Titanoboa Read online

  “Good, I’m glad to hear you’re doing well.”

  “Can I talk to her a little more?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea. It gets her excited, and then you just break her heart.”

  “Me? Leah, what the hell have I ever done but ask her to come out here and spend time with me? I even offered to pay for you and your asshole to come out just so I can see her.”

  “My asshole? He’s a better provider than you ever were.”

  “If that were true he’d…” Mark took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He calmed himself, waiting a moment before speaking again. “I don’t want to do this, Leah,” he said calmly. “Can I call again tomorrow?”

  “No, once a week is plenty. Goodbye, Mark.”

  “Yeah, bye.”

  He hung up and placed the phone down on the table. Tears were forming in his eyes, but he pushed them back. Growing up, his father had always told him tears were for women. That they were weak in a man, and that a man, a real man, took action. He didn’t whine about his circumstances. As much as Mark tried to break the habit, as much as he tried to feel his emotions rather than shoving them deep down inside, his father’s words always rang in his head and prevented it.

  Instead of trying anymore, he decided to have a Jack and Coke and stare at the people passing by the café windows.

  7

  Deputy Chief Rashan Ali sat with his feet up on his desk. He was reading on his computer an article about the transvestite dancers in Bangkok when his secretary buzzed him.

  “Yes?” Though his native tongue was Fijian Hindi, he preferred the barbarity of English. The language forcibly took whatever parts of other languages it deemed necessary and adopted them as its own.

  “Mr. Miguel Arturo to see you, Chief.”

  “What about?”

  “He says he thinks someone drowned last night. He wants to make a report.”

  “So send it to Dinesh.”

  “He’s out on patrol right now.”

  Not likely, Ali thought. Patrol for him was stopping at a bar to have a few beers and then taking a long nap in his patrol vehicle. “Okay,” he said with a sigh, closing the window on his desktop, “send him back.”

  Miguel was a tall man with dark, caramel skin. He wore a style of clothing Ali hadn’t seen much. A white shirt embroidered with intricate patterns and shorts that seemed to flow off his body. Ali made it a point to lean a little to the side so he could see the man’s beige sandals that covered his toes.

  “What can I do for you, sir?” he said dryly.

  “Can I sit?”

  Ali motioned for him to pull out the chair. “Comfortable? Good. Now what can I do for you?”

  “I need to make a report about a missing person.”

  “And who is this missing person?”

  “A resident here. I forget his last name. His first name is Stanley. He has that old flicka you always see near the shore.”

  “Stanley Fischer. Yes, I know. I don’t think he’s missing.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He disappears for weeks, even months at a time. No one really knows where he goes. But then he just appears again.”

  “Well, I guess that would make sense if his boat wasn’t out on the water all night. So I went out there. Near the transom was about a gallon of blood.”

  “How do you know it was blood?”

  Miguel’s face flashed in anger that quickly disappeared. “I’m not an idiot. I know blood.”

  “Stanley was a fisherman. It was probably fish blood.”

  “I’ve smelled fish blood, lots of it, and this was not fish blood. Go look for yourself.”

  Ali rubbed the bridge of his nose. He had been planning to leave soon. His wife was out with friends and had taken the kids. He would have the whole house to himself to watch some dirty movies then relax in his backyard hammock and get drunk. “Mr. Arturo, you’re talking about a man who leaves the country six or seven times a year. What exactly do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to give a damn about a man that has lived on this island for thirty years.” Miguel stormed out of the open door. Ali watched him climb into a white luxury car, perhaps a Rolls Royce or something just as outlandish. He could see the woman in the passenger seat. Absolutely stunning. He wondered what he would have to do to get a woman like that. Probably win the jackpot in the island’s casino.

  His secretary, Helen, stood by the door with her arms folded. Anger scrunched up her face. Ali tried to ignore her as long as he could by going back to his computer, but she wouldn’t leave.

  “What?” he finally said.

  “Do you remember when my car wasn’t running? That thief Remmie wanted to charge me a month’s salary to fix it. Stanley fixed it for free. He even paid for the parts he needed and wouldn’t let me pay him back. My neighbor’s dishwasher was broke last month, and I called Stanley and he—”

  “Okay,” he said, cutting her off. “Okay, just calm down. I’ll look into it.”

  “You promise?”

  “Yes, I promise. Bhosde kay, you would think Stanley healed lepers or something.”

  She smiled. “Thank you.”

  “Sure.” He stood up and looked for his hat.

  The day was a hot one, and the heat was not helping Ali’s mood. The uniform of the police department consisted of long blue pants and a light blue shirt with a blue beret. He took the beret off and mopped up the sweat on his head with a handkerchief. He leaned against his patrol car, one of only three the island had, and finished a small bottle of kava. With only a third of the bottle left, he capped it, placed it on the hood of the patrol car, and headed out to the pier.

  The police force’s boat was a twenty-five foot Defender, an older boat donated to them by the United States Coast Guard. Ali climbed onboard. Dinesh fired up the engine from the bridge. Ali walked up behind him and didn’t say anything as the boat pulled out of the slip and headed toward open sea.

  “Good to see you’re actually awake,” Ali said.

  Dinesh didn’t reply. Instead, he sped the boat up a bit. “Where are we going?”

  “Sama Beach.”

  Ali sat down on a bench bolted into the ship’s bridge. It wasn’t there when the Coast Guard had donated it. The chief had placed it inside himself.

  Within five minutes, they were pulling into Sama Beach. Sama was almost a bay, surrounded on both sides by high cliffs. But the cliffs were wide enough apart that they never considered it a bay, and the water was still and clear. Ali went to the stern. He could see the boat, definitely Stanley’s and almost out in the open ocean. “Pull up close,” Ali shouted.

  The Defender slowed as it approached the other vessel. Ali hung over the railing and observed the ship. Stanley didn’t care much about appearances, and the ship appeared shabby, though it was probably thirty years old anyway. He was such a good mechanic that he had no need to buy anything new.

  Ali grabbed a line out of a container and attached a small grappling hook to one end. He tossed it onto Stanley’s boat and yanked back, the hooks catching underneath the handrail. He wrapped up the rope to a winch and turned it on, pulling the smaller boat closer.

  The smaller boat inched toward the Defender. When close enough for a man to hop over, Ali stopped the winch, went up onto the transom of the Defender, and jumped onto the other boat. The first thing he did was go down the stairs to see if maybe Stanley had passed out drunk.

  The cabin was empty, though the amount of useless junk Stanley had kept here impressed him. And how much he was able to drink, as evidenced by all the empty beer cans and bottles in the garbage. All the dynamite Stanley used for fishing stood out. The damn fool probably blew himself up, Ali thought.

  He trotted up the stairs and searched the rest of the ship. When he reached the stern, he froze. A large stain of what looked like dried blood spread over the transom and the deck. But something else was there, too. He bent closer. The something else was more terrifying than the blood.r />
  What appeared to be raw beef or chicken meat sprinkled the stain. And just by his feet, something else. Something off-white. Several of them, in fact. He picked them up. They were teeth. Human teeth. At least five of them.

  “Well?” Dinesh shouted from the Defender.

  “You better call the chief. I think we have a crime scene.”

  8

  Mark was walking back from the café when he heard shouting. He stopped in his tracks and instinctively went for the firearm tucked in the holster in the small of his back. Then he stopped himself and withdrew his hand. This wasn’t Los Angeles. No need for that.

  One man was chasing another through the streets. The men were yelling at each other, not much more than profanity in the Fijian tongue. One of them finally got a hold of the other and tackled him to the ground. They began punching each other. One even tried strangling the other. With so few police on the island, they didn’t have to fear arrest.

  Mark let them brawl another half a minute. Their punches were weak, as though they didn’t know how to make fists, and their squeals of anger drew a crowd. But despite their weakness, they were landing enough blows to hurt each other. Mark had seen enough.

  He marched up to them, pulled the one on top off, and pushed him back so he couldn’t attack the guy on the bottom again. “That’s enough!”

  The one standing looked surprised, and his eyes locked on Mark. The one taking punches looked surprised as well. Something wasn’t right. As Mark scanned the crowd, he saw the real purpose of the brawl. Two young kids, maybe twelve, were slipping in and out from behind the crowd and reaching into people’s wallets and purses. The men shouted, “Cumba Ja!” and took off. The boys followed.

  Though tourists were the lifeblood of the island and well protected, some people didn’t see it that way. They saw them as foreign invaders on their soil that deserved to be taken advantage of. Or, as in any society, some people were just assholes.

  As the crowd dispersed, completely unaware they’d just been taken, Mark saw Riki sitting at the café. She was sipping tea, and her sunglasses were over her eyes. She smiled to him, shyly, then turned back to her tea.

  The only thing Mark could think about when he looked at her was sadness. He couldn’t relate to that. His own brothers had never meant much to him. In fact, they hadn’t spoken in six years. So it was puzzling for him to watch her and know the loss of a sibling caused her melancholy.

  What the hell, he thought. He didn’t have a whole lot of other things on his plate right now.

  Mark hopped the three-foot fence around the café’s veranda and sat down across from her. On the table was a small bowl of pastries and her cell phone, with a picture of a man as the screensaver. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll look into your brother’s case for you.”

  Her entire presence changed. She was no longer sitting in a slumped position with her shoulders down, her lips twisted into a frown. She lit up like a kid on Christmas. And Mark had to wonder whether the sad act was solely for his benefit or the real deal.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  She placed her teacup back on the saucer. “So where do we start?”

  “I’ll need all the information you have about him. What hotel he stayed at, who he knew out here, what he liked to do on the island, the last place anyone saw him, things like that. It’s just a matter of running down every lead. But you need to understand, there are no guarantees. I might not turn anything up. But I still get paid the same. Up front, by the way. Twenty-five bucks an hour, with a thousand dollar retainer.”

  She took out her purse and pulled out a wad of cash as thick as a book.

  “No, not here. Put your money away before some pickpocket follows you to your hotel. Come to my office. My secretary will have some documents for you to fill out first.”

  “I really appreciate you doing this.”

  “Well,” he said, taking one of the pastries off the plate and popping it into his mouth, “let’s just hope we don’t end up regretting it.”

  Mark sat in his office while Riki signed up. He could hear her soft voice, feminine and somewhat sultry, through the open door. She was quite attractive, though Mark had a rule that he would never get mixed up with clients again. It made for uncomfortable situations later on. Plus, they never worked out. Whenever he began dating a woman, he always thought, What if we had kids? What would we tell them was the story of how we met? And telling their kids they met because of the disappearance of their uncle, or because their former husband was cheating on them, or because they had a stalker they wanted followed was not the most romantic of ways to meet.

  When Riki finished, she came to his door, a wide smile on her face, “Thank you again.”

  “No worries. I’ll get in touch with you as soon as I know anything.”

  She stood there awkwardly a moment, unsure what to say or perhaps knowing what she wanted to say but unsure how Mark would take it. She finally said, “He… I raised him.”

  “I know.”

  She nodded then left.

  Mark went out front to gather her paperwork. She’d filled out the information forms in perfect handwriting. They usually preferred to have those typewritten, but the handwriting was so clear Mark didn’t need it. He wondered if she came from prep schools and expensive colleges. From money.

  A streak of bitterness went through him, and he was angry. Mostly angry at himself for being bitter about something like that.

  Mark had been raised in as blue-collar a neighborhood as you could get, a suburb not far from Echo Park. Most of the people in the surrounding homes were construction workers or cops. The two professions all the kids knew they’d be going into from the moment they understood what a job was and why you needed one. Some of the kids chose a third route, becoming a criminal, but that was rare. And usually those were the kids from homes with parents who couldn’t have cared less what they did or where they were during the day.

  Mark scanned the completed file for William Thomas Gilmore and was amazed how little information there actually was. Riki seemed to know little about anything at all. She knew which beach he was at when she called him, knew which hotel he was staying at, but that was it. She had no idea who he was spending time with out here, whether he was into drugs, or a thousand other things she should’ve known if the two of them were close. Something wasn’t adding up about her story.

  Regardless, Mark could already guess how this was going to turn out. He wouldn’t find anything, she would be upset and probably ask for her money back, he would say no, and a Fijian court would decide the matter.

  He regretted his decision to take this case and cursed himself for not following his gut. But she was shaken up about this, and he certainly wasn’t going to sign her up and dump her the same day. He decided he’d poke around a little and see what he could find. Maybe it’d be an interesting case. Certainly better than all the cheating spouses he’d been dealing with.

  9

  The Bastion Hotel was a cream-colored building in the heart of Vusa. Its three flags outside represented India, Fiji, and the United States. A doorman was letting people in and out. Mark nodded to him as he held the door open. As he walked inside, he wondered whether to tip the doorman for something like that. He would Google it while he was in here and see.

  The clerks, a man and woman dressed in suit coats and dark pants, stood behind the counter. He vaguely recognized the man but not the woman.

  “Hi, I’m looking for some information about William Gilmore. He went by the name Billy Gilmore. I was wondering if you perhaps remembered him?”

  The woman rolled her eyes and returned to whatever she was doing, but the male looked at him sternly and said, “You’re with that woman, aren’t you?”

  “His sister? Riki?”

  “I don’t know who she is. But she came in here shouting and acting like a crazy person. We were thinking about calling the police.”

  “What was she shouting abo
ut?”

  “That we were hiding something. As though I would care about some American tourist enough to hide information.”

  The way he said “American,” Mark could almost see his revulsion. Only a sliver of the island’s population shared his attitude. Without American tourists, they would all be working in factories or fishing, and most people recognized that and were grateful. But some people simply blamed the United States for all the world’s ills, whether it was true or not. People just needed someone to blame, and America happened to be the dominant world power right now. Mark wondered if Rome had been blamed for all the world’s problems as well, or France or the British Empire. He had a feeling being on top brought many detractors.

  “What happened to him, exactly?” Mark asked, ignoring the smugness.

  “How should I know? He checked in one day, and the next he was gone.”

  “Was he staying here with anybody?”

  “Yes, a woman.”

  Mark opened a note-taking app on his phone. “Do you remember her name?”

  “I can look it up, but I won’t.”

  He knew why. He took out his wallet and laid a ten-dollar Fijian bill on the table. The bills used to have pictures of prime ministers and queens of England, but fish, seagulls, and depictions of government buildings replaced them. “The name?” he asked.

  The man looked at the ten. If he took it and gave him the name, Mark might leave and not ask any more questions. So he should ask for more. But if he asked for more, and Mark said, “Forget it,” and left, he wouldn’t get anything.

  Finally, the man took the bill, stuffing it quickly into his pocket before turning to his computer. Only a moment passed before he said, “Rebecca Langley.”

  “She still here at the hotel?”

  “Yes.”

  “What room?”

  The man stared at him blankly. Mark laid another ten on the table.