A Nice Cuppa

CROUCHING BARISTA, HIDDEN LACTOSE (continued…)

Interior - Motel - West Sumatra

PRAMANA: You seem to know people.

GUNTER: Mm.

Gunter still hiccuped bubbles of stomach bile to his throat. The taste was forgettable but he couldn’t retain it while his head spun. John was the man he’d heard in the cafe, no question. John. An anonymous enough title that wouldn’t get any more specific over the next few hours, but he could care less. Titles worried him less than reputations. John had his. Prince of Meth. Consummate business man with a heart of lead, though he peddled his product under the pretense that he cared, he really cared. After the tsunami hit, he ordered his troops to the scene with adulterated meth “rescue pacs”….a crumbly brown rock known as peanut butter crank. It was an acute CNS stimulant sure enough, an epinephrine-provoked fight or flight response that no one really needed or wanted to feel again that soon. But there were buyers. He sold it to anyone who had anything, mostly burned out relief workers. How entrepreneurial. So yeah, Gunter knew his rep. Even when this tropical adventure was over, with Pramana in a scuffed and bloody sling and him coughing his insides out, punching EpiPens through his skin in a suffocating wheeze, he’d still only know him as John.

Inside, the panic was just starting to ease up. On Gunter’s face though, he tried to keep things as dull as possible. Losing face in front of Pramana was an uncrackable habit lately. He was sick of it.

PRAMANA: You’re not a total bad luck magnet though…

GUNTER: Hmm?

PRAMANA: Depends how we spin it off.

Pramana’s hand went up to the chin and cupped it. It helped him think. A good time to.

PRAMANA: What else did you hear?

GUNTER: I didn’t hear anything else.

PRAMANA: Just the famous tag line.

GUNTER: His signature line.

PRAMANA: “All thumbs til you nah nah nahhh.” Yea. Hard to imagine anyone else in South East Asia saying that.

GUNTER: Don’t mock.

He did. Insult kept people on their toes, made them question their own reliability, and in an drug enforcement officer’s case, hopefully their powers of observation. It definitely qualified as a mock to an inexperienced Gunter, after having heaved in a helpless plant instead of gathering more useful information on the man even their DEC only knew as John. But he believed Gunter. DEC before life in the field placement was a thorough text and tech marinade. International law, distribution and trafficking, linguistics, surveillance and satellite imaging - they’d had their share of stuffed shirt lectures, logged a ton of hours sitting in headphones, analyzing tapes and wire taps (most having the fire and pomp of a Book on Tape). The DEC officially put to rest any dreams of playing Crockett and Tubbs, saving the world with a Corona waiting on a nearby beach front patio, though even after months of speeches discouraging the recruits from considering any part of their career glamorous, try tearing any one of them away from a Friday night airing of The French Connection, or Heat.

“You’re all thumbs til you find your fingers.” That’s where Gunter’d heard it…via surveillance training. Pramana too. John was a moderate player at the time, building in-roads to meth distribution for an operation he’d inherited from big brother and recent executee, Jonah. Seems after the firing squad, rumor had it that Jonah could have played fearless leader with a bit more information on his side. He was the hands on type, the kind of guy to verify a food’s best before date by downing a mouthful. In this case, it was crank: crystal meth’s less pure powdered form, bagged and saran-wrapped around his torso for travel purposes.

“So…,” Jonah may have asked himself before that day, “…the best way to test overseas smuggling prospects? The best way to research solo smuggling operations and which nation’s security may be lax enough to warrant creating routes there? And the best way to test whether carrying grab-bags of mind-altering chemicals make their carrier’s behavior….noticeable?” Do it, it seemed was his solution. Jonah had told Taiwanese authorities between his capture and death that it was the last question he was most curious about, most curious to know first hand about. Otherwise he would have strapped crushed animal crackers around his waist instead of the real thing. Otherwise he wouldn’t have put himself in danger. Gutsy to be sure, but choosing Taiwan as a port of call was…dumb. One drug smuggling death penalty later and John would promote himself upwards, into bro’s shoes, while bro would just promote himself upward.

As the area’s new meth go-to man, John was even more fond of recycling his one-liners than ever. During his five years as Jonah’s number two, he’d been logged by DEC agents using his “thumbs to fingers” proverb a total of six times. In the two years since his rise in the ranks, the number climbed to 29. Pramana could only imagine how sick John’s cronies were of his evangelizing. Maybe the drugs helped. Regardless, yeah, it was John. Now, the only question in Pramana’s mind was how to get him.

…to be continued.