Grundish & Askew

by Carbuncle, Lance

  “Everybody pull in,” orders Mojado. “Everybody in now.” The men resume their positions just outside the gate. “You have fifteen minutes to give us a hostage. If we don’t have one of them out here, the negotiations are off. We will come at you with extreme prejudice, and we will do anything we can to stop you from harming the others.”

  • • •

  Grundish runs from the oil drums and makes such a clatter. He throws open the roof hatch and slides down the ladder. His hands glide on the rails, and his feet do not touch the rungs on the way down. “Askew...Jerry...” he shouts. The names echo back at him from the metal walls and ceiling. “I need you guys here, now.”

  “They’re trying to get things all set up, they are.” Turleen hobbles around the corner of a stack of storage boxes. She holds an almost-spent Sordes Pilosus to her lips and takes one last hard drag on it.

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, you wouldn’t.”

  “Well, you ain’t supposed to be smoking. You only got one little burnt up lung left, and you can’t afford to fry that one.”

  “Aw, honey, I appreciate the concern, I do,” she says. “But you don’t need to worry about me. I’m a staunch character, I am. s-t-a-u-n-c-h. And, I don’t know that I’m gonna need that lung much longer the way things are looking. If those blue-boys out there come in, I think we’re all done for, I do.” She touches her hair as she speaks to him and adjusts something on her leg under her red dress.

  “Well, uh, do you have any more smokes?”

  “That was the last one, it was.”

  “Fuck!” His left eye throbs, shooting pain through to the back of his head each time it pulses. “Where are Jerry and Askew?”

  “I’m right here,” Jerry’s voice says from around the corner, irritated. “What’s going on? I told you to stay up there and stall them.”

  Grundish rounds the corner. Askew is holding Chancho’s corpse steady on top of Alf the Sacred Burro while Jerry lashes the body to the donkey with duct tape. The jackass’s legs tremble, and he hocks up bits and pieces of some previous meal. Grundish stares at the bizarre scene, unsure what to think. Alf tucks his ears back and hangs his head low. He dredges up a ripe throat turd and drops it on the floor in protest.

  “Well, don’t just stand there,” says Jerry. “For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled. What’s so important that you had to come down here and leave your post?”

  “They want a hostage. If we don’t give one of you guys over to them, they’re gonna storm the place.”

  “Then give ’em Dora and make some sort of lame request in exchange for her, like maybe ask for twenty supreme pizzas or something,” says Jerry. Objections form on Askew’s lips like a nascent cold sore but are not given the opportunity to fester and spread. “I know, Askew, you don’t want to lose her. But if you let her go now, she can hook up with you once you’re safe. Trust me on this if you want to get out of here alive. Plus, she’s better off getting out of here. Do you really want her caught in the crossfire from those thugs out there?”

  Askew shuts his slackened jaw and nods his concurrence.

  “Okay,” says Grundish. But, instead of moving he just stands and stares at the dead Mexican taped to his donkey friend.

  “What are you waiting for, Boy? You don’t get up there and talk to them now, they’ll be shaking our windows and rattling our walls,” barks Jerry. “Get moving. Now! You better start swimming, or you’ll sink like a stone.”

  “All right, I’m moving,” says Grundish as he turns. “But, that’s a hell of a way to treat a donkey.”

  • • •

  Crouched again behind the oil drums, Grundish counts the men near the front gate. Nineteen in all. “Okay,” says Grundish into the bullhorn. “Mojado?”

  “I’m here. And you can call me Piso.”

  “Mojado. We’re gonna send out the whore. We got her ready to go. But I need you to do something for us.”

  “Give me your demands, and I’ll run them up the chain of command.”

  “I’m gonna need two cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon (cold), a carton of Blue Llamas, a box of surgical gloves, and twenty supreme pizzas from Hungry Howie’s – hold the olives.”

  Mojado looks over the top of his car to Detective Carter. Carter nods to him and points at his watch. “Okay,” says Mojado, “it’s going to take us a little while to get all of that together. Now, are you going to want any bread sticks or chicken wings with the pizza? Or maybe a couple of 2-liters of cola? They usually have pretty good package deals, and we might be able to scrounge up a couple of coupons.”

  “Just the pizza,” answers Grundish.

  “All right, then. You go ahead and send out the girl,” says Mojado. “What’s her name?”

  “Her name is Dora. And I ain’t sending her out until we have everything I just demanded.” Grundish knows that he is risking blowing the deal but holds out to stall just a little longer, hopefully long enough to allow Jerry to orchestrate their escape.

  Carter nods again at Mojado. Mojado calls a deputy over and puts his hand on the man’s shoulder. After briefly conferring, the deputy gets in his cruiser and drives away. “Deputy Ceñal is on his way to the In-n-Out Mart, and we’re phoning in the order to Hungry Howie’s right now. It looks like we’re gonna try to work together on this, right? I mean, we’re going to give you what you want, and you’re going to stay cool in there. Nobody else gets hurt. Right?”

  “We don’t want to hurt anybody,” says Grundish. “We’re cool. Just get us the stuff I asked for, and we’ll send out the whore.”

  • • •

  Forty-two minutes later: Deputy Ceñal returns, hauling an armful of cheap beer and a carton of Blue Llamas from his back seat. Ceñal sets everything down on the hood of Mojado’s car.

  “All right, Mr. Grundish,” says Mojado into his handset, “we have your beer and cigarettes. The pizza is on the way. Can you come out and get your stuff?”

  Grundish eyes the men at the gate. It still looks like the same amount of people. Everybody holding their position. “I’m going to send the whore out to bring the beer and smokes back to us. I want you to carry everything through the gate, and put it on the ground about twenty feet away from the building. Go back to your position, and I will send the whore out to pick everything up for us.”

  Detective Carter nods his approval at Mojado. The mustachioed, bottom-heavy man hefts the beer and cigarettes and carries them past the gate, setting them twenty feet out from the building. He backs away again, his eyes fixed on the steel cans that conceal Grundish. A SWAT team sniper sets his sight one inch above the top of the oil drum that hides Grundish, ready to explode his skull with a burst of lead slugs in the event of any shenanigans or skullduggery.

  • • •

  Dora emerges from the front door of the building. Several of the officers with their sights trained on the door pull their guns down when they see that the young, sickly-skinny girl is not accompanied by either of her abductors. She reaches the beer and smokes and bends over, her rump facing the police, the bottom of her ass cheeks hanging just below the high cut fringed edges of her hiked-up jean shorts, showing a sweet crease of flesh where the rounded parts meet the thighs. Emaciated and clearly worn down by her short years, Dora’s presentation still manages to draw curious glances from most of the posse.

  Just inside the building, Askew opens the door for Dora, careful not to expose himself to the police. Once inside she sets down the goods and embraces her man. “I don’t wanna leave you, Baby,” she says, her eyes welling up with tears. “If they’re gonna shoot you, I want to be here with you. Don’t make me go out there.” Her arms wrap around his body, fiercely gripping him, holding him tight to the moment.

  “Baby Doll, you gotta do this,” says Askew, reciprocating with a firm embrace, not wanting to let go. “There’s two ways this can turn out for me. Either I get away and you join up with us later, or they put me i
n the marble orchard. ‘Cuz they ain’t takin’ me alive. I can’t spend the rest of my days in some prison, staring out at the real world through some bob wire fences.” He kisses her forehead. “I think Jerry just may be able to get us out of here safely. But you gotta go along with the program. Otherwise we’re both dead meat. And I can’t have that. So give me one last kiss before you walk out the door. Give me something to hold as a momento until we see each other again.”

  The amplified voice of Detective Mojado, muffled by the building, interrupts them. “Mr. Grundish. We now have the pizza sitting just outside of the building for you. Please send the girl out to get the pizza. And then I trust that you will release her to us.”

  “Go get those pizzas, Baby.” Askew peels Dora from his body. “I need you to go along with the plan. You understand?”

  “Okay, Baby.” She retrieves the pizzas and returns into the building. Askew relieves her of the boxes. Before he can say anything, Dora puts a suffocating squeeze on him, planting wet, warm kisses all about his face, crying, oozing briny tears. “Tell me this is gonna work out, Baby. Tell me it’s gonna be okay.”

  “I love you,” he says. “I never knew what that felt like before. But in these last couple of days, you’ve given me something I never understood before. I’m gonna fight like hell to get out of here and be with you.” He returns her kisses. Sweaty forehead to forehead, pressed together, he tells her, “now get out there and make it look good.”

  And with that, Dora tosses the front door back and flees the building, crying, screaming. She flings herself against the barrel-like core of the officer closest to the gate and screams, “It was horrible! Just horrible! Please don’t do anything to provoke them. If you cross them, those monsters’ll kill those old folks in there.” She buries her face into the officer’s chest and weeps. The tears are deeply felt and sincere. Tears for her man. She bawls and blubbers and blows her nose on the officer’s shirt, leaving a glimmering streak of hot snot. She weeps more and wipes her nose on his arm. “It was horrible. Just horrible.”

  35

  The farrow of cops at the front gate wallow in muddled frustration – restless, smoking smokes, chawing chaw, shuffling their feet, waiting for the action. Askew scuttles along the edge of the roof, staying low, crouched and ready to drop into a defensive position if necessary. A demented squirrel skitters along behind at a safe distance, zigging with Askew’s zigs, zagging with his zags. There are officers nowhere but at the front gate. As far as Askew can tell, the grounds are not surrounded. Much of the area outside of the perimeter of the property is overgrown scrub, vines, palmetto trees and crotalus horridus[45]. It would take a bulldozer or a well-fed crew of illegal aliens with sharpened machetes to cut a swath through the growth.

  “Mr. Grundish,” Mojado’s voice blares through his public address system. “Thank you for working with us. We are taking the girl to the hospital to make sure she is okay. I need you to give me an update on the others. The girl told us that Mr. Mathers is your uncle and the elderly lady is Mr. Askew’s aunt. Is that correct?”

  Askew runs over and says to Grundish in a soft voice, “We told Dora to tell the police that Jerry and Turleen are both captivated and being mistreated by us. That way it still supposably gives us two hostages and keeps them in the clear if this goes bad.”

  “Mr. Grundish? Can you hear me?”

  “Uh, yeah. Yeah. I can hear you. We got the old folks here, and we don’t got no problem with capping ’em if you cross us.”

  “Okay. Okay. Listen,” says Mojado, “we’ve been working together, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Grundish sucks at his teeth, and thinks that one of the Pabst Blue Ribbons would sit just about right in his stomach.

  “So, let’s all stay calm. Now, you got what you wanted with the beer and pizza and smokes, right? We were honorable, weren’t we?”

  “Yeah, I suppose,” Grundish allows. Askew pulls a fresh pack of Blue Llamas out of his pocket and hands it to him. Grundish takes a smoke and lights it, drawing hard on it. The throbbing in his eye lessens and then subsides, leaving the sclera feeling dried out and raw. Askew pulls a fag from his own pack and catapults it into his mouth.

  “What I want to do, then, is hear the rest of your demands. You send out another hostage, and we’ll see what else we can do for you.”

  “Tell ’em we want a dump truck, Uzis, and a garbage bag full of that Jell-O with the fruit salad suspended in it,” says Askew.

  “What for?” asks Grundish.

  “To stall them. Jerry’s just about ready to help us get outta here. We just need a little more time. And to make them think we’re insane in the membrane, Esse.”

  Grundish addresses Mojado. “We ain’t sending the old broad out right now. First you’re gonna meet our new demands. Then we’ll let her go.”

  “Tell me what you want, and I’ll see what we can do?”

  “First,” says Grundish, “we want a dump truck with a full load of gravel in the back. And two Uzis with lots of extra ammo. And we want that Jell-O that has fruit salad suspended in it. I’m talking a shit load of the fruit Jell-O[46], like a garbage bag full.”

  “Let me run that by my superiors,” says Mojado. “It may take a while to fill that order. Can you promise me to be calm and not do anything to those people in there while I see if we can meet your demands?”

  “We’ll give you one hour,” says Grundish. “And then I can’t promise you anything.”

  • • •

  Forty minutes later: “Mr. Grundish, we are still working on your demands. Detective Carter says that we can get you the dump truck, but we’re having trouble finding a load of gravel. It might have to be filled with rubber mulch.”

  “We want gravel,” says Grundish.

  “And as far as the Uzis, I think you’re going to have to understand that they won’t let me give you those. How about shotguns?”

  Grundish stubs out his fourth smoke, grimaces, and wonders how long they can hold off an all-out assault. “Well, then you better talk to them about the fact that if you only give us part of what we’re asking for, we’ll only send out part of a hostage, maybe just a leg and some teeth.”

  “Just stay calm in there, Grundish. I will do my best to talk to Detective Carter but my hands are tied if he says no. And as far as the Jell-O, that takes at least an hour to make. With the amount you’re requesting, it could take us a couple of hours. So you are going to need to stay calm and work with us. I’m doing everything I can to make you happy.”

  “Well, if I don’t have my Jell-O, my dump truck, and the Uzis very soon, we’re going to snuff out the oldies and come at you with our guns blazing.”

  • • •

  Grundish descends the ladder into the building. The dark building. The warm, un-air-conditioned building. “What the fuck?” he says. “What’s up with the lights?”

  A flashlight peeks around the corner and shines into Grundish’s eyes. It moves closer to him as he blocks the glare with his hand. “They shut the power off on us, they did,” says Turleen, flashlight in one hand, half-full jug of wine in the other. “No phone, no lights, no air condition. Not a single luxury.”

  “Like Robinson Crusoe,” agrees Grundish. “As primitive as can be. So they’re starting to try to put the pressure on us now. Steam us out.”

  “It looks that way, it does.”

  Grundish stumbles his way toward Turleen, unable to see the ground, a moth to the light. Just around the corner, Askew sits on a wooden crate with a Pabst can clenched between his thighs while he stuffs the greater part of a piece of pizza into his mouth. Two battery-powered lanterns and several candles throw an orange glow about the room, mad dancing shadows settling here and there, illuminating Jerry, Chancho and Alf the Sacred Burro.

  “What the fuck you doing?” says Grundish to Askew.

  “I’m chowing on this pizza. It’s killer. You ever had this shit with the garlic flavored crust. It kicks the turds out of Pizza Brothers. I�
�m gonna have to quit delivering there and get a job with Hungry Howie’s.” He drains the remaining fluid in the Pabst can and tosses it into a small-but-growing pile of empty cans in the corner.

  “We need to stay sober,” says Grundish. “Quit drinking that beer, and give me a piece of pizza.”

  “He’s drinking up some courage,” says Jerry, looking up from his work on the donkey. Chancho is firmly strapped to the miserable-looking ass. “The boy is shaking in his shoes. He needs a little liquid courage. And you might benefit from a little of that yourself. Go ahead and have one. You’re gonna need it.”

  Grundish grabs a beer from the case beside Askew and pops the top. “All right,” he says, and empties the contents of the can down his throat, not stopping to breathe. “There. Now tell me what we’re gonna do. Askew says you have a plan. Please share it with me.”

  Jerry shuffles around the donkey, ignoring Grundish’s question. Chancho’s corpse is securely attached to Alf. The sacred burro shifts his weight from his left legs to his right, flashes a look of severe irritation, and shifts back again. Chancho’s left arm is taped to the donkey’s neck. The right arm is propped up in front of Chancho, just above Alf’s head. Jerry places a Smith and Wesson .38 in Chancho’s hand and duct tapes the fingers around the handle. In the dim lighting Chancho looks like a fierce armed bandito charging forward on a burro. Jerry unwraps a pack of Black Cat firecrackers and tapes them along the top of Chancho’s arm. The fuse dangles just off of the dead man’s rigor-mortis-locked elbow. Jerry tapes another strand of the fireworks to the shiny black hair on the back of Chancho’s head, and two more down the cold stiff back of the rotting meat-form resting on the back of the burro. He twists the fuses together and turns toward Grundish.