He leaned back in his seat and his old fear of flying crawled up out of the dark. He’d been worried they’d spot the difference between the picture on Eddie’s passport and his face, especially in the light of all the security they supposedly had in these days of Homeland Security and their seemingly never ending terrorist alerts, but a guy with half a brain took a quick look at the passport, then asked him to remove his shoes. He’d been sweating a bit through that ordeal, but nothing like this.
He wasn’t afraid, he told himself, but when he turned his palms over, his hands were damp. He brushed the hair from his eyes. It was slick with sweat.
“ Are you all right, sir?” A pretty blonde flight attendant asked.
“ I’ll be okay.” He met her eyes, tried to concentrate on her freckles.
“ There’s nothing to be afraid of, we’re quite safe.”
“ Do I look afraid to you?”
“ A little.” Then, “You have flown before, haven’t you? And survived?” She smiled.
“ Yes, barely, but I lost my eye.” He laughed as he pointed at the eye patch.
“ Seriously?”
“ No, just kidding, but I am a little bit afraid of flying.”
“ Like I said, it’s perfectly safe. I’ve been doing it for years.”
“ I’ll be okay.”
“ If you need anything, just ask.” She started to move down the aisle, stopped, turned back. “Really, any problems at all, just give me a call. That’s what I’m here for.”
“ I can’t believe it. You’re afraid of flying?” Donna thought after the flight attendant had moved away.
“ Where have you been?” he asked, surprised at himself for not missing her earlier.
“ I’ve been here all along, I just thought you needed time to get over everything that happened.”
“ Maybe I did. But I think I’m going to need your help getting through the next ten hours.”
“ I suggest sleep.”
“ Not a chance.”
“ When I was a little girl and couldn’t sleep, my mother would tell me stories, and the way she told them made them so real that they took away all my problems and worries, better than the movies, better than TV. When she finished I would lay in my bed, sometimes happy, sometimes sad, sometimes scared, depending on the story. But happy or afraid, I always forgot about not being able to sleep as soon as she finished with the telling.”
“ That’s nice.”
“ Why don’t I tell you one of my mother’s stories and we’ll see if it works.”
“ Really, Donna, I don’t think there’s any way I’m going to sleep.”
“ Let’s try. Put your seat back, close your eyes and listen to me. We have a word in Maori, Ngaarara, that can mean many things, like insect, reptile or even monster. And we have a sort of legend, or maybe tale is a better word, about a kind of monster that my mother, and her mother before her called Ngaarara, for want of a better name.”
“ This doesn’t sound like it’s going to be a bedtime story,” Jim thought.
“ But it’s the story I’m going to tell you,” Donna thought, “so please listen, because it’s important.”
Then Donna told her story.
Long ago two girls climbed a tarata tree to pick the leaves to scent their oils, because they wanted to smell as pretty as they looked. The tree grew on a hill and when they saw the village in the valley below, the girls felt like birds, at one with the sky. The oldest was seventeen, the youngest, a girl named Mahina, was barely fifteen and she wanted to climb as high as she could, because she wanted to touch the clouds.
Mahina was very happy that day, but her happiness was quickly chased away by the sound of a man below, calling up to them.
“ Which one of you will come and be my bride?”
The girls looked down and were frightened at the sight of him. He was old and withered, with stringy hair and slits that hid his eyes.
“ Not me, sir,” the older girl said. “because I am going to marry my sweetheart in three days time.”
“ Then it will be you.” The man pointed a bony finger at Mahina.
“ Not I,” Mahina answered, “for I have no wish to marry for many years.”
“ I am sorry, but you cannot refuse.”
“ But I do refuse,” Mahina said.
Then, all of a sudden, they were covered in a cloud of blue smoke and when it had cleared away the man was gone, but in his place was a giant green tree gecko. And it was laughing.
The girls shuddered at the laughter, because if you hear the laughter of a green gecko, it means someone close to you will die. The only way to avoid the curse is to catch and burn the reptile before death comes to the village.
Again there was smoke and, quick as a wink, the man was back and the girls knew at once that it was no ordinary old man on the ground below them, it was Ngaarara, the evil Gecko Man.
“ I have come searching for a bride.” He pointed that bony finger again. “And I choose you, Mahina.”
“ But I don’t choose you.” Mahina looked straight into his slitted eyes, trying not to be afraid. “So go away.”
“ You have heard my pet’s laughter. If you refuse, death will meet your family before your feet touch the ground. All will die, your mother, father, brothers and sisters. Even your little niece, who I know you love very much.”
Mahina knew this was true, so with sadness in her eyes and a heavy heart, she nodded her head, climbed down from the tree and Ngaarara, the Gecko Man, took her away.
The older girl ran back to the village and told Mahina’s family and they were overcome with grief, but there was nothing they could do, because the evil Ngaarara was already gone.
However, after some time, Mahina was able to convince Ngaarara that she had accepted her fate and one day she told him that she wanted to take him home to meet her family. The Gecko Man agreed, because he had fallen in love with her and he wanted to make her happy.
So the very next day he took her back to her village. He remained at the outskirts, while Mahina went to her father’s house to make arrangements for the meeting and a feast to follow. After awhile she returned and told Ngaarara that he was to be received in her father’s house and that he would be accepted as a son. This made Ngaarara happy and he walked tall and proud when he entered the village, puffing up like a peacock when he was greeted by Mahina’s father and brothers.
“ Where are the women?” the Gecko Man asked.
“ They are doing what women do while we men eat and drink,” Mahina’s father said and he sent Mahina away.
Ngaarara was delighted. It was the best meal he’d ever had and for the first time in his life he felt like he belonged, like he had a family.
“ Now,” Mahina’s father said when the sun started to go down, “you wait here while we go and bring the women and a special surprise.”
“ Go, go.” Ngaarara was ecstatic, a special surprise for him. “Get it and hurry back and when you return, I’ll tell you my secret.”
But the surprise the men had for Ngaarara was not to be to his liking. Mahina’s father and brothers barred the door and piled firewood under the windows. Then they burned the Gecko Man alive, because everyone knows the only way to really kill a being like Ngaarara is to burn him until he’s nothing more than ash.
After the fire burned itself out, the villagers sang and danced throughout the night. Mahina was back and Ngaarara was dead.
“ That’s the traditional end of the story. Mahina returns to her village and everybody lives happily ever after, but there’s more,” Donna thought.
“ Ngaarara’s secret,” Jim thought.
“ Precisely,” Donna thought. “The Gecko Man’s secret.”
Mahina and all the villagers thought that her husband had the power to turn into a giant gecko whenever he wanted, like she’d thought he’d done in the smoke that day he’d come to take her away. But that afternoon, when she’d come to fetch him from the outskirts of the village, Ngaarara told his young wife his secret and it was this. The giant gecko and the man with the slitted eyes, were one and the same, but not the way she had thought. They were two parts, bound to each other, the same and different, never far apart.
Kill the man and the gecko finds a replacement by anointing another, whose mind is then taken over. Kill the gecko and the man finds a replacement by anointing a small green tree gecko which is transformed into a man-sized giant. This way the evil pairing goes on forever.
Unfortunately Mahina didn’t get a chance to tell her father this before they burned Ngaarara. He was not one, but two. They hadn’t killed him. They just made him angry. Very angry.
“ You see, Jim Monday, I know this to be true, because that young girl stolen by Ngaarara was my grandmother’s grandmother. This story has been handed down on the female side of my family for generations, because we know that someday he is going to come back and seek his revenge.”
“ And you think that thing that killed Roma is the Gecko Man coming after you?”
“ I do.”
“ Your mother told you that story to put you asleep?”
“ Among others.”
“ Was she trying to scare you to sleep?”
“ No, she was trying to make me aware,” Donna thought. “Now lay back and think about what I have told you.”
“ Excuse me sir.” He felt a squeeze on his shoulder and almost screamed.
“ You’ll have to raise your seat for the landing.” It was the stewardess with the freckles. “Did you enjoy the flight?”
“ You’re kidding. I’ve been on edge ever since we left L.A.”
“ I guess I was kidding. I did see that you were pretty anxious, but you made it.”
“ Yeah, I did.” He smiled. “The plane didn’t fall out of the sky, I didn’t flip out. All in all, I guess I’m pretty pleased with myself.” Then he asked, “What’s the local time?”
“ It’s 10:45.” She squeezed his shoulder again. “I hope you enjoy your stay in New Zealand.”
“ Me too.” He started to adjust his watch.
“ Oh, and it’s Wednesday. We lost a day when we crossed the date line.”
He thanked her and she continued down the aisle, checking seatbelts and seatbacks.
“ We lost a day,” he thought. “I hadn’t counted on that.”
“ And I don’t know anything about Whangarei. It seems so hopeless.”
“ I thought you were from there?”
“ No, I’m a city girl, from Auckland. Never been to the North Country, till this.”
“ Why did you go and what’s the last thing you remember?” He asked, trying to keep his mind off of the descending plane.
“ My older brother lives in Whangarei. He and his fiancee just moved up, and they were getting married. We came for the wedding. We arrived Tuesday night and we stayed at the Park Side Motel. I had my own room. I remember going to sleep. I don’t remember waking up.”
“ Your parents must be sick with worry.”
“ I know. I thought about asking you to call them, but that would only complicate things.”
“ It seems the logical place to start looking is the motel. It’s the only clue we have.”
“ You’ll find me. I just know it.”
“ First we have to get through customs,” he thought, and they both began to worry.
The plane bucked and he grabbed on to the armrests with white knuckles.
“ Just a little turbulence,” the stewardess said as she made her way back down the aisle, “nothing to worry about.” But Jim worried all the way to the ground. He was still worrying when he was in line at Immigration and Passport control.
“ I don’t look a bit like Eddie Lambert,” he thought.
“ It feels like your heart is going to beat right out of your chest. If you don’t calm down, you’re going to have a heart attack.”
He tried to control his breathing.
“ And stop sweating. It feels like I’ve just stepped out of the shower.”
“ Next,” a voice called.
Jim looked up. He was at the head of the line. The voice wanted him. He walked ahead, presented his passport. The man opened it, glanced at the photo, turned to a middle page, stamped and returned it.
“ Next,” he said again, through with Monday.
“ He barely looked at the picture,” Monday thought, as another control officer passed with a sniffer dog. The dog passed his nose over Jim’s carry-bag and kept going. “The dog even okayed me.”
“ Let’s go,” Donna thought.
Fifteen minutes later they were driving out of the airport in a red Toyota, rented with Eddie Lambert’s Visa Card. The eye patch was back in Jim’s pocket.
“ Get over!” The thought was a screech going through his brain. “You’re on the wrong side of the street.”
“ Forgot.” He jerked the car to the left side of the road.
It was two hours later and 2:00 in the afternoon when they stopped at a Mobil Station just outside Whangarei for directions to the Park Side Motel and petrol. Jim remembered the last Mobil Station he’d stopped at, just outside of another small town, and he thought of Glenna. He was glad she was going to be okay. Then he looked in the side mirror and watched as the attendant put petrol in the car. The last time a gas jockey put gas in his car in California was sometime back in 1975.
Five minutes later he shut off the engine, grabbed his bag, locked the car and entered the lobby of the Park Side Motel.
“ Do you have a room for a few days?” he asked the man behind the desk.
“ Sure do, we’re mostly empty. It’s early.” The man had a nervous tick in his left eye and he smelled like fresh earth. “Excuse the clothes.” He handed Jim a registration card, “but I’m the gardener too.”
“ I’m looking for someone who checked in last Tuesday.” Jim noticed the dirty corner on the card as he filled it out. He used Eddie Lambert’s name.
“ And who would that be?” the man asked as Jim watched him pick at the dirt under his nails with a clean card.
“ I’m looking for some friends that came up for a wedding.”
“ The Tuhiwais?” The man set the folded card aside, tick going crazy.
“ Yeah. I was supposed to meet them here four days ago, but I missed my flight,” Jim lied. “I called their home in Auckland and there was no answer. I was wondering if they’re still in town?”
“ You don’t know?”
“ What?” Jim thought he knew, but he wanted the man to tell him.
“ Their daughter Donna went missing the night they checked in. At first they thought she might have been kidnapped, but the parents don’t have much money. Now they think she ran off.”
“ Ran off?”
“ Who knows why kids do what they do today. If you want to know anything more, you’ll have to ask the police.”
“ I’ll do that.” Jim thanked the man, whose eye was batting up a storm now.
“ Here’s your key. You have her room.” The man was trying to force his eye to stay closed and not having much success.
“ Her room?”
“ The same room Donna Tuhiwai was in last week.”
“ Coincidence, or did you do that on purpose?”
“ Just coincidence,” the man said, struggling to keep his eye slammed shut. Jim didn’t believe him.
He flopped on the bed as soon as he entered the room, stared at the ceiling and tried to think. Donna went missing from this room less than a week ago. She was being held in a windowless room somewhere, strapped to a hospital bed. There had to be more, something he was missing.
“ You need rest,” Donna thought.
“ I’ll be fine,” he thought back.
“ Nonsense, take a couple hours. You’re dead tired.”
“ Maybe you’re right. But just a few minutes.” He closed his eyes and in seconds was asleep.
He woke with a steady knocking on the door.
“ Don’t answer it,” Donna warned.
“ You’re being paranoid.” He sat up and stretched.
“ I’m not.”
“ Who is it?” Jim called out, getting out of bed.
“ Linen service,” a male voice on the other side of the door answered.
“ See, you were worried about nothing.” He turned the knob.
The door burst open and Jim had a quick look at a small man with rugged features. He staggered back from the door, but he wasn’t quick enough. A fist shot into his stomach, doubling him over, then something came down on his head and the lights went out.
He woke slouched in a chair as cold water was splashed onto his face. He sputtered and spit to keep from gagging. He tried to bring a hand to his face to wipe away the water, but his hands and arms weren’t obeying his commands.
“ How do you feel?”
Jim turned his head to the direction of the voice and found the small man seated in a chair by the door.
“ You can stop trying to move your arms, your hands are handcuffed behind your back.”
“ Why? Are you the police?”
The man laughed.
“ How’d you get the cuffs over the cast?” Jim asked, remembering how he showed the cast to Washington to get him to leave the cuffs off.
“ With difficulty.”
“ Why are you doing this? I’m not a criminal.”
“ Hey, that’s enough. I’m the one that’s supposed to be asking the questions here.”
“ Okay, ask.”
“ You came around asking questions about the missing girl.”
“ I did not,” Jim said, playing for time.
“ Phil, the desk clerk, called and said you were asking.”
“ I was not.”
The short man got up from his chair, walked to the bureau, picked up a tourist magazine, rolled it, and smacked Jim in the head.
“ I need better answers.”
The slap stung, but Jim had faced a lot worse. There was nothing this little man could do that could make him say something he didn’t want to.
“ I’m not a brave man,” Jim said. “If I knew what you wanted me to say, I’d say it.”
“ Why were you asking about the girl?”
“ When the guy at the front desk handed me the key, he said I was in the room the girl went missing from. He made me curious, so I asked. I didn’t know I was committing a crime.” He hoped the man would buy his story.
“ You didn’t come here looking to meet someone?”
“ Yes I did,” Jim lied. “My fiancee, she should be here around 8:00.” He looked out the window. It was dark out, he’d slept longer than he’d planned.
“ If what you say is true, why would Phil call and say different?”
“ Why don’t you go get him and ask? I’m not going anywhere.” Jim was beginning to enjoy confusing him.
The man grabbed the phone, pushed buttons. After a few seconds he began speaking,
“ Tell Manfred we have a problem. I think Phil was a little anxious to earn some extra money.” A few seconds silence. “No, Phil told this American that he had the same room as the missing girl, so the guy asks a few curious questions, and Phil reacts like he’s from Interpol.” More silence. “Okay,” the man said and hung up.
“ The boss will be here in ten minutes, then we’ll figure out what to do with you.”
“ Are you going to arrest me?” Jim tried to sound afraid. “Because if you are, I have something to say to you.”
“ What’s that?”
“ If this was Chicago, half the money in my wallet would be gone, these cuffs would come off and your wife would have a new dress tomorrow.”
“ Are you trying to bribe a police officer?” The man was smiling, apparently amused at being mistaken for a policeman.
“ No, sir,” Jim said. “I was just saying what would happen if we were in Chicago.”
“ How much do you have in that wallet?” the man asked.
“ Over a thousand American dollars.”
“ Cash?”
“ You can buy your wife a nice dress with half of that and have change left over.”
“ What keeps the cops in Chicago from taking it all?”
“ Leave a man broke and he might go crying to your boss. Leave him half his money and he says, thank you very much, and forgets it ever happened.”
“ And that’s what you would do? Forget this ever happened?”
“ I just want this over before my fiancee gets here. Can’t we make a deal? Call off your boss, take the money, and everybody goes away happy.” Jim tried to sound like he was pleading. However, he knew the man wasn’t going to let him go. When his boss arrived, they would question the desk clerk and more than likely it would be big trouble for Jim Monday.
“ Let me see the money.” The little man was greedy.
“ All right.” Even though his hands were cuffed, Jim had little trouble pulling Eddie’s leather wallet out of his hip pocket. The little man came close, reached behind Jim to take it, but before his fingers touched the leather, Jim kneed him in the face. The little man with the rugged features was dead before he hit the floor.
Jim scrambled out of the chair, sat next to the body on the floor. Any minute he expected company and he didn’t want to greet them with his hands behind his back. He faced away from the body and tried to maneuver his hands into the dead man’s jacket pocket as the glare of headlights streamed in through the front window, playing across the wall, followed by the sound of a car pulling into a parking place out front.
He jammed his hands deep into the pocket only to find it empty. He looked up at the front door and wondered if it was locked. The chain wasn’t drawn and he couldn’t tell if the lock was engaged or not. If it was locked, would the dead man’s boss break it in? No, of course not. He’d get a key from Phil. He worked his hand into the other pocket as he heard the engine shut off.
No key there either. He only had seconds left. He scooted toward the man’s midsection, fishing in the left front pocket of the man’s jeans as he heard the car door open. He wondered if the man outside had a gun. The dead man didn’t, at least he hadn’t seen one. Maybe he should have looked. He heard the car door close.
No key in the pocket. He quickly checked under the man’s leather jacket for a shoulder holster and found none. One front pocket left. Last hope. He had to slide up onto the body to get at it. He straddled the dead man’s waist and with his hands behind himself, he eased his right hand into the man’s pocket. There was a knock on the door.
Loose change and no key.
The knocking resumed, louder.
“ Hey, Tony, it’s us.” The boss man wasn’t alone. There were at least two of them, three, counting Phil, the desk clerk, and he was trapped.
“ See if there’s a pocket on the inside of the jacket,” Donna thought.
Jim spun around, still straddling the dead man, so that he was facing the feet. He cringed when it sounded like he pushed air out of the corpse. The body still felt alive. He hurriedly ran his hand inside the jacket and breathed a sigh of relief when he found a pocket there.
“ Get Phil and get a key to this room,” a squeaky voice whined from the other side of the door.
Not much time left. Bingo, the key was there. He fumbled it out of the pocket, fumbled it into the keyhole and felt a sharp wave of pleasure as the handcuffs unlocked.
He looked around the room for a weapon and realized that even without the handcuffs he wouldn’t be a match for three men. He was still trapped.
“ The window, there’s a park out back.” Once again it was Donna to the rescue.
He hurried around the bed and opened the window.
“ Hurry up,” he heard from outside the front door.
The wallet. He dropped the wallet when he kicked the man in the head. He had to get it. And his bag. He had to have it. The passport was in it. Without them he’d have no money, no credit, no ID, and no place to go.
“ It’s about time,” he heard from out front. He didn’t have time to go back for the wallet or bag.
He pushed the screen off, stepped out the window and into the night as he heard a key being inserted into the front door. He ran across the park toward a group of bushes about fifty yards from the motel and he slid into them like he was sliding into home, trying to beat out a throw from second base.