Sweat

Senator Day showed his guest through the door and past Dana and the page. It was obvious the senator’s helpers had been straining to hear the conversation in the inner office chamber. With the guests safely in the confines of the elevator on their way to the first floor, the senator looked at the picture of Chow Ying and called Dana and the page into his office.

“Is the man on the right the same man who dropped the envelope off last week, before our little encounter with the AWARE group?”

“No,” the page answered.

“Are you sure?” the senator asked again.

“Yes, sir. I am sure. The man who dropped the envelope off for you last week was average size. This guy is huge. I definitely would have remembered him.”

“You’d better be right. I have taken all the surprises I can handle for one term.”

The page took the insult to heart. Then he tried to be helpful. “By the way, sir. Rumor has it that the AWARE group is going to keep protesting right through the week. Just so you know.”

“Thanks, Doug. That is just wonderful fucking news.” ***

Detective Wallace flashed his badge to the departing mailman who held the door open for the two officers. Inside, Wallace stopped in the small landing at the front of the building, looked up the stairs, and then back at Nguyen. With a completely straight face Wallace asked, “No elevator? I already went up one flight of stairs today.”

“Sarge, you need an exercise program,” Nguyen answered, sliding by his partner and starting upward.

“I already have one,” Wallace answered, head down as he lifted each leg.

“What exercise program is that?”

“Trying to avoid my wife.”

“How’s it going?”

“It’s tough. She has pretty good aim throwing things around the house, and I’m not as quick as I used to be. She’s angry because I’ve gained two pounds a year, for twenty-some years. She claims she doesn’t remember hearing ‘for fatter, for thinner’ in our wedding vows.”

“Two pounds a year?”

“Like clockwork.”

“Slow and steady, heh?” Nguyen said, with perfect respiration, legs moving in an easy tempo.

“That’s my motto.”

The stairs broke a moment of silence, creaking in pain as Wallace followed in the younger detective’s wake. Nguyen reached the fourth floor and looked back down at Wallace. The twenty-two-year veteran with a growing waistline was grasping the banister in an effort to both pull himself up and prevent himself from falling back.

“The exercise program starts next year, with my New Year’s Resolution,” Wallace managed through a thick cough.

“It’s July.”

“I know. Remember what I said, ‘slow and steady.’ I don’t like rushing things.”

Nguyen knocked on the door with three hard thuds. A few seconds passed before Wallace tried his special if- you-knock-loud-enough-someone-will-answer-even-if-they-are-not-home technique.

“I’m coming,” a voice said, agitated. The Wallace Theory proved correct again. He smiled at Nguyen who shook his head at the immature, albeit effective, approach of his mentor. Wallace pounded once more for good measure.

“I said I was coming, you don’t have to be such an asshole,” the voice said as it approached the foyer.

Robert Plant Everett, bong smoker extraordinaire and son of the self-proclaimed biggest Led Zeppelin fan ever, opened his apartment door and a visible cloud of smoke billowed out. Wallace and Nguyen turned and stared in disbelief at the lifelong student peering out through the haze. Door open, it registered in Robert’s rusted cerebrum that the visitors were pounding on his neighbor’s apartment. “Jake isn’t home,” Robert said, with long stretched syllables, a common speech impediment of a daily toker.

“Do you know where we can reach him?” Wallace asked, taking a step toward the neighbor’s door.

“That depends. What do you want him for?” Robert asked, eyes bouncing slowly from Wallace to Nguyen and back to Wallace. A mix of smells, none of which were appealing, poured from the apartment. A lava lamp cast a slowly flickering shadow that nudged against the doorframe. Nguyen stepped to the other side of Wallace and peeked into the stoner’s paradise. It was impossible to tell whether the twice-baked neighbor kept a bowl burning in his apartment or whether the smell was just “cannabis cling,” smoke impregnated into the neighbor from years of abuse.

Wallace pulled out his badge and shoved it in Robert’s face. The quick flash of the shield was too fast for the veteran stoner, and Robert’s brain tried to process what his eyes had just seen.

Wallace didn’t wait for a reply. “Where is he?” the detective asked.

“Where is who?’ Robert asked.

“Jake Patrick. Apartment 4-A,” Wallace answered.

“He’s not home.”

“We already covered this ground, bright eyes. Where is he?”

“He said he was going to be away for a few days. Said he had something to take care of.”

“Where did he go?”

“Out of town, I guess.”

“When did he leave?” Nguyen asked, perturbed.

“What day is it?”

“Monday.”

“Then he left yesterday,” Robert said, trying to sound straight.

“When will he be back?”

“Wednesday, I think. He gave me his fish bowl and asked me to feed his fish while he was gone.”

“You two friends?”

“Nahhhhh. But Jake seems like an all right dude. For someone who doesn’t really party,” Robert added, once again no longer conscious of his audience’s profession.

Wallace looked at Nguyen. Let it go, just let it go, he thought, hoping Nguyen would read his mind. ***

Vincent DiMarco watched the white van turn left at the end of the road leading to Chang Industries, followed by the rumbling of two, five-ton trucks, shaking the ground, stirring up a cloud of dirt and bugs. DiMarco’s rental car was littered with surveillance mainstays: binoculars, grease-stained fast food bags, an assortment of coffee cups and soft drink cans. He was a man of habits, and in the hours he spent on surveillance, DiMarco drank his caffeine, chewed his gum, and smoked his cigarettes—all with equal passion.

He sweated through three shirts a day, and the smell of perspiration and bad food in the car was growing rancid. Worse still, DiMarco was becoming immune to his own funkiness. He had briefly visited the stage where he could smell himself and he knew he stunk. He was now at the point where he knew he reeked, but smelled nothing. It was all downhill from there. He could step in a pile of fresh dung and it wouldn’t affect him in the least. The population of indigenous flies was enjoying the Wop from Boston like a rotten-flesh buffet.

The small park with a semi-unobstructed view of Chang Industries was one of three famous suicide spots on Saipan. During WWII, when the Japanese knew that the U.S. offensive on the island wasn’t going to end with the honor of victory, the cliffs earned the nickname that has haunted them for half a century.

Facing impending doom, ruthless Japanese soldiers convinced the local population that the Americans would torture, rape, pillage, and burn. Believing that a certain and most unpleasant end was at hand, the island’s population—a mix of Pacific Islanders with a history of Spanish, German, and Japanese colonization—started throwing themselves from the top of what are now called “suicide cliffs.” When the bodies stopped raining and the waves below washed away the crimson evidence, twenty thousand islanders had killed themselves. Those residents who had resisted suicide of their own volition were simply thrown off the cliffs by the Japanese military. By comparison, twenty-four thousand Japanese soldiers and three thousand American G.I.s had died in the weeklong battle for the island.

DiMarco stood and for the hundredth time read the landmark sign identifying the cliffs and their infamy. He threw away his coffee cup in the green basket trashcan that buzzed with two-winged activity and looked over the