Warriors in Paradise (30 page)

Perhaps, I thought, gay men take rejection worse than heterosexual men. Probably a straight man faces rejection more often than a gay man does. It’s more accepted for a heterosexual man to openly go after women than for a homosexual man to go after men. An average straight man is more accustomed to active sexual rejection than an average gay man, enabling the former to deal better with rejection. Men of all walks of life develop stronger shells that protect their egos and allow them to hunt another day.

I had to put a stop to his hysterical outburst. I interrupted him, saying in a commanding army voice, “Chill out, Terry! You are OK! You will be fine! If you do what you are told, I will take you back to your home in Virginia. Now I want you to clean yourself in the bathroom, change into these sweatpants, and have breakfast.”

“Fuck your breakfast, asshole! What did you do to me last night? How come I can hardly remember anything?” He started to cry.

I was losing control of the situation. I wasn’t sure how to deal with the outburst.

“Terry, I need you to be brave, or I will not cut your restraints. Do you want me to leave now?”

He responded, “I couldn’t care less whether you stay, leave, or die! Fuck off, you lying sack of shit!”

I turned around and left the room.

At the beginning, I had thought it would be easier to deal with Terry. I was overly optimistic. Nothing comes easy, except in your dreams.

I told Charlie and Santi of the new development. We concluded that I needed a strategy of carrot and stick to deal with him, using more of the carrot the more Terry complied.

After fifteen minutes, I went back to Terry’s room.

He had been biting his hand restraints; there was blood on his wrists and lips.

As soon as he saw me, he shouted, “What are you doing here, snow queen? Did somebody leave your cage open?”

I walked rapidly to him, slapped him, taped his mouth, cut his hand restraints, turned him over, and recuffed his hands behind his back.

“Terry,” I said while turning him gently to face me and smoothly lifting his hair out of his forehead, “I want to treat you nice, because I like you and you deserve it. But you don’t let me. Please, stop behaving like a hysterical brat-queen.

“I am leaving now, but I’m coming back to see if you’re willing to do the right thing and cooperate with me.”

I kissed his forehead and left the room.

Ten minutes later, I went back in. He was crying softly. He didn’t look up to me. I took the tape off his mouth and asked him, “Do you want me to leave?”

“No, you can stay. OK, I’ll cooperate with you. What do you want from me?”

“First, stop crying.”

He took a long breath, pulled himself together, looked up at me, and stopped crying.

I cut through his flex-cuffs and helped him stand up. I put a pillowcase over his head, saying, “I’m putting this on your head for your own protection. That way you won’t see anything you shouldn’t see.”

I walked him to the bathroom, closed the door, and took off the hood, telling him, “Clean yourself and take a shower if you want to. After cleaning yourself, wear these sweatpants. Apparently you had an accident during the night.”

“Yes, I think I’ll take a shower.”

He started to undress. He was twenty years old, and there was no muscle tone in his body. He was a little chubby with still some baby fat on him. He had a little white penis and baby-pink ass. He had a butterfly tattoo below his navel and a heart with a crossing arrow on one of his ass cheeks.

He finished taking the shower and dressed. I put the pillowcase over his head and walked him back to the workroom. Once I closed the door, I took off the pillowcase and gave him the tray with his breakfast.

He looked at the food with distaste. “I am not hungry,” he said, moving the tray away from him.

“Terry, I am going to have to restrain you again. I don’t want you to be moving around and doing anything foolish.”

“OK,” he said, pouting, trying to be brave by holding back his tears.

“Call me if you need anything,” I said as I was leaving the room.

I could hear him starting to cry again.

Breakfast with American royalty

Miranda stayed home.

It was 8:40 a.m., time to meet Rupert Pattinson.

Jonathan drove his Cherokee to the Mount Vernon Hotel. It was Saturday morning, and there was little traffic. We were dropping Santi with his disguised face at the side of the hotel. Charlie and I followed thirty paces behind.

Santi approached the side entrance of the hotel and talked to the guard, telling him that he was a relief waiter.

“What is wrong with you?” the guard asked Santi, adding, “You were supposed to be here at five thirty a.m.!”

Santi responded, “Yes, I know, but this place is difficult to find and I don’t have a car.”

The guard looked down at him with a smirk on his face. He called the kitchen and soon after lowered the chain and waved Santi in with a look of disapproval on his face.

Santi disappeared into the kitchen. The dining room director was waiting for him. “I think there has been a mistake. I didn’t call for a temp, but now that you are here, I’ll take you. I need all the help I can get. Everybody is having breakfast late, and I need you out there
pronto
!

“What is your name?” the director asked Santi.

“Luis Sanchez,” replied Santi.

“OK, Luis. Dress up. If you have any doubts, ask one of the waiters.” He turned and went back out to the dining room.

Santi asked one of the cooks, “Where is the dressing room?”

The cook raised his arm, pointed, and said, “Over there.”

“Thanks, man,” said Santi as he walked in the pointed direction.

Santi put on a white shirt, a black bow tie, and a black vest. He was already wearing black pants, black socks, and black shoes.

Santi looked the part of an elegant waiter with a distinguished big nose.

He went out and asked the waiter who seemed the least occupied, “Could you please explain the system to me? This is my first day.”

The waiter responded, “The same as elsewhere—you know, the usual stuff. All the tables are numbered. Right here on this wall you have the dining room diagram with the numbered tables. You grab your tray, pick up the food dishes as they come out, you look at the order’s table number, and you deliver the fare to that table. Voilà, now you know the system. Don’t worry about which tables you will be working on. You are a relief waiter, so you will be working the whole dining room unless the dining room director assigns you to a specific section.”

Santi said, “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. This morning, you’re just going to be working for minimum wage. You won’t be getting any tips.”

“That’s all right, man. No problem. I know that is the price of entry, and I need this job.”

Santi grabbed a tray, put a bread basket on it, and went out into the dining room. He walked as if he belonged there. It took him a couple of seconds, but he recognized Rupert Pattinson having breakfast with a younger man who looked like an assistant taking notes.

On his way to Rupert Pattinson’s table, Santi grabbed a water carafe. As he was filling Pattinson’s glass, he said, “This just arrived for you, sir,” and gave Pattinson a white envelope.

Santi turned around and walked back to the kitchen.

He went into the dressing room, took off his waiter’s clothes, and put his own back on. He walked out of the hotel and told the guard that he was leaving because they were not interested in his services.

The guard exclaimed, “I could have told you that. Nobody wants a lazy fucking Latino who arrives three hours late, even if he is a minority worker. The only advantage you have over niggers is that you are a shade lighter. But you are as fucking stupid and lazy as they are.”

Santi ignored him and kept on walking.

***

Rupert Pattinson hardly raised his eyes. He played with the envelope, deep in thought, before opening it. There were five photographs and a note. He looked at one of the photographs and turned pale.

“What happened, sir?” asked his assistant.

Rupert didn’t respond. He kept looking at the photographs of his naked son crying and trying to cover his private parts.

The note said:

Dear Mr. Rupert Pattinson,

We have Terry. He is safe and in relatively good condition at the moment.

We want you to release the girls kidnapped in Acapulco six days ago, unharmed. If you do that, we will return your son unharmed. If you do not, Terry will die a painful death.

There is no room for negotiation.

We will contact you again in an hour.

Signed: The affected parties.

Pattinson looked for the waiter, but he had already walked away. He went to the dining room director and asked for the waiter who had served him the water. The director walked with Pattinson to the kitchen and called a waiter, saying, “This is the waiter who has been serving you.”

Pattinson shouted, “This is not the one who served me water. That waiter was older with a larger nose.”

“Where is the temporary waiter who just arrived fifteen minutes ago?” asked the director to the rest of the kitchen staff.

One of the cooks said, “He just left.”

They walked out of the kitchen and up to the guard station and asked the guard if he had seen one of the waiters leaving. The guard said, “Yes, he just passed through a couple of minutes ago.”

Pattinson told the guard to call the other guards and go looking for him and bring him back to his office. The guard made a hurried call on his walkie-talkie, and four guards came fast on their four-wheelers. The guard left his post and hopped onto a four-wheeler, and the five of them left in the direction that Santi had taken.

Santi had a four-minute head start.

Catch a sack of bad luck

Charlie and I were ahead of Santi, walking a little slower to give him time to catch up. We heard the four-wheelers before we saw them. We hid behind the trees.

Santi was in the middle of a meadow, running toward the trees. As he made it into the first line of trees, five hotel guards surrounded him and shouted, “Stop, or I’ll shoot!”

They were in the clearing. They all had their guns pointing at him. The five of them dismounted their vehicles.

The guards had the same look about them, that of being either ex-military or ex-cops. They were tall and in their midthirties.

The guard who had let Santi in and out the hotel looked south of forty. He was a barrel-chested man in a 6’2” frame. He had big hands with sausage fingers. He weighed around 240 pounds.

Charlie and I made our way back while the guards’ attention was on Santi.

The barrel-chested guard took off his jacket, folded it on top of his four-wheeler, and placed his gun on top of it. He said, “I was told to bring you back, but not in what condition.” He walked toward Santi, and as soon as he was within punching distance, he threw a massive punch at Santi’s face. Santi moved back, but the fist swished by close enough to Santi’s face to dislodge his fake nose.

Santi said in a playful voice, “Now look what you just did.”

“Oh, what do we have here, a clown in disguise? You’ve been lucky so far, you chicken-shit beaner, but that luck just ran out,” he said as he threw another punch at Santi, who let the punch slide through with a swift side movement.

He shouted to the other guards, “Dick, Joe, hold this frightened chicken in place.”

One of the guards said, “Frank, let’s get this over with and take this guy back to Mr. Pattinson.”

Frank, Santi’s attacker, said, “You can go if you want, if you are too scared to watch this. However, I won’t let any two-bit Mexican hustling thief break into the hotel and leave without teaching him the lesson he so obviously needs! This one here will always remember that he should have stayed south of the border and not sneaked into the hotel by lying to me! He made me look bad. So I am giving him back what he so rightfully deserves.”

Dick and Jack came over to Santi as they holstered their guns. They tried to hold Santi, but he moved away.

The other guards pointed their guns at Santi and shouted, “Don’t move!”

While Dick and Joe grabbed Santi’s arms, Frank closed the distance and was about to punch Santi when Charlie and I appeared from behind, pointing our guns at the guards.

I shouted, “Drop your guns, motherfuckers!”

Our guns had their silencers on.

The two guards with the firearms remained unmoving. Charlie shot his Glock right in front of one of the guards. The guard heard the pfffft sound of the bullet and saw the blades of grass jump as the bullet buried itself into the ground two inches from his foot.