Anna had
sketched out maps the night before (tracing them from a Rand McNally) and we
had our positions laid out for us. The most essential part of any operation is
logistics and Ralph, on the excursion which Anna sent him out, thought of everything
we needed to finish the acquisition of gear stage of the operation. He’d picked-up
some toy compasses and a set of small two-way radios at a Radio Shack type
store, spending the rest of his reserves he’d kept rolled up in a sock hidden
away in an old stash place. He gave me a set of night vision binoculars he had
from his drug dealing days. Anna figured I could use them more that he could
from where she would have him posted. It was clear to Ralph and me whose
operation this would be. He had a Minolta SLR with a telephoto lens that
Max had also left in the apartment.
Anna tried
on one wig and then another. She changed the make-up on her face several times
too. Each time she came out of the bathroom she looked entirely different;
taller, shorter, paler, and somehow tanned, skinnier, and so on.
“Ralph,”
she said, “before we do anything else, take a shower.”
“What? I
just did.”
“Wash off
the cologne, no stink on an operation like this.”
Ralph
stripped off and left the room.
She called
out to him, “And don’t use that stinky soap. Irish fucking Spring.”
The shower was already running as he yelled
back at her, “You have perfume on. What’s the diff?”
“Just do
it. I want them to smell me coming?”
I left the
apartment to take a jog around the small park at the end of the cul de sac.
Ralph had blackout curtains pulled when I got back to the apartment. It took a
minute for my eyes to adjust to the dark room. A single candle’s light
flickered about a woman’s face that was nothing like Anna’s. It appeared
clothed in its soft glow where she sat in a full lotus position. Ralph was at
her side so I assumed the pose a few feet away and facing them.
Time
passed. Once we sat long enough for Anna’s satisfaction, a faint Buddha smile
passed her lips before she spoke, “The mansion’s a mandala castle, you know. Like
the one hanging in the bedroom. A castle guarded by fierce Vajras.”
Ralph’s
voice was distant, “I know, Max left it too. He told me what a mandala is, a
circle kinda thing. That black dude in the middle with fangs diggin’ into a
chick like he was fuckin’… what’s that
about? I thought it was ‘posed to be spiritual.”
“It’s a
protector, a Vajra…, Daemon sometimes.”
“That what
you mean, a Vajra?”
“Yes, the
main one in the center, Ralph. Center yourself. Find your inner chi like you do
in Kempo karate. Meld yin and yang. Your soul is the castle surrounded by fear
and delusion. This one has four sides; white across from red and green across
from yellow or gold, as in that case. Each guarded by several lesser daemons,
or Vajras.”
“You sayin’ that the Bird Dog guy is a demon
fuckin’ with the Smurf guy?”
“Smurf? I
like that. Smerdyakov… Papa Smurf fucking the Bird Dog. Uh, not exactly, but I
like it. They are there to protect the treasure.”
“I’m taken
the white side, Crash is taking the red and you stay where I drop you off outside
the perimeter on the other side of the slough from the boat landing. You are
there to watch the green and gold.”
Ralph
grinned the way he did when he wanted you to know he got-it but was getting
bored with it, “Green and Gold… I like the Packers. It’s time we go?”
“I have gas money,” Anna offered, “Lets go
fuck ‘em up.”
“That forty
bucks is my fuckin’ money, honey,” Ralph pouted.
“I told you
I was a whore. If I charged you what I usually get, you’d owe me lots more than
forty bucks.”
“Okay, it
was worth it, my sweet whore.”
“We’re set then. Let’s go.”
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