by Pat Connid
Pavan had grabbed me at the airport only an hour earlier, but I had no interest in sticking around where The Mentor might be scoping out.
“Anything weird going on at work? Anyone poking around?”
“Huh? The theater? Nah, not really. Anthony’s got your job, but he’s not a drinker so it isn’t the same.”
“Maybe you and I need a change of venue,” I said, zipping up the sack and heading out of the kitchen.
“I’m up for a change. I’m thinking you should probably put this Mentor thing to bed before, you know, you and me decide on any sort of vocational adjustments.”
I stopped and slowly turned. “Dude. ‘Vocational adjustments.’ What was that?”
Smiling, he said: “The CDs you gave back to me, I’ve been listening.” His teeth pressed out of his grin. “I think I’m getting smarter.”
“Then why do you still have staples in your hair?”
He shook his head violently, and I walked to the door.
“Can’t get the bastards out,” he said, trailing behind me. “I was thinking about getting one of those Wile E. Coyote magnets. You know, get the little metal pieces out.”
Pulling the door and stepping into the muggy night air, I breathed it in and looked at my hands. They still hurt, but I was beginning to find ways to control the pain a little. No reason to get all doped up on painkillers. Unless they were grain-based painkillers.
“Like a giant Acme magnet?”
“Yeah.” Once out of his pocket, his car keys jingled like a Christmas department store bell ringer.
I said, “Never really seemed to work out so well for the Coyote.”
“Yeah,” he said opening his door. “That was why I didn’t go that way.”
BEFORE MY FRIEND PICKED me up, I’d pressed a couple dollars in quarters into an airport Internet kiosk and checked my email account. There’d been a good response to the ad I’d placed while at Smokey’s, and a couple calls later, I had a place to stay. For a little while.
The Mentor was going to come at me, that was a certainty, but this time I’d welcome the visit because this time all this screwing with my life, that was over. But, I was still flying blind and needed to see what there was to know about my enemy.
That would take time and that necessitated a poor man’s safe house.
We stopped by Doc Drake’s place, pulled Pavan’s car into the Quiet Room and checked it for tracking devices. Again, there was just the faint signal, but traversing the car; the signal didn’t fluctuate in such a way we could find the device. Under the chassis, in the truck, under the hood, the seats… nothing.
The Mentor had tracked me to Doc’s garage and a repeat of that was out of the question. We’d have to get any sort of tracking device out of Pavan’s car or face the same problem—he could hit anytime he wanted.
“That’s so weird,” Doc said, rubbing his bald head with both hands.
I asked where the nearest corner store was—we were low on beer— and left the two of them in the Quiet Room.
A few days earlier, before my recent forced trip abroad, I’d come up with an idea to get free lodging, while even make a couple bucks on the side.
I’d been thinking about my sister who, for a young fiery girl, was always looking to make a buck. Of her many little entrepreneurial ventures, one stuck for a while. The doting older brother, I’d helped her out—and ended up with a couple real life references— and decided there might be a shot, all these years later, for using that odd resume to find a hidey-hole.
Checking the email account at the airport, I’d gotten lucky: a desperate couple had an emergency. Perfect.
Hopefully, there’d be enough of a continued response that I could string together jobs—
“Dex!” Pavan was running toward me, his hair flapping wildly as he climbed the short hill from the room below. “Come back, we found it.”
“Cool,” I said, and felt better. “Can you get it out?”
Pavan grabbed my arm and excitedly tugged me back down the hill toward Doc’s Quiet Room. “I hope so. We lost the signal less than a minute ago, so we both kinda realized, you know, where it is.”
“How did—?” I stopped and caught the smile on his lips. “No way.”
“Sure, yeah, makes sense,” he said.
Doc popped his head out, his eyes too wild for my comfort at that moment. When I got to him, I stopped.
“Inside me?”
Doc nodded and pulled out a small, silver Exacto knife.
TIFFANY MADE A GREAT dinner for the four of us. She was studying Egyptology, so concocted a dinner fit for a king—rather, a pharaoh in this case it would seem. I’m not sure what it was, and the only thing I recognized was the chopped olives in the mix and the bread I was scooping it onto, but it was great to have another home cooked meal.
She was a very talented host. Not just because my wine glass was never empty but because she was, once again, totally naked. And not blue anymore.
When she finally left the room for a moment, I whispered to Doc: “Pink? She’s pink, man!”
“Nope,” Manic rubbed his bald head. “Salmon, she tells me.”
“Salmon?”
“Yeah. I thought it was pink, too, at first.”
“Isn’t Salmon a type of pink,” Pavan said. Admirably, he’d been keeping his eyes on his plate or at Doc and me. He was a nutty bastard but pretty respectful. One of the many things I like about him.
Doc shrugged, “Type of fish, isn’t it?”
“Yep,” I said. “Pink fish.”
“Not according to my lady.”
“Bummer, man.”
It hadn’t taken the Mad Surgeons, Pavan and Doc, long to find where the tracker was in my body. Doc seemed most excited about lining up a small mound of tablets, pain-killers of every shape and size, a barbiturate buffet to prep me for a little slice and dice just below my right butt cheek.
Call me crazy, but with those two behind my naked ass armed with a pen knife, I wanted to be as sober as possible. The wire came out, about as long as my hand and once Doc had smashed, burned, boiled, sliced, crushed, melted and sunk it into a paint bucket filled with concrete-- “we have to be sure, Dex! Gotta stop the signals, man!”-- there were no signals coming from the room.
I’d have to investigate later but, cobbling together the growing collection of memories of my college years that were coming back to me, it seemed possible that the tracker was getting its power from electromagnetic fields outside my body.
We let the world tend to itself for an hour while Doc showed us some of his newest paintings—he’s talented and it’s not hard to lose yourself entirely in the alternate universe he’s peeled from the inside of his skull and slapped onto canvas.
A few hours later, as I stared out the car window, my mind was trying to sift out any big pieces in life’s sandbox to get an idea of what was happening to me. Pavan interrupted my thoughts: “You okay?”
My Kato was driving, the road very dark, and the hum of the engine was beginning to make me sleepy. I said, “My ass hurts a little. I had this weird thing in it, come to find out.”
“Was it your head?”
I shot him a look and he laughed so hard I thought he was going to wreck the car. But, maybe he was right.
“Yeah, okay,” I said and laughed along with him.
Tired and a little wine buzzed from dinner and post-dinner bottles, I was slumped in the crook between the door and edge of my seat. Pulling my shoulder blades together, getting a satisfying spinal crunch, I’d drifted in and out of sleep over the next half hour.
Pavan banged my shoulder when we’d pulled into the upscale Buckhead neighborhood. I’d only given him the cross streets, not much more. The plan was to get out of his car a couple blocks away from my destination, just in case we’d been followed. That may be paranoid, but I had all the reason in the world to be paranoid.
Pavan continued pressing me for where I was going. Finally, I said: “I sorta got a job.”
“What? No way. You didn’t tell me this.” He looked around the posh neighborhood. “You a gardener now? I could help!”
“Well, you’re Mexican,” I said. “You’d know about that sort of thing.”
“El Sal-vah-dor,” he said, enunciating each syllable, like he does every time I comment on his heritage. “But, I can edge like a motherfucker, man.” he said. “And I know exactly where to get a lawnmower. Uncle Rolo’s got one.”
“Isn’t that the one he was pissed at your Dad about? An innocent phone got slathered with butt grease on it, right?”
“Yeah,” he said, and I pointed to a gas station that had been crammed into a lot without any regard for parking customers. “I’m gonna have to stay away from the phone for a long while.”
“Pull in here.” There was, at best, room for four cars—the only car there at the moment, seemed to belong to whoever was behind the counter. “I’m getting out.”
“You’re bunking here?”
“No,” I said. “A couple streets down. Just don’t want to take any chances, you know.”
Pavan flicked his lights off and by the glow of the street lamps, stared at the homes on the next street. Easily, nothing in front of us was any cheaper than seven figures.
“You got some rich uncle I didn’t know about? Or did you use that savings dough you got to buy a new home here?”
“Nope.”
“You gonna give me a number or something where I can get a hold of you?”
“Sure, tomorrow,” I said, getting out of the car.
“Okay,” he said, as if making a mental note. “You gonna tell me what you’re doing out here?”
“Not yet,” I said and smiled, closed the door. “As soon as I can, you’ll be the first to know.”
Walking away, I thought: I hope you’ll be the first to know.
I LEARNED A COUPLE years back, the hard way, that you probably don’t know a guy well enough to bash him unless you’ve walked a mile in his shoes. Like a friend used to say about that notion: then, if you decided you were going to tear into the guy, at the very least, you’d be a mile away and have his shoes.
With that in mind, I tried to get into The Mentor’s head.
Did he rent that plane to Hawaii? Did he rent another that got me dropped into Guinea? Why would he even have underworld connections in Africa? Did he work for the company on the flight manifest I’d seen at the Honolulu airport, Solomon-Bluth?
And, top of the list, why was he doing this to me?
The first thing I’d done after landing at Hartsfield-Jackson airport was to check my email and secure a part-time gig, off the grid a bit. After a few clicks, I scribbled an address onto a napkin from the airport bar. The first hit didn’t work out but the second was perfect timing. I needed a place to stay today, and the client of my new venture needed someone right away.
Finally arriving at the house, I gingerly slipped on a pair of thin, black gloves that Pavan had scrounged up for me. My hands and wrists had been treated back in Morocco, but they were still a bit gruesome from my run in with the Sterno. And the volcano.
The bell rang beneath my finger and a moment later a striking woman in her fifties stood before me, looking a little perplexed by the young man at her door.
“I’m Dexter Daisy,” I said. “I spoke with you on the phone a few hours ago.”
She smiled. “Yes, I remember,” she said and called out behind her. “David! The pet sitter is here.”
Chapter Nineteen
The web ad I’d placed explained my top-notch pet and house sitting skills: schooled in taking top care of flora and fauna, whatever was required of me.
Among others, the Dvoraks had likely called Laura as a reference—I’d given her the heads up to say wonderful things about me and she said she would only after I promised these people weren’t about to be robbed blind. That kinda hurt. But, still, she thought I was some gambling junkie, so it’s hard to blame her.
“We can’t leave the babies at a kennel; certainly, you never know what they’ll bring home from those dreadful places. And the woman who usually sits when we’re out died unexpectedly last week.”
“Unexpectedly?”
“Old age. She was eighty-four, I’m told.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Well, luckily, we found you,” she said and smiled flatly.
My new employer walked through the enormous house as a museum tour guide might ten minutes before closing. The home was beautiful, expensive and spotless. Just like the woman of the house.
“Ruggles and Muggles get one cup of the hair-ball formula dry food in the morning and then one before bed,” Mrs. Dvorak said. Because I didn’t want to make any mistakes that would hamper any future chances of getting lodging in this way, I listened closely. Because I’m male and, thus, simple and juvenile, I couldn’t help trying to imagine what she might look like naked. “Toby isn’t allowed in the house…”
“You don’t let your dog in the house?”
“No, never,” she said, her eyes fixed on me. “There’s a bag of dog food in the garage—on the far side—and he eats from there. Just fill his water bowl every morning.”
I looked around the home (trying very hard not to look like I was looking around), and was only mildly impressed. Some of the most expensive stuff in the world is pretty ugly, it seems. Although, the television that took up a third of one of the walls in the “home theater” was kinda nice.
“And don’t look Toby directly in the eye.”
“What happens if I look Toby the dog in the eye?”
“That would be a… challenge, as I understand it. It very likely could lead to some sort of territorial affirmation.”
“That means it could bite me, right?”
“Yes, for starters,” she said and looked down at a sheet of paper that held my instructions. “The cats are indoor cats, but I scoop the box every night.”
“Box?”
She stared at me, eyes probing my face.
“Yes,” she said, studying me. “Litter box, you know?”
“Oh, yes,” I said, nodding vigorously, “It’s, um, my previous clients, they were… you know, European, and they, um, had the animals trained to go in the flower bed.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, dual purpose, it seems.”
“I see,” the lady of the house said, measuring me up. “We don’t have them trained that way. Stick with the box.”
With the straightest face possible, I said: “Ma’am, those are words I live by.”
Slowly, she looked at me and then a small smile crept to her lips.
SO, THE FIRST ANSWER is, no, “the Pet Whisperer,” I ain’t.
As a kid, we never had a dog because my parents were too busy to take care of it. A dog couldn’t have been my responsibility because, when it’s something that doesn’t interest me, I have a tendency to put it out of mind. That mentality seems to clash with a dependent, living creature’s mortality.
Cats, we had two. Not in succession, but two together. The first was pawned off on us because a neighbor was moving to Germany for a couple years. I guess they don’t allow cats.
But, Abigail, as the cat was named (horrible name for a cat), hid under the sofa for a week and anytime we tried to give it food it would swipe at us with diamond-tipped claws, so by the third day we got pretty good at bouncing its food off the linoleum floor, hopefully landing near Abigail in her dark, furniture cave.
My tender-hearted mother thought her newest, furriest child was in need of a play pal, so she popped over to the animal shelter to find the most lovable, friendly cat she could find. The papers said that Mr. Timshun (second dumbest name for a cat, after Abigail) was “fixed.” But, from behind, it looked as though someone had jammed “double-stuffed” cotton swabs into the gap of its legs, so we had a sneaking suspicion Mr. Timshun was looking for a Mrs. T.
Playing hard to get (or totally terrified), Abigail stayed under the couch for nearly three months, att
empting to cope with two very different fears of the outside world: big scary people who ricocheted food off the floor at it, and, if the poor thing tried to make it to the litter box, that she’d endure a frenetic feline mounting before she completely cleared the couch.
So, in the end, we were left with a smelly couch and a horny, white tabby that would tear from one end of the house to the other at full speeds, usually when we were trying to sleep.
And, not to delve too personally into it, but as a kid trying to get a, uh, grip on puberty I caught Mr. Timshun watching me. More than once. Not cool.
The first time I snuck a girl into the house, and began to cast my teenage spell of love upon her in my bed (with Superman sheets and curtains, still, sadly)… when it was all over, a few minutes later, there was Mr. Timshun curled up at the end of the bed.
So, while I like cats, I do get the impression they’re sorta like some creepy neighbor or uncle the family doesn’t like to talk about.
Ruggles and Muggles were Burmese. I learned a little about cats when plugged into the Cobb County audiotape library, but those were mostly lions, tigers and pumas… that sort of thing. I didn’t see the necessity to learn about, well, kitties.
After the Dvoraks, Cindy and David, left that night, I perused the list of instructions. They’d be gone ten days and, for the time being, that gave me a chance to catch my breath. Thankfully, the couple never commented on my gloves, possibly dismissing it as some parcel of an eccentric nature on my part—the professional pet sitter.
Snooping a little around the house, I did discover they’d not only called Laura but had run me through a background check, both criminal and financial. As I looked around the home, I wondered which of those two mattered most to them and settled on the latter.
One of the neighbors would come by, each day, the first couple days to make sure things were all right (read: make sure I didn’t steal all their crap), so I had to at least keep the place up a little.