Grundish & Askew (27 page)

“Okay, Baby.” She retrieves the pizzas and returns into the building. Askew relieves her of the boxes. Before he can say anything, Dora puts a suffocating squeeze on him, planting wet, warm kisses all about his face, crying, oozing briny tears. “Tell me this is gonna work out, Baby. Tell me it’s gonna be okay.”

“I love you,” he says. “I never knew what that felt like before. But in these last couple of days, you’ve given me something I never understood before. I’m gonna fight like hell to get out of here and be with you.” He returns her kisses. Sweaty forehead to forehead, pressed together, he tells her, “now get out there and make it look good.”

And with that, Dora tosses the front door back and flees the building, crying, screaming. She flings herself against the barrel-like core of the officer closest to the gate and screams, “It was horrible! Just horrible! Please don’t do anything to provoke them. If you cross them, those monsters’ll kill those old folks in there.” She buries her face into the officer’s chest and weeps. The tears are deeply felt and sincere. Tears for her man. She bawls and blubbers and blows her nose on the officer’s shirt, leaving a glimmering streak of hot snot. She weeps more and wipes her nose on his arm. “It was horrible. Just horrible.”

The farrow of cops at the front gate wallow in muddled frustration – restless, smoking smokes, chawing chaw, shuffling their feet, waiting for the action. Askew scuttles along the edge of the roof, staying low, crouched and ready to drop into a defensive position if necessary. A demented squirrel skitters along behind at a safe distance, zigging with Askew’s zigs, zagging with his zags. There are officers nowhere but at the front gate. As far as Askew can tell, the grounds are not surrounded. Much of the area outside of the perimeter of the property is overgrown scrub, vines, palmetto trees and
crotalus horridus
^[45]
. It would take a bulldozer or a well-fed crew of illegal aliens with sharpened machetes to cut a swath through the growth.

“Mr. Grundish,” Mojado’s voice blares through his public address system. “Thank you for working with us. We are taking the girl to the hospital to make sure she is okay. I need you to give me an update on the others. The girl told us that Mr. Mathers is your uncle and the elderly lady is Mr. Askew’s aunt. Is that correct?”

Askew runs over and says to Grundish in a soft voice, “We told Dora to tell the police that Jerry and Turleen are both
captivated
and being mistreated by us. That way it still
supposably
gives us two hostages and keeps them in the clear if this goes bad.”

“Mr. Grundish? Can you hear me?”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah. I can hear you. We got the old folks here, and we don’t got no problem with capping ’em if you cross us.”

“Okay. Okay. Listen,” says Mojado, “we’ve been working together, right?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Grundish sucks at his teeth, and thinks that one of the Pabst Blue Ribbons would sit just about right in his stomach.

“So, let’s all stay calm. Now, you got what you wanted with the beer and pizza and smokes, right? We were honorable, weren’t we?”

“Yeah, I suppose,” Grundish allows. Askew pulls a fresh pack of Blue Llamas out of his pocket and hands it to him. Grundish takes a smoke and lights it, drawing hard on it. The throbbing in his eye lessens and then subsides, leaving the sclera feeling dried out and raw. Askew pulls a fag from his own pack and catapults it into his mouth.

“What I want to do, then, is hear the rest of your demands. You send out another hostage, and we’ll see what else we can do for you.”

“Tell ’em we want a dump truck, Uzis, and a garbage bag full of that Jell-O with the fruit salad suspended in it,” says Askew.

“What for?” asks Grundish.

“To stall them. Jerry’s just about ready to help us get outta here. We just need a little more time. And to make them think we’re insane in the membrane,
Esse
.”

Grundish addresses Mojado. “We ain’t sending the old broad out right now. First you’re gonna meet our new demands. Then we’ll let her go.”

“Tell me what you want, and I’ll see what we can do?”

“First,” says Grundish, “we want a dump truck with a full load of gravel in the back. And two Uzis with lots of extra ammo. And we want that Jell-O that has fruit salad suspended in it. I’m talking a shit load of the fruit Jell-O
^[46]
, like a garbage bag full.”

“Let me run that by my superiors,” says Mojado. “It may take a while to fill that order. Can you promise me to be calm and not do anything to those people in there while I see if we can meet your demands?”

“We’ll give you one hour,” says Grundish. “And then I can’t promise you anything.”

•  •  •

Forty minutes later:
“Mr. Grundish, we are still working on your demands. Detective Carter says that we can get you the dump truck, but we’re having trouble finding a load of gravel. It might have to be filled with rubber mulch.”

“We want gravel,” says Grundish.

“And as far as the Uzis, I think you’re going to have to understand that they won’t let me give you those. How about shotguns?”

Grundish stubs out his fourth smoke, grimaces, and wonders how long they can hold off an all-out assault. “Well, then you better talk to them about the fact that if you only give us part of what we’re asking for, we’ll only send out part of a hostage, maybe just a leg and some teeth.”

“Just stay calm in there, Grundish. I will do my best to talk to Detective Carter but my hands are tied if he says no. And as far as the Jell-O, that takes at least an hour to make. With the amount you’re requesting, it could take us a couple of hours. So you are going to need to stay calm and work with us. I’m doing everything I can to make you happy.”

“Well, if I don’t have my Jell-O, my dump truck, and the Uzis very soon, we’re going to snuff out the oldies and come at you with our guns blazing.”

•  •  •

Grundish descends the ladder into the building. The dark building. The warm, un-air-conditioned building. “What the fuck?” he says. “What’s up with the lights?”

A flashlight peeks around the corner and shines into Grundish’s eyes. It moves closer to him as he blocks the glare with his hand. “They shut the power off on us, they did,” says Turleen, flashlight in one hand, half-full jug of wine in the other. “No phone, no lights, no air condition. Not a single luxury.”

“Like Robinson Crusoe,” agrees Grundish. “As primitive as can be. So they’re starting to try to put the pressure on us now. Steam us out.”

“It looks that way, it does.”

Grundish stumbles his way toward Turleen, unable to see the ground, a moth to the light. Just around the corner, Askew sits on a wooden crate with a Pabst can clenched between his thighs while he stuffs the greater part of a piece of pizza into his mouth. Two battery-powered lanterns and several candles throw an orange glow about the room, mad dancing shadows settling here and there, illuminating Jerry, Chancho and Alf the Sacred Burro.

“What the fuck you doing?” says Grundish to Askew.

“I’m chowing on this pizza. It’s killer. You ever had this shit with the garlic flavored crust. It kicks the turds out of Pizza Brothers. I’m gonna have to quit delivering there and get a job with Hungry Howie’s.” He drains the remaining fluid in the Pabst can and tosses it into a small-but-growing pile of empty cans in the corner.

“We need to stay sober,” says Grundish. “Quit drinking that beer, and give me a piece of pizza.”

“He’s drinking up some courage,” says Jerry, looking up from his work on the donkey. Chancho is firmly strapped to the miserable-looking ass. “The boy is shaking in his shoes. He needs a little liquid courage. And you might benefit from a little of that yourself. Go ahead and have one. You’re gonna need it.”

Grundish grabs a beer from the case beside Askew and pops the top. “All right,” he says, and empties the contents of the can down his throat, not stopping to breathe. “There. Now tell me what we’re gonna do. Askew says you have a plan. Please share it with me.”

Jerry shuffles around the donkey, ignoring Grundish’s question. Chancho’s corpse is securely attached to Alf. The sacred burro shifts his weight from his left legs to his right, flashes a look of severe irritation, and shifts back again. Chancho’s left arm is taped to the donkey’s neck. The right arm is propped up in front of Chancho, just above Alf’s head. Jerry places a Smith and Wesson .38 in Chancho’s hand and duct tapes the fingers around the handle. In the dim lighting Chancho looks like a fierce armed bandito charging forward on a burro. Jerry unwraps a pack of Black Cat firecrackers and tapes them along the top of Chancho’s arm. The fuse dangles just off of the dead man’s rigor-mortis-locked elbow. Jerry tapes another strand of the fireworks to the shiny black hair on the back of Chancho’s head, and two more down the cold stiff back of the rotting meat-form resting on the back of the burro. He twists the fuses together and turns toward Grundish.

“This here donkey and Mexican are two of the few people in this world I give a shit about. Chancho’s dead and Alf is so old that he may as well be.” Jerry scritches the donkey’s head, Alf leans in toward the nails scraping at his scalp. “These two sorry specimens are gonna get you out of here.”

“Mr. Jerry. With all due respect, how in the fuck can a sick donkey and a dead wetback get us out of this situation?”

“Son. Just get back up on the roof and stall a little bit more. Leroy over there knows the plan. He’ll tell you what to do when the time comes.”

Grundish turns his head toward his best friend. Askew chugs another beer, tilts his head back, and releases a deep, bellowing burp that flaps his lips and sprays a fine mist from his mouth.

“So, you’re telling me we’re fucked?” says Grundish. He grabs another beer and drains it with the ease of a seasoned binge-drinker.

“No,” says Jerry, impatient with having to answer questions. “I’m telling you to shut up and go back onto the roof. Buy us another hour and you will be good to go.” Grundish grabs three more beers and pauses, trying to think.

Jerry snaps his fingers at Grundish. “Just do as I say. Don’t you realize that there must be some kind of way out of here? Well, there is. And I’m setting it up. So, just get up there on the roof and do as I say. Don’t think twice, it’ll be all right.”

•  •  •

“Okay,” says Grundish into the bullhorn. “I’m back. And your time is almost up. What’s the deal with our demands?” Grundish cracks a warm beer and tilts it down his throat. The warm beer foams and expands halfway down, making for an aching trachea, stinging his epiglottis.

“I need you to be patient with us, Mr. Grundish,” says Mojado. “I am working on everything for you. We have the dump truck with the gravel on the way. Detective Carter is running the request for the Uzis up the chain of command, and that looks like it’s probably a go. But the Jell-O is slowing us up. We found a hospital cafeteria over in Brandon that can get us a full garbage bag of the fruity Jell-O. I’m sending one of my men to pick it up but it’s going to take him at least an hour, maybe a little bit more, before he can be back here. At that point we should be good to go and you can send the elderly woman out.”

Grundish finishes off the rest of his beer and lights a Blue Llama. “You have one hour,” he says into the megaphone. His voice is gravelly from chain-smoking and slightly slurred from the rapid alcohol intake, making him sound rough and deranged. “One hour. No more extensions after that. If we don’t have everything, including the fucking Jell-O, we kill another hostage. I’ll do my best to work with you but after an hour, I can’t promise you that I will be able to control Askew.”

“We will have everything for you,” says Mojado. “Just work with us. We don’t want anybody else, including you and Mr. Askew, including my men, getting hurt.”

“One more thing,” barks Grundish into the megaphone. “I’m coming out in front of the building for just a minute. While I’m out there, Askew will be holding a gun loaded with hollow points to the old man’s head. If there’s any funny business, Askew will paint the wall with the old geezer’s brains and then do the same to the old lady. Do you understand me?”

Mojado looks to Carter for confirmation and gets the nod. “You will have free passage in front of the building for the next five minutes.”

•  •  •

Exiting the front door, Grundish can feel the sniper rifles trained on him without even looking. The burly tattooed hulk barely looks at the police as he plucks apples from the tree and dumps them into the bucket he carries. A scurvy black cat with a kinked tail rubs against Grundish’s ankles and purrs as he collects the fruit. The cat chews on one of the sock garters and Grundish tries unsuccessfully to push it away with his leg. When the bucket is full he pushes the cat away with his foot and returns to the building. Grundish sits down on a crate in front of Alf the Sacred Burro and feeds the juicy, sweet fruit to the donkey.

“It’s time for you fellas to go,” says Jerry, interrupting a tender moment between Alf the Sacred Burro and Grundish. Alf sits back on his haunches like a dog, munching on the apples and presenting his head for scritching, trying to ignore the rotting dead man strapped to his back. Grundish feeds him apples and drains another beer.

“Where are we going?” Grundish rises to his feet and rests his hand on Alf’s head.

“Leroy there knows what to do,” says Jerry, nodding toward a passed-out Askew lying face-down amidst a scattering of empty Pabst cans, a burned-out cigarette wedged between his front teeth.

“He’s wasted. Shit, not even conscious. How the hell is he supposed to tell me what to do?”

“Just wake him up, and drag him out of here,” says Jerry. “Get him going, and he’ll know what to do. It’s time for you to go now before those coppers claim to have all of your demands. Because just when they make you think they’ve got everything, they’re going to huff and puff and blow the place down. There’ll be a battle outside a-raging.”

Grundish tosses his floppy, drunk friend over his shoulder and follows Jerry and Turleen through the maze of rooms and storage boxes, past mother cats nursing their kittens, past overflowing litter boxes and bundled stacks of pornographic magazines, through a room populated with decapitated mannequins, the heads all lined up on a shelf and facing the wall. At the back of the building is a door. On the other side of the door is a corridor made from two rows of junked VW vans. The space between the vans is covered with rotting plywood, blocking out any view from above and letting only prying fingers of sunlight force their way past some of the holes and cracks where the wood has rotted through. At the end of the corridor is an opening.