by Ken Douglas
“ Ran off?”
“ Who knows why kids do what they do today. If you want to know anything more, you’ll have to ask the police.”
“ I’ll do that.” Jim thanked the man, whose eye was batting up a storm now.
“ Here’s your key. You have her room.” The man was trying to force his eye to stay closed and not having much success.
“ Her room?”
“ The same room Donna Tuhiwai was in last week.”
“ Coincidence, or did you do that on purpose?”
“ Just coincidence,” the man said, struggling to keep his eye slammed shut. Jim didn’t believe him.
He flopped on the bed as soon as he entered the room, stared at the ceiling and tried to think. Donna went missing from this room less than a week ago. She was being held in a windowless room somewhere, strapped to a hospital bed. There had to be more, something he was missing.
“ You need rest,” Donna thought.
“ I’ll be fine,” he thought back.
“ Nonsense, take a couple hours. You’re dead tired.”
“ Maybe you’re right. But just a few minutes.” He closed his eyes and in seconds was asleep.
He woke with a steady knocking on the door.
“ Don’t answer it,” Donna warned.
“ You’re being paranoid.” He sat up and stretched.
“ I’m not.”
“ Who is it?” Jim called out, getting out of bed.
“ Linen service,” a male voice on the other side of the door answered.
“ See, you were worried about nothing.” He turned the knob.
The door burst open and Jim had a quick look at a small man with rugged features. He staggered back from the door, but he wasn’t quick enough. A fist shot into his stomach, doubling him over, then something came down on his head and the lights went out.
He woke slouched in a chair as cold water was splashed onto his face. He sputtered and spit to keep from gagging. He tried to bring a hand to his face to wipe away the water, but his hands and arms weren’t obeying his commands.
“ How do you feel?”
Jim turned his head to the direction of the voice and found the small man seated in a chair by the door.
“ You can stop trying to move your arms, your hands are handcuffed behind your back.”
“ Why? Are you the police?”
The man laughed.
“ How’d you get the cuffs over the cast?” Jim asked, remembering how he showed the cast to Washington to get him to leave the cuffs off.
“ With difficulty.”
“ Why are you doing this? I’m not a criminal.”
“ Hey, that’s enough. I’m the one that’s supposed to be asking the questions here.”
“ Okay, ask.”
“ You came around asking questions about the missing girl.”
“ I did not,” Jim said, playing for time.
“ Phil, the desk clerk, called and said you were asking.”
“ I was not.”
The short man got up from his chair, walked to the bureau, picked up a tourist magazine, rolled it, and smacked Jim in the head.
“ I need better answers.”
The slap stung, but Jim had faced a lot worse. There was nothing this little man could do that could make him say something he didn’t want to.
“ I’m not a brave man,” Jim said. “If I knew what you wanted me to say, I’d say it.”
“ Why were you asking about the girl?”
“ When the guy at the front desk handed me the key, he said I was in the room the girl went missing from. He made me curious, so I asked. I didn’t know I was committing a crime.” He hoped the man would buy his story.
“ You didn’t come here looking to meet someone?”
“ Yes I did,” Jim lied. “My fiancee, she should be here around 8:00.” He looked out the window. It was dark out, he’d slept longer than he’d planned.
“ If what you say is true, why would Phil call and say different?”
“ Why don’t you go get him and ask? I’m not going anywhere.” Jim was beginning to enjoy confusing him.
The man grabbed the phone, pushed buttons. After a few seconds he began speaking,
“ Tell Manfred we have a problem. I think Phil was a little anxious to earn some extra money.” A few seconds silence. “No, Phil told this American that he had the same room as the missing girl, so the guy asks a few curious questions, and Phil reacts like he’s from Interpol.” More silence. “Okay,” the man said and hung up.
“ The boss will be here in ten minutes, then we’ll figure out what to do with you.”
“ Are you going to arrest me?” Jim tried to sound afraid. “Because if you are, I have something to say to you.”
“ What’s that?”
“ If this was Chicago, half the money in my wallet would be gone, these cuffs would come off and your wife would have a new dress tomorrow.”
“ Are you trying to bribe a police officer?” The man was smiling, apparently amused at being mistaken for a policeman.
“ No, sir,” Jim said. “I was just saying what would happen if we were in Chicago.”
“ How much do you have in that wallet?” the man asked.
“ Over a thousand American dollars.”
“ Cash?”
“ You can buy your wife a nice dress with half of that and have change left over.”
“ What keeps the cops in Chicago from taking it all?”
“ Leave a man broke and he might go crying to your boss. Leave him half his money and he says, thank you very much, and forgets it ever happened.”
“ And that’s what you would do? Forget this ever happened?”
“ I just want this over before my fiancee gets here. Can’t we make a deal? Call off your boss, take the money, and everybody goes away happy.” Jim tried to sound like he was pleading. However, he knew the man wasn’t going to let him go. When his boss arrived, they would question the desk clerk and more than likely it would be big trouble for Jim Monday.
“ Let me see the money.” The little man was greedy.
“ All right.” Even though his hands were cuffed, Jim had little trouble pulling Eddie’s leather wallet out of his hip pocket. The little man came close, reached behind Jim to take it, but before his fingers touched the leather, Jim kneed him in the face. The little man with the rugged features was dead before he hit the floor.
Jim scrambled out of the chair, sat next to the body on the floor. Any minute he expected company and he didn’t want to greet them with his hands behind his back. He faced away from the body and tried to maneuver his hands into the dead man’s jacket pocket as the glare of headlights streamed in through the front window, playing across the wall, followed by the sound of a car pulling into a parking place out front.
He jammed his hands deep into the pocket only to find it empty. He looked up at the front door and wondered if it was locked. The chain wasn’t drawn and he couldn’t tell if the lock was engaged or not. If it was locked, would the dead man’s boss break it in? No, of course not. He’d get a key from Phil. He worked his hand into the other pocket as he heard the engine shut off.
No key there either. He only had seconds left. He scooted toward the man’s midsection, fishing in the left front pocket of the man’s jeans as he heard the car door open. He wondered if the man outside had a gun. The dead man didn’t, at least he hadn’t seen one. Maybe he should have looked. He heard the car door close.
No key in the pocket. He quickly checked under the man’s leather jacket for a shoulder holster and found none. One front pocket left. Last hope. He had to slide up onto the body to get at it. He straddled the dead man’s waist and with his hands behind himself, he eased his right hand into the man’s pocket. There was a knock on the door.
Loose change and no key.
The knocking resumed, louder.
“ Hey, Tony, it’s us.” The boss man wasn’t alone. There were at least two of them, three,
counting Phil, the desk clerk, and he was trapped.
“ See if there’s a pocket on the inside of the jacket,” Donna thought.
Jim spun around, still straddling the dead man, so that he was facing the feet. He cringed when it sounded like he pushed air out of the corpse. The body still felt alive. He hurriedly ran his hand inside the jacket and breathed a sigh of relief when he found a pocket there.
“ Get Phil and get a key to this room,” a squeaky voice whined from the other side of the door.
Not much time left. Bingo, the key was there. He fumbled it out of the pocket, fumbled it into the keyhole and felt a sharp wave of pleasure as the handcuffs unlocked.
He looked around the room for a weapon and realized that even without the handcuffs he wouldn’t be a match for three men. He was still trapped.
“ The window, there’s a park out back.” Once again it was Donna to the rescue.
He hurried around the bed and opened the window.
“ Hurry up,” he heard from outside the front door.
The wallet. He dropped the wallet when he kicked the man in the head. He had to get it. And his bag. He had to have it. The passport was in it. Without them he’d have no money, no credit, no ID, and no place to go.
“ It’s about time,” he heard from out front. He didn’t have time to go back for the wallet or bag.
He pushed the screen off, stepped out the window and into the night as he heard a key being inserted into the front door. He ran across the park toward a group of bushes about fifty yards from the motel and he slid into them like he was sliding into home, trying to beat out a throw from second base.
Chapter Twenty
He woke, kissed by the sun and fighting for breath. Thursday, he thought, exhaling into a violent coughing spasm. He gasped air between the racking coughs and jerked himself into a sitting position, slapping dirt from his face. He struggled for a breath, exhaled, took another and the coughing subsided. He recognized the symptoms. He was having an asthma attack. His last one had been over forty years ago.
The grass was wet with frost. His clothes were damp. The seasons, like his life, were upside down. It was winter in July and the cold night spent outside had brought back the dreaded asthma of his youth. He needed to see a doctor. He couldn’t go all day fighting for air, not if he wanted to find Donna.
He looked through the bushes to the park beyond and a profusion of bright flowers. Across the street were middle class homes with middle class lawns, and on the corner, a cafe. He watched as people came and went, knowing he wouldn’t be one of them. He had no money. He gasped again and again was racked by a coughing spasm. He would have to do something. He had to see a doctor.
He crept out of the bushes and stood to greet the dawn. He looked around, making sure he was unobserved, and brushed off. He wished he had a coat hanger to scratch under the cast and he wished he had some warm clothes.
He started across the park, hoping a walk would warm him. Every other breath was punctuated with a cough and every other cough, punctuated by a sharp spasm, his stomach muscles clenching and jerking, forcing him to bend over, hands on his knees, till it passed.
“ I’m back.”
“ You were gone?” He hadn’t noticed she’d been away.
“ I went away just as you were going to sleep. I remember the police were still over in the motel room when you closed your eyes. When I opened mine, I was back in my body. And I was on a boat.”
At the mention of the police, memories of last night came flooding back. From his hiding place in the bushes he’d been able to see into the room he’d fled. The two men who’d entered were not the kind of people Jim wanted to cross sides with. Both big, wearing black woolen sweaters and seaman’s caps. They’d looked like a body building advertisement.
He’d watched as they came to the window and looked out. It seemed as if they’d been looking right at him and he’d been tempted to get up and run, but he knew they couldn’t see him through the dark and the bushes. When they turned away from the window he had half expected them to come around the motel and look for him. Instead, they’d left.
He’d hidden in the bushes, shivering for another fifteen or twenty minutes and, seeing no activity, decided to crawl back in the window and get his things. He was halfway across the park, when the front door opened and the police came in. He’d turned, darted back into the bushes. They were still there an hour later when he’d drifted off to a cold, fitful sleep.
Now awake, with a wheezing cough that seemed to be getting worse, no money for a doctor or even breakfast, he was fast running out of ideas and the asthma attack had sapped his strength.
“ We could go by my brother’s, he’ll help,” Donna thought.
“ Do you know how to get there?” He thought. Any idea was better than no idea.
“ No, but I know the address. 1737 Norfolk Street and I remember from one of his letters, he said it was a two minute walk from the center of town. So it can’t be far.”
He stopped a jogger and asked directions to Norfolk Street. Five minutes later he was standing on the front porch of a small home with a trimmed lawn, surrounded by a white picket fence. He could have been in any small town in America forty years ago.
He rang the bell and doubled over, coughing and gasping for air.
“ Can I help you?” Jim heard a soft woman’s voice, but couldn’t straighten up to see the face.
“ In a second.” He waited for the spasm to finish.
“ Come in.” She took him by the hand. “What is it? Asthma?” The concern in her voice was real and he was impressed that she would invite a stranger into her home. Not in America, he thought. Not anymore.
“ I think so, hasn’t affected me since I was a teenager.” It was a struggle to force the words out.
“ You’re American?” She led him to a sofa.
“ Yes.” He looked into her deep brown eyes, clear, wide and honest. Then he bent forward and coughed his way through another attack.
“ Here, this will help.” She put a blue inhaler to his lips. “It’ll relax your bronchial tubes and let you breathe.”
He inhaled the medicine as she released it and within seconds he was breathing.
“ Now this,” she said, handing him a brown inhaler, “the blue one helps to stop it once it has started and the brown one contains a steroid that helps keep it from starting.”
He took three puffs from the brown inhaler and handed it back to her, feeling better.
“ It’s my mother,” Donna thought. “What’s she doing here? Ask if Daddy is here?”
“ Is Daddy, excuse me,” he mumbled, “I mean is Mr. Tuhiwai here?”
“ What did you say?” The woman looked him in the eye.
“ I asked if Mr. Tuhiwai was here?”
“ You called him Daddy. Only Donna calls him that. Do you know where she is?” She was speaking in a rapid staccato and her eyelids hooded over. She balled her tiny hands into fists, bit into her lower lip, then shouted, “Mohi, come in here!”
“ What is it?” A short, well built man answered her call. He looked like a bantam weight ready to fight.
“ I think this man knows something about Donna.”
“ Just a minute.” Jim coughed, but not as badly as before, the medicine was starting to work. They waited, glaring. When he was able to breathe, he said, “I don’t know where she is. I’m trying to find her and I need help. I came here looking for her brother.”
“ He’s dead,” Mohi Tuhiwai said.
“ Oh no.” Donna’s thought was filled with despair.
“ How?” Jim asked.
“ Why should we tell you? We don’t even know who you are,” Mohi Tuhiwai said.
“ Because something very bad is going to happen to your daughter, Sunday at midnight, unless I can find her and stop it. And right now I’m sick, hungry, tired, out of money, my passport and clothes are gone, some bad men want me dead and the police want me for murder, both here and in America. I need h
elp. Donna told me to come here.”
“ Then you know where she is?”
“ No. Only that she’s on a boat, she doesn’t know where it is.”
“ I don’t understand,” Mohi Tuhiwai said.
“ I don’t have much time and I need you to believe me. It’ll be a lot easier to explain if you each ask me a question. Something that only you and your daughter would know.”
“ If you’re trying to pull something-”
“ Please, sir, there isn’t much time. Just do it.”
“ Donna was bit by our neighbor’s dog when she was four years old. Where did it bite her?” Mrs. Tuhiwai asked.
“ The dog’s name was Phoenix, it belonged to Mr. Hoeta and it bite me behind the left knee, I still remember how much it hurt.”
“ Behind the left knee, its name was Phoenix, she still remembers how much it hurt.” He paused for a second. “Now you sir.”
“ I don’t know what you’re playing at.” His face was flushing red as he advanced on Jim.
“ Ngaarara has her,” Jim said.
“ Stop, Mohi,” Donna’s mother said, her voice quiet, but commanding. Mohi stopped.
They stared at him and electric tension filled the room.
“ I need your help,” Jim said, breaking the silence. “I’ve seen it. It tried to kill me. It’s killed people I love. I want to help Donna and I want to kill it.”
“ How can you know this?” Mrs. Tuhiwai sat next to him on the sofa.
“ She came into my head four days ago, in California. My life hasn’t been the same since.” And he told them everything. When he finished he lay his head back and closed his eyes.
When he opened them he was in a small wooden room. He felt the gentle rocking and he knew at once he was with Donna, on a boat.
They roved their eyes around the room. Knotty pine paneling covered the walls and ceiling. It seemed out of character. Boat makers usually used hard woods, like teak or oak. The knotty pine would quickly swell and warp in an ocean environment. The cabin was comfortably warm, on a warm day it would be hot and on a hot day, a sweat box.