change him if just given a little more time?

  “When did Terry get out?” he asked, himself just a little too tired to do the dance tonight. He kept his eyes on her as he reached down and scratched his leg just above the ankle. It was going to take some time getting used to that area being vacant.

  She smiled the kind of smile people do when caught in a lie. He could tell she was surprised he remembered the guy’s name. Part of his job.

  “Two weeks ago. Came right home and was back at work the next day.” She took a quick look around the dining room—nobody seemed to need anything at the moment—and slipped into the seat across the way from him. That was a first. “He was real good the first eleven days. Went to the garage early, came home for dinner, watched Jessica when I had the night shift.”

  Eleven days. Like the answer to how many days have you been sober.

  “And then…?

  She grabbed the saltshaker and started making circles with it on the table. It was then he noticed the small bruises around both of her wrists. He knew from experience what caused those particular types of bruises, and it wasn’t because Terry was buying his baby’s mama the wrong size bracelets.

  “Then…he wasn’t so good. Wasn’t Terry’s fault, not really. His boss got on his case about showing up late and one of the engines he worked on had to be redone which cost the boss an extra three hundred dollars and it’s just a lot of pressure for somebody trying to make a life for himself…and his family after being away for a couple of years.”

  He had no answer for that. “Being away” one of many euphemisms for what happens when you get caught with enough black tar heroin to get charged with intent to distribute and the state decides to pay your rent for thirty months. That’s another problem with these assholes: they never seem to get in enough trouble to do real time. The kind of time it takes for the women in their lives to smarten up and move on. Six months here, a year here. Too little time to give up the hope. He’d thought maybe two and half years would’ve been enough to do trick this time, but Stephanie here was a true believer.

  “He still at the garage?” Joe asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “The boss said one more screw up and he’s gone—he’s a good worker, Terry is, he’ll be fine—but he’s still there.”

  “No.” He put the menu down. “I mean right now. Is he at the garage right now?”

  “Oh,” she said, now realizing she was confused by the question. “No. He’s actually out back.” She motioned with her head towards the kitchen where Joe knew the back exit was. Joe never ate anywhere without knowing where the back exit was. She put her hair behind her ear, briefly exposing a small, black-and-blue circle behind the ear before the hair fell back. “My boss needed some work done on his pickup, so he asked Terry to take a look at it. My mom said she’d watch Jessica tonight so Terry could make a few extra bucks.”

  He shook his head and tapped the menu. What he wanted wasn’t on it. “Chef still making those meatloaf burritos?”

  “You’re the only one who still asks for ’em.” She stood. “You got twenty minutes to wait? Off-the-menu items take a little longer.”

  Joe smiled. “I have a rare evening with no plans.” Except maybe one now. “I need to step outside and make a phone call. Grab a quick smoke.”

  “I didn’t know you smoked,” she said.

  He took the pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket that had been there for almost a year now. He only pulled it out when he needed an excuse to step outside on occasion. This was one of those occasions.

  “I quit,” he said, showing her the pack. “Mostly.” He faked an embarrassed shrug. “Just do one or two a week now. Helps take the edge off a long drive.”

  Stephanie smiled that smile. “Good for you. I’ll go put that it for you.”

  As she made her way back to the kitchen, he looked at his watch. Twenty minutes was plenty of time. She’d come back with some water before that but would probably assume his phone call had taken longer than expected. Maybe she’d think he was getting in a good stretch. He’d told her more than once that he drove a lot for his job. Of course, he never told her what he did for a living and Stepha
nie was not the type not to ask too many questions.

  The boyfriend, Terry, knew that, didn’t he?

  Joe went outside and put the pack of smokes back in his pocket. After he made the phone call—that part of his excuse was true—it took him less than a minute to locate Terry. He was the only asshole behind the diner with his head inside the mouth of a pickup truck. There was a work light hanging from the hood of the truck and it cast a glow on Terry that made him look as if he were being interrogated in a bad 1950s movie. Even from ten yards away, he could tell that Terry was frustrated over something and talking to the engine as if it were an unruly step-kid.

  “Trouble?” Joe said as he approached.

  Terry looked over and grinned. His smile did not match Stephanie’s. There was no joy in it, just a big old toothy smile that pretty much said the same thing he had just told the engine.

  “No,” he said. “I just like looking at engines on nice nights like this evening.”

  Joe laughed. Lots of guys he knew who went in and out of prison had good senses of humor. They needed them.

  “Maybe I can give you a hand,” he said.

  Terry turned back to the engine. “Got two of mine own,” he said. “I’m good.”

  As Terry raised his right hand to prove his point, Joe pulled out a pair of handcuffs from behind him and grabbed Terry’s arm. With the dexterity of a magician, he slipped one cuff around the wrist and the other he attached to the latch in the hood.

  “Motherfucker,” Terry said, and tried to jerk himself out of the handcuff. “Fuck.”

  “Now you’ve got one good hand,” Joe pointed out. “And if you keep pulling on that, you’re gonna end up with some nasty bruises around the wrist. The kind Stephanie’s wearing tonight.”