That’s where it was, Arnie thought almost matter-of-factly, but then nearly collapsed under his own weight right there.
“Nice piece, Arnold.” The small man ejected the magazine from the Sig Sauer and tucked it into the pocket of his suit. “I bet you wish you hadn’t left this sitting in the bathroom right about now, huh?” He pulled back the slide. A single bullet popped out of the chamber and landed on the floor, and then the man in the flashy suit laid the empty gun on the bed. The small man looked pensive. “How did you get a gun, Arnold? Is this what was in the package? At the post office?” Smoke laughed. The other man did not.
Arnie stared at the useless weapon. Jesus, he thought. How had they tailed him so fast? He’d been careful. Maybe they were guessing. He tried to turn on the charm, but really had none to offer. “Shit, Smoke. I got ways, you know? A man can’t be too careful, if you know what I’m saying. But it’s not like I had it for someone like you or nothing. I mean, look where I left it. I saw you out there before I let you in. Um, I mean, I’m a little surprised to see you, but we’re all friends here, right?” He looked at the beast next to him. The giant man hadn’t missed a workout in decades and looked as if he’d been raised on raw meat and gunpowder. The veins in his exposed biceps looked like they were about to burst. When Arnie followed the length of the man’s massive arms down to his hands he noticed the Kali baston for the first time. The brute had flipped it out from behind his girth like a magic trick and only now allowed Arnie to see it. A baston was nothing more than a length of oiled bamboo about three feet long, but Arnie had seen one before. He’d seen how, in the right hands, it could be used to tear a man to pieces. This man obviously had the right hands. The sight of the weapon diminished the small amount of confidence Arnie had in his voice. He began to sound like a child. “What’s going on here, Smoke? Buddy. I mean, like, what are y’all doing here?” Arnie’s eyes were glued to the baston.
Smoke held a finger to Arnie’s lips as if to hush the child Arnie had suddenly become and spoke to him as if he were one. “No—no, Arnold. We are not buddies. We are not friends like you say.”
“But Smoke, I…”
Smoke pressed his finger harder into Arnie’s lips, contorting his entire mouth. He hushed Arnie again. Arnie shut up.
“Do you want to know why we are not friends, Arnold?”
Arnie tried to step away from Smoke, but the giant man with the baston snaked in behind him, grabbed his shoulder, and held him in place. Arnie tried to spin some more bullshit about not understanding what was happening, but Smoke hushed him a third time and answered his own question. “Because friends don’t steal from each other. That’s why. We come to this country to have fun. We come here to make money, not lose it. And you—you ruined our fun. You stole our money, Arnold. You stole a lot of people’s money, and we want it back. I want it back. Then do you know what I want, Arnold? Can you guess? Or do I need to explain that to you, too?”
Arnie said nothing. Smoke looked disappointed.
“I want to know who else was involved and I want to know how you did it.”
Arnie still said nothing. He couldn’t take his eyes off the length of bamboo. The edge was sharpened. He’d never seen that before.
Smoke finally took his hand away from Arnie’s face and snapped his fingers. He raised his voice to get Arnie’s attention and his eyes back on him and off the bruiser to his left. “Did you hear me, you hillbilly?”
Arnie was too scared to speak. He looked back and forth from Smoke to the huge hand still holding on to his shoulder, as if he needed to be released to answer. Smoke nodded at his partner, and the man let Arnie go. Arnie slid away from both Smoke and the big man but made no sudden moves. He didn’t want to give that mean-looking bastard another reason to put his hands on him. “C’mon, Smoke. It’s not like that. I didn’t steal anything. I just won is all. I got lucky, man. It happens like that sometimes, you know?”
Smoke dropped his head and shook it. He motioned to his companion again. This time the silent man didn’t use his hand to make contact. He drew back and cracked Arnie in the face with the blunt end of the baston. The hit spun Arnie in a complete circle before he eventually collided with a small table. He and the table both slammed into the wall. He slid down into a heap on the carpet, drenched in the open Dr Pepper that had been sitting on the table. Arnie threw up on the carpet and then sat there in a daze, sticky and wet, as he struggled to keep from blacking out. The silent man with the bamboo stick crossed his arms and went back to his place in front of the door.
Smoke gave himself a once-over to make sure none of the soda had splashed on his expensive suit, then started to search the room. He slid open the folding doors of the closet and then closed them. “Don’t treat me like I’m stupid, Arnold.” He opened the bathroom door again and pulled back the shower curtain. “I’m not stupid, and you are not lucky. Finding a wallet with fifty dollars in it is lucky.” He opened and closed all the drawers in the dresser. “Not catching crabs after fucking your mother—that is lucky.” He checked the nightstand. “But what you did? That is not lucky. No one is that lucky. That is called stupid. It is also called stealing. So, like I said already, me and the people you stole that money from want it back.” Smoke looked at the bed and then at Arnie. He lifted a manicured eyebrow and pointed under the bed. Arnie wiped a trickle of blood off his chin, oozing from the freshly split lip, and let his head drop.
Smoke smiled and then motioned to his enforcer. “Move this, Fenn.” Smoke got out of the way and the man Smoke had just called Fenn used one arm to slide the entire queen-sized bed across the floor. It sat diagonally in the center of the room to reveal the tweed suitcase that had been tucked underneath. Smoke smiled wider and his sharklike grin matched the sheen of his sharkskin suit. It was an effect that made him seem otherworldly to Arnie—something other than human—or maybe that was just the weed. More blood poured down his broken fat lip as he watched Smoke pick up the suitcase and set it on the bed. He shook it to hear the contents. “This sounds like progress, Arnold.”
Arnie began to beg. “C’mon, Smoke, please. I won. I didn’t do whatever you think I did. I swear to God, man. This time I really just won.”
Fenn moved toward him, and Arnie held up his hands to cover his face. Smoke snapped his fingers and Fenn stopped. Arnie slowly lowered his arms and opened his eyes. Smoke was sitting on the bed next to the case.
“I believe you, Arnold.” Smoke used his thumbs to work the latches on the case. “I didn’t say you were lying. I didn’t call you a liar. I called you a thief—a stupid thief.” He lifted the lid on the case and his grin evaporated. He saw the bundles of cash inside—tens, twenties, hundreds—all US currency, but he didn’t see all of what he wanted to see. He estimated the amount in the case to be about half of the 1.2 million he was expecting to find. Still, the sight of that much money was hypnotic. Fenn even broke from his blank indifference to glance over at the contents of the case. It was a lot of money, even if it wasn’t all of it. And Smoke did want to see all of it. His recovery wasn’t yet complete. That meant there would be angry people back home. That meant more time in this stupid country. He closed his eyes and let out a long, whistling exhale.