About to get it

» Kaimuki

Slowing the stolen red truck for the light where 22nd crosses Kilauea, Fon Du realized that the perfect place for someone to die was just around the corner. Two someones.

He turned right, was soon making another right into the back entrance of Diamond Head Memorial Park.

"Why're you taking us here?" Bodhicita Guzman gasped from the back seat, where she sat close to the second Lama Jey Tsong Khapa, clutching his hand, totally unable to ignore the Tokarev 9mm that Fon Du waved over his shoulder at them with his left hand as he drove with the right.

"I told you, Bodhicita, shut up or he gets it," Fon Du snapped.

"This term, gets it," the young lama said softly, his amusement with Americanisms showing through. "I'm guessing it has nothing to do with, say, 'getting' the teachings of Buddha?"

Fon Du glared at the lama's placid reflection in the rearview mirror. The triple Prozac was wearing off, he was feeling more like his shrewd villainous self, but something about the way the lama asked the question almost made him smile.

"Yes, it is a curious term," Fon Du allowed as he parked the truck at the kokohead end of the main drive, near the mausoleum building. "The Americans seems to have an endless supply of these colorful terms. I rather enjoy them."

"Me too! You see, we have more in common than wearing robes."

Although the lama had given up his saffron and crimson robes for the disguise of a Japanese tourist, Fon Du was wearing Bodhicita's pink velour bathrobe from the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. They were about the same size. Fon Du would have to get the lama to strip before he shot him.

Fon Du was making this up on the fly, had come here without a set plan. So as the engine idled, he turned off the headlights, thinking, glancing occasionally in the mirror to check on the couple, keeping the pistol on them. It was strange, she was his lover until just a couple of days ago, the most luscious woman he'd ever known. Yet seeing her with the lama did not make him jealous. Not because of Bodhicita, because of the lama.

This was dangerous thinking, and he went back to considering the best way to kill them both and disappear into the night, recalling various operations he had either studied or participated in. And then he remembered a job on Taiwan... He'd shoot them right here. The acoustics of the big truck would mute the gunshots. Then he'd leave with the radio playing softly, draining the battery, and the doors locked.

Fon Du turned in the driver's seat, aiming the pistol at the lama.

Hoping to hear them both beg for mercy, he said, "Before I shoot you, any last words?"