“You try those medicated pads?”
“I need some time off the anal. That’s all.”
“The pads work.”
“I don’t want to do any more anal.”
Lono nodded. Jessica, the beautiful Korean girl who didn’t want to do any more anal, adjusted her silicone-enlarged breasts in her tight leather bikini top and licked her lips.
“I want to book more three-ways.”
Lono nodded. Now she was thinking. He could charge more than twice for a threesome and it took almost the same amount of time. Besides, most times the clients just wanted to fuck each other but needed the prostitute there for reassurance.
“I’ll see what I can do. Will you do anal in a three-way?”
Jessica nodded. “If I have to.”
Lono looked over at Terika, a lithe young woman with hair dyed a honey blond.
“What about you?”
Terika squirmed in her seat. She was nervous. “I’ll do anal. Three-way, fifty-fifty, whatever you want me to do.”
“Thanks.”
“But I was wondering if I could have Christmas off this year.”
Lono stared at her. He didn’t say anything. Normally he would’ve scolded her. Christmas was one of the busiest times of the year. He could have Terika bringing in three or four thousand dollars a night during the holiday crush.
“Why?”
“I want to go see my grandma in Detroit. She’s ninety-two.”
Jessica flashed her eyes at Terika. She gave her a look that said, You’re wasting your time, girlfriend. But Lono surprised them.
“Go see your grandma. It’ll be all right.”
The women exchanged surprised expressions. Not that Lono was a hard ass or unreasonable, but he did maintain a level of professionalism that was unusual in the flesh-peddling biz.
“Thanks, Lono. Really. That’s awesome.”
Lono smiled. “Merry Christmas.”
Jessica, sensing magnanimity in the air, leaned forward. “I don’t like it when they pee on me.”
Lono’s expression changed. He didn’t like opportunists.
“It washes off.”
Terika elbowed Jessica. “We better go. Heavy schedule tonight.”
Lono nodded and watched them as they got up and left. Although they were looking exceptionally good, especially Terika, with her round firm ass moving in her leather skirt like some kind of jungle cat, Lono couldn’t get Yuki off his mind. His voice mail was full, normally something that would’ve made him smile, only now it seemed like an anchor strapped to his leg, keeping him from spending time with her. All he wanted to do was rip off his clothes and crawl into bed and make love.
It hadn’t always been that way. You work in the sex trade too long and it can warp your mind. You become like any other merchant. Rugs, used cars, surfboards, jewelry, drugs, pussy: It’s all merchandise. You stop thinking of women as people, as human beings. They become commodities, objects of supply and demand. And there is always a demand for sex.
Sometimes he thought of himself as a simple farmer selling pineapples along the roadside. You find the ripest, juiciest fruit and display it for the customers. If people like your product they pass the word along. You get repeat customers, regulars. Soon you carve out a share of the market and you’re in business.
It wasn’t that simple, of course, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to be a successful pimp. The downside, if you don’t get busted, was personal. Lono had begun to see sexual desire as a weakness. A character flaw. Something that must be resisted at all costs. How many good Christians had he seen commit adultery, hundreds? How many marriages had been destroyed by the siren call of his girls, dozens? How many bankruptcies had been declared because someone was spending all his money enslaved to a fantasy?
If whoring was the world’s oldest profession, it was created by desire, the world’s first impulse buy. You couldn’t have one without the other.
Lono wasn’t weak. He couldn’t be. If he appeared fragile or indecisive or looked for a second like he didn’t have his shit together big-time, someone would move in on him: take him out, put a bullet in his brain or a knife in his back, and start running his girls. It was, after all, a cutthroat business.
To cope with the pressures of pimping, Lono thought of himself as one of the Jedi knights in the Star Wars movies. He liked their loner rebel attitude. It inspired him. It wasn’t like the nerdy do-gooders on Star Trek. The Jedi were unflappably cool. They could be surrounded by beautiful women or storm troopers from the Death Star; either way, they didn’t break a sweat. They used their mental strength to defeat their enemies and stay on the path of righteousness. Lono believed his preservation lay on that path, so he became like a Jedi. A Jedi pimp.
And then Yuki entered his life.
...
Jack bumped his walker along the hallway until he reached a couple of steps.
“You couldn’t find an office with a fucking ramp?”
“We’ll put one in later.”
Stanley held out his hand and Jack reluctantly took it. What else was he going to do, sit there?
“I don’t ask for much.”
Jack wanted to yell some more, but he had to concentrate on the stairs. He raised one leg and then leaned his body to drag the other one up. It took a long time to climb two little steps.
“There’s a great view. You can see the ocean.”
“We’re on a fuckin’ island. Any way you turn there’s gonna be ocean. It’s like tellin’ me our office in Vegas is good ’cause we can see the desert.”
“I like the ocean.”
Stanley was defensive. Normally Jack would’ve gone on the attack, yelling at his son, trying to toughen him up for the day he’d be taking over the business and taking on the world, but today Jack wasn’t feeling up to it. He was preoccupied with thoughts of a pissed-off renegade hitman coming for his money.
“Hand me my walker.”
Even Stanley sensed a change. “Long flight, huh?”
“Yeah, it was long. I’m flyin’ to the middle of fuckin’ nowhere and they only had old bags for stewardesses.”
By old bags, Jack meant women over the age of thirty-five.
“Did you talk to the union?”
Jack nodded. “Those cocksuckers are worthless.”
“What’d they say?”
“The new guy, Paul Rossi, is a fucking fag.”
“They told you that?”
Jack looked at his son. “Not in those words. You gotta read between the lines.”
Stanley heaved a sigh. Why was his father so difficult? Why was it always nicer when he wasn’t around?
“What did he say?”
“He said no.”
“No?”
Jack nodded. “That’s what the big man on campus said.”
“So what’re we gonna do?”
“I was trying to arrange an alternative. That’s why I needed the money wired ASAP.” Jack sounded tired.
“What kind of alternative?”
“The kind you don’t want to know about.”
Stanley crossed his arms and looked his father in the eye. “Dad, I want to help. But you’ve got to let me in on it.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
Jack realized that Stanley wasn’t going to budge, so he changed the subject.
“You got the phones working?”
“Of course.”
“I need to make a call.”
Stanley led Jack past the large plate-glass window, with its magnificent view of downtown Honolulu, swaying palm trees and ocean glistening in the background, to a small office.
“Check out the view, Dad.”
Jack stopped himself from snapping at Stanley. He paused to look at the view. “That’s nice.”
He meant it. Jack entered the office and turned to close the door after him. Stanley was surprised.
“I need to make the call in private.”
Stanley was insta
ntly suspicious. “Why? What did you do?”
Jack sighed. “Stanley. Trust me. You don’t want to know.”
And with that he closed the door.
...
Keith had been sitting in his rental car for four hours. In fact, he could’ve sat there for days. It didn’t bother him. He was patient. Good hunters always are.
Keith rigged the dome light so it wouldn’t turn on when he opened the door. He slipped out of the car and walked up toward Sid Tanumafili’s house. Keith had been watching it since Sid came home at six o’clock. Since then, all he’d seen or heard was the flicker of a TV set and the occasional flushing of a toilet during the commercials.
He could’ve killed him. It would’ve been easy. Sid didn’t keep his door locked, and it would’ve taken Keith only a minute to enter and exit. Sid would’ve been found lying on the couch with a broken neck. The neighbors wouldn’t have heard a thing. They wouldn’t have seen a thing. But Keith hadn’t worked out his exit strategy. He didn’t want surveillance cameras at the airport catching him trying to go standby back to the mainland. That would give the police too easy a time frame. What he wanted to do was disappear Sid’s body. Let it wash up on the beach two weeks after he’d gone back to Vegas. Something like that. He still had to work out the details.
Keith crept along the outside of Sid’s house and peered in the kitchen window. He noticed a few empty bottles of Kona beer in the sink, a dirty plate, a Zojirushi fuzzy logic rice cooker, and a handgun on the counter.
The handgun gave him pause. A Smith & Wesson nine-millimeter semiautomatic police issue is a fairly serious weapon, not something your average joe uses for home protection. It signaled to Keith that Sid had some experience.
Keith went back to his car. It had been a long day, and he realized that he’d have to spend the next few days running some intensive background checks. He wanted to know if Sid had been in the military or, worse, if he’d been a policeman. It meant a day of boring paperwork. That was the stuff Keith hated the most. To do it correctly without leaving a trail means creating a maze of information requests to mask the one you really want. It was dreary, tedious, and time-consuming. But if it turned out that Sid had been a cop or a marine, Keith would abort the mission. A murdered cop, even a retired one, would bring too much heat. And a marine? Forget about it. Keith was semper fi all the way.
...
Jack watched as Stanley ate some kind of weird-named fish. It was snapper, but they didn’t call it that. They called it uku or moi, onaga or opakapaka. And when you said, “What the fuck is that?” they always told you it was some kind of snapper. Like the Eskimos with three hundred words for snow, the Hawaiians had three hundred words for snapper.
“You’re not hungry?”
Jack looked down at his food. He’d ordered chicken and wasn’t quite convinced that chicken was what they’d brought him. Maybe it was a kind of snapper.
“I ate on the plane.” Jack drained his beer and signaled the waitress for another.
“You want to try some of this?”
“I’m sick of fuckin’ fish. All they eat here is fish, fish, fuckin’ fish. I eat any more fish I’m gonna vomit.”
“It’s an island in the middle of the ocean.”
Jack shot Stanley a look. Stanley shrugged.
“At least it’s fresh.” He tried to change the subject. “So what do you think of the new office?”
“It needs a ramp.”
“We’ll get one.”
“And rails in the bathroom. I had to claw my way up the wall after taking a shit.”
“I already ordered ’em.”
Jack nodded. His beer arrived, and he proceeded to drink it as quickly as possible.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
But the truth was, Jack wasn’t fine. He was anxious, he’d lost his appetite, his palms were clammy, and he was constipated. He hardly responded to the signals being sent to his brain by his constant erection. He was obsessed with two distinct and unpleasant possibilities looming in his future. In scenario number one, the creepy fountain-obsessed hitman does the job and then kills Jack because he refuses to pay him. In scenario number two, Jack has to go to the fuzz and plea-bargain to save his life. He’d trade protection and life for a conviction of soliciting a murder-for-hire. He’d go to the slammer; he knew that. Wouldn’t that be fun? How could he explain his hard-on in the prison showers? What kind of nickname would they give an old cripple with a boner in the big house?
It wasn’t like he felt guilty about having Sid offed. That wasn’t it. The fucking Sumo deserved it. But things were getting weird, and Jack didn’t know what to do. His anxiety was amplified by the fact that he couldn’t reach Keith. In fact, the number he’d been calling had mysteriously been disconnected. Jack didn’t know what that meant.
It was this combo of paranoia and desperation that had forced Jack to go proactive and hire Baxter. It was an audacious plan. He hoped the young man could pull it off.
...
Chad went back to his hotel. He’d had enough of Francis, his neediness, and his freaky-looking dick. He pulled his rental car around to the front and let the valet take it. Chad slung his black leather Prada carry-on bag over his shoulder and walked into the lobby of the Halekulani. He liked this hotel. Even though it was smack dab in the middle of Waikiki, it was first class all the way. He had stayed here during the filming of a historical epic a few years earlier and had requested the same room: a luxury suite on the corner with views of Diamond Head and the ocean.
After he dropped his bag on the bed and tipped the bellhop, Chad looked around his room for a minute, adjusted the thermostat, and headed downstairs to the bar.
The night was balmy, a humid breeze blowing in from the ocean, the tiki torches flickering and snapping. Chad found a table near the pool. He ordered a mai tai and relaxed. He’d done a quick scan of the relevant males in the bar and had located two possibles and one probable. Now came the easy part: Just sit back, sip your drink, and see who makes eye contact. Chad was a closer. He didn’t play games or flirt. He wasn’t a tease. Once he made eye contact, it was only a matter of time.
It didn’t take long before Chad hooked one. Bingo. We have a winner. Chad smiled to himself as a young man with pale blue eyes and a fabulous physique joined him at his table.
“I’m Chad. What’s your name?”
“Keith.”
“Can I buy you a drink, Keith?”
“I could use another beer.”
Chad signaled the waiter as Keith settled into a chair.
“What brings you to the islands? Business or pleasure?”
Keith smiled at Chad. “I’m hoping a little bit of both.”
Chad grinned, his perfectly bleached and veneered teeth gleaming in the flickering tiki light. “A man after my own cock.” Chad was anything but subtle.
Keith grinned. “What about you?”
“I don’t want to bore you.”
“You’re here to work on your tan.”
The drinks arrived.
“I have a friend in the hospital. I came to cheer him up.”
“Is he okay?”
Chad shrugged. “He got beat up. But like I said, it’s boring.”
Keith smiled. “I need to eat something. Do you mind if I grab a menu?”
“I could use some food myself.”
“Be right back.”
Keith got up and walked over to the bar to snag a couple of menus. Chad watched him go. He admired his tight muscular ass and the strong graceful strides. This, Chad realized, was going to be fun. In fact, he was going to ensure it. He took a small plastic bag filled with little pills out of his pocket. He plucked two hits of ecstasy out of the bag, popped one in his mouth, and dropped the other into Keith’s beer. Made in Amsterdam, purchased by a young screenwriter, and smuggled into California on the studio’s corporate jet, it was the very best money could buy.
Keith came back with a couple of menus. He
handed one to Chad and then sat down.
“See anything you’d like to eat?”
...
At first he couldn’t tell what was wrong. Everything looked the same, but it was somehow different. The air had been displaced, the atmosphere altered. Joseph looked around his house, his mouth dropping open in astonishment as the slow, burning realization that he’d been dumped crawled into his consciousness. While he was out, Hannah had come and taken all her stuff.
He went to the bedroom and opened the set of drawers she’d used for almost a decade. They were empty. He looked in the bathroom. Her shampoo and conditioner, even the empty bottles that somehow managed to stay stuck in soap scum for months on end, were gone. Her makeup—not that she wore much—and hairbrush, combs, hair product, tampons, eye drops, three dozen tubes of Dr. Pepper–flavored Lip Smackers lip balm—she was addicted to those—and a big bag of cotton balls. . . all gone.
With a rising sense of dread fomenting in his stomach, he went to the kitchen. Joseph threw open the refrigerator door to find that she’d removed all the containers of her favorite brand of yogurt and the Cholula Mexican hot sauce she liked to dump on almost everything.
Joseph picked up the phone, hit the speed dial, and got her message machine. He hung up without leaving a message and walked into the living room. He sat heavily on the couch and looked around. Even though she didn’t have that many things in his house—the average visitor might not even notice any difference in the before and after of her leaving—to Joseph it seemed like his home had been stripped bare by bandits.
Tears welled up in his eyes. He tried to suppress them but failed, and the warm wet tears rolled down his face.
Fifteen
Baxter had kept his sunglasses on during the flight. Not like he needed to, but he thought that’s what hitmen do. They keep their shades on. It didn’t even occur to him that it looked strange until a friendly ophthalmologist in the next row asked him if his eyes were bothering him. Baxter was trying to look inconspicuous, like the guys in the movies. He glared at the ophthalmologist and tried to think of something tough and funny to say. But nothing came to mind, and after an uncomfortable pause the ophthalmologist went back to reading his in-flight magazine.
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