“Is that a large pie, peppers, onions, sausage, extra cheese?”
“That’s the one. I want to pick it up instead of having it delivered.”
“You got it. Five minutes.”
A woman walked by the car. She had a mixed breed on a leash, and the dog was walking placidly beside her. Brian was nuts in the backseat, bouncing around, clawing at the window.
“Arf, arf, arf, arf.”
Judey took a spice cookie out of his pocket. “If you’re a good doggie I’ll give you some cookie,” Judey said. “Does ’ou wanna spice cookie? Does ’ou? Does ’ou?”
Brian stopped arfing and sat at attention, ears up, body vibrating, totally focused on the cookie. His eyes were so wide they were surrounded by white and looked like they might roll out of his head.
Judey held the cookie out and Brian lunged for it. Snap! The cookie broke into about twenty pieces, and Brian was nuts again, tracking the cookie pieces.
“He really likes spice cookies,” Judey said.
There were two Pizza Time delivery cars parked in reserved slots by the back door. They were old Ford Escorts that had been painted pink with powder blue palm trees, and PIZZA TIME was written in fluorescent green all over the cars.
“I could use one of those cars,” I said to Judey.
“That shouldn’t be a problem for you,” Judey said. “You and Bill have been stealing cars since you were ten years old.”
“Not stealing. Borrowing. And I only borrowed cars from the garage.”
I turned the key in the rental and pulled it up into the slot next to the Pizza Time car. I left the rental, walked into Pizza Time, and picked up my pizza and soda. I rushed back to Judey, and we very carefully lifted the cheese and added five knockout drops to each piece of pizza.
The driver’s side door to the Escort was unlocked. I got in with my nail file and had the car running in less than two minutes.
“You are so clever,” Judey said. “There’s not a car made that you can’t steal.”
“Thanks, but the newer ones are impossible. Lucky this was an old Escort.”
I took off in the Pizza Time car with Judey following in the rental.
FOURTEEN
I drove by the condemned bungalow once to check things out. Nothing had changed. Same car at the curb. Judey was following me. When I did my second lap around the block, Judey dropped back and parked the rental in the spot I’d vacated earlier.
Now or never, I thought. I took a deep breath and yanked the Pizza Time car into the driveway. I got out, walked around the car to the passenger side, and got the pizza box and the soda. I marched up to the front door and rang the bell. Nothing. No bell sound. The bell wasn’t working. Great. I knocked as hard as I could. Still no action.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Anybody home?” And I gave the door a good kick.
I could hear someone mumbling behind the door. The door opened and a big sweaty guy looked out at me.
“What?” the guy said.
“Pizza.”
“You’re late.”
“I would have been on time if you’d opened the door when I got here. You need to get your bell fixed. What are you doing here, anyway? It looks like all these houses are condemned.”
“I work for the guy who’s gonna build here. We’re doing…research.”
“That’s twelve-fifty.”
“I’m gonna give you fifteen ’cause you’re cute.”
He gave me fifteen. I told him to have a nice day. And I got into my stolen car and left. I got to NW Twentieth Street and saw flashing lights behind me. Shit. I pulled over, got out, and walked back to the cop car. As luck would have it, it was the same cop who pulled me over yesterday.
“Oh man,” he said. “Not you again. Give me a break.”
“I’m on a secret mission.”
“Of course you are.”
“And that’s my partner behind you.”
Judey was idling behind the cop car, a forced smile on his face. Brian was in the seat next to Judey, front paws on the dash, schnauzer eyebrows drawn together in concentration, staring the cop down.
The cop looked back at Judey. “The gay guy with the dog? Are you kidding me?”
“How do you know he’s gay?”
“I’m a cop. I know these things. And his dog’s wearing one of them rainbow collars.”
“Maybe it’s just his dog that’s gay.”
“Lady, I don’t want to go there. My nuts are shrinking up in my scrotum just thinking about it.”
“Listen, I sort of have things to do…”
“Like go to jail?”
“You’re not going to make me call the guys with the blue flashy grille lights, are you?”
“Scala and Martin? No! Don’t do that. I hate those guys.”
“Tell you what. I’m done with the car. How about if I just leave it here, and you can call it in.”
“Fine. Great. But you gotta stop stealing cars on my watch. Steal them on the night shift. Steal them from Coral Gables or Miami Beach.”
I ran back to Judey, shooed Brian into the backseat, and buckled myself in.
“You are so good,” Judey said.
Fifteen minutes later, we were back in front of the abandoned bungalow. I was hunkered down, out of sight in the backseat. Judey was driving. The plan was that he’d park behind the silver Camry, run up to the house, tell them he was lost, and ask directions. If no one answered after he yelled and pounded and kicked, we were golden.
“If I don’t come back you have to promise to take Brian,” Judey said.
I looked up at Brian sitting on the backseat. If there was a God in heaven, Judey would come back.
“He’s very smart,” Judey said. “If you mix up the letters in his name it spells brain.”
I kept my head down and listened to Judey walk up to the house. He knocked. He yelled. And then quiet. I popped my head up. No Judey. I looked at Brian.
“Where is he?” I said to Brian.
Brian just sat there. He looked worried. Most likely not crazy about the prospect of maybe living with me.
Judey appeared at the back of the house, and I let out a whoosh of air. He’d circled the house, probably looking for an open window. He returned to the front and waved me over.
I got behind the wheel and pulled the rental into the driveway.
“I was able to look in through the back windows,” Judey said. “There’s some good news and some bad news. The good news is that both goons are out for the count. The bad news is, it looks like they shared the pizza with Bill and Hooker.”
I got a tire iron out of the trunk.
Judey was looking over my shoulder. “What’s that thing in the trunk?”
“Bomb. Probably a warhead, to be more precise.”
“I wouldn’t expect any less,” Judey said. “You never disappoint.”
I hustled across the yard with the tire iron and wedged it between the jamb and the door, just below the doorknob. I put my weight behind it, the jamb splintered away, and the door popped open.
The inside of the bungalow was even more depressing than the outside. The air was stale, smelling of poor sanitation, mold, and cold pizza. The furniture was Dumpster pickings. The light was dim.
Salzar’s men were facedown on the floor, having fallen off their chairs at the rusted chrome and Formica kitchen table. The empty pizza box was open on the tabletop. Nothing left in the box but smudges of tomato sauce and a few scraps of cheese.
A short hallway opened off the living room, dining room, kitchen area. There were two bedrooms and a small bathroom at the end of the hallway. The bedroom doors were open. Bill and Hooker were handcuffed together in one of the bedrooms. They were sprawled on the bed, out like a light. A half-eaten piece of pizza was stuck to the threadbare yellow chenille bedspread, inches from Hooker’s open hand.
“Hey, wait a minute,” I said. “Where’s Maria?”
We looked in the second bedroom and bathroom. No Maria.
&nb
sp; “She’s probably at a different location,” Judey said.
Neither of us entirely believed it, but it was a good thought for now. Worry about one thing at a time.
“How are we going to get these big boys out of here?” Judey asked. “They’re hooked together, and together they must weigh about three hundred and sixty pounds. And then we have to get them through the door.”
I ran to the kitchen and checked the goons’ pockets for a key. I did a fast scan of the house. No key. I looked back at the bedroom door. Not wide enough to drag them through side by side. “We’re going to have to make them into a sandwich and pull them through.”
We wrestled Bill and Hooker off the bed and onto the floor, trying to be careful with Bill’s gunshot wounds. We took the ratty chenille spread off the bed and worked it under Hooker. Then we put Bill facedown on top of Hooker.
Judey and I grabbed the chenille spread and pulled Hooker and Bill through the bedroom door, across the living room, and out the front door. We got them as far as the rental car, and we were stumped again.
“I guess we have to try to sit them up in the backseat,” I said.
We pushed and pulled and managed to get them more or less sitting in the backseat. Hooker was hanging in the shoulder harness, head down and drooling. Bill was leaning on Hooker, looking like Zombie Bahama.
Brian had retreated to the front and was peeking between the seats, not sure he was liking what he saw.
“You know what we should do?” Judey said. “We should take one of the goons. And then we can interrogate him and maybe find out where they’ve got Maria.”
We went back to the house and took the smallest of the two men. We dragged him out the door to the car and around to the trunk. I opened the trunk and threw the spare tire away. Now I had room for the goon and the warhead. I took a good look at the warhead to make sure it’d be safe back there with the goon. It didn’t look like anything could break off. We heaved the goon into the trunk, folded him up, and closed the lid.
“Now we need a good porn store,” I said. “One that sells devices. Handcuffs have a universal key. I know that from watching Cops on television.”
“I love that show,” Judey said.
I drove across the Miami River, went south on Seventeenth Street and into Little Havana. After a few blocks I saw what I was looking for. Adult Entertainment. I swung into a strip mall parking area and came to a stop in front of the store.
“I don’t want to buy an expensive pair of handcuffs just to get a key,” I said to Judey. “See if you can borrow one.”
Judey ran into the store and a couple minutes later came out with a guy who looked like Ozzie Osbourne on a bad day.
“Whoa,” the guy said when he saw Hooker and Bill. “Kinky.”
We got the cuffs off, and the porn guy shuffled back into the store. Judey and I made a halfhearted attempt to revive Hooker and Bill. Hooker opened one eye halfway, smiled at me, and went back to slumberland.
“We should put those cuffs to good use,” Judey said.
We got out of the car, went around to the trunk, and made sure no one was looking. We opened the trunk, twisted the goon until his arms were behind his back, and cuffed him.
“Much better,” Judey said. “It’s a little creepy to have him back here with the warhead.”
I know this is weird, but I was getting used to carrying the warhead around. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was going to miss it when I got rid of it, but I wasn’t nearly as freaked out that it was back there. It was sort of like…luggage.
Judey and I got back into the car and watched Hooker and Bill. They seemed to be comfortable, breathing normally, good color. Still, I was worried. It would be a relief when they came around.
“I appreciate your help,” I said to Judey. “Probably I should take you and Brian home.”
“You’ll do no such thing. I’m staying with you until these bad boys wake up.”
So we sat there in front of the smut shop, waiting for Hooker and Bill to wake up.
“This is just like when we were in school,” Judey said, smiling. “We were always getting Bill out of scrapes. And usually they involved young ladies.”
Sometimes the more things changed, the more they stayed the same.
After an hour, Hooker opened an eye again. “Did I miss something?” he asked.
“We rescued you,” I said.
“The last thing I remember I was eating pizza.”
“Yep,” I said. “I did the old date-rape-pizza-delivery routine.”
“What’s this big wet spot on my shorts?”
“Drool.”
“That’s a relief.” He glanced out the window. “And we’re parked in front of adult entertainment, why?”
“We needed a key for the handcuffs.”
Bill opened his eyes. “Adult entertainment?” He put his hands to his head. “Wow, killer headache.”
“Your sister delivered poison pizza to the bad guys, and we ate it,” Hooker said.
“Did I tell you? Barney always comes through,” Bill said. “She’s been rescuing me for years.”
“Not a minute too soon for me,” Hooker said. “Things were about to get really ugly.”
“Hooker sang like an American Idol wannabe,” Bill said. “They tied him to a chair, gave him one punch in the face, and he told them everything they wanted to know.”
“Yeah,” Hooker said. “I told them we buried the canister about ten feet into the jungle about an eighth of a mile upstream. I thought that would keep them busy. Bill was sure you’d ride in with the Marines and save our asses.”
“The Marines were booked,” I said. “Fortunately, Judey was available.”
“I figured this was the day Salzar would find out I sent him on a wild goose chase, and he’d order his goons to come back to beat the living crap out of me,” Hooker said. “He wants that canister real bad.”
“It’s filled with a chemical nerve agent,” I said. “SovarK2. It’s estimated that it contains about six million lethal doses. If dispersed as a gas over Miami it would kill tens to hundreds of thousands of people. It turns out Slick and Gimpy are with one of those three-letter government agencies, and they’ve been trying to retrieve the canister and nail Salzar.”
“Had me fooled,” Hooker said.
“Me too. And I don’t entirely trust them. I could use their help, but they worry me.”
“I don’t know anything about this,” Judey said. “Nobody tells me anything.”
“When Maria dove down for the gold, she also found a canister. We didn’t know it at the time but it turns out it’s a chemical bomb.”
“The bomb we’ve been carrying around in the trunk?” Judey said.
Hooker looked over at me. “In the trunk?”
“I was worried about Salzar finding it. So I went back and got it and it’s…in the trunk.”
Everyone turned and looked at the backseat, as if they could see through it into the trunk.
“This trunk?” Hooker asked.
“Yep.”
“You’ve been riding around with a chemical bomb in the trunk?”
“Yep.”
“I hate to change the subject,” Bill said. “But they still have Maria.”
“I don’t know where she is,” I told him. “We ran through all Salzar’s properties, and we didn’t turn anything up. No Maria and no gold bars.”
A car parked next to us and a middle-aged, balding guy got out and walked into the smut shop.
“I know him!” Judey said. “That’s my dentist.”
“Wait a minute,” Hooker said. “I want to go back to the bomb in the trunk. How did you get it out of Cuba?”
“Chuck helped me. And his friend Ryan.”
“They flew to the island, got the bomb, brought it back, and put it in your trunk?” Hooker said.
“That’s the big picture.”
I put the car in gear and pulled out of the lot, into traffic. I had no idea where to go next, but it
seemed like it was time to move on.
“I might know where they’ve got Maria,” Bill said. “When they first brought us out of Salzar’s office there was some confusion about where we were going to go. They were talking about a garage on the Tamiami Trail.”
Bill wasn’t looking great. His face was ashen and there were dark blue smudges under his eyes. Blood had seeped through the bandage around his ribs and stained his shirt.
“How are you feeling?” I asked him.
“Fine,” he said.
“You look awful.”
“Bad pizza.”
“Here’s the deal,” I said to him. “I’m sending you back home with Judey. If you promise to stay in bed, Hooker and I will look for Maria.”
“Not good enough,” Bill said. “You have to promise to find her. And you have to help her get her father out of Cuba.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said.
There was some thumping and muffled yelling from the trunk.
“The goon is awake,” Judey said.
I turned to Bill and Hooker. “I almost forgot. I have a goon in the trunk, too.”
“We thought it might be helpful to be able to interrogate one of Salzar’s men,” Judey said. “So we put him in the trunk…with the bomb.”
“It was Judey’s idea,” I said. “He’s a crime fighter mastermind.”
“Some people think I look like Magnum,” Judey said. “Do you think I look like Magnum? Maybe around the mouth a little?”
“I’m awake, right?” Hooker said. “This is real?”
FIFTEEN
By the time we got to Judey’s condo building, the guy in the trunk had quieted down.
“What’s Salzar like?” Judey wanted to know. “I only know what I read in the paper.”
“He’s scary,” Hooker said. “Obsessed with the canister. Obsessed with one last grab at power in Cuba. I think at this point he might not be playing with a full deck. I think what probably started out as a smart political move has turned into a last-ditch nightmare. Castro’s time is coming to an end, and the politburo is in a power scramble. If Salzar doesn’t come through with that canister, I’m guessing he’s lost his place in history.”