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Authors: Christa Faust
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that Little Eddie was still shooting at him. He couldn’t seriously be trying to kill Peter—not yet anyway. After all, if Peter were dead, his dad would never get his money. And it was a large enough sum that he probably wasn’t yet ready to write it off. Of course, Little Eddie had notoriously poor impulse control, and really wasn’t much of a thinker.
So Peter couldn’t take any chances.
He scanned the street for options and spotted the big “Welcome” sign over the entrance to the sprawling Night Market, about fifty yards away. If there were any place in this city where a big white guy could get lost, that was it. He ran for it without looking back.
The Night Market was a maze of cluttered stalls and vendors selling anything and everything, from cooked food and sweets to raw fish, fruit, and flowers. There were bootleg CDs and movies, religious items, and tacky plastic souvenirs. Tourists crammed the spaces between stalls, daring each other to try exotic delicacies and snapping photos and haggling over the price of Buddhas. Bare wooden two-by-fours held up cloth canopies, and the sound of music emanated from the large central stage.
Peter slipped easily into the flow of the crowd, eliciting little notice beyond a few grimaces at his wet hair, dirty face, and the aroma of urine wafting from his stained shirt.
He looked back over the heads of the shoppers, searching for one of the few people in Phnom Penh who was taller than him. He spotted Little Eddie back by the entrance, hung up like a Clydesdale horse trying to cut across a herd of stubborn, clueless sheep. The horse image was reinforced by the fact that he was all lathered up and drenched with sweat from the run, as if he’d been ridden hard by a heartless master. The tropical swelter was revealing itself to be Peter’s ally.
If he was lucky, the burly Scotsman might just keel over from heat exhaustion.
He ducked behind a stand selling durian, hoping the sharp, powerful smell of the notoriously odiferous fruit would cover his own stink as he pulled his stained shirt over his head and used it to clean off his face and hair as best he could. When he was done, he tossed it into an open trash barrel that was already filled with the spiked empty durian shells whose pale gooey guts had been served to the more adventurous tourists. The pretty young girl in charge of the stand couldn’t stop giggling at the sight of this large shirtless foreigner crouched behind her pile of spiky green fruit. It seemed kind of cute, until she started calling her friends over to look at him, too.
He waved his hands, shook his head and put a finger to his lips in a desperate universal pantomime for quiet. He cycled through the few Khmer phrases he knew and couldn’t come up with anything useful other than the word for please , which he whispered over and over.
Too late.
Little Eddie had spotted him. And he was reaching for the small of his back, presumably to retrieve whatever he’d been using to shoot at his quarry out on the street.
Peter had less than a fraction of a second to decide what to do. He was all out of genius, so he grabbed one of the spiky, football-sized fruits and flung it at Little Eddie as hard as he could.
The durian hit Little Eddie square in the face and both his hands—including the one that now held a gun—flew up in surprise and shock. Without stopping to think about it, Peter picked up another fruit and then another, throwing them both in quick succession. The first bounced off Little Eddie’s broad chest with minimal effect, but the second hit his gun hand, breaking open against the barrel and knocking the pistol from his grip.
The acrid, rotten-smelling pulp from the center of the broken fruit exploded all over Little Eddie’s face and chest, clearing away the crowd faster and more effectively than the fact that he was brandishing a deadly weapon. While Little Eddie was knuckling the noxious mush out of his eyes and groping for his fallen
So Peter couldn’t take any chances.
He scanned the street for options and spotted the big “Welcome” sign over the entrance to the sprawling Night Market, about fifty yards away. If there were any place in this city where a big white guy could get lost, that was it. He ran for it without looking back.
The Night Market was a maze of cluttered stalls and vendors selling anything and everything, from cooked food and sweets to raw fish, fruit, and flowers. There were bootleg CDs and movies, religious items, and tacky plastic souvenirs. Tourists crammed the spaces between stalls, daring each other to try exotic delicacies and snapping photos and haggling over the price of Buddhas. Bare wooden two-by-fours held up cloth canopies, and the sound of music emanated from the large central stage.
Peter slipped easily into the flow of the crowd, eliciting little notice beyond a few grimaces at his wet hair, dirty face, and the aroma of urine wafting from his stained shirt.
He looked back over the heads of the shoppers, searching for one of the few people in Phnom Penh who was taller than him. He spotted Little Eddie back by the entrance, hung up like a Clydesdale horse trying to cut across a herd of stubborn, clueless sheep. The horse image was reinforced by the fact that he was all lathered up and drenched with sweat from the run, as if he’d been ridden hard by a heartless master. The tropical swelter was revealing itself to be Peter’s ally.
If he was lucky, the burly Scotsman might just keel over from heat exhaustion.
He ducked behind a stand selling durian, hoping the sharp, powerful smell of the notoriously odiferous fruit would cover his own stink as he pulled his stained shirt over his head and used it to clean off his face and hair as best he could. When he was done, he tossed it into an open trash barrel that was already filled with the spiked empty durian shells whose pale gooey guts had been served to the more adventurous tourists. The pretty young girl in charge of the stand couldn’t stop giggling at the sight of this large shirtless foreigner crouched behind her pile of spiky green fruit. It seemed kind of cute, until she started calling her friends over to look at him, too.
He waved his hands, shook his head and put a finger to his lips in a desperate universal pantomime for quiet. He cycled through the few Khmer phrases he knew and couldn’t come up with anything useful other than the word for please , which he whispered over and over.
Too late.
Little Eddie had spotted him. And he was reaching for the small of his back, presumably to retrieve whatever he’d been using to shoot at his quarry out on the street.
Peter had less than a fraction of a second to decide what to do. He was all out of genius, so he grabbed one of the spiky, football-sized fruits and flung it at Little Eddie as hard as he could.
The durian hit Little Eddie square in the face and both his hands—including the one that now held a gun—flew up in surprise and shock. Without stopping to think about it, Peter picked up another fruit and then another, throwing them both in quick succession. The first bounced off Little Eddie’s broad chest with minimal effect, but the second hit his gun hand, breaking open against the barrel and knocking the pistol from his grip.
The acrid, rotten-smelling pulp from the center of the broken fruit exploded all over Little Eddie’s face and chest, clearing away the crowd faster and more effectively than the fact that he was brandishing a deadly weapon. While Little Eddie was knuckling the noxious mush out of his eyes and groping for his fallen
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