Read Island of the Sequined Love Nun for Free Online Page A

you stay?"
    This guy looked criminal, just an eye patch short of a pirate. Tucker didn't want to tell him anything.
    "How do I get to the Paradise Inn?"
    The pirate called to a teenager who was sitting in the shade watching a score of beat-up Japanese cars with blackened windows jockeying for position in the dirt street.
    "Rindi! Paradise."
    The younger man, dressed like a Compton rapper-oversized shorts, football jersey, baseball cap reversed over a blue bandanna-came over and grabbed Tucker's pack. Tuck kept one hand on an arm strap and fought the kid for control.
    "You go with him," the pirate said. "He take you Paradise."
    "Come on, Holmes," the kid said. "My car air-conditioned."
    Tucker let go of the pack and the kid whisked it away through the jostle of cars to an old Honda Civic with a cellophane back window and bailing wire holding the passenger door shut. Tuck followed him, stepping quickly between the cars, each one lurching forward as if to hit him as he passed. He looked for the driver's expressions, but the windshields were all blacked out with plastic film.
    The kid threw Tuck's pack in the hatchback, then unwired the door and held it open. Tucker climbed in, feeling, once again, completely at the mercy of Lady Luck. Now l get to see the place where they rob and kill the white guys, he thought.
    As they drove, Tuck looked out on the lagoon. Even through the tinted window the blue of the lagoon shone as if illuminated from below. Island women in scuba masks waded shoulder deep; their floral dresses flowing around them made them look like multicolored jellyfish. Each carried a short steel spear slung from a piece of surgical tubing. Large plastic buckets floated on the surface in which the women were depositing their catch.
    "What are they hunting?" Tuck asked the driver.
    "Octopus, urchin, small fish. Mostly octopus. Hey, where you from in United States?"
    "I grew up in California."
    The kid lit up. "California! You have Crips there, right?"
    "Yeah, there's gangs."
    "I'm a Crip," the kid said, pointing to his blue bandanna with pride. "Me and my homies find any Bloods here, we gonna pop a nine on 'em."
    Tucker was amazed. On the side of the road a beautiful little girl in a flowered dress was drinking from a green coconut. Here in the car there was a gang war going on. He said, "Where are the Bloods?"
    Rindi shook his head sadly. "Nobody want to be Bloods. Only Crips on Truk. But if we see one, we gonna bust a cap on 'em." He pulled back a towel on the seat to reveal a beat up Daisy air pistol.
    Tuck made a mental note not to wear a red bandanna and accidentally fill the Blood shortage. He had no desire to be killed or wounded over a glorified game of cowboys and Indians.
    "How far to the hotel?"
    "This it," Rindi said, wrenching the Honda across the road into a dusty parking lot.
    The Paradise Inn was a two-story, crumbling stucco building with a crown of rusting rebar beckoning skyward for a third floor that would never be built. Tuck let the boy, Rindi, carry his pack to an upstairs room: mint green cinder block over brown linoleum, a beat-up metal desk, smoke-stained floral curtains, a twin bed with a torn 1950s bedspread, the smell of mildew and insecticide. Rindi put the pack in the doorless closet and cranked the little window air conditioner to high.
    "Too late for shower. Water come on again four to six."
    Tuck glanced into the bathroom. Mistake. An exotic looking orange thing was growing on the shower curtain. He said, "Where can I get a beer?"
    Rindi grinned. "We have lounge. Budweiser, 'king of beers.' MTV on satellite." He cocked his wrists and performed a gangsta rap move that looked as if he'd contracted a rhythmic cerebral palsy. "Yo, G, we chill with the phattest jams? Snoop, Ice, Public Enemy."
    "Oh, good," Tuck said. "We can do a drive-by later. How do I get to the lounge?"
    "Down steps, outside, go right." He paused, looking concerned. "We have to shoot out driver's side. Other window not go