"She's no friend of mine," Barbara snapped, jerking away. "And I'm sure you aren't here for my health."
"Of course I am...among other things," Carl admitted sheepishly. "You know I've been a little strapped lately."
There was no need for him to go into details. In a town as straight-laced as Richmond, a g-string could make headlines. Carl Ksnip had been in the news for years. His nightclub in Shockhoe Bottom had been raided, closed, re-opened and re-closed for just about every violation on the books, and then some. He seemed to have a thing for minors: employing them, serving drinks to them, and sleeping with them. His liquor license had been revoked so often that the Panty Free Zone had become a beacon of sobriety. His club was the first to be prosecuted under the state's new anti-smoking regulation. And finally, the city fathers had resurrected the old chestnut from Prohibition days, tax evasion, forcing Carl to the verge of bankruptcy. Those dancing poles were regular lightning rods.
"I didn't tell Monique where I was going," Barbara reiterated.
Carl began reaching for her but pulled back when she showed her fangs. He nodded at Dog, who sidled up to Barbara and gave her a blank look.
"Hand him your purse," said Carl.
She knew barking dogs don't bite, and when Dog said nothing Barbara wisely slid her purse off her shoulder and gave it to him. With a strange, almost subservient nod he approached Carl.
"Open it," Carl ordered.
Dog opened the purse and Carl reached in.
"What, no dog biscuit?" Jeremy quipped, but fell silent when Dog darted him with his deadly blues.
Mining his way through the small purse proved a little tougher than expected. With every downward spiral of his fingers, Carl triggered small avalanches that buried his hand. I prayed Barbara had not brought along her portion of the secret password, even if it was outdated and useless. No sense adding fuel to the fire.
"Do you mind?" Barbara said, reaching out.
"You don't know what to look for," Carl told her.
"I don't know what's in my own purse?"
"Not this," Carl answered. I noted the outward bulge at the bottom of the purse as his fingertips scuttled back and forth. "Ah," he said, and drew out his hand. He held up a small metallic rectangle. "This little GPS cost me $89.43 on sale."
Dog returned the purse to Barbara, who took the contaminated object between pinched fingers. "You were tracking me?"
"Hey, the receiver put me out $399.99...not on sale."
Carl was broadly hinting that such an capital investment called for equitable returns—something in the range of a million-fold.
Barbara was shooting daggers at Monique. "You put that thing in my bag, didn't you?"
"Maybe that'll teach you to stop using the same purse all the time." Monique reached into the cab and took out a quaint sequined square that was apparently some kind of pocketbook. It didn't look big enough to hold the necessities of basic female hygiene, which take a little more room than a cell phone and lipstick. "See?" she said, holding up the tiny bag. "Every day I take the time to mix and match. What's a girl without accessories? But every day, you've got that dumb dookie. If you'd changed your purse this morning, we wouldn't have been able to follow you."
Carl regarded this fashion statement from one of his protégés with narrowed eyes and puckered lips. After mulling it over a moment, he offered up his own suggestion:
"Monique, shut up."
"But Babycakes—"
"When you sell out a friend, you keep your yap shut about it." Carl shook his head. "People'll think you're not just a snitch, but a cretin, too."
Monique put on her best stage pout and turned in my direction. I was startled and/or nonplussed and/or aroused when she gave me a muffled look of recognition. She had seen me somewhere but couldn't quite place me. I briefly shot her a come-hither invitation. Yeah, I was the stud you met in...where the hell was that, again...? She batted her eyelashes with the precision of an M-16 on automatic. I went down in flames.
"So now you're here, now what?" said my grammatical sister.
"You act like you don't want to share after all I've done for you." Carl pursed his lips in a remarkable imitation of Monique's petulance. "Don't you think you should want to pay me back for the facelift?"
"I've never had a facelift!" said Barbara, outraged.
"I mean pay me back for the facelift you'll need when Dog's finished with you," Carl elaborated.
"Oh."
You might be wondering what I was doing throughout all of this. I figure the fact that I was still breathing was accomplishment enough.
Jeremy was sizing up Dog. He had been chumped by the runt and he wanted a rematch to prove his manhood, or at least his sizehood. Dog seemed oblivious to his scrutiny. In fact, Dog's gaze remained locked on Monique. I wondered if she was the dog biscuit.
"This isn't fair, Carl," Barbara said cautiously, her best and only defense being a measly truism.
"What a disgusting society we live in," said Carl. "For three or four generations we've been raised to indulge our every whim. It's too late for reform; it's in our blood. I was born and raised in America, weaned on Madison Avenue and matriculated at Gimme University. Don't blame me if I want a share. Blame our esteemed culture."
What a philosopher. What a poet. I bet his tax returns were positively Ginsbergian.
"What kind of share did you have in mind?" Jeremy asked after fighting a croak out of his voice.
"All of it, of course," Carl said blithely. "That's the cost of saving you from prison."
I was put out by this broad interpretation of 'share'. It was like conquering the world for a square block of Podunk. I said: "That's bullshit."
Dog looked my way and dismissed me after half a glance. A little put out by his pet's indolence, Carl said, "Dog, you want to bury this bone?"
Dog wasn't quite as slavish as I had thought. He was mentally rotating Monique on a sharp file and pretended not to hear. Monique felt the pointy edge of his vision and seemed prepared to spring back into the truck.
"Enchanté suffers from a severe form of Heliobacter pylori," said Carl, going gastrointestinal on us. It took me a moment to transpose 'Barbara' into her professional moniker. "This results in a copious flow—"
"Carl..."
Seeing no real need to agitate Barbara more than she already was, Carl sidestepped with a delicate: "Let's just say there's a leak in the flask. Enchanté here is worth her dehydrated weight in gold."
He had mentioned sickoes. None of us was inclined to ask for details. Seeing his recital deflate, or fail to inflate, Carl got down to business.
"It would be fiscally irresponsible of me to harm Enchanté." Carl weighed Jeremy and me in the balance and found the lesser chore. Turning to me, he said: "You, on the other hand, I'm willing to grind into basic elements."
I was not reassured by Barbara's insouciant shrug. Up to that instant I would have said, outside of being a slut, my sister had some good qualities.
"It's in the house," I said.
I had saved myself from Dog. On the other hand, it was quickly obvious I had placed my head on Jeremy's chopping block.
"It's perfectly obvious the money's in the house," said Carl, as mentally sharp as his gut was slack. "I would like you to tell me where inside."
"You came before we could find it," I said.
"As evidenced by your empty hands," Carl sighed. "But weren't you told by your mysterious benefactor where it is?"
"Ask him yourself," I said, making a show of stepping aside and waving him to the door. "There's a camera setup in the ceiling. He was going to tell us the hiding place, but then you showed up."
"A camera...?" Carl took a step backwards.
I knew it would drop him hard. A camera could be attached to a recorder, a recorder to a computer, and a computer to YouTube. He was in enough trouble with the authorities without having his imbecility broadcasted around the world.
"A pretty primitive setting for hi-tech," he observed cautiously.
"The lunar landings were cheap fakes," Carl sneered.
Neil Armstrong took his famous stroll long before I was born, so I had to bow to the authority of age. "Maybe so, and maybe the Earth is flat, but I can guarantee you there's a live camera inside this dump. All you have to do is look."
Jeremy finally realized there was method to my cowardice (there always is) and unclinched his fists. He understood that while Carl might not exactly be publicity-shy, some forms of notoriety were...fiscally irresponsible.
"I long for the days of plain, simple peepholes, where your eyeball could squat." Carl said this with surprising conviction, but I was sure he must be more in tune with the digital age than the McPherson clan. It was rumored that he made interesting movies, that his pool-sized bed was surrounded by a multitude of media inlets and outlets, that one of his mistresses was a robot that spoke perfect French. "Who the hell would put a camera in there?" he demanded.
"We don't know," I answered.
"I'm thinking it's Skunk," said Barbara in a low voice. "And before you start making fun of me, you explain what we've seen and heard these past few days."
"You explain the dead-as-a-doornail Skunk I saw at the morgue, complete with toe tag," I countered. "You explain seeing Skunk get shot on the security cams."
"Anything can be faked," said Barbara glumly. "I mean, they faked the whole Moon thing, right? And I've seen dead bodies before. They don't look real, if you know what I mean. Maybe you were looking at a dummy."
"I'm looking at one right now." Not a very nice thing to say, I admit. But by pasting QED on her forehead she had opened herself up for the shot. I was feeling strangely exhilarated. Feisty. Non-Mute. Danger has its uses, not least of which its ability to hone your dialectical skills. It can also reduce you to a jabbering mass, which is why I didn't follow up with a more detailed critique of my sister's mental processes. Carl had patiently allowed our spat to run its course. He was waiting for us to draw enough rope to hang ourselves, but we had only succeeded in knotting a ball of yarn. He would have to do the hanging for us.
"Dog, smack this fool down," he ordered.
Seeing three fools before him, Dog gave his master a blank look that I presumed was inquiry. Carl nodded at me and I suffered an instant attack of gelatinous jabbering.
"I'll get it!" I began legging it towards the house.
To my relief and dismay, no one stopped me. Jeremy would have knuckled me under given the opportunity, but he was still unsure of Dog. So far, my brother was the only one who had drawn a weapon. We were acting on the assumption that Carl or Dog or both were armed, and their guns weren't loaded with blanks. But until we knew for certain, we should be putting up a better fight than this. Jeremy could tackle Dog while I went after Carl Tub-O'-Guts. But these appeared like just the sort of knuckleheads who would play pin-the-tail with a high-powered rifle. Jeremy might have swept the incident under his mental rug, but I couldn't shake the sniper out of my mind. Dog's beady eyes seemed made for a scope.
Weaving past the holes in the porch, I reentered the house—and stopped dead. I didn't have a clue, but I had to find the money fast, or else. 'Or else' was still open to definition, but I couldn't think of anything pleasant. I wandered through the front room. Realizing I could be seen clearly through the busted windows, I tried to look purposeful. This meant no ogling, no pensive pausing, no empty meandering—all habits to which I was chronically addicted. To avoid any misunderstanding, I circled around to the kitchen and stairs, out of sight of the front yard. I just about rinsed my britches when a voice spoke:
"Welcome back, Mute."
I clambered over some railing that had rotted off the stairs and craned my head up at the camera.
"I thought you were gone," I said.
"A prudent absence, but temporary," said the voice. How could Barbara think it was Skunk? The word 'prudent' did not exist in our father's vocabulary—either before or after death.
"Who are those people?" the voice asked.
"Ever hear of Carl Ksnip?"
The voice pondered this for a moment. "You mean the nightclub owner?"
"That's him, plus a goon." I turned away from the red eye, as though that could hide my shame. "Sweet Tooth works for him."
"Oh dear," said the voice. "And she brought him here?"
"Not exactly, but yes." I grew worried. "Maybe we should keep our voices down."
"Are they in the next room?"
"They're still outside. Carl's afraid you might be taping this." I shuffled sideways a bit. "Are you?"
"I have the capability," said the voice.
"That's not an answer.
"Would it bother you if I was?" the voice said. I waited for him to interpret my silence as a repeated request for an answer. All I got was more silence.
"You still there?" I said lowly.
"Do you think they can hear us?"
"Maybe."
"Is Carl threatening you?" the voice said. "You mentioned a 'goon'."
"I think you could say he plans to break our necks if we don't give him the money."
"And you expect me to agree to this?" the voice asked peevishly.
"We don't have much choice," I said. "Anyway, does it matter to you what we do with it once we get it?"
"In fact, it matters a great deal."
"Put it this way: we'll be using it to save our lives." On the cuff, I concocted a bit of Hollywood, raising my arms in supplication. But the voice wasn't fooled. Theda Bara I'm not.
"Save your theatrics for the critics," the voice said. "Right now, you need to use your noodle."
"Why?" I asked, not seeing any reason to think.
"I intended to use this opportunity to talk to the three of you," said the voice. "Nothing else."
I caught my breath. "You mean the money's not here?"
"Only whatever you have in your pocket."
There went my knees again, wobbling like crushed jelly doughnuts. The few coins in my pocket wouldn't have got me through the Downtown Expressway tollbooth. Was there anything else we could offer? My lifetime earnings would have sent Carl into a deathspin of laughter. Of course, there was Jeremy's mystery fund. At least he could hock his Porsche. I suspected Carl was already in possession of Barbara's kitty, so to speak. Wait—for location, the house on Oregon Hill couldn't be beat. The city assessor said it was worth $180,000, but that was a technical crowbar to tax me out of the district.
"I could sign over my house," I said dolefully.
"The family inheritance?" The voice sounded genuinely affronted, as though he had a stake in the property. "That would defeat the whole purpose of this exercise."
"What purpose?" I asked on hearing two words I deeply loathed. "What exercise?"
"Never mind," the voice began, only to be interrupted by a second voice in the background. A choppy staccato followed, like someone cupping his hand over a microphone.
"Hey!" I said, "you still there? You're not alone, are you?"
The voice returned:
"I've summoned assistance. Be prepared to escape."
"What, you called the cops?"
But the red light once again blinked off.
The voice was seriously fretting my nerves. First he had told me there was no money on the premises, which I had been prepared to risk my neck to investigate, thank you very much. Now he was asking me to walk outside empty-handed and tell everyone to wait an undetermined amount of time for the cavalry to arrive. I'm not a gambling man, but even if I was my life wasn't something I was willing to stake. I was stuck. I couldn't go out and I couldn't stay put.
My genetic inheritance on the Skunk side ranged from a taste for cheap beer to a tendency to hardened silences, with a fairly strong sixth sense sandwiched in between. I had read somewhere that prisoners (or those who belonged in prison) had overly-developed personal spaces, and could instinctively sense any violation of those personal bubbles. Unless I did something rash (like abscond with stole
n money), I did not foresee myself becoming a ward of the Department of Corrections. But whenever someone was looking my way, I could usually sense their presence—long-range snipers being a notable exception.
My skin tingled and I turned. Dog had circled around to the back and was staring at me through one of the empty window frames.
"Is 'Dog' your legal name?" I asked.
He answered with a barely perceptible pull of his lips, as though to say, "No, it's Rabid Dog to turds like you." Or maybe a flea had bitten him and he was too stoically houndbound to show he cared. Either way, I got the message: Stop dicking around. Bring out the money. Now. The mongrel memo would have carried more weight had he pointed a gun at me. Then I risked a second look into those weirdly blue eyes and panicked. This mutt could eat me alive.
I needed to buy time until help arrived, which meant finding something more convincing than the few loose boards laying about the first floor. Dog would make matchsticks out of them before making matchsticks out of me. Some kind of container to preoccupy Carl and entertain Dog for a few precious minutes. I held up a hand towards Dog. "Stay."
Dog malevolently interpreted this as an command to attack and hoiked himself up on the window frame—there was a back door wide open next to the window, but he was much too advanced a life form to bother with it.
Like a raccoon pursued by a ratty beagle my first thought was to gain height. I turned to the stairs and stretched my leg up to the third step. The handrail wobbled and groaned, but held, as I pulled myself up. I tested my full weight on the step. It cackled dryly, as though planning a practical joke. Without looking back, I went ahead. Each step was a chapter out of the Fall of the House of Usher, threatening to haul down the roof on my head, and suck out my immortal soul in the bargain. But I made it without any more loss than some wind and a weakened bladder.
Through the window at the top I looked down on the misery scene in the front yard. Carl was holding a handgun casually in his right hand, while his gun moll filled his left. It was a Mickey Spillane moment, and I'm sure Carl could hear the master's typewriter keys churning out the lurid scenario. Monique's upper and lower body seemed to segment away from her captive wasp waist, as if Carl had bad breath and stinky feet and she did not want her analogous parts to be contaminated. I knew what it was like to live with a man who stank to high heaven, but I doubted Carl was in the same league as Skunk, or else he would never have been able to run a strip joint. Even sordidness has limits, my sister's clientele notwithstanding.
Skunk Hunt Page 16