I walk through the jetway entrance and down the stairs to do my walk around. My aircraft looks fine, everything just the way it should be, but something keeps drawing my attention back to the flight one gate over. It's a widebody just in from somewhere. The first cargo container unloaded is evil, no specifics, but I know. I call Perez, give her the container number, and ask her to get someone over here in the next two minutes or it will be gone.
Two vehicles are racing down the access road before I finish my walk around, so I hurry as best I can and am back in the jetway before they get there. Last thing I need is to delay the flight by having to make a statement about something I can't explain. We taxi to Bravo, and find ourselves twelfth in line for the runway. We're down to third when we get an email from dispatch. It's simple, it reads: 20 kilos of heroin found. Thanks. Perez. Message Ends.
So my good deed for the day does not get me punished. Captain Amos thinks I'm a hero, and he tells the entire flight before he makes the halfway to Kona game announcement that I spotted something while we were boarding, and it turned into a major drug bust. He even pays for my green fees at Waikaloa.
After dark, I go swim with the manta rays, and a couple passing whales, totally enjoying myself and not worrying about anything. I check my email in the morning and I have one from Sergeant "Lope" Lopez, the LAPD self-defense instructor, inviting me to start advanced training on the 21st and 22nd. I send him back my RSVP. Hopefully, Perez can teach me to shoot straight before then.
Reality hits me hard when we get back Tuesday night. No Jen. No Perez. A motorcycle store in Denver has grainy video of me buying my leather. There are at least six women on every rooftop in downtown LA when I pass by, well out of sight. The
Times
reports that most of the buildings are going to start having MFM Flyby parties, and charge women to stand up there, but the City Council is thinking of ordering the rooftops locked. I vow not to fly by regardless. The baby drone is still over the apartment complex in Colton, clearly the Army is not giving up and I need to do something about that. Fortunately or un, I can't visit Ms. Nortin because of all the activity.
I end up in my little lumpy bed, sleeping alone, not caring if Fog Dude shows. He doesn't. I guess even he has no answers for me anymore.
Normally my morning run helps me get things back together, the beach, cool winter day, a little real fog, and my mind goes everywhere at the same time and nowhere specific, cleansing, but not today. There are too many reminders. A helicopter flying south along the coast. A kid playing with an MFM action figure. Fuck me, its only been 10 days, and you can buy a terrorist helo and black underwear for your G.I. action figure. At least there's no salami.
Perez is already there when I get to the office in Terminal 7. The morning is busy, but neither mentally nor physically challenging, just the usual harried. I buy the tacos for lunch, and we dine inside the 757 at gate 75. She has a stack of paperwork with her, information, and a suggestion.
"Just so you know, I was invited to a debriefing by the FBI for our friend Ali. They haven't learned anything useful about where the money came from, or who else might have been involved, except that there are two unidentified sets of fingerprints are all over the hanger in Santa Monica and the hotel rooms at the Marquis, and four of Ali's men are still missing, and not presumed dead, though that's the line they told the press." She makes a long pause, and then starts in on me.
"You've been moping around like you're useless. In the past two weeks, you've saved a million lives, and found four million dollars in illegal drugs, how can you possibly be depressed?"
"880," I pause and then start over in my sarcastic voice, "Celeste Nortin carrying MFM love child, film at 11." Then I go back to my own voice, "And the Army wants me to be their new boy toy."
"All true, but irrelevant. I have a proposal for you." She hands me the stack of papers. "A list of places with different kinds of drug busts over the past few months. I want you to go out every night, and make some busts, and see if we can cheer you up."
"Perez," I decide I need to tell her the whole truth about my sordid past, "I lied to you."
She looks at me with a look that assures me I'm stupid, not a liar. I tell her about my attempt to take out the meth lab, the resulting dead guys, and my resulting arson. She is not impressed.
"I say that only proves you are not completely a dumbass, because instead of doing it again, you came to us to learn, and ended up saving lives. Karma, Air Force, karma. It works in mysterious ways."
"Kiana," I speak softly and carry a big depression, "every person I have tried to stop has ended up dead, every good deed I have tried to do has ended up being punished. Karma is a bitch."
She thinks for a second. "You
are
going out each and every night. You are going to grab the drugs, and do it without touching the people. You are going to prove to yourself that you can do good, untarnished good."
"Yes, sir," my voice says, but my face must have said something else, because she hits me on the arm. Then she says something else.
"And, will you stop with the countdown too? It's not healthy. You found that nozzle and stopped that helicopter. No matter what you do from now on, you're in the plus column. Live, don't count,
please.
" There's a lot of emphasis on the last word, strong emotion in her voice.
I hit her gently on the arm, and produce the best smile I can, which isn't much of one. "I'll do my best."
The paperwork has a number of general locations on it, including the neighborhood where I found my first meth lab. I memorize a few and toss the pages away in the terminal. We finish our day, and she "buys" me dinner at her
tia's
restaurant. Then we split up, her off to bed, me off to try the Perez Plan.
I drive to Anaheim, change into my now iconic underwear, and fly northward, about 100 feet high. There's a freedom to play that I've never felt before, I buzz a couple kids necking in a park, I flash across the diamond of a softball field, catch a fly ball some fat guy just clubbed into the sky and return it to him, I roust a flock of pigeons and then try to stay with them as they try to be anywhere except near me. Each stop cheers me up for a few seconds, and then I'm on my way, flying back into my depression.
Minutes later I cross the line into not so nice neighborhoods where parks are drug bazaars, where ball fields don't exist, and where even pigeons fear to tread. I cruise to the neighborhood where Perez said I would find an unlimited supply of street drug deals, and take a look around. It's houses, not businesses, though there's a mom and pop mini-mart on one corner that probably mostly sells alcohol and lottery tickets, based on the signage. The streets are dirty, the houses have weeds and a few trees in the front, and Japanese gardens of decaying metal scrap scattered across the backyards. New American zen.
Finding the dealers is easy, they're standing on every other corner. A nice BMW pulls off the freeway, stops at the light a block away, then slowly moves over to the side of the road and stops. Three earnest young salesmen approach the now open window, their wares openly displayed in their hands. I wait until the money and drugs are about to be exchanged, light my molecules, and grab both dollars and dope before they know what's happened.
At Perez's suggestion, I brought a book of matches with me, so a quick strike, and everything's falling to earth, burning.
Feels good for the 10 seconds that it takes for them to land, then nothing. So it's cruise around the neighborhood again, 100 feet up, until it happens again. And again. And again. And again. Five times I do it, five times the falling drugs lights my fire, five times I go back to being depressed as it hits. Soon, there are no dealers standing on any of the corners. I think briefly about going to another neighborhood, but in the end, I track for Colton, wave at the little drone still circling, then rip for Anaheim and home.
Perez is even less excited than I am over my night's adventure, she was so sure that it would cheer me up, and now she's depressed that it didn't. She thinks I need to keep doing it for a few days just to see what happens, and I agree just to cheer her up. I know it's not going to work. Why I have a fixation with drug dealers I don't know, but a half ounce at a time is making me more depressed, not resolving my issues.
We go to the shooting range after work, and I improve a little, maybe one in four rounds hitting the circle where the heart should be. Perez is 10 for 10 from her clip, or rather nine for nine, with the last round going between the eyes. Then she's off to home, and I am off to play with the drug dealers again.
They are all back on their corners until I make two grabs, then they go away. All gone. I head to the second neighborhood on Perez's list, this one less single family, more small business and cheap apartments. Same drill though, as I intercept one, two, three times a drug deal. Bored, I make a pass back to the first neighborhood, where the dealers are just beginning to go back out. I grab one transaction, buzz a couple other corners, then give up on them and head for downtown. Or rather, head for outside downtown.
I climb to a thousand feet or so, a half mile from my usual skyscraper obstacle course. It takes me 10 minutes of hard effort to find the drone, a little to the south of downtown, circling at maybe 600 feet. It would be hard to spot looking up, dark grey fiberglass against a dark grey and black sky. I picked it out because I was above it, and it occasionally blocked the lights of the streets below. Makes me understand just how invisible it would be out in the desert where it's supposed to be.
There are obviously large numbers of people still on the roofs of the buildings too, the desire to ride the salami unabated. Music is playing, conflicting songs coming from several different roofs, so the emphasis has changed from meeting me to making money off of the idea of me. Something else I need stop. Trying to avoid thinking, I'm Anaheim bound, with a quick stop on the roof of the Hilton to leave my underwear for tomorrow.
Friday morning dawns rainy in Los Angeles, so I skip my run and head to work early, just in case. Taylor Mankat, the beautiful dispatcher my dad told to stay away from me, is there, handing me my folder and looking like she wants to say something different than fend off my usual attempt to entice her with the lure of the islands. I give her my best, ‘what?' look.
"I am never a rebound girl," she looks me straight in the eye, attempting to ensure I believe every word, not knowing that I would believe anything those eyes told me, "I am always first in line, it's one of my rules. But," a brief pause, "if you would like to teach me how to play golf, I'm interested in learning."
And just like that, I am taking the lovely Ms. Mankat to the Century City Public Links on Monday morning. It's not Hawai'i for the weekend, but it's a start.
I fly back from Kona to visit my new neighborhood, figuring that I can't create a pattern that would either give them nights they know they can work, or help some frakking intelligence officer narrow the list of possible secret identities. I fly back naked to allow for high speed, flash to Anaheim to collect my underwear off the Hilton roof, and then cruise to the ‘hood. There are only three groups standing out on the street tonight, fewer than in any of my previous visits.
I hang over the main drag for about 10 minutes, when a black SUV the size of a school bus exits the freeway, pops through the intersection just as the light turns red, and pulls over to a group of dealers. My brain knows something is up, both the fog part and the ‘I got a 100 on my criminal investigations' part. They have never been on this side of the street before, they are directly in front of an alley, and there appear to be six or eight people in the SUV. I go for it anyhow.
Rolling over like a World War II fighter plan heading in on its bomb run, I get to about 30 feet above the ground when they open fire. Three weapons pop out of the windows of the SUV, two from the roof of the store, two more from the alley between the stores. I come to a halt, floating now maybe 15 feet off the ground, my arms crossed in front of me, tapping my toe to show my impatience. I think the last part is lost on them. They put about 100 rounds into me, or rather at me, before they stop.
My underwear is shredded. The salami is visible to all the world, and my ass is hanging out the back. I give them my best "what the fuck were you thinking" hand and arm gesture, and they break. The SUV is screaming down the road, everyone else sprinting in whatever direction is away from me, neither group looking back.
Pissed, I decide to call it a night, adjust my junk, and head for Kona. They did save me the trouble of ditching my underwear and retrieving it later, but now I'll probably have to suffer through the indignity of having to go shopping for more with Perez. I land on the Big Island at the top of the hill a mile inland from the hotel, in a vacant lot with enough tall foliage to cover me, turn back into myself, and start jogging for the hotel.
Dumbass. As in it may be three a.m. in Los Angeles, but it's only midnight here, and the police don't like mostly naked joggers running through the middle of town. I'm halfway down Hualalai Road when I notice the Dodge Charger behind me, flashing his little blue light. Not really thinking, I make a quick left, and half run, half fall, down the hill toward an apartment complex. I reach the ground, with my legs, ass, and half-a-salami all seriously sliced up by the lava rocks and tough plants.
