The Preserve

by Steve Anderson

Selfer turned away. He muttered, “This is what those German leaders must’ve felt in those final days, with us closing in from all sides. You know? The last man standing, you’re Hitler’s best friend.”

  “Or Tojo’s. We in Asia, bruddah.”

  Selfer kicked at the ticker tape and papers and scooped it up and dumped it in the garbage can. He patted his pockets and peered around the desk, pushing papers and folders off it.

  “Lighter?” he barked at her. “Give me that lighter of yours.”

  “No.”

  He grabbed the rum bottle and took a long swig, then poured the rest on the paper in the garbage can. He wobbled a moment. It made him lean on the can’s edge, clenching it with both hands, his knuckles white. He vomited into the can and half the stream shot over the opposite edge. A stench of stomach juices and rum hit Kanani, parching her skin like a vapor, and she turned away holding her nose.

  “For God’s sake, get ahold yourself,” she told him.

  He nodded, wiping away dribbles of vomit hanging from his lips, leaving them on his trousers. “Oh, if only dear old dad could see me now.” Something made him grin at her.

  She only glared back at him.

  His grin dropped with a jolt. “What?”

  “That’s why you wouldn’t tell me my new post right away—you want me to help you.”

  He rushed over to her, his hands clasped in deference. “Can you? What do you want? You know I can’t help you get Wendell free.”

  “It’s too late to help Wendell. That would only give Frankie his big excuse to break you.”

  “Break me?”

  “In two.”

  Selfer clawed at a cheek. “How do you know? How’re you so sure?”

  Now, finally, Kanani smiled. She was waiting for this moment. She smoothed out her overalls on her hips, puckered her lips. “Because he told me. Frankie, that is. We go way back.”

  Selfer stepped away from the garbage can. “Then get your own damn keys to the tunnels,” he snarled. “If that’s what you want. Because you’re not getting mine—”

  “It’s not what I want, Charlie. I’m telling you this to help you.”

  “Sure, sure.” Selfer threw open his desk drawer and pulled out his Colt pistol and fumbled with it.

  “You like I show you how to load that?” she said.

  “Shut up,” he muttered under his breath, turning the gun in his hand.

  She stepped close to him and caressed his shoulder, her red fingernails on his chest, his cheek, the gun. “You have to make the big move. Yes, you. It’s the only one that’s gonna save you.”

  Selfer cocked his head at her. “Why are you helping me? Frankie’s from Hawaii.”

  She pulled her hand away, bowed her head. “Frankie, he . . . probably killed my father. Maybe it wasn’t his own hand. I can’t know for sure. But it was his kine. Bad people.”

  Selfer choked on a nervous laugh. “Hell, you’re not messing around, are you? Is that why you came here, really? To avenge him?”

  Her head flushed hot, maybe from surprise, maybe pride. She’d never looked at it that way. Selfer could be plenty perceptive when he had a death sentence. “Maybe. Maybe it is. Now listen. You can’t just go and eliminate him just anywhere up here. He’s gonna expect that. He’s gonna see you coming. You’re gonna have to wait for just the right kine moment.”

  “How will I know?” Selfer said and stared at his gun again.

  Kanani waited a beat. Pretended to think. Nodded at a thought. “I will tell you when.”

  “Okay.” Selfer nodded, then shook his head. “No, I mean, how?”

  “I know a guard,” she whispered.

  “One of the new ones? No. Wendell’s friend—Jock Quinn?”

  “Yes. Keep it down.”

  “But, he didn’t want to get involved,” Selfer whispered back. “He made it out. He got papers back to the regular world. Wants to rotate back in. One of the few.”

  “He’s still here. Lying low. I’m only gonna have him tip you off. He won’t know why. Then he’s gone for good.”

  “So he won’t know from Adam—okay, okay,” Selfer said, sliding the Colt into his front pocket. “It’s the funniest thing. I can’t find my holster in all this mess.”

  You’re not gonna need that, Kanani thought. Only the ammo.

  39.

  Kanani undressed and dried herself off again, powdered her face and put on makeup. She found her bright red lipstick and applied it to her chapped lips with care, taking as much time as she needed, making the cleanest line she’d ever painted. She pinned up her hair on one side and set a pink-orange hibiscus behind her ear. She wore the sort of wraparound floral dress that made a haole woman look sweet and cute and a Hawaiian tita a whore in the eyes of a mainland sailor. She pulled on a rubber raincoat and galoshes and carried her bright red Mary Jane shoes in the same hand as her shiny black purse that concealed the baby revolver, just in case.

  Frankie had his own bungalow, Jock had told her, not far from Lansdale’s before he left. Frankie wasn’t in, but a gang of the new guards, all of them demons with leering oily faces, were there having a little party, with dice and dirty magazines and Johnnie Walker hosting. They were the wrecking crew and the cleanup detail all in one. She insisted on waiting there for Frankie to come back, so they started to wind things down. A couple mokes she knew from Honolulu were the first to go, setting the example.

  Waiting for Frankie gave her time to dry the last damp ends of her hair and put herself in order. She didn’t need rouge. The adrenalin had flushed her cheeks good. She poured a Scotch neat in a short glass and settled on the sofa with her legs crossed just so. She didn’t clean the place up—she’d let Frankie see how his pals disrespected him. The last moke to shuffle out didn’t even close the door behind him.

  The rain rattled the roof like a chain across railing. It found the doorway and drenched the threshold.

  His footsteps were so deep and resounding she heard them over the rain and practically felt them in the sofa cushion. They bounded up the steps. He leapt through the wet doorway as if through a ring of fire, pressed the door firmly shut, both screen and front door, then peered around with his shoulders jacked up as if someone were waiting to jump him from a corner. He wore the coveralls the guards used down below. They were smudged with something dark around the cuffs, and she didn’t want to know what. At least he’d washed it off his hands. He also had his holster and a combat knife hanging off his belt and, slung on his shoulder, one of those little M3 machine guns Marines called “the greaser.” He scrunched up his chin at the mess his pals had made. But then he saw it was only her here now, and he loosened up.

  “Aloha,” she said.

  “Aloha. Make yourself at home.” He held out his tattooed hands as if to ask: What was she doing here?

  “Dat Charlie Selfer, he going make plenty big play,” she told him. “He try for save himself before too late. Before busted up already.”

  Frankie grunted. “How he going save himself?”

  “He going try bust you up before you get him. Maybe he kill you, Frankie.”

  “Yeah? How you know?”

  Kanani smiled. She crossed her legs the other way. “I went sleep with him.”

  Frankie didn’t smile. He dropped the Pidgin. “Well. Look who’s the sly gal. Can’t say I’m surprised—”

  “Shut up. So? What are you gonna do about it?”

  “I’m gonna take care of it, that’s what.”

  “Looks like you’re ready for it already.”

  Frankie patted his combat knife. “Just part of the job, sistah. Orders are orders.”

  “Orders from who?” Kanani said.

  “I told you. Men plenty higher than Selfer. Than Lansdale even.”

  “Wendell Lett in those orders?” she said. She couldn’t help it. She made a face as soon as she said it.

  “What do you care about him? I thought you didn’t.”

  “I don’t. I just like to know all the angles,
how the loose ends get tied.”

  “Ah.” Frankie showed her a grin. “Soon Lett, he’s gonna get sent. . . let’s call it ‘reassigned.’” He whispered, “Lansdale, he’s gonna set that up plenty good.”

  “Oh. Fine. That serves him right, I suppose.”

  “Why?”

  “For not playing along.”

  “I thought maybe you liked him.”

  Kanani shrugged. “Nah. He’s just another dumb army guy.”

  “That’s the truth. Anyway. Mahalo.”

  “For?”

  “For sticking with me. Gold or no gold.” Frankie straightened his belt and turned on his heels.

  “Wait. Where you going?”

  “I’m gonna go pay that Selfer a visit—”

  “No. You have to wait.”

  “How come?”

  “Timing. You need to wait till he makes his big move. Think about it. That way you got the reason why if they ever come asking why you didn’t do it exactly their way. Maybe they wanted him in a stockade instead, or the looney bin. But he attacked you, see.”

  “Ah. Okay. How will I know when?”

  “Me. I’ll tell you when.” Kanani stood, smoothing her skirt, and stepped around Frankie while showing him her flower and a smile. “You rest up. Try make yourself at home. I’ll be back. I’m the one who goes now. This has to look natural.”

  “Then what happens?” He leered now, just like the rest of them did.

  She giggled and tapped him on the tip of the nose. “Why, that’s easy. I’ll send a messenger.”

  “There’s no one left. The last left by trucks, down mountain.”

  “I have someone.”

  “He better not be trouble. I got work to do.”

  “He’s not. He’ll give you the word, tell you where. You stay ready, yeah bruddah? Because it’s coming tonight.”

  “And after?”

  “After I come see you,” Kanani cooed. “Come see you for good.”

  40.

  Wendell Lett lay still in the dark, wedged in the angle where concrete wall and floor met. Cornered. It might as well have been the jaws of a vice. Rolling against the opposing walls again and again had not worn him out, so he had flung himself at the door, again and again and again. That only bruised him, then injured his shoulder—one arm might have come clean out of its socket, such was the searing pain, and he instinctively jammed it back in, gritting his teeth, only to hate himself for acting as if he would survive any of this.

  The frantic activity hadn’t worked. He’d simply run out of gas, yet his mind was still going. He lay there, blind, searching the darkness, looking for any way to kill himself. He thought of forming his blanket into a fat noose but had nothing to hang it on; and he couldn’t reach the light bulb up above even if he stood on the shit bucket, and even then, it wouldn’t hold him. What if he drank his own shit, right out of the bucket? He longed for any feeling of weakening, for that damning sickness people felt when facing a flu or some harmful virus—a disease, hopefully one that was a quick killer. But it hadn’t been near long enough for weakening.

  He heard the softest clatter and lay still, waiting. “Who’s there?” he muttered, but of course he was alone. For a moment he thought it was an inmate in a neighboring cell scratching or tapping a signal, but such noises had stopped long ago, well before the screaming had stopped. He set his ear to the floor. It was a small animal or insect, roaming in circles from the sound of it and probably just as desperate as he. A rat maybe. A cockroach? Finally, a creature had come. He wondered what drove it here. Was there inclement weather up above? Fire? A battle? But how had it gotten here? Up through the drain, surely. It must not be very big to do that. He wanted it big, and contagious, with long sharp teeth or claws. His survival instinct urged him to catch it and eat it, and he suppressed the thought by biting into the inside of his cheek. His only hope was that this rodent-roach was only the first of a great wave that would flow into the dark room and consume him.

  The soft clattering became a scuffing scratching, and then it was gone. Nothing to be had here, not even for a cockroach.

  He moaned now. He felt such a failure. He wanted to be able to say it with assurance: See you soon, Holger Frings, and Tom Godfrey, though he doubted they would be heading his way. As for his Heloise, he didn’t expect to see his only love anymore, not ever again. She was far too good and pure for where he was surely heading. At least there he could finally proclaim to Selfer and hopefully even to Lansdale one day and, if there were any justice, to all the power mongers who ran them: You see. You’ve never done a thing for the human race except destroy and profit at others’ expense. This is your reward. I hope you all burn down here with me, because you truly deserve it . . .

  He was about to drag himself over to that bucket of shit and drink it down whole. His mind was ready. But his body wouldn’t move. So he muttered, before he passed out, “Good-bye, Heloise . . . goodbye, Holger Thomas, my good boy.”

  41.

  Kanani waited in the unoccupied bungalow, in the dark. She sat on a metal folding chair at the little dining table, her hands pressed to her knees. She had told Frankie it would likely be tonight, and now she knew it had to be tonight, what with all of Frankie’s mokes getting so drunk. Like local boys guzzling rum before a cockfight, they were juicing up for a big bloody kine bust ’em up, and soon. But it had to be Frankie alone. Adding to that was Frankie telling her that Wendell Lett was about to be shipped off to who knew where and used for who knew what. Her nerves ran hot and buzzed, like charges of electricity on a ranch fence.

  She had tried empty bungalows and had located this one with the door unlocked. She then found Jock in his own bungalow, sitting on a chair in his tidy room, the pack with his few belongings at his feet. It included anything from the room that could identify him. He had the small photo of his girl in there, his travel papers, letters from his mother. She’d told him it was time to start doing what they had to do. What he had to do. He’d nodded, didn’t ask questions.

  She had told him to meet her here in this unoccupied bungalow afterward. She chewed at her nails, caught herself, pressed her hands back to her knees. It just seemed like Jock was taking too long. But she wouldn’t let herself open the blinds to look. The one nearby light outside on a log pole lent the contours of the room a dim yellow glow. The rain came back. Broad spurts lashed against the window and dragged along the metal roof like sand, in and out with the wind like sweeps of a huge wet broom, irritating her nerves even more. She had her denim overalls on, and jungle boots she’d nabbed from the now–near empty quartermaster’s hut. She had the baby revolver in her hip pocket. Jock had no gun out there—he’d given his up because he was rotating out. She was expecting him to carry at least a fighting knife. They would just have to risk it.

  The door banged and she shot up. Had someone knocked? Before she could get to a window the back door flung open and Jock rushed through the kitchenette to her, all wet and panting, his breaths controlled like a man climbing a long rope with much length and height yet to cover.

  “It’s done,” he said.

  “Tell me.”

  “Selfer was first. Main House. Rear entry so as to stress secrecy. He opened the door for me, he’s the only person there. I tell him. He goes pale, wants to shit his drawers. He didn’t want to go down there, but I convinced him. If he doesn’t get Frankie alone down below and now, all alone in that break room, then it’ll be too late. He got quiet a moment. I tell him it’s the only way to fix what he helped create. He nodded at that, gained a little color in his face, asks me what comes next. I told him to give it one hour, until Frankie was sure to be in position. By then Frankie will have relieved the only guard down there.”

  “You sure there are no other guards?”

  “Yes. I checked it again. We can’t be sure about a random sentry, though.”

  “Then what?”

  “I went to Frankie. This one’s not so easy. His bungalow was all fouled up. Quite a
card game they had going. The rest, his skeleton crew, they’re all there throwing one hell of a wingding like before shoving off for combat detail, some passed out already or on their way.”

  “So?”

  “I told him. Gave him the lowdown, what Selfer was planning, and it wasn’t no scuttlebutt, I got it on good authority—because Selfer himself came to me with it.”

  “Why would Selfer do that?”

  “That’s what Frankie asked. I told him that Selfer was trying to recruit me. I’d been hanging around on a bender, in no big hurry to shove off down to Kona Town. So Selfer found me. He needed someone to get his back, see. Nothing doing, I says, to Frankie. I’m rotating out and anyways I seen enough blood for my kids’ lifetimes.”

  “That’s a nice angle. You don’t have kids.”

  “Who’s counting? So, I get to the gist of it. Selfer will be heading underground, and soon, and on no one’s orders but his own. I think he’s after a little of that gold, I also tell Frankie.”

  “Good. Okay.”

  “And I tell Frankie, Selfer’s aiming to release Wendell while he’s at it, let him run free and clear. But, and here’s the thing: Frankie would have to face Selfer on his own. He brings that reckless blotto crew of his, then Selfer’s going to hear them coming. Well, Frankie just smiled at that and said he wanted to do this one himself anyways.”

  “Frankie believe you?”

  “He asked me why I’m doing this. I told him I got no orders for what Selfer wants. I only follow orders. But I do report any transgressions I see to the highest authority—meaning Frankie. That got Frankie smiling too but it wasn’t a smile you’d want to see twice.”

  “I don’t want to see it once. What then?”

  “I asked Frankie how he’s going to handle it. He wasn’t going to tell me, but he couldn’t resist, not with that smile. He told me he would simply be lying in wait for Selfer down there.”

  “All right. Well, let’s see who gets there first.”

  “What now?”

  “We wait a bit. Hopefully this rain will stick around. You all ready?”