Nine Kinds of Naked (13 page)

“Tell me your name, then.” Clovis attempted to distract him. “I wish to know who would release me from this life.”

“Name?” The crusader laughed loudly. “You don't know what you're talking about, peasant. You could call me Jacob Jingelheimer if you wanted—”

“Jacob Jingelheimer?” Clovis repeated.

“But that would tell you nothing at all, so why don't I just tell you who I am? I'm King of the Wood, and I've been King of the Wood for fucking ever. That means that you are in the presence of a bona fide murderer, my friend. I've killed dozens of schmucks like yourself, and the dude who came before me doubtless did the same thing. It's not out of spite, understand, it's just my duty in this place. You would do the same.”

“What place is this, then?” Clovis—though he could not understand half of this madman's barking vulgarity—was nonetheless genuinely curious. “At least tell me where I am,
here to meet my death. And where do you come from, Jacob Jingelheimer? Your speech is most strange.”

The crusader held his knives wide and turned in a circle. “I'm from everywhere, man. Welcome to eternity. That mistletoe you're fingering grants access to the underworld, a life outside of time. I can go anywhere, anytime, see everything there is to see, learn every language. I've been at it for decades . . . centuries, for all I know.”

“You look tired,” Clovis observed.

“That's because little fuckers like you come strolling up when I try to catch up on my sleep. I'll sleep when I'm dead, as they say. Till then, I am King of the Wood, guardian of the
now.
” Without warning, the crusader threw his knife. Clovis, having been alert to the possibility, successfully ducked behind the trunk of the oak.

“Your armor does not fit you well,” Clovis called out, taunting the crusader and hoping to distract him.

“No shit, Sherlock. It wasn't made for me. It was worn by whoever was here before me. It comes with the
job
.” Having stalked around the tree, the crusader's second knife grazed the air off Clovis's ear and took him entirely by surprise. Clovis scrambled around the trunk and higher, glancing a ways away and below him. He spied Attila watching the unfolding drama, head cocked sideways. The sight of her granted him an idea.

“Get away from me!” Clovis hollered at the crusader, and Attila perked her ears.
Get
was what Clovis commanded when he wanted her to run faster, as in “get faster!” But Attila, she
didn't really see what he could possibly mean by that right now. She tested her master's resolve with an ambiguous snort.

Amused by Clovis's apparent desperation, the crusader laughed pitiless and cruel. “Don't get all pathetic on me. This is really happening, chickenshit. I told you once already, only one of us will survive this encounter.”

“Get away from me!” Clovis yelled again. “Get away! Get away! Get away!”

“Get away!” the crusader mocked him in falsetto. “Get awa . . . ” The onrushing gallop of Attila's hooves prevented him from finishing his taunt. Hearing her master's insistent command to get faster, Attila—not knowing what the hell else to do—had charged as fast as she could to the base of the tree. The crusader turned with sword half drawn only to be greeted by Attila's front legs, instinctively rearing up and kicking him in the face. Down he went, bludgeoned and bloody as his chest collapsed beneath the trampling hooves of Attila.

Stuffing the sprig of mistletoe under his belt, Clovis scuttled out of the king oak as best as he could with an injured hand, praising Attila and aiming to commandeer the crusader's sword. Much to his alarm, however, no sooner had he laid his hand on the hilt than his wrist was locked in the crusader's death grip. Prevented from unsheathing the sword completely, Clovis tried to pull away but was met with the stubborn weight of an armored corpse. The lethargy of death upon him, the crusader's head lolled loose and lazy to one side, startling Clovis at the sight of a missing left ear. When Clovis met his unfocused eyes, however, the crusader suddenly tightened
his gaze along with his grip. “It's you,” he said, as if in recognition. “You fucking killed me,” he croaked incredulous in his unfamiliar dialect. Lifting his other hand, he pressed a thrice-knotted strip of leather into Clovis's grasp. Pulling Clovis closer, he yawned gigantic and warned, just before his body fell into its final fatigue, “Whatever you do, do not untie any more of these knots.”

 

39
U
NDER THE LIGHT
of a full moon, the sand on a white sand beach is not so much white as it is
lunar.
Looking out across a scene of such silver serenity, chilled by the breeze and soothed by the surf, it is difficult not to fall into spontaneous exhilaration. But on just such a lunar sand beach in Playa del Carmen, Mexico (on the evening prior to the appearance of the Great White Spot), Special Agent J. J. Speed failed not only to appreciate the luminescent seascape, but also failed to notice the evening clouds hurrying across the face of the full moon, sweeping their silhouettes across the length of the beach and taunting at beauty like the moon's own matador. Instead, Special Agent J. J. Speed switched on his supersecret night-vision goggles.

Given the full moon, of course, he didn't really need them. He just liked them. They made him feel more important, more cool, more clandestine, more super spy. Special Agent J. J. Speed studied his target: an American kid with sun-bleached dreadlocks and a Japanese kid with ass-long hair. Special Agent J. J. Speed waited. He always waited. And listened.

“It's travel, man, that's what does it.” The kid with the sun-bleached dreadlocks passed the marijuana cigarette to his companion. “Not tourism, you know, no fucking itineraries, just rambling along. If you want to catch synchronicity, you gotta
travel.
”

His Japanese companion inhaled the joint thoughtfully. “Yeah, but life is life wherever you are,” he spoke through bated breath, holding his smoke. “What's the difference? Why can't we surf the synchronicity superhighway back home?”

Agreeing with this last point, Special Agent J. J. Speed nodded, lurking behind a hedge a few feet away from them.

“Routine,” the kid with the sun-bleached dreadlocks answered. “There's no routine when you travel. When you're at home, it's all routine and nothing new. Travel busts up that routine. You can't have any expectations if you're gonna enjoy yourself. Travel forces you to give up control, to go with the flow, you know? That's when synchronicity emerges. Just like this shit.” He held up the joint. “I mean, what the fuck, right? We're just hanging out on the beach in fucking Playa del Carmen, Mexico, and out of nowhere a bro strolls up and offers to sell us a dimebag of Mexican brickweed for a hundred pesos. That's some kind of synchronicity.”

“Some kind of shitty weed, if you ask me,” the Japanese kid answered. “Tastes like we're smoking the fur off some stoner's dog.”

“Shit yeah,” he chuckled. “But look, he gave us matches and papers, too. He makes up for it in service, man. You gotta respect that, right? Should I roll another one?”

“Fuck yes,” the Japanese kid snorted. “We'll probably have to puff that whole dime to catch half a buzz.”

Special Agent J. J. Speed removed his supersecret night-vision goggles. The second joint was his cue to attack—he liked to make sure they were good and baked before he freaked the fuck out of them—but he still had a couple of minutes before they were actually smoking it. He signaled for his partner to be ready to follow his cue. His partner—his trainee, actually—nodded vigorously. The trainee was excited about their stakeout. They always were, and Special Agent J.J. Speed resented
them for that. Special Agent J. J. Speed had been running this racket for twenty years. Even with his supersecret night-vision goggles, he was bored.

It had been a blast at first. After his cassock was rent in two by the tornado and his lifetime supply of toothpicks was dispersed, Father J. J. Speed had ditched his pastoral gig along with his toothpick habit to chase his mangled dreams. Taking nothing but his footlocker full of porn (which he eventually dumped in a junkyard under the paranoia of night as if it were as incriminating as a murdered corpse), he set out on a circuit, following CIA recruiters from university campus to university campus, pestering them to go ahead and check his background. His dream was to be a secret agent, daring, dashing, babes galore, the whole international espionage experience. After harassing the recruiters at a dozen or so universities, he was finally called for an interview. To his delight, he was then given one interview and examination after another. Apparently, his psychological profile revealed a tremendous amount of repressed rage and resentment, as well as a delusional narcissism that held others responsible for his own decisions. He was perfect for their purposes.

Within two years, he found himself stationed in Central America as a sleeper agent, to be activated in case any local politicians got uppity toward American hegemony. In the meantime, he mastered the language and customs, and took full advantage of vacationing women's greater willingness to have sex with strangers. He was also under orders to exploit Central America's lack of entrapment laws, befriending local law enforcement officers and teaching them how to shake
down drug users on the beach and channel the rustled money into covert drug wars. But that was just his initial cover story. Mainly, he channeled the money into his Cayman Islands account, and mainly the local cops channeled the money to their families. He'd set up hundreds of these ops, a regular Ponzi scheme, placing himself at the peak of the pyramid. Playa del Carmen was just his latest front line, making his way up the Mayan Riviera to Cancún.

It was easy, really. An undercover associate, typically his trainee, would wander the beach, striking up conversations with international backpackers, eventually offering to hook them up with some
Mota.
After they purchased a dimebag (with free matches and rolling papers) for a hundred or so pesos and parted paths, Special Agent J. J. Speed would monitor their movements through his supersecret night-vision goggles. He'd creep to within earshot as they rolled the joint, staying hidden behind any of the hotel fences and hedges that lined the beach. Then he lurked, with trainee in tow, listening to their cannabinated conversation. He never pounced on the first joint. He'd listen for half an hour or more, waiting for the second joint to circle around, fascinated by whatever random thing they happened to be talking about, vaguely envying their enthusiasm.

But not really. Mostly he hated these punk-ass backpacker types, and ultimately, Special Agent J. J. Speed just loved being undercover. It made him feel special, the double consciousness, as if his pretensions at the ordinary somehow brought him closer to Truth. And besides, any lingering doubts were defeated as soon as that second joint came out and he pounced,
squelching his radio, flashing his light, clinking his cuffs. He loved the power trip. Affecting a broken-English Mexican accent, he would scare the crap out of them with intimations of third-world prisons and
Midnight Express.

“Dude.” The kid with the sun-bleached dreadlocks was pointing with his joint, stoned and wowstruck. “Check the shadows of those clouds . . . ”

Special Agent J. J. Speed snatched the joint out of his hand and clacked a cuff on his wrist. “You're under arrest,
comprende
?” He affected his Mexican accent, rolling his
r
s and softening his
d
s, and cuffed the dreadie to his Japanese companion. “If you resist, I will shoot you in the head. I will shoot you in the fucking head and leave you dead on this beach.” He threatened them with his Luger, and here the trainee backing him up was instructed to grin menacingly and tap his riot baton against the palm of his hand. “You're in Mexico,
hombre
, and you were smoking
drogas.
” He shook his head severely, gesturing them up. “
Vamos, hombres.
We go to the jail.”

That was how he always introduced himself, and thence typically followed a lot of whoa-dude-and-what-the-fuck begging and pleading, please sir we didn't know, we love your country, we're only here for a few days. There was occasional crying, and even some rare indignation from some overprivileged brat threatening to call the consulate. Special Agent J. J. Speed had heard and seen it all a thousand times over. Nothing surprised him, nothing took him off guard, their reactions were as predictable as the amount of money he'd shake out of them: 2,000 pesos.
Each
, he'd emphasize, you can pay the fine now or you can pay the fine a week from now when you talk
to the judge. Actually, 2,000 pesos (about $180 American) was the least he'd accept. A moment's paranoid contemplation of what it might be like to spend a week in a Mexican clink was enough to inspire most to hand over the entire contents of their wallet.

He made out good with these two. Together they surrendered over $600 U.S. Special Agent J. J. Speed jammed the money in his shirt pocket, unlocked the cuffs, and smacked the kid with the sun-bleached dreadlocks across the back of his natty head.

“Synchronicity, eh?” he cackled as they ran off, and when the moonshadow of a passing cloud glanced across his face, he noticed it not at all.

 

40
T
HE AVERAGE HURRICANE
releases the energy equivalent of a ten-megaton nuclear bomb every twenty minutes. The Great White Spot was no average hurricane. In fact, after studying it for a while, climatologists were forced to conclude that it wasn't a hurricane at all. Maybe it was a hypercane or an F6 tornadic singularity, who knows? Naming it did not assist in understanding it, and so there it was: It was an inconceivably concentrated vortex of immeasurable wind speed, never more than fifteen miles wide, and it was the most powerful presence on the planet.