by Ted Staunton
I pass on that one. “Last thing,” I say. “Guess what happened at the cottage?”
“Spence, I have to run. Aunt Vicki wants me to go to hot yoga with her. I’ll check back with you. Tell me then. Love you.”
It takes three tries to start the van before I can drive home. I find Roz’s number on the fridge under a skull-shaped Grateful Dead magnet; blame Jer for that one. I call Deb back, just to hear her voice, but I get her voice mail instead. Maybe she’s found Roz’s number already and she’s calling her now. I leave a message anyway.
The Bun file is now handed off. Life is good again. I’m meeting AmberLea at one and visiting a megastar. I’ll tell her about what happened at the cottage. We’ll hang out. Maybe Toby will disappear in a Gap store. There are almost ten days of vacation left, my parents are away, there are movies to watch and a basement shelf filled with boxes of mac and cheese.
So why am I still weirded out? Deb isn’t, and before she left she was all dithery. But maybe she’s way ahead of me on this; philosophy profs aren’t paid to think life is simple. Or maybe the cruise has totally mellowed her out.
Still, things are nagging at me. Like SPCA: where have I heard that lately? And why would Jade/Jane suggest tracking Bun’s phone if she was covering up? And why are Bun’s boots here and not his skates? I think about our unlocked door again. Did Bun and the Fifteenth Streeters really make this mess?
Maybe what I need to settle me down is some morning mac and cheese. I’m still hungry; I didn’t exactly eat well yesterday. I duck down into the basement to get a box. The light’s been left on in Deb’s office. I go to turn it off and I freeze. The place is a disaster: cabinets open, drawers dumped, books and papers scattered, the computer light glowing. Deb is a neat freak. Bun and his buds wouldn’t have done a food-and-shoe search here. Instantly I’m four years old again, and every shadow is a monster. I zoom upstairs and phone Deb. Voice mail again. I leave a message for her to call me.
Then I go on the shared computer in the den. It takes forever to boot up. I’m panting as I wait. I take a deep, slow breath and go to the website for Bun’s phone. The user name and log-in are written on a yellow sticky note on the monitor. I enter and click on the location tab. Up comes a map of Toronto. There’s a red dot. It’s in the west end, down near the lake—not too far from here. I zoom in closer to look. Then I download the link to my phone, put on my curling sweater and grab the keys to the van.
Stay out of it, Deb said. I have no idea what “it” is, but I don’t think staying out is an option anymore—especially when I don’t want to stay in here.
EIGHT
The Baby Breeze Motel (WEEKLY/MONTHLY AC SAT TV VACA CY) sits crumbling in its parking lot like half a sandwich left at the back of a fridge. I think skuzzy is the technical word for this style. The app says Bun’s phone is around here. Somewhere.
I was kind of hoping I’d see Bun skating on a frozen puddle or something, but that’s not on and he’s still not answering either. All I can do is hit the locator tab on the app, walk past the rooms and hope I hear his phone beep.
I turn off the van reluctantly and climb out. It took another three tries to start it for this drive. I hope it starts when I need to get out of here. It’s colder by the lake, and up close, the Baby Breeze isn’t exactly homey. Curtains are drawn across every window. The plastic chairs out front are magnets for cigarette butts and empties. Two sorry cars are parked about five doors apart. Both look older than me. One has a flat tire. The O’Toolemobile fits right in.
I hit the button on my phone and start walking, trying to seem like just another wholesome teenager looking for harmless fun at a fleabag motel. A faint beeping kicks in as I pass the second car. It gets stronger every step I take. So does a certain dense, skunky smell I’ve, uh, smelled before. Both are definitely coming from the end unit. I stop at the door and knock. Nothing; just stink and beeping. “Bun?” I call. “Bunny?” A few rooms back, I think I see a curtain twitch. I ignore it and try the door. It’s unlocked. I push it open.
Instantly, the beeping gets louder. Weed stink gushes out on a wave of warm air. Lights are glowing over a small jungle of pot plants on one side of the room. Some kind of foil blanket hangs behind the curtains, duct-taped to the wall, and the carpet is stained. Apart from the plants, the room is empty except for a ratty couch and a shiny pole that runs from floor to ceiling in the middle of the room. One end of a set of handcuffs is clamped around the bottom of the pole. I’m not even going to think about that.
The phone beeps are coming from a kitchenette space behind the couch. “Bunny?” I try again, but I know nobody’s home. Get the phone and get out, I think.
I tiptoe fast to the kitchenette. Partway there I wonder why I’m tiptoeing, but I do it anyway. And there’s Bun’s phone, beeping away on the floor by the counter. I’m just bending for it when I hear a rustling in the leaves behind me and a sound that’s a cross between a creaking door and like a bullfrog on steroids. I look over my shoulder. Looking back at me is an alligator.
I don’t hear myself scream, but I probably do. I do know that somehow I jump straight up onto the stamp-sized countertop and teeter there, clutching the mini-cabinet fixed to the wall, my head scraping the ceiling.
The gator or crocodile or whatever it is snorts, its black eyes gleaming at me. Its front claws clack and scrabble at the cupboard doors under the counter while its tail thumps the back of the couch. I’m trapped. I could yell for help, but I’m thinking guests at the Baby Breeze Motel are used to yelling from their neighbors. Cops aren’t an option. Hi, I’m trapped by an alligator in a grow op, and looking for my brother who’s skipped his jail pass. Meanwhile, Bun’s phone is still beeping, and I’m starting to feel how hot it is in here.
Clutching the cabinet with one hand, I thumb my cell phone with the other. Then I call the only person who might understand. AmberLea answers on the second ring. “Um, I need some help.” My voice only squeaks a little. I tell her what’s going on.
“An alligator?” she says. I can imagine her chin tucking way in.
“Or a crocodile,” I say. “I don’t know. But it’s one of them and it’s big.” Below me, there’s more snorting and clacking and scrabbling, and then the beeping noise suddenly gets quieter. “And I think it just ate Bun’s phone.”
“Okay, sit tight,” AmberLea says. “We’ll think of something. Is there, like, a dogcatcher in Toronto or anything?”
“This isn’t a dog!”
“Okay, Animal Control?”
“I dunno. For raccoons, maybe. This thing probably eats raccoons.”
“We’re on our way.”
I don’t think about the “we” part. I’ve got enough on my mind with a hungry crocogator that now beeps, not to mention worries that whoever owns the plants and the pet might show up and find me where I’m not supposed to be.
By the time I finally hear a car pull up out front, I’m drenched in sweat. The place is overheated, and I’m still trapped in my jacket. Plus there’s the little matter of being scared: the crocogator is still down below me, waiting. Then car doors slam, and I hear AmberLea’s voice. “In there.” Footsteps. AmberLea and Toby peer in the doorway.
“Over here,” I call as they take it all in.
“Amazing,” Toby says. “Plus a stripper pole and handcuffs.”
“Where’s the gator?” says AmberLea.
“Down there.” I point. The crocogator does some huffing and shuffling at the sound of their voices.
“Okay, just stay where you are,” AmberLea orders. It’s one of those reminders you really don’t need. “Give me the bag,” she says to Toby.
“No, I’ll do it.”
“Just give me the bag. We’ll argue later.”
He hands her a plastic grocery bag. AmberLea steps into the room. Toby comes in behind her, raises a video camera and sweeps the place. AmberLea pulls a family-size package of chicken parts out of it and rips the plastic wrap off. “Here, gatie gatie!” she calls. “
Stomp your feet,” she orders Toby. She does it too.
The crocogator scuttles around. AmberLea throws a piece of raw chicken just past the couch. The gator oozes forward and the chicken is gone, just like that. The gator gives a prehistoric hiss. “Good girl,” AmberLea says. “Have another.” She tosses another piece, this time at the open doorway to the bathroom. The gator slides for it, around where a bit of wall sticks out to make a little alcove by the bathroom door. There’s a nasty snapping sound. AmberLea heaves more chicken. From the sound of it, it lands in the bathtub. The gator’s tail disappears around the corner, and there’s a lot of echoey banging and thudding and snorting. “Good for you,” AmberLea says. “While you’re in there, why not just finish the rest?” She heaves the rest of the chicken parts. I hear various smacks and splats; then Toby dashes past her, and I hear the bathroom door slam shut, trapping the gator.
“Oh, man. Thanks.” I more or less melt off the counter.
AmberLea is wiping her hands on the couch.
“Why was that alligator beeping?” she asks.
“It’s a long story,” I say.
“This isn’t the time for Peter Pan,” Toby says. “Let’s get out of here.”
NINE
“It must have been a good party,” AmberLea says. We’re all crowded in the tiny front hall of O’Toole Central. They’ve followed me back in a Porsche Cayenne with a ski container on top; it only took six tries to start the van. Now we’re going to have mac and cheese.
Toby shrugs. “I don’t know. By standards in my dorm, a level three.” He grins. Perfect teeth. Still, he’s eyeing O’Toole Central as if it’s as sketchy as the Baby Breeze. I’m also not so crazy about him getting a video shot of me doing a Cowardly Lion on top of a counter, even if the guy did do a primo move slamming that door on the gator. All I say, though, is, “It wasn’t a party. I think somebody searched the place last night while we were at the rink.”
“Searched for what?” AmberLea drapes her jacket over the newel post Jer’s never finished refinishing. Then she goes and straightens the sofa cushions. She pulls a chip bag and two empty iced-tea tins out from underneath. I don’t tell her those are my mess from watching movies last night.
“I haven’t got a clue,” I say, watching Toby arrange his jacket on a hanger. I drop mine on the floor. “They trashed my mom’s office too.”
I go into the kitchen, stash a mug and two glasses in the sink because the dishwasher’s full, then square a pile of DVD cases on the table, on top of where the salt spilled. Now things look tidier.
AmberLea comes in. I heat water in a saucepan and tell them the story, from going skating with Bunny on. Then I show them the texts. “Now I don’t know what to think,” I finish. “Maybe my mom’s right. That motel is pretty close to Posse territory. It could be their grow op. Drugs are their thing.”
“So you think Jade was hinting how to find Bunny without ratting anyone out?” AmberLea has pulled her chin in again.
“Maybe.” I shrug. The water is boiling. I dump in the macaroni. AmberLea opens drawers until she finds cutlery.
“But that was dangerous,” she said. “Would she set you up? Whoever runs that grow op wouldn’t have been happy to see you.”
“Maybe she tipped them. Maybe she thought they’d be gone, or that only Bun would be there. It looked as if Bun’s phone got dropped there by accident.”
“But—” She stops. She’s just found the plates. “Okay. If Bunny’s with Fifteenth Street, why did they search here?”
“Beats me. Just out of habit?” I stir the macaroni with a wooden spoon. “Bun might not have known they searched downstairs.” I’m beginning to buy this myself. The mess doesn’t seem as sinister with other people around and mac and cheese on the way. “And maybe Bun has shoes I forgot.”
“What do you think, T?” AmberLea turns to Toby.
He’s sitting at the table, staring at my cell-phone screen.
He murmurs, “SPCA. Maybe we should have called them about that alligator.”
“It’ll be fine,” AmberLea says. “I left it lots to snack on.” Toby isn’t listening. He has his own phone out now, pecking away with his thumbs. The macaroni is ready. I kill the heat, drain the water and open the cheese packets. AmberLea gets milk and butter from the fridge.
“SPCA,” Toby says again as I bring the pot of mac and cheese to the table. He reads off his cell screen:
“Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
Serum Prothrombin Conversion Accelerator
Symposium on Pervasive Computing and Applications
Short Posterior Ciliary Artery
Structural Pest Control Act
Student Paper Competition Award
Security Policy Compliance Assessment
Save Pianvia Counterrevolutionary Army.”
“Uh-oh,” I say.
TEN
I bring my laptop into the kitchen and show them the bit about the killer in the Pianvia documentary. I tell them what happened at the cottage and how Bunny thinks the killer is our grandpa. Then I show them the text message: we got buny trade 4 musik w8 4 contact SPCA. We do a web search on Pianvia. Wikipedia says:
A tiny, insular Balkan state with a long cultural tradition of cross-dressing. Its economy is built on the export of its national drink, splotnik, a potent liqueur derived from fermented pork rinds.
Little is known for certain about contemporary conditions. A monarchy under King Hoj the 34th until the end of WWI, Pianvia was briefly a democracy until the Nazi invasion of WWII. It was the only state in the region not fully conquered by the Germans in that war, owing to a combination of its geography (impassable mountains and vast tracts of malarial swamp known as yill) and the fierce resistance of partisans led by Josef Josef, a former gym teacher.
Following WWII, Josef established the current People’s Paradise of Pianvia (PPP) under his own ironfisted and eccentric rule and closed the country off entirely. He is known to have banned unicycles, music, films, card tricks, ice cream, television, left-handedness and religions that do not proclaim him a god.
In consolidating his rule, he dealt ruthlessly with political opponents and other dissidents, killing many and forcing others into exile, where they were still not safe from PPP assassins. (See entry for Zoltan Blum.) In a rare appearance at the United Nations in 1959, Josef declared blotzing (killing slowly by chopping into small pieces) Pianvia’s new national sport, replacing fleever, a form of polo played by yak-riding warriors who used the skulls of enemies for a ball.
Nominally allied with the Russians during the Cold War, Josef was independent and unpredictable enough to also hold talks with the Americans, who are now known to have been interested in splotnik as a form of chemical weapon and who tried to negotiate a secret trade deal in the 1960s.
Josef Josef died in 1982 and was succeeded by his son, Josef Josef Josef, who is rumored to actually be Josef Josef ’s daughter, Greta, in disguise. (She has not been seen in public since 1976.) He (or she) has since banned digital technology and massage therapy. Since the fall of the Iron Curtain in the 1990s, opposition to the regime has increased, thanks to the SPCA (Save Pianvia Counterrevolutionary Army), an organization of Pianvian exiles and their descendents based mainly in Canada, the United States and Australia. The SPCA demanded recognition from the UN after a successful armed insurgency left them in control of the Flug Yill Basin in southern Pianvia. They have also enlisted numerous human-rights agencies in their cause, which has gained some popularity. Oprah is rumored to be negotiating a special about their fight, and several lowlevel Hollywood stars were spotted wearing purple-and-gold SPCA lapel pins at the Academy Awards in 2013.
“So this could be for real. They must have heard about your family from your prof. It’s a kidnapping. My god, we have to call the FBI or something.” AmberLea is wide-eyed.
“There is no FBI in Canada,” I say, “and if we phone somebody, what are we going to tell them? Besides, my mom said not to.”
“But all that spy stuff! That guy in the movie could be your grandpa. Your mom didn’t know about that.”
“Oh, come on. There was no Pianvian passport, and the disguise kit wouldn’t even be good enough for Halloween.”
“Sounds as if the gun and money would be more than good enough,” Toby says.
AmberLea jumps in. “What matters is, it looks as if this SPCA thinks it’s him. And if they’re for real, and they’ve snatched Bunny, we need to call the FBI.”
“There is no FBI in Canada. I just told you that. It would be—”
“So what’s this music they want to trade for?” Toby interrupts.
“No idea,” I say to him. “Music is banned in Pianvia.”
“That Zoltan Blum guy that got killed was a famous composer,” AmberLea says. “Do a search.”
The Wikipedia entry for Zoltan Blum doesn’t help.
(1909-1962) Foremost composer of the tiny Balkan nation of Pianvia. Trained in Vienna, Austria, where he returned following his defection in 1954, after his own country banned music. For much of his career, his work was heavily indebted to Schoenberg and other masters of atonal and serial composition. Too indebted, according to some critics, who made numerous charges of plagiarism, particularly over his “Variations on a Theme for Yak Bells.” Manuscripts from his years in exile have disappeared, but he is said to have turned to a simpler and more traditional melodic style, as well as taking up golf, which he described as “fleever on foot.”
He died on an Austrian golf course, killed by what was probably an exploding golf ball. Blum is thought to have been one of many victims of assassins working for the notorious Pianvian dictator Josef Josef.
The landline starts ringing. I see the message light is flashing too. The answering machine kicks in before I get to the phone. A canned version of Jerry’s voice says, “Hi, thanks for calling O’Toole Central. At the sound of the tone, leave a message for Deb, Jerry, Bunny or Spencer, and we’ll get back to you, Scout’s honor. And don’t forget to wonder what’s so crazy about peace, love and understanding.” BEEP. A voice leaves a message about dentist appointments next week. When it’s done, I press Play to see who else has called. A familiar voice kicks my eardrums. “Roz Inbow here. Bernard is thirty minutes late for his ten-AM check-in. He needs to call me immediately. I should advise you that there may be consequences.”