WAR (Something Even an Escape Artist Can't Escape)

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WAR

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Koala. That is what Kerry Koalayama is. A koala. He has thought about this a great deal recently, lying on the sun lounger with the eucalyptus Mai Tai sweating a ring onto the little table beside him while the warm Maui air moved through his fur in a way that was, objectively, extremely pleasant. He is a koala. This is a fact. It is perhaps the most important fact about him, and he has been sitting with it for several weeks now in the way that a koala sits with important facts, which is slowly and with great physical stillness and the occasional repositioning of a forepaw toward the Cheetos. The Cheetos are gone now. This is a separate fact, and a recent one, and Kerry Koalayama has feelings about it that he has chosen not to examine too closely because there are larger things requiring his attention. Scott Hunter was eliminated. Kerry Koalayama knows this somehow. He knows this the way he knows things, which is completely and without nuance and with the full weight of his small but surprisingly opinionated body behind it. Scott Hunter was eliminated and was sent home, and this information arrived in Kerry Koalayama’s awareness sometime between the third eucalyptus Mai Tai and the fourth, at which point he set down his drink and looked out at the Pacific Ocean for a long time. The ocean did not have anything useful to say about this. Kerry Koalayama made a sound. It was not a happy sound. The female koalas of the Maui Koala Wellness Collective, several of whom had become quite fond of Kerry Koalayama over the preceding weeks for reasons that Dr. Nathaniel Okafor had documented with increasing professional discomfort, looked over with concern. Kerry Koalayama did not acknowledge them. He was thinking. He was thinking about Scott Hunter, who had carried him to every single match in a little jacket, who had been very upset when Tony Gamble dropkicked him into a stack of equipment, who had flung bacon strips in his honor during a period that Kerry Koalayama did not fully understand but had appreciated on a cellular level. He was thinking about the armband and the farmhouse and the man on the porch who said five words that covered everything. He was thinking about all of it with the full processing power available to a koala brain, which is, in absolute terms, not very much, but which Kerry Koalayama has always used with remarkable marsupial efficiency. He reached out. He picked up the eucalyptus Mai Tai. He set it back down. This was not a Mai Tai moment. This was a WAR moment. The claw on Kerry Koalayama’s right forepaw, which Dr. Okafor had noted in his most recent report as being in excellent condition following its recovery from the Ultraviolence incident, needed to be razor sharp. Kerry Koalayama looked at it. He thought about what it would need to do. He thought about Tony Gamble, who was gone from the competition too, but not from the accounting. He thought about Rob Williams, who had stomped on Kerry Kuroyama’s hands on top of a mountain. He thought about Daytona Diamonds, who had hit Kerry Kuroyama with a steel chair in front of an official and champagne-toasted the retention of a title that did not belong to him. Kerry Koalayama made another sound. It was also not a happy sound. He stood up in the sun lounger with the purposefulness that the resort’s wildlife liaison had previously described as extremely bold for a koala, and began making arrangements. There was a flight to catch. Claws to sharpen. There was a Scott Hunter to find. There was WAR.

"The following is the final entry in a series of medical progress reports filed by Dr. Nathaniel Okafor, DVM, Maui Animal Wellness Center, regarding patient KOALAYAMA, KERRY, male, age 4, koala (Phascolarctos cinereus): Patient has checked out. Dr. N. Okafor, DVM Maui Animal Wellness Center P.S. Thank God."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ BELLWOOD LANE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The gravel drive sounded the same. That was the first thing Scott noticed, pulling in off the main road with the windows down. The crunch of the tires. The same sound as when he was seventeen and borrowing Frank’s truck without asking and coming back before Frank noticed, which Frank always noticed and never said anything about. The same sound as the morning he’d left for the Survivor competition, the gravel disappearing in the rearview mirror in the grey pre-dawn light. He sat in the truck for a moment after he parked. The house was quiet. The live oaks stood there holding Spanish moss and not having opinions about anything, same as always. The front-left corner of the porch still sagged. The fence along the drive was the one he’d replaced last fall, white and straight and solid. He looked at it for a second. He got out of the truck. Emma’s note was on the kitchen table, which was where he’d have put it too. It was written on the back of an envelope in Emma’s handwriting, which had always been neater than his. Scotty, Proud of you. Not because of the result. Because of how you did it. Food in the fridge. Call me when you’re ready. - Em He read it twice. He left it on the table and went to find something to eat.

Henry Keyes called that evening, while Scott was sitting on the porch with a glass of water and the quiet of a southern Florida night settling in around the property. He picked up on the second ring. “Hey,” Scott said. “Hey.” The word landed slightly wrong, and Keyes knew it the moment it left his mouth. It wasn’t a natural greeting for him, and the pause that followed it was longer than it needed to be. It was the specific silence of a man who had picked up the phone knowing what he wanted to say and discovered at the last second that he didn’t know how to start. “How’re you doing?” “I’m okay.” Scott looked out at the fence line. “I’m home.” “Good,” Keyes said. “That’s good.” A moment passed between them that didn’t need to be filled. “You’re still in it,” Scott said. “Yeah.” “Good.” He meant it. “You’re gonna win the whole thing.” Keyes was quiet for a second. “That’s the plan.” “I know it is,” Scott said. “I’ve always known it was.” Another pause, slightly different in texture than the first. Neither of them said anything about what that meant, because neither of them needed to. The plan had always been to take each other to the finals. One of them was still in position to do that. The other one was sitting on a porch in Homestead, Florida, and that was just how it had gone. “I have a match with Rezin this week,” Scott said. “Yeah. I saw.” “I’ve been doing some reading on him.” Keyes said nothing for a moment. Then he exhaled. It was a long exhale. It felt like it carried significant weight and history behind it, lasted a good twelve seconds, and communicated something that Scott couldn’t fully decode but understood was not nothing. “And?” Keyes said finally. Scott considered this for a moment. “He hid in a wooden owl to get into an arena,” he said. “He has a to-do list. One of the items is blowing up the Federal Reserve Building.” Keyes was quiet for exactly the right amount of time. “Are you taking that literally?” “I think I have to,” Scott said. “I don’t know what the other option is.” Something moved through the line from Keyes’ end that might have been a laugh. Brief and genuine, and then gone. “He tried to get at Kerry,” Scott said, and his tone shifted when he said it, not dramatic, just different, the specific register Scott’s voice took when something sat heavy with him. “When he was Reverend Black. I never trusted him. I still don’t.” “Use that,” Keyes said. “I intend to.” Another pause. The night was fully in now, the orange grove dark beyond the fence, the well pump silent. “Win your match,” Keyes said. “I’ll keep surviving. We’ll figure out the rest after.” “Yeah,” Scott said. “That’s right.” They said goodbye and hung up. Scott sat with the phone in his hand for a moment, looking out at the fence and the darkness beyond it. The night had nothing to say about any of this. He went inside and went to bed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ THE MALTESE GOAT BASTARD ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was a dark and stormy night. The kind of night that was not actually a dark and stormy night, and was actually a Tuesday afternoon in southern Florida, which meant it was sunny and approximately ninety-one degrees, and a mockingbird was doing something complicated in one of the live oaks outside. Why a mockingbird? Mockingbirds were always somewhere around in old detective movies. That’s just how it works. But this was the kind of work that happened in the dark, in the rain, in the corner of the human soul where the easy answers went to die and the hard ones waited with their hats pulled low, their collars turned up, and their hands wrapped around a cup of coffee that had gone cold an hour ago but nobody was gonna say anything about it. Also, everything was in black and white. Scott sat at the kitchen table with a legal pad, a cup of coffee, and a manila folder he had assembled from printed pages and notes, because this kind of work required a manila folder, and he had found one in Emma’s desk drawer and felt this was close enough. He clicked his pen. The click echoed in the silence like a gunshot in an empty church. The case. The subject’s name was Rezin. Scott recognized right away that spelling his name as Rezin with a “Z” instead of Resin with an “S” indicated that he meant business. Scott wrote this down and looked at it. One name. Except it wasn’t one name, was it? He turned to the alias page. Erik Black. Reverend Erik Black. Reginald Smokington III. Paddington Snicklefritz. Scott underlined this one and put a star next to it, then wrote: Paddington… bear? Bear connection? Bears are dangerous. Also possibly British, or worse yet, from Indiana. He considered this for a moment and added: look into bear angle. He moved on. The Indianapolis Cryptid. There’s that Indiana possibility again. Goat Flaps Hannigan. The implications for this one needed no further explanation. Six names. Scott tapped his pen against the legal pad. A man with six names was a man with six faces, and a man with six faces was a man who had decided a long time ago that the truth was something that happened to other people. He wrote: which face is the real one? Probably Goat Flaps. He considered this and added: investigate. He opened the folder to the first page. The Escape Artist. That was what they called him on the street. Scott wrote this down and underlined it twice. Built his whole identity around not being caught, not being held, not being finished. Twenty years on the road taking hits and getting back up. Twenty years of being a stepping stone for men who figured he wouldn’t last. He had lasted. Scott tapped his pen again. The thing about a man who called himself the Escape Artist was that he was telling you exactly what he was gonna do, right out in the open, which was either the boldest move Scott had ever seen or the dumbest, and he was starting to think it was both. He wrote: cockroach energy… is he part cockroach? Look into this. Buy Raid if confirmed. Like Bob Seger, he turned the page. The ambulance. Scott read the first sentence, stopped, went back, read it again. A French doctor. Purple ambulance. Marijuana. He paused on this combination for a moment, decided it tracked, and kept reading. The doctor had locked the subject inside the vehicle and filled it with smoke, which had apparently reversed the born-again situation and brought Rezin back out. The subject’s response had been to hotwire the ambulance, drive it off a parking structure into Biscayne Bay, swim out of the wreckage, melt a crucifix on the pavement, and disappear into shrubbery. Scott recognized this clearly as the plot of his favorite episode of his favorite childhood cartoon, the Berenstain Bears, the one where Papa Bear went on the lam. Scott wrote: Dr. Reform… French. Suspicious. The French are not to be trusted. He wrote: Biscayne Bay… an entire bay full of biscuits? Check marina records? He stared at this for a moment. He wrote: the bay knows something. He crossed all three out. He wrote: crucifix melted. Reverend Black… religious connection. Or vampire. Possibly both. A religious vampire. Investigate. I’m hungry for garlic bread. The wooden owl. Scott read this section with the focused attention of a man who committed to accepting every fact in front of him regardless of where those facts decided to go. Rezin had hidden inside a large wooden owl statue, been wheeled into Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, dropped out of the owl’s underside onto the arena floor, described the plan as having worked, and then immediately walked face-first into Big Ian Salt’s chest. He had subsequently Shoryuken’d Salt in the face, announced in advance using Street Fighter inputs, which knocked the big man off his feet and produced cartoon birds. He had then been chased by the Enemigos, who were a popular Latin boy band from Puerto Rico in the 80s. Scott wrote: wooden owl… accomplice? Detain for questioning. He wrote: Christopher Nolan… genius. Call him. He wrote: birds… witnesses. Also detain. He wrote: Enemigos… Latin boy band. He turned to the to-do list. A good investigator read everything once straight through without flinching, without blinking, without letting the facts know they were getting to him. He read it once, straight through. Then he read it again. KILL COPS. KILL MORE COPS. BLOW UP FEDERAL RESERVE BUILDING. Scott set the papers down very carefully, the way a man set down a live grenade in a library. He picked up his coffee. He put it back down. The mockingbird outside continued its business in the live oak, indifferent to the gravity of what was happening at the kitchen table. He wrote: KILL COPS… probably means something else. Will investigate. He wrote: Jeremy Allen White… victim? Check Bears schedule. He wrote, in large letters, underlined three times, with two stars and a question mark the size of his thumb: FEDERAL RESERVE… CALL SOMEONE??? He sat with this for a moment that lasted approximately the length of a man’s entire worldview shifting two inches to the left and deciding it preferred it there. He turned to the last section of the folder. Reverend Erik Black. The born-again persona. What he had done when he was operating under that name. What he had tried to do to Kerry Kuroyama. Every man who did this kind of work had a code. You kept your distance. You stayed objective. You did not let the facts follow you home, because once the facts followed you home, they sat in your kitchen and drank your coffee, and you ended up talking to them at two in the morning, and that was no way for a man to live. Scott read this section slowly. He let the facts follow him home. His jaw set the way it set in the corner between rounds. He had never trusted Reverend Black.  He closed the folder. He set down the pen. He sat with it. Then he picked it up and wrote one final thing at the bottom of the page, below all the other notes and stars and underlines and crossed-out marina inquiries and religious vampire theories and detained owl accomplices and bear angles requiring further investigation. He went after Kerry. He underlined it once. Once was enough. A sound came from the direction of the front door. The door opened. Kerry Koalayama stood in the doorway. He was wearing a trench coat, small, sized for a koala, collar turned up against a wind that didn’t exist inside a farmhouse in southern Florida but which Kerry Koalayama had decided was there anyway, because some things were about atmosphere. His eyes were the eyes of an animal who had recently sharpened something and intended to use it. He crossed the kitchen, climbed onto the chair across from Scott, and sat down. Scott slid the folder across the table. Kerry Koalayama put one small paw on it and looked at Scott with an expression that communicated, without the use of language, that whoever had gone after Scott Hunter was gonna pay for it, and that whoever had gone after Kerry Kuroyama was gonna answer for it, and that the accounting was open and the claw was sharp and the Escape Artist was gonna find out that some things you could not escape from. Scott nodded once. “Good,” he said. “You’re here.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ PLAINVIEW ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Clay’s truck was in the drive by the house when Scott came back from his morning run. No call ahead. No text. Just the truck sitting there. Scott stood at the end of the drive, hands on his knees, catching his breath. Then he straightened up and went inside. Clay was at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee Scott had not made. He had found it, made it himself, and been here long enough to do that. Scott didn’t ask how long. He poured himself a cup and sat down across from him. Kerry Koalayama was on the couch. The Maltese Falcon was on the television. Kerry Koalayama was watching it with the focused attention of a professional. Neither Scott nor Clay acknowledged this. “How you holdin’ up,” Clay said. It wasn’t quite a question. Two friends, two different ways of askin’. “I’m okay,” Scott said. Clay looked at him directly, without particular expression. He drank his coffee. Scott drank his. Outside, the mockingbird was at it again in the live oak. “Kerry’s title shot,” Scott said. “Yeah.” “I watched it after. On my phone, on the bus back from Chicago.” Scott looked at his coffee. “I saw the chair.” “I was right there,” Clay said. “Couldn’t get to him in time. Fred got his ass between us, and by the time I put him on the ground it was already done.” No drama, no self-pity. Just the facts of it, plainly stated, the weight sitting underneath the plainness where Clay kept everything that mattered. Scott nodded. Watching it after was different from watching it live. Didn’t make it hurt less. “He deserved that title,” Scott said. “He did. And he’ll get it. That belt ain’t goin’ anywhere.” Not performed. Clay Byrd didn’t perform certainty. He had it, coming from a man who decided how things were gonna go and was prepared to personally ensure it. On the couch, Kerry Koalayama leaned forward slightly as something happened on the screen. “You’ve got Rezin this week,” Clay said. “Yeah.” “What do you know about him?” Scott thought about the legal pad. The vampire theory. The detained owl. The bay that knew something. The Berenstain Bears and how they wore clothes but no shoes. He shook the thoughts away. “Enough,” he said finally. Clay looked at him for a moment, decided this was probably true, and moved on. “Then go in there and take him apart. Nice and clean, no bullshit. You win this match, you keep on movin’. That’s how this works.” “I know how it works.” “I know you do.” Clay set down his coffee. “Scott. We all took hits. Kerry took a hit. You took a hit. Hell, I been takin’ hits since before you knew what a hit was. That ain’t the part that matters. What matters is what you do after.” Scott looked at him. “Vae Victis. You know what that means.” “Woe to the conquered,” Scott said. “That’s what they say about us. Let the sons of bitches say it.” It sat there for a moment. The right things didn’t need anything added to them. On the couch, Kerry Koalayama made a small sound at the television. Thoughtful. An animal processing new professional information. Scott stood up. He rinsed his coffee cup at the sink and stood there a moment looking out at the fence line, the orange grove dark beyond it, Clay’s truck in the gravel drive next to his. “You driving to Kansas City?” Scott said. “We’re drivin’ to Kansas City,” Clay said. Scott nodded once. He went to pack his bag.