Plum Spooky

SIXTEEN

MY MIND CAME awake before my body. I was thinking, and then I was hearing. I opened my eyes, and I could see, but I couldn’t move. I was stretched out on a bed, and Munch was poking me like I was a yeast roll and he was testing my freshness.

“Stop it,” I said. “What the heck are you doing?”

“I wanted to see if you were awake.”

“What hit me?”

“Wulf. He’s awesome. It’s like he’s not even human or something. It’s like he’s some sort of dark titan.”

I could feel tingling in my fingers and toes. The tingling moved along my arms and legs, and there was a rush of heat throughout my body.

“He’s not a titan,” I said. “He’s just a big, scary, creepy guy in expensive clothes. What are you doing with him?”

“We’re partners. We’re going to take over the world.”

“Get real.”

“Actually, I don’t really care about that,” Munch said. “I just want to be able to do my experiments. And I want to get chicks.”

“Excuse me?”

“You know, girls. Pussy. Wulf said he’d make sure they were all over me.”

“You need Wulf to get you girls?”

“No way. I can get all the girls I want. It’s just that I’m busy, you know? I don’t have time to do the whole bar scene. Anyway, I think the bar scene is old. I mean, who does that anymore anyway, right?”

“What, do they check your ID?”

“Yeah. It’s humiliating.”

I pushed myself up to a sitting position and swung my legs over the side of the bed.

“So how’s Wulf going to get you girls?” I asked him.

“He brings them in to me. Like you. You’re my first. We have the monkey lady, but she’s kind of old and Wulf is using her for other stuff. Anyway, Wulf said I could practice on you. You’re kind of a mess, but you’re nice and soft.”

“Soft?”

“Yeah. Your breasts are soft.”

“You touched my breasts?”

“I would have done more, but you’re all muddy. I figure we’ll put you in the shower now that you’re awake, and then I’ll have a go at you.”

“How about if I have a go at you,” I said. And I kicked him in his Munchkins.

He crashed to the floor and rolled around in a fetal position, gasping for breath. The door to the little bedroom opened, and Wulf looked in at us.

“I see it’s going well,” Wulf said.

I wanted to say something clever, do a kung fu move on him and run like the wind, but truth is, my brain was numb with fear. Wulf scared the crap out of me. There was something about him. The lack of facial expression. The black eyes. The perfect clothes over the body that exuded evil power. He was the dark side of Diesel.

“I need to move you,” Wulf said. “You can walk with me, or I can incapacitate you and drag you out.”

“I’ll walk.”

He stepped aside and motioned me out the door. We were in a small but comfortable ranch-style house from the seventies. He led me out the door and across the yard to an outbuilding. It had stopped raining, but the air was raw and the ground was oversaturated. The outbuilding was nothing more than a shed. Maybe five by five. A door and no windows.

“I’ll be back,” he said. “And when I come back, you’re going to have to be nicer to Martin.”

He closed and locked the door with a padlock, and I was in total blackness. Not a hint of light. No furniture. No bathroom facilities. Just a metal shed. I felt my way around the shed, but there were no weak seams. I still had my cell phone clipped to my jeans, but there was no reception.

I was in a terrible position. My Jeep was in my parking lot, and Ranger had no idea I was in trouble. Diesel was rambling around in the woods, oblivious to my predicament. When he finally returned to rendezvous with Flash, Flash wouldn’t be there. Bottom line, I was on my own, locked in a shed, waiting for a madman to return and give me over to a geek who wanted to get laid.

A half hour passed, and I heard a car drive away. A couple more minutes, and it sounded like someone was clunking the padlock against the shed exterior. There was silence and then more of the clunking and some scratching. The padlock clicked, the handle turned, and the door opened a crack. I cautiously peeked out. The sun had set below the trees, but the sky still held some light. No one was in the yard. I pushed the door fully open, and that was when I saw him. It was Carl!

I picked him up and hugged him to me.

“Eeep,” Carl said.

The padlock was on the ground, the key still stuck in the lock.

“Is anyone else here?” I asked him. “Gail Scanlon or Martin Munch?”

Carl shrugged his shoulders.

This wasn’t one of the properties Diesel had tagged for further investigation on his first sweep. The little ranch-style house sat in the middle of a cleared patch of ground. No garage. No generator. Just the tool shed, which was big enough to hold a lawn mower and not much else.

I crept to the house and looked in a window. Lights were off. No activity. I tried the front door. Locked. I worked my way around the house, looking in all the windows. No one was in the house. There was a yellow pad on the kitchen counter. Dishes in the sink. Some clothes on the floor in the second bedroom. Looked like jeans and boxer shorts.

A window was broken in the kitchen, the glass cleared out with a stick that was left on the counter. I looked down at Carl.

“I imagine that’s how you got the key to the padlock.”

Carl scratched the top of his head.

I reached through the window, got the stick, and used it to break a window in the back door. I opened the door, and we stepped inside. My search was fast. I didn’t want to be there when Wulf returned. No phone that I could find. There was a power cord for a computer in the kitchen but no computer. Milk and a couple cans of soda in the fridge. A jar of peanut butter, half a loaf of white bread, and an opened box of cereal had been left on the kitchen counter. Minimum clothes in the dresser. A couple T-shirts and a pair of Power Ranger’s briefs. A down jacket in the closet.

Munch was living in the house, but it looked more like a stopover than a residence. And he was working someplace else.

I dropped my wet sweatshirt onto the kitchen floor and zipped myself into Munch’s down jacket. The yellow pad on the counter caught my eye. It looked like Munch had a grocery list going. The first item was HTPB. The second was APCP. He also listed a transmitter, barium, and Blue-Bec rockets. I ripped the page off the pad and stuffed it into my jacket pocket.

I left through the back door with Carl tagging after me, clutching the cereal box. I guess life in the woods lacked amenities like cookies and cereal. We crossed the yard and followed the road. After a half hour, I heard a car approaching and saw headlights shining through the trees. Carl and I ducked into the woods, crouching low, hiding in the shadows. The headlights swept around a curve and the Audi passed us on its way to the house.

As soon as the lights disappeared around the next curve, I took off running. In a matter of minutes, Wulf would be hunting me down. It was dark, and the road was slippery and pocked with potholes. I went down twice, scrambled to my feet, and stumbled forward. The dirt road widened slightly, and a short driveway to my right led to a double-wide. There was a pickup parked in the drive. I ran to the pickup and looked in the window. Keys in the ignition. Pineys are trusting people.

I jumped into the pickup, Carl scampered over me and sat in the passenger seat, and I turned the key. I backed it out to the dirt road, and the door to the double-wide opened and a big guy, more Wookiee than human being, filled the doorway. He had to be over seven feet, wearing a T-shirt and shorts, and he had hair everywhere.

He roared, there was a shotgun blast, and the windshield was peppered with birdshot that didn’t completely penetrate.

“Eep,” Carl said, eyes big and bugged out.

I whipped the truck around and took off down the dirt road in Sasquatch’s broken-down heap that reeked of giant prehistoric wet dog. In seconds, I was able to turn onto pavement. I had no idea where I was. I didn’t recognize anything. I was in a stolen truck with half a tank of gas, no identification, no credit cards, no money, and a monkey. I stuck to the paved road, and after ten miles, I came to an intersection with signs. The signs meant nothing to me, but just ahead I could see the glow of overhead lights to a parking lot. The lot was empty except for one car. The Subaru. Somehow I’d found the junk store.

I had the SUV keys in my jeans pocket. I swapped out the truck for the Subaru and laid down rubber, wasting no time getting the heck onto the Expressway. I called Diesel while I drove. No answer. Diesel was probably waiting for Flash and had no reception. I needed to go back and get Diesel. Crap. I really didn’t want to do that. I was afraid I’d run into Wulf.

“What do you think I should do?” I asked Carl.

Carl didn’t answer. Carl had discovered Super Mario stashed in the console and was beyond happy, eating his cereal and making Mario jump around.

I made a U-turn at the next interchange and headed back for Diesel. If I got to the pickup point and he wasn’t standing there with the two ATVs, I’d turn around and not stop driving until I pulled into my apartment building parking lot.

My heart started skipping beats a quarter mile away. I wanted Diesel to be waiting for me, unharmed. I wanted to get him in the car and make a safe retreat. And as far as I was concerned, Munch could stay in the wind forever. Vinnie would just have to deal with it. My rent was due, but better to be evicted than be dead… or even worse, be a Munch toy.

I was the only car on the road. I switched to my high beams and slowed to almost a crawl, looking for the dirt road, afraid I wouldn’t recognize it. Fortunately, it wasn’t an issue, because Diesel was at the edge of the road. He was standing hands on hips, mud splattered and wet through to his skin. I stopped, he opened the passenger-side door, and Carl gave him a thumbs-up.

“I get the feeling I missed something,” Diesel said, shooing Carl into the backseat and sliding in next to me.

I gave him the short version of my eve ning adventures.

“Take me to the house,” Diesel said.

“What, are you nuts? There’s one road in and one road out. And there are homicidal maniacs there.”

“I can only hope,” Diesel said. “I need to catch Wulf by surprise, preferably with his back to a wall. I’m sure they’ll abandon the house, but we might be able to get them in the pro cess.”

The only way I knew to find the house was to go back to the junk shop and retrace my route.

“This all looks the same to me,” I said to Diesel. “If you hadn’t been standing out in the open, I probably would never have found you.”

Headlights swung onto the road in front of me, and a police cruiser passed me going in the opposite direction. I took the road the cruiser had just left, and hooray, there was the double-wide. No doubt the police had been responding to the stolen-truck report.

I felt kind of bad about taking Sasquatch’s truck, but it wasn’t far away, and I’d left it in good shape.

I swapped seats with Diesel, and he cut the lights and drove the muddy road in the dark. He parked the Subaru just short of the clearing, and we got out. Carl stayed in the Subaru with his game.

There were no cars in the yard. This meant I was relieved, and Diesel was unhappy. We crossed to the house and looked inside. It seemed empty.

“Are you going in?” I asked.

“Maybe.” Diesel prowled the yard and found a large rock. “Get back,” he said. “Stand by those trees.”

He hefted the rock and pitched it through a front window. Seconds after the window shattered, the house was literally blown apart by an explosion.

“No need to go in,” Diesel said.

“What the heck was that?”

“Motion bomb. Remember the Sky Social Club? Classic Wulf. He loves that crap.” He took my hand and pulled me to the car. “We need to get out of here before the police and fire trucks clog the road.”

“But the house is on fire!”

“It’ll burn itself out. There’s no wind, and the woods are wet from the rain. There’s a large enough patch of cleared ground around the house, so the fire won’t spread. I’m sure there’s no one inside, and if there is, it’s too late to help them.”

We ran to the Subaru. Diesel opened the door and groaned. The SUV was full of monkeys. Six of them in all, plus Carl. They were all sitting in a row in the backseat. All but Carl were wearing hats.

“Get out,” Diesel said.

The monkeys sat tight and exchanged ner vous glances.

“I know you understand me,” Diesel said.

I looked at the monkeys. “They must be Carl’s friends.”

“I don’t care if they’re members of Congress. They have to go.”

“Carl did save my life,” I said.

Diesel rammed himself behind the wheel. “I don’t have time for this.”

He drove into the clearing, turned the Subaru around, and drove out. He hooked a right at the end of the road and headed for the Expressway. We could see the flashing lights of emergency vehicles in our rearview mirror.

“We can leave the trailer and the ATVs here,” he said. “I have to get out of these clothes. I’m starting to mildew.”

We stopped on the way home and got four large pizzas and a six-pack of beer. Diesel parked the Subaru in my lot, then we all got out and trooped into my apartment building and into the elevator.

“I feel like I married into the Brady Bunch,” Diesel said, monkeys hanging on to his pants legs.

I hit the button for the second floor and got my key out of my bag. “Last time you came to town, I ended up with a horse in this elevator. These things don’t happen when you’re not around.”

“I don’t believe that for a second,” Diesel said.

I opened the door to my apartment, and we all rushed inside. Diesel put two pizza boxes on the floor for the monkeys, and we ate ours off the counter. Who says I’m not civilized? I just hoped my mother never found out about this.

Diesel ate an entire pizza and chugged two bottles of beer. He kicked his boots off in the hall and dropped his still-wet jeans on the floor.

“I need a shower,” he said.

I was relieved to see he was wearing underwear and that his T-shirt covered almost all the good stuff.

“I could strip down further,” Diesel said.

“Not in front of the monkeys.”

He grinned, ruffled my hair, and sauntered off to the bathroom.

I cleaned up the monkey mess, sat them all in front of the tele vision, and tuned to the Cartoon Network. I nibbled on one last piece of pizza and called Morelli.

“How’s it going?” Morelli wanted to know.

“It’s average. Stole a truck. Blew up a house. Brought seven monkeys home with me. And now I have a naked man in my shower.”

“Yeah, same ol’, same ol’,” Morelli said.

“What’s new with you?”

“Pulled a double hom i cide. Shoveled dog shit off old man Fratelli’s lawn. Started drinking at three o’clock.”

“I assume Anthony is still with you.”

“He’s like a boil on my ass.”

I took a shower when Diesel was done. When I came out, he was in the kitchen. He’d removed all the monkey helmets and was studying them.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “It looks like a little antenna on the top, but I have no idea what it’s supposed to do.”

“Gail Scanlon rescued animals from labs. Hard to believe she would turn around and use them for experimentation.”

“She was a woman living alone in a secluded area. She didn’t have a phone. I don’t think she had a gun. She kept intruders away with a piñata. If she had something Wulf wanted, like land or monkeys, she’d be an easy target.”

“Why would Wulf want monkeys?”

“Don’t know the answer to that.”

“Wulf has Gail. Munch said they had her locked away and that she was serving a purpose.”

“Maybe she’s wearing a helmet,” Diesel said. “What are we going to do with the monkeys?”

“They’re watching tele vision.”

“They’re used to living in a habitat without flush toilets, and you just fed them pizza. It’s going to get ugly in here.”

“You have a point. We need something temporary until we find Gail. We can’t put them in a fenced yard because they’ll climb out. If we call animal control, they’ll put them in a cage.”

“Maybe they’ll put them in a big cage,” Diesel said.

Carl glared at him and gave him the finger.

“Carl doesn’t like that idea,” I said.

“How do you know which one is Carl? They all look alike.”

“Carl is wearing a collar.”

“Maybe we should give Carl a credit card and let him find a hotel room,” Diesel said.

“I have a better idea. I have a genius idea. We’ll put them in Munch’s house. He isn’t living there.”

“That’s really rotten,” Diesel said. “I wish I’d thought of it.”

We put all the boxes of cereal, cookies, and crackers in a bag and led the monkeys out of my apartment and down the hall. We herded them into the elevator and into the Subaru and drove them across town. Diesel walked through Munch’s house to make sure it wasn’t being used, and then we turned the monkeys loose.

I gave Carl the bag of food. “This should last you until tomorrow morning. The tele vision remote is on the coffee table in the living room. You’re in charge. Everyone’s house-broken, right?”

Carl looked around and scratched his armpit.

I could feel Diesel smiling behind me.

“I’m not coming back here,” he said. “I’m never setting foot in this house again. And I’ll swear on a Bible I didn’t put these monkeys here.”