48, Questioning

“Well if he’s not gay, then at least he’s not straight.”  Alexi Blacktide sipped a very strong concoction made from rum and some sort of fruit that she couldn’t put her finger on.  It danced on her taste buds like joyful fire.  “People who are bi don’t keep their shoes that clean.”

“I know, right?  I can’t put my finger on it.”  Agent Death sipped a water and nursed a solid hangover.  She’d been drinking for two weeks straight in Texas.  She’d only been in Columbia for two hours and wanted nothing to do with alcohol, especially at ten in the morning.

“I’ve given him some signs too, but he still hasn’t made a pass at me.”  Blacktide sighed.  “Maybe I should just ask him if he wants to wreck a hotel room with me and see what he says.”

“Well if he doesn’t, it’ll be because he doesn’t want to scuff his kicks.  Fuck, those things are clean.”

Death and Blacktide smiled as their friend Dirt came walking back to the table.  “Be grateful you ladies don’t have to use the mens restroom here.  It’s awful.”

“Oh yeah,” Blacktide said in partial enthusiasm, “dare I ask?”

Dirt was an expatriate who’d been living in Bogota for over a decade.  He’d randomly met Blacktide on the night of a shootout at the docks on the river.  He’d helped her escape by boat, and from there the two worked together to try and take down a drug cartel overlord named Tiberon.  By random chance, Tiberon was captured at a taco truck by McVanadaly.  Tiberon was tortured mentally to death in the captivity of Team Whiskey.  Without ever touching him, his brain synapses finally stopped firing after having to listen to Murdock and O’Connor bicker for a week straight with no sleep.  Colombia was a safer place with him gone.

Today, Dirt was in a good mood.  Two beautiful American ladies had called him out of the blue to ask for help and he had nothing going on.  He liked to help the good guys.  

“Worst men’s restroom ever,”  Dirt said with disgust.  “I don’t know how to explain it.”  The fifty five year old man had the skin of a teenager but his grey mustache and wrinkled bald head betrayed his youthful face.  He rubbed his hand over the bald dome, then stroked his long, beautiful manstache.  “Everything is wet.  I mean, everything.  The walls, the sink, the handles, everything is covered in condensed moisture.  Oh, and they clearly haven’t cleaned it in months cuz it smells like fermented urine.  Just awful.”

Death couldn’t help herself.  “May I ask, how do you know what fermented piss smells like?”

Dirt chuckled and raised his lukewarm beer to the sky.  “I used to make homemade wine in Panama in the late 80s back in my teens.”  He raised his hand to stop the myriad of questions he knew would come his way.  “Just trust me, by the third month of trying to make hooch out of whatever fruit we could get, I made way more vinegar than alcohol.”

Death shook her head.  “Yeah, I don’t wanna know.”  

“Noriega was an asshole.  Christmas of ’89 was fucked.  It used to be a good thing to be an American living there, then after we invaded them, the locals hated us.”  Dirt polished off his beer and set the empty bottle down gingerly on the wobbly cantina table.  “To be honest, it’s partly why I joined the service, so I could learn how to defend myself.”  He suddenly lost interest in the conversation and stared at some of the patrons in the bar.  “Dammit, that man looks amazing in those pants.”

The two women looked over their shoulder to see a latino man sitting leisurely with a very beautiful woman.  He had glisteningly white pants that were ironed to perfection.  They looked back at Dirt to see that he hadn’t taken his eyes off the man.  Blacktide looked at Death and simply muttered, “Gotta be.”  

Dirt snapped back to reality.  “So, about getting you beauties to Russia.  I got ahold of an amiga of mine who says she can get you to the Galapagos by midnight, then from there we can get you on a private jet to Honolulu.  The owners of that jet owe me a favor, but they’re rich as fuck and love to island hop anyway just for fun, so it’s a perfect fit.  It’ll be a short layover for you because you’ll have to fly on the airlines from there to get to Tokyo.”  

The women were both taken aback by how quickly Dirt had arranged all of this.  Death tried to pull herself together.  “Wow, Dirt, this is amazing.”

“Yeah, this is incredible.  Thank you,” Blacktide added.

“Well you ladies and your team made my life a million times better when you took out Tiberon, so I figure I still owe you as many favors as you ask for.”  He reached into his pocket and pulled out two passports along with several plastic ID’s and credit cards.  “Your new identities are Chelsea Schultz and Trinity Addison, and you’re both businesswomen from Canada.’

Agent Death raised her eyebrows in surprise.  “Um, what?”

“The folks flying you to Honolulu don’t like Americans.  I’ve told them you’ve been partying a lot and you’ll probably need to sleep.  Am I wrong?”

Death had been rubbing her temples, trying to tame the mild headache she was fighting.  “Humph.”

“Exactly, and besides, if you’re sleeping, that means less questions.  Since the flight leaves at 1am, you’ll sleep most of the way anyway.”  Blacktide started to protest but Dirt cut her off.  “My I.D. guy is the best, and he’s already got these aliases entered into the international travel database.”  He grinned.  “Remember, if they ask, you just tell them that you prefer South America over Toronto this time of year.”

Both women looked at each other, then at him, and simply nodded.  Blacktide pretended to talk in a Canadian accent.  “Toronto, eh?”

“Neither of you look like you could be from either coast.”  As the women tried to figure out if what he’d said was an insult or not, Dirt reached back into his pocket and pulled out a mixed stack of Japanese and Russian currencies.  He gave them another mischievous grin and then threw the wad of colorful cash across the table.  “This is the equivalent of about five G’s or so.  It’s all I’ve got from those two countries.  It’ll get you in and out of Japan and into Russia.  From there, you’re on your own.”

A bead of condensation dripped down the outside of the glass of Blacktide’s fruity sugar bomb drink at the same slow pace as her jaw.  “Holy shit, Dirt.”  She grabbed the passport and flipped through it.  “Fuck me, you’re good.”

“Yeah,” Death agreed, “you’re better than our people back at Langley.”  Her eyes were big.  “How in the fuck did you pull this off so fast?”  She knew Dirt was shady, but this display was on another level.

“After Panama, I moved to Nevada.  I did college in the early 90’s as butt rock was being replaced by those depressed grunge kids from Seattle.  Dammit I miss dudes in tight pants singing like women.”  

It was Death’s turn to say it under her breath to Blacktide.  “Gotta be.”

Dirt was lost in his revelry.  “Computers were getting good enough that I could pay rent and make beer money selling fakes to the college kids who wanted to go out and drink.  I actually got pinched in Reno by the FBI in ninety three.  When they confiscated my set up at my apartment, they were so impressed that they offered me a plea bargain, then later they offered me a job.  I enlisted in the Corps, then got stationed back in central America ’’til I got my twenty years.  I’ve been off their radar ever since living here.”  He shrugged.  “I guess being a good guy got in my blood and I’ve been trying to keep this corner of the world as safe as I can with the tools I’ve got.”

Death examined the drivers license and VISA card with her new Alias.  “Addison is such a millennial name, for fucks sake.  Couldn’t you have picked something cooler?”

For the first time, Dirt laughed hard.  “Of course you’d be picky!  The hot ones always are!”  Death found herself taken aback by the flirting, then looked at Blacktide.  Their confusion was immense.  Dirt tried to lighten the mood.  “Look Death, I love working with hot women cuz they’re fun to look at. You two are knock outs, and you’re smart as fuck, but in the end, hot chicks bitch about random shit.  It’s just a fact of life.”

Death should’ve been insulted, but she enjoyed being called hot.  “Ah, thanks, I guess?”

“Oh, don’t be mad!  You two beauties helped me rid the world of one of the biggest psychopaths to have ever walked the planet.  Since you and your team killed that fucker, Bogota hasn’t had one death on the streets, and the word is that everything is calm.  Hell, you should tell your skinny sergeant that they’re bare knuckle boxing again.”  Dirt took a drink of his beer.  “For now, at least.”

Blacktide drained what was left of her drink and set down her empty glass.  Her breath smelled like fruit and booze.  “Power hates a vacuum, Dirt.”

“Yup.  There’ll be some shit bag narco that rolls in soon enough.  I’ve tried like hell to expand my circle of influence since Tiberon’s been out of the picture, and I think I have enough contacts that I’ll know right away when the next boss pops up.  But for now,” he raised his almost empty beer bottle, “let the good times roll!”

Death raised her water as Blacktide raised her empty glass.  “Saludos!”

“Cheers!”  Dirt polished his beer, then stared at the patron with the perfect pants.  “God dammit, he looks so good.”  He grinned and made eye contact with Blacktide.  “I appreciate sexy men.”  He gave her a nod and got up.  “Let’s get you two prepped for your flights.  You’ll be in the air for thirty of the next forty eight hours.”

As Dirt walked towards the front door, Blacktide grabbed Death by the arm.  “Jesus, I didn’t expect it to be that fast and easy.”

“You say that about all the boys, don’t you?”  Death smiled at her friend.  

“Good one, Death, but fuck you.”

“Still think he’s gay?”

Blacktide snorted.  “This one has me stumped, I’ll admit.”

At the airstrip, Dirt introduced the Americans to two women.  “Dirt, this is Lucía.  She’ll be piloting this bird.”  He pointed at a medium sized cargo plane that had two very large propellers on each wing.  “This is Martina, and she’s the copilot.”  The women shook hands and said their greetings, then Dirt powered on.  “They know you’re from Toronto, and they’ll make sure you get hooked up nicely when you get to the private jet.”  He gave the agents a wink, but the pilots missed the gesture.

“Thanks, Dirt,” Death said, then added a Canadian, “eh!” to the end of her sentence.  When it came to espionage, the women were damn good at their jobs, but they were not good at being con men.

“Yup.  Oh, and each of you eat one of these.”  He pulled out two little wrapped chocolate candies and handed one to each of them.  “It’ll make you pee a lot in the next hour before you load up.  The bathroom on this bird wasn’t working too well last time we used it, so the less you have to use it, the less you’ll hate me for arranging this flight.”

The women trustingly took the candies and popped them into their mouths.  The chocolate had a weird earthy flavor.  Blacktide asked, “Are you sure this is gonna make us pee?  We’ve been drinking since 10am!”

“Yup.  It’ll drain your bladder and make you thirsty and hungry, I promise.  You just gotta power through and not drink anything and the flight will fly by.”  

Blacktide rolled her eyes.  “Flights flying by.  Hardy har, har.  I don’t do pun humor, Dirt.”

“Then toss me in the water and call me mud.”  He laughed at his own joke, then chatted with the pilots in pretty good Spanish.

Twenty minutes later, the women were in the restroom at the airstrip, peeing their brains out.  Death was cranky.  “Is this for real right now?”

Blacktide sat in the stall next to her and answered, “I’ve never even heard of a diuretic like this, ever.  What in the fuck did that guy give us?”

Eventually, the women drained their bladders.  They washed up, and before they knew it, they were loaded up in the plane.  They sat behind Lucía and Martina.  Neither of the Colombian women were dressed like pilots, but they were clearly competent at flicking buttons and looking like they knew how to operate a plane.  They were muttering into the radio in fast Spanish.  The pilot turned around and asked in English, “Are you two buckled in?”

“Yes ma’am!” Blacktide answered.  “Thank you for doing this.  We really appreciate it.”

The pilot nodded and turned her head back to the controls.  “I owe Dirt my life.  Anything for that man.”

The copilot asked a question to the pilot, and even though neither American spoke Spanish, they got the vibe that the copilot was asking if she was sleeping with Dirt.  They watched the pilot shake her head, then answer in Spanish.  The Americans got the vibe that the pilot was considering that Dirt might be gay.  

The pilot turned back around.  “Dirt has become a family friend.  My brother stays with him when he comes to town.”

Death tried to be polite as the engines fired up.  The noise was difficult to talk over.  “Oh yeah?  What does your brother do for a living that brings him to town?”

Lucía answered, “He’s an underwear model.”

Death looked at Blacktide and mouthed, “Gotta be.”  She felt dizzy as the engines were kicking up and told Blacktide, “My head is starting to spin.”

“Damn, me too,” Blacktide said.  “I feel really weird, to be honest.”  Her speech started to become slurred.

Lucía looked back at the two women.  “The chocolates are kicking in, no?”  She smiled and said, “I’ll wake you up when we touch down.”

Death’s eyes got big.  “I’m feeling hungry as fuck and my head is spinning like hell!”  She started laughing and felt her eyes get really heavy.

Blacktide looked into Death’s eyes and exclaimed, “Your eyes are bloodshot as hell!”

Her friend took a few seconds to absorb the news, then laughed like a hyena and held her belly as she fought to get out the words, “So are yours!” 

Blacktide doubled over in laughter and realized she too was getting really hungry.  “Hey Lucía, do you know what in the hell was in those chocolates that Dirt gave us earlier?”

“Sí, muchacha.  They had a high dose of marijuana in them!”  

Death and Blacktide looked at each other simultaneously and yelled, “Dammit Dirrrrrt!”  With that, the engines roared to life as the pilot eased on the throttle and the plane started moving down the runway to prepare for it’s takeoff.

In the distance, a baby faced bald man with a wrinkly head sat in a bar and stroked his grey mustache as he stared at the bare, shaved chest of a young latino man while muttering to himself, “what a good looking shirt.”