Guns Will Keep Us Together

by Leslie Langtry

  No one would notice him, and by the time he woke up we'd be long gone. I just had to make sure I paid with cash instead of a credit card, and no one would know I was even there.

  "Who wants ice cream?" I announced when I made it back to the table. Louis started jumping up and down in his seat, and Leonie smiled, so I guess that was a yes. I paid the bill, and the three of us climbed into my car and headed for Whitey's. Best damn ice cream in the Midwest.

  "I like you," Leonie said to me with a wink as we sat outside eating.

  "Wow. I'm honored," I responded. Louis ignored us both, intent on inhaling his ice cream.

  She laughed. It was a wonderful sound. Maybe the perfect sound. Huh. I always used to think the perfect sound came from a blonde, moaning with pleasure.

  "I mean it," she answered.

  "I like you too." Wow. This conversation was going nowhere. Then why did I feel so good?

  "Dad thinks you're cool," Louis said through an ice cream goatee and mustache.

  "Louis!" Was I…was I blushing?

  My son nodded. "It's true. I think he's quite taken with you."

  Leonie smiled at me then leaned down to Louis. "You know what? I really like him too."

  "Why?" I asked before I realized it was a strange question. I mean, I knew why I liked her. But I needed to know why she liked me. For most of my life, I just took it for granted that chicks dug me. Huh. I guess I never really cared what it was about me they liked. And yet, it seemed very important for me to know what Leonie saw in me.

  "I guess it's because you're funny, and weird. You don't act around me like I think you usually act around women."

  "What? I'm weird? Really?" Wow. Didn't see that one coming.

  Leonie grinned. "Somehow, I feel that I'm the first woman to see who you really are. The first one to see your vulnerable side, maybe. Everything else seems like an act. But around me, you're tongue-tied. That's a major turn-on."

  Oh my God. She likes me when I act like a geek? What the hell? That's not what women wanted! They wanted handsome and confident men. Alpha males. Right? Wasn't that right? Vulnerable? Was she bullshitting me?

  Leonie pulled a napkin out of her pocket and giggled as she wiped the ice cream off Louis's face. She looked so natural doing that. Her mass of red hair tickled the boy's cheek, and he laughed, and I realized that Louis and Leonie belonged together. The question was, where did I fit into the picture?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  [Szell prepares to torture Babe a second time]

  Christian Szell: Oh, don't worry. I'm not going into that cavity. That nerve's already dying. A live, freshly-cut nerve is infinitely more sensitive. So I'll just drill into a healthy tooth until I reach the pulp. That is unless, of course, you can tell me that it's safe.

  ~Marathon Man

  "Don't forget about our little appointment!" Gin's voice bubbled on the answering machine when Louis and I got home. Damn. I forgot about that. Diego was accompanying Romi's class on a field trip, so I'd promised a month ago to take Gin to her appointment with a dental surgeon.

  Taking Gin to get her wisdom teeth out was the last thing I wanted to do. But in the Bombay family we had to use the buddy system any time we would be under anesthesia.

  "Are you sure you want him in here?" Dr. Munch asked my sister. He looked a little concerned about my presence. I could understand that. If he screwed up, he wouldn't want a witness. But rules are rules. It only had to happen once, and it happened to my Great-Great-Great Uncle Francisco. He went in to get his gallstones out, and while under the influence, started talking about killing the Mayor of Montevideo with a fish fork. Fortunately, the doctor thought he was just hallucinating and had no idea that the year before, the Mayor of Montevideo had, in fact, bought it with a fish fork in a kind of, creative tracheotomy, shall we say. Since then, well, we kind of borrowed the buddy system from the Boy Scouts.

  "Sorry, Doctor," Gin said, "but I'm too nervous without my brother here for moral support. You understand." Of course, my sister isn't afraid of anything. In fact, she could probably pull her own teeth. Maybe we should consider having a dentist in the family.

  The dental surgeon reluctantly agreed, then after casting me a sidelong glance, proceeded to shoot my sister full of Novocain.

  "You'll feel a pinch," he said as he plunged the needle into the roof of her mouth.

  Yeah, right. A pinch. We practically had to peel Gin off the ceiling after that pinch. After three more shots on both sides, the doctor left.

  "You okay?" I asked cautiously. Gin looked like she'd had a stroke.

  "Thith feelth weird," she slurred. Her cheeks had collapsed into jowls.

  I, of course, started to laugh.

  "Ith noth funny!" She turned red, and I laughed harder.

  "It's just, you're usually such a talker!" I wiped a few tears away. "And now you can't! This is too good!"

  "Athole." Gin crossed her arms over her chest.

  After a few minutes, the doctor came in. "Are you numb?" he asked Gin.

  She nodded after slapping both cheeks. "Yeth. Thee?"

  Dr. Munch nodded and picked up a tool I suspect was frequently used during the Spanish Inquisition.

  "You won't feel any pain, but you will feel pressure and you'll hear cracking and popping as I pull the tooth out." Without waiting for her to respond, he reached into her mouth and wrestled with the firmly wedged tooth.

  I was fascinated. I'd only been on the other end before. The doc was a large man, but he practically had to put his knee on Gin's chest to loosen up the tooth. Finally he pulled the bloody mess out. I watched with awe as he did the same thing on the other side.

  My cell went off, and I saw it was a text from Paris. Turning my back on Gin, I flipped open the phone.

  First target—Norbert Munch, DDS. Last kill—whistleblower for Halliburton.

  I blinked. This couldn't be happening. I felt like I was in a trance as I closed the phone and turned back to Gin.

  "There you go, all done." And then, Doctor Norbert E. Munch rolled up his sleeves.

  I froze. Woody Woodpecker mocked me from his inner wrist. It was the tattoo of the National Resources assassins. Holy shit! I didn't think it would be this easy. I mean, I knew one of them was a local—but what are the odds?

  Unfortunately, the dentist/assassin saw that I saw. I jumped for the door to block his escape. He charged, and I threw him to the floor, where we wrestled silently on the linoleum. The man grabbed my testicles and squeezed—an act of war as far as I was concerned. Pain flooded my line of vision, and I bit my tongue so I wouldn't scream. Of course, then my tongue hurt too. My hand reached the tray above us, and I found a long handled dental mirror.

  My assailant flipped me into a submission hold. This guy was good. So good that my vision was starting to blur. I could feel myself losing consciousness. So I took the only chance I had and plunged the end of the mirror deep into his eye socket. His hold relaxed, and I scrambled to my feet as he flopped around on the floor.

  "You killed my denthal thurgeon?" Gin asked woozily. Oops. I forgot about her.

  I nodded. "He's one of the National Resources guys. I had to take him out." I lifted his twitching wrist to show her the tattoo. "They all have these. Besides, he recognized me."

  "Well, thath jutht fantathtic." Gin rolled her eyes. "How the hell are we going to deal with thith? The nurth will be in any moment!"

  I hadn't thought of that. Bombays never left behind a body if it could implicate them. And this sure seemed to be that situation. It would be tough to leave him in here when Gin was listed as the last patient he had before he died.

  Think, Dak! Gin looked like a deranged chipmunk with her cheeks stuffed with gauze. She wouldn't be a lot of help. Great.

  The building was designed like a bunker. Low-slung, one-story with high, thin windows. I squinted, wondering if I could pass the body through it. Of course, it was getting close to rush hour and we were facing a street with a lot of traffic. No, that wouldn't
look suspicious at all.

  We'd run out of time. If they didn't have Gin's name, address and insurance provider, I'd just stuff the doctor in the closet and run for it. But it wouldn't take long for them to notice he wasn't anywhere in the building. They'd find him, and Gin would be a suspect. I didn't feel like busting her out of the police department a la the Terminator, so I had to come up with something else…and quickly.

  I started screaming like a little girl (mainly due to the fact that my testicles had just been crushed), "Oh my God! Doctor! Somebody call 911!"

  Gin narrowed her eyes at me, then rolled them. Okay, so it wasn't much of a plan, but I needed her compliance.

  "Thocther Munth? Thocther Munth?" She knelt down beside the body, which I turned facedown. After shooting me a pissed off look, she continued. "I think he'th dead!"

  Two nurses and another surgeon ran into the room and stopped when they saw their colleague face down on the stick end of a dental mirror.

  We had to stay there for three hours while the police (or "poleeth," as Gin called them) and coroner came to investigate. At one point I think the Novocain wore off and Gin was in desperate need for painkillers because she fainted. Somehow we managed to convince everyone that the doctor was walking with the implement in his hand, when he slipped on a little puddle of Gin's drool (I made that part up just for fun—Gin didn't like it much because when everyone's back was turned she had to spit on the floor.) and fell onto his mirror.

  "Happens all the time," the bored coroner said to me, "You wouldn't believe how many people die in freak accidents."

  Actually, he'd be surprised to know how many "freak accidents" were really Bombay family hits. But I wasn't about to tell him that.

  "You bastard!" Gin lit into me once I got her back home. "What if I get dry socket? I can't ever go back there, you know!"

  I ran my hands through my hair. "I said I was sorry! I didn't expect him to be who he was." We were talking in code because the kids were in the next room. Diego finished making an icepack for his wife and handed it to her in silence. I knew he was uncomfortable with our livelihood. But he didn't argue either.

  I took out my cell phone and dialed Paris. "Got one. Four more to go."

  I could feel him nodding—how weird is that? "I found number two. We're going to Indianapolis tomorrow." He clicked off.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  "The first rule of Fight Club is—you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is—you DO NOT talk about Fight Club…and the final rule, if this is your first night at Fight Club, you have to fight."

  ~Tyler Durden, Fight Club

  "Are you sure this is him?" I whispered. We had fifth-row seats to a motivational business seminar in Indy. Paris had bought our tickets online under assumed names, and we were wearing wigs, cheap suits, and large, plastic-framed glasses.

  "Yup."

  My cousin had hacked into the reservations and got us into the 10,000 strong business seminar as Mr. Tom Olds and Mr. James Smith. Apparently, we were salesmen for Massengill. Yeah, I was excited about that too.

  Anthony Lowe had taken the stage, pacing back and forth as he shouted lame encouragements and vague success strategies.

  "And with my one hundred percent foolproof plan, you can triple your sales in the next six months…guaranteed!" He went on to share several situations where this worked, but to me it sounded like he was telling the stories of Sam Walton and Bill Gates—just leaving out their names. Lowe went on to plug his ten-CD collection that usually sold for $500. We could get it for $399 today only. Cash and credit cards accepted.

  I really hated this guy. But I was starting to hate the audience more for believing this shit. We'd been there for three hours already, and I've got to be honest with you: I still didn't have any idea how to sell douche bags more effectively. All he offered was a bunch of clichés, promising that if you bought his CDs could you achieve nirvana, win "Salesman of the Year," and find yourself wealthy with a knock-out trophy wife. What a rip-off artist.

  Finally, a break in the seminar found us in the cement hallways around the auditorium, dining on greasy hot dogs and stale nachos.

  "Isn't he brilliant?" A mousy woman in a flower-patterned dress sighed aloud to the tall, thin man next to her.

  "Tomorrow," the man said while nodding, "he's going to zip line onto the stage. That'll be cool."

  I raised my eyebrows at Paris, and he nodded, indicating he heard it too. We tuned out the stupid couple (Turns out they sold insurance.) and moved on. As the crowd started to re-enter the auditorium, Paris and I slipped around to the backstage area.

  "James Smith," I shouted as I stuck out my right hand to the harried-looking teenager with a clipboard. "I was told that my colleague and I won a backstage tour." Paris nodded, pushing his glasses up on his nose.

  "Oh! Um, really?" The girl looked like she was wound pretty tight. "I didn't, uh know. Okay." She flipped through the papers on the clipboard, but found nothing indicating that two Summer's Eve salesmen had won such a precious commodity.

  Fortunately for us, an even more mentally challenged kid walked by.

  "Ernie!" the girl shouted. "These guys get a backstage tour!" Then with a nod toward Ernie, she walked away, presumably proud of herself.

  Ernie squinted at us. He was tall and skinny, with a pronounced slouch and blue hair. He wiped his nose on the sleeve of a shirt that was way too big for him. His tie had an eagle on it with the words "I'm a winner!" in gilt script.

  "Okay," he sniffled. "Let's get this over with."

  Apparently Ernie wasn't caught up in the excitement of the show. He looked like he'd hire us to hit himself if he had to do one more day here.

  "This is the green room where the celebrities wait until they go onstage." Ernie pointed to a closed door. Celebrities? What, was he kidding? "And that's the staff lounge. We got Fruit Roll-ups and juice boxes in there." I closed my eyes in an attempt to avoid strangling Ernie with his tie.

  He led us past vending machines, which he pointed out to us as if we had never seen one before, and light and sound techs who were drinking some mystery liquid from bottles wrapped in brown paper, to the exit doors, and finally to the backstage area.

  We stood there, watching Anthony from the wings spin bullshit into gold. Gold that would, at the end of the day, only go into his pockets. My guess was that our tour guide barely made minimum wage. It didn't look like Ernie could afford clothes that fit.

  "We heard Mr. Lowe is riding a zip line to the stage tomorrow." Paris pushed his glasses up again. "Is that true?"

  I looked at Ernie, who sighed heavily. "Yeah. He's been wanting to do it for a long time. This is the only place the techies think it's possible." I followed the line of his arm as he pointed to a catwalk in the wings.

  "He'll go from there, offstage—" he slowly led his index finger down toward the stage—"to center stage. I'm not really sure why he's doing it, but oh well."

  A crash came from right behind us, and we watched as Ernie scrambled in its direction. He'd already forgotten our existence, which was good, since we'd have to kill him otherwise.

  Back in our seats, Paris whispered, "We'll have to come in tonight and weaken it somehow. Maybe shred some of the cable."

  I heard some laughter to my left. It distracted me only for a moment before I leaned in and answered, "Maybe we could take the steel out of the pulley, replace it with plastic or something else that would fall apart quickly." However we did it, I really wanted this idiot to die dramatically. A humiliating death is so much more fun when it happens to an asshole.

  The laughter came again, and I turned toward it. Sitting to my left were two burly, good ole boys. You know the kind. The ones who are trapped in the 1950s and still pinch their secretary's ass for fun. The kind that think if a woman isn't interested in them, she's a lesbian. The kind who take their wedding rings off when they travel out of town for business.

  "Is there a problem?" I asked. Paris punched me in the arm. I k
now, I know. Maintain a low profile at all times. But this bullshit seminar was killing me.

  "Now that you mention it, son," the larger of the two answered. "I was just wondering what a couple of dandies like you sell?"

  Dandies? Are you kidding me? I looked at my polyester suit. It was far more obvious that we resembled '70s porn actors! And who the hell says "dandies" anymore? Thanks, Paris. Next time, I'll pick the disguises.

  "I b'lieve my colleague asked you a question," the lesser of two fat men said. "What do you sell?"

  "Oh, I don't know if you two boys can handle it," I replied slowly, ignoring the repeated punches from Paris.

  "That's funny, son." Son? Were we on the Dukes of Hazzard? "But what business are you in?" They looked pissed off.

  Never one to shrink from a challenge, I leaned forward and looked carefully from side to side. Paris started kicking me, but I wasn't about to stop. "Lobster semen."

  "What?" The one closest to me looked like his eyes were going to pop.

  I brought my index finger to my lips. "Shhh! We aren't supposed to tell anyone."

  "Boy, are you trying to tell me you sell lobster jizz?" the big one asked.

  I nodded. "There's big money in that. Those of us in the business call it white gold." I added a wink for emphasis.

  "I don't believe you," the smaller one said, folding his arms across his chest.

  I leaned back in my seat. "I don't care if you believe me. But my wife does, every time we visit our ocean-front home in Jamaica, and every time she has the Bentley washed." I would've gone on and on, but what's the point? I still didn't know why I came up with lobster semen.

  "You make good commissions on that?" Big One asked, his eyes the size of salad plates.