“Good to see you man!” Khieu said. “Let’s get a burger.”
They went into the flourescently brittle and vivid Fatburger. Khieu’s wife stayed with the truck.
“Isn’t she coming?”
Khieu shook his head. “She wants to repack the truck. Spray. She’s OK.”
Lane watched her disappear around the back of the sagging truck with her spray bottle.
“I thought you’d like this place.” Khieu said. “Very American.”
Lane watched the burgers (they really were fat, at least 30 cm raw) sputter away as a horseshoe of hungry faces sat around the grill and stared impatiently. It was a tense scene.
“I think I’ll just get fries.” Lane said
“You don’t want a burger?”
“A little greasy.”
Back outside, they sat with their fries, sharing a paper dish of ketchup. Lane watched his friend’s fingers. He had the telltale discoloration of opium use – the rolling of partially burned opium gave your fingers a distinct stain. Lane was happy to see it looked fresh.
From their concrete table they could see Khieu’s wife organize the back of the truck – he was right, she could really pack it in there. Khieu explained the recycling business. The current price for corrugated cardboard was 1.95 cents per pound. Following a tested route they could collect about two thousand five hundred pounds of cardboard – the maximum payload the truck could carry and still drive, in about five hours. The spray bottle was a trick to make it heavier.
“We spend about fifteen dollars a night on gas, and go through about two quarts of oil because the truck is old. We’re running 10W40 – we get it at Costco by the case, but it’s still two dollars a quart.”
“It takes an hour to check-out at the recycling center and we do two runs – so five hours plus five hours plus two hours – we work twelve hours every night, but we take Fridays off.”
Lane did some quick math and realized that they were working twelve hours per day and making $97.50 minus $19 in expenses, not counting other automotive maintenance, so they were clearing $78.50 a night, times 24 days a week, $1884 per month, $22608 per year. Jesus. How could they both live on that?
“Do you recycle aluminum cans too?” Lane asked.
“No.” Khieu grimaced. “Cans are for amateurs.”
Lane nodded. “What are your boys up to, Khieu?”
“They’re both in college. University of Minnesota. They’re pretty smart. Full scholarship there, they have special programs for Asian immigrants. My oldest wants to be an engineer.”
“Minnesota?”
“It’s a good place for school,” Khieu smiled, “No frisbee in the snow.”
Lane was amazed. He surmised that Khieu must never eat at the Beverly Center.
“What do you do on Fridays?”
“Play poker. I go on Fridays because that’s when all the amateurs are there with their paychecks. I always go to Commerce Casino on the 5. It’s the best. If I don’t go on the weekends I lose. Too many sharks. Like you.”
Lane laughed.
“Tomorrow’s Friday. You should come with me.”
Lane was amazed that he could lift two and a half tons of cardboard every night. The opium must help him recover. Even though Khieu was an old friend, Lane was reluctant to ask. He didn’t quite know how to bring it up.
“You’re working pretty hard Khieu, what do you do to relax these days?”
“A little television, you know, watch the Dodgers maybe when the Asians pitch.”
“You smoking at all?”
“Nah, smoking’s bad for you.”
Lane looked at him. “I’m talking about the kind of smoking that’s good for you.”
Khieu stared back at him carefully. Lane knew he wasn’t hiding his urgency very well.
“My wife makes me keep it at home. If we get pulled over, m-mm...we could lose the truck.”
“I could be in trouble, I think, if I…you know.”
Khieu smiled, a twinkle in his eye.
“OK, come with me tomorrow night. I can set you up. You’ll need cash though.”
Lane nodded.
Khieu gave him the address of where to meet him.
“I have a business meeting at this restaurant, but I’ll be done by five. If you have your car then you can pick me up. My wife can use the truck, go shopping. She doesn’t really like the casino anyway.”
Lane saw that Khieu’s wife was back in the truck. She was waiting patiently but you could tell it was an act. Lane waved and she waved back without smiling.
Lane watched them creep slowly out of the driveway, they’re heavy-duty leaf springs swaying and squeaking the whole way.
“How fucking long does it take to make a single fucking BURGER! Jesus Shit Christ!” Someone was screaming, ranting inside – losing it over how long the burgers took. Lane decided to have another cigarette and walk back to the Sofitel. He’d spent about enough time at the Fatburger.
NEWPORT BEACH – 4:04 AM
Huay peeked into Dominique’s room. It was so quiet and peaceful. Her walls were lined with flowered fabric that absorbed and cushioned every sound. Huay watched her sleeping silently beneath her canopy bed. He could still see the baby features that reminded him of the first time he ever saw her in the maternity ward at the University of California Irvine.
He knew she’d been up late. When he’d returned from the library a few hours ago, he’d heard her speaking German behind her closed door. Huay knew it was to be expected, she liked to keep in touch with her friends from school during the summer, but still the German had sounded disturbingly alien. She attended the Buzek Academy in Switzerland, the sole Cambodian in an exclusive and wealthy international student body. Huay was constantly shocked by her maturity and worldliness. One of her best friend’s mothers was one the most famous movie stars in India. Last summer Dominique had visited them in Bombay and returned with crazy stories of solid gold furniture, bejeweled bedroom slippers and sword carrying palace eunuchs. “Life in Bollywood,” she’d said.
Huay was concerned about his daughter now that his plan was in motion. He hadn’t figured her into his preparations, almost forgetting she would be home for the summer. He started to think that it might be safer to send her away again. There was a chance things could go badly, or that he might have to flee quickly. Huay decided he would have a better idea about what to do after today.
Huay tiptoed into the perfectly still room and placed the Gertrude Jekyll stem in the half empty Pellegrino bottle on her night stand. He took one last proud look at her just before he gently closed the door.
In the kitchen, Huay helped himself to the orange juice carton. Their live-in housekeeper, Nean, was still asleep. And Hok, their gardener/driver wouldn’t be in until seven. He could take Dominique to ballet if Huay was late from his trip to the beach. He left a quick note for Nean saying he was out and to wake Dominique in time for her class.
Out in the garage, Huay inspected his fishing gear. He’d never actually fished from the piers or beach, but he employed many Cambodians who did regularly and he’d asked them a lot of questions and also studied the look of the fishermen on the piers. His tennis shoes were all too new-looking, so he’d bought a run-down pair at the Goodwill. He had an old beat-up bucket from the warehouse for bait, a pair of cheap sunglasses to replace his Vaurnets, and a large backpack for his tackle box and (theoretically) fish. He’d purchased the large retractable ocean pole from a flea market several months ago. The reel looked tangled, but it didn’t matter, he wasn’t going to take time to actually put a line in the water. He had a lot of sand to cover.
He put the backpack and bucket into the trunk of the Mercedes and then listened to make sure Nean hadn’t gotten up and was milling around in the kitchen. Satisfied, Huay unlocked the storage locker at the back of the garage and pulled out two heavy cardboard boxes. The Chinese characters for “Executive Umbrellas” ran down one side of each box. For this mission, Huay had decided to use anot
her variation on the delay mine. He had 96 VS-Mk-2-EL’s. These were Italian-made and, like many things manufactured in Italy, elegantly designed. Completely water-proof and ninety-nine percent plastic, they were undetectable by metal detectors or bomb sniffers. They also had an anti-shock feature that made them impervious to the overhead pressure of fuel air explosions, a more recent counter-mining technology. Huay had already set half of them with a twenty-eight hour delay and the remainder with a thirty-two hour deferral. Pushing and turning the pin on the side would start the clocks. Once activated, the triggers detonated with thirty pounds of pressure. Counting the weight of the sand, the actual threshold was about twenty pounds. Each mine would be buried eight to ten inches below the surface. With a kill radius of approximately one meter and an injury radius of three and half meters, Huay was sure they would make his point.
Huay stacked the first twenty VS-Mk’s in the bucket and snapped on the plastic lid. He put the two boxes in the trunk beside the backpack and bucket and then slid the fishing pole into the Mercedes through the passenger side door. Huay carefully closed the trunk and walked around to the driver’s side. His pulse was pounding and his head was unused to so much sleepless adrenalin. He needed coffee. And bait. He would definitely need bait.
Huay checked the safety on his Colt Defender and slid it under the seat - just a precaution. He exhaled…and turned the key.
WOODLAND HILLS – 6:00 A.M.
Catherine’s world was suddenly upside down. She counted to three and then dropped down out of her handstand and attempted to do the splits, her pelvis stopping two inches above the white carpet. Floor exercise had never been her strongest event. She preferred the pressure of the balance beam. She used to joke that she’d inherited the level-headedness of her parents. Her father was a corporate tax attorney and her mom a part-time court reporter and real-life 200 wpm typist. In her prime on the beam Catherine could do a back walk-over, followed by a back handspring and a two-rotation dismount. Her legs had been like shock absorbers, strong as tungsten.
Staring into the closet mirror, Catherine again wondered who she was trying to stay in shape for - she was in a profound state of singleness. It had been two months since her last date. For a while she’d had regular outings with Harlan the Federal Prosecutor – stilted things like concerts, symphonies, literary events at the Getty, mediocre plays with television stars. Usually followed by cold white wine and protected sex…all by the numbers. Then, in the morning, tandem teeth brushing and more missionary position, almost like an obligatory work-out before brunch.
What she really wanted was someone who enjoyed getting up early on a Saturday morning, driving to the Los Angeles Police Academy range, firing a couple hundred rounds and then catching a Dodger game down the hill in Chavez Ravine.
Blake was an option. She knew she’d never pursue it, but he’d made it known he was there if she wanted it. Of course he was there for virtually anybody, but he did have a swagger that was hard not to notice and occasionally think about.
A successful female career in the FBI rarely included fairytale romance. The recruiter who approached her in her third year of law school had warned her about that fact. But after spending the summer at a firm in Santa Barbara where nearly every single partner on the letterhead had asked her out, the FBI seemed to offer something more interesting. In the beginning her specialty was interrogations of mafia women and incarcerated felons. In these types of encounters women were always better at collecting information. The subjects were more relaxed and the female agents naturally gathered facts rather than instantly sorting and eliminating them.
Catherine was too senior now to do many one-on-one’s and she secretly missed the interviews. The mob girlfriends were incredibly entertaining, bitching tirelessly about the men in their lives like thrice divorced hair-dressers from Elizabeth. And the men behind bars always had a refreshing lack of pretense. Some were too spaced-out to care, but most were not shy about blatantly staring at her various parts while they told their meandering tales of crime and punishment. Office politics didn’t carry nearly the dramatic charge of her old life.
Still, she couldn’t imagine herself in a life like Mindy – her old best friend from Truman Capote High School in Ventura. After completing the MBA program at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, Mindy married the valedictorian and never worked another day. Now she lived in a three-year-old gated community mansion with five thousand square feet of wall-to-wall, three refrigerators, three children, an absent father and a sleep-over house-keeper. Her tivo was stuffed with kids programs and she had a whole room devoted to ribbons and wrapping paper – all arranged in labeled bins she’d acquired from Pottery Barn. The last time Catherine visited her for lunch, Mindy took her out in their golf cart to visit her friends in the adjoining cul-de-sac community.
Still in her underwear, Catherine stepped through the sliding glass door and did a quick round-off on the redwood deck, stopping just short of the covered spa. She knew she could still do a back-bend, and get back up, but she wasn’t sure if she could manage a handspring. She also knew she should stop procrastinating with the gymnastics and call the Assistant Director on the East Coast, but she was not looking forward to it. Despite round the clock surveillance, historical analysis, and lab work, there was precious little progress to report. As she cart-wheeled back towards the door, Catherine thought about what shoes she should wear to the funeral.
HOTEL SOFITEL – 7:18 A.M.
Lane opened his eyes and was instantly alert. His ears told him he was not alone. There was a motherfucking mosquito in his room.
He’d had malaria three different times. African quinine-immune malaria. The fever and dehydrating cramps were bad, but the worst thing had been his great toe swelling up big as a pear from the fansidar treatment. The nail had almost disappeared. It was like a Barnum and Bailey Grotesque -- if anyone had seen a picture they never would have believed it was a real toe.
Lane’s retinas reset and he spotted the intruder perched on the ceiling, just above the impressionist seascape that was screwed to the wall above the bed. From the size and rosy color of the abdomen he knew she’d already sunk her proboscis into him. He wondered for a moment if mosquitoes could get addicted to biting addicts.
Lane could feel the familiar itch now on the middle knuckle of his ring finger. It had been exposed outside the comforter.
According to the Boy Scout Manual, the best treatment for a mosquito bite was calamine lotion, and if that was not available, mud. Lane knew from real-world experience that calamine lotion was not a good idea, particularly in the tropics where manufactured fragrances often had strange interactions with the environment. And mud, while initially soothing, didn’t eliminate the itch and subsequently increased the risk of infection when you finally got around to scratching the bite. The best treatment was to control your impulse to scratch. There were many things in the Scout Manual that didn’t make sense under close examination. Learning to tie the perfect knot to throw to a drowning man was a good example. Generally you wouldn’t want to take that much time when somebody was drowning and the person in the water didn’t seem to appreciate the extra care that went into such a knot.
Scouts was always strong on the bases where Major Lane grew up. Quitters never win. If it is to be, it is up to me. When the going gets tough….Lane had earned all the merit badges. And then he’d grown up and murdered a child. There were no merit badges for that, not really.
The mosquito was bringing it all back again. Two months before she was killed, Aimee had nursed Lane through his third bout of malaria. Love in Africa, where one was constantly surrounded by death, had an intensity nothing could match. The emotions had been carved into him, the scars permanent.
Aimee had been a victim of a combination of twentieth-century inventions – death by high-impact plastic and semtex explosives. Lane had found the perpetrator quite easily. Another child had turned him in. After Lane had rewarded the snitch with a five dollar bill, he dragged
the young killer out of a dusty bar and interrogated him in the street. He had been celebrating with his pay-off and, drunk with defiance, admitted his crime right away. Lane shot him in the stomach, his Colt ripping into the boy’s intestines. Lane let him beg and sob on the ground before delivering the final shot between his eyes.
Was it justice? Lane wasn’t sure, but he knew that in that environment it had been the right thing to do. In Angola, the long civil war had been fought with children. Orphans were easy to recruit and with the life-expectancy hovering around 27 really the only option. And if the children weren’t orphans, they were hungry anyway. In his work in Angola he’d often felt like a scout leader, surrounded by webelos with AK47’s who preferred tarot root and Nigerian brewed Guinness to graham crackers and Kool-Aid. In his first week in Luanda, Lane met a U.N. doctor from Pakistan who told him Angola was infected with war. “You can go into a peaceful land and find peace or go into an insane place and find insanity. The population has fallen in love with the homicidal state of mind and can’t stop.” He’d said. Lane quickly discovered that land mines were a perfect fit with that kind of desperate insanity. But he’d also come to realize how close all human societies were to anarchy, it didn’t take that much of a push.
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