by Layla Wolfe
Where had Town gone? Tobiah seemed to think Target. Was that to purchase my surprise? But what did this Irv Beagle have to do with it? I stood by the kitchen window that overlooked our barbecuing area, the hot tub where I’d squeezed Town’s thick, hard dick between my thighs, the bocce ball court. All good times, nothing that had ever caused me anguish or remorse. Now an uncomfortable feeling came rushing back to me like a football player. Why would Town become involved in some underhanded, sleazy dealing? It reminded me too much of Orson “testing out” the other teenaged wives before recommending them to other men in the compound.
Just as I was beginning to gulp my wine instead of sip, Slappy came in. His wife Chloe had recently asked for a separation. It wasn’t a big surprise. Apparently, the lustful text she’d been privy to was only the latest in a long string of infidelities. And she blamed him for what the army had put her through with their unborn baby. He put a hand on my shoulder.
“Tobiah got the surveillance videos. He used a burner profile he’s had awhile. Look, Heaven, Town would never do anything against us. We are literally his family.”
I turned to him. “You guys are my family, too! Listen, I was thinking about Irv Beagle—”
“—I was thinking about Irv Beagle. Isn’t it just too coincidental that his last name is Beagle when those asswipes at the puppy mill breed beagles?”
I grabbed the tall man by the shoulders. “Yes! It’s beyond coincidental, Slappy! I think we should just get down to Target right now and look around for my car.”
“I agree, Heaven. We can let Tobiah give us updates over the phone.”
Crybaby twirled around the kitchen corner like a stripper, eager to give his news. “Tobiah checked into Irv Beagle’s incoming calls. Guess who the only one was?”
Slappy and I went toward Crybaby with our hands out like claws. He was being dramatic just to draw out the tension, and neither of us needed that right now. I probably would have sliced him with my fingernails if Tobiah hadn’t skidded around the corner on his high-top tennis shoes and proclaimed,
“Byron Riddlesberger.”
Town
I only knew Stomach. He lurked behind the van, out of range of my piece—I may have plugged him through the head if he were available, through the shadow of his enormous scar. He made it through the Bare Bones attack. Probably more pissed-off than before.
Three other guys in black patched vests had jumped out of the Toyota minivan behind the Target and beaten the crap out of me. I held my own, I guess. I hit the first guy with a powerful jab to the nose, and blood sprayed like a red curtain. One Friend of Distinction was down.
To his credit, the feeble Darcy Bard tried to put the wooden vegetable crate full of puppies—there really were boxer puppies clamoring and peeping in the box—back into the Honda. I hit the second Friend in the forehead with a straight cross. I broke two fingers against the guy’s thick skull, but he went flying against the minivan too, like a guy zapped by lightning. The third reprobate lurched over to clinch Darcy Bard by the throat, and the box of squirming creatures banged to the ground. They escaped as well as they could, some confused and staying inside the topsy-turvy box. I instantly whipped my Glock from the small of my back and shot the reprobate in the shoulder.
I know, you should always shoot to kill. Never shoot anyone in the leg “just” to cripple him, and so on. If you’re going to use your weapon at all, you want to kill. And I had way enough justification in my position, being beyond outmanned, attacked as I was.
I don’t know. Maybe my time with Heaven had turned me softer, more introspective, kinder. If she could be so compassionate after all the abuse heaped upon her, couldn’t I? Instead of outright leveling a guy, could I maybe just not disable him?
It was my crowning mistake.
“Eat shit and die, you fuckwad!” Stomach shouted, uncreatively.
I plugged the Friend in the clavicle, expertly missing his carotid artery by two inches thanks to the laser I’d installed. To the thundercunt’s credit, he did let Bard go. Bard instantly dropped to his knees and collected the puppies—that’s the last I saw of him. Tiny hairless boxers squirming out of his embrace, resisting the wooden box. Maybe they knew what was in store for them.
The Friend I’d plugged was a sadistic toolbag. A Neo-Nazi judging by his forearm tattoo of a shield with a swastika, not to mention the word “TEXAS” inked under that. Although I had sixteen rounds remaining in my iron, this bastard overruled me. Coming at me like a cyclone hurricane, he slammed me up against Heaven’s car so violently I later knew I’d broken at least one rib. My Glock went whizzing into the sky, and when he head-butted me, I dropped into the unconsciousness that used to be my best buddy in arms.
Heaven
While Slappy sped and bounced Tobiah’s Prius down the mountain, in the back seat Tobiah showed me the videos he’d obtained from Target. One showed my blurry car drive up and a heavily pixilated Town step out, apparently talking to the emasculated Darcy Bard. Tobiah had enhanced the video as well as he could—we couldn’t see the van’s license plate. He said NASA would have to do the rest. And yes, apparently he had friends there too.
“See?” said Tobiah, pointing. “That’s a box of puppies. That’s how they lured him in.”
I sighed heavily. “That’s my Town.” My nerves were overwhelming me, and for the first time since moderating my drink intake, I longed for my flask. I kept telling myself you can do this. You can make it through this—whatever “this” is—without drink. But it was like a husband trying to convince a wife that dress didn’t make her look fat. Not very successful.
My heart did pound an off beat when the video showed a minivan pull up and three or four men leap out.
Tobiah said, “That’s a limited edition Toyota minivan. If the image was better, we could’ve gotten plates.”
“Well, we know Riddlesberger is behind it,” I reminded him. “He’s Irv Beagle.”
“Yes and no.” I gasped when Video Town beat on two of the thugs. Both went sailing into the sides of their own minivan. I’d seen him lift weights plenty—and what a sight it was—but never had I witnessed any violence on his part. Tobiah continued, “Riddlesberger obviously just called his own phone to make sure it worked. Mistake number one. Number two is that Irv Beagle is a real guy.”
“A fuckin’ puppy miller?” shouted Slappy from the driver’s seat.
Tobiah shook his head. “No. A nearby rancher, a neighbor of his. Maybe just used the name out of stupidity.”
“Out of idiocy,” said Crybaby. “Not knowing we have the number one eyes and ears man in Arizona.”
Tobiah grinned with pride, but then the video changed tone. “See? Our man Town pulls his Glock.”
I mumbled, “So he knew he might need protection when he left.”
Slappy yelled, “Yet he shoots the guy in the shoulder! I know Cap’n Spiro better than that. That was an easy shot. He could’ve easily taken the guy out.”
“For sure.” Crybaby nodded. “It was an easy shot.”
I didn’t know much about easy shots, but the way that goon bashed Town with his own forehead made me shudder, ice trickling down my lungs. We saw Town slump down behind my car, out of sight. We saw them open my hatch and remove a tarp I had purchased to line Mickey’s mudroom, before she improved and came upstairs to our bedroom. They ostensibly covered Town with it as a low keening started deep in my chest.
“No…” I whispered.
Tobiah patted my arm awkwardly. “Don’t worry. Not our man.”
Slappy bawled, “He just bugsmashed him. No one dies from that. He’s just passed out.”
“Unconscious,” Crybaby clarified.
The video ended then with the remaining men who weren’t shot or unconscious wrapping Town’s body in the tarp and flinging him in the back of their van. That really got to me. Did they know he was dead? What did they know that we didn’t know?
I asked the men, “Why do you think they took him with them?”
<
br /> Crybaby started to say, “To find a place to dispose of—” but Slappy cut him off.
He yelled, “To bring him in for further questioning! Notice how Riddlesberger wasn’t there. He’s the head honcho. I suspect they’re doing much of their underhanded sleazery at the farm of Irv Beagle, which is our first stop.”
But when we got to Irv Beagle’s place, my chest ached like a tooth. Was this my destiny, to have every tiny shred of joy squeezed from me until I was just a hollow shell? What is the point of existence, anyway? I’d often pondered that up in Cornucopia, but never in the sheltering arms of Town and The Bare Bones.
“Act classy,” suggested Tobiah as we exited the Prius. “Maybe let me and Heaven do the talking, since you guys look like thugs.”
“I don’t.” protested Slappy. “I’m not wearing a cut.”
“Hey,” protested Crybaby. “Cuts and colors give you respect.”
That was probably true. I knew Town was mulling over whether or not to patch in to the club. I was angling toward encouraging him to do it. I liked the idea of being an old lady. I’d always enjoyed the security and camaraderie of being part of a womens’ club along with Brighten, Tabitha and the others.
“Guys,” said Crybaby, pointing to a horse barn.
Peeking out from behind a corner of it was the blue minivan.
We all took off like siblings calling shotgun. Slappy gained the rise of hill first, elbowing Crybaby out of his way. Tobiah and I were the losers, but we could plainly see it was the Toyota Siena Tobiah had claimed it was. Slappy looked from side to side before lunging for the vehicle and sliding the side door back. It was easy to peek over Tobiah’s shoulder.
My black tarp was crumbled against the far wall of the interior.
“That’s it!” I cried, trying to shove Slappy out of my way.
But he was reaching for something inside. Looked like a small Styrofoam container, such as you would get for a takeout burger. I did grab it from Slappy, squealing, “That’s my hamburger!”
“What the fuck?” the three men mouthed as I opened the container.
“Yes! Yesterday I went to that deli down the hill. I got a burger and forgot all about it in my car!” The container only held a couple of bites worth of bun.
Tobiah said, “They ate your fucking burger?”
Slappy said, “Looks that way. And look. On the seat.” He shoved more people aside to fling open the passenger door. The way he suddenly withdrew the black handgun, although the barrel was pointed at the ground, made my heart cease behind my ribs. Plenty of men walked around with “protection” at Cornucopia, and practiced at our own outdoor range, but rarely did anyone grab one by the grip, just out in public like that. “This is Town’s piece, no doubt about it.” He shoved it down the back of his jeans, although I knew he already had a Ruger stuffed there.
Crybaby looked, too. “No fucking doubt, man.”
Tobiah said, “They took the gun. And didn’t leave the hamburger.”
I didn’t understand what he meant. “Yes, they did. You know what this is, you men? This is Town calling out to us. He was just telling me that no one lives according to the dictates of logic. ‘Reason is slave to the passions,’ he said. ‘We must serve them, obey them.’”
Slappy butted in. “Whatchoo talking about?”
I clarified. “Like me, he believes injustices like puppy milling and spousal abuse are calls to elicit our sympathy for the victims. We know something has gone wrong. We unlock love’s strength, our power to do something about it. We have to fucking find Town. He’s not dead.”
Oddly enough, which wasn’t that odd for Tobiah, he stood at his Prius trunk pouring something into a plastic spray bottle. I really had no suggestion where to look for Town, and Slappy was striding toward the barn doors, when some guy popped up out of nowhere. The sun had set, so no one saw him coming, and I jerked my spine straight. An older guy, you might call him grizzled or gray, with drippy hair he hadn’t washed in two weeks. What seemed to be a rumpled sailor’s hat capped him off.
I was the first to demand, “Where is he? Where’s the black-haired guy who was in the back of this van with those motorcycle guys?”
He frowned. “What are you talking about? What are you doing on my property?”
Crybaby stepped forward. “We’re looking for our buddy, who was abducted behind Target this afternoon by motorcycle assholes in this van!” Ironically, Crybaby was a motorcycle asshole too, with his black leather cut.
“Is this your van?” I demanded to know.
“No, never seen it before in my life.”
“Are you Irv Beagle?” I asked as Slappy shouldered me aside and reached into the glove box.
“Who the hell is Irv Beagle?” asked the guy as he reached for his phone. “I’m calling the police, charging you with trespassing.”
He completely looked like an Irv Beagle, and Slappy confirmed it by waving the pink slip around. “Irv Beagle, Toyota Siena minivan!” His free hand poked Mr. Beagle in the chest. “Are you an accessory to Byron Riddlesberger?”
“Who the hell is Byron Rideberger?” cried Mr. Beagle.
Slappy yelled so in his face he must’ve spit on the guy. “Is this not your fucking van?”
“It is! It is my van!” admitted Beagle.
Crybaby helped Slappy by frisking Irv, I guess for weapons. After he found none, he whipped his own handgun from his ass, pressing the barrel to Irv Beagle’s temple. “Tell us right now,” he whispered, because he didn’t need to talk louder, “where the hell is Captain Townshend Spiro, you complete and utter goon?”
I even got up in the loser’s face. We all knew he knew. It was his damned car. “You know what happened to my husband!” I lied. Well, the guy knew. But Town was far from my husband. I was operating on what I’d seen on TV, and the scumbags who lived in Cornucopia. They probably watched TV too much, too. “We’re going to blast your brains all over this farm if you don’t tell us where they went!”
Slappy agreed with me. “Your fucking innards are going to be splattered like a Jackson Pollock painting if you don’t fucking tell us where Stomach and Riddlesberger went!”
“They—they”—Beagle choked—“they took him to that barn down the hill. The sheep barn.”
Just as he said this, Tobiah yelled triumphantly from the back of the van. “Blood all over the fucking place!” He sounded like this was a good thing. We all went to see how he knew this. I even dropped my Styrofoam. Crybaby even lowered his shooting arm to see what was up.
Tobiah crowed, “Look! The cracks between the metal panels are just seeping with blood! The floorboards glow. So does the ceiling!”
I gasped. “What did you do?”
Tobiah held aloft the spray bottle. “Luminol!”
“Outrageous!” cried Slappy, slapping Tobiah on the shoulder. “That’s some choice, A1 sleuthing there, buddy!”
I had no idea what Luminol was, but since it showed the presence of blood, my stomach dropped lower than a fifty-pound bag of manure. I turned back to Mr. Beagle, who was doing the slow backward perp walk to his house. “Hey you! Exactly where is this sheep barn?”
Beagle pointed with a trembling hand. Tobiah got a flashlight, and we began the careful, methodical tromp downhill under cover of darkness.
Terrified beyond all reason.
Town
I came to covered by crinkly, loud black plastic.
My hot breath against the barrier awakened me. My brain sent signals that I would suffocate breathing in my own carbon dioxide. Yet when all the sights and sounds of that department store back alley came rushing back to me, I knew to remain still. It was possible these cretins thought I was dead and were taking me somewhere to dump me. They had my Glock. With a couple broken ribs and fingers, I probably couldn’t even take on Stomach, much less the other complete and utter dirtbags.
Besides. Now I could listen to their discussion. And it was horrendous.
“What we got to eat back at the mill?”
asked Stomach. “That hamburger from that moron’s car was disgusting. Makes me want to puke.”
I did smell cooked meat. They’d taken Heaven’s veggie burger from her car, apparently.
The Neo-Nazi said, “Riddlesberger is cooking his famous steak tonight. But first he wants us to go bury the rest of those puppies.”
“Hell to the no!” blared another lackey. “Just let the bitch eat them. Easier that way.”
Neo-Nazi said, “Yeah. Saves on corn.”
They fed the dogs corn? One can only imagine how I wanted to roar up out of the plastic and strangle those scrotums with my bare hands. It angered me unbelievably that I had no hope of overcoming them. I had always loathed feeling helpless, impotent. I had to remember I had to stay alive for Heaven. Heaven and Linus and Mickey Finn. Our dogs were keyed in to us, and we were responsible for them. And Heaven. It was always a fine line to walk with her. It was always so easy to screw her up. I had to remain a solid rock for her. Not taken out by some asshole with a swastika on his arm.
When we bumped onto Riddlesberger’s dirt driveway, I snuck a few decent breaths through an opening in the plastic. Evidently Stomach was a chain smoker, and the Camel non-riddled air wasn’t much better than the chemical smell of the tarp. Blood trickled from the searing bash in my forehead.
That sleazy weasel said, “We’ll let Byron decide what to do with this heap of trash. Maybe bury him in the lake with the others.”
The far-right dirtbag piped up. “Put him in the septic tank next to George Fell?”
George Fell’s disintegrating body was too hoity-toity for the likes of me, because Stomach snapped, “Fuck no, Dingbat! He’s got to meet a fate worse than George Fell to satisfy Byron.”
“Yeah,” goofed another one percenter, maybe the one who’d broken my fingers with his skull. “We could use the corn grinder on him again. Byron likes that.”
Stomach turned on that guy, too. “You don’t get to call him Byron, Mumbles! Only I get to call him Byron, and I’ve got the scar on my head to prove it!”
