Niceville

by Carsten Stroud

  The Goth chick getting naked above the needle exchange, who Deitz did not know was Brandy Gule or that if he had gotten anywhere near her with a workable hard-on she would have taken it off with a pair of nail scissors, was talking on the cell phone—to Lemon Featherlight, as it happened—and seemed to have halted her strip-down at a studded black leather push-up bra. Deitz was dealing with his disappointment by rearranging his courting tackle. It seemed that he was living in this fucking truck these days.

  He was still doing that when the long black turtle-limo pulled up alongside the Hummer and Zachary Dak rolled down his window.

  The arrival of the second luxury vehicle in this sorry-ass part of Tin Town was creating a major sensation—so much money so close—but thus far none of the locals felt like making a sortie.

  “Mr. Deitz,” said Dak, showing his tiny baby teeth. “I gather we have made progress?”

  “We have, sir,” said Deitz. “I have established contact. I have an address to wire the funds.”

  “And it is?”

  “If I tell you, could you trace it?”

  Dak nodded.

  “Of course. But this will not be done. I ask merely to determine how reliable the network of transfer would be. If the destination is in Zurich or the Isle of Man, we may be content. If it is in Dubai or Macao, less so. May I know the numbers?”

  Deitz had them on a slip of paper.

  He handed it down to Mr. Dak.

  Andy Chu, fifty feet away in a heroically dull beige Toyota, had been following Deitz’s bright yellow Hummer around for the better part of an hour now, and he happily snapped a very fine telephoto shot of this exchange, which, from a graphic point of view, literally oozed furtive and sneaky and coconspiratorial.

  Dak read the note, handed it back to Deitz.

  “This is a Mondex cash card account.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “The deposit will go into, basically, a private ATM card. It’s a cyber-transaction that can’t be traced. It hides inside all the other ATM transactions that occur around the world, millions every second. It’s not traceable in any way. I congratulate you. You’re in business with a professional. How much do you have to send them?”

  “Well, that’s the thing. They’re asking three-quarter mill. I only have two-fifty available.”

  Dak got colder, and seemed to recede.

  “When we acquire the object, you will receive the payment we agreed upon, and in the manner we have agreed upon. This will not be altered.”

  “Yeah, I get that. It’s just that I can’t come up with the other five large. I can go two point five large, maybe even three. I was hoping you could come up with the difference, because I just can’t make the vig on this. I mean, I can’t get my hands on the thing without you kicking in, sir, and that’s a fact.”

  “So you are asking us to ‘kick in’ five large, as you put it, on top of what we are already paying you, so that you can then pay these people seven point five large, which you contend is the only way to acquire the object for us. Is this correct?”

  “Yeah, see, plus, since this is an unforeseen eventuality, maybe you could cover some of my additional expenses that would need to be, like, addressed, you know, for the extra services I’m performing? It’s just that I—”

  Dak lifted a languid hand, showing a length of his pale gray shirt under the charcoal suit. He had cuff links made of some small lavender stone that perfectly matched his lavender tie and his lavender socks. The stones were set into solid gold. His nails were buffed, glossy and perfect.

  Deitz hated the man’s guts, for reasons he could not have adequately explained, even to himself. Basically, Deitz was just a really good hater, the way other people are good at basketball or dancing the tango.

  “Mr. Deitz, have you seen the movie The Godfather?”

  Deitz knew where this was going.

  It wasn’t good.

  He didn’t really need any help with the five large the pukes were actually asking for—he had it ready to go—but he hated getting fucked all by himself. He wanted to share the experience.

  The pukes were asking five, not seven point five, so if Dak kicks in with the five and Deitz pretends to cover the other two point five that nobody was asking for, then he actually fucks Dak for the five large the pukes were asking and he still picks up the one mill Dak has to pay him on delivery, so Dak gets fucked and it’s a wash for him, he’d skim off the cream, and his life would just be that much … creamier.

  None of which it looked like Dak was going to go along with.

  “Yeah. I did.”

  “You’ll remember the line ‘Either your signature or your brains will be on that contract’?”

  “Yeah. Great fucking scene. Doesn’t change—”

  Dak did more of that hands-up palm-out stuff.

  Talk to the hand.

  “Mr. Deitz, I believe we understand each other. We regret that we cannot accommodate your request. It is not a businesslike proposal. You bear the burden of executing your end of the bargain. Unforeseen eventualities should have been foreseen by you, not by us, who are merely your grateful customers. As I say, deepest regrets, but when can we expect receipt of the object?”

  Deitz looked up at the Goth girl’s window.

  The blinds were shut.

  Then he looked at the Colt Python on his dashboard, had a brief and bloodred urge to just fucking shoot the living shit out of everybody in range, gave that up as counterproductive, had a second fantasy about having been old enough for the Vietnam War so that he could have gone over there and shot the shit out of a whole boatload of wily Asiatic slimeballs just like Mr. Dak here, but that war was over, so Deitz had to go back to looking at Dak’s irritatingly serene expression.

  “They say I’ll get the item as soon as the wire transfer hits that number.”

  “Who will effectuate the exchange?”

  “What?”

  “What agency will do the actual wire transfer?”

  “My guy at the First Third.”

  “Ah. The unfortunate Mr. Thad Llewellyn?”

  Dak smiled, therefore Deitz was able to infer that some sort of joke had just been made.

  “Yes. That guy.”

  “And this will be done very soon?”

  “Yes.”

  “That is to say, this evening?”

  “Yes. That is to say.”

  All the same. Andy Chu, this snake-head, Joel fucking Cairo, Mousy Dung, Charlie Chan, the Dragon Lady, Kim Jong Il, King Ming of Mong, all the wily fucking Asiatics all over the world. Hate ’em all.

  “How will the exchange be effected?”

  “They say it’s in a readily accessible location. As soon as the payment is made, they’ll tell me where the item is.”

  “And you have obtained, how to put it, proof of actual possession?”

  “They knew the number of the deposit box it was taken from. And they described the box. And what was inside it. They’ve got the fucking thing.”

  “So you feel confident that the object will be successfully retrieved?”

  “It’s no good to them. The money is.”

  Dak saw the wisdom in this.

  “Mutual and balanced expectations create happy and harmonious outcomes. Good. I approve of this. We will leave this in your capable hands, trusting that you will do nothing to create uncertainty or discord between the parties. We will be at the Marriott. We will expect you in two hours. Yes?”

  There has to be some way to fuck these guys.

  “Yes.”

  Has to be some way.

  Dak withdrew his head like a turtle.

  The window rolled up, the turtle car glided away soundlessly, Andy Chu snapped a few more shots, grinning ferociously, having one of the very best Saturdays of his entire life.

  Deitz looked up at the Goth girl’s shuttered world, and from somewhere inside his skull he heard that goddam mysterious walnut-cracking sound again.

  Has to be.

&n
bsp; And then, like Saul on the road to Damascus, it came to him in a flash of brilliant light.

  There was no fucking way to fuck these guys.

  Morgan Littlebasket Comes to Regret

  Morgan Littlebasket, pillar of the Cherokee community and highly respected comptroller of the Cherokee Nation Trust head offices in Sallytown, alas now a widower, lived all alone in a big old rambling rancher-style wood-and-brick home on a full acre of rolling grass and live oaks just a half block away from Mauldar Field, the regional airport for Niceville and Sallytown, where he kept a very fine Cessna Stationair 206.

  Being a pillar of the Cherokee community had its perquisites, and one of them was this nimble little plane that he liked to fly on sunny Saturdays such as this one, soaring high above Niceville like an eagle, sometimes following the meandering course of the Tulip River as it flowed south and east out of Niceville, winding its way eventually to the sea, or perhaps he would glide at treetop level above the ancient trees along the crest of Tallulah’s Wall, terrifying the legions of crows that nested there, catching a fragmented glimpse, if the light was right, of the glittering coal black eye of Crater Sink in a rocky clearing below the canopy, the circular sink looking exactly like a black hole in the middle of the world.

  Around six on this particular Saturday, as the light was changing and the sun was sliding down towards the far western grasslands, Morgan Littlebasket was driving home from the airfield after just such a flight, calm, relaxed, feeling that warm meditative glow, that holy transcendence, that he always got from flying.

  He was at the wheel of his classic old Cadillac Sedan de Ville, wearing his genuine reproduction Flying Tigers flight jacket and a pair of original Ray-Ban Aviators and listening to Buckwheat Zydeco on the stereo, tapping his left foot in time to the rollicking beat, and wondering, in an idle way, just how much money a man would have to assemble to leverage himself into a plane like that exquisite scarlet and gold Learjet 60 XR that was parked on the tarmac back at Mauldar Field.

  That beautiful jet, according to the field boss, was owned by some Chinese syndicate called Daopian Canton, apparently an outfit with money to burn.

  But, the man had pointed out, sensing a buyer, given the late recession, there were still an awful lot of cheap secondhand Lear and Gulf-stream models lying around.

  And, so ran Morgan Littlebasket’s thinking, the Cherokee Nation Trust was getting to be a pretty sizable financial entity, with a lot of travel required to attend to its variegated interests.

  Maybe it was time for the Cherokee Nation Trust to think about acquiring a secondhand Lear—strictly for business, of course.

  The idea, although far-fetched, was pleasing to entertain, so, in short, on this soft summer afternoon, Morgan Littlebasket was a contented old man truly at one with his universe.

  When he turned into the driveway he was surprised but not unhappy to see Twyla waiting for him, leaning on the trunk of her red BMW with her arms folded across her chest and her eyes hidden behind a very large pair of sunglasses.

  There was something in the set of her mouth that sent a bit of a tingle down his spine, but he was in far too dreamy a space to let it ruffle his feathers.

  He rolled to a stop next to her “Bimmer” as she liked to call it, rolled down the window and smiled at her, a well-fed well-dressed craggy-faced deeply tanned leathery old man with a full head of silvery hair that he liked to wear long. Catching a peripheral view of himself in the driver’s-side mirror, a habitual conceit, he thought he looked like a cross between Iron Eyes Cody and Old Lodge Skins, in other words a classic example of the Noble Red Man at his most iconic.

  “Twyla, honey, how nice. Can you stay for dinner?”

  Twyla had come forward to the car door, her look still cool and wary.

  Clearly something was on her mind.

  Well, that’s what fathers were for, wasn’t it?

  “Hi, Dad,” she said, not offering a kiss this time. “Can we go in and talk for a bit? I really need your advice.”

  Littlebasket unspooled his lanky frame from the car, placed a large veiny hand on her shoulder, felt her slip away from under it as she turned to walk ahead of him to the front door.

  Definitely something wrong, he decided, watching her make her way up the flagstone pathway, trying not to notice that she was wearing a wrinkled blue smock that was much too short for a girl with such a lovely body and that under the smock, from what he could make out, she might have been wearing thong panties.

  He shoved that image out of his mind—an ancient weakness from long ago—gathered his gear from the backseat, and made his creaky way up to stand beside her as she keyed the lock.

  He had always made sure the girls had their own keys to the house, even after dear Lucy Bluebell had passed. It gave them all a sense of family, and it was all about clan and family, wasn’t it?

  Twyla went in first, going a few feet down the long wood-paneled hallway and stopping in the entrance to the great room—low rough-cut beams and a stone fireplace, leather sofas and chairs and wall-to-wall Native American memorabilia—before she turned to face him, taking off her sunglasses as she did.

  Morgan Littlebasket stopped in his tracks, his heart missing a beat and a cold black feeling rising up from his lower belly.

  The look she had was unmistakable, a look he had been afraid he would see there ever since his little … weakness … had led him astray.

  Her eyes were red and swollen from crying, but she was chilly and composed.

  The certainty hit him like a boot in the solar plexus, literally stopping his breath cold.

  She knew.

  He came towards her, his mind working fast, rehearsing again, to himself, the several complicated lies he had ready in case this terrible moment should ever arise, but when he reached the door into the great room he saw they weren’t alone.

  There were two large men by the fireplace, both of them hard-faced weathered older men in shirts and jeans and cowboy boots, lean and competent-looking, range-hand types, one a long-haired blond guy with a shaggy white handlebar mustache, cold blue eyes, the other clean-shaven, white-haired, with an eagle beak, prominent cheekbones, and gunfighter eyes.

  Morgan Littlebasket glared at Twyla.

  “Who are these men? Why are they in my house?”

  “My name is Coker,” said Coker, “and this here is Charlie. Twyla’s a good friend of ours, and she asked us to come along and help her ask you a few simple questions.”

  The man’s tone was calm, casual, and packed with latent menace. Littlebasket felt his left knee begin to quiver. To cover it, he went over to a bar and cracked open a bottle of vintage Cuervo, making a ceremony of pouring four fingers into a crystal glass with the logo of the Cherokee Nation Trust on the side.

  Everyone let him fumble around for a while, but once he got settled into a big leather chair and opened his mouth to start in on one of his prepared speeches, the man called Coker lifted up a remote and aimed it at the big flat-screen Samsung above the fireplace.

  It bloomed into light and everybody was looking at a picture of Twyla and her sister, Bluebell, both girls obviously in their very early teens, together at the entrance to a large tiled shower area, arms folded across their breasts, naked, engaged in what looked like some serious girl chat. No one said anything.

  Morgan Littlebasket swallowed hard a few times, worked out what he was going to say, opened his mouth to say it, but Twyla cut him short.

  “Don’t, Dad. Just … don’t.”

  Littlebasket looked over at her, composed his features into a semblance of outrage.

  “Twyla, why are you showing me these nasty—”

  Twyla held up a hand, nodded to Coker, who pressed the FORWARD button, rapidly flicking through a series of images taken over a period of years, shots obviously copied from a larger digital file, but clear enough, color shots of the girls—alone, together, occasionally with their dead mother, Lucy—in their bathroom, doing all manner of things that all people
do in their bathrooms, and in each shot the girls were growing older, filling out, blooming, as if the shots were taken from a time-lapse film of two naked young girls turning into grown-up women.

  No one spoke.

  Coker never looked away from the screen, Charlie never looked at it, instead fixing his hard flat stare on Morgan.

  Twyla had never taken her eyes off her father, and her father, after a few frames, was staring into his tequila glass, his shoulders slumping, his hands shaking, his breathing labored and heavy.

  After a while Twyla held up a hand and Coker shut the flat screen down.

  Twyla walked over and looked down at the top of her father’s head.

  “Look at me, Dad.”

  Littlebasket slowly raised his old bull buffalo head, his glazy eyes wet, his large mouth sagging.

  “Say that you did this.”

  He shook his head, mouth working, but only a small squeaky whisper came out.

  “I didn’t hear that,” said Twyla, in a low whisper, her head cocked to one side, her expression as white and hard as quartz, her eyes burning.

  Littlebasket tried again.

  “Your mother … Lucy … she asked me to. It was only for … your safety … in case you fell down—”

  Crack.

  No one saw the move. Just a blur, but the sound of the slap filled the room like a whip crack. She followed through, Morgan reeling, and brought it back fast and mean at the end of the arc, raking him across the left cheek with the back of her hand, a well-aimed strike from a very strong, very angry young woman. Blood came out of her father’s open mouth, his teeth showing red with it as he stared up at her.

  “Don’t even try to blame Mom for this, you shit-heel fucking coward. Say that you did this.”

  A silence, while the old man moved his lips, his eyes darting around the room, as if rescue was at hand.