Bustin'

by Minda Webber

  "Quick, grab the cable netting," Sam urged, her voice taut with anger. Cable netting was difficult to wield and hard to throw over the gargoyles, and despite it being made of metal, many of the gargoyles could still slice through. Still, it was the best they had.

  Over the next half hour they managed to contain four of the original ten gargoyles, the rest flying off into the night sky. She knew that the wily creatures wouldn't come back to the warehouse now that their sanctuary had been invaded. They were lost to capture for a time, until they settled in some other poor unsuspecting slob's building.

  Bogie shook his head regretfully. "I sure hope they don't breed."

  "Nuts!" was Sam's angry retort. Gargoyles bred like superenergized werebunnies.

  She was in a foul mood by the time they finished, her blue eyes bright with anger. Paranormalbustin' Pest Pursuers Inc., had failed tonight because of one fiendish greed-ridden man: Mr. Nicolas Strakhov. She just knew he was to blame. He was the ominous owner of Monsters-R-Us, a Russian-based company that had relocated recently to the United States. This company of comrades was a brother, brother and brother act.

  "Who does he think he is, some Russian Rockefeller? This isn't the Gilded Age. That remorseless rat needs to learn some American history!" She swore, her rage running rampant. "We always win."

  Bogie shrugged. "Monsters-R-Us doesn't seem to have problems competing against us," he said.

  She ignored him. "How can such a cold-blooded creep of a man own a Bus tin' company with such a cutesy name?" she asked in sheer frustration. It had been three months since the Strakhovs had moved into her hometown of Dodge, Vermont. Slowly but surely Monsters-R-Us had been stealing her family's business, even though she and her brother were once known to be as dependable as the Maytag Man.

  But obviously that didn't count for anything with the American public—not with Mr. Serial-Saboteur Strakhov around. Oh, no. And Mr. Slimebag had to mess with her projects as well as steal her clients. Three lousy months of underhanded tricks, and disloyal customers were switching to the other monster removal company in droves. It was just plain unfair, Sam thought heatedly, kicking at the tire on their truck. "Ouch," she yelped. "That hurt."

  "Hey! Don't take your bad temper out on the tires," Bogie said. Sam ignored him.

  "He thinks he can take us down playing dirty pool and politics? Well, not on my watch!" Her life's blood was in this company… literally. Too many times to count. And no rotten-dealing Russian was going to usurp her territory. A showdown was coming, and she intended to be the winner.

  Cursing softly under her breath, Sam climbed into their specialized removal truck. Her brother did, too. "Doesn't Strakhov know that cheaters never win and winners never cheat? I'll teach him a lesson he won't forget. Those dirty Russian rats will regret the day they were born." Sam put the truck in gear and started driving toward their warehouse.

  "What?" Her brother leaned wearily back against the seat, his shoulder aching from a particularly vicious whack he had taken. Gargoyle capture was always a tough business, but tonight's sabotage had made it much worse. He called and canceled his date.

  Sam continued ranting. "Mr. Damn-Him-to-Hell Nicolas Strakhov—although even hell will probably slam its gates to him. How dare he throw a monkey wrench into our works? Who the heck does he think he is?" Then, ignoring her brother, she quickly answered her own question.

  "He thinks he's some caviar-snuffling Mafia don of the supernatural world—I'd bet my bottom dollar. But just because he's from some former communist country doesn't mean he can ignore the American way! Doesn't he realize that capitalism is just that?"

  Bogie looked at her, a confused expression covering his face. He loved his big hairdress-hankering sis, but when she went off on a tirade like this, which was rare, there was no turning back. His sibling was hard-driven and sometimes hard-bitten, tough as nails, full of sass. Of course, she was also sweet as molasses, with a heart of gold. A person or monster had to really back her into a corner before she came out swinging. But once she did… DUCK!

  Slapping the steering wheel, Sam winced. Her hands and arms were already a little stiff and sore from their gargoyle misadventure. Focusing back on her anger, she added scathingly, "You stand up for what you believe in. This is America, for God's sake! You give the other fellow a square deal, don't knock him on his ass when he's on his knees! There's enough room for more than one Bustin' company in the northeastern U.S.! That's what makes America great—all these companies working against each other. What would we do without competition?" Sam peeked at Bogie, taking her eyes off the road long enough to give him a knowing glance.

  He smiled and shrugged, knowing to remain quiet when his older sister was on one of her tirades.

  She liked old-time America better, preferably with fast-talking guys and glamorous dolls.

  She went on: "Why, we'd all be wearing the same style jeans and going to one fast food restaurant. Can you imagine? No, of course you can't. That fast food restaurant might not be Mexican food or pizza. That stupid, smug Strakhov is ruining our country's capitalistic tendencies with strongarm commie tactics. And communism is so yesterday's news. If Mr. Strakhov is an example of Russian fair play, then no wonder people called it the Red Scare."

  Bogie grimaced. Fast food was a staple at their house, which they shared with their uncle. Even though Bogie was quite a cook, he still idolized the drive-thru. And when his sister was right, she was right. Without capitalism, you might have communism and only one fast food restaurant. Forget that! He wouldn't live in a country with only Big Macs.

  "Doesn't that scavenging shark Strakhov realize that this is a free country?" Sam rattled on, gaining speed. "Well, maybe not free," she corrected, thinking of the rent on their warehouse where their new offices were located, and of the price of asparagus and popcorn at the movies. Still, she had a point to make, even if only to herself. She noticed Bogie's eyes seemed glazed over like freshly made donuts.

  "Are you listening, Bogart? I'm not talking just to hear myself talk."

  The glazed look vanished and her brother tuned back in.

  "Just think how proud the Founding Fathers would be of us. I mean, they were into trade and all. And Jefferson! Why, we would probably get a congressional medal of honor if he were alive. Too bad none of them came back as ghosts. I always wanted to ask Adams about the Alien and Sedition Acts."

  "How do you figure that, about medals?" Bogie asked, glad he was paying attention now. He'd always wanted a medal.

  "Why, our great-grandfather made a business out of zip, nothing, nada. He saw an unexplored market in the supernatural world and tapped into it. That's what America is about: seeing a need, filling it and getting paid damn well for it!"

  "We do get paid the big bucks," Bogie agreed. Bustin' work was dangerous and ofttimes deadly. Poorly trained Paranormalbustin' companies had very high mortality rates.

  "Besides, we Americans are a driven bunch. All of us are going for the American dream—a four-car garage and six-television household. Now some rat-faced Russian decides he can come stomp all over our hopes with his chiseling comrade boots?" Sam finished grandly, proud of her thesis on American capitalism.

  Bogie shrugged again, wondering what chiseling comrade boots were.

  "We'll dump these cages with the gargoyles at the warehouse and then go home. Uncle Myles should still be up. I have a job for him," Sam decided.

  Bogie glanced askance at her, wondering what devious plan his scheming sister had in mind that would involve their nutty relative. "Uncle Myles?" he asked.

  "Uncle Myles." she said, smiling evilly. "I've got a scheme for that sleezebag Strakhov! I'll teach him to mess with me, that vodka-loving, sabotaging stooge of a Slav! I bet he doesn't even know the Star-Spangled Banner or who Willie Nelson is! I bet he hates maple syrup. And in Vermont, that's hard to swallow!"

  Bogie shuddered. He knew that evil smile of his sister's and, Mafia don of the supernatural world or not, it didn't bode well for one Mr.
Nicolas Strakhov.

  Against the World—or the Strakhov Brothers, Anyway

  As soon as Sam walked through the door of the Hammett household she felt like she had stepped onto the set of a 1940s film-one starring Humphrey Bogart and complete with a baby grand piano. It really wasn't surprising; this was how she always felt. Her family had always been nuts about Bogart movies.

  Her parents had named her Samantha—Sam, for the Samuel Spade character adapted from the movie The Maltese Falcon, the Dashiell Hammett novel. It had made it more inevitable since their last name was also Hammett, though no relation to the author.

  Her middle name was Sabrina, chosen from the movie with Bogart and Hepburn. Her brother, of course, was named after the late and great film star himself. Both brother and sister privately thought that her parents, children of the sixties, had been bogarting each other's joints when they'd come up with the names.

  Her uncle was the same. He relished the fact that his name was Myles; Myles Archer was Sam Spade's partner in the detective agency from The Maltese Falcon. However, his moniker had more to do with the fact that his grandfather had been named Myles than any movie nostalgia.

  Walking into the vast den, Sam took a quick scan of the room filled with bookshelves. Some of the books were just good reading, while others were references and research materials in various dealings with ghosts, gargoyles and other things that flew or bit by night. Titles ranged from Raising Dead Children, by Dr. Spook; The Road to Hell, by Goode N. Tentions; Dancing with the Devil, by Ginger Astaire; Stoned Until Dusk: a Gargoyle Study, by T. O'Leary; to, of course, the ever popular Thirteen Ghosts, misleadingly compiled by Two Ghosts and a Banshee.

  She spied her uncle in his favorite chair by the fireplace. He wasn't a handsome man; his nose was too big and his features too large for his thin face, but he was a good man who loved both her and her brother. He had once again fallen asleep reading.

  Uncle Myles was in his late fifties, and tonight he was dressed in a dark pinstripe double-breasted suit. His typical fedora lay on the coffee table beside him. When it was on his head, he wore it slightly cocked to the right side of his face. Everything he did, he tried to emulate his idol, Humphrey.

  Sam smiled. Her uncle had been looking for the Maltese Falcon for the past eighteen years, but other than that odd quirk he was fairly normal—considering the guy acted, talked and dressed like a reject from a Humphrey Bogart film festival. He even called women "dames" and "dolls." Fortunately, Sam wasn't into feminist sensibility issues. However, when all was said and done, there was nobody better at scouting out information. The years of practice her uncle accrued while looking for the black bird had sharpened his reconnaissance skills even more than Sam's own tracking skills of shadowing black vampire bats, black gargoyles and any other preternatural flying hazards that came her way.

  Sam gently tapped her uncle's shoulder. "Time to wake up."

  Opening his eyes, Myles reached for a toothpick in his suit pocket. "Hello, sweetheart, what's stirring?" He stuck the toothpick between his teeth and looked her over from head to toe, noticing the large mustard yellow bug stains on her coveralls. "Rough night?"

  "You could say that again."

  "Rough night?" her uncle repeated, his silver hair shining in the golden glow of the lamp.

  She nodded wearily. Well, maybe he had another odd quirk. Sometimes he took everything literally. "He's at it again."

  "The Fat Man?" Myles asked curiously, his eyes suddenly bright and alert.

  "More like the Fat Russian," Sam corrected, wondering if Nicolas Strakhov was overweight. She knew he was in business with his two younger brothers, and that Monsters-R-Us was a family business, just like her own, but she didn't know what he looked like. Nor did she much care. Probably he was some macho, squatty foreigner with hairy eyebrows and fish breath from all that caviar. But was he overweight? Probably not. It was too hard to chase sharp-toothed little gremlins and leaping goblins if you were carrying around a bunch of excess baggage.

  She addressed her uncle: "Strakhov's certainly not a straight shooter. The dirty rat hit us again—sabotaged us by switching our sunlamp for a fluorescent one. We had to use the iron netting and lost six of the gargoyles. No, the job tonight didn't go down easy—as you can see," she added grimly as she glanced at the rips in her steel-mesh coveralls. Not only could the gargoyles' slashing claws have hurt her and her brother, but also they both were now going to have to replace their coveralls. It was an expensive but necessary prospect, as a Paranormalbuster didn't capture creatures without the right equipment; there was too much room for error, and too much chance of ending up disfigured, put out of commission or killed.

  "Tough break. You all right, precious? And Bogie?"

  "We're fine," she replied. "Baby brother is cleaning out the truck."

  Myles pulled an old Colt .45 out of his inner jacket pocket. "That dirty-rat Russian better watch out, or he'll be picking iron out of his liver."

  Sam would have been concerned about her uncle waving around the Colt, but she knew he never loaded it. "Forget the threats. I'm on to Nicolas Strakhov's tricks now, and I've got a plan."

  "Yeah, doll?" Myles put the gun back in his jacket pocket. "What's that?"

  "I want you to find out when and where Strakhov's next two extraction locations are. I've heard a rumor and if one of his locations is where I think it is, he's gonna be up a creek without a paddle. Nicolas Strakhov isn't the only one that can play dirty pool."

  "Does this wise guy cheat at pool?" Myles asked. "I could always challenge him to a game. Loser leaves town."

  As tired as she was, Sam laughed. Her overly literal family was her family in spite of being fruitcakes. She loved them dearly—warts, blackbirds, fedora hats and all.

  "No, the rotten louse doesn't play pool, Uncle Myles," she told him. "Just get the scoop on their doings as quick as you can. We'll give these brothers grim a surprise or two. You know, the bigger they are, the harder they fall." Her uncle had quoted these words as long as she could remember, and so far they had held true. The last giant she had taken down had knocked over a house.

  "Got it, doll. You know, for a real looker, you also got brains. Must run in the family."

  She kissed him on the cheek. "Yeah, it does." And with those words she wearily climbed the stairs to her bedroom.

  Another day, another dollar. What a way to make a living. She should have been a hairdresser. Or she could have played piano in a bar. Well, if her husky voice didn't scare little children and goblins alike.

  Actually, she sometimes played on an old honky-tonk piano to an audience at the Casablanca, the club owned by her Uncle Myles and his longtime friend Rick Bergman. And after a rough night of busting up monsters, when the bar closed at one o'clock, Sam would go over and play and sing to her heart's content.

  Yes, her life was at times a lonely one.

  Although she had quite a few friends, she did not have too many close ones. It seemed at times that her life was to have and have not, and if at times she found herself in a real lonely place in the desperate hours after midnight, so be it. No, she didn't have much time for herself or a social life, but she would take it on the chin and come back swinging. There was no reason for her to feel like a woman marked by fate, by her family and by her job. This was the nature of the beast, of this Bustin' business. And she loved the thrill. The work had gotten in her blood, infecting her with adrenaline lust just like many other Bustin' junkies around the country.

  Her fate had been ordained at nineteen, when her world had come crashing down around her; her parents died and suddenly she was in charge. She had taken on the family business and learned to run it like a pro, juggling work, college and raising her twelve-year-old brother all at one time—always on a deadline. It had left her little time for hairdressing, undressing with a member of the opposite sex or even just letting her hair down, but that was how life went. Her life, at any rate.

  Oh well, she thought as she pushed down her la
cerated coveralls, her internal conflict was just that—hers alone. If at times her life might seem a Pyrrhic victory, leaving her like a frozen tree in the Petrified Forest with no love on the horizon, that was okay; she was what she was.

  Washing her face, Sam glanced in the mirror. Maybe sometimes her life did seem like a dead end, but fortunately she had a good head on her shoulders and knew what was important. She could thank her lucky stars that she had a roof over her head, a family who loved her, a job that never left her bored, two pianos, a cuddly pet goblin and a big, soft bed.

  Smiling, Sam climbed in between the soft green flowered print covers and closed her eyes. Tonight, Lauren Bacall or Humphrey Bogart had nothing on her; she was more than ready for the comforting embrace of a big sleep.

  Trolls—Cheaper by the Dozen

  Nobody ever walked across the Madison County Bridge unscathed, not with the bunch of trolls who lived underneath. Trolls were the biggest scavengers of paranormal pests, and they had very distinctive body odor, like the smell of a pigsty in Fourth of July heat.

  Sam might have felt sorry for her unsuspecting quarry, the Strakhov brothers, who were about to take it on the chin and everywhere else, but she didn't. Life was a series of tough choices. She'd learned that in the school of hard knocks—learned mostly from demons, shapeshifters and grinches, the latter who could pack a mean punch when denied their Hoo pudding. She wouldn't take losing her business to Monsters-R-Us lying down, nor would she pretend that them stealing her clients was just water under the bridge. No, what was under the bridge wasn't water.

  Discovering that the Strakhovs had somehow gotten tonight's troll-removal job from the three Billys—grandfather, son and grandson—Sam had put her plan in motion. Now she was waiting patiently for the payoff.

  The three Billys, though gruff in manner at times, had thrown Sam and her brother a lot of business over the years, so she didn't know how Nicolas Strakhov had talked them into switching sides. She figured it wasn't on the up and up.