Paradise Island

by Peter Guttridge

  After six years, tired of wandering, he’d allowed himself to believe that they would have stopped looking, allowed himself to think about putting down roots. He persuaded the Marshal Service to change his name yet again – Luke Hanson but a distant memory – and moved to the island. He was confident that if he lived quietly, he’d be safe. He enjoyed his work – he relaxed into it. For nearly two years everything was copacetic. He even convinced himself that leaving the island for Joni’s funeral a couple of months earlier was okay.

  He was wrong.

  ‘We’ve found him.’

  A pony-tailed Mexican punk nicknamed J-Lo sashayed past Lewis. He was known to have some mouth on him. It was a crimson pout now as he looked back over his shoulder. Lewis, keeping the phone to his ear, spat deliberately. He saw the fear rising in the Mexican’s eyes. J-Lo turned eyes front, ass wiggled the hell away from there.

  Sure Lewis had done him, more than a few times. Kid shaved all over, doused himself in perfume, put on make-up, had a way of dressing so when he offered his ass you could almost think he was a woman. And almost was the nearest you were going to get when you were serving three life sentences with no hope – in hell or heaven – of ever getting remission.

  When Lewis had the need bad he took it to J-Lo and a couple of other young punks who did the same tricks. But they all knew better than to get fresh with him. Knew better than to suppose that just because Lewis stuck his dick in them every now and then that Lewis was queer.

  No, what Lewis was, Lewis was a guy just making the best of it. No way out of this zoo except feet-first. So Lewis did what he had to do. And never for one moment forgot the double-crossing fucker who put him into this degrading situation.

  Lewis rubbed his face slowly with his big right hand. He sighed. Actually sighed.

  ‘You hear me?’ the voice on the other end of the phone said. ‘We found him.’

  Lewis nodded slowly, working his jaw.

  ‘Lewis?’

  ‘I hear you,’ he finally said, his voice hoarse.

  ‘So what you want we should do?’

  Two years. It had taken two years to find Luke Hanson after the last sighting. Three times in eight years in total. There was only Lewis and Santiago left now. Rojo had lasted exactly two years in the jug. A temper like his, you had to be able to back it up. He was shivved in the shower, over a punk yet. Lewis was shocked to see how Rojo had taken to that aspect of prison life. Made him wonder about some stuff in the past. Whether Rojo had been a brown ring boy all along.

  Guy who shivved him – white supremacist name of Leroy – had sliced off Rojo’s Johnson and stuffed it in his mouth. To make the point. Lewis had never really liked Rojo and certainly didn’t like the fact a swish had been part of his crew. But there was a prison code. They were a crew, so now Lewis and Santiago had to make their point in return.

  Plus there was Lewis’s own code. Do Worse.

  They acted fast. That night they got the white boy and his punk both. Tortured them awhile. Gagged Leroy and made him watch while they beheaded the punk.

  Tools they had to hand, it took a long time.

  Leroy soiled himself. Not that they noticed much – with the punk’s mess the smell was something awful anyway. They had intended to take Leroy’s head off too but they were out of time. It was near dawn. So they opened him up and did some stuff Santiago knew from way back. Oh, Leroy suffered alright.

  Judge handed down another couple of life sentences apiece. But when you’re already serving two, who’s counting?

  ‘You only live twice,’ Santiago told the judge, and thought himself pretty damned clever, Lewis could tell. It was the last time Lewis and Santiago saw each other. The judge split them up. Santiago was sent to New Jack, Lewis to Folsom.

  Lewis’s reputation preceded him. Nobody bothered him.

  And all the time he had people looking for Hanson.

  At first Lewis had been for going through the phone book, maiming anybody called Hanson just on general principles and in case one of them proved to be a relative. Santiago counselled against. Lewis calmed down. He became more reflective.

  And he knew that no one could disappear forever. He’d found him twice already but that particular route to information was closed. Lewis had the name Hanson was going by on both those occasions but that was one, maybe two changes ago.

  Somewhere, some time, Hanson would show himself again. Lewis could wait. What else had he to do? He had time and a lot of money sitting there on the outside doing him no good. If he had to spend it all tracking down the man who fucked his life, then that’s what he’d do.

  Santiago always thought it a waste of time. Hanson was too smart to show. They had no leads. They didn’t know anything about Hanson’s family circumstances, anything about his background.

  For almost two years it seemed Santiago was right. Then, entirely by chance, they checked on a woman Hanson used to work for and realised he cared about her.

  ‘We do what we do to her, he’s going to hear about it,’ Santiago said down a safe phone line. ‘We fuck her up bad enough – use a little imagination – it’ll be in all the papers. In the meedya.’

  ‘No,’ Lewis said. ‘We wait. We keep an eye on her but we don’t touch her. We wait.’

  A year later the woman died. Natural causes. Who knew there was a God for them? Because, at the funeral, Hanson showed.

  ‘Where?’ Lewis said now.

  ‘Island off Georgia.’

  Lewis picked up something in the voice of the man on the other end of the phone. A man he’d never met although he’d been paying him for two years. Santiago had said once:

  ‘How you know this guy you hired not just going to keep the meter running, never going to admit he’s found Hanson even if he finds Hanson?’

  Lewis was hurt when Santiago said that. Had his friend and colleague forgotten so quickly the reputation Lewis had in the City? In lock-up nobody was messing with him on account of Leroy, the punk and, hell, his general demeanour. In the City nobody ever messed with him.

  ‘Man wants to stay alive,’ he’d replied. ‘That’s how I know.’

  Now he said to the man on the phone:

  ‘You got a problem?’

  There was silence.

  ‘This is my dime you’re wasting,’ Lewis said quietly.

  ‘A colleague identified Hanson at the woman’s funeral, followed him to Georgia…’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He lost him. And now he’s disappeared.’

  ‘Hanson has disappeared again?’ Lewis’s agitation sounded in the tone of his voice. To be so near and then to have it snatched away.

  ‘My colleague. My colleague is the one who’s disappeared. So our problem is that we know roughly where the target is – he was heading for one of the barrier islands – but it’s gonna take a few days to make a positive ID because, naturally, he’s not going under his real name.’

  Lewis grunted.

  ‘He the one offed your man he’s going to be running. You have to find him fast.’

  ‘I hear that. My question is – when we catch up with him what do you want us to do?’

  Lewis didn’t speak. The silence lengthened. Eventually the voice on the other end of the line said:

  ‘Kill him?’

  Lewis moved the phone away from his head and looked around the exercise yard. This fucking place had been his home for the past six years. Would probably be his home until he fucking kicked. Thanks to Luke Hanson.

  ‘Use Wilbur.’

  ‘Okay,’ he heard the man on the phone say. ‘That answers my question. You want us to kill him.’

  Lewis put his lips to the mouthpiece of the phone. Touched the plastic with the tip of his tongue.

  ‘Do Worse.’

  Chapter Three

  Julian Earwaker was fucking his receptionist Evangeline and thinking of Claude Monet. It was building nicely for both of them – he and Evangeline, that is - but then after six months of doing this they knew the m
oves to make it happen.

  Not that it was routine exactly – although this was their regular afternoon siesta-fuck - but he didn’t give it his full attention anymore. Doubted she did. Evangeline was twelve years younger than him and he knew he’d never been the best ride in the park so figured she was fantasising some movie star hunk - Redford or maybe that new Saturday Night Fever guy, John Travolta.

  He was thinking about the French Impressionist painter not because the artist or his subjects - haystacks, lily pads and cathedrals mostly - got him off but because of the job Frank Bartram had given him.

  His receptionist dug her fingers into his shoulders, clung, then gave a long, shuddering exhalation. She’d never been a noisy lover. She assured him it didn’t mean she wasn’t having a great time with him, it was just the shy way she was. He couldn’t care less as long as he got what he wanted. Which he did now, sweet Jesus.

  He sprawled on her for a minute or so then rolled onto his back.

  ‘Thanks, darling,’ she said sleepily.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, as he always did, but she was already asleep.

  Julian wasn’t feeling tired. He was thinking about the pair of Monet’s paintings – conservative value eighteen million dollars total - sitting downstairs in his studio.

  Unbe-fucking-lievable.

  Frank Bartram, the Paradise Island weekender from New York, intended to rip off his wife in her divorce settlement. Some days ago he’d delivered to Earwaker his two most valuable paintings. One was Monet’s early portrait of a long-forgotten fellow artist, the other a painting from the Rouen Cathedral series.

  Julian couldn’t quite see how the scam Bartram had figured out was going to go down but nor did he care as long as he got paid. He had two weeks to copy the paintings but he was already pretty much done. Prepping had been easy. He already had the old canvases and the appropriate materials for producing a work of art that whatever test you applied would still come up over 100 years old.

  He grinned, touching himself. It was titillating to know that one floor below he had eighteen million bucks worth of paintings that nobody aside from he and Bartram knew were there.

  Or so he thought.

  Karen and Chris made a striking couple. He was in his mid-forties and fit, tough-looking, capable. She was his height – taller than his six feet when she was in heels – and curvy, breasts and hips.

  ‘You are such a cliché,’ Karen said, not sadly but with resignation.

  ‘No, but I mean it,’ Chris said. They were sitting at a table in the shade outside the Café du Monde in New Orleans. Chris sweating in the afternoon humidity; his wife as cool as ever. ‘This will be the last job.’ He gave her the smouldering look. ‘Really.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, nibbling at the edge of a beinet. ‘Right.’

  He could be such an asshole but he knew how to turn her, had always known how to turn her. God, it was so predictable – she was so predictable, she thought with disgust.

  ‘I thought we were finished,’ she said slowly. ‘You said after the last time…’

  Chris leaned in, smelt her perfume appreciatively as she examined his face.

  ‘I know,’ he said gently. ‘But this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, baby. How often you gonna come across museum quality art that isn’t in a museum? These paintings are worth a fucking fortune – we’re talking multimillion dollars – and for the next couple of weeks they’re sitting on an island where they still believe in fairies. Zero security. Your little sister could knock it over.’

  She didn’t comment on the mention of her sister. Instead:

  ‘There has to be a catch.’

  Chris raised his forearm to his brow and wiped the sweat on his shirtsleeve.

  ‘Not so far as I can see. This island is so hippy-dippy any notion of security is a joke. The law is a time-serving sheriff and half a dozen part time deputies. Everyone else is an artist of some sort. Hell, we should probably take the whole island like the pirates used to do. But we can just go in real quiet and grab these pictures.’ He gave her the look again. ‘We can make the big score. The one we’ve always dreamed of.’

  ‘That you’ve always dreamed of,’ she corrected. ‘So then we get the long, lavish retirement?’

  Her lopsided smile was in place, a fond look in her eyes.

  ‘For sure.’

  ‘And we know how to fence them?’

  He grinned.

  ‘How do you think I heard about them?’

  ‘Joey?’ she said.

  He nodded.

  ‘Even so – this isn’t exactly his area of expertise.’

  ‘He knows a guy who knows a guy.’

  ‘So there will be more than Joey taking a bite,’ Karen said.

  ‘That still leaves plenty.’

  She didn’t speak for a time. Then:

  ‘We need a crew?’

  ‘Just a couple of guys.’

  She sat back.

  ‘You trust me with them?’

  He held her look.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  He dried off his neck this time.

  ‘Me too.’

  They glanced over at a couple of musicians setting up by the cathedral.

  ‘Joey mentioned a couple of brothers,’ Chris said. ‘Sound boys. Steady. Did a lot of heist work on the west coast until things got hot.’

  ‘That’s all we need - people with heat on them.’

  ‘Nobody’s paying them any attention here. I’ve set up a meeting tomorrow in Atlanta in the p.m.’

  ‘And the job?’

  ‘We’ve got a two week window but why wait? Let’s hit the guy as soon as we can.’

  Wilbur Parker was sitting in a motel room near Atlanta airport flicking between two movies showing at the same time on different TV channels about Cochise, Geronimo and the Apaches. It was essentially the same story but told from different angles. One with Audie Murphy, the other James Stewart.

  Murphy’s film focused on Cochise until Geronimo broke away. The other focused more on Geronimo. The actor who played Tonto in the Lone Ranger TV series played Geronimo in both films.

  Parker was getting a kick out of creating a new movie by flicking between the two. It was rare he got much of a kick out of anything these days. He couldn’t seem to get engaged. He looked at the files on the other bed beside him. He should be working but he was lying here, listless, avoiding thought, sinking into this TV junk. His life, his quotidian reality as he’d heard some smart writer describe everyday existence, reduced to this bed, that television, the sprawl of papers on the other bed.

  Like all such motel rooms there was too much furniture. The clutter of armchairs and coffee tables. The air conditioning was a big box sticking out of the wall, rattling as it churned, water dripping every so often onto the carpet.

  Tomorrow, he’d get started properly finding Luke Hanson. Hanson would have a new identity thanks to WITSEC. The documentation would be authentic. Housing, subsistence for basic living expenses and medical care all provided. Job training and employment assistance too.

  Parker had had dealings with WITSEC before. He knew it was almost impossible to break into.

  Almost.

  There was always a weak spot if you looked hard enough. To create total anonymity for witnesses and get them new lives required the coordination of multiple government agencies, good timing and total secrecy. There were always going to be cracks in that little threesome. Nobody could vanish off the face of the earth unless they were dead. Nobody.

  He knew Lewis had found Hanson twice in recent years, tracked by his name changes. Witnesses could have their pick when it came to choosing a new name. They were encouraged to keep their current initials or at least the same first name. Hanson had done neither but that wasn’t the point. Name changes were done by the court system like any ordinary name change but the records were sealed. That was the point. With enough patience and money whatever had been sealed could be unsealed.

  When they’d found
him in New Orleans he was going by the name Gary Barker and was teaching that Bruce Lee shit, Jeet Kune Do Kung Fu, in a gym in the French Quarter.

  Second time they found him, up in San Francisco, he was a chef in some oriental restaurant, churning out kung-pao chicken and California sushi. His name then was Todd Clearing.

  That second time it was through a shrink. WITSEC had automatically offered Hanson counselling by a psych doctor and in San Francisco Hanson had taken this up. The wise guys had long ago glommed the list of approved psychologists. The psychologist Hanson was allocated was about to lose his thumbs for gambling debts. He offered Hanson up. Saved one thumb.

  That was 1976, two years ago. The corrupt court official was serving time now and it had proved tough to find a new one to bribe. It would happen in due course but, Hanson having been rediscovered for a third time quite by chance, Parker had been hired for the fast track option.

  One route for him was to see who’d arrived on Paradise Island in the past couple of years doing some alternative kind of work. The problem was, the island was full of people doing alternative kind of work. And people who didn’t do any work at all.

  The local sheriff would know. As a courtesy, the US Marshall Service would have informed him they were locating someone in his jurisdiction. Told the person’s criminal history.

  Parker wondered how tough the Sheriff was.

  Sheriff Harry Wilson feared his nerve was gone. He was running on empty, that was the truth of the matter. That was why he was here on Paradise Island, living quietly, doing his best to keep out of trouble’s way. Except where women were concerned. Sitting at his regular table by the window in Harry’s bar, Wilson sipped his coffee and looked across to the English fellow slouched at the bar. The guy was two beers in and it was scarcely noon.

  Wilson thought about the man’s wife. Grimaced.

  Wilson and women, there was a saga. It had got him into more than a few scrapes when he was younger. Big, good looking law-enforcement officer, nailing every woman he looked at, riding high, thinking he could sort out every situation entirely on charisma.