You Only Live Once

by Haris Orkin

  “Stay where?” Mendoza choked on his daiquiri. “Here?”

  “In the guest rooms. Of course, you’ll keep them under guard. But my victory will be that much sweeter if I can share it with someone who isn’t an idiot.”

  Mendoza looked offended. “You think I don’t understand your plan?”

  “Mr. Mendoza, please, you’re very good at what you do. But this…is a bit beyond you.”

  “You’re kidnapping billionaires and when the stock market goes down, you’ll make a lot of money. Right?”

  “How?” asked Goolardo. “Can you tell me how I make money when the stock market goes down?”

  Mendoza started to open his mouth and then closed it. Angry color rose to his cheeks. He glowered at Flynn before abruptly downing the rest of his drink.

  “We dine at nine,” said Goolardo. “Mendoza will show you to your rooms. Take a nap. Freshen up. We’ll see if we can find you some clean clothes to wear. Something more appropriate for dinner.”

  Flynn smiled and glanced at Mendoza, who watched him the way a lion eyeballs a wildebeest just before it pounces.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Dulcie thought she would fall asleep as soon as her head hit the feather pillow on her Duxiana bed. It was a well-appointed room in one of the towers. A window overlooked the Sea of Cortez, but Dulcie wasn’t interested in the view. She was interested in being unconscious. She had enjoyed a long bath, which had helped to relax her jangled nerves. They even supplied her with a tab of Valium. She was so tired, so exhausted from being terrified. Unfortunately, as hard as she tried, she couldn’t sleep.

  Her mind raced. It was partly the meth withdrawal, but partly the fact that she couldn’t figure out Flynn. He was a total headcase, but he had this Goolardo wrapped around his little finger. Did Flynn really believe what he was saying? Or was it all part of some elaborate scam designed to keep them from getting killed? And what was this attraction she felt? She knew he wasn’t all there, but still…there was something about him. He seemed so sure of himself. So confident.

  Mike had pretended to be confident, but that was mainly to cover up his deep insecurity and self-loathing. She knew Mike was beaten daily by his dad and that frightened little boy still remained inside of him. He created a tough guy front to protect himself, but inside he was weak. He attacked Dulcie because he knew she wouldn’t fight back. He was a coward and a liar. But so was she, so maybe he was exactly what she deserved. Flynn, on the other hand, seemed like the real thing, even though, deep down, she knew he couldn’t be. Maybe the only people with complete confidence are the crazy ones.

  Sancho was in another room in the same tower, across the hall. Five hulking killers with AK-47’s guarded the inner foyer just outside his door. Sancho knew this because he’d tried the door earlier and was surprised to find it unlocked. Upon opening it, however, he found five AK-47’s pointed at his face. He closed the door without a word and they bolted it shut behind him. He too had bathed, though he opted for the shower.

  The stall had been huge and decorated with colorful tile in an Aztec theme. There were three nozzles. The pressure was intense and the water was perfect and a large window offered a dramatic view of the sea. Once he was in there, he didn’t want to leave. The hot water pounding his back felt so good. From here, it would all be downhill.

  He knew they were going to be killed. The only question was when. Flynn couldn’t keep this crazy charade going forever. Eventually they would figure out that Sancho was telling the truth and that Flynn was a total loon. And now that Goolardo had laid out his plan, he couldn’t let them live. Before Goolardo had spilled the beans, there was an infinitesimal chance of survival, but now there was none. No way was he going to let them walk. Fucking Flynn. He should have let Kursky and his crew kill him in Palmdale. What was he thinking? He should have listened to Dulcie. Now they both were going to die and it was all his fault.

  Flynn’s room, right next door to Sancho’s, had a window which overlooked the palace courtyard. Sixty feet down he could see the helicopter. It was surrounded by guards lounging about laughing, smoking, automatic weapons dangling from their shoulders. If he tied his sheets together to use them as a rope, there was a good chance they’d see him rappelling down. If the bullets didn’t kill him, the fall surely would.

  He leaned out over the edge of the window and felt a rush of vertigo. Adrenaline surged through his blood. Fear was fuel for Flynn. It charged him up and filled him with purpose. There was a ledge right below the windowsill and it apparently ran around the circumference of the tower. If he could edge his way around the ledge and reach another window, perhaps he could find Dulcie and arrange for some sort of escape. The fools had left him his laser pen, believing it was harmless. He could use it to cut through his door and take down the guards, but lasers are dangerously powerful and difficult to control. In the heat of battle, he might accidentally slice through another door and cut Dulcie in half. No, there was only one option. He would make his way out the window and around the ledge, find Dulcie, and free her before anyone knew he was gone.

  Mendoza never let anyone know what he was feeling. That was his power. That was how he kept control. Like an expert poker player, he never gave anything away. He had toughened his body and toughened his mind to a point where he was untouchable. These emotional calluses started growing soon after his parents were murdered by a right-wing death squad. They grew even thicker when he found his first wife in his brother’s arms and had to kill them both. This was why he had no friends and no family. This was why he had no one but himself.

  He was completely self-contained; impervious to pain. He was beholden to no one and loyal to only one, Goolardo, but over the course of time his loyalty had become something else entirely. Somehow, emotion had seized control of his cold, calloused heart. Mendoza felt anger. He felt jealousy. He was jealous that Goolardo was so interested in this Flynn, confiding in him, joking with him, and telling him things he had never told Mendoza.

  Goolardo insulted me to my face, Mendoza thought. He called me an idiot. Not in so many words, but the intention was clear. Mendoza was nothing but muscle in Goolardo’s eyes. A gun. A thug. A pendejo. He knew he wasn’t in Goolardo’s league, but he thought he had the man’s trust. The man’s respect. What if Goolardo never killed Flynn? What if he offered the puto a job? What if he bought him off like he bought everyone off and made him his righthand man? Where would that leave Mendoza?

  Mendoza called a private detective in Los Angeles, someone he had worked with before. The man’s name was Soto and he was an ex-LAPD detective who’d lost his job after the Rampart scandal. He narrowly avoided jail by testifying against his fellow officers. Now, he worked for criminal defense attorneys, helping to find evidence to protect the very drug dealers he had once tried to put away. Soto lived in Burbank. Married for over twenty years, he had seven children with an eighth on the way. So, Mendoza knew he could use the money.

  Soto answered his cell phone. He was on a stake-out in Glendale, across the street from the Vagabond Inn, looking to find dirt on a local judge. The judge was cheating on his wife with another man and Soto was documenting the whole sordid affair. The man screwing the judge was a gay hustler in Soto’s employ.

  “Soto,” he said. There was no caller ID, but then most of his clients blocked their numbers.

  “It’s Mendoza. I got a job for you.”

  “I’m kinda tied up right now.”

  “This needs to be done right away.”

  “I’d like to help, but I got a lot on my plate.”

  “I don’t care what the fuck you got. This is an emergency.”

  “Come on, man…”

  “If you make me ask you one more time, I’m going to kill your wife and all seven of your snot-nosed niños.”

  Soto sighed. “Fine. What? What is it?”

  “I want you to check out some asshole named James Flynn. I want you to see if they have any record of him at City of Roses Psychiatric. If they do, I
want his file. Everything you can find. Can you do this for me?”

  “How soon do you need it done?”

  “If it takes longer than four hours, it ain’t gonna fucking matter.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  But Mendoza had already hung up.

  The ledge was slippery with bird guano. Flynn kept his right cheek flat against the warm stone as he edged his way along. He could hear the guards talking sixty feet down. They were directly below so, luckily, the ledge blocked their view of him. It was only a foot wide so Flynn couldn’t avoid any missteps. The hand holds were few and far between, but he kept creeping along and soon the voices of the guards grew faint. His hand found the edge of a window. Flynn glanced in and there was Sancho, sitting on the bed.

  Sancho was very surprised to see Flynn smiling at him. He tried to help Flynn in, but Flynn resisted.

  “I have to find Dulcie.”

  “Dude, you’re crazy.”

  “Just stay put.”

  “Where the hell am I gonna go?”

  But Flynn was gone, edging his way past Sancho’s window and around the tower. His fingertips were raw by the time he reached the window of Dulcie’s quarters.

  Dulcie was resting in bed, wearing an open robe, when she heard a loud, “Pssssst.” She followed the sound to the window. Flynn grinned at her with bravado. The wind gusted and pushed him sideways. His cocky smile was replaced with a look of surprise as he stepped on a large pile of bird droppings. His left foot slid off the ledge. Flynn scrabbled against the stone. He caught the edge of the ledge just in time. Dulcie was up and running to the window. She grabbed Flynn’s wrist as his fingers slipped, and pulled with everything she had. He grunted and got his leg up and then the rest of him tumbled through the open window head first.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Dulcie was electric with fear and adrenaline.

  “Nothing a stiff drink wouldn’t fix.” He stood and smirked and dusted himself off.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Rescuing you, of course.”

  “We’re like ten stories up.”

  “More like four.”

  “I don’t care! I’m not—”

  “We have no choice, Dulcie. Goolardo’s toying with us and eventually he’s going to kill us.”

  Her eyes grew shiny. “So why don’t you just let me fucking die.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m fucking over it, okay. I just wanna close my eyes and never fucking open them again.”

  “You want to let them win?”

  “They already did!”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “I don’t care what you fucking believe! Just leave me alone.” Tears ran down her face. “Can you do that? Can you just leave me the fuck alone?”

  “I don’t think I can.”

  Dulcie sobbed in earnest now. Her shoulders shook and Flynn put his arms around her. She tried to push him away, but he was as firm as he was gentle and she finally couldn’t fight him anymore. He held her tight and she rested her chin on his shoulder and cried. He cradled her like that until she was exhausted and empty and didn’t have a single tear left.

  He whispered to her softly. She so desperately wanted to believe him. “Let’s rest now,” he said. “Get some sleep. When the sun is down, we’ll make our move.”

  He laid her down in bed and climbed in beside her. She put her head on his chest and could hear his heartbeat. It was strong. Constant. Confident. Too bad he was such a fucking psycho. Within seconds, she was asleep.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Mendoza was now hurt, angry, and humiliated. Goolardo had requested Mendoza’s presence in the throne room. He thought the big man wanted to confide in him, bond with him, apologize for insulting him. He thought Goolardo would reveal his true plans for Flynn. That he was playing Flynn, using him, trying to get information out of him. But instead Goolardo praised the irritating son of a bitch.

  He kept going on and on about how impressive he was. How educated. How high-class. How unflappable. It was hard for Mendoza not to blow, but he kept his fury in check and tried to look inscrutable. And then Goolardo handed Mendoza three different designer suits: Huge Boss, Armani, and Dolce & Gabbana. He wanted Mendoza to take them to Flynn to see if they fit him. He also had dresses for Dulcie; dresses that belonged to the big man’s girlfriend. Fucking designer dresses. Goolardo wanted them to dress for dinner.

  He stood there with his arms out, feeling like a pendejo as Goolardo piled clothes on him. Then he asked Mendoza to find some clothes for Sancho. Will the abuse never end, he wondered? Is he testing me? Mocking me?

  Mendoza stood outside Flynn’s room, holding the suits. The guards were eyeballing him. Were they smiling? They’d better not be.

  “Open the door,” Mendoza ordered. One guard unlocked the deadbolt and another guard opened the door.

  Mendoza threw the suits on the floor. “Goolardo wants you to put one of these on.” He waited for Flynn’s clever retort. The bastard always had some snotty limey comeback. “Did you hear what I said!” Mendoza poked his head in the room and didn’t see Flynn anywhere. He drew his weapon and motioned with his head to get the guards to follow him. He glanced behind the door. He looked in the closet. Under the bed. What the hell? Then he spotted the open window. Mendoza hurried to the opening and looked down. He couldn’t have jumped. It was a sixty foot drop straight to the courtyard. The guards would have seen him and raised an alarm.

  And then he noticed the ledge.

  He leaned out a little further and felt a rush of vertigo. He wasn’t fond of heights, but he steeled himself and poked his head out a little further to see that the ledge continued around the tower.

  “Chingado!” He rushed from Flynn’s tower room and hurried across the hall and threw open the door to Dulcie’s room. The guards were right behind him with their AK-47’s.

  Dulcie was in bed alone. Asleep. She awoke with a start, surprised to find a furious Mendoza staring down at her. He pointed his pistol at her face. “Where is he?”

  “Who?”

  He pulled the trigger and the gun boomed. The bullet missed her face by inches. Dulcie screamed and Flynn poked his head out from under the bed. “If you hurt that girl…”

  “What? You’ll be angry with me?”

  Flynn rolled out from under the bed and checked on Dulcie. She was terrified, but uninjured. Then he leveled his gaze at Mendoza. “I’m disappointed in you, amigo. You didn’t seem to be the sort of sadist who got his jollies frightening defenseless women.”

  “What sort of sadist do I seem to be?”

  “The kind who enjoys torturing men like me.”

  “Well, yes, I must admit, that I would enjoy. Wiping that smirk off your face would give me great pleasure. So, you know what? I think I won’t shoot you. Not right now. Right now, you should get dressed, so you can have dinner with Goolardo. It’s important that you keep your strength up, muchacho. That way later, when I do torture you, it will last a very, very long time.”

  The Armani suit was the closest to fitting Flynn correctly. Goolardo was broader through the chest and shoulders, so the jacket was a little big and the arms a tad long. Flynn was also taller, so the trousers didn’t quite reach his shoes, but somehow Flynn carried it off with panache. He wasn’t the least bit self-conscious, unlike Dulcie, who wore a sexy, red, silk dress designed by Donna Karan. It was knee length, but low cut. She wore red pumps with pointy toes and high stiletto heels. She wasn’t used to walking in heels so high, so she looked unsteady and embarrassed. Her eyes were full of apprehension, but Flynn wasn’t sure if she was afraid of Mendoza or of simply falling on her face.

  Sancho looked equally uncomfortable. He wore Goolardo’s Hugo Boss suit and, being much shorter, it looked like he was wearing his daddy’s clothes. The sleeves dangled down past his hands and the pants hung low off his butt, bagging up aro
und his ankles.

  The three followed Mendoza and four guards down a long corridor. Flynn dropped back a bit to check out the situation and get an eyeful of Dulcie from behind. He noticed that Sancho was doing the very same thing. So were all four guards. The only one who wasn’t checking out her booty was Mendoza. Dulcie could feel the scrutiny and looked back, irritated with all the attention. “What the hell are you looking at?”

  “A thing of beauty,” Flynn said. Sancho grinned. So did the guards, but not Mendoza. He looked irritated.

  Hearst Castle in San Simeon was Goolardo’s inspiration. It rose above the Pacific coast, resting high atop “La Cuesta Encantada.” The Enchanted Hill. Goolardo called his creation “Alcazar del Goolardo.” And the promontory upon which it rested was known as, “Protuberancia del Misterio.”

  Dulcie tried not to grin when Goolardo told her this. He said it so proudly, with such a flourish, rolling his R’s, widening his eyes. “Protuberance of Mystery” was what it meant in English and, for a moment, she wondered if Goolardo was putting them on. When he didn’t chuckle, or offer them a grin, she knew he was deadly serious. Sometimes, when she was terrified, she became dangerously giddy. It was a nervous reaction and it used to make Mike furious. He would beat her savagely, yelling at her to stop laughing at him, but she wasn’t laughing at him. Not exactly.

  She felt the laughter bubbling up and she fought to keep it down. Flynn saw the smile fighting for control of her face. She was going to lose it and he knew it, so he grabbed her and started tickling her. Her laughter burst free and she let it out gratefully, relieved.

  Goolardo was a bit taken aback by Flynn’s spontaneous tickling attack, but continued on with his tour, down a hallway lined with Mexican art, and into a vast dining room which rivaled the grand hall at San Simeon. The walls were paneled in oak and decorated with tapestries. Dulcie saw sculptures of gargoyles and suits of conquistador armor and in the center of the room, a ridiculously long antique table.

  Flynn whispered to her. “I believe Mr. Goolardo is overcompensating for something.”