Ken Douglas - Gecko

“ Do you have a room for a few days?” he asked the man behind the desk.

“ Sure do, we’re mostly empty. It’s early.” The man had a nervous tick in his left eye and he smelled like fresh earth. “Excuse the clothes.” He handed Jim a registration card, “but I’m the gardener too.”

“ I’m looking for someone who checked in last Tuesday.” Jim noticed the dirty corner on the card as he filled it out. He used Eddie Lambert’s name.

“ And who would that be?” the man asked as Jim watched him pick at the dirt under his nails with a clean card.

“ I’m looking for some friends that came up for a wedding.”

“ The Tuhiwais?” The man set the folded card aside, tick going crazy.

“ Yeah. I was supposed to meet them here four days ago, but I missed my flight,” Jim lied. “I called their home in Auckland and there was no answer. I was wondering if they’re still in town?”

“ You don’t know?”

“ What?” Jim thought he knew, but he wanted the man to tell him.

“ Their daughter Donna went missing the night they checked in. At first they thought she might have been kidnapped, but the parents don’t have much money. Now they think she ran off.”

“ Ran off?”

“ Who knows why kids do what they do today. If you want to know anything more, you’ll have to ask the police.”

“ I’ll do that.” Jim thanked the man, whose eye was batting up a storm now.

“ Here’s your key. You have her room.” The man was trying to force his eye to stay closed and not having much success.

“ Her room?”

“ The same room Donna Tuhiwai was in last week.”

“ Coincidence, or did you do that on purpose?”

“ Just coincidence,” the man said, struggling to keep his eye slammed shut. Jim didn’t believe him.

He flopped on the bed as soon as he entered the room, stared at the ceiling and tried to think. Donna went missing from this room less than a week ago. She was being held in a windowless room somewhere, strapped to a hospital bed. There had to be more, something he was missing.

“ You need rest,” Donna thought.

“ I’ll be fine,” he thought back.

“ Nonsense, take a couple hours. You’re dead tired.”

“ Maybe you’re right. But just a few minutes.” He closed his eyes and in seconds was asleep.

He woke with a steady knocking on the door.

“ Don’t answer it,” Donna warned.

“ You’re being paranoid.” He sat up and stretched.

“ I’m not.”

“ Who is it?” Jim called out, getting out of bed.

“ Linen service,” a male voice on the other side of the door answered.

“ See, you were worried about nothing.” He turned the knob.

The door burst open and Jim had a quick look at a small man with rugged features. He staggered back from the door, but he wasn’t quick enough. A fist shot into his stomach, doubling him over, then something came down on his head and the lights went out.

He woke slouched in a chair as cold water was splashed onto his face. He sputtered and spit to keep from gagging. He tried to bring a hand to his face to wipe away the water, but his hands and arms weren’t obeying his commands.

“ How do you feel?”

Jim turned his head to the direction of the voice and found the small man seated in a chair by the door.

“ You can stop trying to move your arms, your hands are handcuffed behind your back.”

“ Why? Are you the police?”

The man laughed.

“ How’d you get the cuffs over the cast?” Jim asked, remembering how he showed the cast to Washington to get him to leave the cuffs off.

“ With difficulty.”

“ Why are you doing this? I’m not a criminal.”

“ Hey, that’s enough. I’m the one that’s supposed to be asking the questions here.”

“ Okay, ask.”

“ You came around asking questions about the missing girl.”

“ I did not,” Jim said, playing for time.

“ Phil, the desk clerk, called and said you were asking.”

“ I was not.”

The short man got up from his chair, walked to the bureau, picked up a tourist magazine, rolled it, and smacked Jim in the head.

“ I need better answers.”

The slap stung, but Jim had faced a lot worse. There was nothing this little man could do that could make him say something he didn’t want to.

“ I’m not a brave man,” Jim said. “If I knew what you wanted me to say, I’d say it.”

“ Why were you asking about the girl?”

“ When the guy at the front desk handed me the key, he said I was in the room the girl went missing from. He made me curious, so I asked. I didn’t know I was committing a crime.” He hoped the man would buy his story.

“ You didn’t come here looking to meet someone?”

“ Yes I did,” Jim lied. “My fiancee, she should be here around 8:00.” He looked out the window. It was dark out, he’d slept longer than he’d planned.

“ If what you say is true, why would Phil call and say different?”

“ Why don’t you go get him and ask? I’m not going anywhere.” Jim was beginning to enjoy confusing him.

The man grabbed the phone, pushed buttons. After a few seconds he began speaking,

“ Tell Manfred we have a problem. I think Phil was a little anxious to earn some extra money.” A few seconds silence. “No, Phil told this American that he had the same room as the missing girl, so the guy asks a few curious questions, and Phil reacts like he’s from Interpol.” More silence. “Okay,” the man said and hung up.

“ The boss will be here in ten minutes, then we’ll figure out what to do with you.”

“ Are you going to arrest me?” Jim tried to sound afraid. “Because if you are, I have something to say to you.”

“ What’s that?”

“ If this was Chicago, half the money in my wallet would be gone, these cuffs would come off and your wife would have a new dress tomorrow.”

“ Are you trying to bribe a police officer?” The man was smiling, apparently amused at being mistaken for a policeman.

“ No, sir,” Jim said. “I was just saying what would happen if we were in Chicago.”

“ How much do you have in that wallet?” the man asked.

“ Over a thousand American dollars.”

“ Cash?”

“ You can buy your wife a nice dress with half of that and have change left over.”

“ What keeps the cops in Chicago from taking it all?”

“ Leave a man broke and he might go crying to your boss. Leave him half his money and he says, thank you very much, and forgets it ever happened.”

“ And that’s what you would do? Forget this ever happened?”

“ I just want this over before my fiancee gets here. Can’t we make a deal? Call off your boss, take the money, and everybody goes away happy.” Jim tried to sound like he was pleading. However, he knew the man wasn’t going to let him go. When his boss arrived, they would question the desk clerk and more than likely it would be big trouble for Jim Monday.

“ Let me see the money.” The little man was greedy.

“ All right.” Even though his hands were cuffed, Jim had little trouble pulling Eddie’s leather wallet out of his hip pocket. The little man came close, reached behind Jim to take it, but before his fingers touched the leather, Jim kneed him in the face. The little man with the rugged features was dead before he hit the floor.

Jim scrambled out of the chair, sat next to the body on the floor. Any minute he expected company and he didn’t want to greet them with his hands behind his back. He faced away from the body and tried to maneuver his hands into the dead man’s jacket pocket as the glare of headlights streamed in through the front window, playing across the wall, followed by the sound of a car pulling into a parking place out front.