"My jurisdiction only goes up to his navel." 

* Bob Newhart 

Chapter 1: 

The dead-eyed monstrosity, known to my long-deceased or incredibly pretentious Latin readers as Carcharodon carcharias, circled the seaplane like vultures of the deep—they’d seen the signs, made their calculations, and knew it was only a matter of time before the chum was in the water.

That aforementioned chum had once been hailed as a conquering hero upon his return home, got a ticker-tape parade, the whole nine yards. Now, he wasn’t much more than the town drunk, he mused. Truth be told, Constance Klipp hadn’t quite reached those depths yet, but he was building his résumé and hoped to be called up to the big leagues by June. Taking another long drag of his cigarette, Constance felt the gentle sway of the Pacific that would later rock him to sleep. Curiously, it didn’t make him as relaxed as it usually did. He was a bit of a nervous nelly, and there wasn’t much the rhythm of the deep blue sea could do about it. All that goddamn Sambuca had made its bed, and now he just had to live with the consequences. 

Sitting up off the rudder, splashing his bare feet against the ink-black salt water, Constance sent the shiver of great whites into a bit of a frenzy. It was a bit premature, he thought, as he flicked his half-finished cigarette at their slimy fins, but they weren’t wrong. They knew, as he did, that Butch was late, and Butch Burton was never late.

Opening the heavy metallic door of the Pelican Bay, it was obvious that this pilot had been born to money. When you spend your youth being pampered and praised by a string of overworked and underpaid nannies just trying to make ends meet, you aren’t usually the cleanest. Once you’ve tasted wealth, squalor only seems fair. Yanking the radio from its cradle next to the badly damaged bobblehead of The Iron Horse and the poorly taped photo of his long-dead mother, Constance barked a desperate plea over the airwaves.

“Dis Pelican Bay to Wasp Nest, do you copy?”

“Read ya loud and clear.”

“He’s late.”

“We’re well aware, Pelican Bay.”

“He’s never late... Can’t you send backup or somethin?”

“Ummm…”

“Goddammit, give me that dumb doohickey. This channel is for emergencies only, asshat.”

“I was just going to say that.”

This was a goddamn emergency, Constance thought. He’d known Butch for twelve years, and they’d been best friends for nearly every second of it. In all that time, Butch had never been anything but fifteen minutes early for every goddamn thing they’d ever done—no matter the danger, no matter the location—and for Constance, a perpetually late person, this had always been his most annoying quality. Until now.

“There’s a storm heating up on the horizon.”

“That’s your problem, not mine. Deal with it. Over and out.”

“Did I say that right?”

To his credit, Klipp was telling the truth—there was a storm on the horizon. A mass of black clouds clung to the choppy waves fifty miles out, like a siren calling for attention, making the future crystal clear from here to Monteverde Harbor.

“H-he’s a fucking idiot,” Ralph stammered as he continued methodically packing the last of their belongings. Only an idiot would bet the house on a turtle named Todd, and an even bigger idiot would tell one of Junebug’s boys to “fuck off” when they came to collect the next morning. Especially when those brutish “boys,”  were notorious on the waterfront for their complete lack of compassion and penchant for violence. Any sane person would have fled to Tahiti by then, but as Ralph said, Constance Klipp was a bit of an idiot.

“You know that’s right,” Junebug—Joan Winkleman Regina—smirked.

Butch Burton, on the other hand, was one of the most reliable men Junebug had ever met, and she knew a reliable man when she saw one. Having grown up in the West before it was won, the old bird could spot a good bastard from a mile away, even if he did fraternize with the filth sitting on the other end of the line in shark-infested waters. She liked having men like Burton on her payroll. Junebug had told him as much on the second day they met, down at Duddle’s, one of her bars, this one for the miscreants and mongrels toiling at the end of the docks. He’d politely informed her, “Before you dance with me, I have to set some ground rules. I’ve got three, just to be exact: Don’t drink and drive. Don’t drink on the job. And I work for no one but myself and my partner over there. Not since the war.” He was less polite the next day when she sent Ronnie to their little makeshift bungalow on the bay. Her boy was still missing the teeth. But Butch Burton was a man like any other; he had his vices—gambling and Constance fucking Klipp, just to name two—and that made him weak. You see, all rules are meant to be broken, especially when money is owed. By the end of the month, she had both the Pelican Bay and the boys deep in her pockets, and it was all thanks to a fella named Todd.

Todd was a fast turtle; the sickly bastard had won a fair bit of money for some of the cheap-seat alcoholics, annoying some of the bar’s more established plutocracy. This led Junebug to send Ralph, Ronnie’s twin, on a weeks-long odyssey, during which one of his errand boys died due to an errant maverick out near Grace’s Point. But it had all been worth it, his mother claimed after she’d tested the grift out with Duddle before the morning rush. It was simple: get anyone foolish enough to bet on a turtle race as drunk as humanly possible on cheap Sambuca and let the money roll in. Butch and Constance were just the suckers for the job.

The boys made an interesting pair from a distance, but their bond was self-evident to anyone who spent time with them. They were more than just friends and business partners—they were brothers from another mother. That’s what happens when you spend a week in the trenches deep behind the enemy line. You develop a relationship closer to marriage than most marriages are to love. They’d do anything for each other, and in this case, on that very fateful spring night, they’d bet their entire business on a turtle named Todd after several downed bottles of Sambuca. Junebug nearly shrieked with joy, watching the dumb bastards fall right into her trap. Duddle even let them keep Todd as they stumbled home, unaware of what they had gotten themselves into. That was until the next morning when Ronnie, his face still wrapped from his broken jaw, and Ralph, armed with a pair of Glocks and a Chicago Typewriter, stopped by just to drive home the point.

Burton had spotted them from his fishing spot under the weathered white dock. Like a jaguar stalking prey, Burton crept into the bay, his head barely visible above the nearly crystal-clear surface. He sank beneath the water as Ronnie and Ralph split up to search for clues. Ronnie checked Pelican Bay in all its morning glory, while Ralph headed to the bungalow at the end of the dock.

“Butch?” Constance garbled, brutally hungover, suddenly stunned by the solid metallic flavor of a pistol pressed deep into his mouth.

“No, the devil, and I’m here to get what’s mine,” Ralph sneered, only to have his elbow yanked from its socket by Butch, who was crouched behind him like a shadow in the dark. With practiced precision, Butch forced the thug’s arm up to his spleen, flipping the gun around Ralph’s back.

Bang! The goddamn gangster had shot his own toe.

“Mommy?” Ralph whimpered, his eyes going bright red with pain. He nearly crumpled to the floor, only remaining standing because of Butch’s meticulous chokehold.

“Nice one, B,” Constance slurred, still half-drunk. But before the words had fully left his mouth, he heard the click of a magazine and the unmistakable whisper of a .45 near his skull.

The pair hit the deck, bullets ricocheting all around them, with one stray round finding its mark, drilling into Ralph’s kneecap like a New Jersey construction worker after a nightcap.

“WHY, God? Why?” Ralph howled, collapsing in a heap.

“Reach for the sky!” Ronnie’s voice thundered as he burst through the rickety bamboo door of the bungalow, rage and desperation etched across his face. Butch and Constance sat up straight, hands raised in mock surrender.

“If you hurt my brother—”

“That was all you, Tiger.”

“And himself.”

“What do you want?” Butch asked, eyeing the tommy gun.

“We want what you owe us. A deal’s a deal, and this one’s final.”

What the hell happened last night? It was a bit of a blur, to say the least. The only reason Butch wasn’t hungover was that he managed to eat a steak and drink a tall glass of milk before bed. “This about Todd?” Constance frowned. The pilot was like an elephant—he never forgot a thing, and he looked freaking nervous. It was the goofy dude’s curse, Butch guessed. In all their years together, he’d never seen the man blacked out, and judging by the gruesome-sounding night terrors that pierced the tropical silence once a week, their time together in France was still clear as a cucumber.

“Fuck off.”

The moment Ralph’s size twelve boot connected with Klipp’s nose, they knew they were up shit's creek without a paddle. Since the little grift wasn’t the soundest of contracts in a legal sense, all Junebug needed from them was some help once or twice a month. But Butch thought she had other tricks up her sleeve, especially after she told him, “Resistance was futile,” as Constance geared up for his first delivery of dope to Delhi; “You just didn’t realize it yet.”

That, I guess, is the short version of how their relationship with Junebug and her boys began. Well, mostly her cronies. Her actual sons—Ralph and Ronnie—hated their guts, but they knew when Momma had a good thing, a profitable thing, it was best to stay out of her way. Most of their jobs were drops at first, but before long, Junebug was using Butch’s skills for her own dastardly deeds. You see, Junebug was only half right: Butch was a bastard, but he was also a war hero, and being a war hero means you have the skills to get a job done without a second’s hesitation. Something most of her boys lacked, as evidenced by Ronnie and Ralph’s showing that fateful morning. What started with a simple series of gigs quickly escalated into a full-blown partnership, and much to Junebug's chagrin, Constance and his plane proved incredibly handy.

So, it wasn’t entirely surprising to see Rebecca—whose real name, they’d later learn, is Kelly Lee—sliding down the narrow dirt roads, the shadows from the hanging telephone wire dancing across her face, heading toward the sign that read: Ginchy Airways, Gateway to the South Pacific.

“We’re closed,” Constance hollered from a lawn chair parked conveniently at the center of the dock. He was half-naked, baking his Upper East Side skin in the sun, sipping on something that needed a little hat, and watching the city he loved tear itself apart in the distance. He was not in the mood for interruptions. This was some damn fine entertainment.

“It’s not us asking?” Rebecca sighed, taking a swig and a seat.

“Don’t care.”

“It pays well.”

As if appearing out of thin air, Butch rumbled, “How well?”

“See that Rolls-Royce over there?” Unlike his partner, who’d grabbed a shotgun, Constance hadn’t noticed. Lifting his glasses, he saw the gleaming symbol of excess parked conveniently under some telephone wire up the street.

“That fucking well.”

If curiosity had killed the cat, Butch Burton certainly hadn’t gotten the memo. He was already halfway up the narrow street, his boots kicking up dust, darting past Rebecca without so much as a glance. The fourth Klipp of the great Klipp Crisp Empire, still fumbling with his worn jacket, wasn’t nearly as impressed with the machine or its driver, Doug, as Butch seemed to be. Burton was almost giddy as they rumbled up through neon-drenched narrow streets toward the capital, the building known to the locals as Ciudad de Dios. The only hitch in this little joyride was the minor detail that Monteverde Harbor was on fire—both literally and figuratively. The tiniest island among a group of volcanic rocks known as the Jaybos, the capital city—squished between two fifty-foot cliffs and home to nearly two million people—had remained largely off the radar, except militarily speaking, until yesterday, when the whole place went up in smoke.

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Given the four centuries of abuse endured by the natives—who had settled the region some twelve centuries earlier and had thrived to such an extent that their culture remains nearly incomprehensible to modern anthropologists—it’s only natural that they might seek some sort of retribution for their stolen land and sometime enslavement. But, in truth, they’d pissed off the wrong sort of bloodsucking bunch: the British Navy. With that being said, our hometown heroes had put up one hell of a fight. The entire city had screeched to a halt, and everyone from the little old lady to the bitter businessman was out for blood. I apologize for the little diatribe, but it’s crucial for setting the goddamn ridiculous scene.

Over the past few decades, the island chain has changed hands multiple times, with various administrations resorting to excessive force to handle situations like these. However, in their view, these literal conquerors were rarely the ones causing trouble—until the darkest hours of yesterday, that is, when a bunch of boys in Navy blue roughed up two lovebirds out for a Clark Gable flick. For some reason, the coppers who’d broken up the brawl arrested the locals instead of the bastards who’d beaten them. I guess that saying’s true: you can always trust a man in uniform. The couple ended up dying in a jail cell under Ciudad de Dios, holding hands.

In other words, traffic was a bitch as they climbed up the South Shore Cliff toward the skyscrapers, cawing to those tourists adventurous enough to journey this far east.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph and all his Carpenter friends, get the hell out of the way!” Doug barked as the Rolls-Royce sped up the cobblestone streets, narrowly missing a few protesters heading toward the opulent Ciudad de Dios, which, clearly inspired by some Greco-Roman nonsense, revealed its tackiness through its twentieth-century light fixtures and machine gun turrets. This regal beagle of a car swung sharply left, pulling up to a conspicuous car park in one of the priciest parts of town.

“Wait here,” the driver stated matter-of-factly before hopping out and checking if the coast was clear.

“I wonder what’s with all the secrecy,” Burton asked to nobody in particular.

“There’s probably an orgy or something, and the governor’s trying to save face.”

“For us?”

“No, for the guests of the orgy, obviously. He doesn’t give a flying fuck about us, no matter our war record.”

“It’s probably just security for the protests. What? I don’t think there’s fucking six ways till Sunday, okay?”

Here’s the thing: Constance wasn’t far off. The protests were perfectly timed for the night of the Governor's Ball—an event that usually ended with group sex. This night, however, was different. The Governor himself would give a now infamous, if somewhat shaky, speech declaring that war was upon them before discreetly retreating to jolly old England. The Krauts were coming, and he knew he was screwed.

The driver returned, shoving some snuff deep into his nose before pulling into a nearly empty garage, where two men dressed in tuxedos closed the steel door behind them. Constance couldn’t shake the feeling that he recognized the man behind the wheel from somewhere long ago.

“Are your seatbelts securely fastened?” Butch looked curiously at his partner. Nothing in his North Florida youth had prepared him for shoulder seat belts—not the seaplane, not anything—but even Constance Klipp was surprised as the car slowly began to descend into the deep. Bats of all shapes and sizes floated around them, feeding off the pale headlights. The sounds of shrill shrieks echoed alongside the creaking wood, strained by the weight of the automobile.

They reached the catacombs with a haunting thud. The place, which would soon serve as shelter for the wounded, offered little to admire. After a mile or two, the driver finally slammed on the brakes with an almost theatrical screech. He then stepped out with impeccable flair, opening the back door for the pair. Surrounded by the dim darkness of the cave system and with eerie echoes drifting down from above, one might reasonably assume the place was haunted. Instead, a golden elevator, its interior lined with plush velvet red, descended gracefully into the depths.

“No, no, this will not do. They are not dressed for the occasion,” the tiny fellow manning the elevator declared. Constance glanced down at his worn bomber jacket, Hawaiian button-down, shorts, and flip-flops, and snorted, but, as a matter of fact, Burton felt a bit embarrassed by his blue jeans and wife-beater.

“There’s no time; they must see the governor immediately.”

The diminutive figure scowled but relented, letting the boys aboard and locking the elevator with a clank before it began its ascent up toward the palace. Below them, the catacombs sprawled out in shadowy labyrinths, no longer a mystery as the flickering headlights of the Rolls-Royce danced before disappearing into the depths below them.

“Help me,” squeaked a rattling skeleton, swaying from a rusty gibbet.

“Traitors, sinners, murderers of the Almighty! You’ll pay for your wicked deeds,” bellowed another, its bones clattering in outrage.

"Where are we?" wondered Butch, his eyes wide with curiosity and dread.

As if plucking the question straight from his mind, the old man operating the elevator muttered in a voice as creaky as the gears, “You see, the tales were true. Welcome to the very bowels of hell, boys.”

This was where the crown sent its most loathsome rogues to dangle from the rafters in unending darkness—the Alcatraz of the East, as the unfortunate souls outside called it. Nearly inescapable, save for suicide or the confines of one’s own mind. The elevator escaped this creaking nightmare through granite and sheer will, arriving with a jubilant jingle at a lime-green secret passage.

“You’ve arrived,” mumbled the elevator operator, almost sad to lose the company.

As they entered this costume party from an unseen door, Butch was horrified to see Klipp lighting up a Lucky Strike next to a painting worth more than their souls.

“It’s expected, Old Sport. Get me a bourbon, straight?”

The waft of jazz seemed to confirm the pilot's suspicions.

“Of course, sir,” said a white-gloved man who seemed to appear out of nowhere.

They looked starkly out of place in this well-dressed room, but they mingled like many would, interested to hear the words of men and women who usually only gave them orders. The boring chit-chat was a bit ironic, as the chants of “We want justice,” “We want freedom,” and “We want peace” echoed from outside the manned walls.

“Your bourbon, straight, sir. May I bother you with a question?”

“I shoot straight.”

“Very well. Do you happen to be Butch Burton?”

“Naw, he’s that fella over there trying the bacon-wrapped shrimp. Old Burton. I’m just his pilot.”

“Very well then. Would you two follow me?”

Klipp motioned for Butch to follow as they zigzagged through the party, down a back corridor to a vacant library tucked away so nobody could hear its secrets.

For what felt like forever, the boys sat, twiddling their thumbs, waiting for someone to arrive. Butch passed the time thumbing through dusty jackets, idly wondering what they might be worth. He couldn’t even begin to fathom their value in today’s currency, especially knowing they’d soon go up in flames along with the rest of this opulent prison masquerading as a castle.

Tucked in the corner on a comfy camelback sofa, Klipp got drunker than a skunk on Sunday, and by the third glass of liquid courage, he was sure he knew the driver’s name was Doug. He hadn’t been following local politics, but he had to be sure.

“What’s the governor’s name again?”

“Da fuck did you just say?”

“I just asked—”

“I heard what you asked! Why are you asking me now? We just got done with a two-hour car ride.”

“Felt rude.”

“What felt rude? Not knowing the name of the man who hired us, or the name of the goddamn man who’s been mayor of this city for the better part of the last six months?”

“The driver could’ve been listening.”

“So, you think now’s the best time?”

“Yeah, so stop the lollygagging and just tell me.”

“Dermon…”

“Davenport. Well, fuck me.”

Just then, in strode the man, the myth, the legend—Sir Dermon Davenport—bustling through the door with the unmistakable stench of cigars and a faint whiff of human piss clinging to his coat.

Constance Klipp had known Dermon and his entire clan in another life, back during those ashen summers in England far away from the Bambino in the Bronx, in some Jane Austen-inspired countryside where his mother prattled on about life’s grand romances, while his father schemed ways to fleece billions out of the Ottoman Empire. And if Dermon Davenport was around, then you could be damn sure Penelope Davenport, the insufferable bitch, wasn’t far behind.

They were of the same age, thrown together by circumstance to endure three long summers in each other’s company. They'd formed something like a friendship—or what passed for one—until that one fateful night when Penelope, in front of a gaggle of future heads of state, casually announced that Klipp liked to shave his legs. Davenport’s mind flickered back to that very same night the moment he saw Constance. But the beach bum swaying like seaweed before him couldn’t possibly be the heir to the Klipp empire, and there was no way this scrawny, drunken fool could be Butch Burton, the legend he’d heard so much about. No, that left only one possibility: the man with marble-like eyes, his dreadlocks curling like vines down his forehead, must be the one who’d earned the Croix de Guerre.

“Mr. Butcher, I presumed,” the words curled out from under his mustache. “It’s an honor.”

No, it was just a trap. A damned suicide mission. If it had been a regular day of the week, Davenport might have dispatched a double-O, but circumstances had changed. This skirmish between the locals and the Navy was merely a warm-up; the real threat loomed on the horizon. The Germans were coming, the Germans were coming.

“Before we proceed, gentlemen, I must issue a word of caution. I have summoned you here not for a venture of ease, but for one of considerable difficulty. It is the gravity and challenge of this mission that has prompted your call.”

Davenport had heard of the boys through Junebug, one of his few friends and his last ticket out of this hellhole and off to Clarita Falls. He’d come to her acquaintance after he ran into a little pickle. A dead hooker in your bed is no laughing matter, yet Rebecca and her cleaners had made it appear inconsequential. It was another one of Junebug’s grifts working like a charm. You see, Doug, the driver, liked to ride the white tiger and had lost a fair bit of money in a now-infamous turtle race; thus, he was available for purchase and privy to some private information, namely that the new governor spent most of his time chasing tail of all shapes and sizes, not named his wife.

One sultry night in the Red Light District, amidst the monsoon’s relentless downpour, when the rain turned the floors of the neon-drenched cafés slick like sweat, Dermon Davenport found a dead woman in his piss-covered bed. Her name was Alice. She’d been an addict for the last four years and needed a score. So, when she was told to meet this surprisingly hairy dignitary, she was down for anything, no matter how dirty. She reassured herself it was for her daughter, who was home humming to the radio, even though she was fully aware of the reality. She’d blow it down the bars before crawling back in bed as the sun began to shine.

Alice was honestly taken aback when the driver sauntered through the beaded curtain at the top of the stairs after the esteemed governor had fallen into a contented sleep. He had a reward, he explained, before he helped her tie her arm in the bathroom, giggling with glee. Rebecca was disgusted by the brutality of the scene, but she hoped the inevitable conviction would make the nightmares worth it. Like the boys themselves, Dermon found himself deep in Junebug’s pockets and needing a man to get a job done, no matter the danger. Butch Burton was the first on the list. “Allow me to elucidate: my daughter, Penelope Davenport, is one of the foremost paleontologists of our age, and she has regrettably gone missing.” Before Constance could interject, Butch muttered, “We’ll find her, sir.”

“Funny thing,” the man replied, “I already know where she is. Titan’s Crest.”

“Ah, hell nah. No way, no how. Nobody comes back from there alive.”

“My daughter did, for my inauguration.”

“Forgive my friend's bluntness; perhaps she was mistaken. Titan’s Crest is, well…”

“Satan’s asshole.”

“He’s not far off. I mean, if you manage to get past the jungles teeming with creatures not of our time, you’ll have to contend with the Vampyr.”

“You refer, of course, to those infernal locals. My daughter has been residing among those wretches for the past four months. She spoke of them to me directly and presented photographic evidence, which I have scrutinized. Regrettably, their eradication is not why I called you. I have not received correspondence from her in three weeks, and I find myself increasingly perturbed, given the ongoing outside disturbances.”Dermon couldn't have cared less about the men and women fighting for justice outside Ciudad de Dios; he was set to depart for Clarita Falls in half an hour.

“I must ask you to retrieve her and escort her to Clarita Falls on my behalf,” he said, hoping with all his heart that the Germans hadn’t already captured her. If they had, his wife would divorce him, and he would be penniless. So, they were his only hope.

“Nope.”

“KC?”

“What? It’s a death sentence.” 

Oh, hell, where was I? Right—Constance and that rusted seaplane, bobbing like a drunk at last call, with those bloodthirsty beasts already circling below. Yeah, now I remember. They went on the mission anyway, like the fools they were. It was always going to end like this. The moment Butch laid eyes on that chrome-plated Rolls, his pupils practically turned into dollar signs. He didn’t need to say a word—the promise of a fat paycheck hung in the air, thick as the flames licking the skyline.

As Pelican Bay’s engines sputtered to life, the fire’s reflection danced on the water, turning the ocean into a molten, orange mess—a postcard as they rode to hell. They thought they'd ride their luck and make it back, but deep down, they knew better. They’d never get her—not in one piece. Butch had said as much before diving into the calm morning Pacific, heading toward Titan’s Crest, where the green jungle seemed to spill into the sea.

Just as the pilot took a swig from his flask, sweat clinging to his back and the radio crackling faintly, he spotted something on the horizon—a scream slicing through the sky. Could it be? Grabbing the binoculars from the driver’s side door, Constance turned his Bronx Bombers cap backward and squinted toward the jagged cliffs of volcanic rock. A red firework exploded about half a click from their rendezvous point—not bad for a day's work on Satan’s scrotum. Constance cranked the engine, the plane skipping against the sea, but then something made him freeze. He had seen the wildest things—from the finest brothel in Brooklyn to the nuttiest nightclub in North Town—but nothing compared to what he saw now. Butch Burton was being chased by a goddamn giant monkey.