A goddamn mystery, he thought, that's what it is.
The phone roused him.
"Walter, it's Papa. We missed you at church. Is everything all right?"
"Papa, you wouldn't believe what happened."
"Try me."
Smith pulled up to Spew's house and walked through the gate of the picket fence in front of what looked like the Cleaver place. He rang the bell and an old woman – a dead ringer for Norman Rockwell's grandmother – answered. Spew's grandma. The guy lived with his grandma.
"Hi, Mrs. Spew, is Shane home?"
Smith was shouting at the old woman. Spew told him his grandma had a little trouble hearing.
"Are you here about the refrigerator?" Grandma Spew asked.
"No, Mrs. Spew, I'm Shane's friend, Eddie. Remember? From yesterday?"
"Has that dog been up to mischief again?" Grandma Spew asked.
Spew had also said his grandma gets a little confused now and then.
"I'll just go up to Shane's room, OK?"
"OK."
Spew's room was divided into two parts. The one side looked like a typical kid's room – bunk bed, a little desk, pennants on the wall, model airplanes on a shelf. The other side looked like a mad scientist's laboratory – stacks of dynamite, a pile of plastic explosive, blasting caps, timers – all piled on an old workbench.
Spew didn't think it was weird at all. Doesn't every kid have a bomb factory in his room? Blowing stuff up was Spew's hobby. Always had been. That's how he hooked up with Papa. Papa heard an explosion behind the church and when he went to investigate, he found Spew standing in a crater. Spew worked for him since then. He enjoyed nothing more than blowing things up.
"You ready?" Smith asked.
"One minute," Spew said.
He was hunched over his workbench, wiring up a device that bore an uncanny resemblance to a bomb from a Road Runner cartoon – a bundle of dynamite topped with an old-fashioned alarm clock. It even said "Acme."
"Acme?" Smith asked.
"A little joke. I got a surefire plan this time. In the Corps, they always said you don't fail to plan, plans fail. Or plans don't fail, you do. Or something like that. It was kind of confusing. This plan, it's foolproof."
Smith shuddered. No plan had ever encountered a fool like Spew.
Spew was packing up his gear when there was a knock at the door. He flung himself against the wall and pulled a Glock 9mm from the waistband of his camouflage pants.
"Shane?"
"Yes, grandma?"
"Do you and your little friend want some Ovaltine and cookies?"
Little friend? Christ, it was like planning a hit with the Beav. Smith felt like Eddie Haskell.
"No thank you, grandma."
Smith heard the old woman totter down the stairs.
"You got your stuff? Let's get the fuck outta here."
Kathy had her feet up on the makeup table, "American Constitutional Law" resting in her lap. She tapped a yellow highlighter against her teeth as she tried to read about Marbury vs. Madison. It was hard to concentrate. The investment bankers were arguing over tips and the sociologist was sitting in the corner crying because she caught her boyfriend banging the doctoral candidate in Hellenic studies in a stall in the ladies' bathroom.
Working at the Happy Beaver wasn't so bad, Kathy thought. Her first night, she made $500. Beat the hell out of waiting tables. She needed the money. Nobody was paying to put her through law school. Her father was a cop who drank himself to death when she was 14 and her mother was usually too Xanaxed out to consistently make a living.
At least here, there were rules. The restaurant claimed to have rules, but they were more like guidelines. She quit, or was fired, depending on your point of view, after a disagreement with the chef, a smarmy little dago named Pasquale. She was in the kitchen when Pasquale grabbed her ass. She tried to laugh it off and told him, "Don't do that again." He did it again and she turned to him, stared into his eyes, and said, "Do that again and I'll break your fucking arm." He did it again. Kathy grabbed his hand and bent it back, sharply, until she felt the tendons snapping and the bones grinding. Pasquale collapsed, grasping his arm, and screamed, "She broke my fucking arm."
It wasn't exactly clear whether she said "I quit" before the owner said "you're fired." Either way, she found herself without a job and in need of cash for tuition, rent, food. Dancing seemed like a good idea. She had the body for it, and if she wanted to exploit it for money, whose business was it?
She was nervous the first night. But as she gyrated to ZZ Top's "LaGrange," she reviewed the U.S. Supreme Court case Cole vs. LaGrange in her head. If only ZZ Top had recorded a tune called "Marbury," she'd be able to ace constitutional law.
It got easier as the night went on and the dollars piled up.
Tonight was not easy.
The place was dead, always was on Sunday nights. The dancers, though, still had to pony up the $50 stage fee and as dead as this night was, there was little chance they'd be able to earn it back. The investment bankers stopped trying to kill each other over the paltry tips they were supposed to share and turned their ire toward Papa.
"Look at this shit," the one investment banker said, flipping through a pile of bills.
"This isn't even minimum wage, after we account for the fifty bucks we had to pay that asshole. That little fucker has a lot of balls to charge us on dead nights," the other said.
Kathy turned from her studies and asked, "You want to sit there and bitch, or do you want to do something about it?"
Smith was listening to the UFO guy on the radio talk about the conspiracy to suppress the truth about the pending alien invasion of America while he waited for Spew to do whatever it was he was doing behind Nunn's house.
"We have a caller from Idaho. Idaho, you're on the air."
"Big fan. Love the show. Just wanted to say you're a little off base on your theory. I have it on good authority that the CIA and Masons are behind it. Regis too. I'll be more than glad to send you my manifesto on it…"
Smith was beginning to enjoy the UFO guy. It made him feel secure in his sanity. The universe was a strange place, but no matter how strange his own universe got, it would never reach the level of the UFO guy.
Spew jumped into the car and said, "Screwby."
"Screwby?"
"That's something we Marines said in the sandbox, dude. Screwby. It means cool. Or it means everything's fucked up. Something like that. I got it confused sometimes, I think."
"You get a lot of things confused, don't you, Shane?"
Three blocks away, the UPS guy was lying on top of his desperate housewife. Her husband was out of town and she had unleashed her Siren-like womanly wiles to tempt the UPS guy into her bed, pulling out all stops to seduce her stud in brown.
"I got a Brazilian today," she told him.
Mission accomplished.
The UPS guy was about to achieve what he romantically referred to as "the money shot" when the house rocked.
"Did you feel that?" he asked.
"Baby, you made the earth move. That never happened before."
The desperate housewife gazed into his eyes.
"I love you."
The UPS guy felt sick.
Nunn regained consciousness lying on top of Traci With an I. Their bed had flipped over and the room was filled with acrid smoke. Nunn coughed and rolled off of her. He dragged her into the living room, where she woke.
She grasped her chest.
"My boob!"
Chapter Four
"Oops."
"I can't believe you fucked that up."
"I said 'oops.'"
"How did you ever get in the Marines anyway?"
"Yeah, I know, they've really let their standards slip."
Wiley toed the rubble and turned to one of the firefighters.
"What a fucking mess, huh?"
The firefighter shrugged and trudged off to get a cup of coffee from the Red Cross truck.
"Nic
e talking to you," Wiley called after him.
The detective walked around front and found Nunn sitting on the steps as the EMTs tended to Traci With an I inside. Nunn was slumped over, his head in his hands.
He had a massive headache and his ears were still ringing, but otherwise, he escaped the blast unscathed.
"So," Wiley began, "another day, another explosion."
"What?" Nunn asked.
"I said, another day, another explosion."
"Yeah, I was sleeping at the time. So was Traci. I didn't see anything."
"Well, it was a lucky break," Wiley said. "Tell me what happened."
"I just did," Nunn said, annoyed. "We were sleeping. And when I woke up, I was on the floor."
"That happen to you a lot?" Wiley asked while writing "Sleeping" in his notebook.
"What?"
"Never mind."
Wiley scratched his chin and stood aside as the ambulance crew wheeled Traci With an I out the front door. Nunn rose and followed them.
"Well," Wiley said as Nunn walked away, "if you remember anything else, don't forget to give me a call."
"Will do," Nunn said.
It wasn't until he climbed into the ambulance that he realized that he still didn't know the detective's name.
Chapter Four
Smith got a beer and walked to Papa's table, in the back, away from the swaying breasts and asses and the sparse lunchtime crowd. He sat and watched as Fat Sam swallowed a turkey club sandwich. It was like watching a python eating a rat. The guy didn't even chew.
Smith delivered the bad news. He could see a vein throbbing on Fat Sam's forehead. He had seen that vein throb before, a signal that Fat Sam was about to do something more horrible than consuming a sandwich.
"He told me it was foolproof," Smith said.
Papa shook his head.
"Look, he said he was going to put the bomb outside Nunn's bedroom and blammo…"
"Blammo?"
"His word. Anyway, he said it was big enough to take down half the house. He said the concussion alone…"
"So then, how the fuck did he manage to blow up the guy's garage?"
"He said he got confused."
"That happen a lot?"
Nunn tried to quiet the voices in his head by reading an old issue of Sports Illustrated while he waited for the doctor to deliver the news. The cover said the Miami Dolphins were going to win the Super Bowl. Win some, lose some. Mostly lose some, Nunn was thinking.
The doctor approached Nunn. After briefly making eye contact with Nunn, his gaze fell to the floor.
"Mr. Nunn?"
"Yes."
"Well, the good news is we saved her left breast. It was touch and go. But…" The doctor's voice trailed off.
"What is it?" Nunn asked.
"The right breast implant is ruptured. We need to call in a plastic surgeon for an emergency augmentation."
"An emergency boob job?"
"I guess you could call it that."
"Does that happen often?"
"More than you know."
Nunn went to Traci With an I's room and knocked gently on the door. She was lying on her back. She appeared, for want of a better term, lopsided.
Traci With an I's gaze met Nunn's. Tears welled in her eyes.
Nunn cleared his throat.
"You look good," he croaked.
Traci With an I burst into tears.
"I'm a goddamn freak. Look at this."
She pulled her hospital gown to the side to show Nunn her deflated right breast. She looked like a goddamn freak.
Nunn looked at his feet and rubbed the back of his neck. He felt tears creeping out of the corners of his eyes. He couldn't help it.
"Um, look, Traci, I'm going to have to find a place for us to stay so I'm going to be taking off here."
"Don't leave me," she pleaded.
"I won't be gone long."
Or, he thought, maybe I will. It might be a good time for a trip. Get out of town for a while, at least until what was left of his garage stopped smoking. "Traci, ever been to Memphis? I've been dying to see Graceland."
Kathy was waiting for Papa when he walked back to his office. The new girl, he thought. Probably going to quit already. Not every girl is cut out to stick her ass in the faces of strangers waving dollar bills at them.
"Well, Cat," he said as he walked past Kathy toward the office door, "sorry it didn't work out. I really believed you had. …
"Oh, no. I'm not quitting. I need to talk to you about something."
She was carrying a briefcase and under her arm was a thick book. That was strange, Papa thought. He hadn't seen a stripper carrying a briefcase since the investment bankers did that Bachman-Turner Overdrive routine at that private party for the AIG people.
Inside the investment bankers' briefcases, well, let's just say that they weren't carrying financial instruments, unless Wall Street was trying to reverse its death spiral with derivatives that were flesh colored and made of latex.
Papa waved Kathy into his office and directed her to the couch in front of his desk. He sat next to her, his hand brushing against her thigh, and said, "Well, what do you want to talk about?"
Kathy thought about warning him not to touch her again. But she fought back the temptation to rip the old fuck's arm off and beat him to death with it. This was a business meeting, and beating Papa to death with his own arm might jeopardize her position in the negotiations.
"Sir, I've done a little research on the fees you charge dancers and how they relate to federal statutes governing wages and hours worked."
This wasn't the kind of meeting Papa envisioned. He got off the couch and walked behind his desk. He eased into his chair, leaned back and said, "That's really quite interesting. Now, tell me where it says in that book you have there that I can't throw your sweet ass out onto Route 30."
"I prefer to show you."
Kathy stood and tightened the belt on her terrycloth robe. Papa leaned forward in anticipation of a free show. Show me, baby, he thought. So he was a little confused when Kathy bent over his desk and slid a thick book under his nose. His eyes wandered from the book to Kathy's breasts, which were peeking out of her robe.
"As you can see," Kathy said, clinching her robe, "this is a bound edition of the Federal Register. Just read the highlighted part."
Papa reluctantly moved his eyes from Kathy's breasts to the book. He skimmed over the highlighted part. Then, he read it again, slowly. Then, he picked the book up, leaned back in his chair and read it yet again. It said a lot of things, but translated into English, it meant he was fucked.
He put the book down. Still, what leverage did this skank have? She may be a law student, but she's still a stripper. Strippers, he believed, ranked slightly below earthworms on the intelligence scale. She couldn't possibly know what she's doing. She might be right on the principles of the law, but here, in the back office at The Happy Beaver, principles didn't count for much.
"So you know how to highlight. Congratulations, counselor."
"You know, it would be very uncomfortable for you, having the Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division crawling up your ass. They have a way of dragging things out and just kind of fucking with your life and livelihood. They can be pretty persistent."
Papa squeezed his eyes shut and Kathy continued, "And it could get even more uncomfortable for you if, until this matter is resolved, for instance, the investment bankers stopped giving free blow jobs to the codes and health inspectors. I believe that may have what we call a chilling effect on your business."
Papa pressed his eyes into his skull with his fingers. Well, he thought, this bitch was certainly on her way to being a lawyer. She already had the extortion part down. He exhaled and suddenly, his expression brightened.
"You really are a law student?"
"I told you," Kathy said.
"You know, I can help you out with this wage and hour business if you help me out with something. What do you know about ins
urance?"
Detective Wiley stared at the TV a long time.
"Sage Fucking Rosenfels."
Less than a minute left in the fucking game and Sage Fucking Rosenfels has to play the fucking hero, Wiley thought. He couldn't just go down in dignified flames. He had to keep trying. Some fucking hero. Asshole.
The Vikings had been losing by 13 to the Packers. The seconds were counting down and it looked like the Packers would cover the seven point spread. It was money in the bank. But with 32 seconds to go and the Vikings on their own 28, Sage Fucking Rosenfels throws the ball as far as he can and Bernard Fucking Berrian runs under it and the idiot cornerback falls down and Berrian scores and the Green Fucking Bay Packers don't cover and Wiley is in deep shit.
"Sage Fucking Rosenfels."
He was pondering his options – a shotgun snack had crossed his mind – when the phone rang.
"How about that Sage Rosenfels?"
"Sage Fucking Rosenfels," Wiley said.
"So, way I figure it, you're in pretty deep here. You keep chasing it, but you only keep digging yourself in deeper."
Wiley didn't say a word. He didn't know what to say. He had about run out of running room. He had chased his bad luck streak right into a brick wall.
Papa continued, "I read something a while back that may be relevant to you. Thomas Freidman. Ever read him? New York Times columnist. Writes about the global economy a lot. Writing about the Iraq war, he wrote, something to the effect, if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. If you find yourself in three holes, dig harder."
Papa paused to allow the full profundity to sink in.
Wiley thought about it for a second. How the fuck can you be in three holes at the same time? And even if you could, why the fuck would you keep digging? Wouldn't you be trying to get out of the holes? He tried to twist his brain around the idea and finally, he blurted out, "What the fuck's that supposed to mean?"
Don't Be Cruel Page 3