Camouflage

—35—

Apia was too local and too small for a killing spree, and the chameleon was getting bored. He left work a few minutes early and took a cab to the little Fagali’i Airport outside of town, and got on the six o’clock puddle-jumper over to American Samoa. The twelve-passenger plane had sixteen passengers, but four of them were children sitting on their mothers’ laps. The flight was only forty minutes long, but forty long bouncing minutes locked up with crying and puking children could turn even a normal man’s thoughts to violence. The chameleon distracted himself conjuring images of infanticides past.

It was still blistering hot at the Pago Pago airport, but worse in town: it had been a “bad tuna day.” Almost half of the people in American Samoa work in one of the two tuna canneries; the plants’ malodorous waste goes into the harbor to compete with sewage for one’s attention on hot still days.

Darkness brought a breeze, though. The chameleon went down to the waterfront in search of trouble. The area east of the canneries, the Darkside, was where to find it. On his way down, he ducked into an alley and came out the other end looking like a rumpled Pakistani sailor.

The first couple of bars looked too quiet for fun, catering to the yachties who moored in the cesspool long enough to take on provisions— and perhaps avail themselves of the Darkside’s cheap women and inexpensive drugs.

He heard a commotion and went into a dark dive called Goodbye Charlie’s. Two tall and muscular Samoans were standing at the bar, yelling at each other in a couple of languages. The bartender watched them warily, evidently moving bottles and glasses out of reach. The other patrons were looking on with an air of detachment. It might be a regular evening diversion.

The chameleon took the only empty seat at the bar and waved an American twenty. The bartender sidled over, not taking his eyes off the two. “Yeah?”

“I would like a Budweiser and an ounce of whisky,” he said with a pronounced Pakistani accent. The bartender gave him a look and snatched the twenty away.

He came back with no change, a warm bottle of Bud, and a tumbler that had been rinsed but not cleaned. He poured a generous inch of liquor into it from a bottle without a label.

“Are those gentlemen twinking?” the chameleon asked.

“Tweaking? I guess.” American Samoa’s drug of choice was methamphetamine, ice. People coming off it get into a dark mood, sometimes argumentative and combative, “tweaking.” It could lead to violence.

The chameleon drank the whisky in two gulps and slid off the stool. He walked unsteadily over to stand in front of the two sailors. “I say.” They ignored him. “I say! Will you quiet down?”

“Yeah, right, fuck with ’em,” a drunk American said into the sudden silence. The two looked blearily down at the little Pakistani, a foot shorter than them. One leaned forward and swung at him, an open-handed slap.

The chameleon ducked under the blow and grabbed the man’s wrist and twisted, bringing him to his knees. He twisted harder and pulled, and the man’s shoulder joint popped like a chicken leg coming off. He rolled down on the floor, keening in pain. The chameleon silenced him with two vicious head kicks. Bar stools crashed all around as most people backed away from the action. The drunk American stayed seated and applauded slowly.

“Tough little Paki,” the other Samoan said, and produced a box- cutter from somewhere.

“Enough!” the bartender roared. “Take it outside!”

“Okay.” The chameleon turned on his heel and walked toward the door.

Witnesses would later tell the police that whatever happened was too fast to follow. The Samoan touched the Pakistani on the shoulder, evidently, and he spun around.

The Pakistani handed the Samoan his box knife back and said, “Ta.” The Samoan stood up straight and looked at the scarlet stain spreading on the abdomen of his T-shirt. Then loops of bluish bloodstained guts slid out, hanging to his knees, and he crumpled over dead.

No one saw the Pakistani leave. When they crowded out the door, there was no one there except an old man sitting on the pier, fishing with a handline.

In the morning, the police would find two prostitutes’ bodies in a Dumpster. There were strangle signs on their necks, livid finger and thumb marks, but they’d died of cerebral hemorrhage, their heads beaten together.

When the sun rose higher, they smelled and found a dead Pakistani sailor in an alleyway, inexplicably naked. Case closed, anyhow.

The chameleon was gone by then, on the dawn flight back to Apia, in a much improved mood.