Christopher Moore - Island of the Sequined Love Nun

He didn’t want to do it, he fought not to do it, he strained, but nevertheless, Tuck couldn’t stop himself from asking. “Why?”

“Because we can’t do it without you, and this is something that you can’t get any other way. And because we’d rather keep you than have to find another pilot and lose the time.”

“What if I say no?”

“Then, you understand, we’d have to ask you to leave and you would keep the money that you’ve already earned.”

“And I can just go?”

“Of course. As you know, you are not our first pilot. He decided to move on. But then again, we didn’t make him this offer.”

“What was your first pilot’s name?”

The doctor shot a look at his wife. She said, “Giordano, he was Italian. Why?”

“The aviation community is pretty small. I thought I might know him.”

“Do you?” she said and there was too much sincerity in the question for Tuck to believe that she didn’t know the answer.

“No.”

Sebastian Curtis cleared his throat and forced a smile. “So what do you think? How would you like to own your own Learjet, Mr. Case?”

Tuck sat staring at the open wine bottle, measuring what he could say, what answer they not only wanted to hear, but had to hear if he was going to leave the island alive. He extended his hand for the doctor to shake. “I think you’ve got yourself a pilot. Let’s drink to the deal.”

An electronic bell trilled from the bedroom and the doctor and his wife exchanged glances. “I’ll take care of it,” Beth Curtis said. She stood and put her napkin on the table.

“Excuse me, Mr. Case, but we have a patient in the clinic who requires my attention.” Then the whiplash mood swing from officious to acid. “She presses that buzzer so much you’d think it was attached to her clit.”

Sebastian Curtis looked at Tuck and shrugged apologetically.

Back at his bungalow, an argument went on in the still-sober brain of Tucker Case.

I am scum. I should have told them to shove it .

But they might have killed you .

Yeah, but I would have at least had my integrity .

Your what? Get real .

But I’m scum .

Big deal. You’ve been scum before. You’ve never owned a Learjet before .

You actually think they’ll give me the jet?

It could happen. Stranger things have happened .

But I should do something about this .

Why? You’ve never done anything before .

Well, maybe it’s time .

No way. Take the jet .

I’m scum .

Well, yes, you are. But you’re rich scum .

I can live with that .

The dog tags and Jefferson Pardee’s notebook lay on the coffee table, threatening to set off another fusillade of doubt and condemnation. Tuck lay back on the rattan couch and turned on the television to escape the noise in his mind. Skinny Asian guys were beating the snot out of each other in a kickboxing match from the Philippines. The Malaysian channel was showing how to fillet a schnauzer. The cooking show reminded him of surgery, and surgery reminded him that there was a beautiful island girl lying in the clinic, recovering from an unnecessary major surgery that he could have prevented. Definitely kickboxing.

He was just getting into the rhythm of the violence when the bat came through the window and made an awkward swinging landing on one of the bungalow’s open rafters. Tuck lost his breath for a minute, thinking there might just be a wild animal in his house. Then he saw the sunglasses.

Roberto steadied himself into a slightly swinging upside-down hang.

Tuck sighed. “Please just be a bat in sunglasses tonight. Please.”

Thankfully, the bat said nothing. The sunglasses were sliding off his nose.

“How do you fly in those things?” Tuck said, thinking out loud.

“They’re aviators.”

“Of course,” Tuck said. The bat had indeed changed from rhinestone glasses to aviators, but once you accept a talking bat, the leap to a talking bat with an eyewear wardrobe is a short one.

Roberto dropped from the rafter and took wing just before he hit the floor. Two beats of his wings and he was on the coffee table, as awkward in his spiderlike crawl as he was graceful in the air. With his wing claw, he raked at Jefferson Pardee’s notebook until it was open to the middle, then he launched himself and flew out the window.

Tuck picked up the notebook and read what Pardee had written. Tuck had missed this page when he had looked at the notebook before. This page had been stuck to the one before it; the bat’s clawing had revealed it. It was a list of leads that Pardee had made for the story he had been working on. The second item read: “What happened to the first pilot, James Sommers? Call immigration in Yap and Guam.” Tuck flipped through the notebook to see if he had missed something else. Had Pardee found out? Of course he had. He’d found out and he’d followed Sommers to the last place anyone had seen him. But where was Pardee? His notebook hadn’t come to the island without him.

Tuck went through the notebook three more times. There were some foreign names and phone numbers. Something that looked like a packing list for a trip. Some notes on the background of Sebastian Curtis. Notes to check up on Japanese with guns. The word “Learjet” underlined three times. And nothing else. There didn’t seem to be any organizational form to the notes. Just random facts, names, places, and dates. Dates? Tuck went through it once more. On the third page in, all by itself, was printed: “Alualu, Sept. 9.”

Tuck ran to the nightstand drawer, where the Curtises had left him a calendar. He counted back the days to the ninth and tried to put events to days. The ship had arrived on the ninth, and the morning of the tenth he had made his first flight. Jefferson Pardee could be lying in the clinic right now, wondering where in the hell his kidney was. If he was, Tuck needed to see him.

Tuck looked in the closet for something dark to wear. This was going to be different than sneaking out to the village. There were no buildings between the guards’ quarters and the clinic, no trees, nothing but seventy-five yards of open compound. Darkness would be his only cover.

It was a tropical-weight wet suit—two-mil neoprene—and it was two sizes two big, but it was the only thing in the closet that wasn’t khaki or white. In the 80-degree heat and 90-percent humidity, Tuck was reeling from the heat before he got the hood on. He stepped into the shower and soaked himself with cold water, then peeled the hood over his head and made his escape through the shower floor, dropping onto the wet gravel below.

In the movies the spies—the Navy SEALS, the Special Forces, the demolition experts—always sneak through the night in their wet suits. Why, Tuck wondered, don’t they squish and slosh and make squeaking raspberry noises when they creep? Must be special training. You never hear James Bond say, “Frankly, Q, I’ll trade the laser-guided cufflink missiles for a wet suit that doesn’t make me feel like a bloody bag of catsick.” Which is how Tuck felt as he sloshed around the side of the clinic and peeked across the compound at the guard on duty, who seemed to be looking right at him.

Tuck pulled back around the corner. He needed a diversion if he was going to make it to the clinic door unseen. The moon was bright, the sky clear, and the compound of white coral gravel reflected enough light to read by.

He heard the guard shout, and he was sure he’d been spotted. He flattened against the wall and held his breath. Then there were more Japa-nese from across the compound, but no footsteps. He ventured a peek. The guard was gesturing toward the sky and brushing his head. Two other guards had joined him and were laughing at the guard on duty. He seemed to get angrier, cursing at the sky and wiping his hand on his uniform. The other guards led him inside to calm him down and clean him up.