IQ(25)

“Kurt? I’m Fluke.” It was the kid with the HUNGRY sign, Kurt wondering why anybody would choose Fluke as a code name.

It was hard to tell what he looked like underneath the dirt and the wig. You’d have a tough time picking him out of a lineup, which was no doubt the point. Even so, you knew right away something was off about him. It was the eyes—twinkling and vicious. They reminded Kurt of that serial killer who dressed up like a clown to entertain the kiddies.

“You mind telling me why we had to meet out here?” Kurt said.

“Right, right,” Fluke said, frowning. “We should have done a Deep Throat. You know, met in an underground parking garage at midnight and be the only two people down there.” He snapped his fingers. “Or the art museum! Yeah, sit in front of the Mona Lisa and pretend like we don’t know each other!” Kurt didn’t crack a smile. “No, seriously,” Fluke said, “I can see the whole deal from here.” He wiped a hand across the length of the pier. “Who’s coming, who’s going, who’s walking in a loop, who’s standing at the rail doing nothing. Basically it’s a tradecraft thing.”

Kurt was self-conscious talking to someone who looked like a bum. He didn’t talk to bums, hippies, or college types. He was afraid someone might think they were friends or mistake him for one of those *s that marched around with signs when a black guy got shot.

“Hope you don’t mind but I need to search you,” Fluke said. They stepped behind his F-150 with a camper on the back. “Wow, you’re like solid muscle,” he said. “It’s like patting down a tree. Say, could you turn your phone off? I’d like to watch you do it.”


They sat in the truck with the stereo on. A bunch of dickheads screaming and banging on guitars.

“You’re really DStar’s guy?” Kurt said, turning down the volume.

“Yup, I’m him,” Fluke said, turning it back up. “Whose guy are you?”

“Funny. How come you picked Fluke?”

“That’s what everything is, right?”

The guy had a point. Fluke looked out at the ocean. “There’s supposed to be five-foot swells at First Point. I should have brought my board. You surf?”

“Surfing? You want to talk about surfing?”

“Oh I guess you can’t, huh? The arm?”

Kurt could do most everything with the arm except jerk off and reach the top shelf in the supermarket. He wanted to use it now. Grab this * by his hair and slam him into the dashboard.

“I’ve got a disability too,” Fluke said. “Four toes on my left foot. Can you believe it? Were you born that way or was it an accident?”

“You know, you don’t really seem like a hit man,” Kurt said.

“Oh yeah? What do I seem like?”

“A kid playing dress-up.”

Fluke smiled like he was glad Kurt had said that. “You’ve got to see this,” he said, already getting out of the truck.

Kurt watched Fluke set a backpack on the hood and dig out a Nikon 8X monocular. Fluke scanned the pier like a pirate. “Bear with me,” he said. “Gotta find the right one… okay.” He gave Kurt the monocular. “There’s a girl right next to Bubba Gump’s.”

A pasty-faced Goth girl was straddling the rail and eating a corn dog, a guy with a hooded army jacket talking to her. “Yeah, I see her,” Kurt said. “What about her?” He heard Fluke rustling in the backpack.

“Just stay on her,” Fluke said. “Don’t let her out of your sight.”

Thirty long seconds went by, Fluke saying hang in there, hang in there, stay on her, stay on ’errrr. Kurt was about to tell this * to f*ck off when he heard a coughing sound and the Goth girl’s corn dog blew up, cornmeal and wienie shrapnel splattering all over her, the army jacket guy saying oh f*ck oh f*ck.

Kurt lowered the monocular. Fluke had his elbows resting on the hood, hands gripping a handgun with a long barrel, not even a scope on it, a wisp of smoke pirouetting out of the suppressor.

“Not bad, huh?” Fluke said. “For a kid that plays dress-up?”

DStar was right, Kurt thought. This guy really was a lunatic.


They got the hell out of there and drove to Palisades Park, a green strip overlooking Pacific Coast Highway. Fluke insisted they use his truck. For all he knew, Kurt had a recording device in the Vette he’d parked two blocks away from the pier. Every time you see a woman talking to an undercover cop she thinks is a hit man, where are they? In a car.

Fluke hopped over the balustrade and stood on the edge of the bluff yelling what’s up, bitches at the cars a hundred feet below.

“Could you get off of there?” Kurt said. “You’re making me nervous.”

“What’s the deal?” Fluke said.

“A rapper. He needs to not be here anymore.”

Fluke never asked the reason for killing somebody. Not knowing made it more like a job. Like he was a dentist and a tooth needed pulling. “A rapper, huh? Is he black?”

“Why? You only do white guys?”

“No, I’ll do your parakeet if you want me to. Remember that scene in Dumb and Dumber when Jim Carrey sold the dead parakeet to the blind kid?”

“It has to be a drive-by.”