The Pinned Butterfly: A Novel by Johnny Mack

Author:Johnny Mack [Mack, Johnny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hypnotic Highway
Published: 2023-09-24T16:00:00+00:00

M

ooney sat slumped in the back of the Toyota Hilux, like some Wall Street baller, and scrolled through his messages. Nothing from Sarah. But also: nothing from Brent, which was a promising sign. Perhaps Brent hadn’t yet found out about the two of them.

“Holiday?” the driver asked, turning around to look at Mooney.

“Watch the road, Chief,” Mooney said, gesturing to the window ahead of them. He sat up and buckled his seatbelt, just to be safe. He remembered showing up at the scene of a head-on collision his first year on the force. The drunk driver had been wearing his seatbelt. He suffered whiplash but was otherwise just fine. The parents in the other car, also wearing seatbelts, were fine, too. But their kids, who had been sitting unbuckled in the backseat, rocketed out the front window upon impact. Dead by the time Mooney arrived, both of them. The boy had hit a tree; the girl, a parked car.

Mooney had told this story to his parents and his brother at Thanksgiving, presenting it as evidence of the darkness that he saw on the job, the inescapable tragedy of his profession. But it wasn’t Mooney with whom his parents were impressed. It was his brother Kenny, who was an FBI agent working big jobs in DC, thwarting homegrown terrorists and pedophile rings – the stuff of TV shows and Hollywood movies, not, as was the case with Mooney’s story, thirty seconds on the local news.

Mooney shook it off and watched the lush landscape stream by. He could have been visiting his mother in Florida with all the palm trees and derelict shanties passing his window.

“Yes. Holiday,” Mooney said.

“Nice. How long?”

“How long? I don’t know.”

“You retire?” the driver asked.

“Do I look like I’m retired?” Mooney asked. “How old do you think I am?”

“In Thailand, must keep working. Government pay money to retire. But not much.”

“Oh,” Mooney said. Was he already hinting for a big tip?

“First time in Thailand?”

“First time anywhere,” Mooney said.

“You want to go to James Bond Island? I get you good deal.”

“I really just want to check into my hotel room and get some shut-eye.”

“You want see monkey? I help you. You want see Big Buddha? I take you.”

“No monkeys. No Big Buddha. How big is Big Buddha anyway?”

“Big Buddha very big!”

“Thanks. That really helps.” Mooney rolled his eyes. Then he saw that the driver was looking at him in the rearview. “How long before we get there?”

“One hour, boss. Maybe forty-five minutes.”

Mooney forced himself to keep his eyes open. He didn’t want to doze off – he needed to stay alert as long as he was in the vehicle of a taxi driver who might not have been a real taxi driver – but the pull of sleep was too strong.

So this is Thailand, he thought, shutting his eyes and falling asleep for the first time in almost forty-eight hours, floating toward the green, green Land of Patong in a chariot named Helux.

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