Big trouble, p.11
Big Trouble, page 11
"Jenny's house," said Monica. "That's where somebody shot the TV, right? And you were in the backyard, with Matt?"
"Yeah," said Andrew. "I mean, no."
"The imaginary Mend," said Monica, nodding. To Detective Baker, she said, "How about I swing over to Jenny's house, see if the kids went there?"
"Sounds good," said Baker.
Monica looked over at Walter, who was in Deep Lust Eyeball Lock with the HBD.
"Officer Kramitz," she said, "you ready to roll?"
"Yeah," said Walter. He told the HBD, "We gotta take care of somethin'. See you in a while." Walter had determined, through investigative techniques, that the HBD was staying in the Doubletree Hotel, room 312, and that she had two girlfriends with her, but they would not be a problem because they planned to spend the evening at a South Beach nightclub called Orgasm.
"Be careful," said the HBD, resting her hand on his forearm.
"Don't worry," he said, shifting his flex effort from biceps to triceps. "We're professionals." He turned and strode in a professional manner toward the cruiser. As he reached Monica, he whispered, "Lemme drive, OK?"
Monica, rolling her eyes, handed him the keys and got into the passenger seat. Walter gave the HBD one last view of his arm muscles, swung into the driver's seat, started the cruiser, and gunned the engine. He fired up the siren and, with a totally unnecessary squeal of the tires, roared off down Grand Avenue.
After a minute, Monica said, "Walter, turn off the damn siren."
Glancing into the rearview to make sure they were far enough from the HBD, he switched it off. "Hey," he said, "where 're we goin'?"
"The house over on Garbanzo Street that we went to the other night, where the kid had the squirt gun and somebody shot the TV."
"Why the hell 're we going there?" he asked.
'To see if the other two kids are there, Matt and Jenny," said Monica. "The detective wants to talk to them."
"What, we're a school bus now?" said Walter. "Jesus."
Walter could not believe he was being pulled away from an actual crime scene, featuring a hot babe, to be sent on this lame errand. Walter did not get into police work to fart around with kids and squirt guns. Walter wanted action.
Matt punched in the code Jenny had given him, and the electronic gate blocking the Herk driveway—which had just been repaired after having been broken open by the police—slid open. Matt pulled into the parking area in front of the garage, and he and Jenny got out and went to the front door. Jenny, who had held it together pretty well on the ride over, was shaking badly now, fumbling with her key. She finally got the lock open and burst into the foyer.
"Mom!" she shouted. "Mom where are you?"
"Jenny?" Anna's voice came from the living room. "Are you OK, honey?"
"Mom!" said Jenny, running to Anna. "Somebody shot at us! He kept shooting and shooting!" She wrapped her arms around Anna, sobbing violently.
"Who?" said Anna, hugging her. "Who was shooting at you, honey? Where?"
Jenny was sobbing too hard into Anna's shoulder to answer. Matt entered the living room. "What happened?" Anna asked him. "What's going on?''
"We were in the Grove?" said Matt. "Playing Killer? And I was gonna shoot Jenny? But somebody started shooting at us."
"You mean with a squirt gun?" asked Anna.
"No," said Matt. "It was a gun gun. With bullets."
"Oh my God!" said Anna, horrified. "Who?"
"We don't know," said Matt. "He was, like, this crazy person."
"Oh my God!" said Anna, hugging Jenny tighter.
"So we ran away, and we don't know where Andrew is," said Matt. "We came here to call the police."
"OK, right," said Anna, fighting to calm herself. "We'll call the police."
"Can I call my dad first?" asked Matt.
"Right," said Anna, "call your dad, let him know you're here, then we'll call the police."
"Mom," sobbed Jenny, "I was so scared."
"It's OK, honey," said Anna, stroking her daughter's hair. "It's OK. You're home now. You're safe here."
On the street outside, in the front seat of the Lexus, Snake looked in Arthur Herk's wallet to make sure the address on the driver's license—238 Garbanzo—was the house Herk had driven to.
Satisfied, he said, "OK, open it."
Herk punched in the code and the driveway gate slid open. Snake said, "OK, chief, who're we gonna find at home?"
"Nobody," said Arthur. "I mean, just my wife and her kid."
"That's all? Just women?" Snake knew that a lot of these drug kingpins had henchmen around.
"Far as I know," said Arthur.
"Well, you better be right," said Snake, " 'cause when we go in, I'm gonna have this gun pointin' right at your head. Anybody tries to fuck with me, your brains is spaghetti on the fuckin' wall."
"Look," said Arthur, "you don't need to shoot me. You can have whatever you want, OK? Just take it. Anything."
Snake thought about that.
"Your wife," he said. "She good-lookin'?"
Arthur turned and looked right at Snake.
"Very," he said. "And so is her kid."
Buffy moved cautiously through the dark and dripping underground passageway, gripping a wooden stake, knowing she had to destroy the hideous creature before it destroyed her. The creature was close by; she could feel it.
Eliot could feel it, too. In the excruciating tension of the moment, he had suspended, temporarily, the chewing of his Cheez-It. The small damp orange square rested uneasily on his tongue.
Buffy saw an opening just ahead to her right, a low, dark hole in the wall. She stopped in front of the opening, peering inside, her eyes unable to penetrate the gloom. But she knew the thing was in there. And she knew she had to go in there after it. Crouching, holding the stake in front of her, she began to edge forward into the darkness, when suddenly ...
BRINNNGG!
Eliot started, spewing a Cheez-It glob onto his shorts.
"Damn," he said, reaching for the phone. "Hello?"
"Dad, somebody shot at us and we gotta call the police," said Matt.
"Matt?" said Eliot. "Are you OK?"
"Yeah but we gotta call the police."
"Where are you?"
"Jenny's house. We drove the Kia here."
"What do you mean, somebody shot at you? You mean with a squirt gun?"
"No! With a gun!"
"Who?"
"Some guy. Andrew ran away and we don't know where he is and I gotta hang up and call the police."
"OK, you call the police and I'll get a cab over there right now."
Eliot hung up, grabbed his wallet, stuck his feet into his flip-flops, and ran out the door, not taking the time to turn off the TV.
The creature lunged out of the darkness and sent Buffy sprawling backward onto the ground. The stake flew from her hand, landing just out of her reach. The creature stood over her, snarling, its gaping, fanged mouth twisted into a grotesque grin of triumph. Things looked very bad for Buffy.
Matt hung up the phone and looked over at Anna and Jenny, who were sitting on the sofa. Anna had her arm around Jenny, who was still crying, but calming down.
"My dad's on his way over," Matt said. "I'll call the police now."
Anna nodded. Matt picked up the phone to dial 911. He had pressed 9 when the front door opened hard, whacking into the wall, the sudden noise causing Jenny to scream. Matt put down the phone to go see who it was.
eight
At the Jolly Jackal, Leo was sweeping up the shattered remains of the TV picture tube, while John was thinking about whether he should call his contact at Penultimate to report what had happened to Arthur Herk. He had just decided the hell with it—why go looking for trouble?—when the door opened and two men came in, one tall and one short, both wearing suits. The tall one held out a wallet, flipped open to show a badge.
"FBI," he said. "I'm agent Pat Greer, and this is Agent Alan Seitz."
John shot a quick glance at Leo. They were both thinking the same thing, which was that, the way this evening was turning out, maybe they'd been better off back in Grzkjistan, drinking solvents from barrels.
To Agent Greer, John said, "How I can help FBI?"
"You can tell FBI where the suitcase is," said Greer. He paused a beat, then added, "Ivan."
John stared at him. "My name is John," he said.
"Sure it is," said Greer. "Your name is John, and you're just a hardworking, law-abiding, immigrant small-business man, running this little shithole bar where you got no customers."
"Yes," said John.
"Yes indeed," said Greer. "Then you surely will not mind if we take a look in the back room. The one with all the locks."
"You have warrant?" said John.
Greer looked at Seitz and shook his head. "Isn't it heartwarming," he said, "the way a person can come here from another country, with nothing but the shirt on his back and maybe a couple hundred grand he got from selling military weapons he doesn't own, and in just a short time in America, he has embraced our way of life to the point where he wants to know if we got a warrant? Doesn't that just warm the cockles of your heart, Agent Seitz?"
"It warms the shit out of my cockles," said Agent Seitz. "My cockles are burnin' up."
Ivan frowned and looked at Leo, who shrugged to indicate that he didn't know what cockles were, either.
Greer turned back to John. "Listen, Ivan," he said. "Number one, we already got you. You have not been careful about who you do business with. We got you so good that, if we want, by the time you get out of federal prison, there will be glaciers in Key West, OK? That's number one. Number two is, we don't need a warrant. We're operating under ... what's that thing that we're operating under called again, Agent Seitz?"
"Special Executive Order 768 dash 4," said Seitz.
"That's right," said Greer, "Special Executive Order 768 dash 4, which basically means that, if it's a matter of national security, which this is, we can search wherever we want, and we don't need a warrant. We can send a search party and a Doberman pinscher up your ass if we want, Ivan."
John glanced at Leo, then turned back to Greer. He said, "I want lawyer."
"Did you hear that, Agent Seitz?" said Greer. "He wants a lawyer! As is his right, under our constitution! Which we hold sacred!"
"You want me to shoot him in the forehead?" asked Agent Seitz, producing a pistol from his shoulder holster.
"Not right now," replied Greer. To John, he said, "My partner would like to shoot you in the forehead, which I have absolutely no doubt he could legally do, under Special Executive Order 768 dash 4. Me, I'm thinking it would be better, for all concerned, if you just got out your keys and showed me around that back room, OK?"
John stood still for a moment, then reached for his pocket.
"Easy," said Seitz, not aiming the gun directly at John, but raising it a little.
Slowly, John pulled out a ring of keys.
"Excellent!" said Greer. "That's the spirit of Special Executive Order 768 dash 4! Now let's you and I go see what you got back there. Agent Seitz will stay out here and be ready to render assistance to Leonid, in case the customer load gets to be too much for him to handle."
Greer and John went down the hallway to the back room. Seitz walked over to the bar, slung one leg over a stool, and pointed his chin in the direction of the shattered TV.
"What happened?" he asked Leo.
"Jerry Springer," said Leo.
"About time," said Seitz.
"What do you think?" said Leonard. "We go in the front?"
He and Henry had followed Arthur Herk's Lexus to 238 Garbanzo. They had watched it go in through the gate; they had pulled over to the curb just past the driveway.
"No," said Henry. "I think we wanna go around the back again."
"With the fuckin' mosquitoes?" said Leonard. "Chrissakes, why? I mean, we could just go in there, pop our boy, bingbing, we're onna plane to Newark. We ain't gonna have a problem with the guys wearin' panty hose, for chrissakes."
"I wanna see what they're doin'," said Henry. "I wanna know what's in that suitcase. And I wanna make sure we don't have any surprises. Like somebody up a tree." He put the car in gear and started driving around to the side of the property.
Leonard sighed. "We don't shoot somebody soon," he said, "I'm gonna forget how."
The first person Matt saw, when he reached the foyer, was Arthur Herk, standing in the doorway. Matt was going to say hello, but the look on Arthur's face—a very unpleasant look, even for Arthur—stopped him.
"Who is it, Matt?" It was Anna's voice, from the living room.
Matt started to answer, but stopped, because he had just noticed, behind Arthur, a short, wide, bearded man lugging a suitcase. Behind him was ... ohmigod ...
"Who is it?" came Anna's voice again, now rising.
Matt backed around the corner, followed by Arthur and Puggy. Anna, seeing them, said, "Arthur! Who's ... " She caught her breath, and Jenny screamed, as the panty hose-distorted face of Snake came into view.
"SHUDDUP, 'less you wanna get shot," said Snake, brandishing the gun at Anna and Jenny. They quieted, both staring, horrified, at the hole in the end of the gun. Snake liked that. He liked holding a gun, having this magical thing in his hand that he could just point at people, like a wand, and they did whatever he said.
He studied the two women on the sofa, the kingpin's women. He was pretty sure he'd seen the older one somewhere around the Grove ... Yeah, that was her; she'd walked past him like he was a piece of shit. Tonight would be different.
Snake moved closer to Anna and Jenny; they shrank back on the sofa.
"Lessee what we got here," said Snake. "Mmm-mmm. These are some fine-lookin' women, here. Fme-lookin'." He glanced back at Arthur. "Just like you promised."
Anna looked at Arthur. He would not meet her eyes.
Snake said to Anna, "We gonna have some fun tonight." With his non-gun hand, he reached down and slowly, deliberately, stroked his crotch.
"If you touch my daughter," said Anna, "I swear to God I'll cut your balls off."
"Your daughter, huh?" said Snake, looking at Jenny, his hand still rubbing between his legs. "That right? She's a young thing? Can't leave her momma?" He raised the gun and aimed it right at Anna's face, and he could see in the way she looked at it that, despite her tough talk, he owned her. As long as he had the magic wand, he owned everything.
"I touch what I wanna touch," he said. He took his hand from his crotch and reached it toward Jenny, who whimpered and shrank back.
Matt said, "Drop the gun right now or I'll shoot you."
Snake, still aiming at Anna, turned his head and saw the boy aiming a gun at him. It was the JetBlast Junior squirt gun, but it looked real to Snake.
"Don't fuck with me, kid," he said.
"I swear I'll shoot you, mister," said Matt.
"You shoot me," said Snake, "I shoot your girlfriend." He moved his gun slightly, so it was pointing at Jenny. He was not letting go of his wand.
They stood that way for five seconds, Matt aiming at Snake, Snake aiming at Jenny, nobody with a clue what to do next. The silence ended with a crash from the foyer, which was the sound of Eddie, blinded by his panty hose, falling over an umbrella stand. The sound startled everybody, especially Matt, who squeezed the trigger of his JetBlast Junior, squirting a stream of water onto Snake.
"Whoops," said Matt.
Snake, in two steps, was next to Matt, slashing sideways with his gun barrel.
"Unnnh," said Matt, going down, his hands grabbing his face. Snake knelt and pressed the gun barrel against Mart's ear.
"You fuckin' punk" he said. "Before I kill you, I'm gonna let you watch what I do to your girlfriend, you hear me? You hear me?" He forced the gun barrel hard into Mart's ear.
"Yes!" said Matt. "OW YES!"
"You better hear me, punk," said Snake. "Eddie! Get in here!"
"Dammit, Snake," said Eddie, from the foyer, "you keep sayin' my name!"
"Never mind that," said Snake. "Get in here and take that thing off your head."
"They'll see us," said Eddie, feeling his way into the living room.
"Don't matter anymore," said Snake, ripping the panty hose off his head. He was thinking like a kingpin now; he had a plan.
Eddie took off his panty hose, brushed some greasy strands of hair out of his eyes, and blinked at the scene in the living room. On the sofa were two women, one he'd hassled for money earlier that day in the Grove, the other very young, both way out of
Eddie's league. In the corner were the two guys they had brought from the bar, the kingpin and the little strong guy that Snake had kicked. On the floor was some kid, holding his face.
Eddie went over to Snake and whispered, "Snake, what the fuck're you doin'?"
"What we're doin'," Snake whispered back, "is we're gonna tie up these assholes"—he nodded toward Arthur, Puggy, and Matt—"and then we're gonna have us some pussy"—he nodded toward Anna and Jenny—"and then we're gonna find out what's inna suitcase, and where this guy keeps his real money, and then we're gonna tidy up in here, and then we're gonna go to the Bahamas and we ain't never gonna have to work again."
"The Bahamas?" said Eddie. "Snake, we don't know nothing about no Bahamas."
"We're gonna find out," said Snake. He'd heard they went pretty easy on kingpins in the Bahamas.
"What do you mean, tidy up in here?" said Eddie.
"I mean get rid of the loose ends," said Snake. "Now go find us some rope."
Agent Greer, with John preceding him, came out of the back room of the Jolly Jackal, shaking his head.
"It's not there," he said to Agent Seitz. "They got enough stuff back there to fight a war with North Korea, but no suitcase. Ivan here says he doesn't know what suitcase I'm talking about."
"Is that right, Ivan?" asked Seitz.
John nodded.
"Are you maybe thinking that you could use the suitcase as, like, a bargaining chip?" said Seitz. "Like, we want it so bad that we work out some kind of deal with you, like you tell us where it is, and we go easy on you? Maybe even just deport you back to Russia? Is that what you're maybe thinking?"
