Dead Clown Barbecue (29 page)

The third Josh White immediately accused me of being a telemarketer and informed me that he was on the national Do Not Call registry. He wouldn't let me explain and finally hung up on me. I decided to come back to him, time permitting.

The fourth Josh White sounded very stressed out when he answered, which was a good sign. "Do you have a brother?" I asked.

"Yes! Who is this?"

"I'm not one of the kidnappers," I said, fending off that particular question before it could arise in the conversation. "I saw your brother not too long ago."

"How is he? Is he okay?"

"He's not dead."

"Oh, thank God! Where is he?"

"I'm not completely —"

There was a knock at my door.

I froze. What if it was Baldy and/or Harry?

"Open up," said Baldy.

I cursed, which is something I rarely do, even when I'm the only one around to hear. I hung up the phone and walked over to the door, trying to assume the facial expression of somebody who hadn't just made a phone call he shouldn't have. Baldy and Harry shoved their way inside as soon as I turned the doorknob.

"We forgot about the nose and the ear," said Harry. "We can cut off another ear, obviously, but the nose can't be replaced. We're not usually this sloppy; we were just distracted by having you turn out to be the wrong person and then needing to kidnap you."

"You don't have to make excuses," said Baldy.

"I don't want him to judge us."

"Who cares if he judges us? Guy's a wiener." Baldy turned his attention to me. "Where are they?"

"They're in my refrigerator," I said.

Baldy scowled. "Are you some kind of ghoul?"

"No, no, I just thought I should keep them fresh in case you returned for them." I hurried into the kitchen.

My phone rang.

I opened the refrigerator door, opened the crisper, and removed the baggie with the nose and ear. The phone continued to ring. Unsure how to proceed, I cursed under my breath (a mild curse, acceptable for broadcast television) and dropped the baggie back into the crisper.

"Aren't you in the habit of answering your telephone?" asked Harry.

"Not when I've got guests," I said. "I'm sure it's only my mom, calling to babble about mom stuff. I cut those apron strings long ago. Most of the time I don't even —"

Baldy picked up the phone. "Yeah?" He listened for a few seconds, then broke into a grin. It was not a grin that hinted at sunnier days ahead for me.

"Well, well, well," he said. "Calling to warn him, were you?"

I shook my head. "I was calling to distract him. I figured you were on your way over there. I like to help out wherever I can."

"Do you think I'm a complete idiot?"

Clearly, there was only one politically correct answer to that one: "No."

Keeping his eyes fixed on me, Baldy spoke into the phone. "We'll be over shortly. Don't call the police or we will kill your brother. Don't leave or we will kill your brother. Don't tell anyone or we will . . . right, that's what we'll do. See you in a bit."

I feel no personal shame in admitting that at that moment, I was absolutely petrified. This evening, which had taken an upswing when the boss decided to let me go instead of kill me, had just suffered a definite drop in quality.

"So, what are we going to do about your betrayal?" Baldy asked me.

"Offer complete forgiveness and call it a learning experience?"

"In your dreams," Baldy said. "In your magical, elf-filled dreams."

"So you mean he called the real brother?" Harry asked. Baldy nodded. "Aw, man, that wasn't cool at all."

Baldy pointed his gun at my chest. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't kill you right now."

"The noise. The moral aspects. The legal aspects. The mess. The cost of the bullet. The wasted effort on the toe surgery. The —"

"Enough!"

"To be honest, that last one was a pretty good point," Harry said. "The boss was pretty proud of that extra toe surgery."

"So what? We'll have his corpse stuffed and the boss can keep it in his bedroom."

"Also, he didn't bring it up as one of his points, but we'd have to take the time to dispose of the body, or risk having it traced back to your gun. We should at least take him back to the boss and do it there."

"What, are we this guy's frickin' chauffeur now?" Baldy asked. "We can't drag him along to go see the other brother, so we'd have to make a special trip to drop him off with the boss. Let's just kill him now."

"Why can't we take him along?"

"Because that's insane!"

"I'm not saying we have to take him inside."

"You gonna ask him to patiently wait in the car while you collect a kidnapping ransom? Think before you speak, or else dumb things come out!"

"Here's the thing," said Harry. "This is all about intimidation, right? We're trying to scare the brother into paying the ransom."

"Right."

"Can you imagine if your brother got kidnapped, and the kidnappers showed up with this guy who had your brother's severed toe sewn to his foot? That would mess you up!"

Baldy considered that. "Yeah, I guess it would."

"I mean, you wouldn't know
what
these lunatics were capable of after seeing something that deranged. If that were me, I'd pay that ransom and then run out to an ATM machine to offer up an advance on future ransoms!"

"It's just ATM. 'Machine' is part of the acronym."

"Oh. I think I knew that."

"What if he escapes?"

"How far is he gonna get on that foot?"

Baldy sighed. "I just don't know. The more convoluted this plan gets, the more opportunity there is for things to go wrong. I'd hate for this whole scheme to crash and burn because we were trying to be inventive."

"You do have a point there," Harry admitted.

Though I wanted to protest, I had to concede that Baldy's logic was sound. It was never a good idea for these kinds of plans to get too convoluted. Simplicity was the key to success. If I were in their position, I probably would've shot me thirty seconds ago.

I'd always assumed that when the dark specter of death approached, I'd put on an almost legendary display of cowardice. Pleading, sobbing, screaming, trembling, whining — all of these elements were included in my mental picture. However, when I realized that Baldy was a mere instant from pulling the trigger, I did none of those things. Instead, to my great astonishment, I swung my fist at his gun.

There's a fine line between bravery and stupidity. Taking a swing at a man with a gun would seem to fall into the latter category, but my aim was true and my speed was sufficient. My knuckles smashed into the barrel of the gun, knocking its aim away from me just as Baldy fired. The bullet struck my stereo, which I'd been planning to upgrade, though not for another few months.

Trivia: punching a gun hurts.

Baldy gaped at me. I couldn't quite tell if his expression was "newfound respect" or "homicidal rage."

"Keep it down up there!" shouted my neighbor Preston, pounding on my floor from below.

Having deflected death, I now found myself unsure how to proceed. I couldn't make much of an impact by saying "Now leave my apartment immediately, lest I bat away your revolver again!" And yet I had to follow-up somehow, or he'd simply point the gun back at me and shoot a second time, thus wasting my original effort. Should I tackle him? Try my luck again and try to kick the gun out of his hand? Grab Harry and use him as a human shield? Make a run for it? (Clearly, since this remained a volatile situation, these thoughts went through my mind very, very quickly.)

I went for the tackle. This was, in retrospect, a poor choice. Baldy bashed me in the side of the head with his gun, and I dropped to the floor. Though I was in great pain, I kicked my legs out, attempting to strike him in the ankles and knock him off balance. Unfortunately, I was facing the wrong direction and this was ineffective.

"We need to go before somebody calls the cops!" said Harry.

I truly believed that Baldy was going to kill me and leave me unable to write down this narrative, although of course he didn't. "Fine, we'll bring him with us! Dammit!"

* * *

I sat in the back of their car, feeling like a child in Time Out. I'd always enjoyed Time Out when I was young, because it offered uninterrupted time for reflective thought, but now I was fidgety and uncomfortable and fearing death.

About twenty minutes later we pulled up in front of the other Josh White's house. It was a fancy two-story home in a nice suburban neighborhood — I could understand why he was the actual target of their ransom demands instead of me.

"Wait here with him," Baldy told Harry. "I'm going in."

"What if the place is crawling with cops?"

"My gut says that he won't disobey instructions. He wants his brother to live."

"What if your gut is misinformed?"

"Stop being such a weenie. I'll be back in five minutes. Don't let him get away."

Baldy got out of the car and walked up the driveway, toward the front porch. I realized that a window of opportunity had opened for me. If I were in Harry's place, I'd object quite strongly to a comment like "Don't let him get away." That wasn't necessary advice. Was Baldy trying to imply that without the benefit of his instructions, Harry would have simply let me open the door and frolic to freedom? It was insulting. I was actually kind of offended on Harry's behalf.

"He orders you around a lot," I noted.

Harry smiled. "That's the way I like it."

"Excuse me?"

"I have enough responsibilities in my social life. This is relaxing."

"Oh. But what about his tone?"

"He means well. I'd rather have him be too forceful than not forceful enough."

Some points are very difficult to argue, even if you know deep inside that you could make a strong case for your point of view. I decided to drop the matter.

The front door opened. Baldy pushed his way inside.

"He won't kill him, will he?" I asked.

"Nah. We need the ransom."

"What if he gets the ransom, and then kills him?"

"Why would he kill him if he got the ransom?"

"Evilness?"

"He's not like that. He might —
might
— kill somebody who refused to hand over the cash or the briefcase of jewels or whatever we were there to get, but he wouldn't just kill somebody to be mean-spirited. People don't respect that. I'm not saying he won't slice off something. Jake does like to slice off things. But as far as actually murdering him, I think you'd be surprised by how . . ." He trailed off and looked very concerned. "You won't tell him I said his name was Jake, will you?"

"Of course not," I assured him. Secretly, I knew that sharing this information at the proper moment could save my life. Sharing it at the wrong moment could also get me killed when I might not have been killed otherwise, so I had to be careful.

A gunshot went off inside the house.

"Do you think he murdered him?" I asked.

Harry shook his head. "No, no. He must've just shot the guy's finger off or something like that." He looked up and down the street nervously. "Usually he uses a knife for that kind of thing, though. I don't like this."

"Should we go in and investigate?"

"I don't want to disrupt his concentration."

We sat in the car and waited.

"How long does it take to bleed to death after your finger gets shot off?" I asked.

Harry shrugged. "I'm not sure. We've had people die after getting their fingers cut off, but not exclusively because of that. You usually follow it up with something more serious, like a slit throat. Just watching people slowly bleed to death — that's no way to spend your afternoon."

"What if you don't want them to bleed to death? What if you're only trying to send a stern message?"

"Then you break the fingers, not cut them off."

"Ah." I considered that. "What about the severed nose? Wouldn't that fall into the same category?"

"You're right, that one did veer from standard operating procedure. I was against it, to be perfectly honest, but the boss doesn't tend to give my feedback a very high priority."

The front door opened. A gentleman who was not Baldy stepped outside. He saw us and sprinted across the front lawn toward the yard next door.

"Crap!" shouted Harry, getting out of the car. He took off running after who I assumed was the other Josh White. I'd only caught a quick glimpse of his face, but even with his nose intact there was a definite resemblance between him and the man in the cage.

Josh was doing fine until he tripped over a plastic baseball bat that was lying at the edge of the neighbor's yard. His face struck the grass like a frying pan striking an unfaithful husband.

Harry pulled him to his feet, twisted his arm around his back, and hurriedly brought him back to the car. He opened the trunk, shoved him inside with moderate effort, and slammed the door shut.

"You didn't run," Harry told me, sounding surprised.

"I didn't want to make your day more difficult."

That wasn't the truth at all. I just didn't want him to shoot me in the back while I was fleeing. But, again, it was best to plant the seeds of friendship and trust and hope that I could exploit them later.

"You're really stupid," he said.

I knew his words shouldn't have stung, but they did. However, I didn't let the hurt show on my face. He would have relished it, the bastard.

"Come on," he told me. "We're going inside."

I followed him into the house. It was very tidy and well kept; apparently Josh had a housecleaning service, or knew his way around a Swiffer. Though the living room, which contained a large pool of blood and the dead body of Baldy, was somewhat less tidy.

"Dead" is probably not a strong enough word to describe Baldy/Jake's condition. "Dead" implies that perhaps there was a struggle, and the gun got twisted around, and Baldy took a bullet to the chest. That could very well be what had happened, but that scenario omits the butcher knife that protruded from Baldy's back. And the meat cleaver in his neck. And the detached left foot. And the internal organs that lay strewn on the carpet next to him.