3. The Shrinking Nuts Case
Wham! Something massive but soft hit me like a ton of marshmallows, waking me up and crushing the wind out of me. Hell, I couldn’t even utter a curse!
“Where is Jake, you little pervert!” roared an inhumanly deep voice. Wham! Wham! Wham!
It was one bitch-of-a fantasy/nightmare come true. Between blows I looked up in the dim light to see a truly colossal dame: voluptuous, dark haired, pissed off, completely naked, and holding an enormous pillow in her huge hands, with which she was beating the crap out of me. “I am Jake!” I was finally able to blurt out between the crushing blows. The beating stopped. Lights came on.
“Boss! Is it really you? Oh my God!” bellowed the giant, clearly distressed.
I finally looked up past the stunning bod and recognized the face of Elaine, my secretary. Now I recognized the rest of her too; I had seen it all before often enough, but not this huge. When Elaine finds me sleeping at the office she often wakes me up with a little sex. Triples her value to me as an employee, and I figure it makes up for the low pay I give her. But what had happened to her? She looked twelve feet tall at least, and sounded like a tuba!
I slipped off the sofa, and got another little shock. Standing up involved a drop to the floor of several feet, and left me standing in an enormous room with twenty-foot ceilings and giant furniture. It sure looked like my private-detective office all right, but it was huge. I also noticed that I was wearing only a giant baggy white canvas tea-shirt that dragged on the floor. “What gives, Baby?” I asked the giant Elaine. “Why is everything king-sized?”
“You shrank, Boss!” she said excitedly, as if a crazy statement like that could explain anything, while she put her clothes back on.
Hell, at that point I didn’t even mind losing the view. There are a few things, like death, taxes, or apparently talk about your body shrinking, that can sometimes get a guy’s mind off sex temporarily. “People don’t just shrink Baby!” I said sarcastically. I sat down in my leather recliner; or rather I climbed up into it. “Besides, wouldn’t I feel it happening?” I was shifting my butt and pushing to get the huge chair to recline, but it wouldn’t budge in inch. “Shi-i-t!” I appropriately complained.
“Who the heck knows what it feels like? This ever happen to you before? And your voice is higher too, Boss. That’s because your vocal cords and everything have been shrunk proportionally. Your linear dimensions have shrunk by over 50% I estimate, and you cube that to figure out the mass loss. By the way, with an over 88% drop in body mass you might as well forget about getting that thing to recline. Anyway, length and mass reduction no doubt explain the multi-octave change in your voice pitch. You sound like a chipmunk.”
She was showing off her university degrees and brains again, and though it usually bugs me when anyone does that, especially when it’s a beautiful woman, at the moment I was too buzzed for it to bother me, and I let it pass. This whole thing made me dizzy. What kind of chipmunk? The kind with the cute little black and white stripes down its back? I had to sit there for a minute and think. As I did, it finally sank in. I had shrunk! Nutty as it was, it was the only damn idea that made any sense whatsoever! “Jesus-H farking Chee-rist!” I complained astutely, shaking my poor little shrunken head.
“Well, at least it hasn’t affected your vocabulary,” she remarked. “I suppose that to work properly, all organs have to have been shrunken proportionally. They must have thrown in something to compensate for brain-volume loss though, at least for the higher brain functions, because you seem to be just as, ah, intelligent as ever.” She walked to her receptionist desk and rummaged around for something. Now that she had her heals on, she looked thirteen feet tall; A damn good looking thirteen foot giant at that, even when dressed.
I wasn’t thinking about giant dames or shrunken brains though, I was worrying about other organs that I was more fond of that might have also been shrunk. I copped a quick feel through the tea-shirt. “Holy shits!” I exclaimed. Ultimate shrinkage!
As though she had read my mind, the giant Elaine pulled a ruler out of her desk. “Let’s see how you measure up, big boy,” she said, as she walked towards me with a mischievous grin on her big face.
It was extenuating circumstances; I knew that I wouldn’t measure up.
“Stand up, Boss,” she instructed, as she pulled me off the chair. Then to my relief she only measured my height. “Two-feet-six-inches,” she announced. “That’s less than half your original six-foot-two, close to a sixty percent loss in linear dimensions.” She lifted me up by my under-arms. “Fifteen pounds or so, I’d guess. I’ve hefted bigger turkeys.”
I was glad when she finally put me down; I don’t like being picked up like a little twerp. I don’t see how kids can stand it. “This is nuts!” I said, as I headed for the liquor cabinet. I keep booze in the office to ease the miseries of my customers, mostly; it’s part of my business model. Almost any broad whining about her rotten husband is more likely to pay for my surveillance services if she has a couple of belts of rot-gut in her. I tried to open a new bottle of brandy that seemed to weigh at least twenty pounds, but the twist-cap wouldn’t budge.
“Let me do that, Boss,” Elaine volunteered, and she soon poured us a couple of shot glasses of the good stuff, a full one for her, and a half-full one for me. She chugged down all of hers before I could even manage a sip of mine.
“I didn’t think you drank, Baby,” I remarked, sucking mine down to politely keep up with the lady. I had tried to booze her up often enough right after I hired her, before I found out that for sex I didn’t have to get her drunk. I hadn’t offered her a drink in months. Why spend good money on booze to get laid if you don’t have to?
“You know I don’t normally drink,” she replied. “But this isn’t exactly a normal day, especially for you.”
“Hell Baby, I’ve been in worse jams before,” I said. I tried to be my usual macho self as I returned to my recliner, but climbing up onto a chest-high chair while holding a giant bottle of brandy isn’t easy, and the giant Elaine ended up helping me again, damn it.
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
“I plan on getting drunk,” I said sensibly. I was struggling with the big bottle, positioning most of its weight on a chair-arm so that I could control the thing better as I drank from it.
“You’re already drunk, Boss. That drink I gave you was the equivalent of at least five shots, given your tiny little bod."
"Super! Think of the money I'll save on booze."
"Not that I can blame you, but don’t you think we should try to do something? What if you’re still shrinking?”
That was a discomforting thought; so discomforting that I put the bottle down after only a couple more big yummy gulps. “OK then, do you have any suggestions?”
“Well, you should be measured every so often, to see if you’re still shrinking.”
“Great idea; that way we’ll know just how lousy things are. No; what I mean is, Baby, have you got any ideas on how to get me back to normal?”
“You could call your doctor, or go to the hospital.”
“Hell no, woman! Those jokers can’t even deal with head-colds! I’d end up as an exhibit at some damn university or something.”
“You’re probably right. OK, so I guess it’s up to the Jake Simon Detective Agency then.”
She was right. It was up to me. “Shi-i-t!” I said astutely. The financial implications hit me especially hard. This meant that I was my own client, and I knew what a deadbeat I was.
“Do you think that you might possibly need some help on this one, Boss?”
She had been bugging me to help out on cases as an actual detective, but I had always come up with excuses so far. I had my job and she had hers, I figured. Mine was man’s work and hers was whatever woman’s work I wanted from her. But maybe I could make an exception, just this one time, as I certainly didn’t know what the hell to do to solve my little shrinkage problem. "OK, you're hereby promoted to d
etective, second class," I announced. She was Catholic, so I crossed myself.
"What about pay?"
Crap! I’d have to pay her too! "Same pay."
"Figures."
"But you've got to earn it, Baby. Got any ideas?"
"Got questions. Like for instance, where did the rest of you go?"
"What do you mean?"
"You lost about two-hundred and ten pounds since yesterday. Ever hear of the conservation of mass principle? The science folks are rather fond of that one. So what happened to it?”
Suddenly I realized where it went. “Shit,” I explained very precisely.
“You don’t have to cuss all the time, do you Jake? This is serious.”
“No Baby, I mean, shit is where it went. Last night I felt really lousy, that’s why I never got back to my apartment. I figured it was some kind of stomach virus. I had an unbelievable case of the runs.”
“While you shrank?”
“I don’t know Baby, I drank a little rum and I was mostly asleep and I felt like hell. But I guess that’s right, I must have been shrinking and pooping myself away. Now that I think about it, I kind of remember that the pot seemed to be getting bigger. Damn near fell in a couple of times. I was too sick and tired at the time to worry about it, I guess. I’ve had weirder experiences when I was liquored up.”
“OK, my next question is, how? You still think it was a stomach virus?”
"How the hell should I know?"
“Well, when did you first feel sick?”
“Last night about eight, I think. I had to cut-out of an important meeting with a new client. I suddenly felt like I had to do a big number two, but I’ve got a strict policy not to take a dump at the residence of a new client. It ain’t professional.”
“Yeah sure, we’re a first class act.”
“First class all the way, Baby. Anyway, the office was closer than my apartment, so I came here fast. Really fast; I was afraid I’d explode in the Ford before I got anyplace. I figured I’d take care of business here and sleep it off, then get back to the client today.”
“What client? Where?”
“That’s top secret; I promised confidentiality. It’s a matter of principle.”
“Really, shorty? Is your integrity more important than your shoe size?”
She had me there. “John Grisim, at the Tower Arms downtown.”
“THE John Grisim, multi-billionaire?”
“Impressed?”
“First let me see what he paid you.”
“Shi-i-t! I left before he even gave me a retainer. I must have been even sicker than I thought.”
“What did he want from us, detective-wise?”
I noticed that she had said ‘us’, like we were partners or something, but I let it pass. “He was just starting to explain it to me when I had to cut-out. He mentioned some kind of game for rich guys. Weird as hell. He wanted me to help him.”
“Help him how?”
“Save him, he said. From death, possibly. I don’t know for sure; he didn’t get into the details. He gave me some papers with a few rules of the game on them or something, and then I got sick and left the place, and that was it. End of story.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Which part?”
“Any of it. No offense, but why would a billionaire hire you? He must have his own security people.”
“Maybe he heard about me someplace. I’ve cracked some pretty big cases, you know.”
“You’ve only handled divorces and lost dogs since I’ve worked here.”
“Well, I’ve found some damn important lost dogs. As far as this game thing goes, Grisim gave me the impression that rich folks get bored sometimes. Life’s too damn easy for them.”
“Sure; being filthy rich must be really tough.”
“Once in a while they just like to do something crazy, like drugs, sky diving, unsafe sex, or something. They probably get bored as hell counting all that money.”
“But what kind of ‘game’ kills people?”
From the pocket of the suit-coat that I wore the previous night I retrieved several papers, folded down to pocket size. Pocket-sized yesterday; almost newspaper-sized today. “He gave me this stuff, but we didn’t have a chance to talk about it.” I handed the papers to her, and she studied them for several minutes.
“Most of it is just stuffy legal wording describing what the game winners get, and so forth,” she said, after looking them over. “The winner can get up to half a billion dollars. Nifty. But there isn't much useful information here; the names of the game participants aren’t even included.”
“Too incriminating,” I reasoned. “Who the players are is probably only known by the rich participants and whoever runs these things for them.”
“As to rules for this so-called game, there isn’t much here. All that Grisim has to do is show up at the First National Bank before four this afternoon and prove his identity, and he gets the money, or at least his share of it. It’s to be split between all participants that show up.”
Just show up and you get millions of dollars? That didn’t sound like much of a game at all. “Crashers allowed?” I asked, hopefully. A few million would do wonders for my own bank account.
“Low-lives like us need not apply, I’m sure. Oh! Here’s a couple of very interesting things. First, any player that impedes or causes the death of any other players during the course of the game forfeits his share.”
“Then why was Grisim worried about getting killed or whatever? What’s the other interesting thing, Doll?”
“This one is really weird,” she laughed. “It’s supposed to be a clue. It simply says that ‘one plus one multiplies,’ whatever that means.”
“Doesn’t seem too helpful. I need more to go on than that.”
“OK then, I guess we head for the Tower Arms, right Boss?”
“You’ve got to be kidding. I can’t go out like this; what about my tough-guy rep?”
“What rep? Would you rather wait until you’re small enough for me to carry you around in my purse?”
I let the crack about my rep pass. “Let's go,” I said, heading for the door.
“Wait a minute, Boss, I’ll get you some clothes first,” she said. She was right; I couldn’t traipse around town in a giant tee-shirt. She went to the little shop downstairs, and was back in ten minutes.
“These are baby clothes!” I complained. “I can’t wear these!” The Super-Man briefs were OK; everything else sucked big-time.
“That’s the best stuff they had in a size three extra short and puny.”
“But what’s all this shit on it?” I pointed out the teddy bears and bunny rabbits on the shirt and overalls.
“This is as plain as they come at that shop. At least these are mostly blue. The only other thing in your size was a pink outfit with purple dinosaurs all over it. You want me to get you that one instead?”
“Nah, these will do.” I went into the bathroom in order to put everything on. I wasn’t about to display my shrunken little body to anyone, not even Elaine. I had a hell of a time with buttons and snaps; I guess Elaine was right, I was a little drunk. Even so, how the hell little kids could do this, even if sober, puzzled the heck out of me.
Everything was baggy as hell, the overalls were short, and the shoes were so wide that they almost fell off my feet when I walked, but it all more or less fit. Elaine was waiting for me with another purchase when I came out of the bathroom. “What the hell is that thing?” It looked like a cross between a backpack and a folding lawn-chair.
“It’s an infant carrier. You sit in it and these straps go around my shoulders and hold it on my back. Great idea, right?”
“Wrong, Baby. I won’t be hauled around town like a papoose.”
“If you walk you’ll draw a crowd for sure. You look like a shrunken little man, not a kid, especially with that odd strutting swagger of yours. With you on my back, wearing this hat, maybe we’ll get away with it.” She pull
ed out a blue, strap-on baseball kind of cap with a big yellow bird on top of it and put it on my head, despite my protests. “And clean up your language; try to talk like a kid.” She put me in the carrier, and then hoisted me onto her back, without even giving me a chance to object. I decided to go along with it. She had that determined look on her face that she gets sometimes.
“If I’m the kid, I guess I can’t be calling you Baby,” I reasoned.
“You call me Auntie, and I’ll call you Junior,” she stated.
She was turning into a real take-charge kind of broad, something I normally can’t stand, but I let it pass. “I’ll need my wallet and gun, Auntie,” I requested. I hid them under my overalls, tucked into my shorts. I was comforted by the feel of cold deadly steel down one leg and a wallet full of credit cards down the other. Some of the cards were so new they even had some room on them. I made a grab for Auntie’s boobs, as that would have comforted me even more, but my new arms were too damn short. Toddlers probably miss out on a lot of good stuff, I figured.
The cab drive to the Tower Arms was pretty uneventful, though the driver tried to stretch out the route and I had to set him straight. Surprised him. He also seemed surprised when I was the one to pay for the cab, with cash from somewhere down in my overalls.
After we got out of the cab at the Tower Arms and Elaine hoisted me onto her back again, there he was suddenly, bigger than life and twice as ugly: Joe Kebony, my old partner on the Force. “Hi, Baby!” he said, as he lumbered towards us grinning.
Baby? He had spotted me, and I braced for more ribbing. He’d tell the rest of the guys at the Precinct, and they’d tell everybody in town, and I’d never hear the end of it.
Instead, he ignored me, and to my surprise the bastard planted a hell of a kiss on the willing lips of Elaine! The kiss went on and on and didn’t stop. My first impulse was to climb down and punch the slug’s lights out, though I probably wouldn’t be able to reach much higher than his knees, but I found that I couldn’t even get out of the carrier; Elaine had me strapped in good. Finally, I squirmed high enough to reach around Elaine and whack the big bozo alongside the head.
“Ouch! What the hell was that? Hey! Is that a kid? What gives?”
“It’s Jake’s nephew from South Jersey.”
“Hey! He’s sticking his tongue out at me! The ugly little cuss looks just like Jake. How’d you get stuck with the brat?”
“Just a favor for Jake.”
“You’re too good for that bum. We still on for tonight?”
“Sure.”
I kicked Elaine in the back for all that I was worth.
“I have to get going, Joe, I’ll see you later,” she said. She gave the big ugly bastard a quick goodbye kiss and we headed for the hotel.
“OK, Baby. When you see Jake, tell him he still owes me fifty,” said the cheap bastard.
When we were out of ear-shot, Elaine let me have it. “What am I, a punching bag or something? That kick hurt!”
“What’s with this ‘Baby’ bullshit? Why would any broad put up with being called that nowadays? This is the twenty-first century, for Christ’s sake! And what’s up with the kissing, and why the hell would you be seeing that bum tonight?”
“He’s a nice guy. Besides, I thought he was your best friend.”
“He was! So why are you going out with the ugly stinking bastard?”
“The usual reasons, not that it’s any business of yours.”
I was dumbfounded. After all, she had me, practically whenever she wanted me, at least during business hours on most week-days. What more could any dame want? Sure, I had told her a couple of times that she shouldn’t get too serious about me, but that was mostly to keep her from bringing up crazy things like marriage, or meeting parents, or whatever. I never really even thought about her having a private life outside the office. But a dame is just a dame, right? So why was I getting all bent out of shape? "Oh sure, kid, it's a free country. I just kind ‘a wondered, is all."
She didn’t say anything back, but I caught her reflection in a door as she entered the hotel lobby, and she had one of those ‘I gotcha right where I want you Mona-Lisa smiles on her face that they all get. What it really meant exactly, I didn’t have the foggiest. Who the hell can figure women, so why try to?
Meanwhile as planned she took us straight to the elevators. Grisim had bought the whole damn building and used the seventh floor for himself. "For luck," he said. Me, I always figured that 'luck' business is total bull. Chance is real, that's for sure, but you can't control it by throwing horse shoes over left shoulders at mirrors or however that goes. Good karma don’t hurt none, but in a pinch it’s usually brains, balls, and fists that matter most.
We ran into our first real problem when we got off at the seventh floor, in the form of two big ugly gorillas that pointed two very big guns at us. That would have been enough to turn me around, even if I was full-sized, but Elaine took it right in stride. Elaine isn’t scared of men, period, except for the ones that are complete shit-heads. She packs plenty of ammo of her own; great looking ammo that turned any sane guy’s thoughts to mush.
"Hi fellas. I'm Elaine King, of the Jake Simon Detective Agency. Mr. Grisim hired us yesterday. I need to see him right away, please.”
“Just a moment,” said gorilla number one, while the second one spoke quietly into a little walkie-talkie device.
After a minute, one of them escorted us into an apparently empty hotel suite, where a knock-out female introduced herself as Jane Fey, head of security. When I visited Grisim the previous night, I hadn’t seen Fey, but I had seen several other knock-out chicks, enough to convince me that Grisim’s hiring policy was slanted towards well-built young blonde babes. Damn good policy. Jane Fey was no exception. They made quite a pair, Fey and my Elaine; one light haired and the other dark haired, and I had a great butt-level view of them both after Elaine at last freed me from the damn baby carrier.
Fey frisked us and used a bug-snooper to make sure we weren’t wired. She took Elaine’s cell phone. She found my gun and took it, of course, with a gentle touch. “Who’s the kid and what’s he doing with a loaded gun down his pants?” she asked. If she had searched me just a little more closely, the statement could have had another meaning. I guess I was starting to get used to giant women.
“Sorry. He’s my nephew that my sister stuck me with at the last minute,” explained Elaine. “He’s a good kid though; he won’t bother anybody. As to the gun, it wouldn’t fit in my purse or in my clothes.” True, Elaine’s clothes were too sparse and nicely packed to hide a gun. The totally goofy explanation seemed to satisfy Fay, who wore equally well packed, tight clothes; she just nodded and spoke quietly into a walkie-talkie.
Fey and Elaine sat down at a small table to talk. A moment later yet another spiffy blonde broad strutted in, this one wearing an expensive business suit-coat and skirt outfit that showed off her nifty legs. “All right Ms. King, where is your boss?” she demanded.
“He’s on other business. Who are you?”
“I’m Alicia Tweed, President of Grisim Enterprises,” she started to respond.
“And you’re here to simply observe my discussions with Ms. King, Alicia,” injected Fey. “I’ll ask the questions, if you don’t mind.”
Tweed obviously did. She glared at Fay like she wanted to kick her teeth in. “As long as the Corporation’s interests are addressed,” she replied curtly.
“I don’t work for the Corporation,” responded Fay equally caustically, “but as the Corporation also works for Mr. Grisim, I’ll try to protect its interests.”
“Humph!” responded Tweed. “Then let’s get on with it.” She sat down at the table facing Elaine, but she also faced off against Fay. You could tell a lot from tone of voice and body language. These too spiffy broads hated each other’s guts.
They all ignored me. I, on the other hand, had a great view of three sets of luscious legs under the table as Fay began the questioning and Tweed
stared daggers at her. I suddenly felt hungry.
“Do you know why Jake Simon visited Mr. Grisim last night?” Fay asked.
“Mr. Grisim was interested in the services of the Jake Simon Detective Agency, of course.”
“What sort of services?”
“That’s why I’m here today, to find out the details.”
“From Mr. Grisim?”
“Certainly. Is he available now?”
“Why didn’t Simon come himself?”
“Like I said, he has other business.”
“More important than his business with Mr. Grisim?”
“He’s a very busy man. He has some big cases.”
“He’s a two-bit gum-shoe who would sell his soul to have a rich client like Grisim,” interjected Tweed. “We checked out his pathetic credentials.”
I figured that in response to that wisecrack Elaine would need to punch her lights out or something, but she didn’t. I was under-cover myself and had to keep my yap shut.
“Whatever Grisim wants from us is between him and us. I’d like to see our client,” Elaine requested.
“So would we,” said Fey. Tweed gave her an icy stare. Fey had let a cat out of the bag, apparently, and there were plenty of cats in this room already: beautiful, long nailed, tough broads that could go at it any second. Me, I just sat there, taking it all in. Tweed shifted and I could see up her skirt almost to heaven. I had a sudden vision of Tweed and Fey, going at it in a mud-wrestling grudge-match wearing tear-off string bikinis, no holds barred. I was becoming very thirsty and hungry.
“What do you mean? Isn’t Grisim here?” countered Elaine.
“Did Simon tell you that he’d be here?” asked Fay.
“He must have thought so, or he wouldn’t have sent me here to talk with him.”
“Or it’s a cover.”
“A cover for what? What’s going on here?”
Fay hesitated.
“You might as well tell her the rest,” said Tweed. “The cops will anyway, as soon as they come back with their warrants. I won’t be able to stop them next time, Jane. They’ll be swarming all over this place.”
“Grisim is missing,” explained Fay. “Since last night when your boss visited him in his rooms. In fact, as far as we can tell, Jake Simon was the last person to see him. Simon and Grisim went in, and only Simon came out. Guess who our prime suspect is?”
“Oh my God!” exclaimed Elaine. She was upset, and I thought she might lose it and blow my cover. I had to do something quick.
“Auntie, I need go potty,” I announced, in my best infant-accent. Nobody paid any attention. “AUNTIE, I NEED GO POTTY NOW!” I screamed. I grabbed my crotch to emphasize the emergency.
“We’ll leave you two here to wait for the cops,” announced Fey, as she got up and headed out the door, motioning Tweed to follow. “You can go potty all you want to, kid. Help yourself.”
I didn’t much like these corporate blondes, no matter how great their legs were. Tweed gave me a particularly mean look as she strutted out. I caught a glimpse of one of the gorillas posted just outside the room, and I heard the door lock after it was closed.
“Well, big boy, you’re really in a mess now, aren’t you?” a calmer Elaine said.
“I have to go potty,” I said loudly, motioning Elaine towards the bathroom. “Auntie help Junior go potty?”
She looked at me like I was demented, but she let me pull her by the hand into the bathroom. There I turned the sink and shower on, and flushed the toilet. Then I jumped up into her arms. She caught me, just like I figured. “Hold me Auntie, I’m scared,” I announced loudly. Then I whispered into her ear. “Bugs, Baby; this place is probably bugged. That Fay broad wants to solve this one herself.”
“You don’t have to pee, Junior?” she quietly asked.
“No. I’m hungry and thirsty Baby, but right now I have to get into Grisim’s suite and see the scene of the crime, before the cops haul us out of here. Maybe I’ll be able to figure things out.”
“Where's Grisim’s suite?”
“Two or three suites down the hall on this side of the building.”
“You know how to get to it?”
“No way possible that I can think of,” I said, glancing towards the door. “They’ve got too much muscle.”
“Then it’s a good thing I’m here.” She put me down and started to fill the bathtub. “Look outside the window Junior. What do you see?”
I looked. “High up, Auntie; Junior is scared.” I jumped back into her arms. It was a damn comfortable place to be, and we could whisper freely. “What the hell are you getting at?”
“There’s a ledge, Boss. Not a wide one; maybe ten inches, but it’s wide enough for you.”
“You’re nuts!”
“Meanwhile, I can stay here and pretend that you’re taking a bath. Kids take them all the time.”
“No damn way!”
“You have a better idea?”
I returned to the window and studied the ledge. It was a warm calm day, and the ledge seemed to be wide enough. Good thing it was only seven stories up. I decided to go for it.
I tried to open the window, but of course Elaine had to do it. Before I could crawl out onto the ledge, she gave me a really friendly kiss and wished me luck. A hell-of-a crazy fantasy flashed through my mind just then when she kissed me, having to do with staying here and taking a bath with Elaine, instead of crawling out on a narrow ledge and falling to my death. This was followed by sudden, tremendous hunger, and a flash of dizziness that caused me to fall flat onto the floor.
“Are you all right?” she asked me, concern etched on her huge but pretty face.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s lack of breakfast. I haven’t eaten anything today. Have we got anything?”
I drank some water, while she found me some mint chocolates from on the suite’s bed, a few complimentary cans of V-Eight in a small refrigerator, a half-dozen little envelopes of sugar, and best of all, a Slim Jim from her purse. As little as I was, that should have filled me up to the gills, but all it did was reduce the hunger a bit, and get rid of most of the dizziness.
I crawled out the window and onto the ledge. It seemed a hell of a lot narrower now that I was on it. I made the mistake of looking down just for a moment, before squeezing my eyes shut in terror. “Shi-i-t!” was all that I could say, about a dozen times. Only seven stories hell, it seemed more like hundreds! I felt dizzy again and on the verge of toppling; I had to tell myself again and again that I was safe. How the hell could a guy fall from a crawling position? Then again, I hadn’t done much crawling in decades, so what the hell did I know about it?
“You OK?” she whispered, right above me.
“Oh, sure; green is my normal color. And did I mention that I’m still hungry?”
“I didn’t know that you were afraid of heights.”
“Seemed like a damned good opportunity to find out.”
“Just don’t look down. You should occupy your mind with something else. Maybe you should think of food, or sex or something.”
Sound advice probably, though a little late. I took a couple of deep breaths, turned my head towards the building, opened my eyes, and started crawling. I did think of sex, but oddly enough that made me so hungry that I could only think of food, and that led to more dizziness. But inch by inch, foot by foot, I was moving. After what seemed like only a couple of lifetimes I was passing by the bathroom window of the next suite, followed by the bedroom and what I expected would be living room windows.
What would normally be a living room had been converted to a dining area/kitchen with a big table and chairs. I crawled in through the window and discovered in the giant refrigerator several brown-bags and thermoses; probably lunches for the security and office staff. I thought about the size of the gorillas that probably owned the stuff, and what they might do to me if they caught me, but it was no use. I had to have more to eat, regardless of the consequences. Hopefully afterwards I’
d feel better and could continue on to Grisim’s.
Given my size, a fraction of a single lunch should have satisfied me, but I gobbled down everything that I could find like I hadn’t eaten in weeks. Sandwiches, drinks, fruit, and junk food for at least half a dozen big people was gone in minutes. I think that I could have even eaten a little more. I began to worry about my trip back from Grisim’s rooms, assuming that I made it. I could be very hungry again by that time. So, using my trusty new Master Card, I phoned in an order for a dozen pizzas, using the land-line phone in the room. The pizza joint was practically next door and I paid extra for a rush job, so hopefully more food would be sitting in that room by the time I passed it again.
Out on the ledge I made faster progress, though for some reason the ledge seemed narrower. In minutes, I was in Grisim’s suite, looking at the alleged scene of the alleged crime. As I looked around for clues, I gobbled down some of the food that I found, and drank a quart of water. Fortunately, there was still a lot of tasty stuff lying around from last night. I concluded that other than a missing John Grisim, nothing had changed since the previous night. I couldn’t figure out what the hell had happened to Grisim. He was simply gone.
I crawled back towards Elaine's room swiftly, though the ledge seemed even narrower. I glanced into the room from which I had ordered the pizza and saw them arrive already, carried by the two gorillas. A gorilla picked up one of the pizzas.
"The pizza guy said those are for the cops when they get here," said gorilla number two.
"Tough for them," said gorilla number one, as he went out the door with the pizza, leaving only eleven on the table. Though I felt run-down, I wasn't hungry or dizzy anymore, and I decided to skip the pizzas for now.
When I crawled into the bathroom through the window, Elaine gawked at me and made a big fuss. She backed me up against a wall, and measured me using, of all things, a sheet of paper that had inch-marks scribbled on one edge. "I made this back at the office, so that I could measure you without lugging around a ruler," she whispered. "There, just as I thought. Roughly thirty-three inches. You've grown three inches!"
I was elated. "No wonder these britches are getting tight, Baby." I studied myself in the mirror. Wrists and ankles were showing, and my toes were jamming the ends of my Keds. "I better get out of this stuff, while I still can." I stripped right in front of Elaine of course, as I felt pretty damn good about growing three inches, and I was no longer as self-conscious. “Well, how do I look Baby?” I asked her, when I was naked.
“Good enough to eat, cutie,” she replied, licking her lips.
That was enough of an invitation for me. To make a long story short, I jumped her. If you’ve never made love to a giant before, don’t knock it; it was great. Hey, women are all about the same height when they’re lying down anyway. But when we were finished, I was famished, totally. The hunger of a short time before was nothing compared to what I felt now. “Feed me, Baby,” was all that I could croak, I was so weak.
There was no more food, but Elaine gave me water, and after drinking a quart or so of that I was well enough to evade Elaine and stumble out the window after the pizzas. Though weak and tipsy, I was desperate. I staggered along the narrowing ledge; crawling would have been too stinking slow. Halfway there, I had to fight back hysteria when I realized that I was buck naked. Laughter, weakness, and dizziness damn near toppled me off the ledge, but I wasn’t scared at all. Nothing mattered except getting food.
At last I was there: pizza heaven. I climbed in through the window. There were extra cheese pizzas, and pepperoni pizzas, sausage, green pepper, and onion pizzas, and meatball pizzas. Best of all, there were two huge everything-on-it pizzas. I ate them all, feeling stronger as I did, and washed them down with a gallon or two of water. For a little while then, I felt cold to the bone, as if my body was busy doing something else, and couldn’t be bothered with keeping me comfortable. I wrapped myself in a short hotel robe and blankets, and after a minute, I was well enough to set off again. I wore the robe, which came down only to my ankles.
The trip back on the ledge was lousy. The ledge was narrow as hell, so narrow that I couldn’t crawl; I had to walk sideways, with my butt and back pressed against the building.
Elaine gave a squeal of excitement when I squeezed in through the bathroom window, and backed me against the wall for measuring. I was bigger again and I knew it; I came almost to Elaine’s shoulder! “Almost four feet tall!” she announced, grinning like crazy. “How do you feel?”
“Better, but not perfect; I still feel a little cold. At least I’m not hungry anymore at all.”
“Interesting,” she said. She kissed me then, in a very friendly way, and then paused to study my reaction. “How do you feel now?”
“Are you sure that we’re out of food?” I asked.
She kissed me again, and her hands were all over me. When she stopped, I stumbled to the sink and sucked some water from the cold tap.
“Just as I thought after you gained your first few inches,” she whispered. “Sex, or even the thought of sex, stimulates your growth, that’s what the riddle meant about one plus one multiplying!”
“But that’s for the players of the game. I’m not even a billionaire.”
“You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were after Grisim, but they got you, too.”
“You think this is what happened to Grisim?”
“How else could he have disappeared past those gorillas outside? It’s a viable hypothesis, anyway. Did you eat or drink anything while you were with him?”
“Just a couple of peanuts.”
“That’s all, just two nuts?”
“Two, that’s all; I had just come from Burger King.”
“Did Grisim eat any nuts?”
“He was wolfing down handfuls of them when I left. The peanut jar was about a third empty when I searched his suite just now. It was full when I ate my two nuts.”
“Those were shrinking nuts," she concluded.
Shrinking nuts?
"Tell me what else you saw in Grisim’s suite.”
“Well, I for sure didn’t see a miniature Grisim.”
“What about poop?”
“None that I noticed. The place smelled good, as a matter of fact.”
“Better than it did last night?”
“Yeah; flowery. The bathroom anyway.”
“Like maybe it had just been cleaned and deodorized?”
“You might be right. By the same person or persons that gave him the jar of shrinking nuts, probably. It had to be an inside job then,” I concluded.
“Possibly Fay and/or Tweed?”
“Hell yes, and/or others,” I reasoned. “Maybe that’s why Grisim wanted an outside agency to help him. Think about it. Super rich types are always surrounded by their own people. The only way to get to him would be from the inside. He would know that.”
“What do we do now?”
“Well Baby, we can’t screw around here all day, much as I’d like to gain back my other hundred-plus pounds. We’re out of Pizza. Sex without food would probably kill me. Sex is what I want to die of someday, but not right now. Besides, I’m not going back out on that ledge again; it’s getting too damn narrow.”
“We could just wait until the cops come.”
“Now that’s another thing that bugs me, Doll. Do you believe what they said? If the cops thought there was fowl play here, no damn President of a corporation would stop them from snooping around. So why aren’t they in here yet?”
“That’s what I wanted to know,” said Fey, from the doorway.
“You all know far too much already,” said Tweed, from behind her. She and the gorilla with her held guns that pointed at both us and Fey. “Well, well. Jake Simon, I presume. I almost didn’t recognize you earlier, little man. I don’t know how the hell you figured out that eating and sex would restore your size; John sure as hell didn’t tell me about it until a minute ago.” She nodded towards the gorilla, evidently
John. “We had a hell of a shock when the pizzas got here, addressed to the police that we had never called, and then they all disappeared. Clever. Fortunately for us you ordered pizza instead of calling the cops.”
Oops.
Tweed and John moved us all into the living room, where two additional nifty looking women with guns joined us. It looked like Fey’s whole damn security squad had sold her out.
“You traitorous bastards!” said Fey, bitterly. She advanced towards Tweed with clenched fists, but got pushed back roughly by John gorilla.
“Want me to rough her up some?” asked the grinning gorilla.
“Not yet, dear,” replied the smirking Tweed. “There are a few lose ends to address first.”
“Like getting rid of us,” I ventured, referring to myself and Elaine.
“It’s not what I planned on, but I think it will work out. Jake Simon and company will be killed, hopelessly trying to defend Grisim from Fey, who will of course also be killed.” She turned towards John gorilla. “Watch them,” she ordered, as she exited the suite and locked the door behind her.
“How does it feel to be a traitor, John?” Fey asked.
“Shut up, bitch.” The big ugly lug took a swipe at Fey, slapping her across the face.
That was the opening that I’d been waiting for. I leapt forward and caught Johnny boy square on the jaw, putting everything I had into a wicked right hook.
He has supposed to drop cold, like they usually do. Instead, the ape grabbed the collar of my robe and with one hand lifted me clean off the floor, while he swung his pistol barrel at me with the other.
Fortunately, the blow never reached me. Fey kicked the wind out of his guts from one side, while Elaine clobbered him over the head with a chair from the other. The big man crumpled to the floor unconscious.
The three of us were left standing there, breathless and grinning at each other “What next?” asked Elaine.
Fey put her finger to her lips, signaling us to be quiet. Then she went around the suite and quickly retrieved four electronic ‘bugs’ from their hiding places, and placed them under a pillow on the bed. At last we could freely talk. “We go after the bastards,” suggested Fey, still steaming. She retrieved John’s gun and covered the door with it.
“That’s going to be tough, doll, with only one gun,” I pointed out.
“You’re right,” conceded Fey. “Too tough. Tweed has four armed fighters, plus herself, not counting John here. Those odds aren’t good. Direct attack should be our last resort.”
“We should call the cops,” I heard myself say. I can’t remember ever saying that, before or since, even when I used to be a cop myself.
“No good,” said Fey. “After that pizza business they sabotaged all the land-line phones.”
“Shi-i-t,” I remarked astutely. “And they already took our cell phones.”
“I don’t get it,” said Elaine.
When she says something like that, Elaine is on to something; I just had to get her to spill it. “Get what?” I cued her.
“Lots of things. Why would Fey attacking Grisim be a plausible story? And why are we still alive? What other loose ends are there to tie up, before they take care of us?”
Elaine and I stared at Fey, who remained silent. “Fess up,” I told her. “You must know more.”
“OK,” she sighed. “Two of us were part of the Games from the start: me and John. We secretly work for an independent outfit that sets up the Games. John was supposed to put trace amounts of the shrinking drug in Grisim’s food; just enough to shrink him by an inch or less. His shrinkage shouldn’t have even been noticeable.”
“Except to the bank people,” said Elaine. "They measure the Game participants to help identify them, it’s in the Game rules. A slightly short Grisim would lose out on his share of the prize dough.”
“I sure as heck noticed my own shrinking,” I said, bitterly.
“Something went wrong,” Fey replied, shaking her head.
“Johnny went in with Tweed,” concluded Elaine. “Grisim and by accident Jake were given mega-doses of the shrinking drug in those shrinking nuts, and their deaths could all be blamed on you and the Game, Fey. But what does Tweed get with Grisim gone?”
“Power. Wealth. Tweed is company president, but Grisim always ran things,” explained Fey. “She hated that situation and him, though I could never convince Grisim of that.”
“You at least got him worried enough to bring us into the case from the outside. What about the money at stake with the Game? Won’t they lose that?” I asked.
“Chicken feed, compared to control of a multi-billion dollar financial empire,” said Elaine.
As interesting as all this was, we were still trapped and going nowhere. “OK, but why haven’t they killed us yet?” I asked.
“They have to kill us at the last minute, or the cops won’t swallow their story," reasoned Elaine. "The forensics would be screwed up. But what are they waiting for?”
“They keep searching Grisim’s suite,” confided Fey.
“Grisim,” said Elaine. “That has to be it. They still can’t find Grisim! He ate so many of those damn shrinking nuts that maybe he shrank down to nothing.”
“Or maybe the overdose killed him,” said Fey. “Until a short while ago, I was hoping that he was still alive; spirited away somehow by you, Simon. But the bits and pieces that we heard you two talking about in here didn’t add up that way.” She was very upset. I got the impression that she liked Grisim, a lot.
“Well, whatever they’re doing, we can’t just stay here and wait for them to kill us,” I said.
“Grisim might still be alive,” said Elaine, comforting Fey. “He’s hiding, maybe. We have to find Grisim before they do, or before they give up looking for him and just get rid of us.”
“You’re right!” agreed Fey.
“How the hell do we do that? We’re trapped in here,” I noted.
“We have to use the ledge,” said Elaine.
“It’s too small for even me now,” I explained. “Besides, you two would never make it. Your weight isn’t distributed right.” I looked at them closely. I liked the way their weight was distributed, but those absolutely fabulous butts and boobs would topple them off the ledge and be the death of them, I was sure. I had to get a big drink of water.
“But you got back here OK from your pizza binge,” insisted Elaine. “Just one more trip to Grisim’s for the peanuts, Jake, then we can all fit on the ledge. Then maybe we can escape from the building or at least hide from them.”
“That’s nuts,” I exclaimed, not even trying to be punny.
“You have a better Idea?”
She was showing off her smarts and getting too damn bossy again, but I let it pass. Soon I was on the ledge, making for Grisim’s suite. All in all the trip wasn’t too bad, maybe because I was too worried about falling or getting shot to think about sex, which could have made me dangerously weak and dizzy with hunger again.
When I got to Grisim’s suite there were Tweed and gorilla number two, in the living room. They were on their hands and knees looking over, under and behind chairs and other furniture. “Come on out Mr. Grisim,” said Tweed, in what she must have thought was a sweet voice. “We only want to help you.” Her voice, if a super tiny Grisim could hear it at all, probably sounded like thunder.
The jar of shrinking nuts was still on the coffee table, near the bathroom door. That made sense; it had to be left there for the cops to eventually find and implicate Fey. I slipped in through the bathroom window quietly and peaked out into the living room. I was lucky. While Tweed and her buddy were occupied with chairs on the other side of the room, I grabbed the nuts, and beat it back out through the bathroom window.
Five minutes later Elaine was counting the nuts to figure out how many Grisim ate, and talking about how much we should shrink. "Half a peanut or so would probably get me and Fey small enough to walk on the ledge. At least one of us has to stay big enough to handle
windows and carry the others to Grisim's suite. But someone needs to be shrunk down to Grisim-size to talk to him and sex him bigger. That could be dangerous, maybe fatal; we still don't know the side effects from taking so much shrinking drug."
"The sex requirement leaves me out," I said, with relief, knowing for sure from his blonde bombshell staff selection that he wasn’t gay. Besides, I sure as hell didn't want to be shrunk again.
"I could do it," said Elaine. "But Grisim doesn't know me from Adam." She and I both eyeballed our companion.
"I'll do it," stated Fey, settling the issue. "I’m not leaving here without Grisim. How small will I get?"
"That would be useful to know," acknowledged Elaine. "We know approximately how many peanuts Grisim ate, but I don't know how much he shrank." Then she started yapping about assumptions about linearity, empirical models, having data on only one instance of the phenomenon that was outside the range of interest anyway, and something about having too many unknowns to answer that question. I didn’t understand any of it, and even worse, we were wasting time. The woman was too damn smart for our own good.
"The bottom line is this," I told Fey. "If you eat the peanuts, we’ll find out soon enough how small you get. We need to get moving. Either eat those peanuts, or we have to do the frontal assault.”
Elaine gave Fey a large pile of peanuts, and ate just half of one herself.
Fey had barely finished hers when the process began. Apparently the more peanuts involved, the faster the reaction. “I have to go to the bathroom really bad. Is that supposed to happen?” she asked innocently. The poor bastard. We hadn’t told her what to expect.
Fey and Elaine retreated to the bathroom. I guarded the door and our friend Johnny, who had regained consciousness and was flexing his over-sized muscles against the electrical cords that we had tied him up with. I blind-folded his ugly puss. So I was doing my share, but I knew that the women, and especially Fey, were going through hell. Of course, since they were women and build for stuff like childbirth and sometimes getting beat on by men, so they could take it, I figured. Only a few pitiful moans and a lot of toilet flushes could be heard from the bathroom over the sound of the TV.
After fifteen minutes, Elaine emerged from the bathroom looking like a kid-sister version of her former self in baggy clothes. Actually, she seemed almost normal in size compared to me for the first time all day. I was finally bigger than her, like I was supposed to be. She looked damn good actually, and I suddenly felt hungry and thirsty. “You OK, Baby?” I asked her. I pulled her to me and gave her a deep kiss.
She responded hungrily for a moment then abruptly pushed me away, but she was smiling. “Later, big boy,” she said. “We’ll crush Jane.” She pulled some kind of little plastic make-up thing-a-ma-jig from a shirt pocket, opened it, and held it out for me to see.
“Jesus-H-farking Chee-rist!” I exclaimed, as I squinted at it. A tiny naked woman less than an inch tall waved at me and gave me either the OK sign or the finger, I couldn’t tell which. “She’s H-O scale! No wonder Tweed can’t find Grisim! Hell, maybe he’s on the bottom of someone’s shoe by now, been carried off by a spider, or flushed down a toilet!”
“Hopefully not,” said Elaine. “Hey, be careful; don’t breathe so hard, you’ll blow her out of there.”
A few minutes later we were outside of Grisim’s Suite, peeking in at Tweed and Gorilla number two. They were obviously tired of looking for Grisim. “I don’t get it, where the hell can the little twerp be?” Tweed shouted. “You were supposed to grab him.” She poked the gorilla.
“I’m sorry Ms. Tweed; I busted in here fifteen minutes after Simon left, and Grisim was already nowhere to be found. Just some poop in the toilet and a little on the bathroom floor. I still say he shrank down to nothing.”
“Then how do we prove he’s dead? Hell, I figured that an overdose would promptly kill the bastard, and we’d find him lying around in here, only slightly undersized. An overdose of practically any damn thing kills!”
Just then John and one of the security chicks came bursting in. “They’re gone, Alicia. Got the drop on me and must have gone outside on the ledge again.”
My heart stopped beating at that point. In moments they were at our window hauling Elaine and me inside at gun point. We were prisoners again and John took back his gun. This time they were taking no chances; they tied both of us up immediately. Of course they noticed that there were only two of us and that Elaine was smaller, but they didn’t know where Fey was or what she had become.
“Where the hell is Fey, Simon?” they demanded again and again, as the two gorillas worked me over real good. But I wasn’t talking.
When they started to slap Elaine around, something in me snapped. “OK, OK, I’ll tell you!” I whined. “She fell.”
“Fell?” responded Tweed, with a gleeful smirk on her face that I’d never forget.
“Off the ledge. When the cops find her they’ll be up here.” Of course, I knew that would be unlikely. There was a big wooded area in back of the hotel, and railroad tracks in back of that; that’s why folks could prance around half the day on that ledge and not be noticed.
Tweed must have known it too, because she was still smiling. “John, send someone down to look for the remains, just in case,” she ordered. “Everyone else should fan out and search all the rooms along that ledge. It wouldn’t surprise me if Mr. Simon is mistaken.” They gagged us, and the bitch kicked me before they left.
“Oomph,” said Elaine, through her gag. I turned my head to watch her. She was wiggling and grunting, apparently trying to get out of the ropes, but all she could do was squeeze her little make-up box from her pocket. Only as it clattered to the floor and popped open did I realize that Fey was still in the damn thing, and had probably been killed by the fall, which must have seemed like a hundred feet to her.
To my amazement a tiny figure climbed out of the box, and then climbed to the top of it, apparently to get a better view. A half a minute later, little Jane jumped down and ran across the room, where she was quickly joined by another equally small creature. It was Grisim, it had to be! The two hugged and stood there for a short time, probably talking. Then they headed for me.
I fought the urge to kick or twitch when I felt them climbing my leg, yanking on my leg-hairs. Actually, it tickled like crazy. They felt like bugs; it’s a good thing I was tied up or I might have swatted them as a reflex action. It was a relief when they climbed onto the outside of my robe; I had been afraid that they’d just continue on up my leg and underneath the robe, to where no man has gone before. I couldn’t even feel them on the robe, which was fine by me.
In a short time they were standing on my hand, jumping up and down and pointing at the end-table next to the chair that I was tied to. Straining at my bonds I was able to reach close to the edge of the table, and they nimbly hopped onto it like a pair of grasshoppers. On the table was an assortment of snacks from last night, which the couple quickly explored. They heaped a little pile of chips, cheese dip, and Jell-O at one end of the table. Then they stood closely together. Then they were lying down together and rolling around.
I thought for a moment that they were fighting, but then I suddenly realized that they were humping like crazed rabbits. After only a short time they stopped, slowly crawled to their stash of food, and quickly ate it all. Then they were making whoopee. Then they were gathering food and eating again. Then they were making love again. Then they were eating. Then humping. Then they were gathering food. Then screwing. Then they were eating. I lost track of how many times they did it, all in only a few minutes. All the time they were getting bigger. When they reached hamster size they pushed the remaining food off the table, jumped down to the floor, and to my relief finally did their love making out of sight. I could hear their shrill little chipmunk voices though, which was almost as bad.
Finally, I felt a gentle tugging at the ropes around my legs. Fey and Grisim, each about two feet tall, were untying me.
/> “We ran out of food,” Jane explained, in a voice so high that I could just barely hear her. The tiny cutie was wearing a hand-towel sarong thank goodness; I was hungry enough already.
“Lock and barricade the doors,” said Elaine, as soon as she could speak. “They’ll be back any second, and we’re finally all here for them to kill.” She was being bossy again, but I let it pass.
“OK genius, now what?” I asked her, after the doors were blocked shut.
“We must inform the authorities immediately,” said Grisim.
Dah! “How?” I asked.
“Help me make rope,” said Elaine. She soon had us all tearing sheets in strips and pulling chords from the draperies. Our makeshift rope wouldn’t hold my weight or Elaine’s, which is of course why we hadn’t tried it earlier.
“I get it. I have to climb down and get help,” said Fey.
“Not without me, darling,” said Grisim resolutely.
Darling?
“He’s right,” Elaine said. “You both have to go. Grisim’s dead once they break in here.”
We gave the two courageous little people instructions and phone booth quarters, and lowered them to the ground far below, apparently safely. They might still have a dangerous time of it, dodging stray dogs, drunken psychos, and other average city dwellers, not to mention the goon that Tweed sent down there to search for Fey’s body. Still, they had a chance of making it.
But Elaine and I would probably be dead before help arrived; Elaine knew it and I knew it. We looked into each other's eyes, and held each other tight. It made me hungry as hell, but I didn’t care.
“You know,” I said, caught up in the moment, “I was thinking of making you a full partner.”
“Equal pay?” she asked, unbelieving.
“We already get equal pay,” I said. It was true; as meager as her pay was, I didn’t take home any more than she did.
“I knew that,” she said. “I just wanted you to say it.”
“Now how did you know that?” I asked, amazed.
“I do the books, silly. I’m not dumb, you know.”
“That’s an understatement,” I acknowledged. “But you’ve got to forget about Joe Kebony. This partnership has to be exclusive.”
“Joe who?” she asked excitedly, and gave me a deep kiss.
There was pounding and shouting at the door. Tweed and company had returned. They were really pissed off already, and it would get even worse when they noticed missing sheets and chords and people. The door shuttered as the gorillas started to bust through. I figured we were goners, but Elaine figured different.
“Out on the ledge partner, it could buy us some time,” Elaine said, pulling me to the window.
Soon we were edging along the ledge, this time hand in hand. More noises and shouts came from Grisim’s suite. Any second, I expected to see Tweed or John at the window pointing a gun at us. They wouldn’t even have to shoot us. It wouldn’t take much; soon we’d both be falling close to a hundred feet.
Really weird thoughts went through my head just then. That it wouldn’t be too bad a way to go, together like that. That at least we had saved our client. Stupid thoughts. Then I suddenly realized that it would be the worst damn way to go, together like that, when we were really caring so much for each other, and the hell with clients, rich and poor alike. We held on to each other and kissed as the weird thoughts spun through my head.
There was more yelling and shuffling around sounds from inside the room and then silence. “You guys staying out there all damn day?” said a familiar voice. Joe Kebony’s ugly mug was grinning at us from the window a few yards away. He was a beautiful sight.
Joe and a couple more cops were inside, but Tweed and her goons had already been arrested and carted away. Grisim was there too, the moment we got inside, handing me a check with an integer and whole bunch of zeros tagged on after it. He and Jane were several inches taller; they must have been at it again somewhere along the way. “We have to go get ready for the bank,” he said, as he pulled Fey into a suite and shut the door. They were carrying several big buckets of chicken. Elaine eyed our check from Grisim and gave me a big kiss. The shrinking nuts case was history and I was headed for the bank too.
“Does this mean our date is off, Baby?” Joe asked Elaine. Then he finally noticed our unusual appearance. “Hey! You two guys shrank too!” he observed. What a genius.
“Our honeymoon will take care of that,” said Elaine. She smiled and kissed me again.
Honeymoon? It never fails. Mention partnership and a woman figures marriage, honeymoon, and the whole damn nine-yards. I had been thinking more along the lines of just a quickie and more pizza back at the office, but I let it pass.
****
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There Goes the Neighborhood Page 4
