In a too-brightly-lit burger joint, Beadie sits alone with Maui, who says that when she showed up at his door, he was "thinking better thoughts than this." He sighs: "And you counted on that, huh." "Who else am I gonna ask?" says Beadie. Maui tells her that he isn't a snitch: "Not even for you am I a snitch." Beadie quietly tells him she isn't thinking about it that way: "I'm thinking, 'Here's a guy, and we had some times together, and even though, you know, it didn't get to where he might have wanted it, he's still a good guy -- he's someone I can talk to about this.'" Maui sets his jaw, and then asks, "How come it didn't go nowhere?" Beadie folds her hands, and after a long beat, she says, "You did good. Who knows? I don't know. You never know." She looks like she's possibly about to cry, and takes a sip of her coffee to cover it. Maui considers this. Beadie sets her cup back down, and tells him, "I could show you pictures of how they died. Broken fingernails, blood on the walls." Maui angrily rears back in his seat: "All of a sudden, you're a cop." "Help me with this, Mau," pleads Beadie. Maui chuckles bitterly: "You didn't get shit from grabbing up Horseface and them, did you?" Beadie doesn't deny it. Maui says that's kind of funny: "I mean, you running around like your head's all chopped off, looking for someone to clue you in, when a lot of what you're asking about is right there for the taking." "How so?" says Beadie, alert. Maui sighs again, and then says that checkers used to do everything on paper; when the ship left without incident, the paper was thrown away: "That don't happen today, right? Nothing gets tossed anymore." He stares straight at her as he says it, but can't hold her gaze long without twitching like even telling her what she already knows is betraying his brothers. Beadie finally gets it: "The computer." Maui swallows. Beadie grins and takes his hand: "Thanks, Mau." His namesake island won't be far enough for him to hide if anyone at the port gets wind of this conversation.













Comments