1 Take the Monkeys and Run

by Karen Cantwell

  I could hear Roz screaming. The next thing I knew, I was in the back of the Town Car banging heads with Roz. We hugged each other and didn’t let go. I could taste blood in my mouth.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  “I think he broke my hand!” she cried.

  The car lurched forward, moving at a speed way too fast for the roads of Rustic Woods. I was thrown against Roz as the car careened around a bend and changed direction. I was trying to figure out where we were, without a whole lot of luck, since my head was throbbing.

  “Do you still have your cell phone?” I asked Roz.

  “No,” she said. “He took it and threw it in the bushes.”

  Okay, so they weren’t as stupid as I thought. It was so dark, I couldn’t make out the other figure in the front seat. I assumed it would be the same pug-faced, gun-wielding goon from earlier, but I decided to find out for sure. “Hey,” I asked, craning my neck, “where are you taking us?” The shooter in the passenger seat turned around. Yup. Same Pug Mug.

  “You don’t follow directions so good, do you?” he asked. “Dis is an unfortunate ting for you.” Wow, I thought, they really do talk like that.

  The car weaved up and down winding roads, leading me to believe we were leaving Rustic Woods, heading maybe into nearby Oakton or Vienna. It was hard to tell and my sense of direction was all out of whack. By looking out the windshield I could see very few oncoming headlights, so it was likely that we weren’t on any major roads. Roz and I shivered, still gripping each other for our lives. Literally, I think.

  “Can you tell where we’re going?” I asked her. She shook her head “no.” I couldn’t see her face very well in the dark, but I suspected we were asking ourselves the same questions—will I ever see my kids again? Will I live to see another day?

  “I should have listened to Colt and stayed out of it,” I said. She nodded “yes.”

  Outside, the dark storm clouds made the dark night even darker. I could barely make out a faint outline of trees. I tried to guess the time. Working my way backwards from when I’d left the hotel, I figured it must have been nearly five o’clock, maybe five-thirty at the latest.

  Our speed had slowed from our initial abduction. From the feel of it, I guessed we were moving thirty to forty miles per hour and, of course, slower on the turns. My eyes had adjusted somewhat to the dark inside the car and I located the very vague outline of the door handle. I looked at Roz, who was looking out the window. I tapped her on the hand. When I had her attention, I pointed to the handle and made a motion with my own hand. Without words, I was suggesting we try to jump out—attempt an escape. She looked at me like I had suffered brain damage and shook her head violently. I didn’t think it was such a crazy idea. Bruce Willis did things like that all the time, and he was still alive.

  “Come on,” I whispered. She kept shaking her head. I nodded. She shook.

  “Hey yous,” said Elvis, spotting us in his rearview mirror. “No use tryin’ those doors—we got ’em locked. You think we’re stupid or sumthin’?”

  “No!” Roz and I shouted in unison.

  “Just sit back and enjoy the ride. You ain’t goin’ nowhere ’cept where we say you’re goin’.”

  I fell back against the seat, feeling a little nauseous and a lot defeated. Roz blew out a loud sigh and joined me in my misery.

  Pug Mug turned around and faced me. “We watched your video on YouTube. Pretty funny stuff.”

  Words escaped me. “What?” I managed to ask.

  “What song was that?” He was looking to Elvis for an answer.

  “Madonna—‘Like a Virgin,’” he said.

  “No,” I corrected him. “‘Material Girl.’”

  “Yeah!” shouted Pug Mug. “That’s the one. Very funny. You got talent. You oughta do more of those.”

  “Thank you,” I said, smiling. Roz gawked at me. I shrugged at her. “They like my video.”

  “Do you mind me asking,” I continued, curious, “how you found my video on YouTube?”

  Elvis sneered in the rearview mirror. “We got our ways, little lady.” Holy cannoli.

  For some reason, I kept talking. “The last time I looked,it had like twenty-five views.”

  “Oh, no,” said Pug Mug with surprising animation. “More’n that.” He looked to his co-kidnapper once again for help. “What was it? Ten tousand—sumthin’ like that?”

  “Ten tousand?” I repeated stupidly in my excitement.

  “Hey, you makin’ fun a de way I talk?”

  “No! I . . . I bit my tongue. It hurth.” I touched my tongue to prove my pain and affliction. Roz looked disgusted. I kept talking, figuring maybe if we made nice with them, they wouldn’t have the heart to kill us.

  “I was thinking of making another one, you know.”

  “Yeah?” asked Pug Mug, leaning over his seat now with one elbow hanging over. “What song was you tinkin’ of?”

  “‘These Boots are Made for Walking.’”

  “Good one! Nancy Sinatra!”

  “Actually, I was thinking of the Jessica Simpson version.”

  “Jessica who? Naw! You gotta do Nancy! She’s Frank’s girl. Hey—you should do a Sinatra song—Frankie’s the best.”

  Lordy. Could these guys get more stereotypical?

  “Oh, yeah,” I said, realizing too late that I didn’t sound convincing enough if I wanted to create a strong bridge of affinity with this felonious fellow.

  “Absolutely. Love Frank.” Actually, I did love Frank Sinatra, so it wasn’t a tough sell. Roz blew out another more disgusted sigh. Pug Mug didn’t like her reaction.

  “What? You don’t like Frankie?” he growled. Roz froze.

  “Are you kidding me? She loves him. She came over just last week and we watched her favorite—From Here to Eternity.”

  “Yeah?” He smiled, content, I was guessing, that we weren’t Sinatra-haters. He pointed at Roz’s hand. “How’s that hand a yours?” he asked. Roz opened and closed the fingers of her right hand a couple of times. “It’s okay, I guess,” she answered warily.

  “That’s good—sorry ’bout dat. Didn’t mean to be so rough.” Roz’s eyes opened wide like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Elvis slapped Pug Mug in the chest. “Ay! Stupido! Put a plug in it!” Pug Mug plugged it and was quiet for the rest of our trip.

  Finally, after what seemed like hours (but was probably only minutes) the car pulled onto a gravel driveway and crunched its way to a stop. Both back doors were opened and Roz and I were yanked out of each door, respectively. I felt something hard in my back. Gun, I thought. So much for making friends. I had learned my first lesson regarding men of the Mafia: a mutual affinity for Frank Sinatra would not necessarily save your life. This couldn’t be happening, I thought. Just a few days ago my biggest worry was Captain Crunch: with Crunch Berries or without? Now it seemed I was standing at Death’s doorstep.

  Large floodlights positioned on the garage illuminated the area, and I was able to make out our surroundings pretty well. The car was parked at the top of a long gravel driveway that wound down a good three or four hundred feet, taking a steep dive at the last one hundred feet where it met up with the main road. I couldn’t see a street sign, so I didn’t know the name of the road. A monstrously large, two-story brick house stood at the end of the driveway. A three-car garage was attached to the house. On top of the house was a unique sort of widow’s walk with a wrought iron railing. It looked like a typical Northern Virginia McMansion with a Victorian twist. The front porch light was on, as well as the large floods from the garage to the driveway, and I could see lights in a few windows here and there on the front of the house. The two thugs had brought Roz and me together near the front of the car and were beginning to walk us, side by side, around the garage and to the back of the house.

  “Barb!” Roz whispered. “I found this house when I was researching House of Many Bones. It’s owned by the same person.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.


  “Pretty sure I saw it on Google Earth—I can tell because of the widow’s walk and the gravel driveway. If it’s the same one, then we’re in Fairfax Station.” That made sense, based on how long we’d been driving and the number of twists and turns we’d taken. Fairfax Station is a good ten to fifteen miles from Rustic Woods, and consists mainly of very large new houses or small old ranches on multi-acre properties. I estimated that the land surrounding this house was at least ten acres. I couldn’t see another house from where I stood.

  “What’s the name?” I whispered.

  “Crooks. Fred Crooks. He owns ten houses in Fairfax County.”

  I felt a thump to the side of my head.

  “Shut your mouths, hear me?” said Elvis, shoving the gun harder into my back.

  Crooks. Peggy’s story about the crazy lady at the wedding was beginning to make sense.

  As they brought us around to the back of the house, I saw that the gravel drive extended around behind the house, and parked there, parallel to the back of the garage, was a tan Prius. Another floodlight illuminated this back area of the house. There was a single door with glass panes on the back of the garage, and between the car and the garage were three large metal trashcans. In the back window of the Prius were several small stuffed animals. The car looked familiar to me—it seemed I had seen it before. I didn’t have time to give it much thought, because we were shoved past the car and through another door that led down some dark stairs into the back basement portion of the house. I stumbled and almost fell over, because we couldn’t see and Roz stepped on my ankle.

  “Ouch!” I yelled.

  “Sorry,” she whispered.

  “I’ll live,” I said. Or maybe not.

  “I said to keep your traps shut!” yelled Elvis, pushing us both. We fell down three or four more steps onto a landing that opened up into an amazingly spacious, nearly empty recreation room. There was a lot of chattering and screeching. A sound I remembered very well. Along one whole wall to our left was a set of black metal cages. Monkeys. Rhesus Macaques. Four of them. Our arrival had seemed to set them off, and the noise was intense. Roz and I struggled to our feet and as we did so, we both spotted the same thing at the same time. In the far corner to our right was a body curled up in a ball. Conscious, unconscious, dead, not dead—I couldn’t tell. I saw the red hair and recognized the bright white and orange “Kiss Me, I’m Italian” sweatshirt.

  They had poor Peggy too.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ELVIS AND PUG MUG SHOVED Roz and me to the floor, threatening certain bodily injury if we tried to leave. Elvis took off across the expansive room, disappearing up a second set of stairs that I assumed led to the main level of the house. We were left with Pug Mug standing, arms crossed, to watch over us, his gun protruding visibly from the waist of his pants. This was the first time I had really seen him head to toe. He was actually quite short and solid. Not fat, but not thin. Bulky—muscular, possibly. He wore a very nice black leather jacket and black dress slacks that I guessed had a designer label. He might not have been the prettiest guy in town, but he was a snazzy dresser.

  The two of us crawled to the corner, keeping one eye on Pug Mug. Roz immediately put her face down close to Peggy’s. “She’s breathing,” she whispered. Thank God. Roz shook her a bit and Peggy, stirred then opened her eyes. She was slow to come around, but she eventually recognized us both and seemed to remember where she was. We warned her to whisper, putting our fingers to our lips—one stray vocal emission could mean the end of us.

  “Holy cannoli,” she whispered back. “My head hurts.” She rubbed her scalp.

  “How did you get here?” I asked her.

  “Oh, man, it really hurts.” She rubbed her fingers through her red locks and then tipped her head to toward us. “Do you see blood?”

  Roz poked through her hair briefly. “No blood. You have a nice welt there, though. What happened?”

  “Give me a minute,” Peggy said, “I’m still really woozy. Is the room spinning?” She laid down on her back and closed her eyes.

  I took a moment to scan the room while she rested. There wasn’t much to see. The walls were white and bare. Not a picture. Not a clock. Not even a poster of Frank Sinatra. The carpet we sat on was a tan Berber that appeared to be brand new. The room was vast—probably large enough to fit two pool tables easily, together with a dreamy personal theater—yet there wasn’t a lick of furniture, with the exception of one lone black barstool which stood near the wrought iron monkey cages. Pug Mug saw me scoping out the place, but he didn’t move.

  Finally, Peggy sat up, ready to talk. “So I did that research you asked me to do. I was on the Internet waiting for the kids to get off the bus. Almost the first thing I find, when I search on the name ‘Tito Buttaro,’ is that he’s been missing for fifteen years. Maybe it was thirteen. Fifteen. Thirteen. Something like that. Anyway, they called him Tito ‘The Butler’ Buttaro. He was some Mafia big-wig but I don’t think he was what they call a ‘boss’. . .” Peggy was getting excited and her voice raised a couple of octaves in her frenzy. We put our fingers to our lips again, warning her to keep it to a whisper. Every once in a while, we’d peer over at Pug Mug to make sure we weren’t being too loud for him. Quite frankly, the monkeys were so loud they could have drowned out the Boston Pops. This appeared to get under his skin, because once, he yelled out, “Shut up, ya damn apes!”

  “Anyway,” she continued, barely audible now, “his wife, Viviana Buttaro, has become semi-famous. She wrote a book and she’s been doing the media circuit. She claims some guy—I forget his name—whacked Tito. Boy, I just love that word, don’t you? Whacked. Whacked. By the way, did you know there’s a Mafia for Dummies? I found it on Amazon.”

  Peggy’s inability to stay on topic was driving me crazy. “Peggy, what about Tito and his wife?”

  “Viviana. I found two different video interviews with her promoting her book—they were probably done five or six years ago—she’s kinda looney. She rambles on a lot and doesn’t really stick to one story.”

  “But how did you end up here?” Roz pressed.

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. So I’m finding all of this really cool information—there was a lot of stuff—you know, it’s really creepy how real it all is. These aren’t very nice people. But anyway, my doorbell rings and it’s Maxine,” she said.

  That was it! I knew I recognized that Prius. It was Maxine’s. The stuffed animals in the rear window were poodles.

  “Maxine?” asked Roz.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought when I saw her on my front step. She’s not someone who usually just stops by my house for a chat or anything, right? I know her, but not that well. She said she was just taking Puddles for a walk and was interested if I knew any more about what you two had found out about the vacant house. So, I tell her all about what I found on the Internet, about Tito and Viviana Buttaro . . .” She stopped talking abruptly because we heard movement on the stairs.

  I was quickly coming to the conclusion that somehow our mobster friends must have scooped up both Maxine and Peggy. But that didn’t explain why Maxine’s car was outside. They must have kidnapped her in her own car.

  Then I heard the barking. I’d know that ear piercing yap anywhere—it was Puddles the poodle. Just seconds after the barking started, Puddles came tearing down the stairs, with Maxine following behind. Puddles was dancing his poodle dance in circles around Maxine, who stood staring at us from across the room. She looked amazingly calm, I thought, for having just been kidnapped.

  “Maxine!” I called out. “Are you okay?”

  Peggy leaned into me and whispered in my ear. “Barb. Don’t you see? She’s one of them.”

  “Well, if it isn’t the Trouble Triplets,” Maxine sneered. “Puddles! Shut up!” She pointed a skinny finger to the floor. “Sit!” Puddles sat. “Good dog.” She smiled. “Poodles are smart. You three—you’re not too smart, huh?” She had traded her Canadian “eh?” for a Jersey It
alian “huh?”

  She was like Sybil, this woman. It was like aliens had come and traded her with a criminal look-alike. No more neighborly lady. This was Al Capone in a peasant skirt.

  “She’s kinda creepy, isn’t she?” whispered Peggy.

  “I’m really confused,” said Roz.

  “My knee-capping story was supposed to scare you broads. Normal people would leave well enough alone. What’s up with you three anyway?”

  “Well,” I said, “I had monkeys in my trees. What would you do?” That didn’t make sense when I said it out loud.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” replied Maxine.

  “She’s right, Barb,” whispered Peggy, “that doesn’t make sense.”

  “Peggy!” yelled Roz. “You can stop whispering now!” Roz was getting testy. Understandably. A kidnapping at gunpoint will do that to you. We all heard the clacking of what sounded like high heels on a hardwood floor, then a door opening and footsteps coming down the carpeted stairs.

  Through the banisters, a figure revealed itself as it descended step by step. We saw the shoes first—three-inch-high red spikes; then the calves (I had better); the thighs (way too much cellulite); crimson miniskirt, white low-cut silk blouse (I was guessing the boobs weren’t real); the face (three inches of foundation, ultra-red rouge, fake eyelashes and probably at least three facelifts worth of stretched skin); and finally a towering bee hive of platinum blonde hair (with black roots). This creature appeared oblivious to the fact that it was no longer 1965. She sucked on a Virginia Slim and blew the smoke out slowly as she sauntered our way. She stood close, looking down and contemplating us while taking another drag. She tapped one foot. The smoke came out through her nose.

  “So,” she said finally. “You know who I am?” Her accent was thick New Jersey and by the deep, coarse sound of it, I’d guess she sucked down one of those cigarettes about every three minutes. She was a walking lung cancer ad.