by Dave Barry
I said, “Look, my name is Philip Horkman, but I stole this guy’s ID and put my picture on it so people wouldn’t know who I really am.”
“And why don’t you want them to know this?”
“Because they think I tried to blow up the George Washington Bridge and that I shot a helicopter pilot in the scrotum.”
“We think that also.”
“But I didn’t. Look in my wallet. Look at the pictures. You’ll see I’m just a simple family man who owns a pet shop in Fort Lee, New Jersey.”
“Ask him the name of his pet shop!” shouted Peckerman.
“What does that have to do with anything?” I shouted back.
“It’s important!” yelled Peckerman, though I wasn’t sure if he was answering me or simply saying this to the goon.
“And why is it important?” the goon asked Peckerman.
“It’s not important,” I insisted.
“We have a lot of our terrorism meetings there,” said Peckerman.
“We what?!”
This tidbit was of obvious interest to these guys.
“And what is the name of this pet shop?” asked the goon.
“It’s not important,” I answered.
“I’m going to ask you again,” he said, suddenly angry. “What is the name of this pet shop?”
“The Wine Shop.”
“I’m going to ask you again,” he said, suddenly angrier. “What is the name of this pet shop?”
“The Wine Shop.”
This time he turned toward Peckerman and asked the same question.
“What is the name of his pet shop?”
“Jahangir Shahrestaani from Habbaniya’s Pet World.”
At this point, the goon turned to Fook and brought him up to speed about this conversation. And though they were speaking in a language I couldn’t understand, you didn’t have to be a linguist to tell that Fook was less than pleased. His Chuck E. Cheese head now spinning atop his gray velvet shoulders. The interpreter goon then shouted something to the gun goon, who then approached Peckerman and started untying the rope that bound him to that tree.
“It’s about time,” said Peckerman, massaging his wrists where the skin was red from rope burn.
Then Peckerman looked at those guys and said, “Take care, fellas,” then looked at me and said, “So long, asshole,” then took about two steps toward the exit before the goon stepped in front of him blocking his path, told him to turn around, then marched him at gunpoint to the top of the big rock that I’d been sitting on. They then made us lie down on top of each other, and tied us together.
“Whether or not you are terrorists is no longer of our concern,” said the interpreter, who I suspect was translating what Fook was saying. “We have our own mission, and so do these big black bears,” whereupon the goon with the gun inserted a big key into the locks on two iron doors at the lower end of the fenced-in area we were in and swung them both open. The three of them then exited through a gate and disappeared into the night about the same time the first black bear emerged from the lair.
CHAPTER 16
Jeffrey
This was my plan:
1.Untie myself from Horkman.
2.Keep Horkman between me and the bear, so that if it started chewing on anybody, it would be Horkman.
3.Get the fuck out of there.
You think I’m a coward? Let me ask you something: Have you ever been in a situation where a bear was about to eat you? No? Okay, then I don’t give a shit what you think.
The problem was, I couldn’t get free from the rope. Fook’s crew did a really good job of tying us up, so Horkman and I were pressed together tight. My arms were pinned to my sides, and my hands were tied in front of me, but I couldn’t move anything enough to get at the knots. The worst part was, Horkman was on top of me, his front facing my back, doggy-style. My face was pressed into the rock. His mouth was breathing in my left ear. It was disgusting.
“Get off me!” I said.
“I’m trying!” he said.
“Stop pushing on my butt, homo,” I said.
“That is offensive,” he said.
“Tell that to your boner,” I said.
“Shh!” he whispered. “Don’t move!”
The bear had reached the rock. It was down on all fours, sniffing the air. Then it stood up. The thing was the size of a UPS truck. It was leaning over us, still sniffing.
“Hold perfectly still,” Horkman whispered. “You must not move.”
“Fuck that,” I said, and rolled hard away from the bear.
We fell off the rock. The good news was, we fell Horkman-side down, so he broke my fall; his head hit the ground with a sound like THWOCK. The bad news was, now that I was on top, I was the one closest to the bear. And it was coming around the rock.
“Get up!” I said, trying to get my feet under me.
Underneath me, Horkman was moaning.
“Come on!” I said. “GET UP!”
Nothing from Horkman. Asshole.
I don’t know how I did it—adrenaline, I guess—but somehow I got the two of us onto our feet, Horkman still moaning, hanging off me like some kind of giant douchebag backpack. The bear was still coming toward me. It was maybe five feet away.
“Stay!” I said.
Believe it or not, the bear stopped. It was looking at me with this expression of What the fuck? Very slowly, I turned around, presenting my Horkman side to the bear. Ahead of me I could see the gate where Fook and the other bastards went out. I started moving that way. I had to do it by making little hops, because my knees and Horkman’s were tied together.
I turned my head around to see how close the bear was.
Jesus. Now there were two bears. One to the left, one to the right. There was no way I could point Horkman at both of them.
By hopping like a bastard, I made it to the gate. Thank God Fook left it unlocked. I pushed it open and hopped through, dragging Horkman. I was sweating and breathing hard. I could hear the bears right behind me. Up ahead, through the trees, I could see lights and hear cars on Fifth Avenue.
I heard scuffling and growling off to the right. The bears had found a garbage can and were rooting around in it. This was my chance. I started hopping into the woods, toward the traffic.
Suddenly there were people in front of me. The light wasn’t good, and for a second I thought it was Fook and his crew. But then I saw it was some young punks, four of them, with those pants they wear so low, you can see the entire ass of their boxer shorts.
“Hey,” I said. “I need some help here.”
One of them stepped close.
“Why you got that man tied to you?” he said.
“It’s a long story,” I said. “How about you untie us, and I’ll tell you, okay?”
“You got any money?” he said.
“I’ll give you some money if you untie us, okay?”
The lead punk turned to the others and said, “Man gonna pay us to untie him.” They all thought that was pretty funny. The lead punk started going through my pockets.
“Hey,” I said, which I admit was stupid, but that’s what I came up with.
The punk found my wallet. Then he searched Horkman and came up with his wallet and phone.
“Okay,” I said. “Now you got our money. So if you could just . . .”
“What else you got?” he said.
“Nothing,” I said.
He frowned.
“Where you got your phone?” he said.
“I don’t have it with me,” I said.
He reached down to his pants pocket, which was down around his knees, and pulled out a gun. He showed it to me. This was my night for having assholes show me their guns.
“Everybody
got a phone,” he said.
“I swear I don’t have it with me.”
He jammed the gun barrel between my hands, into my gut. I would have pissed my pants, except I already had. The punk was about to say something—I’m guessing it involved my phone—but I never found out, because that was when the bears showed up. They must have finished the garbage.
You always hear that if you see a bear, you shouldn’t try to run away. I’m here to tell you that this is good advice. Because all four punks took off, and both bears took off after them. Which left me standing there with Horkman still on my back.
I started hopping again. I reached Fifth Avenue and somehow, I still don’t know how, I heaved Horkman and me over the wall, onto the sidewalk. I did it so we landed Horkman-side down again, my feeling being that I did all the work getting us there, and he needed to pull his weight.
We were lying on the sidewalk, me on top. People were walking past, and I was like, “Hey! Can you give us a hand here?” In Des Moines, if people saw two guys tied up on the sidewalk, they’d stop and help out, but this was New York, so nobody slowed down. Most of them didn’t even look up from texting.
After a few minutes, I managed to get us back up onto all four of our feet, and hopped over to the curb. There was a cab right there, stopped at a light. I hopped to it and managed to get a pinky on the latch and open the door. I turned around and pushed hard, shoving Horkman in, me falling backward on top of him.
It turned out the cab was occupied, so now both of us were on top of the occupant, a guy in a suit.
“What the hell?” he said.
“Sorry,” I said. “If you could just . . .”
“Get the hell out!” he said. “This is my cab!”
The driver was also shouting at me, but he was a New York City taxi driver, so I had no idea what language he was speaking.
I shifted Horkman around so I could sort of sit up and face them.
“Listen,” I said. But before I could say anything else, the suit opened the door on his side and bailed out. While I was trying to figure that out, the driver, who suddenly could speak English, said, “Please. No trouble. Please.”
He was staring at my stomach. I looked down, and all of a sudden I understood what was happening.
I was holding the punk’s gun.
“Please,” said the driver again. He was scared shitless.
“Take me to New Jersey,” I said, “or I’ll shoot you in the balls.”
CHAPTER 17
Philip
“Did you ever see a movie called The Defiant Ones?”
Those were the first words I said upon regaining consciousness in the back of that cab.
“You talking to me, dickhead?”
Those were the first words I heard upon regaining consciousness in the back of that cab.
My entire body hurt. A lot. Like I imagine it would hurt if I somehow happened to roll off of a huge rock and onto the ground while tethered to an obnoxious forensic plumber who I was now trying to have a conversation with.
“It’s a movie where two escaped prisoners, who hate each other, are shackled together but have to cooperate in order to survive.”
“And did you ever see a movie called Tom Thumb?” asked Peckerman. “I suggest you take yours and shove it up your ass.”
That there was something out of whack with that retort (my Tom Thumb?) wasn’t a discussion I felt like having at that exact moment. But, for the record, let me just say that it was far beyond idiotic.
The sun was up. A new day for everyone else, but for me a continuation of the nightmare that was yesterday. We were still tied together. My stomach pressed against his back. So we were sitting there sideways, each with our right butt cheek on the seat, looking out the same window. At first I couldn’t get my bearings, but when I saw Lincoln Center, I knew we were on Ninth Avenue heading downtown.
“May I ask where we’re going?”
“Home,” said Peckerman, with an inflection implying that I’d asked a question with an obvious answer.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I asked.
“You have a better one, assplunge?”
“Well, let me put it this way,” I said. “Do you live in a brick ranch house with a crab apple tree on your front lawn and a mailbox the shape of a locomotive at the curb?”
“You know I do. You came to the house last night and kicked the shit out of my swale with your bullshit Prius, remember?”
“Yes, but it was dark, so this is actually the first time I’m seeing it during the daytime. Nice place.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Take a look to your left,” I told him. He did. And now saw what I was seeing on the TV screen embedded into the back of the driver’s seat. A newscaster was standing in front of Peckerman’s house, interviewing his neighbors.
“I never liked him,” said a heavyset woman walking a Saint Bernard. “He’s a foulmouthed blowhard and he never returned our rake. So when I know he’s not home, I let Winston here squeeze out a brown beauty onto his front lawn. Everyone does. The kids call this place Doodyville.”
The news then switched to the front of my house, where a similar media circus was taking place. Cameramen running alongside the cars taking my kids to school, pictures of me and Daisy as volunteers at a local soup kitchen last Thanksgiving—and then they cut to a reporter standing in front of The Wine Shop asking some of the other storeowners questions about me.
“Did I ever think Horkman was capable of doing this?” said Marty Jaffe, who owned the Bagel Chateau two doors down. “Yes. I knew it the minute I saw that his lower lip drooped slightly on the left side. If I’m not mistaken, Lee Harvey Oswald had that same droop.”
And then that reporter turned back to the camera and said something about a reward for our capture or knowledge of our whereabouts.
“Still think we should go home?” I asked Peckerman.
“I did so return that fat fuck’s rake,” he said, with daggers in his eyes. “How much you want to bet three-quarters of the shit on my lawn is hers?”
It would’ve been extremely difficult to get back to Jersey anyway, because the news mentioned checkpoints at every outbound river crossing. In fact, up ahead I could see that the Ninth Avenue entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel was already backed up.
“Change of plans,” I shouted to the driver. “Make the next right turn.”
“Okay. I will. I promise,” said the cabbie, on the verge of tears.
“What’s with him?” I asked Peckerman.
“He’s scared. He thinks I have a gun.”
“And why would he think that?” I asked.
“Because of this,” said Peckerman, as I followed his gaze downward and saw he was holding a gun.
Then he filled me in on what had occurred after my head crashed against the cement sidewalk. About the thugs taking our wallets, about the thugs being chased away by big black bears, about him hopping away from the big black bears up to a cab on Fifth Avenue, and about discovering that he had the thugs’ gun and it all made perfect sense. Now the question was what to do next.
“I’d love to get out of these ropes,” said Peckerman.
I felt the same way. Peckerman had a small mole, the kind that has a little black hair sticking out of it, on the back of his neck, and I truly felt I’d used up more than my allotted time to stare into that thing and it was only fair to let someone else enjoy the view.
“Pull over here,” I told the sobbing cab driver on what appeared to be a deserted West Side street with dilapidated buildings and unused loading docks. It bothered me that the poor guy was so upset, so I tried to calm him down with a little small talk to show that we were human and, despite Peckerman’s gun, meant no harm.
“That’s a nice picture of
your children,” I said about the photo that was taped to the dashboard.
But my good intentions were misinterpreted, as he apparently perceived that to be some kind of threat to his family. Whereupon he stopped the car, got out, came around to the back, opened the door for us, reached in and untied us.
Then, once Peckerman and I got out and stepped onto the street, the still-sobbing cabbie ran back to the driver’s side, opened his door, reached inside, grabbed something, ran around the cab, handed me a cigar box, then ran back to his side of the cab, got in, closed the door and drove away.
I opened the cigar box and looked inside. It was cash. $74.38. Probably all the money the cabbie made that day. I felt horrible. Peckerman?
“You know, I don’t think this counts as robbing the guy, because we didn’t ask him for any money,” he said. “The putz gave it to us voluntarily.”
I looked at Peckerman and felt the distinct urge to smack him. But we had bigger fish to fry. Plus he was holding the gun.
Then, as if on cue, the sound of approaching sirens was followed by three NYPD cars roaring around the corner. My stomach dropped. Like back in school when a teacher’s voice saying my name startled me out of an effective daydream. We both turned around, our backs to the street. The wailing of the sirens becoming slightly less insistent. The speed of the cars seemingly slower than just a few seconds before. My head down, I wondered if it was possible that Peckerman was actually peeing into his shoes.
And then, as if they’d gotten a second wind, the cars sped up again and headed toward some other place. After the few seconds it took to settle nerves, I garnered the strength to speak again.
“It’s obvious we can’t just stand out here like this. Any thoughts?”
“Well,” said Peckerman, “I’m wondering if there’s a way we can leave Manhattan other than by a bridge or a tunnel.”
“Huh? I’d like to remind you, Mr. Peckerman, that Manhattan is an island, which, by definition, means that it is surrounded by water. So they need things like bridges and tunnels to attach them to other places. That said, how else do you suggest we get out of here?”
“How about . . . ?”