Finding Gideon(125)

WOTCHER UP TA? I’M NOT ONE TO COCK ABOUT SO I JUST WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT I MISS YOU ALREADY. HOPE IT’S OKAY TO SAY THAT SORTA THING. GLAD I GOT TO SEE YOU AGAIN.

It was a text from the arms dealer in London. Zankhana. Zed. Bolshie. She was reaching out to me over a secure network isolated from the mainstream, a network that required special software to enable communication. Another coded message came while I held my phone.


ENJOYED SPENDING TIME SNOGGING WITH YOU AT ROSE PUB AND KITCHEN, NEW CROSS. HAD A BLAST AT STAR WARS THE MUSICAL. I’M ABOUT TO SEND YOU SOMETHING, HOPE YOU DON’T FIND IT OFFENSIVE. I’M HAVING KITTENS ABOUT IT, BECAUSE IT’S NOT THE KIND OF THING I NORMALLY WOULD DO. BUT I WANT YOU TO STAY AS RANDY FOR ME AS I HAVE BECOME FOR YOU.

I texted her back a smiley face. She sent me another message, a nude photo. Her tattoos, the scorpion that ran down her body, her hair, her skin. Zankhana was a fit work of art. One of the best bods I’d ever seen.


FOR YOUR EYES ONLY. DON’T WANT YOU TO FORGET ME. I GUESS I’M TRYING TO SAY I FANCY YOU. HOPE THAT KEEPS THINGS FROM BEING WOOLY. WILL TAKE MORE AND SEND MORE PICS IF YOU WANT. WELL, I DID TAKE MORE, JUST SEND A SMILEY FACE IF YOU WANT TO SEE THEM. YOU ARE DEVASTATINGLY HANDSOME WITH YOUR FACE HEALED.

Weapon at my side, I sent the arms dealer a dozen smiley faces followed by X’s and O’s. For a moment I wished I had stayed in London.

She was in this business. She understood me better than most. I had done what I had to do. I had told her about the nightmares. I saw enemies both new and old when I closed my eyes. The nights I was with her, I had jerked awake at least a dozen times. Once I woke up screaming.

I took slow breaths. Chest was wrapped in steel bands. I broke free, then shook off a chill and looked at the shoes and clothing on the floor. I went to my backpack, took out a BC Powder, downed it with water.

For six days this suite in Paris had been my five-star safe house.

I put the phone down, crept back to the window, cracked the thick curtains. Europeans who were out wore heavy coats, parkas, gloves, scarves, boots. Snow fell and the grandness of Paris twinkled at me, the well-lit Eiffel Tower minutes away. I was hiding at the Shangri-La Hotel.

I wished Shotgun had lived to see this city. He would have loved to be able to see the black Americans and Africans speaking French in Paris.

I caught my reflection in the glass, then saw someone behind me.

The sudden movement jarred me; my trigger finger tensed up.

“Boo, you a’ight over there?”

A light on one of the nightstands clicked on. Living in a mental hell, I saw heaven. Sweet brown skin, virgin white covers pulled up to her small waist. Two shades of makeup had stained the saintly sheets.

She turned on her side, faced me with her eyes barely open.

I lowered my weapon. “Didn’t mean to wake you up, Lola Mack.”

“Were you about to sneak out without saying good-bye again?”

“No, wasn’t leaving, not about to bounce, not yet.”

“You’re going to that other part of Paris to handle your business?”

“Yerres. Yeah. Soon. Later today. Before nightfall.”

“Want some company? You said it’s a short train ride from here.”

“You can’t go with me. Might not be safe.”

“You okay?”

“Give me a moment.” Shotgun was on my mind. “Just a moment.”

“You’ve done that every night. Stood in the window. You’re looking at your reflection over and over like you’ve never seen yourself before.”

Over the last few weeks I had reached out to women I had left without saying good-bye. I still hadn’t called Angelina. The look she’d had in her eyes when she ran into me in Brazil haunted me. The instant tears troubled me. Weeks ago when I was in Atlanta I had called Jewell Stewark and left a message. She was ATL’s top newscaster. We had met in a jazz club a while ago. Sambuca Jazz Café. Two hours after that we had a room at the W Hotel by Perimeter Mall. We had had dinner in the room, talked, laughed, had sex, then rested on the bed and watched the news. Boys who had been outraged and needed revenge after 9/11, boys who were eager to kill the Taliban had ended up in Iraq.

Everyone was fighting a bad war. Everyone was in the wrong war.

When I was passing through Miami, I had reached out to Miki Morioka, a waitress I had met at Tootsie’s Cabaret. She had married two weeks before, was just getting back from her honeymoon in Las Vegas. I congratulated her, and she waved it off. Wasn’t excited about being hitched. She told me it was a marriage of convenience, so her child could have some sort of a father at home. And she needed the financial security. Kids were expensive and private schools weren’t cheap. She told me that as we sat naked on a towel placed on the sands of Haulover Beach in Miami Beach, Florida. It was my first time at a nude beach.