I wish something had gone wrong on that first job, that my nerves had cracked or that I’d fucked up, then maybe things might have turned out different. But aside from my gut flaring with fear, the job went off flawlessly. It seemed like a joke, how simple everything was.
After pacing past the Number Won Sun three times, I finally gathered enough grit to head in. The clatter of pans, the violent sizzle of flaming woks, and the shouting of orders banged off the gritty walls of the tiny rat hole of a restaurant. The place reeked of pork grease and soy sauce, the stench coating my lungs with each breath. An old woman sat in the corner booth, her eyes jaundiced, a full-moon yellow. She looked like she hadn’t moved in months.
“Yes? Yes?” the counterman said, not looking up from the pile of pennies he was counting.
I asked for Kam Man, my voice breaking.
“Who?”
“Kam Man. I want a large order of chicken feet and a Diet Apple Slice.”
The counterman picked up a meat cleaver. His dark, tired eyes met mine, taking me in for what felt an eternity. My heart sheered the bolts holding it to the chassis of my chest, rattled wildly about my ribcage.
The counterman turned his head, shouted toward the back, then raised the cleaver. He deftly started cutting chunks of chicken. “Three ninety-five,” he said.
I paid.
A moment later, a tiny man with a face like an old orange hobbled out from the back. He handed me my order and an envelope. “Are you Kam Man?” I asked.
“Enjoy!” He bowed slightly, then shuffled back toward the rear of the restaurant.
Outside, I tossed the order of food and peaked inside the envelope. An endorsed check, a document written in what looked like Russian, and a Post-it with instructions. Seattle Public Library. 613.04244 Ou71. Page 527.
Wandering the library aisles, I searched out the call number. Our Bodies, Ourselves. Page 527 was the chapter “Midlife and Menopause.” There, in the pages, was another Post-it. Leave envelope, it read. Money in 914.97 W521B. Page 444.
I slipped the envelope in the book, shelved it, then went looking for 914.97 W521B. Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, a travelogue of the Balkans in the 1930s. “Chronicling the history of violence, the pride, the beliefs, and the schism that divided a weary people.”
Between pages 444 and 445 were three hundred-dollar bills, crisp and smooth and waiting.
I pocketed the cash, shelved the book, and headed toward the exit, planning a big lunch at TGI Fridays. But curiosity gripped me. I went back to Our Bodies, Ourselves, flipped open the book to page 527.
The envelope was gone.
Chapter 19
With over five hundred dollars in my pocket and the prospect of earning even more, I didn’t go back to the shelter. I didn’t go back to the gas station, either. Ray-Ray had connected me with Higgles, set me up with a paying job. It was like a paper route, only better paying.
Two, three times a week, Higgles texted instructions. The pick-up points were always different, the coded phrases awkward.
At the car wash in the Central District, I asked that Javier give me a full undercarriage treatment and lavender interior scenting; I had no car. At the gynecologist office on Queen Anne, I requested an appointment with Dr. Mendelbaum on Thursday at 8:00 a.m. and said I’d bring the donuts. And at the pet grooming shop in Bell Town, I asked for Teri and inquired about cat leashes and ordering twenty pounds of chinchilla dust.
Each time I was handed an envelope with a check already endorsed and some documents or a flash drive. Each time I was instructed to leave the envelope in a book in the library.
I called it “Kam Manning.”
One summer in high school I had worked in a factory buffing the metal burrs off of small pieces of die-stamped metal. The piece would then go on to be dipped in anti-rust coating, painted a flat, matte black, and shipped off. A toy, a truck, or weapon’s technology. I had no idea what the piece fit into, what the importance of it was, or even how the final product was used.
My Kam Manning was the same. I had no idea how I fit in the grand scheme of things—or even what the grand scheme was. I simply followed the instructions.
The names on the Kam Man checks would be different each time. Some were for individuals: Jasper Hogan, Molly Simmestere, Bradley D. Arsenault. Some were for businesses: Production Plastics LLC, Unipower Inc., Madson & Hopewell. Always, they were written for $42.17, memo line scrawled For the orphans. Each and every one.
The books I left drop-offs in differed. I’m Okay, You’re Okay. The Pregnancy Bible. Iron John. But the three hundred-dollar bills were always between pages 444 and 445 of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. Each and every time.
Two months passed, then six. Winter came again. Ray-Ray was long gone, probably in another city, in another state, maybe even back in Iran. I kept Kam Manning, kept convincing myself I was clear of any worry. I wasn’t doing anything illegal—that I knew of. I could walk away scot-free.
Or so I kept telling myself.
It’s disturbing how swiftly we deceive ourselves.
But then Higgles went radio silent. A week passed with nothing. I texted Higgles. No response. Two, then three more weeks passed with no word, no Kam Manning gigs. For over a month I sat around worrying. My messages to Higgles went unanswered. No reply. I bided my time, did crossword puzzles, worried, and waited.
Then came the text. Tacoma. Tomorrow morning. Wear pink oxford buttoned to the neck.
I wore a pink oxford buttoned to the neck, rented a car, and drove to Tacoma. Once there, I parked downtown and waited for instructions.
At two o’clock my phone buzzed. I was to meet my contact on the back deck of the Mandolin Café at three. She’d be wearing a green John Deere T-shirt, her hair done in pigtails.
I found her instantly. She sat at a table littered with empty coffee cups, plates, and a bowl. No surface was exposed. It was like she’d finished a party.
As I sat, she rose. “Pink isn’t your color,” she said, tossing a package into my lap. “It makes you look like an idiot.”
“Hey,” I called to her, holding up the package. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
She strode back to the table, cupped her hand to my ear. “Perhaps you could call a bit more attention to us,” she whispered. She touched my cheek. “This is all about skullduggery, possibly a little killing, too.”
I swallowed hard. “Killing?”
She let out an angry laugh, loud in my ear, and poked the check into my shirt’s breast pocket. “God, you’re such a fuckhead. How should I know what’s in the package?” Her hip bumped the table as she walked away.
After I settled the bill, I returned to my rental to open the envelope.
Inside was a wad of pesos, an airplane ticket to Cancún for that night, and a South African passport with the name Tomas Cartright.
The photo on the passport was of me.
Chapter 20
Crushing heat, sweltering sand, blazing sun, and tequila that tasted like toilet cleaner. The contact, a strikingly beautiful woman who didn’t speak English, left me with a virulent case of crabs.
Cancún sucked.
Chapter 21
A loud, singular knock on the door.
Higgles stood from bed, his bare feet on the cold tile floor. The Kite Factory Condos, #2D. Capital Hill, Seattle. No one knew he was here, not even the owner, who, according to her online postings, was in Hawaii for another three days.
Another knock, this one sounding twice. Then a man’s voice. “Are you decent?”
The tension of the unknown was replaced by the worry of the possible. Higgles knew the voice, knew the man. A former colleague of sort. Someone he definitely didn’t trust, not after the man’s betrayal.
“You’ll have to call the office to make an appointment,” Higgles said. Their working relationship had ended in gunshots a li
ttle over a year ago. Now the man had tracked Higgles down.
Laughter rang through the metal door. “This isn’t about business. It’s an apology.”
Higgles sidled up to the door and put his eye to the peephole. The man held a bottle of wine and flowers. An apology? Looked more like a date. He noted the wine. Beaujolais Nouveau, a cheap bottle made even cheaper by the fact that the vintage was three years ago. Typical, Higgles thought. The man gets the only wine that worsens with age.
Both stand on their side of the door, not speaking for nearly three minutes. Then the man said, “I’m out of it all. For good.”
This time Higgles laughed.
A look of hurt skimmed the man’s face. He set the wine and the flowers down in front of the door. “Just wanted to clear the air between us.” The man backed away from the door, pulled out a small envelope from his back pocket, and held it up. “I even got tickets to the Seahawks game tonight,” he said. “You and me, I thought. Beers and hotdogs and bury the hatchet. Make everything clover.”
Clover, Higgles thought, remaining silent. The fucker failed to steal my business so he steals my phrases instead.
“The seats are on the fifty yard line.” He spoke loudly and slowly, like he was giving directions to a foreigner. Putting his own eye to the peephole, the man said, “I’m here to atone for being a dick.”
Higgles shifted back. The sight of the man’s eye fishbowled through the door and left him queasy. “The window to your soul needs cleaning,” he said, adding, “watching grown men in tight pants stand around is your way of atoning?”
“It’ll be a start.” He dropped the ticket next to the wine and flowers and turned. “Let me make this right with you.”
Higgles watched the man exit via the stairwell. Envisioning him lumbering down the stairs, Higgles counted silently to twenty. Then moved to the window overlooking the street. A minute. Two minutes. The man didn’t exit.
No way he made it out that quickly, he thought.
He checked the peephole again. Save the peace offering, the hall was empty.
Higgles watched out the window for a solid five minutes. Nothing.
Maybe I missed him, he thought, heading back to the front door. Maybe he went out the side door.
But another thought—a thought that came too late—sliced across his mind as he turned the door’s knob.
Football season had yet to begin.
Chapter 22
“You’re a shit host,” the man said. Scouring the apartment, he’d found a laptop but no phone. There had to be a phone, he thought, pulling cushions off the sofa. “Quite rude, in fact. No courtesy.”
“I’m a visitor here, too,” Higgles said, his hands zip tied to the radiator leg. “So perhaps you can show me some courtesy and fuck off.”
“Gladly.” He tapped the laptop. “Tell me the password. Tell me where you hid your phone. Tell me about the kid you got working for you. Then I’ll be out of your hair.”
Shit. He knows about the kid, Higgles thought. He had only himself to blame. Not just for the emerald-blue knot the size of an avocado seed on his forehead. But for the situation in general. “I can’t tell you the password,” he said.
The kick caught Higgles in the kidneys. Bright amebas fireworked across his vision.
“Seriously,” the man said. “Make this clover and I’m gone.”
Again with the clover. Higgles spit, expecting to see blood. The blood will happen later, he thought, when I piss. “Imitation is flattery and all that bullshit,” he said. “But really, you need to stop stealing from me.”
The man’s head dipped back like he was dodging a punch. “Stealing? What have I ever stolen from you?”
“My business, my words, even my ex. You’re like an autistic cousin mirroring my every action.”
This time, the kick caught Higgles in the face. His head bounced off the radiator. He slumped, unconscious.
“You’re the retarded one, cousin,” the man said to the limp body. He stood silent a moment, confused as to what to do next. “Fuck.” He needed Higgles conscious, needed information from him. That’s all the business was, information. The money happened when it was passed along.
The man lightly slapped Higgles on the cheek. No response. He looked at the laptop. Okay, he thought, picking it up. This is good enough. I can work with this.
He stopped at the front door. Autistic cousin, he thought, and headed back to the kitchen, where he found a pair of scissors. When the man was done, Higgles looked like a chemo patient, tufts of hair hacked from his head. That’ll piss him off, he thought, smiling.
Back at his hotel room, it took the man more than five hours to hack into the laptop. It took him less than five seconds to realize Higgles hadn’t been lying. He didn’t know the password.
The laptop wasn’t Higgles’. It was the condo owner’s, the woman who was on vacation in Hawaii.
He winged the laptop across the room. It frisbeed into the wall, divoting the drywall. Fuck technology. He stood. I’ll do this the old-fashion way. Find Higgles again, torture him a little.
But then he had another thought. The kid. The one Higgles had working for him.
“That’s the way,” he said, thinking through the plan.
Chapter 23
On my way back from Cancún, I changed planes at LAX. That’s when I saw him. Pockmark. I’m positive—nearly positive—it was him standing by the Wok & Roll in the terminal’s food court, his glare hard on me. He disappeared in a flash, swallowed by a passing crowd, but seeing him jammed a pike of dread into my liver. I was being watched, followed.
Back in Seattle, I hit the pharmacy for Lindane shampoo to address the crab issue and then texted Higgles that Cancún was complete. I had the package.
He texted me a call number. 613.69 Sw35N. National Geographic Complete Survival Manual.
That afternoon, I slid the package between pages forty-three and forty-four of the book. My money was in the standard place, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. Pocketing the cash, I grabbed a magazine and sat at a table in the far corner of the floor, staking out the shelf where I’d left the drop. I texted Higgles, then didn’t move from my spot all afternoon, hoping for a glance of my mystery employer, or at least whoever made the pick-up.
Night edged in. Only a handful of people had wandered down the aisle the entire time I was there. No one had stopped, pulled the book from the shelf.
At closing time, a security guard came by, gave me the nod. “Learning time’s over,” he said. I was the last person on the floor.
On my way out, I quickly checked for the package. It was gone, the book’s pages empty. Higgles had been there, and somehow scooped up the documents.
I took the cash, headed back to my room at the Marco Polo Motel. I wasn’t making mint, but the jobs paid enough to support me—covering a place, shopping trips to Old Navy, dinners at the Olive Garden. It was high living—if you were low rent. I was glad for it, though. I didn’t question the set up. Luck’s lips occasionally brush a man’s cheek.
But now that I’d spotted Pockmark, I knew the kiss wouldn’t linger long.
After the LAX sighting and Higgles’ magic trick at the library, my paranoia built. I became overly cautious. Before, I’d show up clean shaven, a smile on my face. Now when I went on a Kam Manning, I buried my head in a ball cap or hoodie, hid my face behind sunglasses and a week’s worth of stubble. I had a new disguise for every job in every town and made roundabout journeys to my pick-up point. I’d cut through department stores, ride the bus a few stops one way then take another bus in the opposite direction, grab a cab to race me five blocks past my destination. No one was following me. Ever.
Weeks passed swiftly. I grew tired of moving from hotel to hotel, decided to lease a gutted loft in a raw part of town and hunkered down.
I took an entire floor and made the mistake of paying
six months upfront, all cash.
The landlord eyed the stack of bills, then eyed me. So much for trying to be inconspicuous. Overhead, pipes and wires ran their routes, exposed—the nerves and veins of the building. “What do you plan on doing here?” he asked.
“When?”
He gazed at me stiffly. “This is a commercial loft. It’s not zoned for residential living.” He asked me my business.
“Twist ties,” I said. It’s what came to mind.
“Twist ties?”
“Yeah, you know, the green-and-white wire thingies that seal bread bags.” I made a turning motion with my fingers. “I supply thirty-four percent of Indonesia,” I said, adding, “one in three Indonesians use my ties.”
It took him a moment to process. “Didn’t know they ate much bread.”
“More than you’d imagine.”
He nodded slowly, handed me the keys. “Best of luck with that.”
Home. For now.
The back windows looked out on an alley while the front gazed up on the Puget Sound. I set up a couch and a hot plate. A shower entailed standing in a plastic bin and rinsing with a hose hooked up to the bathroom faucet. The used water I dumped in the toilet.
The industrial neighborhood huffed out noise and exhaust fumes during the day, but went silent at night. I shopped exclusively at the dusty-shelved deli across the street. I didn’t flash about, which wasn’t difficult. There was no place to flash about. The warehouses were mostly dormant, there were few real businesses. No shops, restaurants, cafés, or offices; the neighborhood was a pass-through, not a destination.
After 7:00 p.m., activity collapsed completely. The street emptied. I’d sit on the fire escape and watch the lights of the Puget Sound ferries as they made their cheerless journey across the water. I had no plans, no agenda, no dreams or goals.
Friendless, I invented friends, spinning elaborate stories about the one or two people who got on the express bus that stopped a block away. I made up histories for them, created names, imagined successes and failures.
Where Night Stops Page 5