Once Is Never Enough Read online

  Ashley trained Flynn. She showed him how to properly cut lemons and stomp lemonade. It was his least favorite part of the job. He often nervously gnawed on his nails, so his cuticles were cracked and often bled. The lemon juice irritated the broken skin and would squirt in his eyes and burn.

  When he had fifty lemons cut into quarters, he’d put them in a large plastic bucket and plunge a metal masher into the mix to hand stomp them. Ashley told Flynn to move the masher through the lemons with a thrusting, circular motion, up and over and up and down until the bucket made a sound like a heartbeat. Flynn would mash and mash and mash for what seemed like forever. The sharp citrus smell would get up his nose and he’d struggle not to sneeze, because one time he did and had to throw out all fifty lemons and start again.

  This was Flynn’s seventh week at Hot Dog on a Stick, but he still didn’t feel like he belonged. The shifts would change and so would the girls, but Flynn always got stuck cutting lemons. He much preferred putting wieners on sticks, dipping them in the corn bread batter, and plunging them into the hot oil. He found the ritual oddly satisfying, but he rarely had the opportunity as he was always relegated to lemonade stomping duty.

  While Ashley and Emma mostly ignored Flynn, Becky taunted him.

  “Jimmy!” Becky held up one of the wieners on a stick. “Look at the size of this wiener!”

  Heat rose on his neck as Ashley giggled. Becky stuck out her tongue and pretended to lick the flaccid wiener. Ashley cackled with laughter.

  “You are so bad,” Emma said.

  Becky approached Jimmy with the wiener on a stick. “Jimmy knows I’m just teasing.” She offered it to Flynn. “Do you want to hold it?

  “No, thank you.”

  “Why don’t you put it in? I know you want to.”

  “Becky!” Emma admonished.

  “Just put it in and pull it out.”

  She dipped the hot dog on a stick into the vat of cornbread batter and pulled it out, twirling it as the batter dripped off the end.

  “It’s easy!” She put it in the hot fryer and smiled at him. “In and out. In and out. That’s all there is to it, Jimmy.” Becky moved closer and held the hot dog up in front of his face. “I see how you look at these big old wieners. You want a bite?”

  Ashley laughed so hard, she started to hiccup. That made Becky laugh and that set off Emma. Soon all three were laughing their asses off.

  Dulcinea Delgadillo sat at a red plastic table in the Glendale Galleria food court. She watched Flynn’s humiliation at the hands of a trio of snotty teenagers. His once handsome face now puffy and pasty and blotchy with pimples. His hair appeared to be thinning and his ugly plastic glasses didn’t disguise the fact that his left eye twitched uncontrollably. His gut strained the buttons on his Hot-Dog-on-a-Stick outfit and his red shorts sported a prominent muffin top.

  Dulcie was surprised when Flynn voluntarily went back to City of Roses Psychiatric Institute after saving the world. He was still delusional then; still believed he was a Double-0 working for Her Majesty’s Secret Service. She could barely believe that everything that happened actually did, but the fading scar on her forehead was a daily reminder. A daily reminder that she was lucky to be alive. A daily reminder of how Flynn changed her life.

  He was a patient when he escaped and carjacked a young orderly named Sancho. Together they saved Dulcie from her abusive boyfriend and set off on a series of dangerous and terrifying adventures, culminating in the rescue of the ten richest men in the world. Flynn’s derring-do was the top story on cable news for three weeks. He didn’t just save those billionaires, but the entire world economy.

  Unfortunately, all the attention was too much for him with constant visits and messages and phone calls from journalists and TV producers. They all wanted to talk to him and interview him and uncover the real James Flynn, but even Flynn didn’t know who the real Flynn was.

  The strong confident man she knew began to question everything. That caused anxiety and paranoia and severe mood swings that dropped him into a deep depression. His psychiatrist, Dr. Nickelson, was finally forced to drug him. He put Flynn on all kinds of antipsychotics and antidepressants, but Flynn only sank deeper into darkness. Sometimes he’d sit for hours, frozen in place, staring into space. Sancho told her that Nickelson even tried shock treatment and something called transcranial magnetic stimulation.

  No longer a patient at City of Roses, Dulcie had visited Flynn every other day. Sancho would often be there as well and together they’d talk to him. It wasn’t always clear Flynn knew who they were, but they didn’t lose hope. They didn’t give up on him. Just like he never gave up on them when their lives were hanging by a thread. Little by little, Flynn began to remember them and eventually found his way back to reality.

  But he was Jimmy Flynn from Van Nuys, California, an orphan who lost his parents at age ten in a tragic car accident. Not the sexy, self-assured James Flynn she had fallen in love with. As a child he had lived in nine foster homes over a period of seven years and was emotionally abused. He loved spy movies from the 1960s and developed an imaginary personality to protect himself. He became the most capable and powerful person he could imagine; a secret agent with a license to kill.

  As Flynn worked with Dr. Nickelson to come to terms with his new reality, Dulcie continued to visit him, though it was hard for her to reconcile Jimmy Flynn with James.

  As Jimmy, Flynn no longer had that sexy English accent. He sounded like your typical nerdy white guy. Now shy and socially awkward, he even carried himself differently. He slouched and walked with a clumsy, ungainly gait, a symptom of how insecure he was. While James exuded confidence, Jimmy lived in a perpetual state of embarrassment. Dulcie constantly reassured him the way he used to constantly reassure her. She wanted to be there for him, but she missed the old Flynn. Ached for him. Spending time with Jimmy made her sad and she visited him less and less frequently. Until finally, she only saw him once a week and then once a month and then not at all.

  During the time she visited Flynn, Dulcie managed to turn her life around. She attended Narcotics Anonymous meetings at a shuttered mini-mall in Panorama City. In her purse she kept fourteen coins. They were all different colors and commemorated the number of months she had managed to maintain sobriety.

  It was Sancho who told Dulcie that Flynn now worked at Hot Dog on a Stick. Dr. Nickelson decided Flynn should leave the hospital and take some tentative steps into the real world. To help him make the transition, Nickelson found a job for him at the Glendale Galleria and arranged for him to live in a supervised group home in Eagle Rock. Dulcie hadn’t seen Flynn for over a year when she finally worked up the nerve to visit him at the mall.

  As she watched him behind the counter at Hot Dog on a Stick, she came to a sad realization. The Flynn she fell in love with never existed at all. He was only a figment of Jimmy Flynn’s imagination. He was a beautiful fantasy and she loved him and missed him, but he was gone for good.

  Glendale Galleria was a thirty-minute bus ride from her beauty school. Dulcie had fully intended to visit with Flynn over lunch. Talk to him. Connect with him. But that was before she saw him. Before she felt such embarrassment for him. She knew Flynn would see the pity in her eyes and she couldn’t do that to him. At least, that’s what she told herself.

  Dulcie stood up to leave and looked back one last time, accidentally catching his eye. While in the midst of cutting lemons, he looked across the food court and saw her. Dulcie offered Flynn a half-hearted wave. Recognition dawned just as she turned her back on him. She quickened her pace past Panda Express and Dunkin’ Donuts and hurried off. She blinked away tears, overwhelmed by guilt and the knowledge that she would never see Flynn again.

  Chapter Three

  The Federal Social Readaption Center No. 1 was considered escape proof. Known informally as Altiplano (Plateau), the high concrete walls were ten feet thick to discourage ramming or high explosives. Air space around the facility was designated as a no-fly zone to preve
nt an aerial escape. Armed personnel carriers surrounded the prison in case of a ground assault.

  Yet even with all those security precautions, Mexico’s most infamous drug lord, El Chapo (Shorty), found a way to escape. One evening he squeezed through an opening in the floor of his private shower, climbed down a thirty-two-foot-long ladder, and kick-started a waiting motorcycle on a rail. He roared through a well-lighted tunnel and emerged to find himself a mile from the prison. A getaway car waited and El Chapo found freedom. At least temporarily. Eventually, he was caught and this time extradited to the U.S. for trial.

  When Mendoza found out he was headed for Altiplano to serve out his 140-year sentence, he believed he’d spend the rest of his life there. After El Chapo’s legendary escape, the Mexican government put new security protocols into place. Mendoza knew that the new government would never want to suffer the international embarrassment of another high-profile escape. Especially after what his boss, Francisco Goolardo, had attempted to do.

  Goolardo kidnapped the ten richest men in the world. He hoped to make billions. Instead, he lost everything he’d accumulated over twenty years of ruthless criminal activity. Including his freedom. The most galling aspect of that entire debacle was the cause of that failure. Francisco wasn’t foiled by the DEA or CIA or FBI or Interpol or MI5 or any other international law enforcement organization. He was foiled by a mad man. A mental patient. An idiot.

  Mendoza knew something wasn’t right with Flynn the first time they’d met him. How his boss, a brilliant and ruthless criminal mastermind, fell for Flynn’s act still remained a mystery. Goolardo acted as if Flynn was an equal and showed him the kind of respect he never showed Mendoza. He always treated Mendoza like a dimwit. Like muscle. His suggestions were ignored. His every idea criticized.

  Goolardo didn’t lose his admiration for Flynn until Mendoza finally exposed him for who he was; an escaped mental patient from Pasadena. Goolardo ordered Flynn’s death. Yet still the pendejo wouldn’t die. It wasn’t because he was highly trained or the best of the best, because he wasn’t. Flynn survived because he was stupid-lucky and would do things no one in their right mind would. Professional boxers don’t like fighting drunks in bars for much the same reason. It’s hard to counter someone who doesn’t attack you in a way that makes any logical sense. Instead of countering with a right cross, they stab you in the balls with a broken beer bottle.

  As Mexico’s most secure prison, Altiplano held the worst of the worst; including most of the rival drug lords and enforcers that Goolardo battled and defeated. Mendoza and Goolardo needed to prove their place in the pecking order if they hoped to stay alive. Goolardo spent much of his life in prison, so he understood what it took to survive. At age nineteen he was sent to Candido Mendes, a high-security prison on the Ilha Grand, an isolated island that once housed Brazil’s most dangerous prisoners. That was where he spent his formative years and those instincts had returned quickly.

  By their tenth month at Altiplano, dozens had died and he and Mendoza sat at the top of the pecking order. With no one left to challenge them, they took control of many existing criminal enterprises. They smuggled drugs and weapons, cigarettes and booze, pornography and even prostitutes. As prisoners were released, Goolardo’s reach extended beyond the prison walls. Mendoza assumed that eventually Goolardo would put out a contract out on Flynn. Someone would find the idiota and kill him. Mendoza would have preferred to murder Flynn himself, but he knew that wasn’t possible.

  Eventually, Goolardo acquired enough pull to get himself and Mendoza moved into the palatial cell block previously occupied by El Chapo. They had everything they desired. Everything but their freedom. Then one evening, as they dined on langostas from Puerto Nuevo, Goolardo said a curious thing.

  “I think it’s time to go.”

  “Go where?” Mendoza wanted to know.

  “Away from here. Away from this place.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think we’ve been here long enough. Don’t you?”

  “Yes, I guess.” Mendoza sighed and stared down at his langostas and rice and refried beans. He took a bite, afraid to meet his boss’s eyes.

  “You think I’ve lost my mind, don’t you? You think I’m as crazy as the cabron who put us here, huh?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You don’t have to. I can see it on your face.”

  “There is no way to escape from here. You know that.”

  “Do I?”

  “I thought you did.”

  “Well, did you know that I am still worth fifty million dollars?”

  “How is that possible? You invested everything you had in your plan. You lost everything.”

  “Not everything. I had shelter corporations with accounts in banks in Cypress, Belize, Panama and the Cayman Islands.”

  “But I thought…you said were…”

  “Broke. Yes. That’s what I wanted the authorities to believe. That’s what I wanted my rivals to believe. That’s what I wanted everyone to believe.”

  “So you didn’t lose everything?”

  “Are you even paying attention?”

  “Now you’re just being hurtful.”

  “You seem confused.”

  “I am confused.”

  “Well, let me confuse you a little more. We aren’t here at Altiplano by accident. I paid off certain people to make sure if I was ever caught, ever arrested, ever sentenced, that this is where I would be sent.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this is where they sent El Chapo.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I know you don’t, which is why I have to get out of here. As a bodyguard, you are exceptional, but as company, you are abysmal. There is nothing going on in that melon-sized head of yours. You never have anything interesting to say. If I have to sit in this pinche prison with you as my only companion for one more day, I will have to kill myself. And I will do so gladly because I will likely go straight to Hell, and that Hell would be better than this Hell.”

  Mendoza pouted. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

  “I know you don’t and that’s exactly the problem. I don’t blame you for being dull. It’s who you are and why you’re good at what you do.”

  Mendoza moved his lips as if he wanted to say something, but thought better of it.

  “I can see you have a question.”

  “Why would you want to be sent here?”

  “Because I knew that the Mexican authorities would be too cheap to fill in El Chapo’s tunnel. It’s a kilometer and a half long. And if they tried to cave it in or blow it up, the whole prison would come crashing down. So I figured they’d fill in both ends to save some money and leave it at that, and I was right. That’s exactly what the cheap bastards did.”

  “So you had someone dig out the parts they filled in?”

  “Over a year ago. Before I was even convicted. It was an insurance policy.”

  “So there’s an escape tunnel?”

  “You really aren’t very quick, are you?”

  “You don’t have to be so insulting.”

  “It was an honest question.”

  Mendoza sighed. “So where do we find this tunnel?”

  “Under the floor of my private shower.”

  “And we’ll leave the same way El Chapo did?”

  “Now you’re catching on.”

  “When did you want to do this?”

  “Do what?”

  “Escape.”

  “Now would be a good time.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, because someone was paid to spike the guard’s water supply with a powerful, quick-acting laxative. At this very moment, every guard in this prison is worried about one thing and one thing only—getting their ass on a toilet. As preoccupied as they are with pooping, they won’t notice our departure for quite some time.” Goolardo scraped back his chair and stood. “You ready?”

  “I guess.”

  “You d
on’t sound very enthusiastic. Are you enjoying your time here? Would you rather stay?”

  A part of Mendoza wanted to take Goolardo’s face between his two huge hands and squeeze until his cabeza cracked like a walnut. But another part of him, a larger part of him, loved Goolardo like the big brother he never had. Big brothers know how to push your buttons and Mendoza understood that. He knew Goolardo only talked to him like that because he loved him and trusted him. So, the more patient side of Mendoza protected Goolardo from his more ferocious, feral, and savage side. And that was why he said, “No.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  Goolardo headed for his private shower and Mendoza followed, excited to escape, but irritated nonetheless. Why did Goolardo always have to be so insulting?

  “I was going to send killers to take Flynn out.” Goolardo shook his head. “But I decided that wouldn’t be good enough. He humiliated me in a very public way, so that’s how he needs to die. And I need to be there. I need to be seen. People need to know it was me who put that lunatic out of his misery.”

  “He turned you into a laughingstock.”

  Goolardo stopped and glared at Mendoza. “What did you say?”

  “Not me. I didn’t say it. That’s what other people said.”

  “What people?”

  “Stupid people. People who don’t know you.”

  “I want to know who those people are, because they need to die too.” Goolardo started moving again and they continued on in silence as they reached his private cell.

  The shower was so tiny it only accommodated Goolardo. Mendoza watched as Goolardo removed the large metal grate that covered the drain, revealing a three by three-foot plastic drainage pipe. Goolardo sat on the edge and then slid down feet first, disappearing instantly into the hole. Mendoza’s bulk barely fit in the shower stall, let alone the three by three-foot drainage pipe, but since that hole was the only way out, he had no choice but to follow.