Island of the Sequined Love Nun

Chapter 39~41

39

Showtime

The Sky Priestess rolled over in bed and slapped the beeping intercom as

if it was a mouthy stepchild. "I'm sleeping here," she said.

"Get in character, Beth. We have an order, due in Japan in six hours."

"Why don't these fuckers ever call at a civilized hour?"

"We guarantee freshness. We have to deliver."

"Don't grow a sense of humor on me at this point, Sebastian. The shock might kill me. Who's the chosen?"

"Sepie, female, nineteen, a hundred and ten pounds."

"I know her," the Sky Priestess said. "What about our pilot?"

"I'm putting two of the staff on him to make sure he stays in his bungalow."

"He's still going to hear it. Are you sure you don't want to sedate him?"

"Use your head, Beth. He has to fly. We'll do it with smaller explosions. Maybe he'll sleep through it."

She was wide awake now and starting to feel the excitement and anxiety of a performance. "I'll be ready in twenty minutes. Have the ninjas start my music."

Tuck had Favo in a headlock and was administering affectionate noogies to the old man's scalp. "I love this fuckin' guy. This fuckin' guy is the best. I love all you fuckin' guys."

Malink had never seen noogies and wondered why this bizarre ritual had never showed up in the party scenes in People. He prided himself on understanding white people's habits, but this was a new one. Favo didn't seem to be enjoying the ritual nearly as much as Tuck was. The tuba had all been drunk. Maybe it was time to rescue his friend.

"Now we go find the girl-man," Malink said.

Tuck looked up, still holding Favo, whose eyes were starting to bug out a little. "'Kay," the pilot said.

Malink led them into the village, his bowlegged gait more wobbly than normal. A dozen Shark men and Tucker crashed and staggered behind him. As they passed by the bachelors' house and onto the trail that led to Sarapul's side of the island, the music started: big band sounds with easy liquid rhythms echoed through the jungle. The Shark men stopped in their tracks and when the music paused, just for a second, they shouted, "Pennsylvania 6-5000!" and the music began again.

"What's that?" Tucker asked.

Women and children were stirring from their sleep, creeping off into the bushes to pee, rubbing sleepy eyes and stretching creaky backs. Malink said, "The Sky Priestess is coming."

"Who?" Tuck finally released Favo, who he had been dragging by his head. The old man gasped, then grinned and sat splayed-legged on the trail.

"We have to go," Malink said. "You should go back now."

The music paused and Malink, along with the rest of the Shark People, shouted, "Pennsylvania 6-5000!"

"Go now," Malink ordered, once again the chief. "The Sky Priestess comes. We must get ready." He turned and strode back into the village. The other Shark men scattered, leaving Tucker standing on the trail by himself.

Tuck heard the sound of large prop planes mixing with the big band music. The Shark People were draining out of the village onto the trails that led to the runway. Within seconds, the village was deserted. Tuck staggered back to the beach where he'd left his fins and mask. As he stepped over the logs of the drinking circle, there was an explosion and he thought for a moment that he'd found another land mine until he realized that the sound had come from the direction of the runway.

Not trusting himself to find the path through the village, Tucker decided to follow the beach back to the compound. After he'd gone a hundred yards or so, he saw something white lying on the beach

and bent to pick it up. A long spiral notebook. The moon was high in the sky and he could see a name printed on the cover in bold permanent marker: JEFFERSON PARDEE.

Beth Curtis, dressed in surgical greens, waved the guards away from Tuck's door and knocked. She waited a few seconds and knocked again, then walked in. She could just make out a sleeping figure through the mosquito net.

"Case, get up. We've got to fly."

The body did not stir. "Case?" She pulled aside the netting and poked the sleeping figure. A green coconut rolled out of the bed and thumped at her feet. "You sleep with a coconut? You pathetic bastard."

She jumped back and a groggy Tucker Case groaned. "What?"

"Wake up. We fly in half an hour."

Tuck rolled over and blinked through the hangover fog. The sun was coming up and the roosters were going off all over the island. The room was only half-lit.

"What time is it?"

"It's time to go. Get the plane ready." Beth Curtis walked out.

Tuck rolled out of bed, crawled to the bathroom, and emptied his stomach into the bowl with a trumpeting heave.

40

Unfriendly Skies

Tuck spooled up the jets as he watched the guards scramble around the Lear. Each time one walked past the nose, Tuck flipped on the radar and chuckled. The microwave energy wasn't enough to boil the guards in their skins, which was Tuck's fantasy, but he could be reasonably certain that they would never have any children and he might have planted the seeds of a few choice tumors. Once in Houston a maintenance man made the mistake of walking in front of Mary Jean's jet with an armload of fluorescent bulbs meant for the hangar, and Jake Skye had shown Tucker a little trick.

"Watch this, Jake had said." He flipped on the radar and the bulbs, bombarded by the microwaves from the radar, lit up in the maintenance man's arms. The poor guy threw the bulbs in the air and ran off the field, leaving a pile of glass shards and white powder behind. It was the second-coolest thing Tucker had ever seen, the first being the time they had used the Gulfstream's jets to sandblast the paint off a Porsche whose owner in-sisted on parking on the tarmac. Tuck was waiting for one of the guards to walk behind the jets when Beth Curtis came on board.

She wore her business suit and carried the briefcase and the cooler, but this time she sat in one of the passenger seats in the back and fell asleep before they took off. Tuck took the opportunity to suck some oxygen from the emergency supply to help cut through his hangover.

When they were five hundred miles out over the Pacific, Tuck peeked into the passenger compartment to make sure Beth Curtis was still sleeping. When he was sure she was still out, he checked

the fuel gauges, then pushed the yoke forward and dropped the Lear down to level off at a hundred feet.

Traveling at almost six hundred miles per hour at only a hundred feet off the water did exactly what Tuck had hoped it would. He was absolutely ecstatic with an adrenaline rush that chased his hangover back to the Dark Ages. He dropped another fifty feet and laughed out loud when some salt spray dashed the windscreen.

It was a clear sunny day with only a few wispy columnar clouds rising off the water. Tuck flew under and through them as if they were enemy ghosts. Then a speck appeared on the horizon. A second later Tuck recog-nized it as a ship and pulled the jet up to two hundred feet. Suddenly something rose off the ship's deck. A helicopter, going out to spot and herd schools of tuna for the factory ship. Tuck pulled up on the yoke, but the helicopter rose directly into his path. There wasn't even time to key the radio to warn the pilot. Tuck threw the Lear into a tight turn while pulling the jet up and whizzed by the helicopter close enough to see the pilot's eyes go wide. He could just make out men shaking fists at him from the deck of the factory ship.

"Eee-haa!" he shouted (a bad habit he'd picked up in Texas cowboy bars, and if this wasn't cowboy flying, what was?). He steered the jet back on course and leveled off at two hundred feet. He was still dangerously low and burning fuel four times faster than he would at altitude, but hell, a guy had to have some fun. He wasn't paying for the fuel, and there hadn't been much low-level flying when he'd worked for Mary Jean. People on the ground might have trouble remembering the numbers on the side of the plane to report to the FAA, but you don't soon forget a pink jet flying close enough to the ground to cool your soup.

"What in the hell was that?" Beth Curtis appeared in the cockpit doorway. "Why are we so low?"

A wave of panic akin to being caught smoking in the boys' room swept over Tuck, but he couldn't think fast enough to come up with a viable lie. He said, "You haven't surfed until you've surfed in a Learjet."

Much to his amazement, Beth Curtis said, "Cool!" and strapped herself into the copilot's seat.

Tuck grinned and eased the jet down to fifty feet. Beth Curtis clapped her hands like an excited child. "This is great!"

"We can't do it for long. Burns too much fuel."

"A little while longer, okay?"

Tuck smiled. "Maybe five more minutes. We can catch a tailwind at altitude that'll save us some time and fuel."

"Is this what you were doing the night you crashed?"

Tuck winced. "No."

"Because I could understand if it was. What a rush!" She reached out and grabbed his shoulder affectionately. "I love this. How could you let me sleep through this?"

"We can surf some more on the way back," Tuck said. And with that his resolve was gone. He'd planned to ask her about the music and explosions from last night. He'd planned to ask her about Jefferson Pardee's notebook, which he carried in his back pocket, but he didn't want to break this mood. It had been too long since he'd had any attention from a beautiful woman, and he gave himself to it like a jonesing junkie.

"I'm sorry," she said, "but you'll have to wait here." Beth Curtis retrieved her briefcase and cooler from the back of the plane and met the dark-suited Japanese on the tarmac. There was another Lear spooling up nearby and a couple of workmen in coveralls waited beside a large cardboard carton.

Tuck watched as Beth Curtis handed the cooler to one of the suits, who ran to the waiting Lear. Within seconds, the door was pulled shut and the other Lear was taxied out to the runway. Another one of the suits handed Beth a thick manila envelope, which she stashed in her briefcase. She turned and ran back into the plane. She stepped into the cockpit and put her briefcase behind the copilot's seat. "I'll be right back, ten minutes max. I've got to make sure these guys get my TV on board unbroken."

"TV?"

"Thirty-two-inch Trinitron," she said with a smile. "To replace the one that you're using."

"I want a thirty-two-inch Trinitron," Tuck said to her back, but she was already out the door.

He looked out the window to make sure she was busy with the television, then pulled her briefcase from behind the seat and threw the latches. To his amazement, it was unlocked. He removed the manila envelope. Under it lay a small automatic pistol. He could take it, but then what? Hold it on Beth Curtis until she confessed to whatever she and the doctor were doing? And what was that? Research?

There was no law against that. He left the gun untouched and opened the envelope.

He wasn't sure what he expected to find: research notes, bearer bonds, stock certificates, cash, something that would shed some light on all this clandestine behavior for sure. What he found was four issues of People magazine and four issues of Us. Beth Curtis was smuggling American cheese out of Japan and that was it.

He put the envelope back into the briefcase and slid it behind the seat, then pulled Jefferson Pardee's notebook out of his pocket. Perhaps there was something inside that would tell him how the notebook had gotten to a beach some seven hundred miles from where its owner was supposed to be.

He flipped though the pages where Pardee had scribbled phone numbers, dates, and a few notes, but the only things he recognized were his own name, the names of Sebastian Curtis and his wife, and the word "Learjet," followed by "Why? How? Who paid?" and "Find other pilot." Pardee was obviously asking the same questions that were circling in Tuck's mind, but what was this about another pilot? Had Pardee come to Alualu looking for the answers? And if he did, where was he now?

"What's that?" Beth Curtis said as she came through the cockpit door.

Tuck flipped the notebook shut and stuffed it in his back pocket. "Some flight notes. I'm used to keeping a log for the FAA. I guess I brought this along out of habit." In the midst of the lie, he almost panicked. If she asked where he had gotten the notebook in the first place, he was dead. Maybe better to confront her here in Japan anyway - while he knew where the gun was.

She said, "I didn't realize there was any paperwork to flying a plane."

"More than you'd think," Tuck said. "I'm still getting used to how this plane handles. I'm just writing down things I need to remember, you know, climb rates and engine exhaust pressures, fuel consumption per hour at altitude, stuff like that." Right, he thought. Baffle her with bullshit.

"Oh," she said with what Tuck thought was indifference until she reached behind her seat and pulled out her briefcase.

He held his breath, waiting for the gun to appear. She took out an issue of People and opened it on her lap. She didn't look away from the magazine until they were well over the Pacific, heading home.

"You know, we haven't seen much of you lately. Maybe you should come up to the house and have dinner with Sebastian and me tonight." She had slipped on her fifties housewife personality.

Tuck had been thinking about Pardee's notebook and where he'd found it. He wanted to get back to the village tonight. If Pardee had come to Alualu, maybe the old chief knew something about it.

"I'm a little tired. We got a pretty early start. I think maybe I'll just fix up something quick at my place and get to bed early."

She yawned. "Maybe tomorrow night. Around seven. Maybe we can try out my new TV."

"That'll be fine." Tuck said. "I have a few things I'd like to discuss with you and the doc anyway."

"Good," she said. "I think we should spend more time together. Now explain to me what all these gauges mean."

41

What's a Kidney?

Privacy is a rare commodity on a small island and secrets weigh heavy on their keepers. Malink was weary with the burden of too many secrets. If he could only go to the drinking circle and let his secrets out, let the coconut telegraph carry his secrets to the edges of the island and let him walk light. But that wasn't going to happen. Secrets sought him out now, even from the old cannibal.

He stood with Sarapul and Kimi examining an eighty-four-foot breadfruit tree with a trunk you couldn't get your arms around. Kimi held an ax on his shoulder, waiting for Malink's judgment.

"Why so big?" Malink asked. "This tree will give much breadfruit."

"This is the tree," Sarapul said. "The navigator has chosen it."

Kimi said, "We will plant ten trees to take its place, but this is the one."

"Why do you need such a big tree?"

"I can't tell you," Sarapul said.

"You will tell me or you won't cut the tree."

"If I tell you, will you promise not to tell anyone else?"

Malink sighed. Yet another secret. "I will tell no one."

"Come. We'll show you."

Sarapul led Malink and Kimi through the jungle to an overgrown spot piled with dried palm leaves. Malink leaned on a tree while the old cannibal pulled away the palm fronds to reveal the prow of a canoe. Not just any canoe. A forty-foot-long sailing canoe. Malink hadn't seen one since he was a small boy.

"This is why we need the tree," Sarapul said. "I have hidden it here for many years, but the hull is rotten and we need to fix it."

Malink felt something stir in him at the sight of the big eye painted on the prow. Something that went back to a time before he could remember, when his people sailed thousands of miles by the eye of the canoe and the guidance of the great navigators. Lost arts made sad by this reminder. He shook his head. "No one knows how to build a sailing canoe anymore, Sarapul. You are so old you don't remember what you've forgotten."

"He can fix it," Sarapul said, pointing to Kimi.

Kimi grinned. "My father taught me. He was a great navigator from Satawan."

Malink raised a grizzled eyebrow. "That is where you learned our language?"

"I can fix it. And I can sail it."

"He's teaching me," Sarapul said.

Malink felt the stirring inside him grow into excitement. There was something here he hadn't felt since the arrival of Vincent. This was a secret that lifted him rather than weighing him down. But he was chief and dignity forbade him from shouting joy to the sky.

"You may cut the tree, but there is a condition."

"You can't tell anyone," Sarapul said.

"I will not tell anyone. But when the canoe is fixed, you must teach one of the young ones to be a navigator." He looked at Kimi. "Will you do that?"

Kimi nodded.

"You have your tree, old man," Malink said. "I will tell no one." He turned and walked and fell into a light bowlegged amble down the path.

Kimi called to him, "I hear my friend, the pilot, was in the village last night."

Malink turned. The coconut telegraph evidently ran even to Sarapul's little corner of the island. "He asked about you. He said he will come back."

"Did he have a bat with him?"

"No bat," Malink said. "Come tonight to the drinking circle. Maybe he will come."

"I can't," Kimi said. "The boys from the bachelors' house hate me."

"They hate the girl-man," Malink said, "not the navigator. You come."

After a nutritious dinner of canned peaches and instant coffee, Tuck checked the position of the guards, turned out the lights, and built his coconut-headed surrogate under the mosquito netting. Only the second time and already it seemed routine. There was none of the nervousness or anxiety of the night before as he crawled below window level to the bathroom and pried up the metal shower tray.

He dropped through the opening and was reaching up to grab his mask and fins when he heard the knock on the front door and froze.

He heard the door open and Beth Curtis call, "Mr. Case, are you asleep already?"

He couldn't let her see the dummy in his bed. "I'm in the bathroom. Just a second."

He caught the edges of the shower opening and vaulted back into the bathroom. The metal tray fell back over the opening, sounding like the Tin Man trying to escape from a garbage can.

He heard Beth Curtis pad to the bathroom door. "Are you all right in there?"

"Fine," Tuck said. "Just dropped the soap." He snagged a bar of soap off the sink and placed it in the bottom of the shower tray, then threw open the bathroom door.

Beth Curtis stood there in a long red silk kimono that was open in a narrow canyon of white flesh to her navel. Whatever Tuck was going to say, he forgot.

"Sebastian wanted me to bring you this." She held out a check. Tuck tore his eyes from her cleavage and took the check.

"Five thousand dollars. Mrs. Curtis, this is really more than I bargained for."

"You deserve it. You were very sweet to take the time to explain all the instrumentation to me." She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead, keeping the warm pressure of her lips there a little too long. Tuck imagined her tongue darting though his skull and licking his brain's pleasure center. He could smell her perfume, something deep and musky, and his eyes locked on her breasts, which were completely exposed when she leaned forward. He felt as if he had been staring at an arc welder and that creamy powdered image would travel across his field of vision for hours. A chasm of silence opened up and wrenched his attention back into the room.

"This is very generous," he said. "But it could have waited. It's not like I have anywhere to spend it."

"I know. I just wanted to thank you again. Personally, without Sebastian around. And I thought you might be able to explain some of the finer points of flying a jet. It's all so exciting."

Never a man of strong resolve, the combination of sight, scent, and flattery activated Tuck's seduction autopilot. He glanced toward the bed and the switch clicked off. Sexual response was replaced by the dummy Tuck shaking its coconut head. He looked back at her and locked on her eyes - only her eyes. "Maybe tomorrow," he said. "I'm really bushed. I was just going to catch a shower and go right to bed."

For an instant her pouty smile disappeared and her lips seemed to tighten into a red line, then just as quickly the smile was back, and Tuck wasn't sure he'd seen the change at all.

"Well, tomorrow, then," she said, pulling the front of her kimono together as if she had only just noticed that it had fallen open. "We'll see you at seven." She turned at the door and threw Tuck a parade queen wave as she left, once again the darling of the Eisenhower era.

When she was safely out of the bungalow, Tuck ran to the bed and picked up the green coconut. "What in the hell was that about?"

The coconut didn't answer. "Fine," Tuck said, fitting the head back on the sleeping dummy. "I am not impressed. I am not shaken, nor am I stirred. Weirdness is my business." Even as he said it, he dismissed the hallucination as his own good sense manifesting a warning, but the duel cravings for a drink and a woman yanked at his insides like dull fishhooks. He turned off the light and let the cravings lead him out the bathroom hatch to the moonlit sea.

Forty minutes later he took his place in the circle of the Shark men. Chief Malink stood and greeted Tuck with a jarring backslap. "Good to see you, my friend. How's it hanging?"

"It hangs with magnificent splendor," Tuck said, his programmed response to the truck drivers and cowboys who used that expression, although he wondered where Malink had heard it. "But I'm a little parched," he said.

A fat young man named Vincent was pouring tonight and he handed Tucker the coconut cup with a smile. Tuck sipped at first, fighting that first gag, then gulped down the coconut liquor and gritted his teeth to keep it from coming back up.

The older men in the group seemed festive and yattered back and forth in their native language, but Tuck noticed that the younger men were sulking, digging their toes into the sand like pouting little boys.

"Why so glum, guys? Someone kill you dog?"

"No," Malink said, not quite understanding the question. "We eat a turtle today."

Having your dog killed must mean something different here than it means back in Texas, Tuck realized.

Malink sensed Tuck's confusion. "They are sad because the Sky Priestess has chosen the mispel from their house and she will be gone many days now."

"Mispel?"

"The girl you followed last night is mispel of the bachelors' house."

"Sorry to hear that, guys," Tuck said, acting as if he had the slightest idea what a mispel or being chosen was. He figured that maybe it had something to do with PMS. Maybe when the women started getting cranky with the old Sky Priestess cramps, they just checked her into a special "chosen" hut until she mellowed out. He waited until the cup came around the circle before he brought it up again. "So she was chosen by the old Sky Priestess, huh? Tough luck there. Did you try giving her chocolate? That takes the edge off sometimes."

"We give her special tuba when she comes," Malink said.

"Tastes like shit!" several of the men chanted.

Abo, the fierce one, said, "I am chosen and now Sepie is chosen. I will marry her."

Several of the other young men seemed less than pleased at Abo's announcement.

"Come on, man," Tuck said. "You might need a little attitude adjustment, but you're not chosen."

"I am," Abo insisted. "Look." He turned his back to the group and ran his finger across a long pink scar that ran diagonally across his ribs. "The Sky Priestess chose me for Vincent in the time of the ripe breadfruit."

Tuck stared at the scar, stunned, hoping that what he was thinking was as far off as his PMS theory had been. "The Sky Priestess? That was the music last night, all the noise?"

"Yes," Malink said, "Vincent brings her in his airplane. We never see it, but we hear it."

"And when someone is chosen, then does the jet always fly the next day?"

Malink nodded. "No one was chosen for a long time until Vin cent sent you to fly the white airplane. We thought Vincent was angry with us."

Tuck looked to Abo, who seemed satisfied that the chief was backing him up. "Where do you go when you are chosen?"

"You go to the white house where the Sorcerer lives. There are many machine."

"And then what? What happens in the white house?"

"It is secret."

Tuck was across the circle in Abo's face. "What happens there?"

Abo seemed frightened and turned away. Tuck looked around at the other men. "Who else here has been chosen?"

The fat kid who had been pouring twisted so Tuck could see the scar on his back.

"What's your name, kid?"

"Vincent."

"I should have known. Vincent, what happens in the white house?"

Young Vincent shook his head. Tuck turned to Malink. "What happens?"

Malink shook his head. "I don't know. I have not been chosen."

A familiar voice called out of the dark, "They make them sleep."

Everyone turned to see Kimi coming down the path from the village. The old cannibal creaked along behind him.

Abo barked a reproach to Kimi in his native tongue. Kimi barked back something in the same language. Tuck didn't have to know the language to know that Kimi had told the fierce one to fuck off.

"Kimi, are you okay?" Tuck barely recognized the navigator. He was wearing the blue loincloth of the Shark men and he seemed to have put on some muscle. Tuck was genuinely delighted to see him. The navigator ran to him and threw his arms around the pilot. Tuck found himself returning the embrace.

Several of the young men had stood and were glaring at Kimi. One of the jugs of tuba had been kicked over, but no one seemed to notice the liquor running out on the sand.

"Kimi, do you know what's going on here?"

"A pretty white woman with yellow hair. She come out of the fence and take the girl away. They will put her to sleep and when she wakes up she will have a cut here." He drew his finger across the back of his ribs.

"No!" Abo screamed. He leaped over the crouching Malink to get to Kimi. Without thinking, Tuck swung around and caught Abo

under the jaw with a roundhouse punch. Abo's feet flew out from under him and he landed on his back. Tuck rubbed his hand. Abo tried to struggle to his feet and Malink barked an order to two of the young Vincents. Re-luctantly, they restrained their friend. "Vincent has sent the pilot," Malink reminded them.

Tuck turned back to Kimi. "What happens then?"

"You owe me five hundred dollars."

"You'll get it. What happens then?"

"The chosen has to stay in bed for many days. There are tube stuck in them and they are in much pain. Then they come back."

"That's it?"

"Yes," Kimi said.

Malink stood now and addressed Kimi. "How do you know this?"

Kimi shrugged. "Sepie tells me."

Malink turned to Abo, who had stopped struggling and now looked terrified. "She said she would not tell. The girl-man put a spell on her."

Tuck stood rubbing his knuckles, watching this little tropical opera and feeling like someone had snapped on a light and found him french-kissing a maggoty corpse. The cooler, the surgical garb, the flights on short notice, the second jet waiting on the tarmac in Japan, the guards, the secrecy, the money. How had he been so fucking stupid?

Malink was hurling a string of native curses at Abo, who looked as if he would burst into tears any second.

"You dumb motherfuckers!" Tuck shouted.

Malink stopped talking.

"She's selling your kidneys. The doc is taking out your kidneys and selling them in Japan."

This revelation didn't have quite the effect that Tuck thought it would. In fact, he seemed to be the only one concerned about it at all.

"Did you hear me?"

Malink looked a little embarrassed. "What is a kidney?"

***