SEVENTEEN

THE FIRST THOUGHTS in my head when I woke up were about Gail Scanlon and her monkeys. The next thoughts were about the big guy sprawled on top of me.

“Hey!” I said to Diesel.

“Mmmm.”

“You’re on top of me again.”

“Life is good.”

“It’s not good. I can’t breathe.”

“If you couldn’t breathe, you’d be dead.”

“If you don’t get off me, you’re going to be dead.”

Diesel rolled to the other side of the bed and settled in with a sigh.

“I’m going to take a shower and go check on the monkeys,” I told him.

No answer. Diesel was already asleep.

A half hour later, I had my hair fluffed out and my eyelashes gunked up, and I was anxious to start my day. Diesel was still sleeping, so I called Lula while I drank my coffee.

“How are you feeling?” I asked Lula.

“I’m feeling fine, but I have a craving for another one of them breakfast sandwiches.”

“I have to check on Munch’s house on Crocker Street. I could pick you up on the way, and we could stop somewhere.”

“I’ll be outside waiting for you.”

I finished my coffee, took my bag from the hook in the hall, and saw Munch’s jacket still lying on the floor. I remembered the grocery list I’d taken from the yellow pad and pulled the crumpled piece of paper out of the jacket pocket. It was soggy but legible.

“Diesel!” I yelled. “Get out here.”

Nothing. No sound of man getting out of bed.

I stomped into the bedroom and yelled at him up close. “Diesel!”

“Jeez,” he said. “Now what?”

“I ripped this page off a pad in Munch’s house. So much happened last night, I forgot about it. It looks like a shopping list.”

Diesel looked at the list. “Barium, rockets, HTPB.”

“I have to go,” I said. “I told Lula I’d pick her up.”

Twenty minutes and ten traffic lights later, I pulled to the curb in front of Lula’s house and Lula got into the car.

“Why are you going to Munch’s house?”

“I have groceries for the monkeys.”

“Say what?”

“Long story short is we found some of Gail Scanlon’s monkeys yesterday, and we stashed them in Munch’s house.”

“That’s just wrong,” Lula said. “They’re gonna poop all over.”

“It was me or Munch.”

“Okay I could see that then.”

After a fast-food drive-through experience and five more traffic lights, I reached Crocker Street. I parked in the alley and took a bag of what I hoped was appropriate monkey food to the back door. I opened the unlocked door, we let ourselves in, and I set the bag on the kitchen counter.

“So far, so good,” Lula said. “No monkey poop in the kitchen. No monkeys, either, for that matter.”

I poked my head into the living room, where Carl was watching television.

“Where are the rest of the monkeys?” I asked him.

Carl put his hands over his ears and stared at the tele vision.

I walked through the house, looking in all the rooms. No monkeys.

“Did someone take the monkeys?” I asked Carl.

Carl hopped off the couch, walked into the kitchen, and pointed to the pet hatch in the back door.

I was stunned. I’d forgotten about the hatch.

“The monkeys escaped,” I said to Lula.

“How many monkeys we talking about?”

“Six.”

Somewhere not far off, a woman’s scream pierced the air.

“There’s one monkey,” Lula said.

I ran outside, and two doors down, a woman was standing in her backyard. I took a box of cookies from the grocery bag and went to investigate.

“Is something wrong?” I asked her.

“I opened the door to take the garbage out and a monkey ran into my house.”

“Don’t worry,” Lula said. “That monkey escaped from Monkey Control, and we’re here to catch the little bugger. Just step aside and we’ll take care of this.” Lula looked at me. “Go ahead. Go get the monkey.”

“You aren’t going to help?”

“Hell no. You know how I feel about monkeys.”

I went into the house and found the monkey drinking out of the toilet bowl.

I held a cookie out to him. “Yum,” I said.

The monkey’s eyes got bright, and he followed me out of the house. I gave him two cookies and locked him in the Jeep.

“One down,” I said to Lula.

We walked through the neighborhood rattling the cookie box, and we captured two more monkeys.

“These cookies are good,” Lula said, her hand in the box. “It’s no wonder monkeys come to get them.”

“We’ve been around the block twice,” I said as we completed another loop, “and we’re still missing three monkeys.”

“Maybe Gail won’t notice,” Lula said.

“That’s not the point. I can’t just let monkeys loose in Trenton.”

“Why not? There’s all kinds of crazy shit loose in Trenton.”

We returned to the car, and a monkey was sitting on the hood looking in at the other monkeys. I gave him a cookie and added him to the collection. I retrieved Carl from Munch’s house, set a box of Pop-Tarts on the floor as monkey bait, took the rest of the monkey food, and closed the door. We all piled into the Jeep, and I slowly drove down the alley and did a couple laps around the block. We didn’t see the remaining two monkeys.

“My eyes are watering,” Lula said. “These monkeys need some hygiene lessons. What are you gonna do with them, anyway?”

A monkey darted across the road. I stopped the car, grabbed the cookie box, and took off after him. I chased him for half a block and cornered him against a chain-link fence that ran along the button factory parking lot.

“Want a cookie?” I asked him.

He took the cookie and followed me back to the car. Do I know how to catch monkeys, or what?

“Now I’m only missing one monkey,” I said.

“This is a nightmare. Next time, I’m the one chasing the monkey, because I’m not sitting in the monkey Jeep.”

“I’m giving it one more try,” I said. “I’m going back to Munch’s house to see if my monkey bait worked.”

“Monkey bait?”

“Pop-Tarts in Munch’s kitchen.”

I returned to the alley and parked the car. Lula, Carl, and I got out and went to the back door and looked in the kitchen. Sure enough, there was my monkey. I went in, confiscated what was left of the Pop-Tarts, and we all marched back to the car.

The car was locked.

“Did you lock the car?” I asked Lula.

“No way.”

I looked inside. The key was in the ignition. The monkeys had somehow managed to lock the car.

“You got a problem,” Lula said. “You better hope they don’t drive away. Where’s your extra key?”

“I don’t have an extra key.”

It was a little after ten. I called Diesel, but he didn’t pick up. I could call a locksmith, break a window, or call Ranger. Since it was Ranger’s car, the choice was obvious.

“I’m locked out of the Jeep,” I told him. “The key is in the ignition, and the doors are locked.”

“Where are you?”

“In the alley behind Munch’s house on Crocker Street.”

Ten minutes later, a black Rangeman SUV eased to a stop behind the Jeep. Ranger got out of the SUV, walked over to me, and looked in the Jeep.

“Babe,” he said.

I blew out a sigh. I had five monkeys in the Jeep and two sitting on the roof.

Hal was left at the wheel of the Rangeman SUV, and I could see he was turning red, making an effort not to laugh. Hal is one of Ranger’s younger guys. He keeps his blond hair cut short in a buzz cut, he has a personality like a St. Bernard puppy, and he’s built like a stegosaurus.

Ranger’s life is mostly made up of serious business, and it’s not often you see Ranger laughing, but I guess a car full of monkeys was the tipping point because Ranger was smiling.

He took a key out of his pocket and opened the car door. “Do you want the two on the roof inside? Or do you want the five inside to get out of the car?”

“I want the two on the roof inside,” I said.

I rattled the cookie box and threw it into the backseat. Gail’s monkey jumped into the car, and all the monkeys attacked the cookie box. Carl didn’t want any part of it. Ranger had regained his calm, and I thought he was probably calculating the depreciation on his Jeep. Not that this was unusual. I’d done worse to his cars.