Wait a minute. Why was the bear closing in on us? Dutch was about fifty feet away in the other direction. I could smell the barbecue sauce. So why wasn’t Beary (I decided it was the male – for my own ego’s sake) heading for him?
In the darkness, I saw the four-legged eating machine racing after Paris. The smell of tangy ribs seemed to be fading. Why was that? I looked at Dutch who suddenly seemed to appear closer than he really was. Paris was screaming now, running in a zigzag formation across the compound.
I watched in confusion, forgetting about Dutch. That is, until he punched me in the side of the head. As I fell to the ground, I realized what had happened. I hadn’t hit Dutch with the spray. I hit Paris. Now he was in danger of becoming Beary’s midnight snack/new girlfriend and I was getting my ass kicked by another assassin. Some days, it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed, drive to Ohio and put on a mullet wig.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
O-Ren Ishii: “You didn’t think it was gonna be that easy, did you?”
The Bride: “You know, for a second there, yeah, I kinda did.”
- Kill Bill: Volume 1
Paris ran by, screaming again. Good thing for him, he was going pretty fast. Beary would eventually catch up though. And I had to do something about it before he did.
Unfortunately, Dutch wasn’t in a Good Samaritan kind of mood. He must have figured out we weren’t a couple of teenagers breaking in for fun. Mainly I gathered this from what he said as he hauled me to my feet.
“Who sent you?”
If I was inclined to do so, I would’ve answered him. But that was impossible because he punctuated each question with a punch to my gut. I responded by kicking his knee backward until I heard it crunch.
Dutch screamed and dropped to the ground – his left leg bent like an inverted “v,” which made his mouth turn into the letter “o.” He still had hold of my collar, so I went down with him.
“Will you hurry up and help me?” Paris shrieked as he ran by again. I hoped he’d change his running pattern soon, or Beary would figure it out and ambush him. Bears are smart that way.
I brought both arms up in front of me, over the shoulder and down, breaking Dutch’s hold. After scrambling a safe distance away, I fumbled for Missi’s bear tube. Finding it, I managed to load it and squeeze off another shot, hitting Dutch with a satisfying “plink.”
Dutch, my Vic was so freaked out about his leg bent backwards, he didn’t even notice. But I did see Belle and Bebe’s noses go up in the air. There was no time to waste waiting to see if Dutch would actually be eaten by the bear, so I shot him, using Missi’s disintegrating bullets. He looked up at me in surprise before falling over dead.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” Paris shrieked as he ran by me again. This time, however, Beary noticed the smell coming from Dutch. He slowed down just enough to sniff in that direction.
“Hey!” I shouted, “Make another loop, then head straight for the cave door!” I turned and ran to the hidden cave door, swinging it open and holding it in place.
My barbeque-scented cousin ran through and I managed to close the door on Beary’s head. Paris helped me hold it until we locked it. Then without looking back, we ran until we made it to the car.
“Dammit!” Paris shouted from the shower for what must’ve been the fifteenth time. “It’s not coming off!”
I didn’t respond. This was beyond my saying anything. I just folded his shirt up into a hotel towel and shoved it into the trunk of the car. I did make a mental note to tell Missi that the bear juice went straight through the clothes and stayed with the skin for hours. The whole trip back was like riding with a giant McRib sandwich. I think Paris was a little offended when I pulled up to a barbeque pork restaurant for take out on the way back.
“That was messy,” Paris grumbled.
I nodded. “I didn’t leave anything behind, and they’re likely to miss the bullet wound if he was mauled and eaten.”
But in spite of our success, I didn’t feel good about the hit. It was too sloppy. Chances were we’d hear about it from the Council.
It took several hours to get home, and after picking up Louis and putting him to bed, I concentrated more on my injuries. Cleaning up at the hotel before leaving helped somewhat, but I still felt bruised all over.
Sure enough, there were tell-tale marks on my abdomen where Dutch hit me repeatedly. No swimming at Disney World. It would be too noticeable, and I didn’t know how to explain it to Louis. Well, Daddy was trying to kill this guy, but he kept punching me in the stomach. Somehow, that line of conversation didn’t seem helpful.
The next morning, after delivering the little guy to school, I met up with Leonie for lunch. She looked tired. I guess you don’t really get much sleep as a mortician. It wouldn’t necessarily be a nine-to-five job.
“I was wondering when I’d hear from you again.” She smiled wryly.
“Sorry.” I ran my right hand through my hair. “Had to go out of town on business. But I’m back now. How are things at Crummy’s?”
Leonie looked at me curiously for a moment and I found myself wondering what she really thought of me. Her gray eyes cut me to the quick.
“I’m not mocking you, by the way. But it is hard to say the name of your business without sounding sarcastic,” I managed.
She arched her right eyebrow, and her scowl faded into a smile. “Oh. Yeah. Right.” Leonie waved her hand and I found myself wanting to suck on those long, slender fingers. “There’s just a lot going on - period. It’s nothing, really.”
As she talked about her most recent funeral, I discovered that I was completely wrapped around every word that came from that lovely mouth. I did have it bad. But I didn’t care. She was everything I wanted . . . everything I needed. And I was an idiot to let her out of my sight for one minute. Of course, that would mean hanging out at the funeral home and I didn’t really want to see what went on downstairs, if you catch my drift.
“So what about you?” Leonie lifted the glass of wine to her lips and I swooned.
“Oh, not much. Consulting stuff here and there. Next week is Spring Break so my whole family is going to Disney World.”
Leonie laughed. “I wish I could go with you. It would be much better than consoling the bereaved and embalming the deceased.”
“Do you actually do that? The embalming, I mean?” I guess it never occurred to me that my beloved (who, by the way, didn’t know she was my beloved yet) could drain and refill a dead body. Of course, I could drain one too – using bullets as a colander.
She nodded. “It’s not so bad. I guess I’ve been around it all my life, so I’m kind of used to it.” She pointed to my ribs with her fork. “You gonna eat that?”
Suddenly, my taste for barbequed flesh had run its course. I shook my head and she scooped the rack of ribs off my plate.
Oh well, grossed out or not, I loved Leonie Doubtfire. And after dropping her back off at Crummy’s with a lingering, lusty kiss, I made up my mind to tell her that the minute I got back from killing Mickey. I mean, when I got back from the Bombay Family Magical Gathering at Disney World.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Narrator: “You are traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination. Next stop, the Twilight Zone.”
- Rod Serling, The Twilight Zone
Sure enough, Gin and Liv went wild buying Disney clothes for all four kids. Mom was a little miffed that we were going – apparently she’d been planning to take Romi and Louis in the fall.
There’s something about Disney World that brought out the kid in me. I’d never been, but everything from the bus ride to the hotel to the minute we set foot in the Magic Kingdom, I felt like a five-year-old again. Diego, Todd and Paris seemed to watch me, Gin and Liv with amusement as we “ooohed” and “ahhhed” over everything from the rides, to the gardens to the Mickey Mouse ear hats (mine said “Dakota”).
The first day we just kind o
f shuffled from place to place, checking everything out. And I loved it all. It was as if this magical place had been made specially, just for me. I couldn’t get enough of the sights, smells and sounds.
Mostly, I couldn’t get enough of watching Louis enjoying himself. Except for the few, exceptionally brilliant comments like “They must use dry ice to get that smoke,” and “Did you realize there are no straight lines on Mickey’s house? The contractors must’ve had it rough,” he seemed like any other kid. I decided that as soon as this job was over and school was out, the two of us would take a trip somewhere. Just me and my son.
About mid-day, I started to notice something. At first, Louis wanted to go on the rides with his cousins. But on the Peter Pan ride, he asked if he could ride with me. I scooped him up and climbed into the boat that carried us through Neverland. Every ride after that, Louis wanted to sit with me.
“Hey Dad.” Louis said quietly. “I want to be just like you someday.”
“What do you mean?” I asked before thinking about it.
He took a deep breath, like he was going to say something you’d expect from a thirty-year-old, not a kid. “I mean that someday I want to take my son to Disney World and ride the rides with him just like you.”
I looked at him for a moment. He had a funny way of completely surprising me. “Well, kiddo, I hope I can be right there with you both.”
He smiled, and I realized that my answer seemed to be enough – even if I didn’t know what the hell the question was.
We spent the second day at the Animal Kingdom, riding rides, seeing parades and touring the animal treks. Louis seemed to know more about the wildlife than the cast members who minded the komodo dragon, naked mole rats and fruit bats.
I bought him a stuffed bat at the gift shop, and Louis grinned his little gap-toothed grin.
“Thanks, Dad. You’re awesome.”
I felt a little spring in my step. Yep, I was about fifty pounds lighter. Funny how something so simple made me feel so great.
“Hey, Louis?” I asked.
“What?” Answered my perfect son.
I gazed into his intelligent little face before answering, “Chicken butt.”
Louis tilted his head to one side and for a moment I thought he wouldn’t get it. There wasn’t any logic, rhyme or reason to it. It was just funny to say that when someone said, “what?” At least it had been when I was a kid.
Louis burst into a fit of giggles, and I realized that no matter how super smart he was, we could both laugh about the business end of a chicken. I was having a great time.
We were just about to get on the Kali River Rapids when an overwhelming sense of familiarity hit me. There was something about the man running the ride that screamed in my head. But he didn’t look like anyone I knew. Tall, muscular and rugged looking, the blonde man looked exactly like the actor Daniel Craig. That’s odd. Why would Daniel Craig be working here? In fact, I was feeling a little threatened by his attractiveness. I never had the “all-man” look. I was more the boyish rogue.
“Coney?” Gin gasped, and the rest of us turned to look at him.
He smiled. “I guess my own family doesn’t recognize me.” He finished shoving our backpacks into the middle tube so they wouldn’t get wet.
My jaw dropped open as Paris said, “Hey, man! You look so different! How could we recognize you?”
Coney laughed and said, “Tell you what, I’ll meet you at Wolfgang Puck’s in Downtown Disney for dinner at eight.” We barely had time to nod in agreement as he shoved our raft away. We were soaked by the very first wave, but all of us still had that look of shock on our faces. I got water in my mouth. It was still open.
When we got off the ride, he was gone. Soaked to the skin, all ten of us kind of waddled back to the bus to the hotel. We managed to clean up and head out to Downtown Disney while Gin filled Diego and Todd in on our strangest relative.
“He has a Ph.D. in philosophy from an ivy league school. And he’s a carnie,” Liv explained.
I watched as Diego’s eyebrows arched in surprise. It was true. In fact, the last time I saw Coney Island Bombay, was at the family reunion last fall. His head was shaved bald, he had a beard and was covered in tattoos. In spite of the way he looked, Coney was a good guy. The carnie lifestyle seemed to suit him. He traveled the country in a tricked-out RV, wealthy housewives fell all over him to satisfy their carnie sex fantasies, and he wintered in Florida. In between all that, he read things by Jean Paul Sartre, Nietzsche and John Stuart Mill . . . just for fun.
In fact, he always reminded me of Doc Savage. Super smart, muscular frame, laid back, philosophical attitude, all that. Well, except for the assassin part. Doc always rehabilitated the criminals he caught. He wasn’t big on the death penalty.
Upon entering Wolfgang Puck’s, we found him immediately. Sitting at a table in a blue silk shirt and tan linen slacks that made him look like he was about to order a martini shaken, not stirred. After we made introductions and were seated, Paris blurted out the big question.
“Dude! You look so different! What happened?”
Coney leaned back, taking a very manly drink from his expensive scotch and smiled. “I’m kind of going through a new phase.”
The waitress arrived with coloring books and crayons and took our drink orders.
“But the tattoos?” Liv asked.
“They were never real. Missi developed a special semi-permanent ink that, with a certain solvent could be erased from the skin completely. I’m kind of done with them. Taking a philosophical sabbatical here.”
“At Disney World?” I asked, feeling a little like an idiot.
Coney smiled and I thought to myself what a handsome, self-assured man he was.
“It’s what I know. I like it. I do this every now and then.” He looked at the kids, then me. “So, you’ve changed a bit too.”
I nodded. “Yeah. It was a surprise to me as well. But Louis is awesome.” I realized I was grinning like an idiot. I was proud of him.
We talked for a long time, through dinner, dessert and more drinks. Looking at the end of the table, I could see the kids were getting pretty tired. Diego and Todd noticed it too, because they volunteered to take them back to the hotel so that all of us cousins could hang out. Gin and Liv kissed their husbands and waved as they left.
“We should get out of here,” Coney said, throwing a couple of crisp hundred dollar bills on the table. “How about a nightcap?”
Gin, Liv, Paris, Coney and I headed across the bridge to Pleasure Island. We settled at a table in one of the clubs and continued talking. Then a bunch of songs from the ‘80s came on and before we could respond, Gin and Liv ran squealing, to the dance floor.
“So, what brings you here?” Coney asked.
Paris popped another Mickey Mouse-shaped pretzel into his mouth, “A job. From the Council.”
We filled in Coney on everything. When we finished, he leaned back in his chair and had another drink of his scotch.
“His name is Garth Stone, eh? Haven’t met him yet. How are you going to approach it?”
Paris and I looked at each other and shrugged. “We kind of thought we were lucky just to get this far,” Paris answered.
Coney looked toward the dance floor where Gin and Liv were dancing. I followed his line of vision and was horrified to discover all the moves I thought were cool in the ‘80s actually made me look like a spastic heron with rickets. Karma Chameleon was playing and I realized that at my fiftieth high school reunion, a bunch of ugly, old people would be dancing to it and saying how timeless the music of our generation was. I shuddered.
“You said they don’t know about the job?” Coney nodded towards our sisters.
I shook my head. “Paris and I would be smoked if they knew. They think we’re here to bond with the kids.”
Actually, Paris and I had toyed with the idea of getting Gin and Liv involved. But no matter how we looked at it, it just seemed to be a really horrible idea.
&nbs
p; “Here’s what I know,” Coney said to us once the waitress laid down a new round of alcohol. “You’ll never find him on his day off. The younger kids – interns – they run around the parks on their day off. I speak from some level of experience when I say that a thirty- or forty-something assassin won’t do that. And since this zookeeper knew you were coming, Garth will be on the look-out. I’d suggest you deal with the costume.”
“The costume? What do you mean?” Paris asked, sipping his Manhattan. I guess I never really noticed before that he drank like he was Angie Dickinson. Then I remembered he had a Pink Cadillac at dinner and decided I needed to talk to him about that later.
“I’d rig his costume to kill him,” Coney suggested. “It’s the only way I can think of to get the job done without doing it directly.”
“How would you do it?” I asked.
Coney rubbed his chin. “I’d undo the lining of the neck on the headpiece and put about three wraps of det cord around the inside. Install the detonator, and attach the wireless device. Ensure it’s turned on, and then close it back up. Use your cell phone to trigger the explosion. If you do it right, everything will happen inside the costume and with a muffled ‘pop’ he’ll just fall over.”
We looked at him blinking like those toads that need their eyes to swallow.
“You’ve thought about doing this before, haven’t you?” I asked.
Coney smiled. “Oh, only about a thousand times. Those costume guys can be real dicks to us ride jockeys.”
Gin and Liv joined us, and we spent another couple of hours laughing about the family. It was a definite source of amusement.
The night ended with us getting a group photo of our heads superimposed on Star Wars characters. Paris was Luke Skywalker, Coney was Han Solo and I had to be Chewbacca. Huh. Maybe it was a metaphor for the way things were going.
After this, there was only one assassin left to take out. The trip made me realize how important Leonie and family were to me. I was pretty confident the Council would give us a lot of time off. Five hits in less than one month was the stuff of legends to the Bombays. Then I could sort everything out. Yes, things were definitely looking up.
Greatest Hits Mysteries Boxed Set (Books 1-4) Page 33
