Don't Order Dog (7 page)

“Wait
a minute, I–”

“No, don’t apologize,” Jeri interrupted, raising her hand. “
Don’t you see? I’m not asking you to like me. I’m just not interested in you wanting me. Do you understand what I mean? Of course you do. You’re a smart guy. I might’ve just wasted the last fifteen minutes of your favorite pick-up strategy, but cheer up! There’s plenty of naïve young ass in this bar that hasn’t learned the difference between
like
and
want
yet, so get out there and start tapping!”

The young man stared back at Jeri with wide, unblinking eyes, like an actor suddenly stricken with stage fright. His smile had fallen into his half-gaping mouth, and for the first time Jeri realized his childish shyness looked genuinely real. She picked up a towel and began hastily wiping down the counter. She was already beginning to hate herself.

“Look, I’m sorry, I–”

“You said the man that wrote those letters and I don’t know anything about you,” the young man interrupted. “But that’s not really true, is it?”

Jeri smiled wearily as her towel made small circular patterns across the old dark oak. “No, it’s not. You know something about me now that he doesn’t.”

“What’s that?”

She stopped wiping and carefully folded the towel before tossing it onto the rack beneath the counter. As she did, she glanced absently through the window at the blurred streaks of headlights that cut along the cold inky blackness of old Route 66.

“That I can be a real bitch.”

Jeri didn’t give him a chance to respond, but immediately walked towards the other end of the bar. There was nothing more to add to the conversation, nothing she would want to hear. She poured a few more drinks to the waning crowd, then leaned against the back counter and waited for the night to slowly fold to a close. A young couple stood to leave, the man playfully helping the woman with her jacket and scarf before taking her glove-sheathed hand. Jeri studied them, smiling and kissing as they slid through the door, the vapor of their hot breath rising like smoke before evaporating into the frozen air. She crossed her arms and sighed quietly, the volume of a conversation beginning to rise once more in her head.

It would suck to die alone.

Spotless.

Its surface radiated, glinting in the light of the room. Clean as the first time out of the box. Pure as a virgin’s conscious. A tiny, glimmering sculpture of 420 grade
martensitic stainless steel.

He wiped down the utensil again. As always, the act rekindled a memory of his father, peering down at some tool in his workshop from behind the black lenses of his ever-present Ray-Bans, a cigarette hanging loosely from his mouth, his voice deep and confident. He would calmly repeat his favorite lesson over and over, like some goddamned religious mantra, until the words had burned into his childhood conscious. Those same words echoed in his head now as he wiped the tiny instrument and inspected, wiped and inspected, wiped and inspected.

If you take good care of your tools,
your tools will take good care of you.

Satisfied, he slipped the last instrument of machined steel into its custom-formed sleeve and slowly rolled the kit tightly back into its original shape, slapping the thick elastic band around it before shoving it into his backpack. He stood up from the barstool and slowly stretched his arms over his head and yawned, enjoying the feeling of his tensed muscles as he wrung the exhaustion from his body. He then glanced at his watch.

2:42 a.m.

Six hours working on the package. Six hours straight. No piss breaks, no smoke breaks, no fifteen-minute porn channel jerk-off breaks. Six hours of calm-handed, clear-eyed, mind-focused, dick-flaccid attention. Some in his profession might call this heroic. Most would call it insane, but in an awed, reverential, brilliant sort of way, like Leo standing tirelessly in the dining hall of the Santa Maria delle Grazie while he toiled away at
The Last Supper
for hours at a time. Dublin would call him feckin’ daft. But then, Dublin was a selfish corpulent prick.

The package itself sat next to him in the chair at the kitchen bar, just inches away. He examined it with a critical eye and smiled. It was an inanimate mass of subtle brilliance. Then again, there was nothing subtle about the way the package itself looked. Were a stranger to mistakenly walk in to suite 805 at this moment, one look at the object planted on the expensive, high-backed leather barstool would leave them suspended in the kind of paralyzing fear that usually starts with soft spoken gibberish, ignites into involuntary shaking, and concludes with bowel-releasing spasms. It was the kind of sight that would immediately tell them that the small little corner of the world they just happened to walk into was undoubtedly the worst mistake of their lives; producing that gut feeling that this tiny circle on the map, and every unfortunate thing inside it, were about to be fully and irrevocably fucked.

Luckily, he’d never had that happen.

He walked over to the window and stared down into the dark and nearly deserted streets of the city. Market day had long since ended, taking with it the usual teeming crowds. The service gate of the hotel stood directly beneath him, brightly illuminated by a high row of sodium lights that painted the seated, half-slumbering security guards in a pasty shade of jaundice yellow. Just outside of the tall, razor-wire-topped security wall stood a motley collection of rogue-looking boys intensely preoccupied with smoking cigarettes and staring into the night. He watched for several minutes, curious why the boys fidgeted nervously, until the flickering light of a match from the darkness of the opposite street corner faintly illuminated a large gang of young men; their dark faces fixed menacingly on the boys along the fence. The scene stirred another old childhood memory in him – a warm summer day at a nameless lake, his small figure standing along the shore, watching silvery bands of panicked minnows schooling in the shallows as larger fish flashed just beyond in the murky depths.

The predators wait patiently for their prey.

He walked back to the kitchen and picked up the folder on the counter, flipping quickly through the instructions and documents given to him by the men in Al
Jubail. He paused on a page containing several images of a short, thin older man with deep-set dark eyes and a slight build, unknowingly taken from various angles, revealing his facial features in a variety of expressions– laughing, serious, aggravated, and even a photo where the man appeared to be shocked– or terrified. Across the top of the page was a quickly scrawled “#1” written in heavy permanent marker and circled. He lingered on the last photo before glancing up at the package, then quietly closed the folder and tucked it into his backpack.

He was done. Installation complete.

He stumbled into the living room and fell onto the wide leather couch, rubbing his knuckles into his closed eyes for a moment before grabbing his cell phone and texting a brief message.

Batter Up.

He tossed the cell phone onto the coffee table and sank into the soft cushions. The click of the entry door’s electronic lock dragged him back into consciousness, momentarily disorienting him as he lifted his head wearily from the couch. A blonde-haired young man with boyish looks and broad, muscled shoulders strolled into suite 805, a large leather satchel slung over his shoulder.

“Knock knock,” the young man announced quietly, walking into the large room.

“Christ, Tommy, you look like a damn college freshmen,” he replied as he examined the man standing in front of him.

Tommy smiled, exposing a broad row of perfect ivory.
“Aww… thanks Chilly. You yourself look like that rock star from the 80’s right after he tried masturbating from a hangman’s noose and slipped on his own sauce.”

“To hell with you… I loved that band,” he said as he sat up slowly, his body stiff with exhaustion. “For one thing, he was from your country, so show a little respect. Second, auto-erotic asphyxia is highly underrated. Maybe you should try it sometime.”

“Who says I haven’t?” Tall Tommy replied, his sarcasm laced with an Australian accent.

He smiled and nodded. This would only be his third time working with
Tall Tommy
, but he’d liked him from the moment they’d first met. One look at the handsome, twenty-something Aussie told him that Tall Tommy was the kind of guy who won every athletic competition he entered, aced every class he studied and deflowered every cheerleader he came across as a kid before heading off to college for a repeat performance. He had the naturally-graced gift of chiseled looks and perfect physique that women adored and lesser men detested, but beneath his mockingly self-absorbed behavior, he seemed clean of any genuinely prickish qualities. One thing he knew for certain about Tall Tommy from their first project together in Mexico City was that he was both razor-sharp and highly skilled. Having both him and Dublin on this project was like having Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen together on the court; he was working with a dream team of talent.

He glanced again at his watch. 3:03am.

“Thanks for giving me a full five minutes of sleep.”

Tall Tommy shrugged as his eyebrows rose in mock surprise.
“Hey mate, you called
me
.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know you were practically waiting by the goddamn door when I did.”

“Jesus Christ, Chilly… my room is two floors down,” Tommy snapped.
“I’ve just spent the last two hours lying on the bed watching a fucking Barbra Streisand movie, bored out of my head. Of course, I wasn’t really watching the movie as much as I was wondering why the hell Robert Redford would be interested in an emotionally unstable Jewish chick with big hair and questionable political views, or better yet, why the wonderful people of Nigeria would give a damn about two white American folks falling in love and having a shitty marriage.”

“‘The Way We Were’,” he replied. “That’s a great movie. Sydney Pollack flick. I think that one won an Oscar, Tommy.”

Tall Tommy glowered at him for a moment before scratching his chin with his middle finger. “Yeah, that’s absolutely awesome, and you know how much I appreciate your extensive knowledge of movies that suck, but that doesn’t make up for the fact that I’ve been stuck in this fucking hotel for the last twenty-four hours.”

“What do you mean, stuck?”
he asked.

“C’mon, be reasonable,” Tommy replied, staring at him as if he were mentally challenged. “Do you really think a white guy – wait, strike that – an
incredibly good-looking
white guy like me can just go strolling out on the town around here and not get noticed?”

“Good point,” he
answered. “Especially when you’re dressed like a Goeffrey Beene model.”

“Fuck off.”

He stood from the couch and twisted into a pronounced stretch as Tall Tommy carefully rested his satchel on the coffee table and began to unpack it. He pulled out a small, brightly labeled vile and twisted the top off, catching his colleague’s stare as he gulped back its contents.

“Relax, Chilly… it’s just B12,” he said as he casually tossed the empty vitamin container at him. “Keeps me sharp. You don’t honestly think I’m gonna poison this pristine temple of a body, do you?”

He smiled and shook his head as Tall Tommy briefly assumed the pose of a Romanesque statue, then grabbed the air in front of him and started thrusting his pelvis slowly.

“Besides, I’ve gotta keep it fresh for the ladies.”

“Christ, you and Dublin should hang out together.”

Tommy shrugged and went back to unpacking his bag. “No chance. Dublin would fuck pond scum if it had legs and a pair of breasts. He and I are not exactly playing in the same league.”

“I don’t think he’s even playing in the same species.”

Tommy laughed as he pulled a thin manila folder stamped with a 6-digit number from his satchel and flipped it open. “Any surprises for me tonight?” he asked as he thumbed through the pages.

“Nada,” he replied, his voice low and quiet. “Like clockwork so far.” He watched as Tall Tommy quickly scanned the information, his brow furrowed in concentration. Even though he’d gotten the packet days ago, this was undoubtedly the first time he’d stopped to read it.

“When did the package show up?” Tommy asked.

“About seven hours ago.”

Tommy snapped the folder shut and tossed it onto the coffee table. His eyes danced around the room before settling on the object that sat at the kitchen bar. He walked towards it slowly. “Seven hours, eh?” he said with an edge of awe in his voice before letting out a soft whistle. “Is that how long it usually takes to do this?”

“Depends,” he responded dismissively. He never liked to discuss the details. His job, like Dublin’s and Tall Tommy’s, was a solo one for a reason. “Each one’s different.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Tommy whispered, his stare fixed solemnly on the object. “Okay… I’ll take it from here, mate. Our man is doing his cameo in about six hours, so I better get started. Is all of your gear accounted for?”

He nodded.

Tall Tommy pulled two latex gloves from his pocket and looked around the room. “Anything off-list get touched?” he asked as he quickly snapped the gloves over his fingers, a cloud of talcum dust swirling in the air.

“Nope.”

“Sweet,” Tommy responded, pulling a tiny, expensive-looking pair of earphones from his pocket and placing them carefully over his ears. “Well then
, Chilly, don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.”