Motor Mouth

FIFTEEN

Felicia, Rosa, and I got back into the Camry, rolled the windows down, and followed the black limo to Suzanne’s condo. We valet-parked the car and rode the elevator to the twelfth floor. All the time, I was dying to jump up and down and yell and be embarrassingly excited because I’d found Ray. Since I hadn’t a clue as to what was going on, and I didn’t want to screw anything up, I just kept my lips pressed tight together and my hands balled into fists at my side and tried to look calm.

“It’s just a temporary rental until I get everything straightened out,” Suzanne said, plugging her key into the lock. “Still, it’s not bad, and it’s got a great view.”

The condo stretched across the back of the building with floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on the ocean. The décor was modern, mostly white with touches of pastel. The kitchen was high tech and looked totally unused.

“Where’s Itsy Poo?” I asked Suzanne.

“She goes to play group on Tuesdays. And then she gets a whirlpool bath and a pedicure.”

Beans was pressed into my leg as if he understood pedicure and didn’t think a lot of it.

Suzanne set the stone crabs on the kitchen counter. “Follow me, ladies, and I’ll show you what pissed-off mothers do for fun.”

We all marched into the bedroom, which was about half the size of a football field. Her bed was one of those four-poster things, draped in white gauze. The carpet was white. The woods were pale. The upholstered pieces were white. The curtains were drawn, and I thought this was probably to keep the sun out so she didn’t go snow blind.

“This unit has his and hers bathrooms,” Suzanne said. “My bathroom is through the door to the right. And his bathroom is in here.”

Suzanne took a key off the dresser, unlocked the door to his bathroom, and stepped back. Ray was prisoner in the little room, still dressed in the clothes he’d worn to the beach meeting. He was tethered with an elaborate system of clunky chains that wrapped around the toilet and the pipes under the sink. His hands were free to do whatever he needed to do, but he didn’t have enough chain to do what he really wanted to do…which was to choke Suzanne. He had a pillow and a quilt, a stack of magazines, and a tray with leftovers from takeout.

“Now you’re all accomplices to kidnapping,” Ray said. “If you don’t get me out of here, you’re all going to jail for the rest of your lives.”

“What did he do?” Felicia asked. “He cheat on you?”

“No. He’s my brother-in-law,” Suzanne said. “He rudely killed my husband before I had the chance to do it myself. And now he’s planning to swindle my kids out of their inheritance.”

“You have no proof,” Ray said.

“It’s always a mistake to mess with a mother,” Suzanne said.

“So this is where Ray went after he talked to Hooker and me,” I said.

“It was easy,” Suzanne said. “I told him I wanted to talk to him in private about transferring the boat over to him. He came up here. I hit him with a blast from a stun gun, trussed him up, and I was in business. I guess the moron never told anyone he was coming here.”

“Ask her about the chip,” Ray said to Suzanne.

“Shut up.”

“Ask her!”

“What about the chip?” I said to Suzanne.

“Ray and Oscar have a product in R and D that’s worth a lot of money. They didn’t realize I knew about it, but I keep my ears open.

“I knew it was ready for sale, and I knew Oscar was using it on the cars. It got him a championship, but more than that, it was a flashy way to demonstrate the technology to prospective buyers. I was willing to be the good corporate wife and keep my mouth shut. I was even willing to be the good ex-corporate wife and keep my mouth shut. I’m not willing to be the widow who sits by and watches the slime-bag brother rape the company.” Suzanne’s frozen eyebrows narrowed ever so slightly. “So I had to bring Ray in for questioning, right, Ray?”

Ray gave her the death glare. And Suzanne ignored it.

“And now the prototype has disappeared, and Ray doesn’t want to tell me where it’s wandered off to,” Suzanne said.

“I told you where the chip is,” Ray said. “Jesus, why don’t you just ask her?”

Suzanne kept her eyes on Ray. “Ray has this insultingly ridiculous story he’s constructed about the product disappearance. His contention is that you and Hooker have it. And it gets even better. He claims you got this particular product by stealing a car hauler. The same hauler that was supposed to carry Oscar back to Mexico.”

“Are you talking about the gizmo in the gearshift knob?” I asked her.

Suzanne turned to me, mouth dropped open, eyes as wide as they’d go on Botox. “I thought he was lying. The story was insane. I mean, who would believe something like that? Don’t tell me it’s true!”

“It’s true,” I said.

Suzanne tipped her head back and gave a whoop of laughter. She looked over at Beans. “I guess the tooth marks in Oscar make sense to me now. You should give him an extra dog biscuit for that one.”

“He thought Mr. Dead Guy was a big chew toy,” Felicia said. “He’s just a puppy inside.”

“So where’s the circuit board?” Suzanne asked. “Do you have it?”

“Not exactly. But I know where it is.”

“And it’s safe? You can get it for me?”

“Yes.”

Suzanne gave a sigh of relief. “You can’t imagine how much time and money went into the making of that thing. It’s my sons’ future.”

“So it wasn’t about the boat?”

“Not entirely. The boat was just part of it. By the time Ray’s executorship ran out, there wouldn’t have been anything left of the company. Ray would have stripped every asset from it.”

Ray didn’t say anything. They’d obviously had this conversation before and it didn’t end well for Ray.

“There are a couple things I don’t understand,” I said to Suzanne. “I know the value of traction control in a race car, but I get the feeling this is bigger than just rigging a contest. Why is this one little circuit board so important?”

“The technology has the potential for wide use,” Suzanne said. “Everything on that tiny circuit card is exclusive to Huevo. The concept, the programming, the wireless technology, and the battery composite are all straight out of development and have never before been seen…anywhere. If the circuit board fell into the wrong hands, it could eventually be unraveled and the technology could be stolen. The battery alone is worth hundreds of millions. The wireless technology will revolutionize the aircraft industry.”

“So you wanted to get it back just so it wouldn’t get duplicated?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Suzanne said. “Idiot Oscar amused himself by producing a microprocessor that could easily be embedded in an engine and regulate engine speed. It was illegal and made use of the new battery and wireless technology, but it was a simple program, and it self-destructed each week when given the signal. At the same time, Oscar had established a partnership with a technology broker.”

“Anthony Miranda?”

“Yes. Miranda has an overseas client who is willing to pay top dollar. Unfortunately, some of that technology could have been used in very bad ways by Miranda’s client. I would have stepped in sooner, but I didn’t know that part of it until I got to Florida.

“Anyway, a prototype circuit board had been produced for Miranda. It was programmed to demonstrate the wireless technology that could be used in aircraft. So genius Oscar brought two different circuit boards to Florida and somehow managed to put the wrong circuit board in the sixty-nine car.”

“It was Rodriguez,” Ray said. “He picked up the wrong package. I had both packages labeled and locked away in the hotel’s safety-deposit box. Miranda’s man was flying in the day after the race to pick up the prototype for demonstration. I didn’t even know about the mix-up until the day after the race when I went to get Miranda’s package.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Let me get this straight. Rodriguez put the wrong circuit board in the number sixty-nine?”

“The chip that actually controls engine function is embedded directly onto the engine, but since the signal was traveling some distance to the car, we found it to be a more reliable system if we added a second chip that picked up the start signal and relayed that signal to the primary. Because we powered the relay chip with the new battery material, we kept the chip close to us until the last moment. And as a final precaution, it was programmed to self-destruct. Plus, we only used the second chip on Huevo cars. The morning of the race Rodriguez was in a hurry and grabbed the wrong package out of the safe. And Rodriguez placed the chip in the knob without examining it.”

“Could that prototype circuit board control the car?”

“No,” Ray said. “And it wasn’t programmed to self-destruct, either.”

“So you’re telling me Dickie actually won the race?”

This was the first time Ray smiled. “Yes,” he said. “Isn’t that a kicker? Who would have thought he could actually drive that car?”

“Why didn’t you hurry up and make another circuit board for Miranda?”

“There’s no way to hurry. The prototype circuit board and battery could have been reproduced…but not quickly. Certainly not in the two week window we were tied to. The demonstration schedule was in place.”

“Why didn’t you just reschedule?”

“Imagine that Miranda is Darth Vader,” Ray said. “And you had to tell Lord Vader that he needed to reschedule his demonstration. Miranda is ruthless. Miranda has no tolerance for mistakes. And when the chip didn’t get dropped into Miranda’s hand as promised, his twisted paranoid mind screamed double cross. Miranda’s assumption was that I was selling the chip elsewhere. And things turned very ugly.”

“Anybody mind if I have some stone crabs?” Felicia wanted to know.

“Omigod,” Suzanne said. “I forgot about the stone crabs. Let’s all go into the kitchen, and I’ll have a pitcher of booze sent up.”

“Hey!” Ray said. “Pay attention here! What about me?”

“What about you?” Suzanne asked.

“I’m chained!”

“Don’t whine, Ray,” Suzanne said. “It’s unattractive.”

“I told you everything you wanted to know,” Ray said. “You’re just keeping me here because you’re a sicko. Not my fault that you turned into a dried-up old hag and Oscar dumped you, sweetie pie.”

Suzanne lunged at Ray, and we all jumped on her and dragged her back from the bathroom.

“Not a good idea to wrestle with him,” I told her. “I need him to be alive and coherent so he can set Rodriguez and Lucca up as murder suspects.” I looked at Ray. “You’re still going to do that, right?”

“Sure,” Ray said. Sullen but hopeful.

“Unfortunately, Rodriguez and Lucca have disappeared and might be dead, so you’ll have to work that into your plan,” I told him.

I looked over at Suzanne. “Do you mind keeping him here awhile longer? He’s probably safer here than out on the street where Darth Vader might run into him.”

“Sure. We’re having a good time together. And I know it seems crass to bring this up, but I want the circuit board. It belongs to Huevo Enterprises.”

Rosa, Felicia, and I cut our eyes to Beans.

“He ate it,” I said.

“I put it down for only one minute,” Felicia said. “And he did a big lick on the table, and the little thingy was gone. And now we’re waiting for him to make poopie.”

Suzanne went dead still. “Are you serious?”

“Yes,” we all said.

She stood with her hands slack at her sides and her face expressionless. “Let me get this straight. We’re waiting for that dog to shit out my billion-dollar circuit board.”

“Yes,” we all said.

“This is priceless,” Suzanne said. “I’ve been keeping Ray here for two days because the true story he was telling me was too insane to be believable, and now it turns out a Saint Bernard ate the circuit board. Is there anything else I should know?”

“Miranda is holding Hooker hostage for the circuit board. And there’s another man missing. A friend of mine who is also involved. Jefferson Davis Warner.”

“Those guys got Gobbles?” Felicia said. “I didn’t know that. That’s terrible. He’s such a sweetie. I bet he’s scared.”

“Ray knows where he is,” I told everybody. “Don’t you, Ray?”

“We had him on the boat with us. And then we moved him to the car,” Ray said. “Rodriguez was keeping him close. He had him in the trunk.”

“He’s not on the boat, and he’s not in the car,” I said.

“Then I don’t know where he is,” Ray said. “You have to ask Rodriguez.”

My phone buzzed, and I looked at the readout. Skippy.

“Sorry,” Skippy said. “I went to a bunch of different sources, but no properties turned up. Has the dog pooped yet?”

“No.”

“I got an actor lined up, and if you don’t get too close, he could be Hooker. All he has to do is get in the car and follow the guy in front of him at parade speed. We might be okay as long as he doesn’t have to talk. If he opens his mouth, I’m fucked.”

The line went dead, and I put my phone back in my pocket. I was between a rock and a hard place. I wanted to give the circuit board to Suzanne and her kids. I really did. But more than that…I wanted Hooker safe.

“I know that circuit board belongs to you,” I said to Suzanne, “but I can’t sacrifice Hooker for it.”

Ray had been sitting on the toilet lid, taking it all in. “If you cut me in, I can help,” he said. “I can talk to Miranda. I can make a deal so everyone benefits…even Hooker.”

“Eat dirt and die,” Suzanne said. And she closed and locked the bathroom door.

We followed Suzanne out of the bedroom and into the kitchen.

“If I let him go, he’ll kill me,” Suzanne said. “Just like he killed Oscar. And I know he killed Oscar. I have spies everywhere, listening at doors, reading memos before they get shredded. Ray decided to stage a coup, and Rodriguez was the designated hit man. Rodriguez grabbed the wrong chip because he’d just drilled Oscar and his slut girlfriend, and he was running late. Rodriguez had Oscar packaged up and in the back of his car when he stopped off at the hotel to get the chip. Rodriguez was in a rush and not paying attention.”

“What are you going to do with the guy in the bathroom?” Rosa wanted to know.

“I don’t know,” Suzanne said. “I brought him here because I was told Miranda was coming into town to personally pick up the prototype. I thought I might be able to get the chip ahead of Miranda and use it as leverage to keep Ray in line. After I had Ray here awhile, I realized nothing is going to keep Ray in line. Ray is insane. He feels no remorse for anything.”

“Maybe he needs to get fitted with cement shoes and go for a swim,” Rosa said.

“First thing, we need to find a way to get Hooker and not give up the circuit board,” I said. “Then we’ll worry about Ray.”

“We could force them to give us Hooker,” Felicia said. “Just go in there and shoot ’em up.”

“How many men are with Hooker?” Suzanne asked.

“Miranda and two others, for sure,” I said. “Rodriguez and Lucca have disappeared. They could be with Miranda, but most likely they’re playing poker with Oscar.”

“We could take them,” Rosa said. “Four against three.”

“I’m game,” Suzanne said.

This was a ridiculous idea that scared the bejeezus out of me. It wasn’t as if we were army rangers or something. We were a former Vegas showgirl, a cigar roller, a grandmother who sold fruit, and a mechanic who wasn’t any good with guns.

“Any other ideas?” I asked.

Silence. No other ideas.

“Gee, it sounds like a good plan,” I said, “but we can’t do it because we don’t know where they are.” Thank God.

“I’ve got that covered,” Suzanne said. “We let Ray lead us to them. Three of us leave and one stays behind to guard Ray. The one who stays behind opens the door to see if Ray’s okay, and then she feels sorry for him, so she opens the handcuffs so he can have some stone crabs. And she lets Ray escape. Then we just follow Ray.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It sounds dangerous for the one who stays behind.” In fact, it sounded nuts!

“Piece of cake,” Felicia said. “I could do it. Look at me. I’m a grandma. He’ll believe I would let him go. But you have to promise to come get me before you bust in on the bad guys. I don’t want to miss anything.”

Who was this woman? Did she moonlight as the Terminator?

Rosa was at the wheel of the Camry, Suzanne was riding shotgun beside her, and I was in the backseat with Beans. We were across the street from the condo building, waiting to get the call from Felicia telling us Ray had escaped. Felicia had now been alone with Ray for almost twenty minutes, and I was mentally cracking my knuckles, worried something had gone wrong.

The call came through just as Ray bolted through the front door and hailed a cab.

“Felicia says it worked perfect,” Rosa said, following Ray’s cab. “She said it took so long because he locked her in the bathroom. And then she thinks he ate some stone crabs. And she said he took her cell phone and he better not be making any calls to Mexico.”

The cab went south on Collins, and we all knew the destination. Ray was going to the boat. He didn’t know about the fire. He didn’t know the boat had sailed. He wasn’t sure if Rodriguez and Lucca were at large. He was probably calling them on Felicia’s cell phone from the cab, not happy because they weren’t answering. Hell, what do I know, maybe they were answering. Maybe they were with Hooker, or maybe they were hiding out in Orlando with Mickey Mouse.

The cab pulled into the lot and dropped Ray off. Rosa idled on the street, and I ran through the courtyard attached to Monty’s so I could spy on Ray when he stepped onto the marina footpath.

I slipped into place, to the side of the building, just as Ray emerged from the lot and stood, staring at the empty space on the dock. He made a hand gesture that shouted where the fuck did the boat go? And he was back on his phone. Angry. Punching numbers in. Talking to someone. He had his hand on his hip, head down, trying not to go entirely gonzo with the person on the other end. He picked his head up and looked around. Not in my direction. Too pissed off to see anything anyway. He paced up and down the walkway, talking. He disconnected and punched in another number. The conversation was much calmer this time, but I could see the rage simmering below the surface. Not talking to an underling, I thought. Maybe talking to Miranda. At least that was my hope, because now that we were committed to a plan, I wanted to get on with it.

It was early afternoon. Not a cloud in the sky. Slight breeze coming in off the ocean, ruffling the water and rustling in the palms. Cool enough to wear jeans but warm enough to wear a short-sleeved shirt. In other words, the weather was perfect. And Florida would have been paradise if only I wasn’t wanted for questioning in multiple murders and if only Hooker wasn’t being held hostage, and if only Beans didn’t have a billion-dollar circuit board working its way through his intestines.

Ray looked at his watch and nodded. He looked in the direction of the parking lot. He did another nod, then he put the phone away. Someone was coming to pick him up, I thought. Be interesting to see if it was Rodriguez or Lucca.

Thirty minutes later, I was back in the Camry with Rosa and Suzanne and Beans. Ray was waiting at the lot entrance. The black BMW rolled past us and stopped curbside. Ray got in, and the car pulled off into traffic. Simon was driving. Rosa kept them in sight, and she swept past them when the BMW stopped in front of the Pearl. She made an illegal U-turn and parked half a block away, facing the hotel. The BMW flashers went on, and Simon got out and went into the lobby. Five minutes later, Felicia called and said her nephew reported the BMW. Ten minutes later, Simon came out with the luggage, got behind the wheel, and took off.

“They checked out,” Rosa said. “I guess they didn’t think a fancy-ass hotel was a good place to rough up a hostage.”

I knew Rosa was just using the phrase as an expression, but the thought of Hooker getting roughed up made my stomach sick.

The BMW went north on Collins, turned onto Seventeenth Street, and took the Venetian Causeway. We were two cars back, watching carefully. The BMW turned into a residential neighborhood on Di Lido Island, wound its way to the northernmost point, and pulled into a gated driveway.

“Nice house,” Rosa said, looking through the wrought-iron gate to the house beyond. “I bet they got Dobermans.”

“This isn’t going to be easy,” Suzanne said. “We’re going to have to scale a six-foot fence to get into this place. And we don’t have any idea how many people are in the house.”

We were parked down the street, debating our options, when my phone rang.

“This is Anthony Miranda,” he said. “I know the location of the circuit board, and I see no reason to wait any longer for it. You have one hour to give me either the circuit board or the dog.”

Ray was a big blabbermouth. “And if I don’t make the one-hour delivery?”

“I start to cut your friend’s fingers off his hand.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“It’s business,” Miranda said. “Nothing personal. There’s a small parking lot adjacent to a convenience store on the corner of Fifteenth Street and Alton Road. My representative will be there to collect my property. One hour.”

“I expect to collect my property as well. I’m not handing anything over until Hooker’s released.”

“Hooker will be released when I take possession of the circuit board.”

“And Gobbles?”

“And Gobbles.”

I disconnected and looked at the ladies. “I have an hour to get the circuit board to Miranda. If I don’t get the circuit board to him, he’s going to start cutting Hooker’s fingers off.”

“Hard for him to drive without fingers,” Rosa said.

“I have an idea,” Suzanne said. “If we could get Beans to poop out the circuit board, we could disable it. Remove the battery and ruin the circuitry. Then we could give it to Miranda, and we will have fulfilled his demands without giving him the technology. Not our fault if the circuit board got damaged, right? I mean, it’s been through a lot.”

We all looked at Beans. He was panting and drooling. He lifted his ass off the seat a little and farted. We all jumped out of the car and fanned the air.

“Do you think that smelled like prunes?” Rosa wanted to know. “I think I might have caught a hint of prune.”

We got back into the car and Rosa drove off De Lido and took the causeway to Belle Island Park. She pulled up to a grassy area, and I got out with Beans and started walking him around.

“Do you have to poop?” I asked him. “Does Beansy have to poopie?”

He took a seven-minute tinkle, and he did a lot of drooling, but he didn’t poop.

“It’s not time yet,” I told everyone. “He’s not ready.”

Suzanne checked her watch. “He has forty-five minutes.”

Rosa drove to Suzanne’s condo, and Suzanne ran in to get Felicia out of the bathroom. When they came out, they had more prunes.

“I borrowed them from my neighbor,” Suzanne said. “She actually eats them. Can you imagine?”

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” I said. “He’s already had a lot of prunes.”

“Yes, but look how big he is,” Felicia said. “He could take a lot of prunes. Maybe not the whole box this time. Maybe only half a box.”

I fed Beans a couple prunes, and he started to whine and claw at the door.

“He’s ready!” Felicia said. “Get him out. Get the bags.”

“He needs grass,” I told them. “He only goes on grass.”

“Ocean Drive!” Suzanne shouted.

Rosa had the car in gear. “I’ve got it covered. Hang on. We’re only a couple blocks away.”

She rocketed down Collins, hung a left onto Ocean, and slid to a stop at the curb. We all got out and ran with Beans to the grassy stretch of park between the road and beach. Beans reached the grass and abruptly stopped and hunched. I had a plastic bag wrapped around my hand. I was set to catch. Felicia had Beans by the leash. Suzanne and Rosa had spare bags.

“I knew the prunes would work,” Felicia said.

Beans put his head down, squinched his eyes closed, and a box and a half of prunes and God knows what else exploded from his back end in a gelatinous spray that shot out over a ten-foot radius.

We all jumped back bug-eyed.

“Maybe too many prunes,” Rosa said.

Beans picked his head up and smiled. He was done. He felt fine. He pranced around a little at the end of his leash.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s not panic. He’s obviously empty. So the circuit board has to be here somewhere. Everybody look.”

“It’s too small,” Suzanne said. “It would have been hard to find in…you know, a pile. It’s going to be impossible to find in this grass.”

“Maybe they’ll only cut a couple fingers off,” Rosa said. “As long as he’s got his thumb, he could be okay.”

“We have twenty-five minutes,” Felicia said.

“We’ll have to fake it,” I told them. “Everyone look for dog poop. Lots of people walk their dogs here and not everyone cleans up. We’ll fill a bag with whatever poop we can find. Then we’ll give the bag to Miranda, and we’ll tell him we didn’t have time to look for the circuit board. And the more poop the better, so it takes a long time for Miranda to go through it. We need time to make a getaway with Hooker.”

“I’m gonna need some Pepto-Bismol when I’m done here,” Rosa said.

“Sorry,” I said to Suzanne, “you’ll have to replicate the circuit board. But at least your technology won’t get stolen.”

“What’s this?” Simon wanted to know.

“Dog poop,” I said, handing the bag over to him. “We didn’t have time to look through it for the circuit board, but I’m sure it’s in there. Beans is all cleaned out.”

“No kidding. This is a gallon bag of dog shit. Jeez, you could at least have double bagged it.”

“I was in a hurry. I didn’t want Hooker to lose any fingers.” I looked around. “Where’s Hooker?”

“He’s in the car with Fred. I’m going to have to call Miranda on this. I wasn’t expecting a sack of shit.”

“It was the best I could do on short notice,” I said.

Simon and I were standing in the parking lot next to the Royal Palm Deli. Rosa was idling in the slot closest to the driveway. Suzanne and Felicia had Simon in their sights, giving him the squinty-eye, guns in hand, ready to “take him down” should I give the signal. An SUV with tinted windows idled at the other end of the lot. Hard to tell who was inside the SUV.

Simon studied me behind his dark glasses. “Just between you and me, if I hadn’t left you at the bar last night, would I have gotten to nail you?”

“You don’t expect me to tell you, do you?”

He looked at the gallon of dog poop. “I guess I know the answer.”

Simon put the poop in the back of the SUV and flipped his cell phone open. He held a short conversation with someone at the other end, presumably Miranda, the phone was flipped closed, and Simon walked back to me.

“Miranda says we bring the bag and Hooker back to the house, and when we find the circuit board we’ll let Hooker go.”

“The deal was that we’d swap here. I want my poop back.”

“Lady, I’d love to give you your poop back, but no can do. The boss wants the poop.”

I trudged back to the Camry and got in next to Beans. “They’re going to release Hooker when they find the circuit board.”

The black SUV pulled away, and Rosa cranked the Camry over. “Okay, ladies,” she said. “A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”

“What does that mean?” I asked Rosa.

“It means we have to kick some ass and get Hooker out.”

“That sounds good on paper,” I said to Rosa. “But we’re not exactly a SWAT team. I think it’s time to bring in the police.”

Suzanne was in the back with me, sitting on the other side of Beans. “Easy for you to say,” Suzanne said. “You didn’t just kidnap Ray Huevo. I’m in favor of us going in and solving the problem ourselves. I work out, and I can shoot, and I’m in the mood to do some damage,” she said, selecting a gun from the pocket in front of her. “I’m putting my name on this Glock nine.”

We drove to the house and Rosa sat at idle in front of the gate. The gate was closed and attached to a six-foot solid-stucco fence that encircled the property. From what we could see of the grounds, we would have to get over the fence and then cover some open grass before reaching the house. A small metal medallion attached to the front gate told us the property was protected by All Season Security.

“It would be better if we could do this in the dark,” Rosa said.

I looked at the sky. The sun was low. Maybe an hour until sunset. Maybe a little more. An hour felt like a long time to leave Hooker in there with the finger chopper.

“It’ll take them a while to go through a gallon of poop,” Felicia said. “They gonna have to put it in a strainer little by little and power wash it.”

We all made gagging sounds.

“I think we have until the next phone call,” Suzanne said. “If they don’t find the circuit board, they’ll call. They don’t know for certain that this was a setup.”