Niceville

for the Vietnam War so that he could have gone over there and shot the shit out of a whole boatload of wily Asiatic slimeballs just like Mr. Dak here, but that war was over, so Deitz had to go back to looking at Dak’s irritatingly serene expression.
    “They say I’ll get the item as soon as the wire transfer hits that number.”
    “Who will effectuate the exchange?”
    “What?”
    “What agency will do the actual wire transfer?”
    “My guy at the First Third.”
    “Ah. The unfortunate Mr. Thad Llewellyn?”
    Dak smiled, therefore Deitz was able to infer that some sort of joke had just been made.
    “Yes. That guy.”
    “And this will be done very soon?”
    “Yes.”
    “That is to say, this evening?”
    “Yes. That is to say.”
    All the same. Andy Chu, this snake-head, Joel fucking Cairo, Mousy Dung, Charlie Chan, the Dragon Lady, Kim Jong Il, King Ming of Mong, all the wily fucking Asiatics all over the world. Hate ’em all
.
    “How will the exchange be effected?”
    “They say it’s in a readily accessible location. As soon as the payment is made, they’ll tell me where the item is.”
    “And you have obtained, how to put it, proof of actual possession?”
    “They knew the number of the deposit box it was taken from. Andthey described the box. And what was inside it. They’ve got the fucking thing.”
    “So you feel confident that the object will be successfully retrieved?”
    “It’s no good to them. The money is.”
    Dak saw the wisdom in this.
    “Mutual and balanced expectations create happy and harmonious outcomes. Good. I approve of this. We will leave this in your capable hands, trusting that you will do nothing to create uncertainty or discord between the parties. We will be at the Marriott. We will expect you in two hours. Yes?”
    There has to be some way to fuck these guys
.
    “Yes.”
    Has to be some way
.
    Dak withdrew his head like a turtle.
    The window rolled up, the turtle car glided away soundlessly, Andy Chu snapped a few more shots, grinning ferociously, having one of the very best Saturdays of his entire life.
    Deitz looked up at the Goth girl’s shuttered world, and from somewhere inside his skull he heard that goddam mysterious walnut-cracking sound again.
    Has to be
.
    And then, like Saul on the road to Damascus, it came to him in a flash of brilliant light.
    There was no fucking way to fuck these guys
.

Morgan Littlebasket Comes to Regret
    Morgan Littlebasket, pillar of the Cherokee community and highly respected comptroller of the Cherokee Nation Trust head offices in Sallytown, alas now a widower, lived all alone in a big old rambling rancher-style wood-and-brick home on a full acre of rolling grass and live oaks just a half block away from Mauldar Field, the regional airport for Niceville and Sallytown, where he kept a very fine Cessna Stationair 206.
    Being a pillar of the Cherokee community had its perquisites, and one of them was this nimble little plane that he liked to fly on sunny Saturdays such as this one, soaring high above Niceville like an eagle, sometimes following the meandering course of the Tulip River as it flowed south and east out of Niceville, winding its way eventually to the sea, or perhaps he would glide at treetop level above the ancient trees along the crest of Tallulah’s Wall, terrifying the legions of crows that nested there, catching a fragmented glimpse, if the light was right, of the glittering coal black eye of Crater Sink in a rocky clearing below the canopy, the circular sink looking exactly like a black hole in the middle of the world.
    Around six on this particular Saturday, as the light was changing and the sun was sliding down towards the far western grasslands, Morgan Littlebasket was driving home from the airfield after just such a flight, calm, relaxed, feeling that warm meditative glow, that holy transcendence, that he always got from flying.
    He was at the wheel of his classic old Cadillac Sedan de Ville, wearing his genuine reproduction Flying Tigers flight jacket and a pair oforiginal Ray-Ban Aviators and listening to Buckwheat Zydeco on the stereo, tapping his left foot in time to the rollicking beat, and wondering, in an idle way, just how much money a man would have to assemble to leverage himself into a plane like that exquisite scarlet and gold Learjet 60 XR that was parked on the tarmac back at Mauldar Field.
    That beautiful jet, according to the field boss, was owned by some Chinese syndicate called Daopian