Skunk Hunt (50 page)

"Wait," I said as he began to get out. I
nodded across the street. "Doesn't that look like your buddy's van?
Not the fancy one, but the plain wrapper."

"Carl?" He squinted, as though I was asking
him to pick out a fir tree on a mountain range wrapped in fog.

"Oh, yeah...they hotwired my car so they
could take it to a quiet place and search it for clues."

"And they brought it back here
because...?"

"Five'll get you ten they planted another bug
on it."

Todd shifted uneasily. "You think Dog's
around?"

"I don't see why they'd go back inside..." I
mused, then looked at the front of my house, thinking of Dog in my
closet. If I told my brother that Carl and his pet had already
searched my house, I might trip over the circumstances of our
encounter. He had bedded the luscious Monique, while I had bounced
an adiposal prison security guard. You can have pride without
standards.

"What do you think?" Todd snapped. "They
think the Brinks money is here." He cocked an eye at me, an ape in
a mirror. "Is it?"

"Would I still be living here if I had that
kind of dough?" I snapped back.

This reminded him of the reason for driving
me home. He scanned the block, none of which had an edge on the Taj
Mahal's outhouse. "Which one is yours?" he asked doubtfully.

"The one you wouldn't wish on your worst
enemy or your brother," I said.

His expression drooped. "You mean where those
beer cans are rolling onto the side walk?"

I didn't know what he was talking about. Beer
cans spilled out of every yard and recycling bin. "You have to be
more specific."

"The one where you can't see the porch for
the junk."

There was junk on every porch, mainly in the
form of old chairs and ratty sofas where kids hung out to smoke,
the landlords around here making a peculiar stipulation against
smoking indoors. "Try again."

"Don't be a hard case, I mean that one there,
where the door's wide open." Todd pointed.

From where I sat the porch post blocked the
door. I leaned towards the driver's side and saw what Todd
meant.

"Don't tell me you always leave your door
open," Todd leered, as though he had caught me with my pants
down.

"Not all the time," I said slowly.

Carl and Todd might be half-assed business
partners, but neither one of us wanted to encounter Dog, no matter
what his incarnation of the moment happened to be. We waited. I
wasn't sure what we would do if Carl and Dog emerged with a
boatload of cash. I was sure most of the students milling up and
down the street toted cell phones, and for once was comforted by
their presence. In the old days, the law was lucky to scrounge up a
stray cat as a witness to criminal activity. But now, even Joe Dog
as Rabid Mutt would be forced to tone down his act in front of so
many witnesses who could summon the cops at the press of a
button—sort of like a nuclear exchange for beginners. These kids
might be self-absorbed, but a major mood-killer (an oil or
bloodspill, for instance) was bound to rouse them out of their
navels.

To my annoyance—actually, to our mutual
annoyance—it turned out Todd and I shared fidgets. I rubbed my
elbows, then stopped abruptly when I saw he was doing the same. I
began reaching for my nose, but hesitated when he began inserting
his index finger in his left nostril. He caught me staring and
switched directions to pinch his earlobe, but froze when I beat him
to it. There was a thump-thump-thump as he tapped his heel and I
nearly snapped a tendon to keep from following suit.

"Don't you want to go in?" he said without a
whole lot of enthusiasm. "They could be turning the place upside
down."

Should I bother telling him there would be no
difference in degree or kind? After the police had finished I only
needed to clear a path through the rubbish to put things right. In
fact, I had begun to wonder what might be under all those piles of
McPherson paraphernalia. Someone could have sneaked into my house
(it had become the national pastime) and buried something,
anything, out of sight and mind. It had been a long time since I
had rummaged through my past. Maybe at that moment Carl and Dog
were doing me a favor, sifting through all the extraneous junk for
the Brinks nugget. Of course, when I mentally composed a list of
voluntary contributors to my personal wealth, I had to scratch out
the zero and start over.

"They'll see us when they come out," said
Todd.

"Maybe they've already seen us."

"And they're afraid to come out?" Todd
snorted. "The only thing that scares Carl is the Department of
Health."

"Maybe we should call the cops," I posed.

"For a simple B&E?" Todd scoffed. "Do you
care?"

"Kind of."

"For a dump like this?" Todd scraped his chin
along the collar of his wrinkled shirt. "You weren't kidding, bro.
This is a dump par excellent."

"'
Excellence
," I corrected. "You've been hanging
around Carl too much."

"And you've been living in a shithouse, so
don't lecture me on associates."

It was obvious from Todd's frank appallment
that he had not believed a word I had said about my house, which
was sort of a slap in the face. He had not seen the inside of the
house and understood already there was nothing here worth
inheriting.

"OK, you've seen my old homestead," I fumed.
"Why don't you leave? Thanks for the ride."

"You know why I'm not leaving," he said.

"Enlighten me."

"Maybe Carl and Dog know something we don't,"
Todd said. "They knew we were back at my house. The field was
open."

"So it's about time we closed it." I got out
of the car.

Todd was as chickenshit as I was about the
whole business, but he was also just as curious. Giving a moan of
disgust, he switched off the engine (he had been prepared to roar
off) and got out.

"I can smell your house from here," he
winced.

"Get out of here."

"Seriously, I can smell—"

"No, I meant 'get out of here', as in
'go'."

"All right, all right," Todd threw up his
hands. "I only meant offense."

I would have continued the argument, but we
had already taken a few steps towards the house and my attention
re-magnetized. There was a possibility that Carl and Dog were in
the back of their van, either peeking out or playing a duet for
Monique. I imagine threesomes and quadruplesomes are common in that
crowd. But my luck is the juicy wart on Chance, and it was more
likely the two of them were waiting for us in the living room,
which would promptly become the dying room.

"Think they found something?" Todd actually
licked his lips. I must look like a lizard, too, whenever I did
that.

"Did they give you any hints?"

"They just hinted they would rip out my guts
if I crossed them," he said.

"What were you supposed to get out of this?"
I asked.

"Didn't Carl say? Barbara told him about the
letters from Skunk. Carl figured I would get all antsy that you
would show up and claim—"

"He offered to rub me out?" I exclaimed.

"No, just to brush you off. Somehow." He only
slightly wilted under my gaze. "And he said he could brush off
Barbara and Jeremy, too. You know, convince them it wouldn't be
worth their while to go to all the trouble..."

"And what was Carl's service fee for all of
this?"

"A lot more than I realized." Todd gave a
small cough. "He's a blackmailer, you know. He said he would use me
to plea bargain at his next arrest. He practically bunks out in the
courthouse."

"But if the money has been laundered—"

"Carl said I could end up in jail, anyway.
And I had to protect..."

"Who?"

"No one you know," he blushed. I blushed back
and turned away from him.

"Maybe we shouldn't go in," I said,
hesitating. Todd seemed to agree. Why not? We thought alike, shared
the same dread of beshatting ourselves with fear. Then, because
neither of us was very talented at making up our mind, we started
forward again.

"Wait," he said.

We stopped. On cue?

"I have an idea." He pulled a cell phone out
of his pocket.

An optimistic flash shot across my mind.
There, the difference! Todd was tech savvy. Don't kid yourself,
cell phones are hi-tech. They might have been superseded by all
sorts of Androids and what-nots, but for someone who held cash
registers and shoe laces as mortal enemies, they were the height of
advanced Martian civilization. I might have mentioned that I'm able
to peck a few strokes on the library computer, but that's an
anomaly. If I whistled Dixie, I didn't want a return call in
Mandarin. Local suits me fine.

Todd dialed a number on the tiny pad
with his thumb. His
thumb
! It
was like an act out of Barnum and Bailey, or opening a bottle of
Schlitz with your teeth. It was physical proof that, at some
critical juncture in the womb, our genes had diverged. Sure, it's a
common talent, but I'm uncommonly stupid. He got the smarts, and I
got the shaft. I wondered which one of us had gotten out
first.

Identical my ass. Oh...right. But no matter.
We were not psychically entwined. I could have turned
cartwheels.

Todd waited and I could hear a tinny ringing
from his phone. An equally tinny voice burbled like a squeeze toy
at the other end.

"Hey, it's Todd." My brother winced as she
responded. "Wait! Wait! That's not true! Not literally." He allowed
another squall of words to pass, then said, "Okay, it's literally
true, but you know how deceptive appearances are. Listen—don't hang
up! I have a favor to ask. It'll only cost you a few minutes." He
was interrupted for a brief lecture on cell phone economics.
"Really? You have to pay if I call you? I have to pay, too? That
sucks. Anyway, could you stay on the line a little bit? I'm kinda
involved in a hairy situation, and I just want someone to listen
in. If you hear shots or screams—" Pause. "Well, I guess I would be
the one screaming. And if you hear something like that, call the
cops." Pause. "Where?" Todd looked at me. I gave him my address—the
dickhead couldn't read the number on the house, it seemed—and he
repeated it into the phone. When done, he listened, then frowned.
"What do you mean, it sounds like I'm talking to myself? No, it's
just some guy going in with me. Okay? We're going in, now. You
understand what to do, right?"

Todd's nose wrinkled prunishly as he followed
me up the porch steps.

"What, you think it stinks here?" I
demanded.

"You're used to it," he said. "Christ, this
is like in the old Army, when they threw recruits into a room
filled with onion gas and made them take off their oxygen
masks."

"What do you know about the Army?" I asked.
"And I think it was tear gas."

"What do
you
know about the Army?"

"I'm being all that I can be," I paraphrased
eloquently. "Your house didn't exactly smell like a rose
garden."

We had fallen into sync, as though we had
been bickering for years. If either of us had had any common sense,
we would have shut up.

Todd did not protest when I entered first. He
seemed perfectly comfortable with the idea of making me the primary
target. This would have opened the opportunity for me to dash ahead
and hide anything that I didn't want him to see, had that not
encompassed everything from smutty magazines to a door mat buried
under a lifetime of shoe grime. There was just too much to remove
from sight on short notice and I kicked myself for inviting my
lesser self beyond my doorsill.

All this I put aside as I patted down the
quills on my scalp. This open-door business spooked my sense of
decorum. It was bad enough having Jeremy stroll in—and thank God I
had not been stroking myself when he did. Although, come to think
of it, it wouldn't have been the first time. Jeremy's venomous
toolkit included blackmail, and he had often threatened to tell
Skunk he had caught me whacking off in the john. Even if he had not
actually seen me, he could tell by my attitude when I had been up
to no good and armtwist my guilt. Skunk's reaction would have
probably been roundhouse indifference, but you never knew with him.
Even his laughter could be crushing.

"Well?" Todd hissed as I paused at the
door.

I signaled him to shut up. It was my head
going through the noose first. No need to alert the hangmen. Having
seen Joe Dog in action, I knew my reflexes needed every advantage I
could suck out of my sagging muscles. Slowly, I peeked around the
corner. No one.

"Is she still there?" I whispered.

Todd murmured into his cell phone, waited for
an answer, and nodded. I went inside.

I knew pretty much where the vital
ingredients to existence lay in my house. The TV remote, the
refrigerator, the toilet. Everything else required second and third
thought and usually a prolonged search. So it took me a moment to
realize the trash had been trashed. The couch cushions had been
tossed on the floor, Mom's old photos ripped off the walls and the
threadbare carpets thrown up, exposing embarrassing mounds of
unvacuumed dust. Even the ashtrays had been spilled, as if the
intruders expected to find diamonds hidden among the butts. Part of
the dining room's mountain of junk had been pulled down, leaving a
detritus of broken tools and appliances.

"Is this how you take care of your property?"
Todd snarled.

"Shhhh!"

There was no one else on the first floor.

"I smell smoke," said Todd.

I looked at him, then sniffed. He was right.
There was a hint of smoke, or something like it, something a little
more acrid. I didn't think Carl and Joe Dog would take it into
their heads to burn down my house, but intestinal logic could have
lead them down the path of most resistance. Burn it all down and
sift the ashes for the theoretical fireproof safe.