Moonshot [Part 11] – The Fig Factory
Cryptocurrency is Deek’s last chance to succeed in life, and he will not stop, no matter what.
Previous Chapters: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10
“Sometimes I think I can see right through myself. I see what I’ve become. And I don’t like it.”
— Walter Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress
What Happened?Zaid Karim sat with his feet on his desk, and a handful of magnetic darts in his lap. He pitched one, too hard. It hit the round metal dartboard and bounced off. He flung another, and it stuck right in the center.
“Yes! Right in your eye.”
He threw another.
“Boss!” Jalal, Zaid’s assistant and trainee P.I. threw his hands up. He was an athletic, broad-shouldered young man with green eyes and crewcut blond hair. One of those Palestinians who looks more European than Arab. He’d just gotten married, and sometimes Zaid caught him staring at a framed photo of his wife instead of working. But in general he was an excellent assistant, who took the ethics of the job seriously. More seriously than Zaid himself, at times.
“I can’t work like this,” Jalal complained. “Do you want me to find this girl or not? You’re the one who taught me that the first 24 hours are critical.”
“Did they pay us?” They’d been hired to find a nineteen year old Bangladeshi Muslim girl who had gone “missing.” Zaid wasn’t worried. He’d worked three similar cases in the past, with teenage Muslim girls who went “missing.” Once with Lonnie, and twice on his own. Every time the family put out a flyer implying the girl had been kidnapped, starting a panic in the community. And every time it turned out the girl had run away from home. Too much school-related pressure from the parents, or culture clash between immigrant parents and their USA-born daughters. In one case the girl was pregnant, and had just completed an abortion when Zaid found her. He brought her home, but never told the parents about the pregnancy.
“They paid a thousand up front and a thousand more when we find her.”
“Cheapskates. We’ll never see that second grand.”
“Boss.” Jalal sat back from the computer and raised his hands in supplication. “What happened to you? Where’s the man who put his life on the line to find a missing child?”
Zaid glared at his assistant. “This is not that.” Though perhaps it was, who knew?
“We’ll find her. Look at her Instagram, then follow the trail. Relatives, friends, or boyfriend.”
Bite SomethingHe threw another dart. It hit the exact center of the board and stuck, displacing the previous one. He felt a vicious sense of satisfaction. If he couldn’t do anything else right in life, he could stick these stupid darts to the bullseye.
He knew he was being a jerk, and furthermore a bad detective. But he was in a foul mood, and couldn’t bring himself to care, any more than a snake in its desert hole cared about political, social or spiritual revolution and reformation. All the snake wanted was to hide and sleep, and every now and then bite something.
Jalal made an exasperated noise, but before he could complain further, Zaid said, “Fine! I have things to do anyway. Call me when you have a line on the girl. Don’t go looking for her in person! Just find a digital trail. We need to make sure we’re the ones who physically bring her home, or they’ll claim she showed up on her own, and they won’t pay us the second half.”
It was a warm day, and the car was a baked potato on a sheet pan. He started the engine and ran the AC. He had barely slept last night. He’d dreamed of one of the men he’d killed, the driver. They’d been sitting in a Yemeni coffee shop, having a conversation as blood welled from the man’s chest. The man complained that the coffee had no taste, and Zaid pointed out that he was dead. The man looked shocked, then his eyes rolled back and he collapsed into a pile of ash and bones.
A few years ago the city had planted palm trees along this previously barren stretch of East Belmont. They stretched toward the sky, tall and proud, uncompromising. Muslims one and all, standing in ranks like the believers at Badr. Zaid himself was a gnarled oak, twisted, nearly unkillable, and harboring life in his way, but plain and fruitless.
Agent of DestructionHe couldn’t kill one more human being. He couldn’t continue to live like this, functioning as an agent of destruction in this already mad world. He was at the end of his rope with this private detective gig. But what else could he do? He had no other training, no other skills.
He began to drive. He needed to talk to someone, but who? His friends could literally be counted on the fingers of one hand. Tarek Anwar was dead. Zaid had found his body two years ago, half in and half out of an abandoned refrigerator, the heroin needle still sticking out of his arm like a parasite that had died with its host.
His best friend, Saleem Haleem, who worked as a project manager at a homeless shelter, was at ‘Umrah. Yahya, the Kenyan sufi who lived like an ascetic and saw auras, was speaking at the ICNA conference in Baltimore. Titus Palumbo was a police detective, and Zaid felt it was best to stay away from him for now. As for Imam Saleh, he would not understand. He was a man of faith, a decent and peaceful man. Zaid’s lifestyle was beyond his ken.
As his mind worked he had been driving, and he looked up to see that his subconscious had already made the decision for him. He had come to a stop in front of the Bookazon bookstore, one of many money laundering fronts owned by his childhood friend Amiri Sulawesi, known by everyone else in the world as Badger. Zaid happened to know that Badger dropped by here often.
Coming here made sense, in a twisted way. Zaid needed advice on how to escape violence. And what greater expert was there on the subject of violence than Badger?
A Bad DayThe bookstore was small and overfull, with books cramming the shelves and stacked on the floor. A handful of youths – probably students at City College down the road – browsed, or sat in armchairs, reading. The clerk at the counter – a paper-white, thin young man with a ponytail, whose name Zaid had forgotten – Jimmy, Jerry? – claimed he didn’t know anyone named Badger.
“I’m quite sure no one with a name like that would be associated with our store,” Jimmy sniffed.
Zaid wasn’t in the mood. He had a clear memory of this pale, skinny fool addressing Badger as, “Mister Badger Sir,” like he was a character from a children’s story. He circled around to the back of the counter and seized the young man by the throat with one hand, the other hand going to the knife clipped to his pocket.
“Listen, Jimmy, you might not remember me but I remember you, and I know very well that you know Badger, so get him on the phone and tell him that Zaid Karim wants to see him, before I lose my patience and use you to test the edge of my knife. Do you understand? Nod to tell me you understand.”
The clerk’s face flushed as red as a beet, and his entire body went stiff. With eyes averted, he made helpless pawing motions in the air.
Zaid realized that the man was terrified into paralysis. This happened sometimes with chokes. People fell into profound fear states that shut down the higher mind entirely. Shocked at his own violence, he released the young man and stepped back.
“I’m so sorry, Jimmy. I apologize. I’m having a bad day. Do me a favor and make the call, alright?”
The clerk coughed and cleared his throat, holding out a hand as if to ward Zaid away. To his credit, he said, “Screw you, creep. And my name is Jerry.”
Zaid nodded, smiling. “Of course. Jerry. My apologies. I really do need you to make that call, though.”
Still red-faced, and not taking his eyes off Zaid, Jerry got on the phone, spoke for less than ten seconds, then hung up and spat two words at Zaid: “Fig factory.”
No WitnessesThat was all Zaid needed to hear. Two years ago he’d gone to Badger to request a favor. The price had been to act as lookout on one of Badger’s raids. Zaid had reluctantly agreed, only to find himself sucked into a massive gunbattle between Badger’s crew and a Samoan gang. He’d saved Badger’s life, and had watched helplessly as Badger’s henchwoman Pinky shot a naked lady in a shower. When it was all over, they had retreated to an abandoned Arkadian Foods fig processing plant in the countryside to patch up their injuries. Zaid had been emotionally devastated, until he learned that the naked lady had survived.
He was surprised that the gangster-killer was still using the same hideout.
The old fig factory, out in the countryside southwest of Fresno, was unguarded. A long gravel road led to a high fence and a rusted iron gate secured with a huge padlock. Miles of empty fields stretched out around him—no houses, no witnesses, just silence. There was a new signpost, with a triangular red and yellow sign declaring, “Hazardous Waste Site.”
If something were to happen to him here, his body would never be found, he was sure of that. Sure, Badger was a friend, but he was also a killer with a heart as cold as stainless steel in the Arctic.
Fig FactoryThe padlock was not locked. Zaid opened the gate and drove up to the factory’s loading dock. For some reason a number of stray cats stood about the property, as if waiting for something to happen.
The rollup door was open, and he drove right into the factory, parking beside a nondescript gray Corolla. Badger was as rich as a Saudi prince, but his cars were always plain.
The factory interior smelled of rust and old syrup. The combination was sickly sweet, and made Zaid’s stomach rumble in discomfort. An immense complex of pipes and vats occupied the north side. The scattered furniture was aged, though the makeshift first aid clinic in one corner was better equipped than in the past. A heavy-duty first aid kit was laid open on a folding table, its contents sorted with clinical precision—bandages, syringes, surgical scissors, and a bottle of iodine.
A large wooden table held a scattering of weaponry, including shotguns, rifles, handguns and bullet proof vests.
Where there had been mattresses on the floor in the past, there were now three pairs of bunk beds. A portable battery pack hummed faintly, feeding power to a hot plate, a dented oscillating fan, a phone charger, and a tiny mini-fridge, all wedged together beside a stack of ammo boxes and what looked like a Quran with no cover. That last item surprised Zaid, but gave him some hope that Badger still retained a shred of faith.
The voluptuous Hispanic woman named Jelly sat cross-legged on one of the cots, sharpening a folding knife against a ceramic plate. Pinky, her petite lesbian lover, lounged nearby with a massive pearl-handled revolver in her lap and a lit cigarette dangling from her lips. A young man Zaid did not know sat on the floor in the shadows, black hair to his shoulders, eyes dark and unreadable, watching Zaid with a look that might have been curiosity or disdain.
In the middle of it all was Badger. Short and wiry, seated on an upturned bucket like a child’s throne. A ray of sun painted a yellow stripe across his hard brown face. His expression was not welcoming, and Zaid knew right away that he’d made a mistake in coming here.
Eight Years AgoEight years ago, Zaid had been part of a robbery along with Badger’s father, Malik Sulawesi. Malik had been shot protecting Zaid, and had bled to death in Zaid’s lap, in the back seat of a car, on the way to the hospital. The crew had dumped Malik’s body in the driveway of the hospital, abandoning him to his corporeal fate.
No one alive knew this. It was a secret that Zaid had buried deep in his own mind, on a level that even he did not visit.
After Malik’s death, Badger had gone on a campaign of vengeance against the gangsters he believed responsible, killing more people with his guns than a carpet-bombing run would have done. While all the while the man responsible was his own best friend.
The last time Zaid had visited Chausiku Sulawesi – Badger’s mother – the woman had implied that she knew Zaid’s secret, and had threatened to tell Badger if Zaid ever bothered her again. Ever since then, the possibility of such a revelation had been nagging at Zaid’s heart like a dog worrying a bone.
Badger glanced sidelong at Zaid, lips twisting into a cold smile. “Didn’t think I’d see you again, Stick. Funny, right? Life got this way of makin’ the past come back around. Like the cosmic powers-that-be wanna force you to examine all your dark, dirty secrets. You ever notice that?”
Zaid tensed. What was Badger implying? He studied his murderous friend. Badger was slender to the point of being delicate, and those who did not know him sometimes fatally underestimated him. Zaid never made that mistake.
Avoiding the connotations of Badger’s comments, and ignoring Badger’s unwelcome use of his old nickname, Zaid said, “What’s with the cats?”
Badger shrugged. “Jelly started feedin’ ’em, and they kept comin’.”
Scars“Look at you,” Badger went on. “What happened to your face, homie? You look like you went ten rounds with a cotton harvester.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“Oh yeah? Show me.”
Zaid had not come here to entertain others with his scars, but what the hell. Badger’s mind was like a supercomputer, and computers functioned on data. The more information you fed them, the more useful the answer.
Matter of factly, without embarrassment or hesitation, he pulled his t-shirt off and let Badger study the mass of twisted skin that covered his left shoulder; the long, fiery scar that ran up his left arm; and the pockmarked bullet scar on his right shoulder.
“Now for the featured attraction.” He put his t-shirt back on, and pulled his pants down to his knees. The skin on the front and inside of his thighs was a frightening, chaotic mess of scars atop scars. They were not neat lines as one might get from a knife wound, but scores of misshapen, twisted rents and tears of all shapes.
Badger whistled, long and low. “You was tortured.”
“Ay Dios,” Jelly whispered.
Zaid pulled his pants back up.
“Who did that to you, Stick?” Badger demanded. “Gimme their names and I’ll exterminate ‘em all.”
Zaid regarded his old friend solemnly. “I already did that.”
Badger did not ask for names or details. He merely grunted and said, “Good man.”
No Future“Fool prolly makin’ it all up,” the young man offered from the shadowy corner where he crouched. “Prolly had a car accident.”
Zaid looked at the youth. His soulful eyes were deep and haunted beneath a mop of curly dark hair. He was not more than nineteen, yet radiated anger and sorrow, as if already resigned to a bleak ending that hadn’t yet come. The sad part was that, working for Badger, the young man had no future. He’d already thrown his life away, and didn’t know it yet.
“Shut up, Ofelio,” Jelly said lazily. She was lying back now on the cot, her long black hair fanning out on the small pillow. The tight jeans and t-shirt she wore barely contained her figure. Zaid remembered the time they’d nearly killed each other, when she’d pressed a gun to his forehead as he had put a knife to her femoral artery. Her breath had been spicy, and her eyes as deep as the Mariana Trench. She was watching him closely now, fascination in her gaze as she twirled a knife between long, manicured fingers.
Zaid’s eyes flicked to Pinky, the diminutive and insanely jealous Asian killer. Her eyes darted rapidly between Jelly and Zaid, her slender fingers nervously twitching at the handle of a pistol she never hesitated to use.
“So,” Badger went on as if the young man had not spoken. “Watchu doin’ here, Stick? Must be pretty bad if you come to see me.”
“I came to talk to you,” Zaid said at last. “Not your whole crew.”
Badger’s lips twitched into a half-smile, the slightest nod acknowledging old bonds. “Just protocol, Stick. You know how Jelly and Pinky get when they miss the action.”
“What about the big mouthed kid? Who’s he?”
“I’ll show you who’s a kid,” the young man snarled, standing and drawing a long dagger.
“You better sit down, Ofelio,” Badger remarked, “if you know what’s good for you.”
Ofelio took a step toward Zaid. “Naw boss, I’ma show you that this guy is all talk.”
Zaid wondered what was going on with the kid. Was he jealous of Zaid’s friendship with Badger? Was he new to the crew, and feeling a need to prove his chops? Or was he just crazy? Nevertheless, a threat was a threat.
“Act like you have an ounce of brains,” Zaid said, “and sit down.”
Later, he wondered why he had said this. Was it a half-hearted attempt at deescalation? Or was he actually trying, on some poorly illuminated subconscious level, to provoke the young man?
Regardless, Ofelio took another step forward and raised his long dagger.
Suddenly, fluidly, Zaid drew the large folding knife from his right-side front pocket, snapped it open and flung it hard and fast. The blade and handle were black, and in the gloom of the factory the weapon was little more than a shadow flicking through the air. The blade embedded itself deep in Ofelio’s thigh. The young man screamed and fell to the ground, clutching at his leg. “He stabbed me! The fool stabbed me!”
Badger threw back his head and roared with laughter. He laughed so hard he fell off the bucket. Rolling on the floor, he clutched his stomach and guffawed as the young man moaned in pain.
Seeing this, Zaid could not stop the corners of his mouth from quirking upward into a smile, though he hated himself for it.
“You never even warned me!” Ofelio shouted.
“Why would I warn you? This is real life, not a kung fu movie.”
“Pinky,” Badger commanded when he’d recovered himself. “Patch the kid up. Jelly, make us some tea. You know the kind I like.”
A Taste for MurderBadger sat back down on the bucket. “Never mind the kid. Just say what you wanna say, Stick.”
“I killed three men the other day.”
“Oh yeah?” A genuine smile touched Badger’s lips. It occurred to Zaid that although Badger’s mission had started out as one of revenge, somewhere along the way he’d developed a taste for murder. The very mention of it pleased him, like an addict talking about his drug of choice.
“And it wasn’t even for me. I was helping out a brother in trouble.”
“That’s the only way you would kill, Stick. For someone else. I’m the opposite, I only kill for myself. That’s why you’re the hero of this story, and I’m the villain.”
“What story?”
“Life.”
“The thing is,” Zaid said, “I did it easily. I didn’t even consider alternatives. I cut those men down like the grim reaper. This isn’t who I am. It’s not who I want to be. I need a way out of this life and away from violence. So I thought, who understands violence better than Badger? Understanding a thing means you know both sides of it.”
Badger nodded slowly. “You need to achieve escape velocity, huh? But you know better than anyone—ain’t no easy roads out here. Just circles.”
Zaid met Badger’s gaze, resolute. “Then help me break the circle.”
Badger watched Zaid carefully. “You think,” Badger finally began, voice calm and measured, “you can just step away from violence, like it’s a barrio you grew out of. Made some money, wanna move to a gated community. But violence isn’t geography, Stick. It’s gravity. It pulls you, holds and don’t let go.”
Zaid tilted his head, listening, but silent.
“It’s basic physics. Every action,” Badger said, tapping his chest, “ripples outward endlessly. All the killing you’ve done has changed you. It’s inevitable.”
“I know,” Zaid murmured. “But that’s the problem. It was too easy. Killing them shouldn’t have felt so—”
“Natural?” Badger interjected softly. He leaned back, the bucket creaking quietly. “Marx spoke about alienation. Workers lose themselves when their actions become commodities. The same happens with violence. When you detach the act from the self—when killing becomes automatic, instinctive—you’ve become alienated from your humanity. The self is lost in the process.”
“Then how do I get it back?” Zaid asked, barely audible.
Jelly came with a small folding table and a tray and silently poured three cups of tea, handing one to Zaid. The silver cup was small and ornate. Zaid sipped it, reveling in the rich flavor of chocolate and peppermint that flooded his mouth. It was delicious.
On the other side of the warehouse, Ofelio was moaning nonstop as Pinky tourniqueted his leg, cleaned the wound and began to stitch it up. Zaid felt no remorse for what he’d done, and that was the problem.
An AnchorBadger’s eyes hardened. “You want to reclaim humanity, you must reclaim agency. Choose consciously. If violence must occur, it can’t be reflexive. Anarchists understood this. Any genuine action must originate from deliberate choice, not necessity or impulse.”
Jelly had pulled up a chair and sat sipping her own tea and listening to the conversation. The pressure of her eyes upon him was like the constant emanation of a space heater.
Zaid frowned. “You’re not exactly a pacifist yourself.”
“No,” Badger admitted, sipping his tea. “But I never lie to myself about why I do what I do. The moment violence becomes easy, you become a slave to its gravity. Breaking orbit means making different choices—deliberate choices that reflect your values, not your reflexes. You need an anchor.”
“An anchor,” Zaid echoed softly.
“Exactly.” Badger stared directly into Zaid’s eyes. “Find an anchor outside violence, something strong enough to pull you free from its orbit. Art. Community. Philosophy. Pick a different center of gravity. Otherwise, you remain trapped in violence’s perpetual cycle.” Badger leaned forward, voice lower. “You’re troubled not because of the act, but because you’ve glimpsed clearly what you’re capable of. So decide who you gon’ be, Stick, and mean it. Otherwise, these streets gon’ keep decidin’ for you.”
Zaid finished his tea and stood. Badger was making sense. Except for one thing.
What About Allah?“What about Allah?” Zaid challenged. “The person who remembers Allah and the one who does not are like the living and the dead. If I have learned anything in life, it’s that everything begins and ends with Allah. I know this better than I know my own name. So how can you, or me, or anyone, make a true change without the light and guidance of Allah?”
Badger shrugged. “You’re the Muslim, you figure it out.”
“You don’t consider yourself Muslim anymore?”
“Come on, homie. After all I’ve done? I’m a monster, I know it. Could be I’m a sociopath. I display all the markers.” He made quotation signs with his fingers and recited: “Pervasive pattern of disregard for the rights of others. Failure to adhere to social norms. Lack of remorse. Don’t matter what I consider myself, ain’t no God about to forgive me.”
“You’re cherry-picking. I took an abnormal psychology class in the pen. Sociopathy also includes impulsiveness, irritability and an inability to form meaningful relationships. None of which I see in you. Anyway, Allah forgives, brother. Don’t you know that? If you come with an ocean of sins and make tawbah, Allah will come with forgiveness greater than that.”
“Could I be forgiven?” Jelly asked.
“Of course. You feed cats. There’s mercy in you, which means you are open to receiving mercy as well.”
Badger laughed. “You better get goin’, Stick, before you convert my crew and steal ‘em away.”
“You have a copy of the Quran,” Zaid persisted.
“Do I?” Badger’s surprise was genuine.
Zaid gestured. “Right there on top of your ammo boxes.”
“Actually,” Jelly said with uncharacteristic shyness, “that’s mine.”
Zaid studied the beautiful young woman for a moment, then, on impulse, and knowing it was probably a bad idea, took out his wallet and handed her one of his cards. “Text me and I’ll give you my wife’s number. You can talk to her about God, the Quran, faith, or whatever you like.”
Badger stood. “You’re crossing a line here, homie.” His voice was low and dangerous.
Zaid met his old friend’s eyes. “I don’t think I am.” He waved his arm to encompass the dilapidated factory. “I want more than this for you, Badge. You’re capable of so much more. I care about you.”
“See that!” Badger gestured to his compatriots. “That’s sincerity. That’s why I never murdered this dude, and never will.”
“How heartwarming.”
In the first aid clinic, Ofelio had been treated and sedated, and was asleep. Pinky walked over to join the group, carrying Zaid’s knife. Zaid tensed. Pinky had never liked him. But the petite Asian killer tossed the knife gently, and Zaid snatched it out of the air. It had been cleaned and disinfected.
“Thanks,” he said.
The fig factory suddenly felt not just like a hideout, but a tomb. Badger was a dead pharaoh, already wrapped and mummified, while the crew members were his acolytes, worshiping him even beyond death. There was no life here, no truth, no answers. Badger could perhaps point the way toward something true – that Zaid was a human being with free will, and the capacity to make different choices – but Badger himself was stuck in his own nightmare, and was so used to it that it seemed like home.
Zaid walked to his car, backed out of the factory and drove away, thinking of Badger’s final comment – that he’d never murdered Zaid, and never would – and what it might imply.
***
[Part 12 will be published next week inshaAllah]
Reader comments and constructive criticism are important to me, so please comment!
See the Story Index for Wael Abdelgawad’s other stories on this website.
Wael Abdelgawad’s novels – including Pieces of a Dream, The Repeaters and Zaid Karim Private Investigator – are available in ebook and print form on his author page at Amazon.com.
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