14bis Plum Spooky (15 page)

“I need a shower,” he said.

I was relieved to see he was wearing underwear and that his T-shirt covered almost all the good stuff.

“I could strip down further,” Diesel said.

“Not in front of the monkeys.”

He grinned, ruffled my hair, and sauntered off to the bathroom.

I cleaned up the monkey mess, sat them all in front of the tele vision, and tuned to the Cartoon Network. I nibbled on one last piece of pizza and called Morelli.

“How’s it going?” Morelli wanted to know.

“It’s average. Stole a truck. Blew up a house. Brought seven monkeys home with me. And now I have a naked man in my shower.”

“Yeah, same ol’, same ol’,” Morelli said.

“What’s new with you?”

“Pulled a double hom i cide. Shoveled dog shit off old man Fratelli’s lawn. Started drinking at three o’clock.”

“I assume Anthony is still with you.”

“He’s like a boil on my ass.”

I took a shower when Diesel was done. When I came out, he was in the kitchen. He’d removed all the monkey helmets and was studying them.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “It looks like a little antenna on the top, but I have no idea what it’s supposed to do.”

“Gail Scanlon rescued animals from labs. Hard to believe she would turn around and use them for experimentation.”

“She was a woman living alone in a secluded area. She didn’t have a phone. I don’t think she had a gun. She kept intruders away with a piñata. If she had something Wulf wanted, like land or monkeys, she’d be an easy target.”

“Why would Wulf want monkeys?”

“Don’t know the answer to that.”

“Wulf has Gail. Munch said they had her locked away and that she was serving a purpose.”

“Maybe she’s wearing a helmet,” Diesel said. “What are we going to do with the monkeys?”

“They’re watching tele vision.”

“They’re used to living in a habitat without flush toilets, and you just fed them pizza. It’s going to get ugly in here.”

“You have a point. We need something temporary until we find Gail. We can’t put them in a fenced yard because they’ll climb out. If we call animal control, they’ll put them in a cage.”

“Maybe they’ll put them in a
big
cage,” Diesel said.

Carl glared at him and gave him the finger.

“Carl doesn’t like that idea,” I said.

“How do you know which one is Carl? They all look alike.”

“Carl is wearing a collar.”

“Maybe we should give Carl a credit card and let him find a hotel room,” Diesel said.

“I have a better idea. I have a
genius
idea. We’ll put them in Munch’s house. He isn’t living there.”

“That’s really rotten,” Diesel said. “I wish I’d thought of it.”

We put all the boxes of cereal, cookies, and crackers in a bag and led the monkeys out of my apartment and down the hall. We herded them into the elevator and into the Subaru and drove them across town. Diesel walked through Munch’s house to make sure it wasn’t being used, and then we turned the monkeys loose.

I gave Carl the bag of food. “This should last you until tomorrow morning. The tele vision remote is on the coffee table in the living room. You’re in charge. Everyone’s house-broken, right?”

Carl looked around and scratched his armpit.

I could feel Diesel smiling behind me.

“I’m not coming back here,” he said. “I’m never setting foot in this house again. And I’ll swear on a Bible I didn’t put these monkeys here.”

SEVENTEEN

T
HE FIRST THOUGHTS
in my head when I woke up were about Gail Scanlon and her monkeys. The next thoughts were about the big guy sprawled on top of me.

“Hey!” I said to Diesel.

“Mmmm.”

“You’re on top of me again.”

“Life is good.”

“It’s
not
good. I can’t breathe.”

“If you couldn’t breathe, you’d be dead.”

“If you don’t get off me,
you’re
going to be dead.”

Diesel rolled to the other side of the bed and settled in with a sigh.

“I’m going to take a shower and go check on the monkeys,” I told him.

No answer. Diesel was already asleep.

A half hour later, I had my hair fluffed out and my eyelashes gunked up, and I was anxious to start my day. Diesel was still sleeping, so I called Lula while I drank my coffee.

“How are you feeling?” I asked Lula.

“I’m feeling fine, but I have a craving for another one of them breakfast sandwiches.”

“I have to check on Munch’s house on Crocker Street. I could pick you up on the way, and we could stop somewhere.”

“I’ll be outside waiting for you.”

I finished my coffee, took my bag from the hook in the hall, and saw Munch’s jacket still lying on the floor. I remembered the grocery list I’d taken from the yellow pad and pulled the crumpled piece of paper out of the jacket pocket. It was soggy but legible.

“Diesel!” I yelled. “Get out here.”

Nothing. No sound of man getting out of bed.

I stomped into the bedroom and yelled at him up close. “Diesel!”

“Jeez,” he said. “Now what?”

“I ripped this page off a pad in Munch’s house. So much happened last night, I forgot about it. It looks like a shopping list.”

Diesel looked at the list. “Barium, rockets, HTPB.”

“I have to go,” I said. “I told Lula I’d pick her up.”

Twenty minutes and ten traffic lights later, I pulled to the curb in front of Lula’s house and Lula got into the car.

“Why are you going to Munch’s house?”

“I have groceries for the monkeys.”

“Say what?”

“Long story short is we found some of Gail Scanlon’s monkeys yesterday, and we stashed them in Munch’s house.”

“That’s just wrong,” Lula said. “They’re gonna poop all over.”

“It was me or Munch.”

“Okay I could see that then.”

After a fast-food drive-through experience and five more traffic lights, I reached Crocker Street. I parked in the alley and took a bag of what I hoped was appropriate monkey food to the back door. I opened the unlocked door, we let ourselves in, and I set the bag on the kitchen counter.

“So far, so good,” Lula said. “No monkey poop in the kitchen. No monkeys, either, for that matter.”

I poked my head into the living room, where Carl was watching television.

“Where are the rest of the monkeys?” I asked him.

Carl put his hands over his ears and stared at the tele vision.

I walked through the house, looking in all the rooms. No monkeys.

“Did someone take the monkeys?” I asked Carl.

Carl hopped off the couch, walked into the kitchen, and pointed to the pet hatch in the back door.

I was stunned. I’d forgotten about the hatch.

“The monkeys escaped,” I said to Lula.

“How many monkeys we talking about?”

“Six.”

Somewhere not far off, a woman’s scream pierced the air.

“There’s one monkey,” Lula said.

I ran outside, and two doors down, a woman was standing in her backyard. I took a box of cookies from the grocery bag and went to investigate.

“Is something wrong?” I asked her.

“I opened the door to take the garbage out and a monkey ran into my house.”

“Don’t worry,” Lula said. “That monkey escaped from Monkey Control, and we’re here to catch the little bugger. Just step aside and we’ll take care of this.” Lula looked at me. “Go ahead. Go get the monkey.”

“You aren’t going to help?”

“Hell no. You know how I feel about monkeys.”

I went into the house and found the monkey drinking out of the toilet bowl.

I held a cookie out to him. “Yum,” I said.

The monkey’s eyes got bright, and he followed me out of the house. I gave him two cookies and locked him in the Jeep.

“One down,” I said to Lula.

We walked through the neighborhood rattling the cookie box, and we captured two more monkeys.

“These cookies are good,” Lula said, her hand in the box. “It’s no wonder monkeys come to get them.”

“We’ve been around the block twice,” I said as we completed another loop, “and we’re still missing three monkeys.”

“Maybe Gail won’t notice,” Lula said.

“That’s not the point. I can’t just let monkeys loose in Trenton.”

“Why not? There’s all kinds of crazy shit loose in Trenton.”

We returned to the car, and a monkey was sitting on the hood looking in at the other monkeys. I gave him a cookie and added him to the collection. I retrieved Carl from Munch’s house, set a box of Pop-Tarts on the floor as monkey bait, took the rest of the monkey food, and closed the door. We all piled into the Jeep, and I slowly drove down the alley and did a couple laps around the block. We didn’t see the remaining two monkeys.

“My eyes are watering,” Lula said. “These monkeys need some hygiene lessons. What are you gonna do with them, anyway?”

A monkey darted across the road. I stopped the car, grabbed the cookie box, and took off after him. I chased him for half a block and cornered him against a chain-link fence that ran along the button factory parking lot.

“Want a cookie?” I asked him.

He took the cookie and followed me back to the car. Do I know how to catch monkeys, or what?

“Now I’m only missing one monkey,” I said.

“This is a nightmare. Next time, I’m the one chasing the monkey, because I’m not sitting in the monkey Jeep.”

“I’m giving it one more try,” I said. “I’m going back to Munch’s house to see if my monkey bait worked.”

“Monkey bait?”

“Pop-Tarts in Munch’s kitchen.”

I returned to the alley and parked the car. Lula, Carl, and I got out and went to the back door and looked in the kitchen. Sure enough, there was my monkey. I went in, confiscated what was left of the Pop-Tarts, and we all marched back to the car.

The car was locked.

“Did you lock the car?” I asked Lula.

“No way.”

I looked inside. The key was in the ignition. The monkeys had somehow managed to lock the car.

“You got a problem,” Lula said. “You better hope they don’t drive away. Where’s your extra key?”

“I don’t have an extra key.”

It was a little after ten. I called Diesel, but he didn’t pick up. I could call a locksmith, break a window, or call Ranger. Since it was Ranger’s car, the choice was obvious.

“I’m locked out of the Jeep,” I told him. “The key is in the ignition, and the doors are locked.”

“Where are you?”

“In the alley behind Munch’s house on Crocker Street.”

Ten minutes later, a black Rangeman SUV eased to a stop behind the Jeep. Ranger got out of the SUV, walked over to me, and looked in the Jeep.

“Babe,” he said.

I blew out a sigh. I had five monkeys in the Jeep and two sitting on the roof.

Hal was left at the wheel of the Rangeman SUV, and I could see he was turning red, making an effort not to laugh. Hal is one of Ranger’s younger guys. He keeps his blond hair cut short in a buzz cut, he has a personality like a St. Bernard puppy, and he’s built like a stegosaurus.

Ranger’s life is mostly made up of serious business, and it’s not often you see Ranger laughing, but I guess a car full of monkeys was the tipping point because Ranger was smiling.

He took a key out of his pocket and opened the car door. “Do you want the two on the roof inside? Or do you want the five inside to get out of the car?”

“I want the two on the roof inside,” I said.

I rattled the cookie box and threw it into the backseat. Gail’s monkey jumped into the car, and all the monkeys attacked the cookie box. Carl didn’t want any part of it. Ranger had regained his calm, and I thought he was probably calculating the depreciation on his Jeep. Not that this was unusual. I’d done worse to his cars.

“I know I’m going to regret asking,” Ranger said, “but where are you going with the monkeys?”

“I don’t know. Originally, they were in a habitat in the Barrens, but Carl opened the door and they all escaped.”

“Carl?”

“Eep,” Carl said.

Ranger looked at Carl, and Carl gave him a thumbs-up.

“Anyway, a lot happened in between,” I told Ranger, “but last night, Diesel and I were in the Barrens looking for Wulf and Martin Munch, and we ended up with all these monkeys in the car.”

“Diesel’s been driving these monkeys around?”

“More or less.”

Ranger looked like he might burst out laughing again, but he squelched it.

“It’s not like they’re bad monkeys,” I said. “It’s just that I don’t know what to do with them. Except for Carl, they belong to Gail Scanlon, but Wulf has her locked away somewhere. I can’t bring them back to the habitat and leave them there all alone.”

Ranger cut his eyes to the monkeys. They were fighting over the cookies, shoving them into their mouths, cookies flying everywhere.

“I can put a man at the habitat until this sorts itself out,” Ranger said.

“I don’t know if that’s safe with Wulf prowling the Barrens.”

“Wulf won’t go after my man.”

Ranger motioned to Hal. Hal left the SUV and approached the Jeep.

“You’re going to follow me in the Jeep,” Ranger said to Hal.

Hal’s mouth dropped open and he went white.

“The Jeep’s full of monkeys,” Hal said.

Ranger clapped him on the back. “You’ll be fine. Just don’t touch the cookies.”

We dropped Lula off at her house, and Hal followed behind in the Jeep.

“Hal looks terrified,” I said to Ranger.

Ranger checked him out in the rearview mirror. “This is going to cost me. I’m going to have to give him hazard pay for this trip.”

We took the Turnpike and the Atlantic City Expressway. We exited the Expressway, and Ranger wound his way around the Barrens to Gail Scanlon’s compound. He drove the SUV into the habitat yard and parked. Hal parked behind him, and we all got out. Four monkeys had returned to the habitat and were huddled together on an outside table. They were still wearing their helmets.

“We took the helmets off the monkeys I had in the Jeep,” I told Ranger. “We couldn’t figure out why they were wearing them.”

“Did Gail Scanlon put these helmets on?”

“I doubt it. I think it must have been Munch or Wulf.”

Ranger approached the huddled monkeys, removed the helmets, and gave them to Hal.

“Put these in my SUV,” he said. “If Wulf wants them back, he can talk to me.”

We wrangled the remaining monkeys into the compound. We set food out and made sure there was fresh water. We closed and locked the door.

“Eep,” Carl said, monkey fingers curled around the chain-link fence, looking out at me.

I opened the door, let Carl out, and relocked the door.

“He doesn’t belong with the rest of the monkeys,” I said to Ranger.

“No doubt,” Ranger said.

We went into Gail Scanlon’s house and took stock. It seemed exactly as I’d left it.

“I’m going to leave you here,” Ranger said to Hal. “Make sure the monkeys have food and water. As soon as I get phone reception, I’ll dispatch someone to bring in a couple days’ supplies and communication.”

Hal seemed okay with that. He was out of the monkey truck. Life was sweet again.

Ranger, Carl, and I left the compound. Ranger stopped when he got to the paved road.

“Do you want to look for Munch or Gail Scanlon?” Ranger asked.

“I wouldn’t know where to begin. They’re here somewhere, but I have absolutely no direction. We did aerial surveillance and couldn’t find anything.” I pulled Gordo Bollo’s file out of my bag. “This is the guy who threw the tomatoes at me. He lives in Bordentown, and since it’s a weekend, he might be home. I’d love to catch him.”

Ranger looked at the file and punched the address into his navigation system.

“What’s the charge on this guy?”

“His ex-wife remarried, and I guess he had unresolved marital issues because he ran over the new groom with his pickup truck, twice.”

A half hour down the road, Carl was squirmy in the backseat.

“Puh,” Carl said. “Puh, puh, puh.”

Ranger’s eyes flicked to Carl in the rearview mirror.

“Does he want to live?” Ranger asked.

“Eep,” Carl said.

The nav system got us to Ward Street, and it didn’t look any more promising this time than it had last time. A cemetery ran down one side, and on the other was scrub field and the ceramic pipe factory. Ranger drove the length of it, turned, and drove back. He stopped at the entrance to the cemetery.

“Babe, there aren’t any houses here.”

“Connie double-checked this address.”

Ranger called in to his office and asked them to run Gordo Bollo. Minutes later, the same address came back.

“I’m sitting here, and there’s no house,” Ranger said. “It’s a field next to a ceramic pipe factory. Go into the tax rec ords and see who owns this land.”

Ranger waited for the answer, and when it came, he disconnected.

“Gordo Bollo owns 656 Ward, but it’s a lot. No house.”

D
IESEL WAS AT
the dining room table with coffee and my computer when Carl and I walked in.

“Every time I call you for help, you don’t answer your phone,” I said. “Where were you this time? Peru? Madagascar?”

“I was in the shower. You didn’t say to call back. I figured you were pulling on rubber gloves and decontaminating Munch’s house.”

“The monkeys all escaped through the pet door.”

“There’s a pet door?”

“Anyway, I found them and took them back to the habitat. Ranger has one of his men staying there until we find Gail.”

“It looks like you didn’t take them
all
back to the habitat.”

“I guess Carl had enough of the nuts and berries thing. What are you doing on the computer?”