Fall Out

by M. N. Grenside

  “You aren’t a star without one. Louis is so smart. They’re nearly all his,” she had told him.

  Tyler’s hunch was right. Louis was ripping him off.

  * * *

  “Good afternoon, Tyler,” said Louis shaking the big man’s hand. “She turned me down. She knows where her best interest lies. I’ve just been watching over her,” he added wondering if Tyler knew she’d bang his whole team of polo players at the drop of a hat. No surprise there. Old habits die hard, Louis mused to himself.

  “Honey, if you two are going to discuss my career, I’ll hang right here.” She looked at them both. Their faces were expressionless.

  “Fine, then I’ll be over at Sarah’s Point,” she said referring to the pasture named after Will Roger’s pet Brahma bull. “Need to check out our ‘string’.”

  With that she flounced off towards the team of bronzed riders, the spring breeze rippling the polo shirts against the riders’ muscular torsos. Tyler couldn’t have cared less. She’d been much cheaper and more effective than an auditor. Studio cutbacks! Where else was this bastard stealing from him? He would no doubt eventually find out, but bigger issues had arisen that needed to be dealt with immediately.

  “Whatever dispute you may or may not be having with your ex-partner Haribon Guinto has nothing to do with my associates,” Tyler spoke in a flat but dangerous tone, as he bit the end of a Cohiba Esplendidos.

  Louis feigned shock. His contact at Immigration Services had caused trouble. If there was one thing sure to rile Tyler and his associates it would be inspection by any government agency.

  “We’ve had U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on our back,” continued Tyler, “saying we’re employing a number of illegals. Then what? Those clowns are gonna throw in a coupla’ criminals on our books next? They are rumbling about going over our books, threatening subpoenas. Next thing you know it’ll be Homeland Security shouting terrorists. This has to do with you and Haribon Guinto. We don’t appreciate being implicated.” Louis could hardly miss the clear threat in Tyler’s voice.

  “I’m sorry Tyler, Haribon Guinto’s dripping poison into someone’s ear at Immigration. He has a long reach. He’s obviously pulling you in to get to me. We have to stop him.”

  “Louis, I passed on Guinto’s business. He’s your problem,” he said clearly. “This ends now.”

  Louis shrugged. “If Guinto thinks the immigration card and those guys at USCIS can bring me down, he’ll make it difficult for everyone, including you,” he said. There was a pause. Tyler turned to leave but Louis quickly added, “Just hear me out.”

  Tyler hesitated and gave a sigh. “OK. Give it your best shot, Louis.”

  “Haribon is a big player, but weak. For you and your friends, it’s too good an opportunity. Real estate, leisure, casinos, movie theaters, cable TV. No shareholders. Just one man. There is no competition if he is taken out. Once done, you move in and I’ll fade away. Retirement beckons,” Louis said. “This new market and Haribon Guinto’s empire is my gift to you. It’s the doorway into the rest of Asia.” Louis sensed a slight change in Tyler, a flicker of doubt. Louis had him.

  “Let me make a few calls. Perhaps I could send someone over… for a look-see,” said Tyler.

  “It has to be quick, Tyler, before anything else heats up,” replied a confident Louis. “I have all the details.”

  As the Polo teams returned to battle on the green expanse of the playing field, Louis agreed to email Tyler the necessary information, hoping he was elegantly nailing down the lid on Haribon’s coffin once and for all.

  All Louis needed to complete a perfect day was confirmation that Jonathan had been successful with today’s assignments. Then everything would be back on track.

  50

  TOPANGA CANYON, LOS ANGELES

  Christo slowly stepped down out of his battered Land Rover and started to unload the small trailer. There were over half a dozen bags of fertilizer and a collection of small cacti. It was early morning; the sun was just coming up.

  The cacti were to have been an anniversary present for Robert later that month; one for each year he’d been clean and sober.

  * * *

  A few years earlier Christo had arranged with the American Rose Society to name a rose after Robert’s elderly mother, who was slipping away with Parkinson’s disease.

  The gesture had been greatly appreciated by the old lady and she filled the small garden outside her room at the San Clemente nursing home with ‘Hannah Kelso Blush.’ A floribunda, the bushes were bursting with bi-color blooms of luscious white, with deep pink borders. The aroma was light and with the doors opened to her patio, the evening onshore breeze had filled her room with its perfume. She died a short time later, her small bedroom filled with the scent of the flowers named after her.

  “Don’t even think of naming a flower after me,” Robert warned on the drive back after the quiet funeral.

  Christo looked at him.

  “I’m sorry that was thoughtless…” Robert said quietly, “You remember rehab… flowers can bring back bad memories…”

  “Ungrateful prick,” Christo muttered.

  “Now there’s a name for a rose,” Robert countered.

  It had taken Christo over six months to persuade the Southern Cactus Growers Association to allow him the privilege of naming a strand of organ pipe cacti after the once-famous movie director. He had received notification they were ready to be picked up when he arrived back from France. The press interest in him had started to wane after days of ‘no comment’ along with the willingness of other people to crawl out of the woodwork to talk about ‘the late great Robert Kelso’.

  The only other message was from the local police. A few questions, but it seemed that Detective Inspector Groelet of the Cannes Police had done a good job of handing over all responsibility for the case to others; it was now a matter for Interpol. Of course, Christo could have let fly with stories about Sam’s script but he had decided not to. That meeting with Cara had helped him make up his mind.

  He was genuinely scared, being pretty certain that bringing up anything related to Sam’s script or what could be pieced together would come to the attention of the wrong kind of powerful people. Long before the local cops got even halfway round to figuring out what was going on, he and Cara would be dead in a ditch somewhere. The fact that someone might eventually piece it all together would be no consolation.

  Christo was getting out. He had put the house on the market and was expecting his first viewing that afternoon. The cacti would be planted right down at the end of the garden as a memorial to the man who had once lived here.

  As he reached into the back of the truck, he felt a sting on his arm. Cursing, he started to pull back to look at the puncture mark he assumed one of the cactus spines had made. As he did so he felt another sharp sting, then another.

  He heard the tell-tale rattle and saw the three sets of bite marks in his arm. The diamond-back rattlesnakes slithered out from behind the plants in the trailer. The loading area was alive with them sliding their way over the plants and tools.

  His earlier experiences had taught him what he needed to do. After escaping Allentown and before settling in southern California he had first worked in the desert on an illicit marijuana farm in the Devil Ridge Mountains south of El Paso. If you were bitten out there and didn’t know what to do, you were dead.

  It was his time at ‘the farm’ that had turned him to working in rehab. It wasn’t the drugs themselves, but the ruthless bastards who ran the place. They mercilessly picked on the shy young man from the north and jeered at him for his sexuality. The idea of preventing lowlife scum like them from becoming any richer had become a crusade for him.

  Christo knew the most important thing was to remain calm and not to panic or run. A fast-beating heart would speed up the poison coursing through his bloodstream and kill him before he could do anything. He needed the antivenin, which he always kept up at the house as a precaution. The serum
needed to be drip fed into a bite victim for thirty minutes at least. On his own it would take him some time to set up, so he had to act now and try to remove at least some of the poison.

  He reached into the cab and grabbed his water canteen and a handful of tissues. He quickly undid the top of the container. He took the Kleenex and scrunched them into the tin drinking cup and quickly placed it over the first set of puncture wounds. He pulled a lighter from his jeans and, lifting the edge of the cup, lit the tissues. As the paper burst into flames, he pushed the container back over the wound, the heat creating an airtight vacuum between his arm and the cup, which gradually began to suck the poison out of the bite. He began walking back to the house, his wounded arm held out in front of him. As he walked, he poured the water from the canteen over the other two bite marks. Nevertheless the swelling was already very pronounced.

  Clap. Clap. Clap.

  Christo looked up to see Jonathan staring at him with a smirk on his lips. His heartbeat quickened, recognizing Jonathan at once. “Desert survival for snakebite. Who’d have thought a simple gay gardener knew such things?”

  Christo at first froze to the spot. As Jonathan slowly picked his way down the hillside towards him like a cat approaching his prey, Christo knew that to stand still was also a death sentence.

  He made a decision and went for it, hoping to slip between Jonathan and the open veranda doors, locking Jonathan out. It was uphill and the sun was hot. Within a short distance the poison began to take effect; breathing became difficult and he began to drool. As paralysis started to set in, Jonathan pounced. He knelt over Christo, who was lying on the ground slowly losing consciousness.

  “Let me help,” whispered Jonathan.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small hypodermic, injecting pure adrenalin mixed with snake venom into one of the bite marks.

  With his heart now racing and his body racked with pain, the last thing Christo saw was Jonathan reaching down with heavily gloved hands to gather up the snakes slithering around the trailer. Jonathan smacked at them then dropped them hissing on Christo’s bare forearms.

  The dust on Christo’s shoes and his footprints in the soil would show he had made the fatal mistake of panicking after being bitten. Jonathan walked back once again to Christo’s 4x4, casually reached into the back of the trailer and picked out a rake. He carefully covered over his own footsteps as he walked up the path to the drive and out onto the main road where he had parked the car.

  The realtor who showed up three hours later had not found her client waiting as agreed nor anybody answering the doorbell, so she wandered into the back garden, looking for him. She had spoken to the prospective purchaser over the phone and Jonathan was pretty sure she would not remember much about him; certainly, the name he had given her was false. The only time she ever met the seller was when she threw up over him after discovering his twisted body lying in the dust.

  51

  GENEVA, SWITZERLAND

  “I just don’t understand. What’s the significance of the head?” Mako’s voice was still weak, but the grayness in her skin was slowly disappearing. Remarkably, her skin was not damaged, only off color. Since leaving Nisten two hours ago, Mako had drifted in and out of sleep, drowsy from the drugs and the effort her body was putting into fighting the poison.

  “It was enough to kill for,” Marcus said over the drone of the engine. “Your dad never mentioned it?”

  “I don’t think so… no, never. You notice anything special about the head?” Mako asked.

  “A large Buddha head. Made from stone. Some kind of markings that covered the base and unbelievably heavy. When did you work out it was Ringo?”

  “When you were sleeping last night. Something was nagging me; didn’t look right. Then I remembered he was an archer, had a quiver on his back, so why carry the weapon of the select bodyguard of the emperor? A bodyguard, not an archer. He was protecting something special. Seemed a typical clue from my father,” she shrugged.

  “In future can we share little things like that?” He asked dryly. “At the time I wasn’t aware it carried a death sentence.” She looked over and gave a wan smile. “Probably just as well I don’t tell you everything or you’d never have gone for the axe.”

  She leant over and planted the softest of kisses on his cheek, more like the beat of a butterfly’s wings.

  “Proud of you. Thank you. That’s twice you’ve saved my life.”

  “Can we at least try to keep it to two times rather than go for the more traditional fairy tale three times?”

  She smiled and gave a yawn. She was recovering fast. “So, where are we headed?”

  “Geneva. Lots of people. Easy to leave. Safe to think. We both know we have two options. Run and hide or…,”

  “… face the demons,” Mako finished. She looked out into the valley below bathed in the late afternoon glow.

  Marcus paused hoping she would pick up the logic in his train of thought. “The airport, we can fly out…”

  “You mean go to where this started?” said Mako at last getting his drift.

  He knew it was their only choice.

  “Yup. Back to the heart of all this, back to the Philippines and Pagsanjan.”

  Mako looked at him for a beat.

  “Agreed. Geneva airport it is,” she said. An easy decision for her. “You sure? You still look like shit,” he asked, wanting to be certain.

  “A date with you is a riot of compliments.” She paused and her tone changed. “I don’t run,” she said emphatically. And despite your smart-ass comments covering up your fears, you don’t either, Marcus, she thought to herself. She gave him a friendly little punch, wincing slightly as her injured hand made contact. “We fight.”

  She was the toughest person he had ever met.

  * * *

  A few hours later he swung the car into the long-term car park on the Swiss side of Geneva Airport. He parked the Maserati, pulled out their bags and gently helped Mako out of her seat. As a security measure and with no idea when he would be back, he flipped the battery ‘kill switch’ hidden above the passenger foot well.

  “Steal it now and you’d have to tow it,” he explained.

  They went into the airport and headed to the information desk.

  They needed to track down two tickets to Manila.

  There was an Etihad Airways flight leaving at the end of the following day to Manila via Dubai. They needed a rest so that worked perfectly. Marcus was worried about Mako, and he had a few ideas he wanted to check out in peace. They stood at the desk surreptitiously unrolling some bank notes from the substantial bundle they had found in Stefan de Turris’ house.

  “We’ll take the tickets please. Where’s the best place to stay near the airport?” Marcus asked after handing over the wad of notes.

  The woman at the counter recommended a hotel. “We have a special rate with them, shall I call?”

  “Thank you. Tell ’em we’re on the way,” Marcus said and turning to Mako added, “You need to lie down.”

  “Madame is unwell?” enquired the woman at the counter barely looking up counting the bills, as the tickets spewed out of the machine on her desk.

  “A little hung-over. We’re on honeymoon,” Marcus explained with a sheepish grin as he grabbed the tickets and headed towards the exit and a taxi ride to the hotel.

  Mako’s shocked expression said it all.

  “It’s an explanation for how we look, buys us sympathy, and gets us privacy,” he whispered in Mako’s ear.

  Marcus was not even close.

  52

  SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA

  It was 8:00 a.m. and Cara was packed. She wasn’t running, she tried to reason to herself, just needed time to get away and think. She needed somewhere safe and out of the country, so she had picked a retreat in the Andes. She wasn’t sure which event had hit her hardest: Sam’s death, the revelations in FALL OUT, the truth about Jonathan, or the murders of Marcus and Robert. She’d told Christo h
e needed to get away and lie low as well.

  “I have one last thing to do in Robert’s memory, then I’m gone,” he’d said.

  For so long she had wanted to believe that the disastrous final moments of THE LAST COMPANY were all down to Bill’s bravery, his belief in himself. If he hadn’t been so insistent on going after the dailies, maybe none of this would have happened. Now she had let go of that explanation, yielding to what she had always suspected. It was a lie. His death was part of a bigger plan, a small yet crucial role in a different story.

  She looked up at the kitchen clock as the doorbell rang and Cato scoffed up the last of his breakfast.

  “C’mon Cato,” she said over her shoulder as she reached to unhook his lead that hung by the kitchen door.

  “That will be Bella. She’s early. Momma’s off for a few days of R&R. Be good,” she said as she slipped the harness around the little dog’s barrel like chest. “Coming,” she said as she crossed the hall.

  She pulled open the door and locked eyes with a Filipino standing impassively in her doorway, a gun in his hand.

  53

  GENEVA, SWITZERLAND

  All Marcus and Mako wanted was to check in discreetly at the hotel. However, having been tipped off by the airport ticket agent who had assumed their look of exhaustion was down to enthusiastic lovemaking from the first few nights of being married, the reception desk staff made a great fuss on their arrival. They were greeted by a round of applause from the staff, offered a suite at a special rate, flowers, and champagne – all compliments of the management.