by Dick Wybrow
"Uncle Jerry, he is…" She traced her finger across several blue lines, some red lines, and a couple of black ones. "Somewhere in this area."
"You live with a guy?" I repeated.
"But," she said, her voice barely above a whisper, "it is like some gate neighborhood, not a very nice one, though. Except for the big house. That is like some Beverly Hills mansion with everything. Hot tub, pool—two pools—and a three-car garage."
The Actor leaned back, still chewing obnoxiously. "I've been to much better places. A director I know—"
"Keep your voice down!" Anza said, and we heard rummaging in the bedroom with the closed door. "You'll wake up Angel."
"You live with a guy named Angel?" I asked, trying to whisper, but my voice was a bit strained. Anza was one of the most straitlaced people I knew—and the only real religious one. Yet there she was living with… a guy.
She waved me off. "Angel is harmless," she said then gave a small smile. "And the most beautiful man I have ever met. But very crabby when he wakes up, works late."
I started to say something, and she shushed me.
"Okay, so all of this area, these are tiny homes. Barely they are homes, more like shacks. There's a bunch of them." She tapped the map with a red fingernail. "Uncle Jerry is being held, shackled, in one of those tiny houses."
"How do you know that?" the Actor asked, chewing more quietly.
"This is what I have been doing down here. Researching, trying to find out, find a way in."
I shrugged and looked at the map. "So how do you get in?"
She sat back. "I think is impossible."
"That will make it harder," the Actor said. "How do you even know he's in there? Maybe they moved him or, you know, worse."
Anza shook her head. "I checked with the drone just last week. You can't see in because the curtains, they are always drawn, but he's in there. I know he's in one of those."
"You have a drone?"
"Yes, had," she said and scowled. "That man with the stupid haircut, Silvio, you saw in the bar, he had one of his men shoot it down. I am very angry about that. It was a nice drone."
"When did you learn how to fly a drone?" the Actor asked, shaking his head.
"Is not hard."
The door to the bedroom creaked, and we all froze. It opened slowly, like something out of a glam horror movie, then the man named Angel came out.
Anza smiled, got up, and gave him a small hug and a peck on the cheek.
Angel looked very hung over. He barely shifted when Anza approached him then shuffled into the kitchen. He was wearing a purple robe and bright-blue slippers. His hair was pinned very close to his head.
Our friend returned to the seat across from us and smiled again. "Angel, these are my two friends," she said and introduced us.
Angel pulled a beer from the fridge and shuffled toward us. He plopped into the other chair and slumped, knees wide. Strangely, his brown face sparkled a little in the light. When I realized he was wearing eyeliner, I guessed the sparkle was from a bit of glitter from the night before.
I didn't find him as "beautiful" as Anza, mind.
"Angel, he is a performer," my friend said, beaming. "There is a club in town, and he sings and does a very good dancing routine."
The Actor nodded. "Oh? What do you sing?"
The roommate took another slug of his beer. "Mostly country-western. Like Tammy Wynette sort of stuff," he said in a surprisingly high voice. "Patsy Cline, that sort of thing."
"Garth Brooks?" the Actor asked.
"Honey." Angel rolled his eyes. He had on one fake eyelash. "Do I look like the sort of girl who would sing Garth Brooks? I have standards."
"Well," I said, trying to be open-minded, "you guys don't have a TV, so maybe we can get a tune later on."
Angel sighed. "No, no. I have to rest my voice," he said and rubbed his crotch, then sniffed his fingers and frowned. "I need a shower." His eyes fell on the Actor. "I recognize you."
"Great." The Actor frowned.
"Listen, I know you got a lot of heat for last season," he said, twirling the beer bottle in his fingers. "But I'm glad you killed all those pricks and bitches. Backstabbers, every last one of them. You have no idea… that elf princess or whatever she was, she was plotting to kill you!"
"I know. I mean, I read the script."
"Darling, don't mess with the fantasy," he said. "Sometimes, it's all we have. I say 'goodbye and good riddance' to all of them."
The Actor beamed and looked at me. "I like this guy."
"Guy?" he said. "Please, I don't assign small-minded patriarchal designations like that." He smiled, showing perfect teeth. "Just call me Angel."
"My humble apologies," the Actor said, with a theatrical bow of his head. "Angel."
"Thank you, my liege." Angel bowed back.
I briefly wished that motorcycle gang might come in and shoot me dead—or Sally, I supposed. She was still out there. Something about the Actor being so pleased with himself made my stomach lurch.
Angel looked down at the map and frowned. "You plotting your big breakout again?"
"Yes, maybe. I mean." Anza brightened. "Now with my friends here, I think we can all do this."
"We?" I said and instantly regretted it.
"It was Angel's drone that got blewed up, Raz," Anza said. "Without that, I would not know how all of this was laid out."
Slowly, Angel got to his feet, went to the kitchen, and dropped the empty bottle in the trash. He grabbed another from the fridge and headed for his room. "Wake me up for the third reel, if you want," he said then looked at the silver watch on his wrist. "Christ, it's barely five o'clock! I need my rest."
"Angel," Anza growled.
"Sorry, babe," he said. "Golly, it's barely five! I'm going to lie back down.” With that, he slipped inside the dark room and slid the door closed.
Anza sipped her water and bent over the map again. Frowning, she leaned back. "It won't be enough just to get Uncle Jerry out. If he's missing, they will just come looking for him."
"So what? Let them look," the Actor said. "We just need to get him out of there!"
From the other room, Angel called out, "Sleeping!"
I whispered, "So, what do we need to do? You want to break him out but not break him out?"
"No," she said and tapped her lip. "We have to kill him."
"What?"
"I mean," Anza said, staring at the map again, "if they think he's dead, then they don't go looking for him."
"What does that matter?" the Actor asked.
She crossed her arms and glared at us. She nodded to the Actor. "You have this Sally Shooter person chasing you, yes?" Then she looked at me. "And Enrique, he is looking to feed you to his dogs, yes?"
We both nodded, and I said, "And kill a squirrel."
"So, of course, you have enough people chasing after you."
"Don't forget the motorcycle gang," the Actor offered.
"Si, yes! We don't need no more people to be chasing. So if everyone think Uncle Jerry is really dead, then nobody chases dead people!"
I heard a rustling in the bedroom, a yank of covers.
"Shhh," I said and smiled at Anza. "Sleeping."
She stuck her tongue out at me. "I am just so excited you two are here," she said, more quietly. Then she turned to the Actor. "Even if you do look like you went down on a belt sander."
"Anza!"
"You know what I mean." She shrugged. "With the face all ruined, it looks like a belt sander went up and down on it."
The Actor eyeballed her. "Uh-huh."
"Okay." I stood up and walked to the fridge. Eyeballing the cerveza, I instead opted for a half-finished bottle of orange juice. "So you've been thinking about this for a while. How do we not kill him so these guys think he's dead?" I poured the juice into a coffee cup and leaned against the cool front door of the refrigerator.
"We could shoot him," the Actor said.
I sipped. "That would take care of the killing part. What abo
ut the not killing part?"
He said, "You know, if we got him into a hell contract, he wouldn't die. It would hurt a hell of a lot but no dying."
"Unless he's shot by another hell-contracted agent," I said and took another sip. "I suppose that's why the motorcycle guy with the shotgun just tore up your little yellow nightgown. When Sally puts a slug in you, you're dead."
Anza nodded. "I was going to ask about your nightgown."
"It is not a nightgown." He tugged at its tattered collar. "It's a fleabag motel kimono." He ran his hands down it, his stubby fingers passing over the singed parts.
"It looks like a witch's summer frock," I said and sipped with a smile. "We'll have to get you some other clothes."
"I look like a badass."
"Yeah, but I can see your jockey shorts!"
"Impossible." He crossed his legs. "I always go commando."
"Yeck." Anza raised her hands to her ears. "No more freeball talk. We're not going to shoot Uncle Jerry."
"Drowning?" I offered.
"No."
"Stabbing?" the Actor suggested.
"No."
"Autoerotic asphyxiation?"
"No, no," Anza said, waving a finger. "I don't even have a car."
The Actor grinned. "And I thought you said she was the smart one, Raz."
"He is a pilot. The only time he is let out of that room is when he is piloting. So—" She sipped from her cup. "We crash the plane."
I looked at the Actor and frowned.
Anza turned to me. "Yes, this is the best way, and those stupidos lose their drug-getting plane, so it is a win for us and the peoples of Mexico."
"The peoples?" The Actor stood up, walked over to me, and grabbed my cup. "We don't see you for the best part of a year, and you turn into a fascist commie revolutionary?"
He took a sip, winced, then took another.
Anza turned to us, arm draped over the back of her chair. "There is the autopilot, guys! We get on and have Uncle Jerry make the plane crash itself!" A huge, beautiful smile split her pretty face.
"Okay." I snatched the cup back, draining it. "So how do we get Jerry off before the autopilot smashes it into the side of a hill?"
"Mountain," she said proudly. "From what I found out, the plane takes off from Cozumel and goes over ocean the whole way, but to get to a reserve in Nicaragua, there is a mountain range. Smash, boom, crash!"
"The question still stands."
The bedroom door banged open with, um, a bang. Standing in the entryway was Angel wearing nylon bicycle shorts, a purple bra, and a silky blond wig that fell to his shoulders. "Parachute!" he shouted in a singsong voice.
"No, don't like parachute plan," Anza said, her voice weary. "Is crazy, loco. Uncle Jerry is old. They fall out of showers. He can't parachute."
"I told you," Angel said, stepping forward, eyes locked on Anza. "Before my life on the stage, I spent a whole summer as a tandem instructor. I can just"—he pulled at imaginary straps on his chest—"strap our boy in and ride his back all the way down. We land safely, easy peasy."
"The image"—the Actor reached in the fridge and grabbed the orange juice bottle—"of a drag queen mounted onto Uncle Jerry is one I will never, never be able to get out of my mind."
Angel put a hand on his hip. "You should be so lucky."
"No one is mounting nobody!" Anza shouted, hand in the air again.
"Well, there go my afternoon plans," I said and got a roomful of stares. "Come on, that was funny."
Angel nodded toward me, his eyes still on Anza. "You said he was an entertainer," he said flatly.
"Well, he is unemployed. I don't think he was a very good one."
"Hey!" I said and snatched the juice bottle the Actor had taken from the fridge. He grabbed it back, theatrically licked around the opening, smiled, and took a sip.
Anza stood up and slapped her hand on the counter.
"I thought you were tired, Angel. I don't want you involved in this," she said then turned to us. "No parachute. Most of the flight path to Nicaragua is over water. He flies very low."
"Come on," the Actor said.
"Yes, yes. So, he sets it on a course to smash into a mountain but before… jumps into the water. Then the plane crash, boom, bang into the rock, and Uncle Jerry is safe."
"And drowning," the Actor said. "For the record, I want to say I suggested that first."
"No, not drowning." She smiled, putting her hands to her chest. "That is where we will be. With a boat."
The Actor looked at all of us then shrugged. "You know, that is so crazy, it just might—"
"But this is ridiculous!"
We all laughed.
"That is not how the expression goes, Anza."
The only one not laughing was Angel. "A parachute is a much better idea," he said, turned, and went back into his room. Before he closed the door again, he poked his head out. "You know that juice has my medicine in it."
The Actor froze, the bottle nearly to his lips. "What medicine?"
He gave us a wicked smile then slowly closed the door, peering through the gap.
My short friend looked down, shrugged, said "It tastes nutty," and drained the last of it.
I looked around the room and, for a moment, took in the simplicity of it. That was how normal people lived: a small apartment, a steady job, friends sitting at the living room table, joking and sipping cocktails on weekends.
But that "normal" life, so distant, was not the one I currently led. Again, we were plotting a bit of madness. Some part of me wondered if I could ever get back to normal.
The Actor tossed the empty juice container into the sink. "So, we sneak onto the compound, through the armed guards, find Jerry, and get him to program the plane to crash, then take a boat a few thousand miles down the coastline, avoiding the coast guard of a half dozen nations, and wait for him to fall out of a moving plane."
Anza grinned. "Exactly."
I shook my head. "Why not?"
The Actor asked, "Where's this high-speed boat of yours, Anza?"
"Ah." She took a few steps back into the living room and plopped down into her chair. "That is where this sort of gets complicated."
"How complicated?" he asked.
She shrugged. "No boats."
However, the way she'd just said that triggered a memory of something similar I'd heard the last time I had been in Mexico. I grabbed a beer from the fridge, spun the top off with a thumb, and shot the bottle cap across the room. "I think," I said, "I know a couple guys who can help us."
When I leaned back, brushing an arm against my jacket, a strained mechanical voice spilled out, "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!"
Chapter Sixteen
As the elevator car began to rise, Hood put a hand to the wall as his stomach did a mild somersault. The interior of the elevator was dark except for a thin glow of an LED above him. There were four more strips vertical along each wall.
With a small bit of pleasure, he watched as the red lights traveled from top to bottom. He'd had to work with Facilities for a few days to get the right pacing—too slow and it looked like the car just wasn't moving very fast, too fast and it made him nauseous.
He frowned as one of the red LED strips refused to cooperate, a dark, finger-length patch. He tapped it a few times until it came alight in time with the travel indicators on the other walls.
"Hmm."
Finally at the top, the door opened to a large, cavernous space. The dimly lit room was encircled by a long purple leather couch with tiny dots of track lighting so he didn't trip over it.
In the center was the Call Cauldron.
Hood considered hitting the automatic shades, which would slide in with their ominous thunk, thunk, thunk sound, blacking out the windows. Occasionally, there were paparazzi set up on the far perimeter of the compound, pointing cameras and looking to catch the young, reclusive CEO doing something salacious that could sell tabloids or clicks—or almost as good, posed in a way that appeared he was doing somet
hing salacious.
However, he was an egomaniac, who was likely responsible for ten percent of those clicks. Few things gave him more pleasure than to see a grainy photo of himself, maybe reaching for something off frame, and all the speculation that the little people would spin out, seeking distraction from their dull and pointless lives.
He's probably got slave girls in there. You can't see 'em because they're forced to kneel, avert their eyes!
I'm betting drugs. Rails of cocaine that look like snakes!
I heard rumors of a pudding hot tub! Probably calling for more butterscotch!
Months earlier, he'd had the extended perimeter security shut down so as not to dissuade the snappers.
The social media boss walked over and got settled into the circular couch. All around it were flat smoked-glass panels nestled into the seat fabric. From above, it might look like a clock face, each dark panel in the position of the twelve numbers.
He tapped panel one next to him, and it slowly rose, revealing a mini fridge. Hood pulled out a diet soda. For the next minute, he decided on how he wanted to appear to Steve Janus, the chairman of Hell Inc., or as he liked to call him, Big Head. Hood tried putting an arm up on the couch with one crossed leg then switched the other direction.
At one point, he put both legs up on the cushions and leaned back against the raised panel. But he felt it made him look too childlike. He was already the youngest member of Steve Janus' inner circle and didn't need to bolster that image.
Another adjustment, he tapped the dark glass again, and a footrest below him sparked twice then shot across the room.
"Dammit!"
In the end, he put both feet on the floor while casually draping an arm over the back of the couch. Now settled, he clapped twice and the cauldron came to life.
In the circular space created by the couch, flames rose to encircle a large black disk.
The word CONNECTING floated in midair just above the flames, trailed by three dots of an ellipsis filling out left to right repeatedly.
After a full minute—during which Hood tried crossing his legs at the ankles but felt that was trying too hard and put them both back on the floor—the large, floating head of Janus appeared in the center.
The huge face was topped by a receding hairline. It also looked displeased. "Why do I only see feet?" the head barked. "Am I talking to shoes? Someone booked me in to talk to shoes? I don't talk to shoes!"