32

The Missionary Position

The guards came for Tucker at sunset, just as he was slipping into the cotton pants and shirt the doctor had left for him. The doctor's clothes were at least three sizes too big for him, but with the bandages he had to put them over, that was a blessing. He still had his own sneakers, which he put on his bare feet. He asked the guards to wait and they stood just inside his door, as straight and silent as terra-cotta soldiers.

"So, you guys speak English?"

The guards didn't answer. They watched him.

"Japanese, huh? I've never been to Japan. I hear a Big Mac goes for twelve bucks."

He waited for some response and got none. The Japanese stood impassive, silent, small beads of sweat shining through their crew cuts.

"Sorry, guys, I'd love to hang around with you chatterboxes, but I'm due for dinner with the doc and his wife."

Tuck limped to the guards and offered each an arm in escort. "Shall we go?"

The guards turned and led him across the compound to one of the bungalows on the beach. The guards stopped at the steps of the lanai and Tuck dug into his pants pockets. "Sorry guys, no cash. Have the concierge put a couple of yen on my bill."

The doctor came through the french doors in a white ice cream suit, carrying a tall iced drink garnished with mango. "Mr. Case, you're looking much better. How are you feeling?"

"Nothing wrong with me one of those won't cure."

Sebastian Curtis frowned. "I'm afraid not. You shouldn't drink alcohol with the antibiotics I have you on."

Tucker felt his guts twist. "Just one won't hurt, will it?"

"I'm afraid so. But I'll make you one without alcohol. Come in. Beth is making a wonderful grouper in ginger sauce."

Tucker went though the french doors to find a bungalow decorated much like his own, only larger. There was an open kitchen nook where Beth Curtis was stirring something with a wooden spoon. She looked up and smiled. "Mr. Case, just in time. I need someone to taste this sauce." She was wearing a cream-colored Joan Crawford number with middle line-backer shoulder pads and buff-colored high heels. The dress was straight out of the forties, but Tuck had been around Mary Jean long enough to know that Mrs. Curtis had dropped at least five hundred bucks on the shoes. Evidently, missionary work paid pretty well.

She held a hand under Tuck's chin as she presented the spoon. The sauce was sweet citrus with a piquant bite to it. "It's good," he said. "Really good."

"No fibbing, Mr. Case. You're going to have to eat it."

"No, I like it."

"Well, good. Dinner will be ready in about a half hour. Now, why don't you men take your drinks out on the lanai and let a girl do her magic."

Sebastian handed Tuck an icy glass filled with an orange liquid and garnished with mango. "Shall we?" he said, leading Tuck back outside.

They stood at the railing, looking out at the moon reflecting in the ocean.

"Would you be more comfortable sitting, Mr. Case?" the doctor asked.

"No, I'm fine. And please call me Tuck. Anyone calls me Mr. Case more than three times, I start thinking I'm going to get audited."

The doctor laughed, "We can't have that. Not with the kind of money you're going to be making. But legally, you know, it's tax-free until you take it back into the United States."

Tuck stared out at the ocean for a moment, wondering whether it was time to give this gift horse a dental exam. There was just too damn much money showing on this island.

The equipment, the plane, Beth Curtis's clothes. After Jake Skye's lecture, Tuck had imagined that he might encounter some sweaty

drug-smuggling doctor with a Walther in his belt and a coke whore wife, but these two could have just flown in from an upscale church social. Still, he knew they were lying to him. They had referred to the Japanese as their "staff," but he'd seen one of them carrying an Uzi out behind the hangar. He was going to ask, he really was, but as he turned to face the doctor, he heard a soft bark at the end of the lanai and looked up to see a large fruit bat hanging from the edge of the tin roof. Roberto.

The doctor said, "Tucker, about the drinking."

Tuck pulled his gaze away from the bat. The doctor had seen him. "What drinking?"

"You know that we saw the reports on your - how should I put it?"

"Crash."

"Yes, on your crash. I'm afraid, as I told you, we can't have you drinking while you're working here. We may need you to fly on very short notice and we can't risk that you might not be ready."

"That was an isolated incident," Tuck lied. "I really don't drink much."

"Just a momentary lapse of judgment, I understand. And it may seem a bit draconian, but as long as you don't drink or go out of the compound, everything will be fine."

"Sure, no problem." Tuck was watching the bat over the doctor's shoulder. Roberto had unfurled his wings and was turning in the sea breeze like an inverted weather vane. Tuck tried to wave him off behind the doctor's back.

"I know this may all seem very limiting, but I've worked with the Shark People for a long time, and they're very sensitive to contact with outsiders."

"The Shark People? You said you'd explain that."

"They hunt sharks. Most of the natives in Micronesia won't eat shark. In fact, it's taboo. But the reef fish here often have a high concentration of neurotoxin, so the natives developed shark as a food source. You would think that the sharks, being higher on the food chain, would have a higher concentration of the toxin, wouldn't you?"

"You'd think," Tuck said, having no idea whatsoever what the doctor was talking about.

"They don't, though. It's as if something in their system neutralizes the toxin. I've done a little research in my spare time."

"I've seen a lot of shark shows on the Discovery Channel. They go on and on about how harmless sharks are. It's bullshit. Half of these stitches you put in me are because of a shark attack."

"Maybe they don't have cable," the doctor said.

Tuck turned to him, amazed. "A joke, Doc?"

The doctor looked a little embarrassed. "I'm going to go see how dinner is coming along. I'll be right back." He turned and went into the house.

Tucker bolted to the end of the lanai where Roberto was hanging. "Shoo. Go away."

Roberto made a trilling noise and tried to catch Tuck's drink with his wing claw.

"Okay, you can have the mango, but then you have to get out of here." Tucker held out the piece of cut mango and the fruit bat took it in his wing claw and slurped it down.

"Now get out of here," Tucker said. "Go find Kimi. Shoo, shoo."

Roberto tilted his head and said, "Back off on these people, Tuck. You push them too hard, they'll pull your plug. Just keep your eyes open."

Tuck moved away from the bat with stiff jerking steps out of the line dance of the undead. The bat had said something. It was a tiny voice, high but raspy, the voice of a chain-smoking Topo Gigio, but it was clear. "You didn't talk," Tucker said.

"Okay," said Roberto. "Thanks for the mango."

Roberto took off, the beat of his wings like the shuffle of a deck of leather cards. Tuck backed though the french doors into a wicker emperor's chair and sat down.

"Come sit," Beth Curtis said as she carried a tray to the table. "Dinner's ready."

"What kind of drugs have you been giving me, Doc?"

"Broad-spectrum antibiotics and some Tylenol. Why?"

"Any chance they could cause hallucinations?"

"Not unless you were allergic, and we'd know that by now. Why?"

"Just wondering."

Beth Curtis came to him and patted his shoulder. Her nails, he noticed, were perfect. "You had a fever when they brought you in. Sometimes that can give a person bad dreams. I think you'll feel a lot better after a good meal."

She helped him up and led him to the table, which was set with a white tablecloth and black linen napkins around a centerpiece of

orchid sprigs arranged in a crystal bowl. A whole grouper stared up between fanned slices of plantain on a serving tray, his eye a little dry but clear and accusing.

Tuck said, "If that thing starts talking, I want to be sedated - and right now."

"Oh, Mr. Case." Beth Curtis rolled her eyes and laughed as they sat down to dinner.

Tuck could almost feel his body absorbing the nourishment. He told them the story of his journey to the island, exaggerating the danger aspect and glossing over his injuries, Kimi, and his craving for alcohol. He didn't mention Roberto at all. By the time Tucker was in the typhoon, the Curtises were well into their second bottle of white wine. Beth's cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkled with enthusiasm for Tuck's every word.

Tuck really intended to ask about Kimi, their cryptic messages, the guards, the rules for his employment, and of course, where the hell all the money came from, but instead he found himself playing to Beth Curtis like a comedian on a roll and he left the bungalow at midnight quite taken with both himself and the doctor's wife.

The Curtises stood arm in arm at the door as the guards escorted Tucker back to his quarters. Halfway across the compound, he did a giddy turn and waved to them, feeling as if he had been the one to consume two bottles of wine.

"What do you think?" the Sorcerer asked his wife.

"Not a problem," she said, keeping a parade smile pointed Tuck's way.

"I really expected him to be a little more resistant to our conditions."

"As if he's in a position to bargain. The man has nothing, is nothing. He shatters this little illusion we've given him and he has to face himself."

"He looks at you like you're some sort of beatific vestal virgin. I don't like it."

"I can handle that. You just get flyboy ready to do his job."

"He'll be able to fly within a week. He brought up his navigator again while we were outside."

"If he's here, you'd better find him."

"I'll speak to Malink tonight. The Micro Spirit is due in day after tomor-row. If we find the navigator, we can send him back on the ship."

"Depending on what he's seen," she said.

"Yes, depending on what he knows."

Tucker Case entered his bungalow feeling satisfied and full of himself. Someone had turned on the lights in his absence and turned down the bed. "What, no mint on the pillow?"

He changed into a pair of the doctor's pajama bottoms and grabbed a paperback spy novel from a stack someone had left on the coffee table.

They had a TV. There had been a TV in the Curtises' bungalow. He'd have to ask them to get him one. No, dammit, demand a television. What did Mary Jean always say? "You can sell all day, but if you don't ask for the money, you haven't made a sale." Good food, good money, and a great aircraft to fly - he'd stumbled into the best gig on the planet. I am the Phoenix, rising from the ashes. I am the comeback kid. I am the entire 1980 gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympic hockey team. I am the fucking walrus, coo-coo ka-choo.

He went into the bathroom to brush his teeth, caught his reflection in the mirror. His mood went terminal. I am never going to get laid again as long as I live. I should have pressed them about Kimi. I didn't even ask about what in the hell kind of cargo I'm going to be flying. I am a spineless worm. I'm scum. I'm the Hindenburg, I'm Michael Milken, Richard Nixon. I'm seeing ghosts and bats that talk and I'm stuck on an island where the only woman makes Mother Theresa look like a lap dancer in a leper colony. I am the man who put the F in failure, the P in pathetic, the G in gullible. I am the ringworm poster boy of Gangrene City. I'm an insane, unemployed bus driver for the death camp cartel.

Tuck went to bed without brushing his teeth.

33

Chasing the Scoop

Natives slept side by side, crisscrossed, and piled on the deck of the Micro Spirit until - with a thu showing here, or a lavalava there, streams of primary color among all that gelatinous brown flesh - it looked as if someone had dropped a big box of candy in the hot sun and they had melted together and spilled their fillings. Amid the mess, Jefferson Pardee, rolled and pitched with the ship, finding three sleeping children lying on him when the ship moved to starboard, a rotund island grandmother washing against him when the ship listed to port. He'd been stepped on three times by ashy callused feet, once on the groin, and he was relatively sure he could feel lice crawling in his scalp.

Unable to sleep, he stood up and the mass moved amoebalike into the vacated deck space. A three-quarter moon shone high and bright, and Pardee could see well enough to make his way through to the railing, only stepping on one woman and evoking colorful island curses from two men. Once at the rail, the warm wind washed away the cloying smell of sweat and the rancid nut smell of copra coming from the holds. The moon's re-flection lay in the black sea like a tossing pool of mercury. A pod of dolphins rode the ship's bow wave like gray ghosts.

He took several deep breaths, relieved himself over the side, then dug a bent cigarette out of his shirt pocket. He lit it with a disposable lighter and exhaled a contrail of smoke with a long sigh. Thirty years in the tropics had given him a high tolerance for discomfort and inconvenience, but the break in routine was maddening. Back on Truck, he'd be toweling off the smell of stale beer and the residue of an oily tumble with a dollar whore, preparing to pass out with a

volume of Mencken under his little air conditioner. No thought of the day to come or the one just passed, for one was like the next and they were all the same. Just cool cloudy sleep that made him feel, if only for a minute, like that young Midwestern boy on an adventure, exhausted from passion and fear, rather than a fat old man worn down by ennui.

And here, in the salt and the moonlight, on the trail of a story or maybe just a rumor, he felt the fungus growing in his lungs, the pain in his lower back, the weight of ten thousand beers and half a million cigarettes and thirty years of fish fried in coconut oil pressing on his heart, and none of it - none of it - was so heavy as the possibility of dashed hopes. Why had he opened himself up to a future and failure, when he had been failing just fine already?

"You can't sleep?" the mate said.

Pardee hadn't heard the wiry sailor move to the rail. He was drinking a Bud tallboy, against regulations, and Pardee felt a craving twist like a worm in his chest at the sight of the can.

"You got another one of those?"

The mate reached into the deep front pocket of his shorts, pulled out another beer, and handed it to Pardee. It was warm, but Pardee popped the top and drank off half of it in one gulp.

"How long before we make Alualu?" Pardee asked.

"Three, maybe four hour. Sunrise. We drop you on north side of island, you swim in."

"What?" Pardee looked down to the black waves, then back at the mate.

"The doctor no let anyone go on the island except to bring cargo. You have to swim in on other side of island. Maybe half mile, maybe less."

"How will I get back to the ship?"

"Captain say he will swing back around the island when we leave. Captain say he wait half an hour. You swim back out. We pick you up."

"Can't you send a boat?"

"No boat. No break in reef except on south side where we unload. We have many fuel barrel and crates. You will have seven, maybe eight hour."

Pardee had seen the Spirit arrive in Truk lagoon a thousand times; the ship was always surrounded by outboards and canoes filled with excited natives. "Maybe I can get one of the Shark People to ferry me." He did not want to get in that water, and he certainly

didn't want to swim half a mile to shore, wasn't sure he could.

"Shark People no have boat. They no leave island."

"No boats?" Pardee was amazed. Living in these islands without a boat was akin to living in Los Angeles without a car. It wasn't done; it couldn't be done.

The mate patted Pardee's big shoulder. "You be fine. I have mask and fins for you."

"What about sharks?"

"Sharks afraid around there. On most island people afraid of shark. On Alualu shark afraid of people."

"You're sure about that?"

"No."

"Oh, good. Do you have another beer?"

Three hours later the rising sun lay like a silver tray on the horizon and Jefferson Pardee was having swim fins duct-taped to his feet by the first mate. The deck bustled with excited natives eating rice balls and taro paste, smoking cigarettes, shitting over the railings, and milling around the ship's store, trying to buy Cokes and Planter's cheese balls, Australian corned beef, and, of course, Spam. A small crowd had gathered around to watch the white man prepare for his swim. Pardee stood in his boxer shorts, maggot white except for his forearms and face, which looked like they'd been dipped in red barn paint. The mate stuffed Pardee's clothes and notebook into a garbage bag and handed it to him, then slathered the journalist with waterproof sunscreen, a task on par with basting a hippo. Pardee snarled at a group of giggling children and they ran off down the deck screaming.

Pardee heard the ship's big screws grind to a halt and the mate unhooked a chain gate set in the railing. "Jump," he said.

Pardee looked at the crystal water forty feet below. "You're out of your fucking mind. Don't you have a ladder?"

"You can't climb ladder with fins."

"I'll take the fins off until I get in the water."

"No. Straps broken. You have to jump."

Pardee shook his head and the flesh on his shoulders and back followed suit. "It's not gonna happen."

Suddenly the children Pardee had frightened came running around the bridge like a squealing pack of piglets. Two little boys broke formation and ran toward the journalist, who looked around just as he felt four tiny brown hands impact with his back.

Pardee saw sky, then water, then sky, then the island of Alualu laying on the sea like a bad green toupee, then the impact with the water took his breath, ripped the mask from his face, and forced streams of brine into his sinuses strong enough to bring blood.

Before he could even find the surface, he heard the ship's screws begin to grind as the Micro Spirit steamed away.

Two excited boys shook Malink awake. "The ship is here and the Sorcerer is coming!" The old chief sat up on his grass sleeping mat and wiped the sleep from his eyes. He slept on the porch of his house, part of the stone foundation that had been there for eight hundred years. He stood on creaking morning legs and went to the bunch of red bananas that hung from the porch roof. He tore off two bananas and gave them to the boys.

"Where did you see the Sorcerer?"

"He comes across Vincent's airstrip."

"Good boys. You go eat breakfast now."

Malink went to a stand of ferns behind his house, pulled aside his thu, and waited to relieve himself. This took longer every day it seemed. The Sorcerer had told Malink that he had angered the prostate monster and the only way to appease him was to quit drinking coffee and tuba and to eat the bitter root of the saw palmetto. Malink had tried these things for almost two full days before giving up, but it was too hard to wake up without coffee, too hard to go to sleep without tuba, saw palmetto made his stomach hurt, and he seemed to have a headache all the time. The prostate monster would just have to remain angry. Sometimes the Sorcerer was wrong.

He finished and straightened his thu, passed a thundering cannonade of gas, then went back to the sitting spot on the porch to get his cigarettes. The women had made a fire to boil water for coffee; the smoke from the burning coconut husks wafted out of the corrugated tin cookhouse and hung like blue fog under the canopy of breadfruit, mahogany, and palm trees.

Malink lit a cigarette and looked up to see the Sorcerer coming down the coral path, his white lab coat stark against the browns and greens of the village.

"Saswitch" (good morning), Malink said. The Sorcerer spoke their lan-guage.

"Saswitch, Malink," the Sorcerer said. At the sound of his voice Malink's wife and daughters ran out of the cookhouse and disappeared

down the paths of the village.

"Coffee?" Malink asked in English.

"No, Malink, there is no time today."

Malink frowned. It was rude for anyone to turn down an offer of food or drink, even the Sorcerer. "We have little Tang. You want Tang? Spacemen drink it."

The Sorcerer shook his head. "Malink, there was another man here with the pilot you found. I need to find him."

Malink looked at the ground. "I no see any other man." The Sorcerer didn't seem angry, but just the same, Malink didn't like lying to him. He didn't want to anger Vincent.

"I won't punish anyone if something happened to him, if he was hurt or drowned, but I need to know where he is. Vincent has asked me to find him, Malink."

Malink could feel the Sorcerer staring a hole in the top of his head. "Maybe I see another man. I will ask at the men's house today. What he look like?"

"You know what he looks like. I need to find him now. The Sky Priestess will give back the coffee and sugar if we can find him today."

Malink stood. "Come, we find him." He led the Sorcerer through the village, which appeared deserted except for a few chickens and dogs, but Malink could see eyes peeking out from the doorways. How would he ex-plain this when they asked why the Sorcerer had come? They passed out of the village, went past the abandoned church, the graveyard, where great slabs of coral rock kept the bodies from floating up through the soil during the rainy season, and down the overgrown path to Sarapul's little house.

The old cannibal was sitting in his doorway sharpening his machete.

Malink turned to the Sorcerer and whispered, "He rude sometime. He very old. Don't be mad."

The Sorcerer nodded.

"Saswitch, Sarapul. The Sorcerer has come to see you."

Sarapul looked up and glared at them. He had red chicken feathers stuck in his hair, two severed chicken feet hung from a cord above his head. "All the sorcerers are dead," Sarapul said. "He is just a white doctor."

Malink looked at the Sorcerer apologetically, then turned back to Sarapul. "He wants to see the man you found with the pilot."

Sarapul ran his thumb over the edge of his machete. "I don't know what happened to him. Maybe he went swimming and a shark got him. Maybe someone eat him."

Sebastian Curtis stepped forward. "He won't be hurt," he said. "We are going to send him out on the ship."

"I want to go to the ship," Sarapul said. "I want to buy things. Why can't we go to the ship?"

"That's not the issue here, old man. Vincent wants this man found. If he's dead, I need to know."

"Vincent is dead."

The Sorcerer crouched down until he was eye-to-eye with the old cannibal. "You've seen the guards at the compound, Sarapul. If the man isn't at the gate in an hour, I'm going to have the guards tear the island apart until they find him."

Sarapul grinned. "The Japanese? Good. You send them here." He swung his machete in front of the sorcerer's face. "I have a present for them."

Curtis stood. "An hour." He turned and walked away.

Malink ambled along behind him. "Maybe he is right. Maybe the man drown or something."

"Find him, Malink. I meant it about the guards. I want this man in an hour."

"He is gone," Sarapul said. "You can come out."

Kimi dropped out of the rafters of Sarapul's little house. "What is he talking about - guards?"

"Ha!" Sarapul said. "He knows nothing. He didn't even know I had this." Sarapul reached down and pulled out a headless chicken he had been sitting on. "He is no sorcerer."

"He said there were guards." Kimi said.

Sarapul laid his chicken on the ground. "If you are afraid, you should go."

"I have to find Roberto."

"Then let them send the guards," Sarapul said, brandishing his machete. "They can die just like this chicken."

Kimi stepped back from the old cannibal, who was on the verge of foaming at the mouth. "We friends, right?"

"Build a fire," Sarapul said. "I want to eat my chicken."