Flying Down To Rio...

Beth stirred besice me, moaned softly. Poor kid, they'd really done for her. And she was smallwr than me, so the effects of being clouted and knocked out were going to take that much longer to wear off. I glanced down at her hands, which moved restlessly in her lap. The left, where Sam's shining example of love had rested, was bare. The circlet of diamonds she had been so touchingly proud of was gone.

Deb:  Hey...stewardess...HEY!  Yo!  You!  C'mere!

Baddie1:  Si, seniorita?

Deb:  One way to earn brownie points with the passengers...I need to use
the ladies room.

Baddie1:  My instructions are to keep you restrained.

Deb:  Are your instructions also to dryclean the seat?  Where can I go?  I
need to pee, here, work with me.

Baddie1:  You will return?

Deb:  No, I'm gonna go for a walk around the War Memorial, idiot, what do 
you think?  Come on, man, my back teeth are floatin'!

Baddie1 let me loose.  I stood, staggered, looked curiously at the
center of the difficulty.  This was before the really sharp pain hit my
ankle and I tumbled back into the seat.  Baddie1 merely assumed I had 
changed my mind and returned to his post.  He neglected to re-restrain me 
and eventually I was able to use the seatbacks to hop to the restrooms and
back.  As soon as I was settled, Baddie1 and his close personal friend,
Baddie2, came to my seat.  One locked me back down, and the other tangled
a fist in my hair and held my head still so he could press an evil smelling
towel over my face.  I lost consciousness yet again.

Billy:  You ready for this, Dawg?

Sam:  As I'll ever be.

Billy:  Then let's do it.

Sam strode forward into the morgue's outer office.  He had been in such
places many times, most recently to officially identify young Noah Newman
so that his remains could be shipped to Chicago.  He had never, ever stepped
into a morgue with this much at stake.  If their Jane Doe was Beth...he
would never forgive himself. It would mean that he was losing his edge,
that anyone entrusted into his care was in danger.  It would be time to
hang it up.  And if what he found in this place condemed him to a lifetime
alone...there would be no point.  Sam felt a knee in the long miscle at
the back of his thigh.

Billy:  Dawg, shit or wind your goddam watch.

The attendant didn't want to let Billy inside, but Billy withered the
little smartass with a look.  He sailed on in, just behind Sam, a fist in
the other man's back.

Billy:  Don't crawl over there, girly-man.

The attendant stopped at a numbered drawer, checked the number against
a clipboard he carried.  He looked bored.

Attendant:  C'mon, honey...wakey, wakey!

The drawer slid out on heavy oiled wheels.  It seemed to Sam that it
took about a year until the form under the plastic drape was visible.  There
was a brief, unpleasant smell of formaldehyde which couldn't mask the
even more unpleasant smell of corruption.  The weather had been warm, and
a body in the open always started going over a little faster in the heat.
Sam clenched his fists until he felt the cords in his arms pop.  Beside 
him, Strannix stood impassively.

Attendant:  It ain't pretty, pardner.

Billy:  It usually ain't, jackoff.  Let's see what we got here.

Billy yanked the plastic sheet away from the corpse's face...or what 
was left of it.  Neither man could tell if the extensive damage was ante-
or postmortem - it could have gone either way and neither man was familiar
enough with the intricasies of forensics to be able to tell.  Sam kept
thinking of Noah and how he'd failed the boy.  Had he failed Beth, had
his loving vigilance been for nothing?  Was this the proof?

Billy:  Dawg.  Pull yourself together, man.

Sam:  Any personal effects we can look through?

Attendant:  Nothing.  Found in an alley naked, with a couple of those
scroungy coyotes trying to drag her off...see the leg?

The fist was pushed deeper into Sam's back.

Billy:  Lemme see, here.

Billy ignored the fact that this was by far the deadest dead body he
had ever flipped over, and grabbed the cold hip.  He pushed, and the body
tipped away from him.  He was looking for a particular mole near the cleft
of the buttocks.  His fingers had lingered over it many times.  He saw
nothing like it.  And the ass was wide...much wider than Beth's.

Billy:  It ain't her, Dawg.

Sam:  They haven't been able to identify...

Billy:  It.  Ain't.  Beth.

Sam:  How in hell can you pretend to know that?  There's no face!

Billy:  It ain't her!  She's got a mole on her ass.  You see a mole there?
And does this look like it'd fit in your hands as nice as Beth's...

Sam:  Damn you, sonofabitch!  I don't need my pleasures all over your face!

Billy:  Then beat your goddam self up with it!  I'm tellin' ya right here,
this ain't the pipsqueak.  Now let's quit dickin' around in this meatrack
and go find the girl.

Billy turned on his heel and strode out, boots clocking rhythmically on
the concrete floor.  After a minute, Sam followed.

Military transport.  Surplus.  Old.  Smelled like old dead sheep or 
something and with our heads the sheep might just as well have been in there
with us.

Beth:  Deb...you 'wake?

Deb:  Trying not to be.  Man, this thing smells like batshit.

Beth:  Maybe that's what they haul in it.  Chief export and all that.

There were several minutes of groans and muffled curses while we tried
to arrange ourselves comfortably, or at least get ourselves braced so we
wouldn't be bounced around like pingpong balls.  From up front, we heard
liquid Spanish.

Deb:  What's he sayin'?

Beth:  Hell if I know.  I took Spanish in high school, still don't mean 
shit to me.

Deb:  Wonderful.  No way to know what any of this jabber means.

We pounded on the cab window until the passenger thug slid it open.  He stuck an enquiring head through.

Baddie2:  Si?

Deb:  Go on...I didn't take high school Spanish.

Beth:  Um...hold on...como esta..er...como..esta...usted?  Yeah, that's it!
Como esta usted, Rico Suave?

Baddie2 whipped off a stream of Spanish, and we were left high and dry.

Deb:  Look here, Zorro, we don't...oh, shit!  No comprendo espanol!  Er...
yo...yo...what's that damn dog say?

Beth:  Yo quiero Taco Bell.

Deb:  You want Taco Bell?

Beth:  Hell, no!  I want information!  that's it!  Yo quiero information!

Baddie2 cocked his head at us, had a look on his face like a confused
cat.

Beth:  Parlez vous francaise?

Deb:  Okay, dammit, Pele, sprechen sie deutsche?  This is useless.  Siddown,
Frito.

The window slid shut.  My purse bumped my hip - odd that they hadn't
taken it, or searched it or just chucked it.  I had a brainstorm...I 
sometimes do.  I dug in the bottom of the bag...damn!  there was my trusty 
Motorola.  I dived to the floor of the truck and propped my back against 
the back of the cab so I'd be harder to see.

Beth:  What?  A cellphone?  Shit!  Migod!

Deb:  Might be worth a try.  Don;t know what kind of coverage they've got
down here, but let's giver 'er a whirl.

Beth:  This truck's so noisy they'll never hear us.

Deb:  Maybe they'll be able to get a trace on the signal.  What the hell!
Here goes!

I punched in Billy's cellphone number.  It rang twice before I heard
his wonderful voice.  Granted, he was barking at me, but at that point in
time, even the barking was music to my ears.

Billy:  Talk.

Talk, hell, I had to holler just to be heard.  Meantime transmission is
puking up gears right under me, the engine is grinding, and Beth was
yowling with the pain in her head.

Deb:  Billy!  Billy!

Billy:  Who in hell...Deb!  Where are you?

I heard an ominous beep in my ear.  The LED readout was saying the magic
words - LoBatt.

Deb:  Shit!  It's dying!  Where's Sam!

Billy:  Right here, why?  Dawg...Deb's askin' for ya.  I guess you were
right, she did go with Deb.  Got all bent outa shape for nothin'.
maybe they're gonna go...decorate that outhouse of yours.

Sam:  Yeah, kiddo?

More LoBatt beeps.  I didn't have any time to spare.

Deb:  Sam!...Sam!...

Sam:  You playin' with me?  I need to keep this line open, Deb, I've got no
time for stupid shit, I can't find Beth.

Deb:  Do I sound like I'm goofin' around?  The battery's goin' on me, I have
to hurry...Beth - 

Two things happened in quick succession;  Beth whacked her head on the
side of the bed of the truck and cut loose with a godawful yess, and the
phone died.

The hacker dude camu up from the basement.

Dude:  Signal seems to have come from South America.

Billy:  Narrow it down.

Dude:  Without...

Billy:  You've got the bastard on a loop, enhance the goddam signal, do it
NOW!

Sam grabbed Billy, rattled his cage.

Sam:  Can you trace that?

Billy:  Y'heard what he said.  And y'heard what I said.  Shit!  Damn call
from her cellphone.  What in hell would she be doin' in South America?

Sam:  Beth has no cellphone.

Billy:  No, dumbass, the punk!  What in hell is goin' on here?

Sam:  I'm askin' you, dammit!

Sam rattled Billy's cage some more.  Billy's eyes go hard, glitter
like obsidian.

Billy:  You better pull yourself together, boy, before you make one helluva
fatal mistake.

Sam:  Don't hold out on me, asswipe.  Where's my girl?  And why would a call
come through on Deb's damn worthless cellphone from South America if she's
in Minnesota?

The Hacker Dude reappears, sort of like a nerdy jack in the box, from the
basement.

Dude:  I've narrowed the frequency location sweep about as far as I'm going
to be able to.  Looks like the Caribbean...the Southern Caribbean.

Sam:  In other words...Clean to hell and gone.

Billy:  Narrow it down again, jackoff.  I wanna be able to figure out which
side of the house that call was made on.

Hours passed.  Billy hounded the hacker Dude.  Sam hounded Billy.
Nobody got anyplace.  Meantime we were checked in to an underground...room
...that might have passed muster in a third world country.  Maybe.  There
were two cots with thin mattresses and many coarse blankets and sheets.
We tumbled into them, intent on sleeping off the last of the chloroform
and beer.  Beth now had two small cuts over her left eye, and a rather
delicate looking bruise high on her right cheekbone, courtesy of the
sidewalk, the interior of the truck and a mistimed grab by one of the goons.
My leg was beginning to swell alarmingly, but it didn't hurt so much any
more.  The swelling inside the leg of my jeans acted as a sort of poor man's
splint.

Beth:  Hey...a light socket.  If only I had something to plug into it I
might not feel so far from home.

Deb:  Try this.

I tossed her the cellphone and the little charger that had come with it.
She plugged the charger into the wall and the phone into the charger, then
wadded up the bedclothes around it and fell asleep.  I followed suit.  When
we woke up we were both starving.  We had skipped lunch and it had been 
hours since either of us had eaten.  Instead of being offered a meal, Beth
was grabbed in a couple of big pairs of hands and trundled away.  I was
left behind, fretting, in the basement.  I knew something was going on up 
there.

Julio:  Welcome, my dear.  Mi casa es su casa.

The Head Bad Guy was handsome in a Julio Iglesias sort of way, very
smooth, suave.  He spoke perfect English.  Downstairs, I started yelling.

Beth:  Forgive me if I don't seem properly grateful for your generosity
but just what the hell is going on?

Deb:  Beth!!  Hey!!  What the hell??

Julio:  You should be more than acquainted with the affairs of our mutual
friend Guillermo.  I have brought you here in order to convince him to pay
a call.

Beth was slower on the uptake than normal, thanks to shock, the remains 
of her hangover and the drugs she'd been given.

Beth:  Bill?  What the...

Deb:  Get your hands off me, Might Joe Young!!  BETH!!!  You alright up 
there??  Assholes!!

Julio:  Exactly, my sweet.  Bill  He has...how do you say...screwed me one
too many times.  Now it will be my pleasure to screw him.  Through your
lovely self.  We are going to make a short tape for his edification tonight
...

Beth:  Buy...why me?  What do you think I can say to Bill that he'd bother
to listen to?

Julio:  Exactly what I tell you to say, querida.

Deb:  Beth!  Answer me!  Dammit!  Lemme up there, you bastards!  Sam'll
have a conniption if anything happens to her!  What are you shitbirds
doing to her??

Beth:  You better let her up here, Bubba, she'll go on like that all night.

Julio motions sharply to a silent attendany, who disappears.

Deb:  Pissheads!  Yo mammy!  An' I said it!!

Julio:  Sit.  Quietly.  understand?

Deb:  Shit!

Beth decides that they have to play along.  She gave me a fierce look.
I returned the look with one of my own that was inarticulate but not very
nice.  I turned this look on Julio.

Beth:  Okay.

Julio.  Now, querida, I would have you sit here.

Deb:  Very good there, Babalooey, a blank wall.  Nobody'll be able to tell
where she is.  Boy, you were sure listening in Kidnapping 101 that day, by 
God.  Damn, you're good.

Julio:  Every words you say is one minute less for you to live.  Why do you
insist.  Continue and I will return you to whatever Yanqui hellhole you
call home in a box.  A small box.

Beth:  Hey, hey, hey, look.  I'll do whatever you want, okay?  No need to
go off on her.  Let's just do this thing.

Julio:  I understand you are an actress...

Beth has had enough of this clown's smooth, phony flattery.

Beth:  What.  Do.  You.  Want?

Julio:  You to bring me Guillermo.  We will make an exchange.  Your freedom
for his life.

Deb:  What??

Beth:  Why the hell would Bill trade his life for me?  You're out of the
loop, pal.

Julio:  Is that not the yanqui way?

Deb:  Somebody better talk to me here.

Julio busied himself with setting up the videocamera.

Beth:  I think the information superhighway's a little slow down here.

Deb:  I don't care if it's in frigging gridlock, what's that butthead
goin' off about?

Beth:  He thinks Bill and I are still an item.  He thinks Bill will come 
down here after me.

Deb:  Is that so far fetched?

Beth lowered her voice to a near whisper.

Beth:  He'll come down here to help me.  But he'll take this place apart
once he knows you're down here...so you make sure you get yourself in this
tape somehow.

Julio got the camera all set up and focused.

Julio:  Teresita, querida, atencion, por favor.  Look into the camera.  On
the count of three, begin to read the speech which I will hold for you to
read.  At the prompt, please hold up your left hand.  Comprende?

Beth:  I think so.  Let's do it to it.

Julio:  Good.  So we begin.  On the count of three...

TO BE CONTINUED...