Matt & Mariko - A Serialized Novel - 4.23

CHAPTER 5B

     They drove down Lincoln to Rose and parked in front of a faded green apartment building called Villa Diana. Aileen led the way up a flight of stairs at the back of the courtyard. The Mexicans and Filipinos who lived in the apartments left their doors open, and when Matt glanced inside one he saw a group of men inside huddled around a coffee table playing dominos. In the courtyard, a small boy rode a tricycle around the swimming pool. Aileen knocked on CJ's door. After a delay a little too long for an apartment that size, CJ, about 50 years old with a thin mustache and a black beret, opened the door six inches or so and peered out at them from behind his round wire-frame glasses.

    "Hey-hey ba-abe, whadya say? Not a good time. Come back in about an hour."

    But the door opened wider and a man in a suit was standing behind CJ, holding a gun to his neck, although Matt and Aileen couldn't see that.

    "This the one?" the gunman said, turning to another man in the apartment to ask about Aileen.

    "That's the one. Get her in here."

    "Come on in," the gunman said, then noticed Matt. "You too."

     In a moment, the five of them were standing in CJ's sparsely furnished living room, crowded between an old gray couch and a TV set, which was tuned to a nature show. A lizard was stalking its prey, a large white insect poised gracefully on a green plant. Snap, and the bug was in the reptile's mouth.

     "Wait a minute," CJ protested. "These people don't have anything to do with – "

     "Shut up," the man without the gun said.

      Matt could tell denying would be pointless, so he intervened.

     "No, she doesn't have it anymore," he said. "I've got it."

     The gunman put his pistol back into his shoulder holster. CJ looked relieved and sat down in a chair on the other side of the room, near the TV, which showed monkeys swinging from tree to tree and howling in a rain forest.

     "You know we're willing to pay for it," the other man said to Matt, ignoring CJ, Aileen and his accomplice.

     "Yeah," Matt said, "but how much?"

     Sensing the negotiation was now out of his hands, CJ panicked. "No, wait," he tried to interrupt. "Oh, man – " The other man cut him off and continued to ignore him.

     "This item is the property of my employer," the other man said to Matt. "I have been given broad authority to negotiate its return. My offer is twenty thousand dollars."

     "OK," Matt said. "But I want to know what it is."

     "I don't know what it is. And even if I did know, I probably wouldn't be allowed to tell you. Like I said, it belongs to my employer. My directions are to get it back."

     "I still want to know what it is."

     "Then I'll compensate you for your – disappointment, or frustration – as far as the knowing-what-it-is part. Fifty thousand."

     Matt smiled at the absurdity of the situation.

     "Well, shit, man," he shrugged. "Why not say a hundred thousand."

     "Fine," the other man said, showing some impatience with Matt's cavalier tone. "One hundred thousand dollars."

     Matt was speechless. The other man looked at the gunman and tilted his head toward a gray attaché case near the couch. The gunman opened it, showing it was filled with hundred dollar bills. He took out a sheaf of them and handed them to the other man. The other man handed them to Aileen.

     "That's for your trouble," he said to her. Then he turned to Matt.

     "Can you make it back here in an hour?" he asked.

     "Not if I have to zig and zag to make sure I'm not being tailed."

     "It's not worth it," he said. "We have a deal. That's all I was looking for. I'm not interested in where you've got it stashed. It's just a job for me. You've seen the money. Why wouldn't you come back for it?"

     Matt shrugged. It seemed logical. Still, he was worried about getting jumped on the way back to the apartment. But he had his new tear gas pen in his pocket, the gift from Ashton, and decided he could handle anything that came his way that day. Of course, he was wrong.

     "Back in an hour," Matt said.

     "See you then," the other man said and sat down to watch TV as the nature show concluded with scenes of hippos yawning and snorting, halfway submerged in a jungle river.

Matt  and Aileen walked back to the Mustang.

     "Look at the shit you've got me into now," he told her.

     "I swear I didn't know. I swear."