“Leave her alone!” I shouted.
“The ring, son. It’s hot as hell out here and I haven’t much patience left.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the ring.
“And don’t be childish and make me go looking for it. I’ll just shoot her. Now toss it here. Nice and easy…”
I lobbed him the ring.
“‘Atta boy,” he said, and chuckled. “Finally, after all these years, I get to play catch with my son.” He held the ring up and examined it. Satisfied, he put it into the coin pocket of his jeans.
“Quit calling him your son. He’s nothing like you.”
“You know, sweetie, I’ve often wondered. I mean a son of mine, a flunky? A son of mine who has never finished a single thing he’s ever started? Who can’t even get a date on a Friday night? My, Guy, a family embarrassment you are. But you know, maybe it’s my fault. Maybe I’ve neglected you over the years, you think? Maybe I just haven’t been a strict enough father to you. But it’s not too late. Guy, you’re grounded!” He laughed. “Oh, come on you two, that was funny!”
“How much of what you told me was a lie?” I said.
“None of it. Lying is for amateurs. Why lie when the truth will work so much better?”
“What are you going to do with us?”
“Kill you, I’m afraid. Or, rather, you will kill yourselves. Note the handy abyss behind you. Duel suicide, not unlike the one Ellery forged for your friends Max and Aidos. Only yours will be for real.”
“We’re not jumping,” I said. “You’re going to have to either shoot us or push us over yourself.”
“Kill my own son?” he said, aghast. “What kind of father would that make me?” He tossed an eye over his shoulder. Three men stepped out from behind the outhouse and strode towards us. I recognized two of them from our encounter back at my place in Tucson, Bulldog and Scarface, grinning, happy to see me again. The third was Mongoose.
“Hello, Doreen,” Mongoose said, halting a few steps away from us.
“Screw you, you bastard,” she spat.
“But you already did,” he said. “Have you forgotten about my birthday present already? I haven’t.”
“You’re grotesque. I hate you.”
“Is that what all your moaning was about last night? I don’t think so.”
“You loser. I was faking it.”
“Yeah, right.” He turned to me. “Hello, Guy. Funny how I keep running into you. How ya doin’?”
“I’ve been better. Sorry to hear about your pal Wilkinson.”
“Yeah, bummer, huh?”
“Curiosity killed the cat?” I said.
Fielding smirked. “Could it be you’re not really the mental retard everyone in high school thought you were?”
“What can I say? I’m misunderstood.”
Fielding snorted. “Your life sucked, and then you died. Both of you died. Killed yourselves—a girl with a broken heart, and a flunky Guy with a shitty life.” He turned to Doreen. “Melodramatic, I agree. But no more so than those crappy plays you do at school. Now, you two hold hands. Your Kitty Hawk awaits you.”
“We’re not jumping,” I said again.
The three men pulled out guns from their shoulder holsters and pointed them at our faces.
“No, Jim, please,” Doreen pleaded.
Fielding said, “A little tough to find the nerve? Let me help you. On the count of three, okay? One—”
“Those pictures I gave you, the descriptions—fake, all of it.”
“Pathetic, Doreen.”
“Those photos were just people I saw on the trip. Nameless backpackers. Everything I told you I made up. How does it feel, big boy?”
“Mongoose,” Piranha said. “Get it over with. She’s lying.”
“I may not have known you were working with Piranha,” Doreen said. “But I knew something was up. I knew you were a two-faced creep. Men like you never change, you only mutate.”
“You knew nothing.”
Doreen snorted. “I knew you were lying the minute you said you had never heard of Aidos. You moron, you had her picture from the newspaper hanging in your locker in high school, bragging how one day you were ‘gonna bone her good.’ We girls don’t forget things like that. Get over yourself, Jimmy. I’m not one of your pasty-faced bimbos. You know what the hardest part of my act was? Not throwing up.”
“Mongoose!” Piranha commanded. “Stop wasting time. Lie or not, we’ve got what we need.”
Mongoose snarled and shoved his gun into Doreen’s face. “One, two…”
A phone rang.
Mongoose looked at Bulldog and Scarface.
“Not mine,” they said.
I shrugged and pulled Piranha’s phone from my back pocket.
Anchors Away
Piranha grinned. “That would be for me, I’m guessing.” He snapped his fingers for the phone and surveyed the plateau. Scarface snatched the phone from my hand and walked it over to him, then hustled back and shoved his gun in my face again.
I couldn’t hear what Piranha was saying, but as he spoke his eyes scoured the surroundings. A tumbleweed shot out from behind the toilets and crashed into Piranha’s Bronco. It bounced off the rear wheel and rolled down the dirt road. Nothing else moved but the waving grass. Smirking, he revolved slowly, his head tilted upward. The sky was blue and cloudless. He folded up the phone.
“Well, kids, predictably your Uncle Ellery has grown sentimental in his old age and bought you a little time.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“A trade. The disc for your lives. I told you the ring was the key to finding him.”
“You have no intention of handing us over,” I said.
“If Ellery plays straight, what do I care? I’ll always know where to find you.” He looked behind. A long plume of dust was visible. “What I’d like to know is how he knew where you were?”
“How should I know?”
Piranha held up the phone. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with it, would it?” He opened the back and pulled out the SIM card. He dropped it and stamped on it like a cigarette butt. “You said you lost it. You lied to dear old dad. That hurts.”
A truck barreled up the dirt road, a plume of dust trailing behind it. Piranha signaled to Scarface. Scarface jogged out and placed himself in the middle of the road. Both hands on his gun, he aimed it at the driver.
The truck slowed and came to a stop. The wind picked up the last of the 4x4’s cloud and whisked it across the open field. Scarface walked over to the driver’s side and peered into the bed of the truck, his gun trained on the driver. He motioned to the driver to get out and then patted him down.
I glanced at Piranha. He was sizing up Doreen’s and my reaction. He smirked. I saw no recognition in Doreen’s eyes, just the same intense squint that I saw in the mirror earlier.
Piranha spun around on the heel of his cowboy boot and raised his arms in greeting. “Agent Fuckwit,” he called out. “Damn good to see you! How ya doin’, old friend?”
“Agent Piranha, you’re looking mighty dapper. Nice boots. Rattlesnake skin. Very befitting.”
“Like ‘em? Four-hundred dollars, on sale.”
Ellery tapped a white tennis shoe on the ground. “Nine-ninety-five. The bargain bin at Walmart.”
“No kidding? I wouldn’t mind a pair myself.”
“How is everyone back at the office? Doing well, I trust.”
“Oh yeah. They still ask about you.”
“After all these years? I’m flattered. Give them my regards, will you?”
“Sure, sure, but you’ll have a chance to do that yourself. You know, we all kind of wonder why you never released the contents of that disc you ran off with to the press. What gives?”
“Just never got around to it. Been kind of busy, what with three kids to raise, criminal organizations everywhere you look, and of course, you nipping at my dimpled buns every time I turn around.”
“Nipping,” Pir
anha said, “but never quite able to sink my teeth into them.”
“Damn close to it on more than a few occasions, I’ve got to tell you.”
“So what have you been waiting for? Most of the stuff on that disc is either old news or obsolete. And it’s tough to blackmail the dead.”
“True,” Ellery said, “but you know as well as I do that there are still a few nuggets on that disc that pack quite a bang. I’ve just been waiting for the right time.”
“Patience has always been your greatest strength, Ellery. Sharc never appreciated that enough about you, until it was too late.”
“Until you killed him, you mean.”
“‘The right time,’” Piranha repeated. “Now what could that mean? The ‘nuggets’ and ‘bang’ you mentioned wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain Max and Aidos, would it?”
“It might.”
“I’m damn curious to meet those two rascals.”
“I know you are.”
“All in good time.” Piranha spun again on his heel and offered up Doreen and me with an outstretched arm. “Here they are. Give me the disc and I’ll send them on their merry way in your truck.” Ellery took a thumb drive from his shirt pocket and handed it to Piranha. “And the application?”
“It’s in there.”
Piranha pointed his remote keychain at his car and I heard the click of the back hatch unlocking. He then tossed the thumb drive to Scarface. Scarface walked over to Piranha’s car, opened the back, reached in, and then with Piranha’s briefcase in hand, he walked to the front of the car. He set the case on the Bronco’s hood and withdrew a laptop computer.
Ellery and Piranha strolled over to us, Bulldog and Mongoose stepping aside for them. Piranha kept his gun at his side, but Mongoose pointed his at Ellery and Bulldog kept his trained on Doreen and me.
“Hello, Guy,” Ellery said.
“Hello you old goat. Who’s tending the forest?”
“Mother Nature herself, I hope.” He turned to Doreen and offered his hand. “And you must be—”
Doreen slapped him across the face.
Ellery touched his red cheek. “I suppose I deserve that,” he said. “I—” She slapped him again. “Okay, maybe I deserve that too.” She tried to slap him a third time, but he caught her wrist. “Okay, okay. I get the picture.” He dropped her hand and took a step back.
Doreen glared at him. “You have no idea of the picture I have of you. Who the hell do you think you are? What gave you the right? You had no right!”
Piranha said, “That’s actually a good question, Ellery. Why did you bring them into our little disagreement?”
“You know we are fighting over more than a disagreement, Piranha. And the fact that we are standing here face to face means they succeeded where everything else had failed.”
He turned to Doreen and me. “I didn’t expect things to get quite this far, and I’m very sorry about that. I realize it’s no consolation, but I couldn’t be prouder of the both of you. You demonstrated terrific courage. If you knew what I knew, you’d understand why it had to come to this.”
“Come now, Ellery,” Piranha said, “You can do better than that. I’ve got to side with the girl on this. We could have done without drudging up all that history. My love for Anya didn’t die with her on that stinking curve, you know? And then there’s the boy here, Guy. Guy? What kind of lame name is that, anyway? Was that your idea?”
“Actually,” Ellery said to me, “Anya named you Dost.”
“Dost?” I said. Where had I heard that name before?
“As in Dostoevsky, her favorite writer.”
“Really? Cool.” And then I remembered. I heard it from myself! I uttered the name while under Aidos’ strange spell, after she had taken my hand.
Ellery grinned. “I thought so too.”
“Forget it, Guy,” Doreen said. “I’m not calling you Dost. It’s a stupid name. It’s no name at all. It sounds like laundry detergent or some foreign currency.”
“Sir,” Scarface called out. “It’s the real thing, but we’ll need the password.”
“Ellery?” Piranha said.
“I believe you already have it.”
“The ring?”
“That’s right.”
“But that can’t be the same as what Sharc had given you.”
“I changed it, naturally.”
“Naturally. Out of curiosity, what did the old man use?”
“Rosebud.”
“No!” Piranha chortled.
Ellery smiled. “Just kidding. His wife’s name, Cassandra, plus the date of their wedding anniversary.”
“Gawd,” Piranha snorted. That’s worse than Rosebud. Such sentimentality from an old warthog like him…it’s obscene. Who’d have guessed?”
“Exactly.”
“Now, Ellery, please don’t tell me yours is as sappy as that.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Christ. Okay, what is it?”
“You got the ring.”
“That’s great, old friend, but silly me, I left my Hebrew dictionary and Wang super computer back at the office, so save me the time—and these young ones’ lives—and just tell me.”
“We made a deal,” Ellery said. “Me, the files, the application, and the password in exchange for their lives. Let them go, Piranha.”
“Sir,” Fielding said, “he’s stalling.”
“Ellery, are you stalling?” Piranha asked. His eyes scanned the surroundings. Nothing had changed but the position of the sun and the temperature. The hot wind dried the sweat on our faces as fast as we produced it.
“It’s simple,” Ellery said. “Let them go and I’ll tell you the password.”
“Ellery,” Piranha said, “I haven’t your legendary patience, you know that.” He nodded to Mongoose. Fielding swept Doreen from her feet and held her over the cliff. Doreen screamed and kicked and tried to scratch at his face. I made a move to grab him but Bulldog smacked me in the forehead with the butt of his gun. My legs buckled and all I saw was the aurora borealis.
Fielding shouted, “Stop struggling or I’ll drop you right now!”
“Ellery?” Piranha said.
“Let her down and I’ll tell you.”
Piranha said, “You should know me better than that. Anchors away, Mongoose.”
Breaking Up is Hard to Do
I rattled off the password, “6634299717!”
“Son,” Piranha said, “you wouldn’t be pulling my ‘toe’ again, would you?”
“Try it! 6634299717.”
Piranha called to Scarface, “Did you get that?”
“Yeah. Hold on. … No good.”
“Mongoose,” Piranha said. “Dump the trash.”
Fielding moved to toss Doreen.
“No!” I cried. “I know I’m right. Try again!” I thought back to my phone call. What did she ask me? … Will you love me tomorrow? And I answered, I will always love you. But wait, she asked me a second question. If I lose you where can I find you? Yes, that had to be it!
“I got it!” I said. “Try again and add, IWALY dash AB!”
Fielding hesitated and looked to Piranha.
Piranha held up his hand, signaling Fielding to hold on. “Again, Guy,” Piranha said. “And no more fucking around.”
I repeated the numbers and letters, and held my breath.
“We’re in,” Scarface reported back.
Piranha said, “Bring her in, Mongoose.”
Fielding set Doreen back on the ground. She sank to her knees and rolled up into a ball, squeezing her daypack like a stuffed animal, quivering and weeping. I crawled over and threw my arms around her. Doreen shot Fielding a hate-filled look. Through clenched teeth and tears streaming down her cheeks, she said, “I’m going to kill you.”
“Doreen,” Fielding said, his hand flying to his mouth in mock dismay, “this is a side of you I’ve never seen before. And frankly, I’m not sure I approve. I’m afraid I’m going to have to break up w
ith you. It hurts, I know, but just try to deal with it, okay?”
“It’s not over,” Doreen sneered.
“Guy,” Piranha said, “Did you figure that code out all by yourself? I’m quite impressed.”
“Got a place in the Organization for me, do you?”
“No, but nonetheless, papa’s impressed.”
“Guy, Doreen,” Ellery said, “Leave. Take my car and go. It’s over. And…I’m sorry. I mean that.”
“No, kids,” Piranha said, waving his gun. “I’m sorry. Mongoose, Bulldog—”
“Piranha,” Ellery said. “You know I wouldn’t come empty-handed. Let them go now and you’ll live. Touch them again and you will die.”
“Ellery, of course I know you.” He nodded towards the outhouse. Eight heavily armed soldiers in camouflage came trotting out, handguns and assault rifles at the ready. They quickly formed a perimeter around us, half facing us, half facing out toward the emptiness. “Mongoose, Bulldog, get rid of them.”
As the two bruisers bent over to grab us I detected a glint in Ellery’s eyes. I turned and saw a glider plane rise silently from beneath the plateau, heading right at us.
Ellery dove at Piranha and tackled him to the ground. In the next moment the plane was spraying machine-gun fire, sending the soldiers sprawling. Amid the shouting and blasting guns I saw Melody and Noriko dressed in full fighting gear drop from beneath Ellery’s 4x4. They rolled, unhooked canisters from their jackets, and hurled them at the soldiers. Then, opening fire, they disappeared behind a wall of dense gray smoke. The last thing I saw was the glider pass narrowly over my head.
Bulldog regained his wits. He slapped an open hand around my throat and started dragging me towards the cliff by my larynx. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t even breathe. My legs flailed like I was drowning. I tried peeling his hand off my throat but couldn’t budge his grip.
In desperation my hands lashed out and found his face. I dug my thumb into his eye with one hand and tore at his ear with the other. His grip loosened and I managed to kick him in the chest and free myself, but he pounced right back on top of me. I squirmed and gasped under his weight.
Through the smoke I saw his cocked arm and huge fist about to break my face. I also glimpsed a knife strapped to his leg. His fist came down like a piston but I moved my head just enough that his blow glanced off my cheek. It hurt like hell and he was coming right back at me for a bigger piece. The knife in my hand, I blindly plunged it into his thigh, and twisted.
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