“In Rio?” he asked. “That is a many, many hours drive.”
“Macao’s Hard Rock.”
He shook his head, thinking. He called his assistant over, who then called over two maids, one of them called her brother-in-law who was a delivery driver and would know such things. The forum agreed that there was a Breezy Café, Paulo’s, Green Mountain, Morning Shine, 2202, Fresh Squeeze, Paradise, Emporio, Barraco, Paulista’s, and BarBossa but no Hard Rock Café in Macao.
I texted Higgles the hotel lobby’s phone number. Call me now.
Five minutes later, the phone rang.
“You made me break a winning streak. Where the fuck are you?” Higgles said. In the background, I heard pings and whoops, ringing bells.
“Macao,” I said. “Where the fuck are you?”
“Macao.”
“Brazil?”
The sound of the slots sang across the line. “There’s a Macao in Brazil?” Higgles was in another former Portuguese colony: Macao, China. The gambling capital of the East.
“We must not have read the same book,” he said, then complained about how expensive his call was going to be. “Can you get here in twenty-four hours?”
Forty-eight would be the best I could do, but why would I go to China? “You made the mistake,” I said. “You come here.”
“Can’t,” he said. “I’m in pretty deep with some things. You’ve got to get here, and fast. And bring lots of cash. The Wheel of Fortune slots are killing me.”
“You just said you’re on a winning streak.”
“I’m fighting a multifront war,” he said, then rang off.
Chapter 45
I landed at Macao International Airport at 7:00 p.m. Saturday night.
Two Macaos in four days. I was sick with exhaustion and double jetlag. The city smelled like a wet wool sock stuffed with fried pork.
The old world clashed with the new; beautiful colonial buildings were bathed in blaring, ugly neon. Before the Portuguese colonized it, Macao was known as Haojing, the Oyster Mirror, or Jinghai, the Mirror Sea. Names change and change again. It made me think of Ray-Ray and his atlases.
Ray-Ray. While I owed my current life to him, he’d faded from my mind, disappearing into a fog of memories false and true.
I found Higgles camped at a video poker machine at the Hard Rock, hitting button after button. He was at home.
I sat down next to him. “Never understood the appeal of these things,” he said, not looking over. “Kick me a few bucks, cousin.”
“What’s with the ‘cousin’ stuff?” I asked, pulling out some money. “I’m getting this back, right?”
“Just give me some money.”
I peeled off five hundred-dollar bills, handed them to him.
“Maybe a bit more?” he said, holding the bills like they were a soiled condom.
I kept my hands in my lap. He shrugged, then pocketed the money. “Interested in some breakfast?” he said, standing.
“It’s around nine p.m. Let’s try for some dinner.”
He led me out of the casino and into the chokingly humid night, sliding through the streets to a greasy place serving an all-you-can-eat buffet. “This place will change your life.”
“I’m fine with my life as it is,” I said.
He eyed me hard. “Really?”
Taking plates, we queued up. The room was crowded, the linen on the tables stained. “Try the shrimp rolls,” he said, tonging six onto his plate. “Really good.”
“I’m not real hungry.” Digestive acid and airplane food battled for territory in my belly.
“Load up anyway.” Higgles winked. “It’ll save me from having to get up again.”
I loaded my plate with shrimp rolls.
We settled at an empty table near the kitchen. My nerves were a jangled mess from lack of sleep. I kept flinching from the slam and clatter of dishware in the kitchen.
Higgles didn’t speak as he worked through his plate. Finished, he attacked mine, then went back for more.
Finally through his third plate, he licked his fingers. “This is it, the big gig we’ve been waiting for. We hit this right and we can both take a nice vacation.”
I asked what the take was on the job. He named a figure. “A straight-up fifty-fifty split.”
The number was impressive, even more so because I knew Higgles was discounting the take by at least thirty percent, planning on pocketing the difference.
“How about seventy-thirty split,” I said. “With me getting the seventy.”
“How about,” he eyed me, “we not get greedy.” He said he’d burned a lot of bridges to get the information. “Believe it or not, you have the easy end of the job.”
I didn’t believe him. But I didn’t push it either. “Okay, fifty-fifty.”
“Good,” he said, getting up once again for food.
Returning with a full plate, he thumped down in his seat. “Fair warning. We pull this off and the whole scene will be radioactive with suspicion. It’s got to be pristine. Leave a trail like last time and the blowback will be pure misery.”
“What trail?” I’d thought the Iceland job had gone smoothly, all things considered.
He laughed bitterly, bit into a shrimp roll. “If you only knew.”
Pulling out a business card from his shirt pocket, he slid it across the table to me. There was writing on the back. Time, place, details. “All you have to do is meet this guy in Milan and get the documents.” He started to say something more but bit the words off.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it,” he said. “Get the documents, get back stateside with them, then you’re off to Hawaii.”
“Hawaii?”
“Or wherever you want to vacation.”
It seemed straightforward, which meant it wasn’t. “It feels like you’re walking me toward a trap.”
Higgles slurped his tea. “Of course it’s a trap. There’s risk. Lots of risk. If there weren’t, the money wouldn’t be so good. But I’ve cracked open a window of opportunity for us. We’ve got to grab it while we can.”
“Why don’t you do it yourself?”
“Because the contact knows me. I’ve worked with him before. And if he sees me he’ll know something’s wrong. Besides,” he said, “the prick has a grudge against me. I nearly got him killed last time we worked together.”
“How?”
Higgles shrugged. “I shot him in the back. Twice.” He held up a finger. “Not without cause, mind you.”
I looked at the business card. “Milan.” I’d never been to Italy.
Higgles rose from the table. “Try the limoncello when you get there,” he said. “It’s to die for.”
Chapter 46
Haven, Florida
The woman finishes her gin, rises from the chair, and ambles to the bathroom. “Do you know what déjà vu is?” she calls to me through the closed door.
“Of course.”
“I mean the scientific bit.” Her voice sounds like it’s trapped in a bottle, hollow and echoing.
I don’t.
She comes out wearing nothing but her blouse, which falls to her thighs. “It’s called—” She breaks off, trying to remember. “I’ve forgotten what it’s called. But basically it has to do with your short-term memory getting messed up with your long-term. They somehow overlap and the short-term memory barely registers before the long-term grabs hold, making you think you’ve had that memory forever. So when you think you’ve experienced something before, you have—if just a fraction of a fraction of a second prior.”
I wait for her to make some kind of sweeping statement, for her to say she’s felt she’s known me forever.
She doesn’t.
She picks up her empty glass, holds it out to me. “Be kind,” she says. “Refresh my drink.”
When I hand her a full glass, her fingers linger on mine, sending a charge through me.
“You can’t get me drunk, you know. Something about my genetic makeup. I get tipsy, but never drunk. No matter how much I drink.”
“That’s a handy trick.”
“It’s a horrible trick,” she says, the morning light wrapping tightly around her. She seems to be miserable. Sweat plasters her hair to her face, turning it to yarn.
She rolls the icy glass across her forehead. “I have no way of knowing when to stop because I have no need to stop.”
Seeing her sweat makes me uncomfortable, hot. Perspiration travels down my sides, down my back. “Take off your blouse.”
Sighing, she sets her drink down and slips the shirt from her shoulders. She turns around, displaying herself. She has a fit body for such a heavy drinker, for someone her age. Small, teacup-sized breasts, an ample ass, a fairly flat stomach. She’s shaved clean, no pubic hair. Turning around full circle, she bends over, allowing me a full screening. “Well?” she says, peering through her parted legs.
“Nice.”
“I mean,” she rights herself, “are you going to stay dressed?”
“Say ‘Simon says,’” I say, kicking off my shoes.
“Simon says.” She watches patiently as I strip.
Naked, I step toward her.
She lunges at me, grapples my torso in a bracing hold. We fumble to the mattress, kissing violently, awkwardly. There is something menacing, violent about her kisses. They’re not about desire but something else. She kisses with an end goal in mind.
A foul burning taste kicks up from the back of my throat, choking me. I know this taste. I had it once before when I was swept from the beach by a riptide and pummeled along the ocean floor by an undertow. It’s a taste of terror, of knowing too late that I’m in a situation I have no control over.
I stop her.
She starts again.
I stop her again and rise from the mattress.
She clasps my arm, holding me. “This isn’t going to work unless you put some heart into it,” she says, then takes my cock in her mouth.
I respond with more heart.
She pulls away just as I’m about to come.
I fall on her.
Elbows, knees, a few knocks of the chins. My sweat becomes hers. Sex is an endeavor one never truly masters. Even if you’ve had a hundred partners and done it a million times, there’s something unnatural about it. It is not a pretty process. It’s a sloppy, sweaty, primordial wrestle, all to satisfy a selfish yearning.
She cries out like a child getting her fingers slammed in a car door. “Jesus,” she says, and wraps her legs tight around my torso.
Then she does something no one’s ever done to me before. She sets her teeth deep into the side of my neck. Bites me hard.
A barbed wire of pain rams through me, snaking down my neck to my groin. Violent, dreadful, blissful. I come for what feels an hour while fighting to free myself from her.
I can’t break free. Her legs are wrapped firmly around me, her jaws clamped solid to my neck. She’s a crocodile, fast and unyielding.
I jab her twice in the ribs hard, which is enough to make her finally unlock her bite. Wrestling away, I get to my feet. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I touch my neck. My fingers come away wet with brilliant red blood.
Lying on the mattress, she smiles up at me. Her teeth are rusted bright. “Sorry,” she says. “It just something I can’t help. Like dying.” She rolls over, lies on her stomach. “You’re not angry at me, are you?”
“I think it’s time you go,” I say, grabbing my underwear. I use it to bandage the bleeding.
She struggles off the mattress, picks up her glass, and strolls to the kitchen. “Where?”
“Charm’s, your place. Anywhere,” I say, heading to the bathroom. I examine the bite in the mirror. It’s ugly, exaggerated, seeping blood. It looks like a Halloween wound made of a strawberry puree and maple syrup.
I splash water on it then dab it with a fistful of toilet paper.
After the bleeding slows, I return to the room to find the woman seated in ratty red recliner, the bottle of gin at her feet. She has a different glass, a large tumbler. It’s packed full with ice.
“Weird,” I say, holding a wad of toilet paper to my neck. “It looks like you’re settling in when I know for a fact you’re on the way out.”
“Oh no,” she says, catching me with a direct stare. “I’m here for the duration.”
Anger frosts my lungs. “Get the fuck out.”
“At least say please.”
“Please get the fuck out,” I say.
She politely asks me to hand her her purse.
I toss it to her, hoping she’s going.
She smiles, though not with happiness. “I’m not leaving.”
I surge toward her, grab her by the jaw, digging my fingers in.
She stares up at me, subdued.
“What’s keeping me from throttling your ass and tossing you to the street naked?” I say, a flash of heat pounding at the back of my eyes.
She says something I can’t understand. I release my grip on her jaw. “What?”
“I said, your upbringing,” she says, touching her cold tumbler to her jaw. “That’s what’s stopping you. And one other thing.” She opens her purse.
“And that would be?”
“This.” She pulls out a pistol, small, silver, and beautiful.
Blood thrashes through my head, sharpening my vision, making me keenly aware of my surroundings. It’s not fear I feel, even as I realize I’ve just handed her a gun—which she now points at me. I should be afraid. I’m not. If anything, I feel strangely relieved. The situation has been defined. I know where I stand.
But then she says something that does terrify me, something I haven’t heard in at least four years.
My name. First, middle, and last.
◉ ◉ ◉
When there is no way out, push on. Find a way further in.
Chapter 47
Milan ended ugly.
Gunfire, a taxi crash, both the cabbie and the contact dead.
Higgles’ instructions had been simple. Fly in, pick up a packet of lithographed Chanukah greeting cards from a print shop, then meet my contact at Duomo Plaza. Hand him the cards and he’d hand me the documents.
From the start, things went bad. My flight out of Macao was delayed three hours. The trash collectors’ strike in Milan created traffic jams. The address Higgles gave me for the print shop was wrong.
I finally found the place, got the cards, and made it to Duomo Plaza fifty minutes late.
I spotted the contact immediately. Higgles was always vague on the description, but this man stood out among the tourists. Italian, dapper, and impeccably coiffed, he looked refined and easily pissed off. He probably put on a tie just to make breakfast. I sat at the table next to his, and ordered a limoncello and an ice water. I said, “The Irish make wonderful pizza,” to which he replied in a thick accent, “But the French make it even better.”
It was the signal.
Without looking at me, he said, “You’re late.” His face was coated in sweat, glistening like it’d been dipped in butter. Still, he gave off an aura of comfort, coolness.
I said nothing, then laid the cards on his table.
He counted them out, his delicate fingers gauging the weight and texture of each. Done, he slid the cards back in the package, and pushed them toward me. “There’s only ten,” he said. “The deal was for twelve.”
Bile spiked my throat. The three continents in five days, the exhaustion, the whole fucked-up situation enraged me. I wanted to stomp someone, maybe this pompous ass sitting next to me. But I swallowed my anger, kept quiet. It was something I had learned from my father.
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br /> For nearly a decade, my father leased and serviced photocopy machines to big businesses. High-end machines that could churn through reams of paper in a matter of minutes. One of the two things he said he learned from that job was to keep his mouth shut when someone had a complaint. “Often, they just want to vent. A lot of times it doesn’t even have to do with the broken copier. It’s just life chewing at them. The copier is the last straw,” he said. “So you let them vent, you nod a lot, then you do what you have to do and move on.”
The second thing he learned was that ninety percent of the time, the copier wasn’t even broken. It was just a paper jam or that they forget to turn it on. “But I always go through all the motions, break the machine apart, service it, even if it’s fine, just hadn’t been turned on. The last thing you want to do is make your client feel like an idiot, even when they are.”
The contact sipped his espresso, then said something in Italian. Then, as if speaking to a child, said, “That’s what we call incompetence.” His voice was even. He held up the cards. “How do you plan to rectify this?”
I took a breath, slowly released it. “I’ll go back to the shop, check with the man I got the cards from.”
The contact insisted on coming with.
The heat had set the whole town boiling with irritability. In our short walk to the cab station, we passed two women shouting and spitting at each other, a young couple arguing, and an old man being taunted by a teenage girl.
My contact puffed his cheeks, then let out a hissing breath of disgust. “I fucking hate Italians. Truth doesn’t matter to them. All that matters is their honor.”
“I thought you were Italian,” I said.
“I am.”
We found a cab. The seats were hot and the entire interior reeked of body odor and processed garlic.
I gave the cabbie the address. He made the sign of the cross, dropped the car in gear, and tore off.
When the cabbie made a left onto a narrow street, my contact berated him. It was the wrong way, the slow way, the out-of-the-way way that the cabbie was taking us. “The bastard thinks we’re tourists, he’s padding his fare,” my contact said. He struck the cabbie on the shoulder, yelling.
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