Grundish & Askew (25 page)

Askew’s pack of Sordes Pilosus sits on a stack of tires next to a half-full can of Blatz. Grundish shakes the last smoke from the pack and lights it. He dumps the flat beer in his mouth, swishes it around, and spits it out onto the burning embers, again receiving a hiss in response. The cool morning air refreshes Grundish and gives him a feeling that it all might just work out. Somewhere, a rooster crows. Alf whinnies and slowly works his way to his wobbly legs, his limbs stiff from sleep and old age. He nuzzles up against Grundish’s arm. Grundish smiles at the sounds of Alf wheezing and Askew snoring. The two noises twine around each other in the air, becoming one auditory wreath of labored breathing, accented now and again by the chirp of a red-shouldered hawk. Grundish smokes and leans against his donkey friend, enjoying the morning, relishing the gentle respiratory song of wheezes, chirps, snores and snorts. The red-shouldered hawk flies from the top of the building. It swoops within feet of the top of Grundish’s head and utters a sharp trill.

New sounds fill the air. Muffled voices. Car doors. Feet scuffling. Sounds from just outside the front gate of the compound. Clattering and clanking of metal. Offensive sounds that hit Grundish’s ear and hurt his spirit. Sounds that mean nothing but trouble.

He throws open the van door and a wave of funk rolls out over him, the odor of jism, sweat, beer and cigarettes. A tangy note of ass drifts under his nose and settles on his mustache. Askew and Dora, naked and unconscious, lie out on their backs, legs and arms tossed over each other. Grundish briefly eyes Dora’s glistening pudendum. The puffy padded mound sits dead-center of her sharp, dangerous-looking pelvic bones, covered by a hint of razor stubble
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. Much of her body is angular and bony and looks as if it would be painful to lie on. Grundish looks away and thinks to himself that the young girl’s malnourished body lacks the softness, the fullness, the thick, loving meatiness and neediness of Velda’s fuller figure. He looks away, grabs a filthy poncho from the front seat of the van and throws it over Dora.

“Hey, you guys,” whispers Grundish, putting his large hands on the top of the van, just above the sliding door, and shaking it. “Wake up, guys. I think something’s wrong.” Askew and Dora stir and roll back over. “I’m serious. Somebody’s out there and I think it might be cops.”

They scuttle for the building, Askew and Dora trailing Grundish and throwing clothes on as they run. The door slams behind them just before Alf can follow them in. The donkey’s hooves slam the side of the building in frustration. The hoof-on-metal clang rails at the indignity of exclusion once again.

“God damn,” says Askew. “What’s that donkey doing? He’s going to draw their attention.”

Grundish runs back to the door and opens it, allowing Alf into the building. They scramble through the building, rats in a maze, seeking out Jerry and Turleen. Grundish throws back the door to Jerry’s living quarters and the four of them burst in, interrupting a tender moment between the elderly couple.

“The cops are out there,” says Grundish, panting. “They’re here for us.”

•  •  •

On top of the building, they crawl to the edge and look toward the front gate. Just outside of the gate is a congregation of sheriff’s deputies, SWAT team members, and a handful of bearded country boys in camouflage jumpsuits cradling twelve-gauge shotguns in their arms. The entire posse is gathered at the front gate. Grundish and Askew stay low and run around the perimeter of the roof, checking all sides of the compound. They see no one anywhere besides just outside the gate.

Jerry meets Grundish and Askew as they descend the pull-down ladder from the roof. “Here you go,” says Jerry, handing a megaphone to Grundish. “Get back up there and stall them. I’ve got a plan, but you’re gonna have to buy a little time.”

“I don’t wanna go up there. This is the Polk County Sheriff’s Office we’re dealing with here,” says Grundish, trying to hand the megaphone back to Jerry.

“Yeah,” agrees Askew, wide-eyed. “Those good old boys like to use suspects for target practice.” He holds his hands up, palms out as Jerry tries to force the megaphone on him. “No way. Just last month, a whole big crew of ’em opened fire on one guy they was chasing. Said he had something in his hand that looked like a gun. Those boys didn’t stop shooting until they ran out of ammo. And it took ’em quite a while, too.”

“He’s right,” says Grundish. “I was listening to the press conference where the Sheriff was giving a statement to reporters at the scene, and the whole time you could hear the guns in the background, nonstop firing.”

“Yeah, and it turns out the guy didn’t even have a gun. He was holding his cell phone. They blasted him full of holes, and it turned out he wasn’t even the guy they was looking for.”

“You’re right. Those are some bloodthirsty killers. So if you do as I say, I might just be able to keep you alive. Do you want to get out of this alive?” asks Jerry.

Grundish and Askew both nod.

“Then listen to me. You, take this.” He hands the megaphone to Grundish. “And this, too.” Jerry holds out a Colt Magnum .44 Anaconda hand-cannon, thrusting it toward Grundish, who takes it and jams it down the front of his pants. The towering Skeletor grasps Grundish’s shoulders and locks eyes, somehow managing not to look like a complete doofus in his multicolored geometric-patterned sweater and Peruvian beanie cap. “Just do what I say and get up there. Say something, anything, to stall them. Tell them you have hostages. Tell them you’ll start throwing dead bodies out unless they back off and give you some space. Can you do that?”

“Yeah. I can do it.”

“Good. Then get up there. And you,” he says to Askew, “come with me. I’m gonna need a strong young man to help out.”

•  •  •

Grundish sits behind a row of oil drums on the roof and peeks out at the front gate. A bottom-heavy deputy lops off the padlock on the front gate with a pair of bolt cutters. Several other officers grab the gates and begin to swing them open.

“Fuck, fuck fuck,” says Grundish, fumbling with the megaphone, trying to figure out how to work it. He hits a red button, figuring it to be the power switch, and sets off a siren on the bullhorn that bare-fist punches him in the face with 120-decibel knuckles.

Instead of drawing them in, the siren song sends the officers scrambling from the gate, tripping over each other, and jumping behind their cruisers. They crouch behind their cars, panting, and point their service revolvers and assault rifles at Jerry’s building. Several shots go off and slam into the building before the officer in charge can reign the men in. “Hold your fire. Hold your fire,” go the shouts through the lead detective’s public-address system on his car.

Grundish hits the red switch again and shuts off the siren. With the swell of the siren muted and the various gunshots already fired, silence and stirred-up dust settles over the scene. Instead of just the silence, Grundish’s ears throb and pick up a whooshing sound, white noise, static. He studies the bullhorn and realizes that the talk-switch is the black button on the pistol grip.

On the ground, the deputies begin peeking up over their cars. A fat face, adorned with a soup-crusted bushy mustache, rises above the hood of its car and leads its bovine body toward the gate again. His name is Detective Mojado. Mojado is the hostage negotiator and is working the situation in tandem with Detective Carter. Mojado gasps deep, raspy breaths and feels his heart pumping hard, feels his pulse in his temples. The amplified click of Grundish’s bullhorn stops him midstride.

“Uhh...don’t come any closer,” Grundish says into the mouthpiece, more of a question than directive. His unsure voice increases in volume exponentially as it blares from the flared horn of the megaphone.

Detective Mojado takes a tentative step forward again.

“Don’t do it, you stinkin’ copper,” says Grundish, feeling disconnected from himself, not sure how to react or what to say in a stand-off with the law. He always just turned himself in before, when it came down to it. Not this time, though. Lacking the experience and knowledge for such a situation, Grundish falls back on the old mobster movies he used to watch on Saturday afternoons as a kid. “Yeah, see? We got hostages. See? And if you don’t back off, we’re gonna start a slaughter in here. See? I’ll start tossing bodies out. Yeah.”

Mojado backs away from the gate and returns to his car. He grabs the handset from inside of his cruiser and speaks over the loudspeaker. “We will not approach the gate again. We don’t want to see anybody get hurt. I am here to see what I can do to work things out. My name is Detective Mojado. You can call me Piso. I’m working with Detective Carter. He is in charge, but I’m going to be the one dealing with you. I don’t want this to end badly for you or the hostages. So you need to tell me what you want.”

“Um...I’m gonna have to get back with you on that,” says Grundish into the mouthpiece. “Give me a couple of minutes to think things over.”
Smooth
, thinks Grundish,
real smooth. You’re really doing a great job. Why don’t you call them stinkin’ coppers again? Yeah, see? Rocky’s gonna rub you out. See? Real fucking smooth.

“Well, while you’re thinking, why don’t you tell me who I’m speaking with? Are you Mr. Grundish or Mr. Askew?”

“How do you know our names?” asks Grundish.
Oh nice
, he thinks,
now you’ve confirmed it for them
.

“I’ll tell you after you tell me who I’m speaking with, Mr. Grundish or Mr. Askew?”

What the fuck does it matter now?
he thinks. “I’m Grundish. So, how did you know where to find us?” He peeks up over the top of the oil drums and sees men dressed in black, moving away from the other deputies, spreading out along the wall. “Hey, tell those SWAT guys to stop spreading out and come back or we start snuffing out the hostages.”

The SWAT members stop moving and look toward Mojado for orders. Mojado speaks into the microphone. “I want everybody to pull in here where Mr. Grundish can see that we’re not trying to pull anything sneaky on him.” Officers return to the front gate area and squat behind their cars. It looks to Grundish as if they have all returned. “I’m sorry about that, Mr. Grundish. The men were acting on their own there. That won’t happen again. Now, should I call you Mr. Grundish, or can you tell me your first name?”

“Just call me Grundish. Now tell me how you found us.”

“Do you have a telephone that we can talk on?”

“No, let’s do it just the way we are.”

“Okay, Mr. Grundish. Have it your way.” Sweat beads on Mojado’s forehead and drips down, stinging his eyes. He wipes at his eyes and continues. “We got a positive ID on you at the house where you and your friend killed that man in Hillsborough County. The kid that you took hostage gave a description to Hillsborough’s sketch artist, and they determined that it was you two fellows in the house. Pretty easy since they already had an APB out on you guys. They checked the phone records from the house and saw that there were numerous calls to the phone number listed for this property. Simple police work really. We just put together a posse and here we are.”

Shit
, thinks Grundish.
Turleen kept calling here to set things up for us. Her efforts to set up the safehouse made things unsafe.

“So, Grundish, what I need is for you to let me know what it is you want us to do. You have the hostages. Obviously you have demands. Let me know what it is that you are wanting, and I’ll check with Detective Carter to see if we can accommodate you.”

“We just want you to go. To leave us alone.”

“Well, Grundish, I’m afraid we can’t do that. You have hostages, and we need to make sure they are safe. Can you tell me how many people you have in there?”

Grundish senses somebody behind him and turns to see Askew hunched over and dragging the battered body of Chancho. Askew drops Chancho beside Grundish and says in a low voice, “Tell ’em we have four. That’ll keep the heat off of everybody else.”

“We have four hostages,” says Grundish into the bullhorn. “A whore, a Mexican and two old people. And they’re all starting to get on our nerves. So don’t push us.”

“Okay, now we’re getting somewhere,” says Mojado. “Is everybody all right? Nobody’s been hurt yet, right?”

“Well, we beat up the Mexican pretty good, but he’s still alive,” says Grundish.

“All right,” says Mojado. “Can you tell me the Mexican’s name?”

“It’s Chancho.”

“And how bad are his injuries?”

Grundish looks at the smashed, squashed, and blood-splattered mess of flesh that used to be Chancho’s face. “Uh, he’s pretty bad. Real bad.”

“Can we send somebody in to bring out Chancho? You can keep the other hostages so you will still have plenty of leverage. And we can take care of Mr. Chancho.”

“No. No, you can’t. We’re not releasing anybody yet,” says Grundish.

In the distance the soft whir of helicopter blades can be heard.

“Well, is there something we can do for you? A little trade off, maybe, so that you’ll allow us to get Mr. Chancho out of there? Maybe we can send in food and drinks for you and the hostages. After you eat, maybe you will be willing to let us tend to Mr. Chancho. Is there any food that you would like in there?”

“How about some pork chops and applesauce?” says Grundish.

“I’ll see what we can do. Let me speak with Detective Carter and see about those pork chops and applesauce.”

The sound of the chopper’s blades battering the air is louder, closer.

“Is that a police helicopter?” Grundish asks.

“That is one of our choppers,” says Mojado. “They are just going to be flying over to make sure everything is all right. We won’t be landing it on top of the building or anything.”

“Tell them to turn away now. And don’t bring any more officers here,” says Grundish.

“I can’t do that, Mr. Grundish,” says Mojado. “I’m not in charge. I’m just the negotiator.”

The helicopter is now visible to Grundish and Askew in the distance.

“Give me your gun,” says Askew.

“No way. We’re not getting into a gunfight with these crazy bastards,” says Grundish.