|-------------------------------------Swallows (Swift)------------------------------------|
Briton Beach New York
Across the busy asphalt street he stands in a doorway out of the light drift of snow, his mind sees only angles of observation, escape paths; a panorama of internal shifting views of how he needs to move, might need to adapt, might seek escape, would dodge, would attack, churns there. The public phone booth is his goal. He is dressed in dark grey, medium sized, a watch cap on his head, grey, average build but clothed as he is his actual strength and size are obscured. He is, when not in motion, or less clothed, invisible to most of the average untrained eyes. Animals in a forest, and a very few humans, can sense his ‘otherness’.
He steps out of the doorway and in less than three seconds is across the street and at the phone. It rings just as he reaches for the handset. He uses his left hand to pick it up and hold it near his ear. The voice says “Bliss Show Club, Phoenix Arizona, Teperb!” and the line goes dead.
He drops the handset from his gloved hand and flees knowing the two things he needed to know. First, where to pick up the trail of his quarry, second that they always watched.
Bliss – antonym – misery
Kertus stands in the middle of the stripper bar. “Not a hot spot at 11 AM” he thinks. The shift manager looks apologetic and tired “We get a lunch surge, really, it’s just a bit early for them.” Kertus looks at the two dancers standing their stations at their dance poles and moving lazily to the booming dance track. The music is some new euro house music with a deep subsonic component that is making Kertus’ head throb. “Puking awful rancid stuff, wot the fuk hapn’t to the Divinyls and tha Cherry Pie band?” he asks the manager. When he’d entered the bar looking for this dancer whose photo had showed up with Manda in the background from some security system or another near this club the dancers had been sitting in a booth chatting with each other. They were pretty girls, mid or late twenties, high cheekbones, slightly angled eyes; “Slavic” he thinks. “So, ya say this Annie’s liv’n up th’ pike in a trailer place?” “Yes,well, it’s a trailer sales lot, yes, Arizona Trailers over by the freeway.” The shift manager, Billy Peterman, is short, overweight, possesses a receding hairline, has jail house
tattoos on his forearms and, invisible to anyone he knows these days, on his back and ass. He’d had a mixed background of minor criminal activity, and he’d hoped that this job would be his way to some sort of security. His life had basically been fucked since he was seventeen, and the years prior to that had seemed like heaven until he’d been popped by the Mariculpa County Sheriff’s office for stealing tires from a garage where the idiot owner had left the display rack outside after closing. A six month stretch in the county lockup had resulted in some missing front teeth and the tramp stamp that ran down his ass in the shape of a chain of tears. He’d had a history, now, of run ins with the law, car theft, assault, and traffic citations that filled entire boxes in his closet. He had seen faces like this Australian’s before, and they weren’t to be fucked around with. “Joi, give this man a nice pole dance will you” he yells at the curly
blonde haired dancer at table four. Kertus remains in place; mumbling seemingly, but is in busy conversation with Driver who is already in motion through the city streets nearby.
The dancer called Joi wraps herself around the pole at her station, her mind is focused on another place, and another time; her body in a routine set of moves memorized months ago. She’d learned them from that American girl, who it was whispered, had a gay female lover, she’d never tried that herself. Women had never had any money where she was from.
Arizona Trailers
Driver mumbles to himself “What the fuck is that girl up to now.” The Humvee rolls towards Arizona Trailers, at speed, the communications console Driver is minding informs him of all police, FBI, DEA, State Trooper, and private security activity in the entire city area; additionally he has available real time satellite feed for visuals on any coordinates he selects. His contacts in the drug and arms cartels have whispered that there is a move on to locate Manda; and that a price is being negotiated for information leading to her, but no price has been placed for her death, nor is anyone blurting out who the people offering the five thousand euros are. He turns to the driver and says “Faster.”
The trailer is empty, Driver stands with one of the two team members who got here before him, their Humvee sits open and running beside the trailer; the owner of the lot Don Cantwell, who’s struggling with sales now that the economy has hit a ‘soft spot’ that seems to have no bottom, stands nearby speaking with Kertus. Driver is on his smartphone with the
brunette getting an update on her arrival. “Yeah, well, we’ve found some documents here that make us think she’s heading north out of the city. Yes, the name of a club northwest of here, it’s not in the phone books or anything online, but the property and planning records show us where it is. Um hmm, Well, there’s an additional problem with it. It’s drug cartel area, and the DEA is everywhere up there; no, no reports of any planned actions. And” he pauses “she’s got a phone number here. It’s the cell phone number of a throw away, but” he pauses again, “the payment was channeled through a Bureau account after moving through some laundering cut outs.”
Kertus and Cochise
“Hey I run the largest trailer dealership in the Phoenix area, I’m one quarter Apache and I don’t have to take this shit from anyone” Don Cantwell insists. He’s as tall as Kertus but for an ex-fullback on U of A’s 1980 losing team he’s let a lot of air seep into his belly, and has trouble rising from his chair after dinner with his unsatisfied wife. Don’s on the edge with his dealership, and only his investments in the Bliss Show Club have enabled him to keep his mistress satisfied. “I called them and they hired her, she needed somewhere to stay, I didn’t know SHIT about some bald headed dyke living with her. Fuck, all this shit and I’m bound to get in trouble with the County Housing and Inspections assholes.” Kertus rolls his eyes and moves close enough to Don that Don can smell the Nutella he had on crackers before arriving. “Donny, ya reely don’t wanna be shoutin at me like that”, Kertus whispers in Don’s face. Don takes two steps backwards and stumbles on a flattened trio of Walgren’s Big Flat Beer, “That fucking Manuel, drinking this piss out here and not cleaning up. Gonna kick his ass off the lot damnit” Don thinks.
“Okay, so you got her the job, cos’ yer all nice roight Donny? And then she goes and moves this bald headed gurl in wif her roight? And what sorta car’d you say they was driving; Hundayih, Toyotah, some sorta small
asian silver job?” “Yeah Hundai, silver, four door, don’t know the model but it was a few years old.” Kertus turns and walks away from Don. Don sighs and rubs his chest where he thinks his acid reflux is building. In three months Don will be in an urn in Phoenix Memorial Cemetery, where his dust will gather dust for two years until his widow ceases to pay the annual monthly maintenance charges for his little slice of heaven. She’ll take her part of Don’s investment in Bliss and sell it off for a nice gain, and pick Joi up as her lover as an extra.
The sun is just setting when Driver assembles his crew and their Humvees, and opens the boxes that they’d picked up from Joshua. The electronics in one gleam silver and green glow and dark matt metal and plastic, the next two reveal assault weaponry illegal in the United States for everyone, military personnel included, the last two cases contain matt desert brown tubs, bracing tripods, sighting lasers, and munitions forbidden for use against personnel of any standing army. Kertus’ mouth waters and he thinks with certain sadness, of how his brother would have loved to play with such toys.
The sky is black; a cold wind is picking up, sliding in from the North West and carrying the dust and dreams of the arctic with it. High high up, above breathable sky, small crystals of water glimmer in the air; spinning and riding the waves of cold and warm, taking shape, then reforming, then suddenly clustering together and dropping quickly; only to repeat the same patterns, like an immense school of fish in the ocean, seeking safety from their larger hungry cousins.
© Amanda 2011
Quote