Never Is A Long Time, Wart Davis

I'm curious about just how Wart Davis sees his job.

He's a professional. Wart knows how to keep his mouth shut. And there are, it seems, always jobs for the close-mouthed among us.

I'm also curious about how Wart views others who move through his world. The movers, the shakers. Fellow professionals. Those he can trust so far as the proper amount of cash fans out.

Those he needs to watch his step with. I learned a bit from Wart Davis's story, dear reader. About what questions to forestall or deny. About working with folks who need something in particular.

I hope, as I did, that you'll discover in this week's story some small part of just why it is that, no matter how the worm turns, Wart reminds himself regularly that...

Never Is A Long Time, Wart Davis by M. K. Dreysen

When the world came unglued, Wart Davis liked to think of himself as a professional surfer. Grab the nearest large floating object and sail away.

He'd practiced, had Wart.

So the trick should have gone like this. Meet the woman. Meet her man. Pass over a selection of assorted knicknacks, receive the packet of paperwork, head for the airport and a sweet bundle of cash.

Nominally, the Federales should not have been invited to the party. "This is because you don't pick your employers very well," the arresting agent said.

"It's because I'm a professional idiot."

Three weeks in the cell and Wart admitted the agent's point. Three months in, and Wart had forgotten even that. In favor of painting the Mexico City skyline.

At night, the cell window lit up with it. Wart didn't remember exactly when he'd felt the urge to draw before, but the guards did provide watercolors. "So that you have a productive stay, Mister Davis. We know that idle hands make life difficult in our little facility. Make of yourself a good beginning, a new man if you will."

He set aside his brush when the consulate finally came through. "You're free to go, Mister Davis."

Nice words.

Wart spent the minutes between those words, the long walk to the desk and his wallet and cell phone, and the front gate, pondering where his feet would take him. Not thinking about whether and who might have been interested in one small-timer caught out.

He kicked himself for that. When he saw the BMW waiting for him.

"I don't suppose I can call a cab?" The cell phone's battery having long since given up the ghost, and the charger cord nowhere apparent.

The guard smiled and shut the gate. And so Wart faced the decision, whether to walk.

Or walk to the SUV. "I don't suppose you're just being nice and giving me a ride to the airport?"

"You'll want to sit down for this, Mister Davis. Why don't you climb in the back seat, so you don't have to use the sidewalk?"

Wart didn't initially make note of the flunky in the other seat; why? Why should he? Once he'd cataloged the Dockers and the carefully rolled-up sleeves, and the offer, there wasn't much more to note.

Well, other than that the coif and the Ivy League accent and the trick the flunky wanted pulled all pointed to corporate money. "You've got people for jobs like this," Wart pointed out.

"Probably. That decision came from way over my head, Mister Davis. When my boss tells me to get you out and give you this job, I do what I'm told. Will I need to tell her you've refused?"

Wart remembered the painting. Down the trash chute, by now. And who knew whether he'd get the same view. "No, no you don't need to tell her I've refused her offer."

"Miss..."

"Nope. You know me, and that's fine. I don't want to know you. Other than to ask if you're also offering support services."

"Such as?"

"Money, computers, cameras. Maybe someone to call if I need help?"

The cell phone came up. "How much, and where?"

Wart bought the hardware himself. The magic of a networked world, and the assurety that no one on the corporate track had their fingers on the machines before he touched them.

The help... in a just world, Wart believed he'd have met her in a bar. Or a cafe.

Not a church. Wart didn't have strong feelings either way about what went on in churches.

He did have a healthy regard for certain types of superstitions, however. And enough history lessons in his pocket to know that these kind of jobs and churches didn't exactly have a healthy track record.

Not for the participants, anyway. And the fact that she wore a nun's habit didn't lift his spirits. "Aren't you pushing this a little far?"

The kneeling woman, hands respectfully folded after she'd given him the middle finger salute that ok'd the meet, sighed. "You know of the Church's history?"

"Yeah, I'm aware. Which means you're trouble with a capital T, or you're thumbing your nose in a part of the world where the Church wields some real power." Wart knelt, less than gracefully, next to the nun. Or "nun", he sort of hoped.

Wart wasn't sure of whether the Universe had benevolence; he'd one-hundred and ten percent certainty that it did have a sense of humor. Maybe he and she could slide by on a good gag.

"My name's Lisabetta Reyez."

"Wart Davis."

"I've been tasked with oversight, Mister Davis. In addition, of course, to providing you with the help you've requested."

Under normal conditions, a nun's habit concealed. In this case, Wart figured she'd gone for clothing that matched up with the pictures she'd found on the internet.

But otherwise of a fit that she'd normally wear. Still long and dreary of color, but Wart had been in prison for three months. He'd started the meet giving himself permission for some few imaginative musings to the way the cloth lay over the figure beneath.

"Oversight" washed such thoughts away. Such a strong word, really. For what should have been a job that didn't matter. Wart was a professional.

He didn't know who had hired him. He didn't know where they were from, or what their story might have been. He didn't want to know these things.

And yet, here he was. On his knees, next to a black-clad "oversight" nun. Wart knew, deep down, that when he'd found the church he should have accepted it as the bad sign it was and kept moving.

Then again, he also reminded himself, what with the "oversight" word being thrown about, maybe that wouldn't have gone as well as it should have. Reyez's face, what he could glimpse of it, suggested both youth and seriousness, along with just that touch of dangerous beauty.

And more than a hint of a combination that meant Wart would not necessarily find a nice quiet place to run to and enjoy his freedom. "You know, growing up, I watched my parents kill themselves trying to pay off Sears every month."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"I've been out of touch for a bit, it'll take me a while to stop talking to myself. Is this our meeting place from now on?"

"Here's my cell phone number." Then, once he'd traded his. "What's your backup plan if we lose contact?"

****

The warehouse sat there, under Wart's discerning eye, not doing those various and sundries that warehouses were so well known for doing.

Oh, sure, the warehouse looked right. The corner location, the loading docks and garage doors. Tiny office space accessible by dint of hunting for the door.

There should have been trucks, though. Guys standing outside ditching their cigarettes when the boss yelled from the door.

Traffic. Only this little warehouse didn't seem interested in traffic. Wart had met a warehouse or three in his time.

Enough to know when he should be nervous about one that behaved oddly.

Oddly meant Wart needed a different bag of tricks. No bicycle, no careful shopping for grandpa clothing and a basket full of odds and ends. An odd warehouse meant Wart needed to treat the place as he would a personal home, or an exclusive business.

Fortunately, the neighborhood around the warehouse provided relief and height abundant. Wart set cameras and watched for several days. Then, after careful review, he chose, not a grandpa's outfit, but a tourist's.

Because the bars two blocks over hosted quite the collection of that motley tribe. And three in the morning found, inevitably, a handful of wrong-turners stumbling their way past the warehouse.

Enough so that Wart's hands, artfully placed to suggest that drunk's pause for stability, did easily place small microphones. That tiny bit of soundtrack to go with the video.

However differently the warehouse behaved to the outside world than its otherwise more well-trafficked brethren, inside, Wart's microphones picked up that oh-so familiar hum of activity.

Indistinct, garbled through what gain the metal doors allowed, still very much the forklift hum and whine, and the yelling and joking of workers handling boxes and bags and crates.

Wart congratulated himself on discovering yet another anomaly of this curious warehouse. Where did the folks working their days away enter this strange little place, and when?

Quite a conundrum. Almost, Wart told himself, if perhaps not even more so, as insurmountable a fact as that his employers and benefactors of the moment had precious little information to give him as to precisely where the object of their attention lay in the confounding warehouse's inner space.

Two small pieces of clarity arose from the video and audio to give Wart access.

The little office door.

And that those working inside the warehouse space knocked off every day around seven.

The first gave him a nightly reproduced entrance that didn't involve an acetylene torch.

The second gave Wart Davis some ten hours free time in those nights for searching the aisles.

Wart Davis found the underground entrance first, before he did anything else.

And once he'd discovered that the iron doors were secured in such a way that he'd have plenty of warning if someone did use them unexpectedly, Wart turned himself to walking the floor.

Here, at least, the warehouse behaved just as normally as Wart Davis could have hoped. The shelving units ran three levels high. But at least they didn't run five.

Wart found the object of his employer's attentions on the second night of his examinations. First night, he'd devoted himself to a general map, and an index of the categories.

Second night, he found the crate in question just before midnight.

And of course, the crate sat comfortably atop the third level.

Not being in possession of a healthy regard for his own skin, or at least not trusting the warehouse machinery well enough to chance the noise, Wart climbed the shelves to read the label.

"There you are," Wart whispered to himself.

The flunky had wanted Wart to send verification pictures; Wart had insisted that, instead, the flunky provide verification data ahead of time. So that Wart could open his phone, a lonely glimpse of light high atop the darkened shelves, and confirm the crate's contents to his own satisfaction.

Without involving any extraneous contact.

The object, one of fifty, sat its foam insert alongside its brethren; Wart recalled pictures of a microwave's innards, or perhaps a TV's electron gun. The distinguishing feature, that under more scholastic circumstances might otherwise have caught Wart's attention, was the material.

Light and strong and absorbent, grabbing, jealous of the phone's light.

The distinguishing features that mattered to Wart Davis at this particular moment were first that the gun piece counted itself one of several. Second that the model he'd faked up from plastic and a pen knife filled the foam insert on the bottom tray admirably.

And, finally and most importantly, that both fake and real fit nicely within the container and the backpack Wart had brought for purpose of exchange.

Shape, vaguely gun-like properties, and size all caused Wart's mind to conjure up laser rifles, or perhaps plasma rifles depending on genre. Wart set aside curiosity, imagination, in favor of the task of re-sealing the crate and exiting the obscure little warehouse.

****

This time, he met her properly for the circumstances of their acquaintance.

Well, more properly. She sat on of the cafe's sidewalk tables with a languid, just short of overdone chic. Giant hat, a suit of cream and bone draped just that caught-breath length above the ankle.

Good quality, very expensive boots, Wart noted. The kind that testified Reyez could, would, get up and move if she had to.

Reyez's top coat concealed; not just her figure but the tools of "oversight". Wart breathed through the moment of caught-breath and signaled to the waiter for water and coffee.

"I appreciate your care, Wart. They're not known for their kindness."

Wart turned away, glad of the waiter's timely arrival. Like his, her, employer, the owners of the warehouse, and once so of the object concealed in the backpack at his feet, didn't concern him.

Well, not any more than the efforts necessary to conceal face and other identifying features. But that was last night's business. "They've certainly built themselves an interesting puzzle palace. One that requires much patience."

Reyez nodded. "I've made new arrangements. For when you've found it."

Wart, satisfied now that the coffee had reached his preferred temperature, sipped. Glad of the cup and the necessary gesture. "New arrangements?"

"The money, the bidding... I've put out feelers, questions, about the..."

Wart held a finger up.

"Ok, fine. Bidders have come in, Wart. Enough so that..."

"You're questioning whether your boss has properly addressed all of his options?"

She had the grace to look away.

Wart recalled the flunky, and an important piece of the conversation in the BMW. "Who's responsible for acceptance?"

"Me, and me alone."

"And if something changes?"

Ivy League had shrugged. "It won't. I pay your bills, I'm buying in person. Anyone else, anyone at all, approaches you, they're not from me."

Here, today, Wart had come into the cafe expecting little besides that he'd need to dance around Reyez's questions for another hour or so.

Until she left, and Wart continued to his meeting with Ivy League. A Toyota this time, new enough, capable beneath the bland exterior, but anonymously more suited to the particulars of the neighborhood.

Now, Wart found himself with additional questions. Hangover questions, trailing out past the now visible end of the job.

In the immediate, Wart concerned himself with "oversight", the tools Reyez concealed upon her person.

And whether she'd knowledge of the Toyota and the flunky sitting in the back seat.

****

"Your choice of associates didn't improve in your absence, Mister Davis."

"I guess I just missed the view," Wart returned. "Is it..."

"Still available? As a matter of fact, Mister Davis, in this matter, your timing is exquisite."

Wart Davis found the prison's watercolors waiting for him in his old cell.

Together with a new small joy. A set of very fine brushes. High quality canvas. Acrylics.

And a note hidden within. With a set of account numbers. And a promise. "When we've run her down. Thank you for your efforts in this, and the warning."

For his next three month sabbatical, Wart Davis set himself the task of once more capturing the Mexico City nightline. Over a church, for scale.

With a Madonna carefully reposed at the church's door.