Uncle and Ants

by Marc Jedel

  With one last sharp glance at me, Mace grunted and turned away to pick up his duffel bag of secret police supplies. “Ok, but he has to stay out of it.” Either Meghan had won or Mace had decided not to push the point.

  “He will,” answered Meghan, both of them settling my fate without my participation.

  Grateful for Meghan’s support so I could see this through to the end, I remained quiet while she unlocked the door to let me and the rest of the strike force into her house.

  The other two cops didn’t have Mace’s good looks or action hero presence. Both stocky, squarely built with close-cropped hair, they wore body armor under their uniform with multiple, official-looking gadgets and gizmos hanging off their uniform belt. Even if I saw them out of uniform, my first thought would be “cop.”

  “Hi, I’m Marty Golden.” I introduced myself and reached out to shake the other cops’ hands. Without reciprocating my gesture, they grunted also, leaned over and picked up bulky bags of police supplies and stepped past me into the house.

  Yup, we were buds.

  Meghan’s house resembled an older, smaller version of Laney’s. Like most houses in the Bay Area that normal people might possibly afford, it was modest and at least seventy years old on a tiny lot crammed next to its neighbors. A previous owner had updated and modernized Laney’s house in recent years while the interior layout of Meghan’s home looked untouched from its initial construction as an original California bungalow.

  As with many older Bay Area homes, the front door opened straight into the living room. A well-worn, yet comfortable looking couch, two chairs and a few small side tables faced each other in the room. I was surprised not to see any TV screens. She did have some colorful medieval-themed prints on her walls that she’d probably picked up from an artist’s booth at a Renaissance Faire.

  The dated layout was ideal for today’s purpose. Her living room acted as the central passageway for the house with various doors and openings leading off it. Off the back of the room past a pocket, sliding door, a narrow galley kitchen opened to her backyard. Daylight streamed into the kitchen through the glass door to her small backyard.

  To the right of the front door was a good-sized coat closet. One of the cops was busy pulling out jackets and clearing room on the closet floor. He’d located his hiding space. The other officer had opened the door to a small bedroom on the right. The left side of the living room had a narrow hallway with yet another pocket, sliding door. It looked like it led to another bedroom and bathroom. The cops would be close enough to protect Meghan in case something went wrong.

  The value of a pocket sliding door separating back bedrooms from the living room escaped me. When I was growing up, I’d lived in a small house, too. Hollow sliding doors didn’t buffer the sounds from the front room back to my nearby bedroom. When my mother had her friends over for their regular book group, my dad had to set up sleeping palettes in a large closet in their master bedroom on the other side of the house for Laney and me. Despite several closed pocket doors between us, I still couldn’t fall asleep until after her friends had left. Their outbursts of alcohol-induced laughter carried through the floorboards and sounded to my young ears as if they stood over me. I’d never understood the appeal. My teachers never made it that much fun to talk about books at school. Maybe if they’d served us alcohol?

  I needed a drink now.

  Sergeant Jackson leaned in close and spoke in a quiet voice to Meghan before placing something small into her hand. She closed her hand around it, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She walked out of the living room into the hallway to her back bedroom.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “That was the ‘wire.’ ”

  “What happens if Billy Bob pats her down or sees the battery pack on her back?”

  Mace scoffed. “You’ve watched too much TV. Modern ‘wires’ are tiny and wireless. There’s enough range for this house and her body heat will keep it charged. She just puts it under her shirt and attaches it with a little piece of tape. It looks and feels like she has a Band-Aid on a cut. Just like you, Princess.”

  I’d forgotten to pull off my Band-Aid this morning. My paper cut no longer stung even if his nickname for me did.

  When Meghan walked back in the room, Mace called everyone together. “Ok, let’s just go over a few points to keep everyone safe.”

  I approved of this idea.

  Jackson looked at Meghan. “The three of us will hide all around you. I’ll be in the hallway, he’ll be in the closet and he’ll be in that bedroom.” He gestured at the other officers.

  “I’ll be in the kitchen,” I offered since Mace had forgotten the fourth member of his strike team.

  Mace ignored me. “You want to make this seem natural, not forced. Just speak normally and the mike will record both of you. Don’t give him the folder with the papers right away. Try to ask him some open-ended questions and get him talking first.”

  “What should I ask?”

  “Ask him why he’s been trying to coerce you into signing that report you mentioned.”

  “You should ask him if he tried to kill Laney.” I contributed my value-add.

  Jackson glared at me, took a deep breath, and then turned his attention back to Meghan. “No. Don’t start with that. You could spook him if you start off by talking about someone else. Remember he doesn’t know you were there last night. Get him talking first about you. Once he admits to something, then maybe you could mention Laney and see what he says.”

  “Ok, that makes sense,” said Meghan.

  Maybe. I didn’t want sense. I wanted to know why Billy Bob was trying to kill Laney.

  “Finally,” Jackson concluded, “there are two code phrases to use. If you want us to hold off on coming in to rescue you, then say ‘My Word.’ Say ‘Bananas’ if you want the cavalry to show up immediately.”

  “What? Bananas?” I was puzzled by that choice.

  “Yeah, it’s stupid. It’s so stupid that people stop to figure out what they just heard. While they’re confused, we’re bursting into the room.”

  “I think I have my lines down and know everyone’s places.” Then, Meghan moved a hand to her chin and ignored us as she began moving her lips silently to get ready for her performance.

  I suppressed a smile about Meghan’s theatrical approach to the sting. She appeared to have dealt with the stress by thinking of this whole situation as yet another play with her in a lead role. With my character off-stage for this scene, I didn’t need to learn any lines. Coding was way less complicated than this monkey business.

  Mace made sure to station me in the kitchen first with the door slid all the way closed before he checked that everyone else had settled into their places.

  All was quiet well before ten o’clock. With a brief pat on her shoulder for reassurance, I had left Meghan sitting on the couch in her living room pretending to read a book. She had the folder with the environmental data and preliminary report near her, hidden under a pillow on the couch. Standing in her kitchen behind the pocket door with my ear turned to the door to hear better, I heard her foot tapping up a storm on the wood floor. As I’d expected, I heard nothing from Mace or the other two cops in their hiding spots. Now we needed our villain, Billy Bob, to make his appearance so the curtain would open and our performance begin. While I stared at the wall in her kitchen, I started to sweat, hoping that nothing would go wrong.

  As if a director had yelled “Action”, the doorbell rang. The game was afoot. I heard Meghan walk to the door and open it.

  “Mighty fine morning, ain’t it?” Billy Bob’s voice sounded muffled through the hollow pocket door.

  His voice had lost the angry tone from last night with Spike. This morning, he unveiled the voice of a politician, speaking with an overly loud, smooth confidence and noticeable Southern twang. I could imagine him with chest out, striding into the room like he owned the place.

  I could barely make out Meghan’s initial response.

/>   “Hi.” She rallied and spoke louder so the hiding cops could hear and know when to come in. “Why did you try to scare me into signing the impact assessment?” Dispensing with small talk, Meghan got right to the point.

  “Well now, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Billy Bob played the part of a self-righteous politician at a press conference, admitting nothing and pretending that he’d never caught wind of those issues.

  Meghan pooh-poohed this answer. “Oh, come on. You had your security people vandalize my car and intimidate me so I’d sign the report without looking closely at the data.”

  Billy Bob waved this off. “My goodness. You have quite the imagination, my dear. If someone put dog crap on your car in the building parking lot, you should have reported it to the lobby security guard and he’d call the police for you.”

  “I didn’t say it was dog crap.” Meghan’s voice sounded triumphant.

  Billy Bob paused. He’d gotten snagged, but only in a small mistake. When he continued, the Southern accent had disappeared and his voice had turned flat and insistent. “Let’s stop playing games. You texted that you have what I’m looking for. Give it to me.”

  “I’ve got all the data from the initial environmental study in a folder for you. First, you’ve got to promise that you and your goons will leave me alone.”

  “Stop playing dumb. I’m not here for that.”

  Meghan sounded as confused as I felt. “But then why were you trying to scare me?”

  Billy Bob’s exasperation was palpable. “I don’t care about that now. If you were lying to me last night, I’ll leave now. I don’t think you’ll like it if I do.” His voice deepened and slowed as he delivered the vague threat. He’d make a great politician. He knew how to say something without being specific. Although we knew he’d threatened Meghan, I’m sure his lawyers could invent a hundred reasons why we’d misunderstood this poor, saint of an executive.

  The sting hadn’t followed our script. In cop shows, stings always worked, enticing the bad guys to admit to their crime before the police surged in for the take-down. All cleanly executed and wrapped up before the final commercial break.

  Shoulders slumping, I leaned over to touch my forehead to the door. We hadn’t outwitted Billy Bob after all. Meghan had asked Billy Bob why he’d directed his goons to harass her. If he’d mentioned something about it, then she might have been able to get him to talk about Laney as well. But, Billy Bob hadn’t played his part. He’d gone off script.

  I shuddered at how furious Mace must be with me right now for wasting his time and getting nothing they could use on Billy Bob. Last night, everything had seemed so clear. Billy Bob wanted Laney dead. What if I were wrong and it was all just a set of crazy coincidences?

  Something cold and hard tapped my neck.

  I turned my head to the left. A gun pointed straight at me, with its cavernous barrel opening looming large enough to swallow me whole. The gun’s barrel stretched out almost to infinity back to where a beefy hand gripped the handle. Attached to the hand was the rest of Spike, with a smirking grin on his face.

  “Well, looky what we have here.” Spike had a sing-song cadence to his voice.

  Without taking his eyes away from me, he called out loudly, “Hey Boss, I found something interesting in the kitchen.” He nodded his head toward the front and gestured to me with his gun.

  I got the point. Sliding the kitchen door open, I shuffled through, with Spike’s arm holding the gun pointed at my neck the whole time.

  Meghan, startled by our unscripted appearance at stage right, recovered with a speed that dazzled me. “My word,” she enunciated clearly, “Spike, I didn’t know you were here. Why are you pointing a gun at Marty?”

  Meghan must be great at improv. She’d incorporated the code phrase into her first comment even though Spike’s appearance had surprised us both. No one wanted the cops jumping out and Spike shooting me, even by accident. Especially me.

  “Shut up. I’m the one asking the questions.” Billy Bob looked at me. “Who are you?”

  My recent experience with the gang at the restaurant helped reduce the stammer in my voice. “I’m Marty.” Accurate, although perhaps not complete. I’ve learned that I’m not at my best with a cold metal barrel pointing at me.

  “Ok, Marty.” Billy Bob seemed more amused than frustrated. “Why are you here and why were you hiding in the kitchen?” With Spike holding the gun, Billy Bob swaggered around Meghan’s living room, touching her knickknacks, in control of the situation.

  “I wanted to find out why you’re trying to hurt Meghan … and Laney.”

  Laney’s name caught Billy Bob’s attention and he swung back to me. His fists clenched and he took a step toward me. Through narrowed eyes, he asked, “How do you know Laney?” In a flash, his demeanor had shifted from a confident politician into someone much more sinister.

  “She’s my sister.”

  Like a tiger to prey, Billy Bob pounced. “So, you have the paper?”

  That confused me. “Meghan has all the papers. She just offered them to you.”

  Billy Bob scoffed. “I don’t care about those.”

  Meghan must have felt left out of the script. “But they’re the proof,” she interjected.

  Billy Bob turned back to her with a scowl. “Proof of what?”

  “They prove you’re trying to build a new plant on top of the crazy ants,” I said.

  “Dorymyrmex insanus,” corrected Meghan, with a scientific compulsion.

  Billy Bob’s head was rotating like a spectator sitting at midcourt of a tennis match. “Insane what?”

  I knew the answer to this one. Skye would be proud of me. Despite my nervousness, I started to explain, “They’re from Texas. They’re known as crazy ants.”

  Meghan corrected, “Originally South America.”

  Billy Bob blew up. “Bulletin! I need it. Where is it?”

  “What?” Meghan and I both said in unison.

  Billy Bob’s face grew red with irritation. I had that effect on people on a regular basis. “This is a waste of time. Ok, just give me that folder. Some stupid ants —”

  “Crazy ants,” I interrupted.

  Billy Bob eyed us both carefully, as if worried we were going insane. “Well, I’ll take that folder anyway. I don’t care if those ants are crazy, stupid, or you’ve got ants in your pants. They aren’t going to stop me from getting that project finished on schedule.”

  “And getting appointed to run the State Board?” I couldn’t resist, although further upsetting him right now didn’t seem advisable.

  With a frighteningly rapid shift of personality, Billy Bob reverted back to the smarmy politician. His words oozed past me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Meghan had a sharp eye on the gun still resting against my neck. I hadn’t forgotten about it either. “Okay, okay, I’ll give the folder to you. Could you please have him put the gun away? We’re not a threat to the two of you.”

  I’d completely forgotten about the cops, hiding around us. Meghan’s ability to stay calm and convey helpful information to them impressed me. She’d stuck to the script while managing an improvisation to get us out of this situation without anyone getting shot. With the gun pointing at my head, I appreciated her skill.

  Billy Bob shook his head derisively. “Spike, put the gun away. You don’t need it. They’re too wimpy to try anything.”

  “Ok, boss.” Although Spike pulled the gun away from my neck, it would be a long time before I stopped feeling it resting against my skin. Spike put the gun behind his back into his belt. “Now what, boss?”

  Meghan said, “It’s time for bananas!”

  The house exploded with noise.

  “Police! Down! Down on the ground! Hands out. Down!” yelled a cacophony of voices as the three cops burst out of their hiding spots.

  Everyone dropped to the ground. Well, Billy Bob, Spike and I all dropped to the ground. Meghan took a step back to make room as th
e cops rushed in around her.

  From the ground, I looked up in time to see Mace rubbing the back of his neck as he cocked his head to the side to observe me with a skeptical raised eyebrow. He shot a questioning look at Meghan before reaching a hand down to me. He pulled me up in one quick jerk. A little rougher than seemed necessary. At least I was off the floor with my dignity restored.

  Yeah, that’s what I’m going with. I let out a deep breath. After someone puts a gun in your face, or your neck, breathing feels good, shaky or not.

  “You’re under arrest,” said one of the police officers to Billy Bob.

  “Why, whatever for?” Billy Bob’s Southern drawl had returned, thicker than before.

  He had a point. Billy Bob hadn’t actually admitted to threatening Meghan or trying to kill Laney.

  “Assault with a deadly weapon,” said Sergeant Jackson with a police officer’s typical bravado.

  “Officer, if you will please look closely. I don’t have a gun,” Billy Bob held his hands up, open and out to his sides. “I’m the CEO of the NorCal Water Agency and I’m just here for a short business meeting with Ms. Emerson.” Billy Bob pointed to Spike. “That man has the gun. He put it away when I told him to. If anything, I’m the hero for stopping the assault. I’ve done nothing wrong. You’ve got no reason to arrest me.”

  I had to hand it to Billy Bob. He was cool under pressure. My heart raced and I still shook a little from the gun and then the surprise from the police popping out. And I’d known they were in the house all along.

  “Read him his rights and put him in my cruiser. We’ll bring them back to the precinct to sort this out.” Jackson instructed one of the cops.

  The other cop already had handcuffs on Spike and had pulled him to his feet. Spike didn’t speak as he was led away. Considering that Billy Bob had thrown him under the bus for the whole episode, his silence was impressive. Billy Bob didn’t strike me as the sort of leader that inspired loyalty.