Plum Spooky

SEVENTEEN

THE FIRST THOUGHTS in my head when I woke up were about Gail Scanlon and her monkeys. The next thoughts were about the big guy sprawled on top of me.

“Hey!” I said to Diesel.

“Mmmm.”

“You’re on top of me again.”

“Life is good.”

“It’s not good. I can’t breathe.”

“If you couldn’t breathe, you’d be dead.”

“If you don’t get off me, you’re going to be dead.”

Diesel rolled to the other side of the bed and settled in with a sigh.

“I’m going to take a shower and go check on the monkeys,” I told him.

No answer. Diesel was already asleep.

A half hour later, I had my hair fluffed out and my eyelashes gunked up, and I was anxious to start my day. Diesel was still sleeping, so I called Lula while I drank my coffee.

“How are you feeling?” I asked Lula.

“I’m feeling fine, but I have a craving for another one of them breakfast sandwiches.”

“I have to check on Munch’s house on Crocker Street. I could pick you up on the way, and we could stop somewhere.”

“I’ll be outside waiting for you.”

I finished my coffee, took my bag from the hook in the hall, and saw Munch’s jacket still lying on the floor. I remembered the grocery list I’d taken from the yellow pad and pulled the crumpled piece of paper out of the jacket pocket. It was soggy but legible.

“Diesel!” I yelled. “Get out here.”

Nothing. No sound of man getting out of bed.

I stomped into the bedroom and yelled at him up close. “Diesel!”

“Jeez,” he said. “Now what?”

“I ripped this page off a pad in Munch’s house. So much happened last night, I forgot about it. It looks like a shopping list.”

Diesel looked at the list. “Barium, rockets, HTPB.”

“I have to go,” I said. “I told Lula I’d pick her up.”

Twenty minutes and ten traffic lights later, I pulled to the curb in front of Lula’s house and Lula got into the car.

“Why are you going to Munch’s house?”

“I have groceries for the monkeys.”

“Say what?”

“Long story short is we found some of Gail Scanlon’s monkeys yesterday, and we stashed them in Munch’s house.”

“That’s just wrong,” Lula said. “They’re gonna poop all over.”

“It was me or Munch.”

“Okay I could see that then.”

After a fast-food drive-through experience and five more traffic lights, I reached Crocker Street. I parked in the alley and took a bag of what I hoped was appropriate monkey food to the back door. I opened the unlocked door, we let ourselves in, and I set the bag on the kitchen counter.

“So far, so good,” Lula said. “No monkey poop in the kitchen. No monkeys, either, for that matter.”

I poked my head into the living room, where Carl was watching television.

“Where are the rest of the monkeys?” I asked him.

Carl put his hands over his ears and stared at the tele vision.

I walked through the house, looking in all the rooms. No monkeys.

“Did someone take the monkeys?” I asked Carl.

Carl hopped off the couch, walked into the kitchen, and pointed to the pet hatch in the back door.

I was stunned. I’d forgotten about the hatch.

“The monkeys escaped,” I said to Lula.

“How many monkeys we talking about?”

“Six.”

Somewhere not far off, a woman’s scream pierced the air.

“There’s one monkey,” Lula said.

I ran outside, and two doors down, a woman was standing in her backyard. I took a box of cookies from the grocery bag and went to investigate.

“Is something wrong?” I asked her.

“I opened the door to take the garbage out and a monkey ran into my house.”

“Don’t worry,” Lula said. “That monkey escaped from Monkey Control, and we’re here to catch the little bugger. Just step aside and we’ll take care of this.” Lula looked at me. “Go ahead. Go get the monkey.”

“You aren’t going to help?”

“Hell no. You know how I feel about monkeys.”

I went into the house and found the monkey drinking out of the toilet bowl.

I held a cookie out to him. “Yum,” I said.

The monkey’s eyes got bright, and he followed me out of the house. I gave him two cookies and locked him in the Jeep.

“One down,” I said to Lula.

We walked through the neighborhood rattling the cookie box, and we captured two more monkeys.

“These cookies are good,” Lula said, her hand in the box. “It’s no wonder monkeys come to get them.”

“We’ve been around the block twice,” I said as we completed another loop, “and we’re still missing three monkeys.”

“Maybe Gail won’t notice,” Lula said.

“That’s not the point. I can’t just let monkeys loose in Trenton.”

“Why not? There’s all kinds of crazy shit loose in Trenton.”

We returned to the car, and a monkey was sitting on the hood looking in at the other monkeys. I gave him a cookie and added him to the collection. I retrieved Carl from Munch’s house, set a box of Pop-Tarts on the floor as monkey bait, took the rest of the monkey food, and closed the door. We all piled into the Jeep, and I slowly drove down the alley and did a couple laps around the block. We didn’t see the remaining two monkeys.

“My eyes are watering,” Lula said. “These monkeys need some hygiene lessons. What are you gonna do with them, anyway?”

A monkey darted across the road. I stopped the car, grabbed the cookie box, and took off after him. I chased him for half a block and cornered him against a chain-link fence that ran along the button factory parking lot.

“Want a cookie?” I asked him.

He took the cookie and followed me back to the car. Do I know how to catch monkeys, or what?

“Now I’m only missing one monkey,” I said.

“This is a nightmare. Next time, I’m the one chasing the monkey, because I’m not sitting in the monkey Jeep.”

“I’m giving it one more try,” I said. “I’m going back to Munch’s house to see if my monkey bait worked.”

“Monkey bait?”

“Pop-Tarts in Munch’s kitchen.”

I returned to the alley and parked the car. Lula, Carl, and I got out and went to the back door and looked in the kitchen. Sure enough, there was my monkey. I went in, confiscated what was left of the Pop-Tarts, and we all marched back to the car.

The car was locked.

“Did you lock the car?” I asked Lula.

“No way.”

I looked inside. The key was in the ignition. The monkeys had somehow managed to lock the car.

“You got a problem,” Lula said. “You better hope they don’t drive away. Where’s your extra key?”

“I don’t have an extra key.”

It was a little after ten. I called Diesel, but he didn’t pick up. I could call a locksmith, break a window, or call Ranger. Since it was Ranger’s car, the choice was obvious.

“I’m locked out of the Jeep,” I told him. “The key is in the ignition, and the doors are locked.”

“Where are you?”

“In the alley behind Munch’s house on Crocker Street.”

Ten minutes later, a black Rangeman SUV eased to a stop behind the Jeep. Ranger got out of the SUV, walked over to me, and looked in the Jeep.

“Babe,” he said.

I blew out a sigh. I had five monkeys in the Jeep and two sitting on the roof.

Hal was left at the wheel of the Rangeman SUV, and I could see he was turning red, making an effort not to laugh. Hal is one of Ranger’s younger guys. He keeps his blond hair cut short in a buzz cut, he has a personality like a St. Bernard puppy, and he’s built like a stegosaurus.

Ranger’s life is mostly made up of serious business, and it’s not often you see Ranger laughing, but I guess a car full of monkeys was the tipping point because Ranger was smiling.

He took a key out of his pocket and opened the car door. “Do you want the two on the roof inside? Or do you want the five inside to get out of the car?”

“I want the two on the roof inside,” I said.

I rattled the cookie box and threw it into the backseat. Gail’s monkey jumped into the car, and all the monkeys attacked the cookie box. Carl didn’t want any part of it. Ranger had regained his calm, and I thought he was probably calculating the depreciation on his Jeep. Not that this was unusual. I’d done worse to his cars.

“I know I’m going to regret asking,” Ranger said, “but where are you going with the monkeys?”

“I don’t know. Originally, they were in a habitat in the Barrens, but Carl opened the door and they all escaped.”

“Carl?”

“Eep,” Carl said.

Ranger looked at Carl, and Carl gave him a thumbs-up.

“Anyway, a lot happened in between,” I told Ranger, “but last night, Diesel and I were in the Barrens looking for Wulf and Martin Munch, and we ended up with all these monkeys in the car.”

“Diesel’s been driving these monkeys around?”

“More or less.”

Ranger looked like he might burst out laughing again, but he squelched it.

“It’s not like they’re bad monkeys,” I said. “It’s just that I don’t know what to do with them. Except for Carl, they belong to Gail Scanlon, but Wulf has her locked away somewhere. I can’t bring them back to the habitat and leave them there all alone.”

Ranger cut his eyes to the monkeys. They were fighting over the cookies, shoving them into their mouths, cookies flying everywhere.

“I can put a man at the habitat until this sorts itself out,” Ranger said.

“I don’t know if that’s safe with Wulf prowling the Barrens.”

“Wulf won’t go after my man.”

Ranger motioned to Hal. Hal left the SUV and approached the Jeep.

“You’re going to follow me in the Jeep,” Ranger said to Hal.

Hal’s mouth dropped open and he went white.

“The Jeep’s full of monkeys,” Hal said.

Ranger clapped him on the back. “You’ll be fine. Just don’t touch the cookies.”

We dropped Lula off at her house, and Hal followed behind in the Jeep.

“Hal looks terrified,” I said to Ranger.

Ranger checked him out in the rearview mirror. “This is going to cost me. I’m going to have to give him hazard pay for this trip.”

We took the Turnpike and the Atlantic City Expressway. We exited the Expressway, and Ranger wound his way around the Barrens to Gail Scanlon’s compound. He drove the SUV into the habitat yard and parked. Hal parked behind him, and we all got out. Four monkeys had returned to the habitat and were huddled together on an outside table. They were still wearing their helmets.

“We took the helmets off the monkeys I had in the Jeep,” I told Ranger. “We couldn’t figure out why they were wearing them.”

“Did Gail Scanlon put these helmets on?”

“I doubt it. I think it must have been Munch or Wulf.”

Ranger approached the huddled monkeys, removed the helmets, and gave them to Hal.

“Put these in my SUV,” he said. “If Wulf wants them back, he can talk to me.”

We wrangled the remaining monkeys into the compound. We set food out and made sure there was fresh water. We closed and locked the door.

“Eep,” Carl said, monkey fingers curled around the chain-link fence, looking out at me.

I opened the door, let Carl out, and relocked the door.

“He doesn’t belong with the rest of the monkeys,” I said to Ranger.

“No doubt,” Ranger said.

We went into Gail Scanlon’s house and took stock. It seemed exactly as I’d left it.

“I’m going to leave you here,” Ranger said to Hal. “Make sure the monkeys have food and water. As soon as I get phone reception, I’ll dispatch someone to bring in a couple days’ supplies and communication.”

Hal seemed okay with that. He was out of the monkey truck. Life was sweet again.

Ranger, Carl, and I left the compound. Ranger stopped when he got to the paved road.

“Do you want to look for Munch or Gail Scanlon?” Ranger asked.

“I wouldn’t know where to begin. They’re here somewhere, but I have absolutely no direction. We did aerial surveillance and couldn’t find anything.” I pulled Gordo Bollo’s file out of my bag. “This is the guy who threw the tomatoes at me. He lives in Bordentown, and since it’s a weekend, he might be home. I’d love to catch him.”

Ranger looked at the file and punched the address into his navigation system.

“What’s the charge on this guy?”

“His ex-wife remarried, and I guess he had unresolved marital issues because he ran over the new groom with his pickup truck, twice.”

A half hour down the road, Carl was squirmy in the backseat.

“Puh,” Carl said. “Puh, puh, puh.”

Ranger’s eyes flicked to Carl in the rearview mirror.

“Does he want to live?” Ranger asked.

“Eep,” Carl said.

The nav system got us to Ward Street, and it didn’t look any more promising this time than it had last time. A cemetery ran down one side, and on the other was scrub field and the ceramic pipe factory. Ranger drove the length of it, turned, and drove back. He stopped at the entrance to the cemetery.

“Babe, there aren’t any houses here.”

“Connie double-checked this address.”

Ranger called in to his office and asked them to run Gordo Bollo. Minutes later, the same address came back.

“I’m sitting here, and there’s no house,” Ranger said. “It’s a field next to a ceramic pipe factory. Go into the tax rec ords and see who owns this land.”

Ranger waited for the answer, and when it came, he disconnected.

“Gordo Bollo owns 656 Ward, but it’s a lot. No house.”

DIESEL WAS AT the dining room table with coffee and my computer when Carl and I walked in.

“Every time I call you for help, you don’t answer your phone,” I said. “Where were you this time? Peru? Madagascar?”

“I was in the shower. You didn’t say to call back. I figured you were pulling on rubber gloves and decontaminating Munch’s house.”

“The monkeys all escaped through the pet door.”

“There’s a pet door?”

“Anyway, I found them and took them back to the habitat. Ranger has one of his men staying there until we find Gail.”

“It looks like you didn’t take them all back to the habitat.”

“I guess Carl had enough of the nuts and berries thing. What are you doing on the computer?”

“HTPB stands for hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene. It’s a clear, thick liquid used for rocket fuel. APCP is ammonium perchlorate composite propellant, an oxidizing agent that helps burn the fuel. BlueBec rockets are sounding rockets. They’re about eigh teen feet in length, and they carry instruments designed to take mea sure ments and perform experiments in the suborbital area of the Earth’s atmosphere. They’re Canadian made, and they’ve been around a long time. It would be fairly easy for Wulf to get his hands on some.”

“Do you think this is what made the rocket tails we saw when we were in the Barrens?”

“No. I think we saw something smaller.”

Diesel punched a number into his cell phone.

“I need a favor,” he said to whoever was on the other end. “Eugene Scanlon was project manager at a research lab in Trenton, Brytlin Technologies. I need the names and addresses of everyone on his team.”

Diesel shut down the computer and went to the kitchen for fresh coffee. “Your rat is awake,” he said.

“He’s a hamster.”

“Whatever.”

I gave Rex fresh water and dropped half a walnut and a baby carrot into his bowl.

“How will your contact get the names and addresses?”

“I don’t know. He has ways. I imagine he’ll hack into the company computer.”

“That’s illegal.”

“You have a problem with that?”

“Just saying. Where will Wulf go to get the rocket fuel?”

“I’d guess whoever had the barium also had the ability to get the fuel components.”

“Yeah, but Wulf blew one of those guys to smithereens.”

Diesel answered his phone and wrote three names and addresses on the back of Munch’s shopping list. He hung up and shoved the list into his pocket.

“I want to talk to these people.”

“It would go faster if we divided them up. It’s Sunday, and Gail has been missing since Thursday. We have no idea what Wulf intended to do with her, but it can’t be good. Maybe we should bring the police in.”

“Give me one more day. If Wulf learns the police are combing the Barrens, he’ll pack up and leave. And he’ll take Munch and Gail Scanlon with him… or worse. There were two other people working under Scanlon. Lu Kim Rule and Vladimir Strunchek. The third name I have is his supervisor. Barry Berman. Berman lives in north Trenton, Rule lives not far from here on Becker, and Strunchek was Eugene Scanlon’s neighbor. You take Rule, I’ll talk to Berman, and we’ll meet back here and do Strunchek together.”

The Subaru was in the parking lot, but the Jeep that Ranger had loaned me was with Hal in the Barrens.

“Drive me to my parents’ house,” I said to Diesel. “I can borrow my Great-Uncle Sandor’s car.”

When Sandor went into assisted living, he gave my Grandma Mazur his car. Since Grandma has had her license revoked, the behemoth ’53 powder blue and white Buick Roadmaster is mine to use in emergency situations. It’s not my favorite car, but it’s free.

Diesel dropped me off, and I ran inside to get the keys from my mother.

“What happened to your car?” my mother wanted to know.

I didn’t know where to begin. Was she talking about the car that was destroyed by raccoons or the car that was filled with monkeys?

“It’s getting ser viced,” I said. “Oil change, spark plugs, the works.”

I grabbed a couple chocolate chip cookies from the cookie jar and ran to the garage. I backed the Buick out and hoped no one was green in the neighborhood. The V-8 engine could be heard a block away, and the trip down the driveway alone sucked up a quarter tank of gas.

Lu Kim Rule lived less than a half mile away. It was a solid working-class neighborhood with mom-and-pop businesses mixed with two-story, residential row houses. A kid answered the door and yelled “Mom” when I asked for Lu Kim.

Lu Kim was slim and of mixed cultures, with almond eyes and straight black hair. I introduced myself and asked if I could talk to her about Eugene Scanlon. Lu Kim stepped onto her porch and closed the door behind her.

“What do you want to know?”

“I’m looking for Martin Munch,” I told her. “I think he might be with Eugene’s sister, and I think they might be in the Pine Barrens. Did either Eugene or Martin ever mention property in the Barrens?”

“No. They never mentioned property anywhere.”

“Tell me about Martin Munch.”

Lu Kim rolled her eyes. “Martin Munch. A brilliant guy but creepy weird. I never had a conversation with him that his eyes ever went above my breasts. And in the two years we worked together, he never said anything that wasn’t work related. It was as if he’d gotten dropped from another planet.”

“And Scanlon?”

“My job for the group was more clerical than scientific. Eugene gave me professional papers to file, expense reports, equipment requisitions, that sort of thing, but he never talked to me. I worked for him for a year before I found out he wasn’t married. Mostly, Eugene talked to Martin. He thought Martin was the reincarnation of Einstein. He had his eye on everything Martin did.”

“Do you know why Munch stole the magnetometer?”

“I figured he just grabbed something and ran out of the building. He wasn’t exactly with the program all the time. I’d find his coffee mug in the file cabinet. And once he lost his car keys, and a week later I found them in the freezer.”

“What about the research the group was doing?”

“I wasn’t involved in that end of things, but it seemed like it was routine. We were subcontractors for a much larger project. It always looked to me like we were working with minutia, but I guess that’s the way it is in the scientific community.”

I left my card with Lu Kim and chugged home in the Buick. I pulled into my lot and looked for the Subaru. I wasn’t surprised to find it missing. Even with Diesel rigging the traffic lights, he had a longer drive than I did. I parked and debated waiting in the lot for him. I checked my watch and thought about Carl. We’d left him alone in the apartment. It wasn’t a big deal. We’d left him alone before. Still, I felt uneasy. I took the elevator to my floor. I plugged my key in, opened the door, and stepped inside.

I looked left and saw Carl on the kitchen counter, his back pressed against the hamster cage. Carl’s eyes were huge, and his monkey fur was standing on end. I looked right and saw Wulf.

“It looks like my cousin has found a playmate,” Wulf said. “Too bad I’m going to have to ruin his fun.”

I turned and put my hand on the doorknob, but the door was locked and wouldn’t open.

“Martin is very depressed,” Wulf said. “He was looking forward to spending time with you, but you managed to escape, and he’s been moping ever since. As it turns out, when Martin is depressed, he’s not productive. And I need Martin to be productive. So you’re going to have to come with me.”

“I’m sure there are lots of women who would be overjoyed to spend time with Martin.”

“Unfortunately, he wants you. And since I can’t count on your cooperation, I’m going to have to scramble a few neurons.”

“Is that the touchy, painful thing? I hate that.”

Wulf reached out for me, and I jumped off into the kitchen, grabbed the still-unwashed fry pan off the stove, and threw it at him. He batted it away, and I whacked him with the spatula. Still no expression on his face. He ripped the spatula out of my hand, grabbed my wrist, and it was good night. The last thing I heard was Carl.

“Eep!”