Titanoboa (2 page)

2

Mark Whittaker woke with a start. His shirt clung to him, and droplets of sweat rolled down his neck.

He
saw the door of his home opened onto the sandy beach of Kalou Island. He tasted the ocean breeze that blew in, salty with a not entirely unpleasant scent of rotting seaweed hanging in it. He peeled off his shirt and hit the shower.

Kalou
Island was one of the largest islands in the Republic of Fiji. The year round warmth was to die for. Other than monsoon season, which only lasted a short time. Even in the colder months, the temperatures only dropped to the mid-70s.

After his shower, he dressed and ate a meal of Captain Crunch with almond milk. Fiji was extraordinarily diverse, but they primarily ate Indian cuisine. The spice always hurt Mark’s stomach, so he preferred his comfort food. Mostly things he ate a
s a child.

He finished his bowl of cereal and stepped out into the sunlight. A few families were already out on the beach
, and he watched them a moment before putting on his sunglasses and heading to his car. The car was nothing fancy. Few of the year-round natives owned anything fancy and cared almost nothing for luxury items. When Mark first moved there, it shocked him to learn that if no one cared about what one drove, one tended to look for practicality rather than flash. He realized just how much other people’s opinions influenced his decisions back in the States.

Mark lived
in Kalou’s one major city, Vusa. The population in the off-season hovered around two thousand and swelled to double that with the tourists during the summer months. The city’s intersecting streets provided clear addresses so everyone could find whatever they were looking for quickly. The city was much cleaner than any city Mark had ever been to, partly because the people valued the beauty of their island. And partly because the punishment for littering was a day in jail.

As Mark arrived downtown, building
s switched from a light island blue to reds and yellows as he went farther into the city. A purposeful decision by the city’s selectmen, the equivalent of a city council, to make sure tourists always felt uplifted and happy while there.

Mark’s three-story office building
was painted a light blue with depictions of crabs and seashells on the side. The office space rented at one hundred Fijian dollars per month, the equivalent of about fifty U.S. dollars, and came fully furnished with a part-time secretary shared by everyone on his floor.

I
sland design decorated the interior, with a massive poster of a champion surfer riding a wave on the wall when he walked through the front doors. The carpet was gray and clean. The first floor housed a call center staffed entirely by native islanders. Though Kalou’s official language was Fijian, everybody spoke English, one of three official languages of the country as a whole. The native islanders began learning English when they were five, and by the time they graduated middle school, they were as fluent as any American or Brit. Probably more so, from what Mark had seen the last few times he watched American or British television.

He took the stairs up to the second floor
’s executive suites and walked through the double glass doors of suite 200. An attractive young woman named Zahina sat behind the desk, flipping through something on her computer.

“
Any messages?” Mark said.

T
hey played that game occasionally. Mark was the island’s only private investigator. A private investigator on an island where things didn’t really happen was not exactly an in-demand job. But Kalou boasted exactly three policemen: a chief, a deputy chief, and a uniformed patrol officer. The three of them, though incredibly warm, friendly men, were about the laziest police officers Mark had ever known. Unless a crime committed on the island affected a tourist, the police couldn’t really be bothered. Unless of course someone paid a bribe.

The bribes were usually quite high, typically more than Mark’s fees, and so a dozen times a year, sometimes less, sometimes more, someone hire
d Mark for something they needed done. Like investigating who had vandalized their property or stolen their television. He also retained a contract with the chief and was occasionally called out to scenes of car accidents or the more serious crimes and paid by the hour for his services. As former LAPD, he was the only one on the island that had actually gone through a police academy.

Even with all that, he received usually less than four new client calls a month.

“Yes,” Zahina said, “the president called. They want to give you your medal for heroism in the face of danger.”

“Excellent, I’ll take it in my office. Actually, no
… make him wait.”

“Your wish is my command.”

As he opened his private office’s door, he noticed something on Zahina’s desk. A clear bowl with a spider inside. The spider was large, probably about the size of the palm of his hand, and sat perfectly still.

“
Ew, what’dya have that for?” he asked.

“Just a reminder.”

“Of what?”

“Just nature. Our place in it. My dad always kept spiders around and
told us stories about how they used to be worshipped. You know, nature’s greater than us, and all. He said it kept people humble.”

“Nature’s greater than us? I don’t see any spider cities.”

“Not like that, silly. But, you know, we might not be the dominant animals forever.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Let me know when dolphins make rocket ships, will
ya?”

She grinned
. “Oh, hey, you did actually have a call. It was a potential client.”

“Yeah? Who?”

“Some lady. She’s coming in at two to meet with you. It was weird; she wouldn’t give me her name. She said she would only talk to you.”

Mark stepped into his office
, decorated exactly as it had been the day he moved in. A couple plants, a poster of a fire dance or something on the beach, and a desk and chair. He’d chosen this office because right behind his desk, a massive window looked down onto Kamal Street, the main street running through the island. From here, he had a view of all the major shops, the tourists, the bars and restaurants, and just about everything else. Farther out, past downtown and on the outskirts of the city, he could see the green outline of the jungles.

He sat at his desk and turned on his computer.
The old PC took nearly five minutes to boot up. Leaning back in the chair, he put his feet up on the desk and stared out the window. Hard to believe that just four years ago he was in a patrol car cruising Watts, chasing down gangbangers and dope dealers. He charged them with something, got them into a cell, and the next day they were out. The jails were so crowded, if the police didn't deem someone an immediate threat, they had to cut them loose.

Once the computer was running, he opened his email.
Exactly one. A message from Amazon recommending different types of firearm holsters based on his past purchases. He perused a few of them, decided his old holster was fine, and picked up a file in a basket on his desk.

One
of his open cases was a woman, a summer native only on the island from April until August, who thought her husband was cheating on her with a cocktail waitress at one of the bars. Mark had followed him around for a week and didn’t see him do anything but lie on the beach, play tennis, and go to the gym. He thought the woman was nuts until he realized the husband was going to the gym at odd hours. Mark followed him into the gym.

The husband
strolled right through the gym and the side door. Mark trailed him there, too. The man rounded a corner, walked straight to a little hotel on the beach, and kissed a beautiful woman in front of the building before going inside.

Mark hadn’t told the wife yet, and he was
n’t particularly looking forward to that conversation. Those wealthy enough to summer in the islands were a different breed he wasn’t quite used to. He saw some of them in Hollywood and the more upscale areas in L.A., but for the most part, he didn’t understand how differently the super-rich lived from those that weren’t. The fact was, the woman was probably cheating on him as well and looking for extra ammunition in the looming divorce.

Mark flipped through the file, organized his photos, and drafted his official report. He read it twice then printed it out and placed it in the file. He looked to the clock on his desktop. An hour had passed
, and it was eleven now.

P
recisely sixteen places to eat were in the city, and he was on a sixteen-day rotation through them all. Today was a place near the beach that specialized in seafood. That morning’s catch was their menu, written on a chalkboard in blue and green chalk. Mark strolled there, enjoying the heat and the summer breeze, and sat on the veranda.

Tourists were the lifeblood of this island and given special treatment at every turn. But they weren’t a bad crowd, not like some he had seen. For the most part, they shopped, they ate, they went to dinner parties and the one nightclub in the city to dance, and that was it. The beaches were like background scenery or a painting. Something for them to look at but not really enjoy. Few tourists, with the exception
of those with children, even went down to the beach except to lie on a chair and get sun. They mostly left the water to the locals.

Mark ordered a beer and scallops. The
fat, round scallops, the edges wrinkled, arrived with a spicy curry sauce. The scallops still tasted of ocean salt, fried up a little with butter and lemon then served.

He ate all of them then licked his fingers, a habit his wife used to tell him he had to break.
At restaurants, she scolded him for doing it and made him feel like a child. He wondered if she did that to her current husband, too.

He checked the clock on his phone then ordered a batch of scallops and a chocolate milk to go.
He left a generous tip, which over here wasn’t much more than a couple of dollars, and left the restaurant.

T
he one school in the city, about two blocks outside of downtown, catered to children from kindergarten through middle school. By the time they reached high school, either they had picked out their professions and stopped their education, or they moved to a bigger island to complete it. The school wasn’t much more than a large house connected to two other large houses, beautifully sculpted, with trimmed bushes, darkly tiled roofs, and even a corridor with no roof so the children could enjoy the direct sunlight during the day.

Mark
sauntered inside the school. The kids were just getting ready for lunch. He went to the cafeteria, and the familiar face he saw every day was there.

“How are you, friend
?” Mariah said.

“Good
.” He handed her the bag with the scallops and milk. “How’s everything here?”

“Living the dream
.” She grinned, not taking her eyes off the food she was preparing. “Hey, you going to that beach party tonight?”

“Which one is that?”

“The one the selectmen are putting on. Some big shot is here from an oil company and they’re throwing him a party. Open bars and all the oysters you can eat.”

“Wasn’t planning on it, but maybe I’ll stop by.”

She stopped what she was doing and looked at him. “You need to get out of your house sometimes, Mark. It’s good to be around other people.”

“I’m arou
nd other people all the time. I’m here with you, I have a meeting with a client at two, then I’ll joke around with my secretary for a while, and then I’ll go home. That’s plenty.”

She shook her head and went back to work. “Suit yourself. But we got some cute girls on this island that have asked about you.”

“Tell them I’m spoken for. Whenever you put in for that divorce, I’m ready.”

She blushed lightly
and chuckled. Though he was kidding—she was twice his age, for one thing—she never let a compliment go unnoticed.

“Have a good one, Mariah.”