1 Take the Monkeys and Run

by Karen Cantwell

  “I don’t know. He just told me to get myself here. I guess we just sit and wait.”

  “We can’t wait for too long,” said Roz, the sniffles winding down. “You’re just supposed to be ‘cleaning up,’ remember? That can’t take forever.”

  I spied a small frosted window on the wall opposite the sink. “Maybe we aren’t supposed to wait. Maybe we’re supposed to go out that window.” Moving to twist the latch open, my hands stopped mid-air at the sound of shouting.

  “What’s going on in there?” It was Frankie. Peggy closed the bathroom door, leaving me alone. I decided to lock the door for added safety. All I could hear were muffled voices.

  “She’s almost done,” Peggy shouted back. Since they were the only words I could hear clearly, and since they sounded especially loud, I assumed she had meant for me to hear her. I put the toilet seat down and sat, my back to the black shower curtain. Muffled voices drifted through the closed door, but I couldn’t make out clear sentences anymore. Suddenly, a crack of lightning lit up the frosted window pane, followed immediately by near deafening thunder that shook the house to its rafters. The lights popped off and women screamed. Definitely Peggy and Roz. Before I could jump up, the shower curtain behind me swung open and a strong, calloused hand grasped my mouth, squelching the scream that was about to escape.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I WAS JERKED INTO THE bathtub. Animalistic fight-or-flight instincts took over, and I thrashed about wildly in the pitch-black room. My attempts at escape seemed futile, since I was obviously struggling with a large, strong man. There was also that familiar cologne scent from the bedroom. I was beginning to wish I had joined my mother in her venture to master the martial art of Tae Kwon Do. A black belt would have been helpful in such a situation. It was times like this, I thought, that hindsight was definitely 20/20. I quickly calculated that the next best thing to a black belt was teeth—and I had those. I pulled at the man’s hands as hard as I could, making just enough room to open my lips and go for a chomp. Unfortunately, the sadly weak bite only caused a temporary release in the strength holding me. Definitely not enough to allow me a chance to flee. I remained bound by his arms, one of his hands still cupping my mouth. He whispered in my ear.

  “Lady, stop fightin’ me!” It was Elvis! My panic quadrupled. Now I knew I was a dead woman, the first nail pounded securely into my awaiting coffin. He whispered in my ear again. “Listen, will ya? Settle.” It was true what they say—your life does start passing before your eyes as you stand on the threshold of death. Mental pictures flashed like images in a slide show. Me blowing out candles on my fifth birthday; my dad pushing me off on a triumphantly successful glide when I was trying to learn to ride my shiny blue bike; my parents standing on either side of me, cap on my curly mess of a head the day I graduated from high school; my best friend, Julie, and me, holding up mugs of beers and smiling joyously the day I turned twenty-one; Howard and me on our perfectly sunny wedding day; me holding a newborn Callie in my arms; Bethany presenting me with her personal Mother-of-the-Year Award at her preschool Mother’s Day party; Amber beautifully costumed as Tinker Bell last Halloween . . . each new picture of my life seemed to bring me greater and greater strength to survive. I couldn’t die. I was a mother and I would live to see my children again! I must have slowed my struggle as all of the thoughts rushed through my mind, because Elvis whispered in my ear again.

  “There. That’s good.” Everything seemed to move in slow motion. “Now,” he continued in a muted tone, “I have a message for you from Sammy.”

  Who? Where had I just heard that name? Sammy, Sammy . . . I was running the name through my memory data bank. I wasn’t registering that name. Then BANG! I got a match. I felt a loosening on Elvis’ grip over my mouth and I pulled away enough to shout, “Do you mean Howard?” Another crack of lightning lit up the room for a second, sending another shock wave through the house.

  “Shhhhhh!” Elvis cupped my mouth again. “You gotta be quiet. This ain’t gonna work if you don’t keep it down!” What was he saying? What ain’t gonna work? I was confused, but he had my attention. I needed to hear what he had to tell me about Howard. “You gonna fight me? You gonna scream?” I shook my head “no.” He released his grip on my mouth. I was panting like a sheep dog on a hundred-degree day. Elvis removed his arm from its hold around my body and it sounded like he was rooting around in his pants. The next thing I knew, the bathroom was dimly lit by the flame of his disposable lighter.

  Our bodies were embarrassingly entwined in the bathtub, with my legs sticking straight up in the air. I must have hit my elbow on the side when he’d pulled me into it, because it ached now. I rubbed it, becoming simultaneously aware that Roz and Peggy were calling out my name in loud whispers. Elvis put his finger to his mouth, letting me know I still needed to keep things mum, then whispered, “Tell ’em to keep it down, that you got you a plan.” I nodded obediently, still not sure if this action would end in self-preservation or self-annihilation. I crawled out of the bathtub, moving toward the door on my hands and knees.

  They were just on the other side of the door, whispering to me again. “Barb! Are you okay?” They were trying the door knob, but it was still locked.

  “Keep it down!” I whispered. I actually didn’t know why we had to be whispering, but that’s what the man had ordered, so I figured it was necessary for some reason. “Keep it down—I . . . I . .” I had a momentary lapse in memory, forgetting what I was supposed to say. Oh yeah! “I got me a plan,” I whispered back through the door.

  “What?”

  “I mean, I’ve got a plan.”

  “Let us in.” I looked to Elvis to see if that was allowed. He was having some difficulty extracting his large frame from the small tub, and our meager light flicked out briefly every time his thumb lost contact with the lighter igniter. He shook his head, telling me they had to stay out.

  “Why?” I asked him.

  Peggy heard me, and thinking I was talking to them, answered. “Why not? Come on, open the door!”

  Having successfully rolled himself out of the tub enclosure, Elvis got down on one knee, moved in as close as he could to my ear and whispered into it. “Ax ’em where’s Frankie at, anyway?”

  “Where’s Frankie?”

  “We don’t know,” Peggy replied.

  Elvis repeated his mouth-to-ear whisper maneuver, which was really starting to gross me out. “Ax ’em is da bedroom door open, or closed?”

  “Is da bedroom door open or closed?”

  “Why are you talking like that?”

  It was a strange habit I had, picking up accents easily. The last time we visited my great Aunt Gertrude Fenstermacher in Sheboygan, it only took me ten minutes to start uttering, “ja?” and “Ach mein Gott!”

  “Is it opened or closed? Just tell me.”

  “Must be closed. It’s pitch-black, but I didn’t hear anyone open it. Frankie told us to stay put when the lights went out and I think he went off somewhere. Wait . . . there’s a little light . . . from under this door. Do you have light in there? Did you find a flash light?”

  Elvis moved in again for yet another command and finally, repulsion got the best of me. I just couldn’t stand his slobbery lips tickling my ear anymore. Without thinking about the consequences, I shouted at him, and put my hands up to pre-empt the inevitable. “Don’t do that again! Come on! Ask them yourself! And why are we whispering, anyway?”

  “We can’t lets Viv and Max hear—why you tink?”

  Curiosity must have been getting the best of them, because I heard them fiddling with the door knob. It sounded like they were trying to unlock it.

  “Barb!” Peggy said. “What’s going on?” Before I knew what was happening, the door was falling open and Peggy was tumbling into the bathroom and onto the hard tile floor with Roz falling on top of her. In Peggy’s hand was a hair pin. Exactly at the same time, a strange rumbling, almost chugging sound like the sound of a lawn mower being started, preceded
the slow return of electricity to the house. Instead of popping on, like I’m used to after a power outage, the lights came on dimly at first, then gaining in intensity, as if the electricity was getting to them slowly.

  “Generator,” Elvis informed us. “Frankie’s the only one besides me knows how to start that ting.” Wide eyed and startled, like two bush babies caught in the light of a nocturnal nature photographer, Roz and Peggy were frozen in an awkward pile on the floor. They stared at Elvis, then at me, and luckily, didn’t say a word.

  Elvis handed me my cell phone. “Here, call Sammy.” He shook his head and corrected himself. “Howard. Call Howard. He wants to talk to yous.” I blew out an exuberant sigh of relief, taking the phone from his hand. My Howard was still alive. There was hope. Maybe Officer Brad was with him. Maybe they had the place surrounded. Those SWAT helicopters were on their way, after all.

  While I touched the number one and “talk” on my phone, connecting me to Howard’s cell, Elvis reprimanded Roz and Peggy. “Yous two there—get in here and close dat door! Yous want to mess dis whole ting up?” He pointed to the bathtub. “In there,” he said. I understood his point. Even though the house was massively large, the bathroom we were occupying was quite small. Roz and Peggy climbed sheepishly into the cramped tub, facing each other and hugging their knees.

  There were two rings and then connection. “Barb?” It was Howard! The last time I remembered being so excited to hear his voice was the time he called me from the grocery store to tell me he was bringing home wine from a bottle instead of from a box. Immediately, though, I could tell the connection was bad.

  “Howard?” Nothing. He was gone. I looked at the display on my phone. I’d lost the connection. I only had one little flickering bar. Not now! No, no, no!!!! I shook the phone, as if that would bring him back on the line. Getting an emotional grip, I touched “one” and hit “talk” again. Weak rings connected to a barely audible Howard. “Crackle, crackle . . . Bar, crackle, crackle . . . me?” Dead again.

  “This isn’t happening!” I whisper-screamed as I tried to strangle the poor phone’s little neck. If my life didn’t depend on eventually connecting to Howard, I am very positive I would have chucked the gizmo hard to the floor, smashing it into pieces.

  Peggy broke her silence. “What’s your network? If it’s Phone-America, I have trouble with that one all of the time. I can’t ever get a good signal. Maybe you should switch.” Either Elvis didn’t like her criticism of Phone-America or he just didn’t want us bringing attention to our happy little convention in the bathroom.

  “Yous,” he whispered, pointing at her, his finger so close to her face she went cross-eyed. “Keep dat trap shut.” Then he played Charades, imitating a zipper being closed across his mouth.

  Peggy mimicked his motion and nodded, expressing that she understood. I figured that might shut Peggy up for, say, five minutes. Then he pointed at both of them and said, “Stay put—don’t move from dat spot. We’ll be back.” He moved to the door, putting his ear close. His one visible eye moved around in its socket, as if its motion coincided with his thoughts of what he heard or didn’t hear. Finally, he pulled his head away, saying to me, “We’ll go out in da room—you go to da farthest window, hear? See if yous can call from there. I gots to stand at the door and be ready for Frankie—no doubt he’s gonna be here any minute.”

  Elvis opened the door ever so slowly, peeking out to make sure no one was in the room. He motioned that the coast was clear, opening the door wide enough for us both to slip out. Two very large windows met in the far left corner of the room. Between me and those windows was the bed. To our left, about ten feet away, was the door that opened up to the hallway. I crawled across the bed, then down onto the floor and over to the corner, where I crouched. The windows were quite large, nearly as tall as the wall itself, and probably four feet wide, making it nearly impossible to stay hidden from the outside. Rain pounded hard against them. I looked over at Elvis. He stood poised at the door, his gun now at the ready, pointed at the door. Was he going to whack Frankie? What sort of convoluted Mafia mess had I gotten myself mixed up in?

  I flipped my phone open, but before my finger could make contact, the phone started ringing. I must have inadvertently taken it off silent mode when I’d dialed Howard the first time. I touched “talk” without looking at the caller ID. “Howard?” The responding voice was distinctly feminine, and distinctly that of my mother.

  “Barbara? Barbara? Are you okay? Oh my God, I’ve been so worried about you!”

  “Mother! I can’t talk now!”

  Unfazed and talking a million miles a minute, my mother rattled on. “Barbara! I’m in the hotel room with the girls. There are men from the FBI standing outside our door and they won’t let us out. And I’m watching the news! They’re live at a scene—a man was shot at and he says the shooters kidnapped two women. There are two abandoned vans. One looks like yours! Callie said she heard you scream when she called. Did Eric find you?”

  “Mom, I’m going to hang up now . . . .” My phone vibrated, alerting me that another call was coming in. This time I looked at the caller ID. Howard. I needed to make sure my mother didn’t screw things up. “Mom, I swear, DO NOT call me again or you’ll get me killed!” I pushed talk again, disconnecting my mother and bringing Howard to life in my ear.

  “Howard?”

  “Barb! Can you hear me now?”

  “Yes, I can hear you!”

  “I can see you. Look out the window.” I turned around, moving to a half-standing position and scanned the expansive lot which was only partially lit from the floodlights on the other end of the house. If he could see me, I must be able to see him. Finally, way back by the tree line, I saw a small light flash on and his face was illuminated. He was holding a flashlight up to his face and wearing some sort of dark-colored rain poncho, the hood pulled over his head. He was waving his left arm back and forth high over his head to attract my attention. I smiled, jumped up and down and waved back. He was probably seventy feet from the back corner of the house and I noticed he stood only ten or fifteen steps away from a wooden, double-door utility shed.

  “I see you! I see you!”

  “Listen, Barb, don’t ask questions, just listen.” It was very hard to hear him because the rain was so loud in the receiver. I could tell he was trying not to yell, but still be heard.

  “This is very important. Elvis is working with us now. He’s going to get Frankie on board. Once he does that, everyone is safe. Where are Roz and Peggy?”

  “In the bathroom.”

  “Great! That bathroom has a window—tell them to crawl out and jump—it’s only about a five foot drop. We can get them to safety.”

  “What about me?!” I screamed.

  “Do you trust me?”

  I couldn’t exactly answer that question immediately. There were definitely trust issues, given the fact that he’d lied to me for our entire married life. For all I knew, he was really Sammy Donato, Mafia mole, working within the FBI to uncover their methods of bringing down the mob. Howard correctly interpreted my silence.

  “Let me re-phrase that—YOU HAVE TO TRUST ME. Are you listening carefully?” he asked.

  Did I have a choice? “Yes.”

  “A plan is in place to sting Viviana. You’re part of that plan. Keep this phone with you and do what Elvis says.”

  “Okay,” I relented.

  “Good. Now . . .” A loud pop rang out and simultaneously Howard flew backwards, as if being pushed by some strong force. The phone flew out of his hands, and he landed flat on his back. Confused, I thought the pop was lightning.

  “Howard! Howard!” Our connection was gone. I shot an anxious look at Elvis, who had heard the pop and was already on his way over to the window. As we both looked out at Howard, sprawled on the ground, we saw a long-legged male figure move in from the wooded area to Howard’s left, limping as if unable to fully utilize his right foot. The man, soaked to the bone because he wasn’t wearing
a coat of any kind, bent over Howard’s motionless body, apparently checking for vital signs. After the very brief check, he stood up, facing the house and bringing to view a long rifle or automatic weapon of some sort, which he rested on his shoulder pointing into the air.

  “Ah, crappola!” muttered Elvis under his breath, throwing us both to the floor. “We don't wanna let him see us.”

  “Who is that?”

  Elvis shook his head and rubbed his face with his hand. “That’s No Toes. Dis ain’t good,” he said. “Dis ain’t good.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  QUICK MENTAL RECAP: KIDNAPPED BY Mafia gang ruled by insane, chain-smoking reject from the sixties—female; discover husband has alias name and FBI badge that he’s been able to keep hidden from me for seventeen years (reminder to self: get a clue!); follow half-baked scheme provided by Brad Pitt look-alike to make a quick getaway through guest bathroom; wind up playing bad game of Twister in bathtub with Elvis Presley wannabe; witness the whacking of FBI husband; hear Elvis Presley wannabe proclaim, regarding husband’s whacker: “That’s No Toes” and follow up with obvious comment, “Dis ain’t good.” Would Al Pacino be caught dead in this movie? Definitely not.

  I stood motionless in front of the window, staring down at Howard’s body. Who would play him in the movie? Duh! George Clooney, of course. Silly question, Barb. Silly question. How about Colt? He always strikes me as a young Robert Redford, but of course, Bob is way too old now to play Colt. Wouldn’t want it to look like the time Clint Eastwood tried to play a forty-year-old photographer in The Bridges of Madison County. Shirtless and flabby pecs. Nope. That was just plain wrong. Colt. Colt. Where IS Colt? Colt was with Howard in the Camry. Where is Colt now?

  I must have been in shock. My thoughts were a frenzied attempt to distract myself from seeing my own husband shot dead before my eyes. Roz’s voice calling from the bathroom snapped me right back.