Honey Moon by Arlene Webb

hand, his other hand empty, to burn into his face.
    “Two thousand, you said?” he snapped.
    “Please keep your voice down so the cams don’t trigger an alert. Are you Roger Moore? May I see some ID?”
    “You can bite my ass, buddy. That Nixon?” the guy growled, but he’d kept his voice low.
    “Er…I’ll give you everything in my wallet—two of those bills—if you tell me if you’re the pilot for the moon shuttle leaving in a few hours.”
    “Yes. Moore, that’s me.”
    As if he’d trained for it all his life, Sam shoved his foot in the door and sucker punched the guy. The man grunted, fury filled his eyes, but he didn’t get his arm out before the Cristal kissed him in the side of the skull and the big bad pilot went down.
    The cam was recording away, but yippee, not a single yelp to trigger attention. Sam set the bottle inside and bent to hit the guy on the back of his head with his fist. The rough moan stopped. Moore collapsed and went still.
    Took him a few seconds to yank Moore farther into the apartment and close the door. His heart in his throat, Sam felt for a pulse—strong and steady. His heart out of his throat and trying to strangle him with aortas clamped on either side of his neck, he let the guy down and hurried past the couch, floor littered with takeout and empty plastic bottles of beer, into the next room.
    Relief hit him like a ton of lunar rock as he absorbed the fact there was no wife, husband, a child or even a playmate. The bed was messy and to his disgust, the black market and obsolete-in-this-era magazine had wadded tissues beside it, was open and exposing compromising pictures of a nude girl, eyes deadened, who couldn’t have been more than fourteen.
    He held back, but still allowed his boot to kick the unconscious pilot in the gut before he dragged him to the bedroom and hefted him onto the mattress.
    His antique Boy Scout pocket knife, Be Prepared written in gold ink down the side, encouraged the sheet to tear easily. He bound Moore’s hands and feet so tightly, he’d have welts. He made the gag loose enough the man could breathe, removed the wrist phone and pocketed it.
    A thin, small, metal case lay on the floor in the corner and his trusty knife was useless. Damn thing wasn’t at all prepared for the complexity of a measly lock. As expected, the blade broke as he tried to jimmy the carrier open. Sam shrugged and picked it up. He grabbed the uniform thrown over a chair, the cap on the floor beside it, and set the items down beside the door.
    Outside, in front of the cam— Christ, what’s it matter at this point —he retrieved the duffel bag then went back inside and tossed the delivery service jacket into the corner, a time bomb holding more of his DNA, but c’est la vie . He shoved the pilot’s uniform and cap into the bag and grabbed the champagne and briefcase then exited. He waved the bottle at the cam as he slunk for the elevator.
    The first person to make eye contact with him on the bus was an elderly man with a shrunken chest and work-worn hands clasped in his lap. At 1000 th street, he silently handed the guy the champagne and hopped off.
    Back at his apartment, Sam tossed the duffel bag on the table and set the metal case on the floor. He spread a towel on the four-by-four table, retrieved the pilot’s uniform and laid the shirt out. A scan of his wrist phone over an app on the com-desk and a pre-heated ironing device popped up. He had ten minutes before it went cold and he’d have to pay another fifty dollars for five more minutes of heat.
    He failed. Cost two hundred dollars before the jacket, shirt and pants were to his liking and hanging in the closet. That was the easy part.
    Shaking exhaustion from his face, he headed out with the determination of a man about to cry wolf. He now had a less-shaky platform to stand on, thanks to the ominous metal case he’d found, as well as the guy who supposedly could fly a shuttle living in a seedy dump. It added up