The Mentor (31 page)

Chapter
Eighteen

I’d been on
deck, staring at the horizon when the city of Casablanca began to ease out of
the water.  A large part of me was desperate to get back onto dry land and
one more step back home.  Another part of me, also quite large (as
previously noted: I’m a rather large, at least at the midsection, so thus am
made up of other large, worrisome bits), was frantically trying to gel some
sort of plan to get off the boat and
not
get turned over to local
authorities.

As the
image of the skyline asserted itself; my mind began to simmer with the words
from a Cobb Country, Georgia library tape I’d listened to detailing religious
architecture.  Some part of me saddened, missing my former ear bud buddy,
although this part was a somewhat smaller part than the two aforementioned
large parts, so it doesn’t really warrant thorough examination.

Then from
my vantage point, leaning against the rail as others were hustling around me
preparing for the long-awaited docking, I could see the world’s tallest minaret
sprout and ripen just beyond the shoreline.  The mosque and its courtyard
could hold about a hundred thousand worshippers, and its completion had been
timed for the Moroccan king’s sixtieth birthday.  

Good to
know.  

I’m not
terribly familiar with the world’s religions, but, whereas in Western culture
(at least Western consumer culture) a celebratory gift for a sixtieth
anniversary is diamonds, rather expensive, it appears, in at least one Eastern
tradition, that anniversary’s gift is a collection of granite and marble fashioned
into the shape of a giant house of worship capable of housing the residents of
a small city.  Though, my guess, the rest of us working stiffs will likely
stick with the eCard (something with a funny, obnoxious animation deploring
how, with age, the former soft things have become rigid or hard and the former
hard things, soft and unpopular).

It had been
near a full-day of keeping up the bump-on-the-head guy routine, and the captain
seemed to be getting a little wary of it.  I was invited to sit at his
table earlier that morning for breakfast, and he hammered me with questions
about anything I could remember.

Made for a
very uncomfortable breakfast.  Had it not been for the seriously excellent
strawberry waffles it would have been a total loss.

As we eased
into port, a little man in a white jacket asked me to follow him as the rest of
my seafaring journey would be embarked upon while inside my small cabin.
 I didn’t entirely mind: the previous night’s the bath I’d taken, drained,
and taken again was the best thing to happen to me in recent memory.  

As I
fumbled around the small suite the following morning, Morocco growing larger in
my port window, my mind fell back to the task of finding a way off the ship
that did not involve restraints.  

It was
explained this way: the crew would wait until all the other passengers had
disembarked—whose ever bag was left, that would be me.  Identity solved,
they’d call my family.

This was
not explained to me but I’d inferred: When they realized I was not on the boat
when it had originally departed they’d call Interpol.

So, I had
about an hour or two to get away.

The young,
drunk couple from across the hall burst into the hallway, arguing ferociously,
again, and once the squabbling began to dim as they left the ship, I hopped
into their room and dialed their cabin’s phone.

Pavan
peppered me with frantic questions, which, for the time being, went unanswered.
 

“Couple
hundred years ago,” I said instead, taking in the view of the approaching city,
“This was a pirates’ port.  Not officially, mind you.  They didn’t
put it in the Chamber of Commerce literature, I’m guessing.  But pirates
would send raiding parties out from here.  Home base.”

“And it’s
where Bogart had a bar,” Pavan added in his worldly knowledge to the conversation.
 “That’s pretty cool, too.  You should find it.  They probably
like Americans there.”

The port
reminded in some ways of the Port of Los Angeles.  Clean, efficient.
 I wondered if there was a man, like my eighteen-wheelin’ friend Abe, who
was out there going through his driving ritual as he headed deeper into the
continent, hauling a load of camel pelts and black tar heroin.

Sometimes
when working through a problem, I vocalize everything.  For one, of
course, it helps me remember my own thoughts much better.  For two, it’s
like a doctor plodding through a differential diagnosis.  The catch, I
suppose, is that I’m not a doctor.  And don’t have a degree.  And not
necessarily very good at working a differential.

 I
said to Pavan, still on my pirate differential: “The Portuguese, neighbors to
the north, they weren’t big fans of the high seas hijinks, so they thrashed the
city.  Built a military fortress and named it ‘white house.’  It’s
still Casablanca today.”

“That on
one of the tapes I gave you?”

“Nah, I
actually knew that one before.  Read it in
Reader’s Digest
at the
free clinic a couple years back.”

“Dexter…
dude, you’re in Casablanca.  That’s kinda fucked up.”

“Well said,
learn-ed sir.”

“So whaddya
going to do?  This guy’s gonna kill you if this keeps up, man.”

He was
right, of course.  I’d used a small withdrawal for the van, but it was time to
take advantage of my meager resources.

 “Time
to tap into the savings account.  I’ll have to slip the boat and make my
way over to the American consulate here because my new scary friend didn’t pack
a passport for me.”

“He is not
a nice guy, this we know.”

“But, when
I get home, if you don’t mind being Kato for a little while longer—“

“Yes!”

“—we’re
going to take a trip to Nashville and talk to some folks.”

“Who?”

THE
THIRTY-SIX HOURS of connecting flights home gave me plenty of time to think.

Regardless
of whether I’d taken the path he’d laid out for me or another, the Mentor was
going to be looking for me after my return home.  The little excursions
he’d been planning for me were getting increasingly dangerous, so who knew what
was in store for me next.  Maybe next time, my morning would consist of
sunbathing nude on the launch pad during a shuttle lift-off.  Or I might
be slathered in barbeque sauce and tossed in a lion’s den.  The only thing
for certain—this wasn’t going to be over until he decided it was over.  

Before
getting back to Georgia, I’d spent another day at the American consulate in
Casablanca.  First, my mind raced with the various stories I could concoct
to bluff my way back home but, ultimately, it crossed my mind that getting
busted with some bullshit story in a foreign country with no I.D. and no record
of my flight to Casablanca... I told them the truth.

“You told
them
about
him
?” Pavan asked.

“No, I left
that part out.”

“Wha...
what part did you leave in, then?”

“That I
went to sleep at Doc’s and woke up on another continent, tied up and being
held, it seemed for ransom,” I said.  “If I’d said anything about The
Mentor, suddenly there’s a huge kidnapping investigation, and I’m going through
mug shot books for the rest of my natural life.”

We grabbed
a couple of beers out of his dad’s fridge and put them into a green knapsack, a
remnant of Pavan’s high school days.  I knew where my head would meet the
pillow that night but didn’t discuss it with Pavan yet.  

“They
called up Doc and talked to him and, hell you know how crazed that dude is, but
he confirmed my story and anything beyond that, they brushed off to him
sounding like a total loon.  A quick check to see if anyone fitting my
description had committed any crimes locally, I satisfied my tab on the ship
with a draw out of my savings and they put together some temporary I.D. for me.
 Took a flight home.”

Pavan had
grabbed me at the airport only an hour earlier, but I had no interest in
sticking around where The Mentor might be scoping out.

“Anything
weird going on at work?  Anyone poking around?”

“Huh?  The
theater?  Nah, not really.  Anthony’s got your job, but he’s not a
drinker so it isn’t the same.”

“Maybe you
and I need a change of venue,” I said, zipping up the sack and heading out of
the kitchen.

“I’m up for
a change.  I’m thinking you should probably put this Mentor thing to bed
before, you know, you and me decide on any sort of vocational adjustments.”

I stopped
and slowly turned.  “Dude.  ‘Vocational adjustments.’  What was
that?”

Smiling, he
said: “The CDs you gave back to me, I’ve been listening.”  His teeth
pressed out of his grin.  “I think I’m getting smarter.”

“Then why
do you still have staples in your hair?”

He shook
his head violently, and I walked to the door.

“Can’t get
the bastards out,” he said, trailing behind me.  “I was thinking about
getting one of those Wile E. Coyote magnets.  You know, get the little
metal pieces out.”

Pulling the
door and stepping into the muggy night air, I breathed it in and looked at my
hands.  They still hurt, but I was beginning to find ways to control the
pain a little.  No reason to get all doped up on painkillers.  Unless
they were grain-based painkillers.

“Like a
giant Acme magnet?”

“Yeah.”
 Once out of his pocket, his car keys jingled like a Christmas department
store bell ringer.

I said,
“Never really seemed to work out so well for the Coyote.”

“Yeah,” he
said opening his door.  “That was why I didn’t go that way.”

BEFORE MY
FRIEND PICKED me up, I’d pressed a couple dollars in quarters into an airport
Internet kiosk and checked my email account.  There’d been a good response
to the ad I’d placed while at Smokey’s, and a couple calls later, I had a place
to stay.  For a little while.

The Mentor
was going to come at me, that was a certainty, but
this time
I’d welcome
the visit because
this time
all this screwing with my life, that was
over.  But, I was still flying blind and needed to see what there was to
know about my enemy.

That would
take time and that necessitated a poor man’s safe house.  

We stopped
by Doc Drake’s place, pulled Pavan’s car into the Quiet Room and checked it for
tracking devices.  Again, there was just the faint signal, but traversing
the car; the signal didn’t fluctuate in such a way we could find the device.
 Under the chassis, in the truck, under the hood, the seats… nothing.
 

The Mentor
had tracked me to Doc’s garage and a repeat of that was out of the question.
We’d have to get any sort of tracking device out of Pavan’s car or face the
same problem—he could hit anytime he wanted.

“That’s so
weird,” Doc said, rubbing his bald head with both hands.

I asked
where the nearest corner store was—we were low on beer— and left the two of
them in the Quiet Room.  

A few days
earlier, before my recent forced trip abroad, I’d come up with an idea to get
free lodging, while even make a couple bucks on the side. 

I’d been
thinking about my sister who, for a young fiery girl, was always looking to
make a buck.  Of her many little entrepreneurial ventures, one stuck for a
while.  The doting older brother, I’d helped her out—and ended up with a couple
real life references— and decided there might be a shot, all these years later,
for using that odd resume to find a hidey-hole.

Checking
the email account at the airport, I’d gotten lucky: a desperate couple had an
emergency.  Perfect.

Hopefully,
there’d be enough of a continued response that I could string together jobs—

“Dex!”
 Pavan was running toward me, his hair flapping wildly as he climbed the
short hill from the room below.  “Come back, we found it.”

“Cool,” I
said, and felt better.  “Can you get it out?”

Pavan grabbed
my arm and excitedly tugged me back down the hill toward Doc’s Quiet Room.
 “I hope so.  We lost the signal less than a minute ago, so we both kinda
realized, you know, where it is.”

“How did—?”
 I stopped and caught the smile on his lips.  “No way.”

“Sure,
yeah, makes sense,” he said.  

Doc popped
his head out, his eyes too wild for my comfort at that moment.  When I got
to him, I stopped.

“Inside
me
?”

Doc nodded
and pulled out a small, silver Exacto knife.

TIFFANY
MADE A GREAT dinner for the four of us.  She was studying Egyptology, so
concocted a dinner fit for a king—rather, a pharaoh in this case it would seem.
 I’m not sure what it was, and the only thing I recognized was the chopped
olives in the mix and the bread I was scooping it onto, but it was great to
have another home cooked meal.