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“I get the feeling I missed something,” Diesel said, shooing Carl into the backseat and sliding in next to me.

I gave him the short version of my eve ning adventures.

“Take me to the house,” Diesel said.

“What, are you nuts? There’s one road in and one road out. And there are homicidal maniacs there.”

“I can only hope,” Diesel said. “I need to catch Wulf by surprise, preferably with his back to a wall. I’m sure they’ll abandon the house, but we might be able to get them in the pro cess.”

The only way I knew to find the house was to go back to the junk shop and retrace my route.

“This all looks the same to me,” I said to Diesel. “If you hadn’t been standing out in the open, I probably would never have found you.”

Headlights swung onto the road in front of me, and a police cruiser passed me going in the opposite direction. I took the road the cruiser had just left, and hooray, there was the double-wide. No doubt the police had been responding to the stolen-truck report.

I felt kind of bad about taking Sasquatch’s truck, but it wasn’t far away, and I’d left it in good shape.

I swapped seats with Diesel, and he cut the lights and drove the muddy road in the dark. He parked the Subaru just short of the clearing, and we got out. Carl stayed in the Subaru with his game.

There were no cars in the yard. This meant I was relieved, and Diesel was unhappy. We crossed to the house and looked inside. It seemed empty.

“Are you going in?” I asked.

“Maybe.” Diesel prowled the yard and found a large rock. “Get back,” he said. “Stand by those trees.”

He hefted the rock and pitched it through a front window. Seconds after the window shattered, the house was literally blown apart by an explosion.

“No need to go in,” Diesel said.

“What the heck was that?”

“Motion bomb. Remember the Sky Social Club? Classic Wulf. He loves that crap.” He took my hand and pulled me to the car. “We need to get out of here before the police and fire trucks clog the road.”

“But the house is on fire!”

“It’ll burn itself out. There’s no wind, and the woods are wet from the rain. There’s a large enough patch of cleared ground around the house, so the fire won’t spread. I’m sure there’s no one inside, and if there is, it’s too late to help them.”

We ran to the Subaru. Diesel opened the door and groaned. The SUV was full of monkeys. Six of them in all, plus Carl. They were all sitting in a row in the backseat. All but Carl were wearing hats.

“Get out,” Diesel said.

The monkeys sat tight and exchanged ner vous glances.

“I know you understand me,” Diesel said.

I looked at the monkeys. “They must be Carl’s friends.”

“I don’t care if they’re members of Congress. They have to go.”

“Carl did save my life,” I said.

Diesel rammed himself behind the wheel. “I don’t have time for this.”

He drove into the clearing, turned the Subaru around, and drove out. He hooked a right at the end of the road and headed for the Expressway. We could see the flashing lights of emergency vehicles in our rearview mirror.

“We can leave the trailer and the ATVs here,” he said. “I have to get out of these clothes. I’m starting to mildew.”

We stopped on the way home and got four large pizzas and a six-pack of beer. Diesel parked the Subaru in my lot, then we all got out and trooped into my apartment building and into the elevator.

“I feel like I married into the Brady Bunch,” Diesel said, monkeys hanging on to his pants legs.

I hit the button for the second floor and got my key out of my bag. “Last time you came to town, I ended up with a horse in this elevator. These things don’t happen when you’re not around.”

“I don’t believe that for a second,” Diesel said.

I opened the door to my apartment, and we all rushed inside. Diesel put two pizza boxes on the floor for the monkeys, and we ate ours off the counter. Who says I’m not civilized? I just hoped my mother never found out about this.

Diesel ate an entire pizza and chugged two bottles of beer. He kicked his boots off in the hall and dropped his still-wet jeans on the floor.

“I need a shower,” he said.

I was relieved to see he was wearing underwear and that his T-shirt covered almost all the good stuff.

“I could strip down further,” Diesel said.

“Not in front of the monkeys.”

He grinned, ruffled my hair, and sauntered off to the bathroom.

I cleaned up the monkey mess, sat them all in front of the tele vision, and tuned to the Cartoon Network. I nibbled on one last piece of pizza and called Morelli.

“How’s it going?” Morelli wanted to know.

“It’s average. Stole a truck. Blew up a house. Brought seven monkeys home with me. And now I have a naked man in my shower.”

“Yeah, same ol’, same ol’,” Morelli said.

“What’s new with you?”

“Pulled a double hom i cide. Shoveled dog shit off old man Fratelli’s lawn. Started drinking at three o’clock.”

“I assume Anthony is still with you.”

“He’s like a boil on my ass.”

I took a shower when Diesel was done. When I came out, he was in the kitchen. He’d removed all the monkey helmets and was studying them.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “It looks like a little antenna on the top, but I have no idea what it’s supposed to do.”

“Gail Scanlon rescued animals from labs. Hard to believe she would turn around and use them for experimentation.”

“She was a woman living alone in a secluded area. She didn’t have a phone. I don’t think she had a gun. She kept intruders away with a piñata. If she had something Wulf wanted, like land or monkeys, she’d be an easy target.”

“Why would Wulf want monkeys?”

“Don’t know the answer to that.”

“Wulf has Gail. Munch said they had her locked away and that she was serving a purpose.”

“Maybe she’s wearing a helmet,” Diesel said. “What are we going to do with the monkeys?”

“They’re watching tele vision.”

“They’re used to living in a habitat without flush toilets, and you just fed them pizza. It’s going to get ugly in here.”

“You have a point. We need something temporary until we find Gail. We can’t put them in a fenced yard because they’ll climb out. If we call animal control, they’ll put them in a cage.”

“Maybe they’ll put them in a big cage,” Diesel said.

Carl glared at him and gave him the finger.

“Carl doesn’t like that idea,” I said.

“How do you know which one is Carl? They all look alike.”

“Carl is wearing a collar.”

“Maybe we should give Carl a credit card and let him find a hotel room,” Diesel said.

“I have a better idea. I have a genius idea. We’ll put them in Munch’s house. He isn’t living there.”

“That’s really rotten,” Diesel said. “I wish I’d thought of it.”

We put all the boxes of cereal, cookies, and crackers in a bag and led the monkeys out of my apartment and down the hall. We herded them into the elevator and into the Subaru and drove them across town. Diesel walked through Munch’s house to make sure it wasn’t being used, and then we turned the monkeys loose.

I gave Carl the bag of food. “This should last you until tomorrow morning. The tele vision remote is on the coffee table in the living room. You’re in charge. Everyone’s house-broken, right?”

Carl looked around and scratched his armpit.

I could feel Diesel smiling behind me.

“I’m not coming back here,” he said. “I’m never setting foot in this house again. And I’ll swear on a Bible I didn’t put these monkeys here.”