by Harper Lin
Curious, I went into the bathroom to find it equally clean. On the sink were two glasses labeled “His” and “Hers.”
“This is a strange place,” I muttered, moving back to my bed. Right next to the headboard was the coin slot for the Magic Fingers, something I hadn’t used in years. I didn’t even know they still existed.
I plunked a coin in the Magic Fingers, eased myself into the bed with a few twinges, and lay down as the mattress started to vibrate.
“Ahhhh,” I said. “Who needs an illicit love affair when you have Magic Fingers?”
The bed sent soothing vibrations through my back, easing the knot along the spine and spreading a sense of relaxation through my entire body.
That relaxation got abruptly canceled when Liz picked up the TV remote.
“I don’t want to see anything this TV has on it!”
Liz laughed. “Don’t worry.”
A Christian network came on. Liz started flipping the channels, passing through sermons of various Protestant preachers, Catholic bishops, rabbis, even a Muslim imam. Then she came to a variety of those family channels where everyone is squeaky clean, nobody swears, and all problems are easily solved. If only.
“What gives?” I said. “It’s like they’re trying to drive cheating couples away.”
Liz turned off the TV with a triumphant smile. “They are. This motel was set up by my church, Cheerville Methodist. It’s a trap. We get cheating couples to come here with an alluring website, then guilt trip them right back to their families.”
“I thought you were crazy for bringing me here. Now I see there’s a Methodist to your madness.”
“No puns. I’m a gun owner.”
“So am I. Pity we’ll never get in a gunfight with each other. I wonder who would win,” I said, lying back on the bed and plunking another coin in the Magic Fingers.
“It would be interesting,” Liz agreed. “But let’s save our fighting for the guys who’ve been trying to kill us.”
“It’s a deal. I promise no more puns.”
“Good, because otherwise I’d have to punish you,” Liz said.
“I wouldn’t want that. In a fight, you’re as fierce as Attila the Pun.”
“I’m going to get into my punjamas and go to bed.”
“Isn’t that word from Punjabi?”
“I believe it is. Tomorrow let’s get breakfast at a bakery I know. It’s not far from here and has excellent hot crossed puns.”
“Stop puntificating and go to bed.”
“All right.” Liz switched off the light. I got changed, put another coin in the Magic Fingers to buy enough time to drift off, and climbed into bed.
“I just hope my friends can crack the code,” I said as the Magic Fingers lulled me to sleep.
The next morning, they did.
ELEVEN
I was back at my secure home computer. We had approached my house as carefully as the night before and found no evidence that our unwelcome guests had been there in our absence. My guess was that they had been monitoring the neighborhood and saw I hadn’t come back. My car was tucked in the back lot of Hot Rod’s Hot Rods, and I felt sure they had correctly surmised that I had spent the night elsewhere.
They couldn’t have guessed where I had actually stayed, or that I had gotten a restful sleep thanks to the Magic Fingers. Not quite as good as Mr. Chong, but it will do in a pinch.
“I got it!” I called out to Liz, who was dividing her time between peeking out the windows and trying to coax Dandelion out from under the sofa. The fight had left her seriously spooked.
My cat, not my friend. I don’t think anything could spook Liz.
“That’s great! I presume I can’t come in there while you’re on whatever page you’re on. Can you print it out for me?”
Asked like a true professional. “I’m doing that right now, and I won’t look at it.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s only professional courtesy.”
“I’m just a forward observer.”
“I’m Marie Antoinette.”
I pulled the page from the printer, folded it to conceal the writing, and walked out to hand it to her. As she took it away to read in another room, my phone rang. Octavian. My boyfriend. Courteous, sweet, and refreshingly normal. The only shot he’s ever heard fired in anger was on the evening news.
Well, at least until meeting me and getting kidnapped. But that’s another story.
“Hey, pretty lady!”
“Hello, Octavian.” Hearing his voice was just as good as getting treated by Magic Fingers.
“Would you like to get a coffee this morning? How about somewhere other than the Tick Tock Café? I’m tired of having to stop the conversation every fifteen minutes.”
“Oh, I’m afraid I can’t today. I’m helping a friend with a few things.”
I hadn’t told Octavian that Liz was getting married and I was invited because that would bring up the obvious question of who I would bring as a guest. I still hadn’t answered that question. Granted, I was a bit distracted at the moment, but even if I wasn’t getting attacked by unknown assassins, I think it still would have been a long, difficult decision.
Octavian paused a second. “That’s all right. Oh, you know that organic delivery place, Eat Your Vegetables or No Dessert? I just subscribed and received an amazing box of fresh vegetables. The only problem is, it’s far too much for me to eat myself, and if I don’t eat it all, I don’t get a coupon for two free sundaes at We All Scream for Ice Cream. Martin and I wouldn’t want to miss that. So maybe you could help us. How about I bring over some of them and leave them on your doorstep?”
I felt a sudden surge of panic. Visions of Octavian getting gunned down on my doorstep filled my mind, his handsome face splatting into a pile of carrots and green beans like that poor wedding planner did with the cake. Even worse, I saw Grimal coming, examining the body, and then pulling out a carrot from under Octavian’s head and chewing on it.
I couldn’t let that happen.
“Um, no. You see, they’re cleaning the street today, and it will kick up a lot of dust. I don’t want them to get dirty.”
“You clean your vegetables, don’t you?”
“Well, sure, but…”
“Or maybe you can stop by my place while you do your errands and pick them up.”
Again I had visions, this time of those hitmen trailing me like they did before, and me, Liz, and Octavian all killed in a burst of machine gun fire.
“Oh, I’m afraid that won’t work either. I’m ever so busy.”
“Hmm. I guess I could try to give them to the folks at the senior center.”
“Perhaps you could give them to Martin?” I suggested. “Learning that he has to eat his vegetables before getting dessert might be a good lesson.”
“Oh, I don’t think he’d be open to that message coming from me.”
“I suppose not.” Silly me. Octavian’s role was as mentor and spoiler, not disciplinarian. That was Frederick’s and Alicia’s job.
Unless…
“Does the package include cauliflower?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“What about brussels sprouts?”
“Yep. Mighty good ones too.”
“Perfect! Martin hates both of them. Frederick and Alicia have had a terrible time getting him to eat them.”
“Well, I don’t see how I’d have any better luck.”
“I noticed you like spicy food. Indian and Thai, for example.”
“Sure.”
“Well, my son and his wife don’t. They never put any seasoning in anything.” They really are kind of bland, but I love them both dearly. “Martin loves spicy food. Why don’t you cook up something fiery with the cauliflower and brussels sprouts and bring it over to him?”
“Hey, that’s a good idea! I’ll make it a challenge, tell him I don’t think he could get through it all. He loves a challenge, like when he’s trying new tricks with his skateboard. Thanks, Barbar
a. Give me a call when you get done with all your errands.”
“Bye.”
I hung up with a smile. What a darling. I hadn’t met his children—they all lived in different states—but I would love to. I bet they turned out very well-adjusted.
Liz must have been waiting for me to get off the phone because she entered as soon as I stopped talking. Her face was somber.
“Bad news?” I asked.
“Not as bad as it could be, but bad enough.”
“Care to share with the rest of the class?”
Liz managed a smile. “As much as I can. When I was stationed in Afghanistan—”
“As a forward observer.”
“As a forward observer, right. We were doing a lot of work to smash the drug trade. Burning poppy fields and breaking up distribution networks. That sort of thing.”
I nodded. People often wonder why the tribes of Afghanistan are constantly warring over dusty mountains and little valleys. The answer is drugs. With no functioning government and a permissive tribal culture, Afghanistan is one of the prime producers of illegal narcotics. When I last checked, the country produced ninety percent of the world’s opium and a third of the world’s hashish. That is a lot of money, and it’s the drug fields that the tribes are fighting over.
That and the fact that they’re a warrior culture and simply like to fight for fighting’s sake. A man isn’t a man unless he’s got a Kalashnikov in his hand.
“So these guys are after you for disrupting the drug trade. But these aren’t Afghanis,” I said.
“No, they’re Americans on the other end of the drug trade. Part of a cartel who got put out of business because of our work overseas.”
“Good for you, except now they’re out for revenge.”
“Yes.”
“Seems odd. Drug production wasn’t destroyed in Afghanistan despite your best efforts. In fact, it’s almost back to prewar levels.”
Liz grimaced. “Yes, it is. That country is impossible to rule. Even Alexander the Great couldn’t conquer it. That should have taught later generations something, but it didn’t. The British tried and failed. The Soviets tried and failed. And now we’ve tried and failed. The countryside is still full of poppy and marijuana fields held by various tribes. All we managed to do was put a dent in their production and put a few of the smugglers out of business.”
“So why go after a government agent? Oh, sorry, forward observer.”
My joke only got a ghost of a smile.
“Revenge, as I said. The guy who runs this trade is called Crazy Andy. Real name Andrew Weir. He’s the rare drug kingpin who actually samples his own product. And not just opium and hashish, but harder laboratory-made stuff.”
“So instead of sitting in front of the TV and eating Doritos, he’s tweaking out?”
“It’s remarkable. He graduated with honors from the chemistry graduate school at Harvard. Got started cooking up methamphetamine and acid in his home lab. Made a fortune. But there was a lot of competition at that time from bigger players. They tried to co-opt him, and when he made it clear he didn’t want to work for anyone else, they tried to rub him out.”
“I take it that didn’t go so well.”
“No. That’s when he got his reputation as Crazy Andy. He set about killing members of other drug operations with a brutality that made the Mexican cartels look like followers of Gandhi. They finally made a truce, and he got a seat at the table. He also expanded his operations into the international sphere, and that included Afghanistan. While designer drugs are all the rage, there are still plenty of people who want the old-school stuff.”
I bit my lip. The international war on drugs was like throwing stones against the tide. The drug barons were relentless, always coming back no matter how hard you fought against them, and their trade flowed into every corner of the world.
Even Cheerville. Even Martin’s school. Oh, he’d never mentioned it, and I doubt at his age he had ever experimented, but it was there, because it was everywhere. And sooner or later he’d be made that offer. Sooner or later, he’d have to make that decision.
“So this Crazy Andy guy has gotten a fixation on you for some reason? Did you tangle with him directly?”
“Yes. He had gone to Afghanistan personally to oversee a major deal. Went to Pakistan on a tourist visa and slipped over the border.”
“An easy thing to do.”
The Afghani-Pakistani border had so many holes, it made Swiss cheese look watertight.
“His big meeting ended up the target of one of our raids. We grabbed the shipment, worth tens of millions, took out some of the tribesmen and some of Crazy Andy’s people, and stopped the whole operation.”
“But, as usual, the bigwigs got away.”
“Yeah,” Liz said with a sigh.
It was always the same.
“So now this lunatic wants to make an example of you.”
She shrugged. “Not me personally. He wants to take out any member of our team. Make an example and send a message. I’m just the one he managed to track down first. A lot of my team members are younger and still posted overseas. I’m an easy target.”
I nudged her. “Not as easy as he planned.”
“Not at all,” she said with a grin. “And I think I know why our murderous friends have been so unpredictable. Crazy Andy’s operation took a big hit thanks to us. He had boasted about his Afghani connections and how he was bringing in a big shipment. He had to borrow a lot to get the money for it, and made a lot of promises we made him break. He nearly bankrupted himself paying everybody off and lost a big share of the drug trade. Because of this, a lot of his smarter people went off to work for other cartels, leaving him with only the druggies and crazies.”
“Are you saying the people who came after us after using? That would explain why they’re so erratic. When they’re sober, they can plan a pretty good attack, and when they’re high they mess up.”
“Exactly. It explains why their planning is so slipshod too. And their lack of funding means they could only afford to buy one silencer on the black market.”
“They don’t even have that anymore.”
“They still have that fertilizer bomb. Considering they didn’t blow themselves up making it, they must have been sober when they did that.”
“Which means it will work just fine when they decide to set it off. Great. So how do you think we should proceed?” I asked. This was her show, after all.
“I’m tempted to tell the police. Considering the threat level and the power you have over that police chief—”
“—for lack of a better word—”
“—they could bring in a SWAT team from some better precinct. Grab them before they do any damage and put them away for decades on terrorism charges.”
“You’re tempted to do that, but you’re not going to do that.”
She gave me a knowing grin.
“Nope. Because if we only grab the hitmen, we don’t get the big guy.”
“And how do we do that? Crazy Andy is probably not anywhere near Cheerville. He may not even be in the country.”
“His last known location was in this region. While that intel is a year old, drug dealers tend to stay put because they have to build up local and regional networks.”
“That doesn’t mean he’ll come running just because you want to capture him,” I said.
Liz got a determined look on her face, the kind of face I’d seen on soldiers when their unit was pinned down and they’d decided to rush the machine gun nest that was trying to slaughter them.
“I think I know a way to change that,” she said.
And so she told me.
While I complain of various ailments thanks to age—a trick back, occasional knee pain, having to use reading glasses, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, I have always had a good heart.
Not after she told me.
Now I have the heart of a woman twice my age. It’s not a good feeling.
TWELVE
It was a clever plan, for sure, but it was also an insanely dangerous plan. It was bold, highly risky, but offered the opportunity of wild success.
It sounded like the kind of plan Crazy Andy might think up.
And I didn’t want to be a part of anything like that.
Not that I had much choice.
“He’s always gone for showy spectacles,” Liz explained. “The fertilizer bomb is just his style. I bet the only reason the hitmen tried shooting me first was because they heard at the last minute where I’d be, and they didn’t have the bomb ready in time.”
“They saw a good opportunity and went for it, despite orders.”
That made sense. Most militaries, or groups of drug-dealing thugs, allowed for their people to have some autonomy on the field. Any experienced commander knew that plans generally flew out the window as soon as the mission got underway.
“If we can tempt him with a spectacle, something that will impress the other cartels, he can get in good graces with the drug network and rebuild his empire.”
I groaned, rubbing my temples. I felt a headache coming on.
“So your idea of tempting him is to allow them to kidnap you and do some video execution? And you think Crazy Andy will fly in to do it personally?”
Liz nodded. “Most of the killings he did to build up his empire he did personally. He likes it, and it made him feared. When we made him lose status, not to mention the bulk of his business and followers, he swore revenge. He’s boiling with hatred for me and my team. He wouldn’t pass up the chance to draw the knife across my throat personally.”
I shuddered. Yes, if he wanted to get in good again with the Afghanis, that would be just the way to do it.
“So you actually want to let them kidnap you,” I said. I could barely believe the words coming out of my own mouth.
“It’s the best way to get Crazy Andy out of hiding.”
“It’s the best way to get you killed.”
“He’s a master at evading the law. We tried for years and were never able to track him down. When we captured some of his men, they were more terrified of him than the prospect of life in prison. And now that he’s lost most of his power, the agency I worked for isn’t monitoring him anymore. You know how it goes.”