If he leaves his apartment before 5:30 am, he can be on the links to tee off at exactly 6 am, which is the earliest start time that the club will allow. He figured that he could get in eight holes, maybe nine, before one of his men shows up to collect him. Someone is bound to drag him back to the office, even though it is his day off. Not even the dead could have failed to notice the gunfire that kept the entire city awake for most of the night. He thought that it would be better to take in this one last, small pleasure than hurry to the station. He already dreaded the insane stack of paperwork which was without doubt waiting on his secretary's desk. The forms alone would consume his entire August.
The most depressing part was that all those bullets and bodies made no lick of difference. The gang war showed no sign of slowing, and it didn't take a genius to see that normal befriend-abuse-betray cycle of Roanapur's crime syndicates had lost its center. Clearly, something had fractured the oddly trusting relationship between Boss Chang and Balalaika that had let the city flourish since 1993. Now, alliances were brokered and broken with dizzying speed as the competing mafias let their long-festering animosity and greed explode like a zit on a fat man's ass. While the big boys battled, the vile little street gangs that usually skulked in the outer rim took advantage of the distractions to swarm in and lap up any neglected business. Their maniacal avarice meant that no quarter of the city was safe anymore. Those idiots would plug their own grandmothers for a New Year's bonus, so it was only a matter of time before the civilian death toll went up and got noticed beyond the city limits. The whole disgusting mess made his guts turn, even as his secret bank accounts bloomed.
He didn't need to read the reports from his detectives to know the score. Two months ago, the Italians agreed to help bring in the Colombians, who had been all but evicted after that wacky maid fiasco, in exchange for a larger chunk of the cocaine trade. The Cartel (still headed in Thailand by Abrego) quickly double-crossed their benefactors once back on Roanapur's soil by teaming up with the Triad in order to get out of their unprofitable covenants with Ronny the Jaws and his old world Mafia. The Triads, in turn, did a better job of impeding the returning Cartel's progress than helping them, so the Colombians got uppity and exploded a 14K drug ship docked the harbor in absolute daylight, no less. The Chinese took a little revenge, the Italians finally put together that they had been had, and Colombians found themselves grabbing their ankles and waiting to get fucked. The appearance of one of Chang's boys in his office to extend an appropriate bribe confirmed that the 14K had asserted its right to be the fucker, and the whole thing went down in the previous night.
He wondered if this meant that he was now SOL in feeding his budding addiction to arepas.
Sighing, he locked up with his unfortunate pre-furnished apartment, trudged out to the dingy covered parking area, and climbed into his late model car in the quiet of the morning. At the first stoplight, he briefly considered his normal route to the club. The coffee had taken a little too long to brew, and he could really use those five minutes back. Still, five minutes wasn't worth the risk. Sure, the quick way was quick, but it would take him directly through Dago turf, where he would be interminably delayed. The thick envelope that he accepted just yesterday from that Ivan bitch to keep his men off the Italian-run streets for the night guaranteed that a broken world of ripped up bodies and exploded cars waited for him down the normal route. Apparently, Miss Balalaika had grown weary of street skirmishes and opted for more direct measures. He could say this about the Russians: they were effective as hell but never subtle. He had spent the better part of the night fretting over their overblown use of force. Were the gunships necessary, really? He had no end of trouble with the national army every time Hotel Moscow went all Afghanistan in his city limits, and the cost of a buying off a general left precious little for the local talent like him.
He had talent, too, damn them all. Did those fucking gang bangers think that what he did was easy? Or cheap? He had a city full of panic-prone civilians to assuage, a federal force to cock-block every time they got a whiff of a big deal gone bad, and four kinds of local media to suppress. He was a goddamn genius, and at the end of it all, his cut from those fat envelopes covered little more than an annual membership at the golf club and his bitch ex-wife's alimony.
He slammed the door to his assigned locker with a dramatic huff even though no one was present in the club's posh ready room to witness his fit. Perhaps he did it because no one would see. Thinking back, he couldn't remember anything from the ride over to the links. All this anger couldn't be good for his blood pressure.
He sighed again.
Maybe he should give up and let the regional office replace him like they had been itching to do for years now. He could cash in his pension and spend the rest of his days on a quiet ko in the arms of a gal with more tits than brains. Thoughts of string bikinis filled his simple brain as he hefted the bag of polished clubs over one shoulder and turned towards the brightly lit archway that emptied onto the course.
A swirl of black fabric materialized in front of him, effectively blocking his exit.
"What the-?" he muttered through curled lips.
The stranger tapped a finger to the bridge of his oddly shaped sunglasses. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am-"
But Watsup, chief of Roanapur's crooked police force, heard nothing more of the stranger's speech over the sudden thrum of blood in his ears. There was the glint of gun metal the stranger's hands, and the distinct smell of blood in his long, black jacket. As he turned to run, his cleated golf shoes digging ragged holes in the carpet, Watsup realized that he was already dead. One exit blocked by the one attacker, and he had left his weapon in the car. He hadn't thought that he would need it. Who in Roanapur would want him dead? Didn't they understand how lucky they were to have him?
A strange laughter welled up inside of him as he scrambled to find some way, any way, to escape.
Only a damn fool...
He felt the bullets- one, two, three- rip through his back and rattle around between his ribs.
His last laugh broke free on a bubble of blood.
From the other side of sleep, he heard a series of shots outside. These shots were nothing out of the ordinary, not like the roar of helicopters and the building-shaking explosions from last night. It was just the muffled echo of another .45 from some distance away, but the resounding echo of those booming retorts sounded just like the rush of a massive wave. It brought Rock, gasping and groggy, up on his hands in the bed that still smelled like the curve of Revy's shoulder. The clock on the microwave across the room flashed 05:57, and the envelope on the counter was long gone. Rock didn't know if that made him felt better or worse.
He tried not to think about it too much. He rubbed at his eyes, got up, and stumbled into the washroom.
So what if he hadn't felt her leave? Perhaps it wasn't such a bad thing. The way his fingers lingered over every livid bruise in the shower told him that he might not have been able to let her walk away this time. That selfish, needy core of him wanted to seize her by the wrists, and when he had all of Revy's searing focus fixed on him, it would compel him say those crystalline words that he knew would make her stay. Rock couldn't deny that some central part of him wanted nothing as much as to drown with her, the very woman that he was dying to save.
What excuse could he offer for the greed of his heart? Lovesick men have never been renowned for their logical thinking.
After the shower, he scraped a razor over his face more out of perfunction than necessity. He combed his hair and brushed his teeth. He dug out a clean outfit from Revy's massive pile and ironed out his collared shirt and black slacks by the bed before putting them on. He gathered the strewn papers into the leather satchel. As a final gesture, he emptied the trash and carefully held the bag away from his pants leg as he tugged open the door.
Before he left, Rock took one last survey of the room. Bare walls. Huge mess on the floor. Nothing personal. Nothing that would betray that he was ever there. When Rock thought about it, he realized that he had been living with the substance of a ghost. His former Japanese bosses had wiped out his identity when they threw him away. Roanapur knew him by a different name, but he held no rosy illusions about the value of his new existence. If a stray bullet took his life as he stood there (so pathetic and so small), his city would forget him in hours. Maybe three people could be bothered to miss him, not counting the legion of loan sharks and small-time hustlers with whom Rock had recently become acquainted, but even those petty crooks would not risk uttering his name to curse him. No one in the dirty, jeweled city spoke of the dead if they could avoid it.
As he hung on the door, Rock felt the pull of nothingness sucking at the last flame of his tiny life. He had never felt so near to losing himself, had never stepped toward the abyss so willing. He wondered if he would somehow get used to it.
Rock closed the door without touching the lock.
Over in the Lagoon office, he started the first pot of coffee and flipped through the latest batch of files from Benny's late shift. A note paper-clipped to several pages of photocopied from an American Lonely Planet guide rested on the top of the stack.
Rock gulped down the first slug of bitter coffee and squinted to make out Benny's scrawl.
I thought that I was the brains in this operation. Sheesh. You were right. This place just might be next stop on the Banana Pancake Trail. More after I sleep... -B
Rock found himself smiling despite his weariness. Benny was a good friend.
He worked quickly after that: scanning the attached pages, making some notes just to occupy his hands but committing the relevant bits to memory, blazing through the rest of the stack. His impressive pace had another advantage; any pause in the machinations of his mind brought up the intoxicating memory of Revy's raw heat and unrepentant need. The worst of him holed itself up in a corner of his head to scheme of the fastest way to get close enough to touch her again, and it refused to miss any chance to shove his lust to the forefront of his thoughts.
Dutch appeared sometime after nine with a newspaper tucked under one arm and a half-filled duffel bag of raw data, which he dropped on Benny's swivel chair.
"That's the last of it. The bus of snap-happy kiddies is on the bumpy road to Oz by now," Dutch reported as he helped himself to an extra-large mug of coffee and several spoonfuls of sugar.
"You think that getting them out is a waste," Rock observed with a tinge of bitterness.
Dutch fell into a chair and kicked his boots up on the table. "Never said that, but yeah, I do."
Rock didn't look up from yesterday's released report on Thailand's GDP to explain. "This isn't sympathy. This is eliminating a liability, and shipping them to the next city is cheaper than killing them."
"They'll be back sooner or later." He shrugged while Rock marveled at his former boss's perfect poker face. Dutch had mastered the mask of bland indifference.
Rock closed his eyes. "If that happens, I'll figure out something else."
Benny's CPU fans whirled while the latest batch of data uploaded. Rock heard Dutch blow across the surface of his coffee and suck back another swallow. It was amazing how much silence could feel like an interrogation. Dutch had that odd power about him.
Rock opened his eyes. "Listen, I know that you're worried, but I can do this. I'll do whatever it takes."
Dutch raised the mug to his mouth. "Never said you couldn't."
"Watsup is dead," Rock said flatly.
Dutch rocked backwards in his chair. His expression held constant. "When?"
"This morning."
"It's not enough," Dutch said, totally cool. "Watsup was the easy part."
"I know," Rock confirmed with a voice far surer than he felt. "I'll do it."
He felt Dutch's gaze move across his bare arms and sweep over his throat where Revy had left her mark inked in blood under his skin. If there was any doubt about his resolution, Dutch could see the reason for Rock's commitment to the plan plainly in the hard light of morning. Rock was in love- possibly with disaster itself, possibly with the woman who embodied its elemental fury.
Dutch pushed out a long breath, unfolded the newspaper, and pushed it across the table. Rock spun it around to read the front page.
"The headline's about the dangers of rip tides in the harbor. Gunships all over the city last night. Ronny holed up with what's left of his Italian boys somewhere while Hotel Moscow is on the hunt for their blood. The Cartel in smoky ruins thanks to the 14K, and we get rip tides. Un-fucking-believable."
Rock nodded slowly. "Tomorrow will be different."
"What?" Dutch's face cracked into a smile at last as realization hit him. "Damn. Watsup will be tomorrow's lead story because he's not among the paying living to bribe down the paper's editor-in-chief. Don't I feel stupid."
"Maybe Watsup," Rock agreed softly. "Or maybe this."
Dutch accepted the thin stack of papers topped with a trio of Polaroids. He cocked an eyebrow at his former employee. "I hate repeating myself, but are you sure you can do this?"
Rock didn't respond. He merely pushed out of his chair to wash his emptied mug in the sink. He didn't want to talk anymore, but Dutch's rich voice caught him at the door.
"Revy gave me a ride back last night. She looked like shit," he said.
Rock nodded. He knew exactly what Dutch meant. Revy had gone too skinny and too feral. Her clothes hid the worst of it, but Rock had peeked beyond her everyday disguises. The sharp angles of her bones under that sallow skin hurt his heart. Anyone could see that she was pushing too hard. She needed a week's worth of late nights down at the Yellow Flag and too-warm afternoons hanging with Eda. Needed a marathon of old Westerns on the TV and someone to put a dozen or so hot meals in front of her. Needed to laugh. Needed to sleep. Needed to come home.
"She took the money, Dutch," he found himself saying.
"Doesn't mean that she'll leave," Dutch countered in a low voice. "Who's to say she won't put it up her nose?"
It was the same argument starting to swirl again. His faith in Revy versus Dutch's hard-won practicality. Rock opted not to stick around to have it out again. He ducked out of the door into the heavy humidity of an August morning. He had to work.
At the bottom of the stairs, the flash of a camera dazzled his irises.
"Ouch," Rock whined.
"Wimp," Eda chided. She stepped out of the shadow of the building dressed in her typical, lurid, bubblegum pinks. A Polaroid camera dangled from her wrist.
"Oh," Rock said.
"Oh?" Eda mocked. "Yeah, you know who I am. Former CIA, motherfucker. Did ya really think I wouldn't figure it out?"
"Eda, I'm busy," Rock insisted. It was a bad excuse. He usually did much better than that. Dutch's quiet interrogation must have done a number on his head. Rock pulled an innocent face and blinked several times to buy time.
Eda whacked him in the shoulder with the camera. "Knock it off. I'm done with your nice guy act. You're gearing up to blackmail the entire city. With your own little army of street kids." She waved a developing Polaroid picture in his face. "Heard you shipped the brats over to Muang Chumphon. I'm thinking that you're going make the move now."
Rock didn't try to hide his frown. "Are you planning on getting in the way?"
Eda snorted. "Did you hear those damn choppers last night? You think I wanna live in a fucking DMZ?"
"Look, pardon my rudeness, but I am working. Just tell me why you're here," Rock cut her off. He tried to walk quickly across the handful of blocks to the main road where he could catch a tuk-tuk to the city center, but Eda tailed him like a soi dog.
"Ooo, touchy. Where's that smooth negotiator now? Or maybe you can't be bothered to be polite because you don't see the point of gaining the good Church's support," she teased.
Rock wanted to stop but opted to keep his pace steady. "I find it hard to believe that Yolanda sent you. If she wanted an alliance, she would come herself."
Eda raised the camera to her eye, snapped another shot, and smirked. "You're so cute when you're trying to act tough. But seriously? Think about it, ace. The Church is on the other side of Italian turf, which I can say first-hand is rip-rip torn right now. Fry Face went nine kinds of crazy on those skeezers. I barely got through on my bike. No car could make it, and Yolanda is old as fuck. It's not like she can hoof it here."
"She wants me to come to her," Rock realized.
Eda popped her gum and grinned. "Now you got it. And it gets better. Guess who else is coming to tea time? Only a couple of recently humiliated gang bosses who are sucking down their pride to have a shot at staying in Roanapur."
They rounded the corner, and there was Eda's motorcycle, right on cue. Rock stopped, but Eda sauntered right up to her favorite machine and snagged the helmet from the seat.
"I'll let you wear it, if it'll make ya feel safe," she said with a saucy wink. "You gotta ride bitch, though."
"Eda, what does the Church believe that it will get out of this? You have no reason to play the game. The Church's ties go so deep that it will go on, regardless of what happens to the rest of the city."
Eda's furnace-blast smile closed up and became a hard line even as her blue eyes softened. Rock had seen this before. Behind the bravado and the swagger, there was a woman betrayed and busted up, whose eyes lived in a web of fine lines that belonged on the face of someone twice her age.
"Rock," she said, her voice low and smooth like the current of a river. "You should see what Hotel Moscow has done to this place already. If they are allowed to go on, there will be nothing left to save. Roanapur's the last stop for losers like us. You should know that as well as any of us. The Church will go on, but where else are we gonna go?"
Rock reached out and touched her elbow. If Eda could drop her guard like this, then he would put his trust in her. Revy wasn't the only one with instincts. "I know. You're right. But Yolanda won't like my terms. I need time to prepare for this meeting."
Eda shook her head. "Rock, cutie, we're out of time, and everybody knows it but that insane-o Ivan bitch's crew and the motherfuckin' legion of the Heavenly King." She tossed the shining black helmet to him. "Just get on the bike. This doesn't have to be so hard."
But it was hard. The talks lasted all morning, all afternoon, and into the night. For leaders with only a fingertip's hold on their former place in the city, Abrego and Ronny acted like kings. Both of them suffered from the same malady: a terminal case of machismo. Even as their respective handfuls of good men pissed away the day playing cards and watching pornos with Rico in the adjoining building, the once-mighty crime lords still postured like they controlled platoons of able bodies. Their infinite need to feed their egos started to raise the hackles on Yolanda, who could be downright dangerous when properly primed, and Rock had to fight to keep them all at the table.
Rock couldn't understand why they felt the need to be so damn prideful when they had so little left to call their own. After a few hours, he figured out that they were playing it up for an audience. He felt so stupid. Of course, they had been putting on a show from the beginning. He made everyone kick out their bodyguards. Eda winked at him and licked her lips as she sashayed out of the room.
Once divested of the unnecessary company, Rock could move the players into more favorable positions. The negotiations chugged along smoothly after that, but the whole thing took much longer than Rock had expected.
By the time that Eda dropped him back at the Lagoon's office, darkness had long since taken out the day. She had been right to push him into action that morning. The unearthly stillness that smothered the entire city confirmed that Yolanda's impromptu convention clocked in just before the final squall. They hadn't seen a single sorry soul on the streets during the long ride over.
"Thanks, Eda," he told her sincerely as he handed back the helmet.
"See ya, space cowboy," she grinned at him before shoving it down over her cornsilk ponytail, gunning her bike, and tearing off into the night.
Rock took the long climb up the stairs at the top of which a lewd stream of cursing met him at the door.
"God-fucking-dammit. Just work, you filthy piece of mechanical shit!" Benny swore at his LCD array of monitors.
Rock shot a questioning look to Dutch, who merely shrugged and stood up to refill his highball with bourbon. Rock felt a tidal wave of nausea when he saw the slightest of staggers in Dutch's steps. Dutch never showed the effects of drink. The warm fuzzies wrought from all the day's progress with the minor lords washed away like dust in the rain.
"Guys?" Rock asked.
"Oh. Hey, Rock. We're fucked," Benny declared.
"What? We were fine this morning. What happened?"
"Power outage at the service center. No one there will answer the phone. I can't tell if shit burned to the ground or if a storm knocked down a line or if aliens beamed the whole thing to Vega," Benny explained. "So we're fucked for now, and I can't tell how badly or how permanently."
"Rock, you had visitors," Dutch announced too loudly.
Benny winced. "Yeah, a regular loan shark feeding frenzy. I didn't catch all of it because I was busy romancing a dedicated connection to fix this mess. Dutch handled it."
Dutch gulped back his bourbon and said, "You have another week."
"That wasn't the deal!" Rock panicked. "I need more time."
Benny put a hand on his shoulder. "Easy there, champ. I think Dutch threw in his own stash to buy back that much. Those guys were serious. They wanted their pound of flesh."
Rock made himself breathe even though it felt like he was going under. He needed control. "I know. Thank you. I'm sorry that I wasn't here to handle it myself. But it's been a good day. I have buy-in from the Church, the Colombians, and the Italians. That is what I spent all day doing. Despite what it may look like, we are ahead of schedule."
Rock looked meaningfully at his friends. Benny's shoulders had come down out of their nervous hunch, but Dutch remained impassive on the couch.
"Rock, it's not over," his one-time boss said. The faintest slur colored his words, and Rock hated himself. He should have been more careful with his friends. In the frantic dash to get to this moment, Rock had used up all of Dutch's cool patience and exploited his carefully nurtured network. If Rock's plan failed, then Dutch was sunk. Benny, too. It was a wonder that both of them had continued to function under the strain for so long.
"I'm seeing this through," Rock promised. "Benny, just keep working on the server. If you can't bring it back, we probably have enough to pull from the hard drives to make a good show. I need to change, and then I'll do it." He looked to Dutch. "I'm going to make this happen."
"That reminds me," Benny chimed in. He plucked a small, lumpy fabric bag from his desk. "Rotton dropped this by. He said to thank you for the gig."
Rock accepted the parcel. It felt as heavy as an anchor and as cold as the bottom of the sea.
"I need to get going," he said and fled back to the tiny apartment. He couldn't hide the way that his hands were shaking, even though he wrapped them around the bag's rim until the knuckles turned white.
Only one thought bubbled to the surface of Johann Fischer's rum-filled mind: his ex-girlfriend Mandy was a filthy Aussie cunt.
Sure, she said that she loved adventure. She claimed that she wanted to see the world and didn't mind burning through all the savings she had put together from her waitress tips, but then what happened? She ditched him in Bangkok, that's what. She took the good backpack, the non-leaky canteen, and all of his cash and took off in the night.
She didn't even say good-bye, just left a note.
Dear J-
I think I have Dengue Fever, again. I'm going home. You really should bathe more.
That slag.
Some of the guys were headed deeper into the country, so Johann decided to leave Bangkok, which was a little pricey even for Thailand and definitely too rich for his now paper-thin wallet, with them. They said that they were going to Roanapur because no one went to Roanapur, for some reason. Pure country. No tourist traps and an international hostel all the same. It sounded like the wet dream of every hardcore traveller on the Banana Pancake Trail through Asia.
And Roanapur really was far, far out. He had been in the city for over a week and drunk for all but few hours of that time because it was all too surreal for sobriety. People walked around like gunslingers in the Wild West. Shots rang out at every hour. He and a couple of Kiwis had spent the night on the roof of the hostel watching the war unfold in the city below. Those tangerine explosions were so pretty reflected in the clear waters of the harbor. He drunkenly wished that he could turn that Buddha statue around to see the show.
"I can't fucking believe it!" he said over and over.
Then, everything shifted. The Kiwis were gone when he got up some time in the next afternoon. The Maple Leaves and the Brits had packed it up, too. Even the street kids who used to hang around like a pack of mutts by the front door with their Polaroid cameras had just vanished. Worse still, nothing was open in town. No tuk-tuks passed by to pick him up. Even if he wanted to leave, he was stuck.
Johann found a mostly full bottle of Bacardi in one of the emptied rooms and measured the hours in his progress toward the bottom.
Sometime after dark, the gunfights kicked into gear in the city again. He tried to watch from the roof, but it was too creepy to do it alone. Instead, he bought a pack of cigarettes from the vending machine and smoked them down, one after the other, in the hostel's dingy common room.
The front door chimed. Johann dropped his tenth cigarette into his lap at the sound and hopped up. The still-burning smoke tumbled to the floor.
"Fuck!" he cursed in German.
"Are you okay?" the new guy asked. His German sounded like he was speaking through a turbine, but Johann grinned all the same.
"Yeah, it's cool. I just dropped my cig. You might as well come in. The people who work here left when the shooting started."
"Ah," said the new guy.
Johann liked him right away. He had a kind face and bright eyes. Just some light-skinned Asian kid- or was he older? Johann couldn't tell. Asians always looked younger to him.
"I'm Johann. You want a smoke?"
"Yeah," the Asian guy said.
Johann nodded. He decided that the new guy looked too fair to be Thai. "Gimme a sec. I'll get you one."
The next couple of shots sounded much louder and much closer. Johann jumped and then started laughing. What else can you do with that much nervous energy and alcohol in your blood stream?
And then he saw the actual blood. He had leaned down to pick the pack up from the side table by the ratty hostel couch, and there was a growing puddle of blood on the floor under his feet. Where had it come from?
Johann tried to laugh again and couldn't.
He turned to his new friend, a question pushing at the corners of his mouth.
The man lowered the gun. For a long moment, he looked right into Johann's eyes.
"It's the only way," he said simply in English.
Johann lost his balance and crashed into the linoleum. Lying there in that shallow ocean of his own blood, he could see the stranger turn and run, leaving him alone on the floor.
He couldn't pull in any air to yell. Even if he could, no one was there to hear him, so Johann did nothing but think about how odd it was. He could feel the dry tip of his nose and taste the air on his tongue, but he felt exactly like he was drowning.
A/N: Thanks for all the reviews and fav-adds. All forms of encouragement are treasured, especially now. I'm not doing so well, as is evident by my incredibly disappointing update schedule. All appropriate measures are being taken trying to maintain the quality of this story, even though my biggest priority these days is making it through work without puking in public. Please be patient with me. I will finish.