by Nic Saint
“So you see?” said Kingman, stifling a yawn. “Nothing to worry about. Now what I would advise you to look into is this business with your human’s uncle and Mayor Butterwick.”
“What about them?” I asked. Now that my own worries were allayed to some extent, I was open to listen to someone else’s woes for a change and maybe try to find a solution.
“They keep sneaking off together. People say to their love nest. Neglecting their duties. It wouldn’t surprise me if calls wouldn’t start going out for the Mayor to be replaced and your Uncle Alec, too. They’re not exactly making themselves popular lately.”
I nodded. “The article,” I said sagely.
“Tip of the iceberg, Max. There’s a lot of resentment, and people are talking, and even though they have their fans, they have their enemies too. And plenty of them.”
This didn’t sound good. In fact it sounded like something I didn’t associate with either Uncle Alec or Charlene. But when I told Kingman that they were both conscientious people and consummate professionals, he shrugged and said, “You can never tell. People will surprise you every time, and not always in a good way. Now take my Wilbur for instance. I know he’s not exactly a Casanova but did you know he spends every waking hour on those dating apps? Yep, Wilbur is looking for love. He’s looking for Mrs. Right.”
We all glanced up at Wilbur. His jaw, missing more than one tooth, was moving wordlessly as he watched a barely-clad model demonstrating a Stairmaster on the Home Shopping Network and he almost fell off his chair laughing when she fell off her machine. Crumbs flecked his beard, and his hair looked as if it had been washed in burger grease.
Yup, whoever landed Wilbur was one lucky lady.
35
Jerry Vale was brooding again. Even though he’d sworn not to stage another escape attempt after the previous one had so gloriously backfired, he couldn’t help the way his brain worked. And his brain wanted freedom, and so did the rest of him. And he’d just had another brainwave and was about to convey his latest scheme to his partner in crime, when the cop in charge of keeping sure the prisoners were safely ensconced inside their cells at all times came ambling up in his customary good-natured way, and announced that Jerry had a visitor.
“A visitor!” Jerry cried, springing up from his perch.
“Yeah, I was as surprised as you are,” said the cop. “And a good-looking dame, too. Your sister, I presume?”
“I don’t have a sister, you moron,” he said, causing the sunny demeanor of the cop to lessen to a certain degree. Clearly the man hadn’t forgotten being beaned over the head.
“Less of that, Vale. Now do you want to see your visitor or not? If you do, I suggest you behave.” And he raised a menacing eyebrow to emphasize his words.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll behave,” said Jerry, craning his neck to see past the cop and catch a glimpse of this surprise visitor.
“Do you have a visitor, Jer?” asked Johnny from his own bunk.
“Yeah, looks like,” said Jerry.
“Who is it?” asked the gentle giant.
“How should I know? That idiot cop thinks it’s my sister.”
“But you don’t have a sister, Jer.”
“Oh? Is that a fact? Gee, I didn’t know. Of course I don’t have a sister, you numnuts!”
“Still the charmer, I see?” suddenly a woman’s voice spoke from the other side of the metal bars.
“Marlene!” Jerry cried out, as surprised as he was pleased to see his better half suddenly move into view. “What are you doing here?”
“That’s what I keep asking myself, but here I am.” Marlene, a handsome woman, slim and exceedingly tan with plenty of makeup and short blond hair, narrowed her eyes at her former husband. “You lost weight, Jer.”
“Prison life doesn’t become me,” he said ruefully.
“Is it true you spent a couple of weeks in Mexico before they shipped your ass back to the States?”
“We were in Tulum, Marlene,” said Johnny, smiling his goofy smile.
“Hi, Johnny. Living la vida loca, huh?”
“I don’t know about lavi loco but we spent a lot of time on the beach, sipping cocktails and looking at the ladies. Pretty ladies they got down there, isn’t that right, Jer?”
“Shut up, Johnny.”
“Pretty ladies, huh? So all that talk about missing me and wanting to get back together was just talk, is that it?”
“No, it wasn’t,” said Jerry. He directed a pleading look at his ex-wife. “I miss you, sweetie. When are you going to forgive me?”
“How about never?” she suggested tartly.
“There was one Mexican lady who kept pouring us tequila, isn’t that right, Jer? I think she took a shine to you.”
“Shut. Up,” said Jerry through gritted teeth.
“Look, I didn’t come here to listen to your travel itinerary,” said Marlene. “I heard that you stole a Picasso and a ton of gold. Is that true?”
“No, it’s not,” said Jerry. “We’re innocent, Marlene—you gotta believe me.”
She frowned. “No gold?”
“No gold.”
She chewed on that for a moment. “Jewelry?” she suggested.
“No jewelry.”
“Diamonds? Necklaces? Furs? Anything?”
“Look, this time we’re actually innocent,” said Jerry. “Isn’t that right, Johnny?”
“Yeah, we found religion,” said Johnny, folding his hands like the elders at Kingdom Hall had taught him. “We’re reformed now, Marlene. The life of crime is behind us.”
“Too bad,” said Marlene. “When I read about that gold, I figured…” She made an airy gesture. “Eh, it doesn’t matter. It was nice to see you again, Jer. Take care of yourself.”
“You’re not going already, are you?” asked Jerry, much perturbed. “You just got here!”
“And now I’m going. See you, Johnny. Bye bye, Jer.”
And with these words, she effectively stalked off, her high heels tapping on the polished concrete floor, the sound growing fainter as she went.
Jerry yelled after her, “So when are we getting back together?”
“Never!” her voice echoed. Then a door slammed and she was gone.
Jerry sank down onto his bunk again, more distraught than ever.
“I think she was disappointed we didn’t steal no gold, Jer,” said Johnny.
“You know, Johnny? I’m starting to wish that we had stolen that gold.”
“But we can’t, Jer. We’re on the straight and narrow now. We’re reformed.”
“I gotta accept that my marriage is over,” said Jerry sadly.
“I thought it was over last year?”
“Oh, shut up, will you? I need to think.”
And soon he was deep in thought again. It stood to reason that the only way to convince Marlene to give their marriage another shot was to wear her down. Talk to her like he’d never talked before. But how could he do that when he was locked up?
So he had to get out and he had to get out pronto.
And this time he was going to come up with a plan that was foolproof.
36
“We have to convince her, Dooley,” I said.
“I know,” he said.
“This is now a matter of life and death.”
“I know!”
We’d arrived at Odelia’s office and both took a deep breath. We were entering the kind of negotiation that was going to determine our future, and we needed to strike the right note from the start, just like a hostage negotiator would. For that was what we were: hostages of the crazy wiles of those cat-hating sisters Blanche and Bella Trainor.
So we set paw inside the Gazette building and made a beeline for Odelia’s office.
She looked up when we entered. “Did you know that an insurance agency by the name of Johnson and Johnson has been named in one of the biggest fraud cases this town has ever seen?” she asked.
“No, I didn’t know that,” I said.
“Tell her, Max,” Dooley whispered behind me, giving me a poke in the rear.
“Chase is looking into the case,” she said. “And he’s made me promise not to write a word about it until he’s ready to haul the principals into the station for questioning.” She shook her head. “It’s tough to have to sit on a story that big, not being able to write it.”
“Tell her, Max!” Dooley urged again, and pushed me further in the direction of Odelia’s desk.
“Will you stop pushing?” I hissed.
“Tell me what?” asked Odelia, only now becoming aware that the two cats who had graced her with their presence were anxious to have speech with her.
“Well, the thing is…” I began, then stopped and started again. “You see, we’re in some sort of…”
Dooley, tired of my prevarications, emerged from behind my broad back and blurted out, “Blanche and Bella have locked us out of the house. They hate cats and they’re going to try to convince you that all cats are evil and make you get rid of us and we’ll have to spend the rest of our lives on the street, eating from dumpsters just like Clarice does, and live off scraps of food and mice and rats and other horrible vermin.”
Odelia looked taken aback by this outburst. “Blanche and Bella did what?” she asked.
“They locked the pet flaps,” I said. “But first they kicked us out.”
“Oh, dear,” said Odelia. “I’m sure they only did that to make sure they could clean without being disturbed.”
“You think so?” I said, not fully convinced.
“You know how jumpy you get around a vacuum cleaner, Max,” said Odelia, getting up from behind her desk and crouching down next to us. “She probably wanted to spare you the trouble of having to hide each time she turns on the machine.”
“She did turn it on and we did run and hide,” I admitted. “Straight into the bed.”
“And then Blanche came and chased us out and said cats shouldn’t be in the bed, or inside the house,” said Dooley, “and then she locked the pet flap so we couldn’t get back in.”
“I’m sure she’ll have unlocked it by now,” said Odelia with a smile as she petted us. “It doesn’t take all day to clean the house, you guys. As soon as she’s done she’ll let you in again. It’s your house too, you know. And she can’t keep you out.”
“She can’t?” I asked, a glimmer of hope returning.
“Of course not. But as long as she’s cleaning, I think it’s best if you don’t get in her way. She’s a good cleaner, with excellent references, but she strikes me as a forceful person, who doesn’t like it when cats run underfoot and make her trip and fall.”
“We would never make her trip and fall,” I said earnestly, though the thought of making Blanche trip and fall suddenly gave me the warm fuzzies when I pictured the scene. Her landing smack dab into her own bucket of sudsy soapy water? The notion actually put a smile on my face for the first time since we’d been chased out of our own home by the evil cleaner.
“See? You’re all better again,” said Odelia, noticing my smile and giving me another pat on the head. “Now run along, I have work to do. Unless you have some juicy gossip for me?” She arched a meaningful eyebrow, but I had to disappoint her. The only gossip I had was that Wilbur was dating, and that wasn’t something anyone wanted to hear.
It was with renewed fervor that we left the office. Things were looking up again. Though I have to say I was getting whiplash from the up-and-down motion my mood had been going through that day.
“I have to say I’m feeling much better, Max,” said Dooley. “Now that I know that Odelia is not going to kick us out.”
“Of course she’s not going to kick us out,” I said, the idea suddenly sounding silly even to my own ears. “Blanche is just a cleaner who comes in once a week. And being locked out of the house once a week for a couple of hours is not that bad, is it?”
“I thought Odelia said she’d hired her to come in three times a week,” Dooley said.
I stared at my friend. “Three times a week!”
“The house is very dirty,” he said. “She’ll probably have to do some of that deep cleaning that cleaners like to do. I once saw an episode of General Hospital where deep cleaning took a week. And at the end Frank Zucker, the homeowner who’d hired the cleaner, had slept with her in his own marital bed and nine months later she delivered two healthy baby boys, twins and heirs to the Zucker fortune. It was the season finale.”
I couldn’t imagine Chase sleeping with Blanche in Odelia’s bed and Blanche delivering twins nine months later, but it did strike me as ominous that she was going to be part of our lives for the foreseeable future at the clip of three times a week. That was a lot of pet flap locking!
And as we wended our way home, and finally arrived at our destination and moved straight inside through the pet flap, we found that the darn thing was still locked!
And when we moved next door, we found Harriet and Brutus lying in wait on the porch, and when I threw them a questioning glance, they both shook their heads.
Locked out of our own homes.
Oh, the horror!
37
“So you want me to hit you?” asked Johnny, surprised.
“How many times do I have to explain it?” said Jerry annoyedly. “Yeah, hit me and I’ll hit you and the cops will come to break up the fight and that’s when we turn on them and escape.”
“But… I don’t want to hit you, Jer. You’re my friend and I like you.”
“You don’t have to hit me hard, Johnny. Just a light tap on the chin.”
“But I don’t know my own strength, Jer. I’ll probably hit you too hard and I don’t want that. What if you get hurt?”
“Look, we’re not really going to fight. It’s just acting, see? Like in the movies? Or did you really think those actors actually hit each other? It’s all fake!”
“Oh,” said Johnny, his face lighting up. “So I just have to pretend to hit you. Now I get it.”
“Yeah! Just like in the movies!”
“I can do that!”
“Great. Let’s get this show on the road. I’ll throw the first punch, and you retaliate.”
“Okay, Jer. Whatever you say,” said Johnny, thinking this was a great game. And a nice change of pace. Sitting in this prison cell was getting kinda boring without his phone. He liked to play Candy Crush to while away the time. Or to look for those Pokémons. But the cops had taken his phone away, which he thought was not very nice of them.
Jerry took a boxer’s stance while Johnny just stood there, like the man mountain that he was, waiting for his friend to throw the first fake punch so he could fake-retaliate.
“Now remember to make a lot of noise, all right?” said Jerry. “The more noise the better.”
“What kind of noise?” asked Johnny, interested in this new development.
“Any kind of noise! Screaming, shouting, name calling. This is supposed to be a big fight, you see. And when people fight they make a lot of noise.”
“Oh, I get it,” said Johnny, nodding. “What names do you want me to call you, Jer?”
Jerry rolled his eyes. “Who cares! Anything goes, Johnny. That’s the name of the game: anything goes. Now are you ready for my first punch?”
Johnny grinned. “Sure, Jer. Do your worst.” He’d always been a big fan of action movies, the kind with plenty of fight scenes. And now he was going to be in one of those scenes himself. It tickled his funny bone. But then Jerry hauled off and landed the first punch and it actually hurt!
Jerry had tiny fists but he was a wiry little fella and when he threw a punch it made a hole in Johnny’s stomach and he said ‘Oof!’ and actually doubled over because he hadn’t expected that.
“Jer! You punched me!”
“Of course I punched you! What did you think this was? A game of chess? We’re fighting, Johnny. Mean and dirty. Like in that movie Fight Club, remember?”
Johnny didn’t remember, but he did think Jerry shouldn’t
actually have punched him. “That wasn’t a make-believe punch, Jer,” he said. “That was a real punch.”
“So give me a real punch back, or are you too lily-livered, you big pussy?”
Johnny frowned. He didn’t like the way this fight was going. “I don’t want to hit you, Jer,” he repeated. “You’re my friend and I don’t like to hit my friends.”
“You mean like this?” said Jerry, and gave Johnny another needle punch in the gut that made the big guy go all ‘Oof!’ “Or like this?” Jerry continued, and hit his friend on the nose!
“Hey—no fair!” said Johnny. “You said you weren’t going to hit for real—only fake!”
“Oh, stop whining and start hitting,” Jerry growled. “Do some damage, you big lummox!”
Finally, after the third kick to the stomach—a sensitive area for the big man—Johnny had finally had enough. So he raised his great big fist and gave his friend a light tap against the temple. Jerry flew through the prison cell, hit the wall, and slumped to the floor, out for the count. And when moments later the guard came to check on them and found Jerry knocked out on the floor, he shook his head and sighed the sigh of a long-suffering guard. “I’ll call the doc. Again.”
“I didn’t even hit him that hard,” said Johnny, still surprised by this turn of events.
“That’s what they all say,” said the guard, and took out his phone to call the doctor.
When Jerry finally regained consciousness, and stared up into the face of Dr. Tex Poole, he said, “Am I out? Did I escape?”
“No, you didn’t escape, Mr. Vale,” said Tex, “but if I were you I’d take it easy for a couple of days. And no more tussles, you hear?”
“I didn’t even hit that hard,” Johnny repeated. “I only nudged him with my fist.”
“Well, that seems to have done the trick,” said Tex, helping Jerry up from the floor. “No lasting damage, though. Not even a concussion. But don’t do it again, Mr. Carew.” The doctor gave him a reproachful look that hit Johnny like a punch to the gut.