Skunk Hunt (72 page)

"How do we get in?" Todd asked as he watched
a student leap out of Uncle Vern's path.

"Simp," I said. Ducking under the yellow
tape, I worked my way past the yard-clutter, hopped up onto the
porch, pushed a tattered couch out of the way, and opened the front
window. "The cops don't think obvious, just SOP. I figured they
wouldn't check the windows. Two doors is all they can
conceive."

Todd joined me and we stooped inside.

I had assumed we would be entering an empty
house. My bad.

Jeremy and Michael were standing like a
couple of cardboard crapouts in the front room. Sitting before
them, filled with pensive confusion, was Old Man Flint Dementis,
his handy-dandy Smith & Wesson 39 pointed at them
parenthetically, giving him the option of taking them down with two
quick shots.

"Hello, Mute, hello, Todd."

His 'hellos' came out sounding like
halos.

"You know me?" Todd asked, remaining stooped
for a dash out the window.

"I said your name, didn't I?"

There was a discreet cough to my right. I
turned. Yvonne was slumped in the armchair on which I usually piled
my old Playboys. She had carelessly tossed the magazines on the
floor to make room for her bulk. Miss November 1976 was staring up
at me, accompanied by her lusty teddy bear. Patti McGuire. I knew
them all by heart.

"What are you doing here?" I asked her.

"I'm with Frick and Frack," she sighed,
heaving herself sideways and pulling out a December issue that she
had missed.

"Okay, what are
they
doing here?" I glanced back at Flint. "What
is everyone doing here? And where's Mom?"

"She's sleeping in the van," said
Yvonne. "And what are
you
doing here?"

"I live here."

"I
know
that. But why come back? Why not go to Todd's? You knew the
police had blocked this place off."

"Lot of good it did them," I said, waving at
the others.

"You came just in time, Mute," said Flint,
hosing me down with his eerie glare. "I want to make damn sure
which one of these is Jeremy. I haven't seen him for a while, and I
can't tell these two turds apart."

"Why is it important?" I asked.

"I wouldn't want to shoot the wrong one, now
would I?"

"Shoot them both," I shrugged. "That way you
can be sure you got the right one."

"It might come to that," Flint cackled as
Jeremy turned and punched me in the arm. Flint slapped his knee.
"Gotcha! I have my answer." He nodded at Michael. "You can move out
of the line of fire, now."

"Fine," said Michael, throwing himself into
another ratty armchair and forcing a cloud of dust out of the
cushions. I hated seeing my domestic shortcomings put on public
display. I growled at him through my pain.

"Is there any reason you guys aren't taking
this nutso seriously?" Todd said, squeezing his ass against the
window frame.

"What makes you think they aren't?" Flint
almost shouted.

"Mute says shoot them both, for one. You know
he doesn't mean that. And when we came in, Frick and Frack didn't
look particularly scared—"

"How do I know
you
aren't Mute?" Flint demanded with a demented
look. True, he always looked demented, but this time his complexion
was heightened by conviction. Flint added, "You sure sound like
him."

"Todd, this is Flint Dementis, Skunk's old
drinking buddy," Jeremy said casually, like a museum guide pointing
out a boring lump of fossilized dinosaur shit. "He wouldn't hurt a
flea on a dead dog."

"Say you," said Flint, taking the gun in both
hands to steady it on his target.

Todd was right, the little prick. As soon as
I had entered my house and gotten over my surprise at finding it
infested by morons, I had taken the whole scene as a joke—hence the
crack about shooting Jeremy and his twin. The modern adage that we
dehumanize our enemies was, in my case, holding true. Seeing my
brother in front of a presumably-loaded gun had done nothing to
improve him in my eyes. He was just a thing that inflicted pain, a
fact to which my roaring shoulder attested. Worse than that,
though, was that Flint was just a thing, too, who reinforced the
joke by aiming a gun at Jeremy. In fact, we were all things, bowing
before contingency and hopelessly addicted to surface impressions.
It was an act from a thingy comedy, and I had played my bit
part.

I won't say I had a change of heart,
but if you changed the comedy to a drama, all these play-acting
things suddenly became vital and poignant. Like, holy crap, flesh
and bullets are
solids
. Pain
is solid. And whatever else you might think about these things,
they were each enwrapped in
feelings
. Know what, Einstein? When push comes to
shove, feelings are all that count. Play in your ivory castle all
you want. That's what makes humans superior. But feelings are what
make us human.

Oooo-boy, what an inconvenient moment for a
shallow yet valid revelation. I dealt with it as best I could.

"Flint? I'm sorry."

"Sorry, Mute?" he said, still focused on
Jeremy.

"That you got involved in all this. It was
Vern who came to you, wasn't it? Who talked you into planting that
clue in your footlocker? Who got that picture of you and Skunk onto
my coffee table and sent me off with Sweet Tooth to Belle Isle.
Vern used you—"

"You got it all wrong, Mute, but I admire you
trying to sort out this mess," Flint said. Something that may have
been a smile peeked out from under his scar tissue, like a kid
peeking out of a haystack. "Most folks would give up after the
first headache. You're right about Vern paying me a visit and
taking the photo, and dippy-do on everything else. It was me doing
the arm-twisting, make no mistake. Vern was sure Skunk had told me
where something was hidden, and I'm not just talking about the body
you dug up this morning."

I whirled on Jeremy, willing to risk a punch
for the truth. "You told him!"

Jeremy was wearing his best innocent
expression, which on him produced the sugary topping you see on ice
cream and used car salesmen. "Wasn't me."

There was no reason to believe him—we're
talking Jeremy here, after all—so I turned to Michael and Yvonne
for confirmation. They both shook their heads. There was no reason
to believe them, either.

"Don't fuss your feathers, Mute," Flint said.
"I know about Penrose because I'm the one who made him dead."

"No you didn't," I gasped.

"See this?" Flint lifted the gun a little.
"Smith & Wesson. It's an old friend of mine, accompanied me on
two tours in 'Nam. Never had to fire it in sheboomee-world—I was up
in the Huey most of the time. But I never thought I would have to
use it once I was back in-country. Oh sure, I wasn't lying. Once a
year I stick the barrel in my mouth and start counting backwards
from ten. But Mom always catches me before I reach zero. All these
years, and she can still smack sense into my head. But then there
came a day when I fired my first shot—right between that idiot
Whacko's eyes."

"But...
why
?"

"I'll get to that. First, though, I want to
make sure Doubletalk here has the proper respect for the
situation." He leered up at my brother. "You don't believe a word
of this, do you?"

Jeremy gave a sarcastic twitch of his
lips.

"Let me tell you, then...the Smith
& Wesson 39 holds eight rounds. I've only ever loaded it once.
The first shot was Whacko. The second I used on a rat out back. The
third I used on the rat's cousin, and another on one of
his
cousins. The fourth and fifth I
used to plug those two in Mute's bedroom. That leaves me with two
shots, Doubletalk. One of these bullets has your name on it. It
always has."

"You killed—"

A noise at the window drew our attention. A
long, bare leg slipped inside. When the next leg logically
followed, we were treated to a beaver-peek as a shapely derrière
shimmied backwards into the house. Monique did not realize she had
a non-paying audience until Yvonne picked up a cushion and threw it
at Michael. This being an alternate dimension where dirt was the
primary element, the pillow exploded with dust on the side of his
head. He let out an oath.

Monique whipped around with a flexibility
that was made all the more gratifying by her tank-top and
hyper-short shorts.

"What the—"

There were a few titters, but no one
was up to outright laughter. Jeremy especially had lost his sense
of humor. Not only was his girl stepping out with his brothers, but
a little light had filtered through a chink in his brain—or maybe
that tiny chink
was
his brain.
Flint was serious, the gun was serious, and in a minute that last
lone bullet might be playing serious mayhem with his
body.

Monique saw Flint with the gun, but like the
rest of us when we first entered she didn't take it seriously. She
was more concerned about the voyeurs among us.

"Better come in head first, Barb, unless you
want to put on a show."

Todd and I had been anticipating a bit of
visual incest, but hid our disappointment when Barbara's head poked
through the curtains. She placed both hands on the floor and
grunted. Her athletic skills had always been limited. Monique
pulled her through and a moment later she was standing before us,
grinning stupidly. Maybe she thought she had won a spot on the
Olympic B&E team. Like Monique, she had ditched her camouflage.
No need to hide yourself from wild game in downtown Richmond,
right?

"Oh great, the muff meisters," Yvonne said in
disgust.

"Don't knock it 'til you try it," Monique
shot back.

"Right after I try arsenic," said Yvonne.

"Hey, Sweet Tooth," Jeremy half-laughed (the
other half was a sob). "Flint just told us he offed your old
buddies. Isn't that a work of shit?"

"Oh," said Barbara.

"A real Picasso," said Monique. Truly, sexy
and educated. Just like Juliette Frette.

"Let me explain," said Flint. "You are here
because you saw a hole in Vern's story. Those two stooge friends of
yours didn't live long enough to solve it. Sweet Tooth, you want to
come over and sit next to your old Flint? And you darling…what's
your name? You can take the other side…here…" He patted the vacant
spot.

Barbara came forward, but Monique, with her
active rumpus radar, foresaw trouble and held her back.

"We'll pass. So what about our two
friends?"

"They were still thinking of the Brinks
money. That's what I think. We didn't do much talking."

"What happened?" I asked.

"I was waiting for you here," Flint said,
adding a thick cough for emphasis, or necessity. "I thought you'd
all figured out where Whacko was and had gone to dig him up. I
wanted to be here to explain things when you got back."

"Explain what?" Monique asked.

"He killed Dr. Whacko, too," I told her.

"Who the hell is Dr. Whacko?"

"Later," I said.

"Right," said Flint. "If you want the story,
I have to tell the tale."

A collective blink greeted this news.

"I was waiting here, like I said, to tell you
the tale, and instead of you I get two pricks walking in. The
little guy holds a gun on me and the big guy says, "So where is
it?"

"But they knew where the Brinks money ended
up," Todd said. "The house in the West End. We had just told them,
and they came straight here anyway."

"Guess they didn't believe you," Flint said.
"Maybe someone planted a bee in their bonnet. How about it, Sweet
Tooth?'

"We
all
thought it was just money," my sister squeaked, clutching at
a non-existent bib around her throat. "I mean, not
just
money. A
lot
of money…" She took a deep breath. "We didn't
know about any body until Mute dug up that foot."

"Anybody?" Flint looked confused.

I held up three fingers.

"What's that, a multiple flip-off?" Michael
asked, still brushing pillow-dust off his head.

"Three crimes," I said. "I mean, there
are three crimes that we're concerned with—besides all the others."
I summoned a smarmy glare to let them know I was letting them off
the hook for all the crimes they had committed against
me
. I reserved my harshest look for
Sweet Tooth. Where had the $20,000 from the pump house gone? I
continued: "It's not so complicated. The Brinks money? Accounted
for. The disappearance of Dr. Whacko? Solved. But do any of you
remember Vern saying what happened with the jewels from the Bildass
robbery? No."

When I beheld all the bland faces staring at
me, I blushed.

"Oh..."

"Yeah, 'oh'," yawped Jeremy, momentarily
forgetting his dread.

"We
all
thought of it," added Yvonne. She should switch her
allegiance to the real Jeremy. She had his snottiness down
pat.

Slow out of the gate again, I thought. The
problem with being learning-impaired is the difficulty with
learning about your impairment. As soon as I caught up, I found
myself behind again. Achilles had the same problem with the
tortoise.

"You think Dad hid the jewels here?" I said
lamely

"You didn't really shoot Whacko, did you?"
Jeremy said, looking closely at the gun shaking in Flint's hand.
"Why would you do that? He wasn't anything to you."

"People on the Hill used to stick up for each
other," Flint said sadly. "We beat the crap out of each other day
and night, but we didn't allow outsiders into our business. We even
roughed up the dogcatchers when they showed their face, which
wasn't too often."