The wake-up

by Robert Ferrigno

  "Yes?" The woman stared at him. Lovely woman… but she wasn't Kimberly.

  "Sorry." Thorpe backed off, embarrassed, beelined over to a coffee stand, and ordered a Mexican-style espresso.

  The heavyset woman behind the counter levered out the inky brew from a stainless-steel manual machine, using two hands. She added a dash of cocoa and three sugar cubes to the cardboard cup, then took his three singles for the coffee. She rang up the sale, tore off the register receipt, showed it to him. "You got a red star. Coffee's on the house. You're a lucky man."

  "You're a lucky man," said the plastic surgeon for the fifth or sixth time.

  "If I was lucky, I wouldn't have been shot," gasped Thorpe.

  "You're lucky that someone of my skill is working on you," said the surgeon as he examined Thorpe's gunshot wound. "Working solo, too, no anesthesiologist or surgical nurse in attendance… Let those ER butchers try doing that." He shook his head. "You tell Billy we're even now."

  Thorpe closed his eyes. Stretched out on the table, an IV in his arm, he wasn't about to tell the surgeon that Billy was retired. He could feel the man's fingers probing his flesh.

  "That hurt?" asked the surgeon. "I had to be cautious with the anesthetic; it's not my area of expertise." He chuckled. "I can promise you a beautiful scar, however."

  "I'm a lucky man."

  "Told you."

  The lights were bright, even through his closed eyelids, but something nagged at Thorpe. It had been bothering him the whole drive over, but he just couldn't remember what it was. The surgeon chattered away, but Thorpe was drifting, hearing bullets whizzing past him in the parking lot, and car doors slamming. He remembered racing through traffic, and the Engineer turning around to see if they were being followed. He must have groaned out loud with the memory.

  "Hang on," said the surgeon.

  Thorpe could still see Kimberly leaning against the Jeep, and lying there in the operating room, he got a whiff of her perfume. He fought to stay awake. Her fragrance was fainter now, and he tried to hang on to her, but she was walking away, walking back to the safe house with the Engineer. Thorpe sat up. The surgeon tried to push him down, but Thorpe shook him off, grabbed his cell phone from the counter.

  "Are you trying to kill yourself?" asked the surgeon.

  Thorpe listened to the phone ring. The Engineer's gait had changed slightly as he and Kimberly approached the house, become almost jaunty, and at the top of the steps, he had looked back at Thorpe. It had lasted only a moment, and Thorpe was bleeding and desperate to leave, but there was something wrong with his expression.

  The surgeon fiddled with the anesthetic drip that ran into Thorpe's arm.

  The phone clicked. "Kimberly!" Thorpe's tongue felt thick. "The Engineer. He's not… he's not right."

  "None of us are," said the Engineer. He had lost all trace of his Italian accent. "Look at Kimberly. A little liar, that's all she was. And you, Frank, so cocky before, all that razzle-dazzle. You don't sound so fearless now."

  "Let me… speak to Kimberly."

  "Say 'Please.' "

  "Please, don't hurt her." Thorpe dragged the surgeon closer. "The safe house… 911."

  "Where are you, Frank?" asked the Engineer.

  Thorpe licked his lips. "The Fuck You Hilton."

  "That's the spirit."

  Thorpe floated on a vast black lake. He felt the surgeon take the phone from him. Someone was sobbing, the sound sending ripples across the water.

  "Mister?" The woman at the coffee stand was holding out his three dollars. "I told you-your coffee is free."

  Thorpe shoved the money into his pocket, walked away without a word, still hearing the Engineer's last words. He sat down at one of the nearby tables, more convinced than ever that this vacation was a mistake, a retreat, not a respite. Kimberly was dead and the Engineer was alive, and no vacation was going to change that. Not that staying home presented much hope. He had laid out the bait for the Engineer, offered himself up without success, and Thorpe had grown tired of waiting.

  Thorpe sipped the thick sweetened coffee and watched the people streaming past. Commuters double-timing it, laptops swinging with every step. Grandmothers with too many carry-on plastic bags, tissues tucked into their sleeves. College girls in Stanford sweatshirts, sorority tattoos discreetly stitched onto their ankles, easily hidden when they joined the PTA in a few years. A woman caught his attention, a middle-aged woman sitting at a nearby table, her cup of frozen yogurt melting while she tracked the line waiting at the security checkpoint. An earpiece was almost hidden by her hair. Ten demerits for the almost. She looked over, but he didn't react, his expression of practiced boredom deflecting any further interest in him.

  Practiced boredom was a specialty of the shop. They had even used it on him, sending some weary desk jockey with fine gray hair to sit on his bed in the plastic surgeon's recovery room, the man plucking at the bedsheet while he told Thorpe that his services were no longer required. All that surveillance, and you didn't ID the main player, Frank. How do you think that makes us look? The desk jockey yawned. I won't even mention the mess at the safe house. Thorpe had beckoned the man closer, said he couldn't hear him, but the desk jockey kept his distance, tossed Thorpe an envelope stuffed with cash.

  The woman whom Thorpe had mistaken for Kimberly walked slowly past, checking her flight ticket, looking lost. It wasn't the first time Thorpe had seen Kimberly since she had been killed. He saw her running along the beach, he saw her waiting in line at the new John Woo movie, and once, in the produce department at Ralph's, he had seen her trying to select a ripe cantaloupe. He knew it wasn't really her. The photos taken at the safe house were proof enough. He knew it wasn't her, but he always made sure anyway.

  Thorpe still didn't know how the Engineer had pulled it off. He had observed Lazurus and his crew for months. Lazurus was a thug, violent and obscene and heavily guarded; the few phone intercepts had caught him raging, giving orders to subordinates who were desperate to please, fearful of his wrath. Lazurus might have thought he was the boss, but the man running the operation was the Engineer; that soft, pink technocrat, the faintly ridiculous Engineer with his puppy love and awkward manners. Lazurus was just an unwitting stand-in, another patsy who never knew what hit him. If it hadn't been for the carnage at the safe house, Thorpe would have applauded the charade.

  Some poor bastard pushed a baby stroller down the concourse, one kid in the stroller crying, another one slung against his chest, sleeping. Dear old Dad was sweating in droopy jeans and a stained polo shirt, thinning hair plastered across his scalp, and looking happier than he had any right to. It always amazed Thorpe. Where did that happiness come from?

  No kids for Thorpe. No friends or family, either. He didn't even have an ex-wife to bitch about, to call in the middle of the night, drunk and lonely, talking about the good times that neither of them remembered. He didn't have anyone. Kimberly was the closest he had come, and she was dead. Fourteen years in uniform, the last ten in Delta Force, sent on missions he couldn't talk about, and then came the shop, with its secret mental compartments. Thorpe was the neighbor you called at 4:00 a.m. when your car broke down in the middle of nowhere, the one who would come and get you, and not tell you to check your oil once in awhile. Then one day his apartment would be empty and he would be gone, with no forwarding address. Sudden departures and no emotional entanglements were part of the appeal of the job, an essential part of the pay package. The shop gave him an excuse to be who he really was. It was a lousy trade-off.

  Angry at himself, angry at the Engineer, angry at the sun and moon and stars, Thorpe finished the coffee in a quick swallow, then headed toward the escalator. Maybe the kid by the luggage carousel had mango slices for sale. Thorpe jiggled the empty cardboard cup as he walked, listening to the sugar cubes rattle around like blind dice.

  A businessman in a blue suit walked rapidly down the escalator, elbowed Thorpe aside without a word, and kept moving. Thorpe forced himself to stay put. I
n his present mood, once he started, he might not be able to stop. He watched the businessman's crocodile briefcase swinging as the man plowed down the escalator, a real hard charger.

  The kid was still by the door, at his post. He held out the tray, called to the businessman. Without breaking stride, the businessman smacked away the kid's tray with his briefcase, a solid roundhouse blow, scattering gum and candy, the kid stumbling backward onto the floor, blood streaming down his face. The businessman stalked out through the sliding glass doors.

  Thorpe chased after the businessman, double-timing it, but a skycap cut him off with a line of carts, the skycap oblivious, talking on a cell phone. By the time Thorpe got outside, the hard charger had stepped into a waiting red Porsche convertible, a beautiful blonde behind the wheel. Thorpe watched them roar off, the blonde's hair floating behind her in the sunshine. She kissed the man as she accelerated into traffic, kissed him hard and deep, horns blaring around them, the blonde not caring. The hard charger didn't kiss her back, just lolled against the headrest and let her do all the work.

  Inside, the kid was on his knees, picking up his goods. "You okay?" asked Thorpe, bending down beside him, helping gather the breath mints and scattered sticks of gum, piling them into the tray. "?Esta bien, nino?"

  The kid didn't answer; he was busy organizing the gum and candy in his tray, stacking them up, his hands shaking. The edge of the tray, or maybe the briefcase, had split his upper lip, and blood was leaking from his nose, too. His T-shirt was spattered, Mickey Mouse's innocent grin stained with red. The kid kept blinking, cheeks flushed, as humiliated as he was hurt, and Thorpe knew that look. The kid didn't cry, though. Not one tear. Thorpe had a few medals in a safety-deposit box. He would have given them all to the kid if it could have done any good.

  Thorpe dabbed at the blood with a tissue. "?Esta bien, vato?"

  The kid still didn't answer, and Thorpe could see anger in his eyes now, recognized it, too, seeing not a sudden fury that faded as rapidly as it came, but something colder and more dangerous. All those so-called experts, Ph.D. numbnuts who thought personality changes were the result of a slow accretion of experience, were wrong. It just took one false move to fuck you forever.

  "?Como se llama?" Thorpe said gently. "Me llamo Frank." He kept himself at eye level with the kid, nodded to the door the hard charger had gone through. "Este hombre es un estupida. Un porque."

  The kid got to his feet, holding on to the tray, his gaze unwavering now. Tiger, tiger, burning bright, thought Thorpe. He and Thorpe were two of a kind now, and it was the saddest thing Thorpe had ever seen in a child. "Me llamo Paulo Rodriguez," the kid said, edging away.

  Thorpe watched Paulo go, watched him until he disappeared deeper into the airport. The hard charger had stolen something from the boy, something only the hard charger could give back. Thorpe turned toward the luggage carousel, saw his bag going round and round, and knew he wasn't going on vacation. Not today. He had glimpsed only the license plate of the red Porsche as it sped off, just caught a flash of numbers, but it had been enough. Old habits, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Thorpe grabbed his bag, then went outside and hailed a cab. Time to go home and give the hard charger a wake-up.

  2

  "What are you doing back here?" Claire wiggled her toes at Thorpe as she reclined in a blue wading pool set onto the grass at the center of the courtyard. Her yellow leopard-print tank suit contrasted with her deep tan, her short dark hair sprouting in all directions. "I thought you were on your way to Miami."

  "Poor boy couldn't bear to leave us," chirped Pam, her roommate, a slim hennaed redhead in a string bikini. She toasted Thorpe with a can of light beer, water sloshing over the edge of the pool and onto the grass. "Welcome home, lonesome."

  Thorpe closed the gate to the apartment complex, walked toward them. Claire watched him approach from under her sun visor, one leg cocked.

  "Come on in and take a dip," invited Pam, tugging on her top. Eleven a.m. and her eyes were already bloodshot.

  "There's not room in there for an anchovy," said Thorpe.

  "She didn't get a callback," explained Claire, and Thorpe wondered if she had spotted some telltale sign of his disapproval.

  "It was just a stupid suntan oil commercial," said Pam. "Not even one line."

  "Everything okay, Frank?" asked Claire.

  Thorpe idly touched his side, felt the scar, the two of them making eye contact. "Fine. I just needed to postpone the vacation for a few days… a week at the most." He walked into his apartment. He could still hear the music from poolside. He took his laptop out of the suitcase, set up on the kitchen table, and logged on to the Net, the connection made with a prepaid cell phone. Thorpe didn't believe in landlines or phone numbers with his name on the bill. His fingers clicked over the keys. The only e-mail was from Billy.

  "Still no sign of the Engineer. Come see me, Frank. You have to be getting bored," it read.

  Thorpe wasn't surprised at the message, but he was still disappointed. Billy had run the shop since its creation. He had been Thorpe's recruiter, his rabbi, his protector-Billy tolerated Thorpe's insubordination, his disdain for proper channels, his failure to ask permission. All Billy cared about were results, and Thorpe got results. A year ago, Billy had quit without a word to anyone. There had just been a memo from Hendricks, the new boss, saying Billy had left to spend more time with his wife and children. A joke typical of Hendricks. Billy was gay. He had as much of a family as Thorpe did.

  Billy might have left the shop, but he was still connected. The day Thorpe came home from the plastic surgeon's office, Billy had sent him an e-mail, advised him to stay away from fried foods, and offered him a job. Thorpe turned down the job, but he had sent an e-mail back with a request. It was a major request, but Billy had made it sound like a very small favor. Typical Billy: dismiss the hook, and thereby sink it deeper.

  "Still no sign of the Engineer. Come see me, Frank. You have to be getting bored."

  Thorpe spiked the message, sent it into the void with all the other invitations from Billy. Invitations to breakfast or golf, Vegas jaunts and sailing cruises, all with invisible strings, all declined. Thorpe missed the work, but he didn't miss Billy. Thorpe had never made the mistake of thinking they were friends.

  Through the sheer curtains, Thorpe had a clear view of the iron gate to the courtyard of his apartment complex, Los Castillos-six detached mission-style bungalows with white stucco walls and red barrel-tile roofs. Los Castillos was just off Redondo Boulevard in Belmont Shore, a kick-back beach town just south of Long Beach, a first-names-only place, where bartenders dreamed of selling screenplays and temp workers were convinced they were at least as talented as Julia Roberts. Everyone was waiting to be discovered, but not working too hard at it. It was an easy place to get lost in, and Thorpe felt right at home.

  His apartment and utilities were billed to one of his fake identities, Frank Deleone, an infant who had died in a car accident outside Bakersfield almost forty years ago. The shop didn't know his fake name or where he lived. Neither did Billy. He didn't think so anyway. You could drive yourself nuts trying to achieve perfect security.

  Thorpe wandered over to the window, watched Claire and Pam lounge in the pool, the boom box pounding out the latest Marshall Mathers, Claire's toe ring moving to the beat. He went back to the laptop. He missed the shop, the ease with which he could call up information on anyone, and, even more than that, the ability to put that information to good use, to make things happen. "To take arms against a sea of troubles"… fuckin' A. It was all gone now, access denied, his pass codes invalid.

  Good thing Thorpe had a backup. A man without a backup was a man who overestimated God and underestimated the devil; that's what his father used to say. Frank Thorpe was just a spectator now, but Frank Deleone had a valid California life- and casualty-insurance license. Thorpe had actually taken the state exam, which was dull beyond belief, but insurance companies had more complete databases than most police departments,
the computation of premiums and risk requiring more rigorous cross-checking than crime and punishment.

  Thorpe entered his password into an industry search engine, plugged in the license number of the red Porsche. The computer cursor flashed while he waited, and he wondered again why he was here, instead of on a plane to Miami. Strange the things our fates turned on: a kid selling gum and candy, a hard charger in a hurry, and a beached spook with a bad attitude. There wasn't an astrologer on the planet that could have predicted the confluence of events that had put him back in business, but here he was.

  Not that Thorpe had any intention of doing the hard charger any permanent damage. No reason to go full court. Thorpe was just going to give him a wake-up. That's what they called it in the shop when you wanted to send a message, a love tap to prod a source, to remind a restless contact of his vulnerability. A hotel receipt placed under a married man's pillow or an "insufficient funds" hold placed on a Cayman Islands bank account worked wonders. Thorpe just wanted to get the hard charger's attention, to show him how quickly the storm clouds could roll in on his sunny world. Just a little wake-up.

  The computer screen blinked. Halley Jean Anderson was the registered owner of the Porsche. Twenty-four years old, unmarried. Three speeding tickets in the last two years flagged her in the high-risk category. A year of community college, no degree. Resided in Corona del Mar for the last three months. Swanky address. Employment: consultant at Meachum Fine Arts, Newport Beach, for that same last three months. Thorpe felt the familiar tingle in his fingertips, like playing draw poker and knowing you had caught the inside straight without even checking. You just knew. Maybe Halley Anderson had a trust fund, but he didn't think so. Girls with a trust fund didn't go to community college.