The Shrinking Nuts Case Read online

CHAPTER 2

  SMALL IS USEFUL BUT BIGGER IS BETTER

  “You think Jake did it? Oh my God!” exclaimed Elaine.

  I judged from that remark that that she was worried about me getting arrested or something and hadn’t grasped the true nature of the terrible dilemma I now faced. My rich would-be damn client was missing without having given me even a retainer and we were here on my own dime! What if the rich bastard never showed up to pay me? The economics of this thing was like a punch to my gut. Anyway, my junior detective was upset, and I figured she’d lose it and blow my cover. I had to do something fast.

  “Auntie, I need go potty,” I suddenly whined, in my best imitation-infant voice. Nobody paid a damn bit of attention. I was a kid, a third class citizen, ranking even lower than these dames. “AUNTIE, I NEED GO POTTY NOW!” I screamed. I grabbed my crotch to emphasize the emergency.

  “We’ll keep you two here to wait for the cops,” announced Fey, as she stood up and headed out the door of her suite, motioning to Elaine and me to follow. Shadowed by Tweed and the ugly giant, Fey ushered us into an empty suite nearby. “This is our guest suite, and it includes a bathroom. You can go potty all you want to in there, Junior; help yourself. The cops should be along any time now.” She turned and strutted away, showing plenty of great leg.

  Tweed looked at me funny before also turning and walking away, and then turned back again and flashed a frown at me that quickly twisted into a nasty smile. “Yes, we certainly do need to keep them both here,” I heard her tell the tall ugly dude, who had already posted himself just outside the room.

  I didn’t much like either of these blondes, no matter how great their legs and other body parts were. Still, I savored my last glimpse of those wonderful legs and behinds as both of them walked away and the door to the suite closed behind them and I heard it lock. Dandy. Elaine and I were prisoners!

  “Well, big boy, you’re really in a mess now, aren’t you?” said a by now calmer Elaine.

  “I have to go potty,” I said loudly, motioning Elaine towards the bathroom. “Auntie help Junior go potty?”

  She looked at me like I was demented, but she let me pull her by the hand into the bathroom and close the door. There, with quite a bit of climbing and struggling due to my shrunken state, I turned the sink faucet and the shower on, and flushed the toilet. That all made quite a bit of noise, just like I figured it would.

  When I jumped up from the toilet seat into her arms she caught me, also just like I figured. She felt warm and soft and smelled nice. She held me against her and it was pure heaven! Wow, I was hungry! “Hold me Auntie, I’m scared,” I announced loudly. Then I whispered into her ear. “Bugs, Baby. This place has got to be bugged. That Fey broad wants to solve this herself. They’re probably listening to us right now; I figure that’s one of the reasons they bottled us up in here alone. They probably do this to lots of folks that come to visit Grisim.”

  “You don’t have to pee then, Junior?” she whispered.

  “No. I’m hungry and thirsty Baby, but right now I have to get into Grisim’s personal suite and see the scene of the alleged crime, before the cops haul our asses out of here. Maybe I’ll be able to figure out what happened and find Grisim before the cops arrive, and he’ll write us a big check.”

  “Where is Grisim’s suite?”

  “Not far; two or three suites further down the hall on this side of the building.” The biggest suite was his, of course. That was where he lived sometimes and did his most important work; whatever that might be for a damn billionaire. Half the other suites were offices, while the remaining housed live-in staff, including plenty of nifty dames. Each of the suites was a lot bigger and nicer than any normal person’s apartment. All in all it was a pretty cozy set-up. That sort of stuff can get a guy thinking that being a multi-billionaire wouldn’t be too bad a deal.

  “You know how to get us into his suite?” Elaine asked.

  “No way possible that I can think of,” I admitted, glancing towards the door. “They’ve got too much muscle. Damned ugly muscle at that! Too ugly for even a nefty fedora to overcome.”

  “Much too ugly. And strange, too.”

  “Strange how Babe, besides the unusually ugly part?”

  She frowned. “They didn’t, well, you know, pay very much attention to me, either one of them.”

  “Gee, what a blow. Don’t take it too hard though, maybe they’re both fags.” More likely, with all those yummy chicks around here already, adding one more was no big deal to them, though personally it never worked that way for me.

  “No, I don’t think what’s it, but they are very strange. Anyway, if you want to get to Grisim’s, I have an idea.” Elaine put me down and started to fill the bathtub. “Look outside the window, Junior,” she whispered. “What do you see?”

  I looked. Even the damn bathroom had a full sized window that went down almost to the floor such that I could easily see out of it. “Too high up, Auntie. Junior is scared.” I jumped back into her arms. It was still a damn comfortable place to be, and we could whisper again more freely. “What the hell are you getting at, Baby?”

  “There’s a ledge out there, Boss. Not a super wide one, only eight or ten inches, but it’s plenty wide enough for you in your current condition. Maybe you can get to Grisim’s suite using the ledge.”

  “You’re nuts!”

  “Meanwhile, I can stay here and pretend that you’re taking a bath. Kids take them all the time. If anyone asks I’ll tell them that you messed yourself up.”

  “No damned frigging way are you going to imply that I shit or pissed my pants! End of story!”

  “You have a better idea?”

  I returned to the window and studied the ledge. It was a warm, calm day, and to poor shrunken me, the ledge seemed to be plenty wide enough to crawl on. We were only seven stories up, so what the hell? I decided to go for it.

  I tried to open the window, but it was jammed, and of course the giant Elaine had to help. Before I could crawl out onto the ledge, she gave me a really friendly kiss and wished me luck. A hell-of-a crazy fantasy flashed through my mind when she kissed me, having to do with staying in the suite and taking a bath with Elaine, instead of crawling out on a narrow ledge and falling to my death. This was followed by the usual natural body reactions, miniaturized as they were, followed by a sudden, unnatural, tremendous hunger, and a flash of dizziness that caused me to fall flat onto the bathroom floor.

  “Are you all right?” the giant Elaine asked me, concern etched on her huge but pretty face.

  “I don’t know; maybe it’s due to a lack of breakfast. I haven’t eaten anything today. Have we got anything?”

  I drank some water, while she retrieved mint chocolates from the suite’s bed, a complimentary can of V-Eight from the tiny refrigerator, half a dozen little envelopes of sugar that she found next to the coffee pot, and best of all, a giant-sized extra spicy Slim Jim from her purse. I gobbled it all down like I was starving. As little as I was, that should have stuffed me up to the gills, but all it did was take the edge off the hunger a bit, and get rid of the damned dizziness.

  I crawled out the window and onto the ledge on my hands and knees. It sure seemed a hell of a lot narrower now that I was on it. I made the mistake of looking down at the ground just for a moment, before squeezing my eyes shut in terror. “Shi-i-it!” was all that I could whisper, about a dozen times, as I crouched there like a sissy. Only seven stories hell, it seemed more like hundreds! I felt dizzy again and on the verge of toppling; I had to tell myself again and again that I was safe.

  After all, how the hells could a guy possibly fall from a crawling position? The answer was too damn obvious. A hand or a knee misplaced over the ledge edge and down I’d go, screaming for my long-lost mommy and her pal Jesus. Mom had dragged me to church hundreds of Sundays, before she and Pop drove off that bridge in the accident. They’d have been better off taking driving and swimming lessons and I’d have been better off practicing my crawling, in
stead of going to church and listening to all that guff about so-and-so begetting so-and-so. They'd still be alive and maybe my life would have been different and I would be an Olympic-class ledge crawler by now.

  As it was, I hadn’t done much crawling in about four decades, so what did I know about it? My knees were already uncomfortable on the concrete ledge; what if they got so sore I couldn’t stand it? I’d try to get up and my sore knees would probably buckle and cause me to fall off the ledge, right? I now noticed that there were king-sized pigeons flying nearby, and clods of bird crap all over the ledge. Maybe in some stretches there would be so much pigeon shit I’d slide right off the ledge! Or maybe a gang of the giant-sized birds would decide to add some meat to their diet! What the hell!

  “You OK?” Elaine whispered, right above me. Her wonderful boobs threatened to break out of their flimsy restraints when she bent down that way. Damn, she was beautiful. More dizziness flooded my aching head and I felt like I hadn’t eaten in days.

  “Oh sure, green is my normal color. And did I mention that I’m still hungry?”

  “You didn’t mention that you were afraid of heights.”

  “Seemed like a damned good opportunity to find out.”

  “It’s simple; just don’t look down. You should occupy your mind with something else. Maybe you should think of nice things like food, or sex or something. Think positive.”

  Sure, think positive. After all, things were going great! Sound advice maybe, though a little late. I took a couple of deep breaths, turned my head away from the abyss and towards the building, opened my eyes, and started crawling. I tried to think of sex, but strangely enough that made me so hungry that I could only think of food, and that led to more dizziness. So instead I focused on the nifty stone of the building, and started to count stone blocks as I crawled past them. The stone was granite; the same stuff that those idiot yuppies buying houses had to have in their kitchens nowadays. What fun crawling on a ledge was, I told myself, over and over. Happy, happy, fun-fun-fun that was safe-safe-safe. Right?

  Inch-by-inch, foot-by-foot, stone block by stone block, at least I was moving. The yammering pigeons let me pass without any problems; the damn things had wings that let them hop on and off the ledge like it was no big deal, and most of the pigeon shit was dry and not too messy. Actually the bird poop seemed like blobs of dry paint. Who the hell knows, maybe they actually make paint from pigeon shit; there certainly seemed to be enough of it just on this ledge to paint a house or two a rather attractive off-white pigeon shit color. Too much of the stinking stuff was fresh though, and I was getting it on my hands and on the knees of my overalls. Yuck!

  After what seemed like only a couple of lifetimes I was passing by the windows of the next suite. What I later figured out to be bathroom and bedroom windows were shut and the shades were drawn mostly shut, which got me a little worried, but the living room window was next and it was actually open a crack. No screen or anything!

  Glancing into the suite, I noticed a large table surrounded by large chairs, a microwave, and a full-sized refrigerator; possibly to hold the lunches of some of the employees. It was hotel-quality stuff, not billionaire quality stuff, so this for sure wasn’t Grisim’s suite; that much was certain. It looked like this suite had been made into an employee lounge. I thought about the size of the ugly gorillas that probably owned some of this stuff, and what they might do to me if they caught me. I also remembered what sexy bombshells many of the employees were, which led to more hunger. But I had to have more to eat, regardless of the consequences, so I squeezed into the suite through the open window. Hopefully after eating I’d feel better and could continue on to Grisim’s suite.

  The refrigerator held a bunch of lunch bags, boxes, and other food containers, just like I figured it would. Given my size, a fraction of a single lunch should have satisfied me, but I gobbled down everything that I could find like I hadn’t eaten in weeks. Sandwiches, drinks, fruit, and junk food for at least four big people were all gone in minutes. Afterwards I was still a little hungry.

  I began to worry about my trip back from Grisim’s rooms, assuming that I made it. I worried that I could be super hungry again by that time. So, using my trusty new Master Card, I cleverly used the room phone to place a desperate order for ten extra-large, fully loaded pizzas from the pizza place down the block. Hopefully, they would be sitting in this room by the time I passed it again. After I had impulsively ordered the pizzas, it occurred to me that the gorillas would probably figure out that something strange was up when the pizzas got here. But a guy has to eat, right? A guy has his limits.

  Out on the ledge again, I made faster progress this time, though for some reason the ledge seemed narrower. In a jiffy I was outside Grisim’s private suite, peeking in at the alleged scene of the alleged crime that I had allegedly committed. I managed to open a window enough to squeeze inside. Fortunately, there was still plenty of food lying around from last night. As I looked around quickly for clues, I gobbled down some of the food, and drank a quart or two of water. There was coffee, but it was old and cold, so I skipped it.

  After a couple of minutes of feeling silly while whispering Grisim’s name and looking around for him, I concluded that other than a missing John Grisim, nothing much had changed in the room since the previous night. I couldn’t figure out what the hell had happened to Grisim. He had simply vanished, if his employees could be believed. They had to be lying. He must have secretly snuck away himself somehow, or someone must have removed him after I left him here. It must have been an inside job, but other than that I had no idea who, how, or why.

  I crawled back towards Elaine's room swiftly, though again the ledge seemed even narrower. As I crawled past the lunch suite, I noticed that the pizzas hadn’t arrived yet, which was all right with me, since although I felt rundown and cold, I wasn't hungry or dizzy anymore, and I decided not to wait for them.

  When I crawled into our suite’s bathroom through the window, Elaine gawked at me and made a big fuss. I couldn't make any sense of her excited gibbering until she backed me up against a wall, and measured me using, of all things, a sheet of paper that had inch-marks scribbled on one edge. "I made this back at the office, so that I could measure you without lugging around a ruler," she whispered. "There, just as I thought. Roughly thirty-three inches on your tippy-toes! You've grown three inches, and you’ve gained five to ten pounds too! You stink of bird crap though."

  I was elated. Obviously all that eating had made me bigger! "No wonder these shoes and britches are getting tight, Baby." I studied myself in the mirror. She was right about the bird crap; it was all over my hands and knees and shoes. But my wrists and ankles were showing, and my toes were jamming the ends of my Keds. I was bigger!

  “Tell me what happened, Junior,” she whispered, and I told her about eating the lunches, searching for Grisim, and ordering pizza.

  Grinning, she gave me a big kiss.

  “Wow, I’m getting hungry again,” I said.

  "Really? That’s very interesting,” she remarked thoughtfully. “I think you better get out of that kid stuff, while you still can." She started to undress me. I didn’t mind so much being seen by Elaine, since now I felt pretty damn good about growing three whole big-person inches, and I was no longer as self-conscious. Besides, I was really glad to get those damn kid clothes off of me; especially the baseball cap with the damn yellow bird on the top of it.

  After throwing the lame stinking baby clothes out the window, I climbed into the bathtub, turned on the water, and washed off my stinking hands and knees.

  “Well, how do I look, Baby?” I asked her, when I was finished.

  “Good enough to eat, cutie,” she replied, licking her lips.

  That was enough of an invitation for me. To make a long story short, I jumped her. If you’ve never made love to a giant on a bathroom floor don’t knock it, it was great, though a bit more weird and kinky than usual. Big as she was, women are all about the same height any
way when they’re horizontal, so I figured what the hell? Besides, she was all for it. I guess that even when shrunken down I'm a babe magnet.

  When we were finished a few minutes later, I was famished. Totally. Sex always does that to me, but usually not this much. Suddenly I felt like I hadn’t eaten anything in a week. The raging hunger of a short time before was nothing compared to how I felt now. “Feed me, Baby,” was all that I could croak, I was so weak and desperate, as I staggered around the room holding my poor aching belly, franticly looking for more food.

  “I’m sorry,” an upset Elaine said as she straightened out her clothes, “I didn’t know it would be this bad.”

  “It was great Baby,” I croaked, “but I’m hungry and thirsty like crazy!” My throat felt so dry I could hardly talk, and my guts burned like I was digesting myself.

  “I figured you might be, but not this bad!”

  There was no more food, but a very worried Elaine gave me water, and after drinking a quart or so of that I was well enough and desperate enough to go after the pizzas. I had to dodge past the upset giant Elaine to get out the window, and I was still weak and tipsy, but I knew that I would die if I didn’t very soon get more food. This time I ran, or rather I staggered quickly along the narrowing ledge with my butt and shoulder pressed against the stone of the building; crawling would have been too stinking slow, and I wanted to keep my hands and knees away from the pigeon crap, even though now I was stepping in it with my bare feet. Yuck!

  About half way to the next suite, I had to fight back hysteria when I realized that I was butt-naked, and risking my life for pizzas that probably weren’t even there. What if they were eaten before making it to the lunch room? Laughter, weakness, and dizziness damn near toppled me off the ledge, but I wasn’t scared. Nothing at all mattered except getting food.

  I quickly arrived outside the lunchroom. The two big ugly gorillas were just bringing my pizzas into the room, thank the gods. Tall and ugly carried all ten of the pizzas as if they were weightless; short and ugly followed close at his heals.

  It took mountains of self-control for me to keep from jumping into the room right off. My poor stomach ached and burned for food. Maybe a naked little man attacking them would have caused the two big ugly guys to laugh themselves so silly that I could have made off with a few slices of the heavenly pizza, or at least gobbled down a few yummy bites of life-giving cheese and crust before they clobbered me. But somehow my food-starved brain realized that approach probably wouldn’t work out so good, so though it was tough on me, I hid and waited.

  As his big partner placed the pizzas on the table short and ugly looked very puzzled. "Grog, did pizza guy say these be for our lunch and already be paid for with human money?" he asked.

  Grog? What the hell kind of name was that? Human money? What else was there? Who WERE these guys?

  Grog nodded. "Lunch for us be gift from secret admirer with high squeaky voice like chipmunk, pizza guy say. Someone in office steal lunches from cold box. Maybe they get pizza to make up for that."

  "What that word mean, ad-mire-er?" short and ugly asked.

  "Not know, not care, Boss. Me be hungry." Grog dropped the pizzas on a table and opened the top box. It was an extra cheese and pepperoni model, I noticed, as my mouth watered. With his huge hands he rolled the whole damn pizza up into a compact, oozing tube and stuffed one end into his mouth, chomping off half of it in one bite. I cringed and maybe cried a little, but somehow managed to keep from shouting or jumping off the ledge. I was so hungry by now that I seriously considered grabbing and strangling one of the stinking pigeons and eating it raw, feathers and all. The effort would probably cause me to fall off the ledge and die, but it might be worth it, just to get some food.

  "Give me," demanded short and ugly, as he grabbed the remaining half of the pizza from his partner and stuffed the entire thing in his own huge mouth in a couple seconds. The selfish bastard!

  That was it. Inside of ten seconds one whole pizza was gone! My pizza! That ‘secret admirer’ bullshit I told the pizza dudes to say was to help get the food through the door and to me. That bit was clever enough, given my desperate situation at the time, but for some reason I hadn’t figured these two big selfish bastards would actually eat my pizza, so my stupendously clever pizza plan had a major damn flaw! Two big ugly flaws, in fact! But how the hells could anyone eat so fast? Maybe these two guys were carnival freaks that did speed-eating? While I stood outside the window with my tongue hanging, my belly aching, and my knees wobbling, the ugly Boss grabbed a second pizza and walked out with it, driving Grog before him. “Back to work we go; we eat more later,” short and ugly said, as he shut the door.

  Only eight pizzas were left, but eight should still be plenty, I had to figure. I was weak and wobbly but I opened the window more, and slipped in. The smell of pizza damn near knocked me out, it was that good! There were more extra cheese and pepperoni pizzas, and sausage, green pepper, and onion pizzas, and meatball and onion pizzas. Best of all, there were two huge life-saving, everything-on-it pizzas, including those stinking little dead fish and annoying hot peppers.

  I wolfed them all down as fast as I could, feeling stronger with every bite, and washed them down with a gallon or two of water. I should have ordered a few gallons of soda. Then I felt cold to the bone, as if my body was busy doing something else, and couldn’t be bothered with keeping me comfortable. I wrapped myself in a hotel short-robe from a closet, but stayed all achy and shivery for a couple more minutes. Then I was well enough to set off again on the ledge.

  Though I felt much better, the rest of the trip back on the ledge was terrifying. The ledge seemed narrow as hell, so narrow that I had to very carefully walk sideways, with my back and butt pressed tight against the stone outside of the building. The robe was short enough that it didn’t trip me, but it blocked the view of the pigeon crap covered ledge I was walking on, so I again stepped into some really messy clods of goo, proving once again that in this life you can’t have everything but you're bound to get a lot of shit. The Greek philosophers and Shakespeare had all of that stuff all worked out correctly years ago.

  Elaine gave a squeal of excitement when I squeezed in through the bathroom window, then she backed me against the wall for measuring. I was bigger again and I knew it; Elaine was only a couple of heads taller than me! “Four feet even on your tippy-toes; that’s a fifteen inch gain!” she announced, grinning like crazy. “How do you feel?”

  “Better, but not perfect. I still feel a little cold, but at least I’m not hungry anymore at all.”

  “Very interesting,” she said. She kissed me then, in a very friendly way, and then paused to study my reaction. “And how do you feel now?”

  “Are you sure that we’re out of food?” I asked.

  She kissed me again, and her big soft hands were all over me, reaching under the robe. Damn she was sexy! When she stopped, I stumbled dizzily to the sink and sucked water straight from the cold tap. “Food, food!” I begged her. “Baby, I’m tired of going through all this crap!” I complained too loudly. “And we still have no idea at all what happened to Grisim, except maybe he shrank like me!” I complained, as I used wads of toilet paper to wipe the worst of the bird shit off my feet.

  “Shhhhh,” she admonished me. “Your deeper voice will carry better!” She turned up the shower to make more noise so that we could talk more freely again, and so I could stick my feet into the cascading water and rinse them clean. “Just as I figured after your first excursion,” she whispered. “Sex stimulates your growth, that’s what the game riddle meant about one plus one multiplying! One guy plus one gal making out multiplies size! Even getting worked up a bit seems to cause you to eat and grow, though having actual sex works even better! Together sex and food are the answer to your shrinkage problem, just like I hypothesized a while ago. Q-E-D.”

  “Goody. Hey, I’m not complaining, but this shrinking crap must be for the players of the game. I’m not even a billionaire,�
�� I noted.

  “You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were after Grisim, but they got you, too.”

  “Hell! You think this is what happened to Grisim?”

  “Assuming he disappeared after you left him, how else could he have gotten past those weird gorillas and the rest of them? He shrank, that’s how! That’s the hypothesis, anyway. Did you eat or drink anything while you were with him?”

  “Just a couple of peanuts.”

  “That’s all, just two nuts?”

  “Two, that’s all." Before meeting him I had just come from Burger King. If Grisim had some classy seafood or something I’d have forced myself, but he had mostly cookies and ham sandwiches and other ordinary stuff. What a cheapskate for a rich dude!

  "Just to be specific Jake, you are talking about the common peanut or groundnut of species Arachis hypogaea, right? The one domesticated in Paraguay or Bolivia thousands of years ago and now cultivated most extensively in China and India?"

  "I guess so." How anyone could keep useless stuff like that in their brain was a mystery to me, a mystery that I really didn't give a shit about.

  "It's a legume really you know, not a true nut; it's essentially a dried bean. When you say two nuts do you mean two seeds or two pods?"

  "Seeds, I guess. Those things that can break into two yummy pieces. Roasted and salted yummy pieces, to be specific."

  "They can contain toxic carcinogenic substances produced by a nasty mold, Jake. I'd stay clear of them just to be safe."

  "Great health tip; I'll keep that in mind." Yawn.

  “Did Grisim eat any of the nuts?”

  “He was wolfing down handfuls of them when I left, and his big peanut jar was about a third empty when I searched his suite just now.”

  “My God!” exclaimed Elaine. “That poor man!”

  “You’re right, Baby! He must have shrunk a lot more than I did, the poor sap, if it was his nuts doing the shrinking. I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t eat any more of them nuts today.”

  “Those are shrinking nuts,” she reasoned, but shook her head in disbelief as she said it. “The irony is, in some cultures peanuts are commonly known as pigmy nuts."

  "That's a real hoot all right."

  "However, shrinking like you experianced is ridiculous in terms of the current state of human science. On the other hand, have you seen the stories in the newspapers, internet, and TV about magic happening in Arizona?”

  “I have enough trouble keeping up with what’s happening here in North Jersey.”

  “Crazy, unbelievable stuff has been happening in Arizona starting a few days ago, though they didn’t say anything about shrinking nuts.”

  “This is Jersey. Goofy stuff happens all the time here. Arizona probably has its moments too.”

  “Right, but not this goofy. There was talk of giants and dragons and strange little people in green tights zapping folks, disappearing, and so forth, there in Arizona. Then there was the crazy tire stuff at Grisim's bank that happened right here in North Jersey a few days ago; that was in the papers too.”

  “Yeah, Grisim mentioned that crazy tire business.”

  “Tell me what else you saw in Grisim’s suite.”

  “Well, I sure as hell didn’t see a miniature Grisim. I have no idea where the hell he is.”

  “What about poop?”

  “None that I noticed, except the bird crap I tracked in. The place smelled good, as a matter of fact.”

  “Better than it did last night?”

  “Yah. Flowery.”

  “Like maybe it had just been cleaned and heavily deodorized?”

  “You know, I think you might be right. By the same person or persons that gave Grisim the jar of shrinking nuts, probably. He shrank and then they cleaned up his mess! The nuts had to be an inside job then,” I concluded.

  “Possibly Fey and/or Tweed?”

  “Hell yes, and/or others. Those two big ugly dudes seem to be in this up to their ugly stinking eyeballs. Maybe they ain’t as dumb as they look and sound. You know, I think they’re weird foreign geeks. Chemists probably, imported from another country to assassinate rich dudes by shrinking them." Other countries are full of evil nerdy types, same as here in the good-old U-S-of-A. And on top of being nerds these weirdoes were pizza speed-eating carnival freaks.

  “Never trust a geek, Baby,” I advised. “Too much brains conflicts with other organs and drives a man crazy. Maybe that’s why Grisim wanted an outside agency to help him. Think about it; super rich types are always surrounded by their own people, so the only way to get to him would be from the inside. Grisim would know that, so he hired me. He probably suspected that someone on the inside was after him. Those two big ugly foreign chemists, I bet.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “Well Baby, we can’t screw around here all day, much as I’d like to gain back my other missing hundred-plus pounds. We’re out of pizza, and sex without food would probably kill me. Sex is what I want to die of someday, but not right now. Besides, I’m not going back out on that ledge again; it’s getting too damn narrow. Still, now that we’ve figured out this shrinking nuts business, I’d like to get back into Grisim’s suite again and see if I can figure out what happened to him.”

  “We could just wait until the cops come.”

  “Now that’s another thing that bugs me, Doll. Do you believe what they told us? It’s been almost an hour since we got here. If the cops thought that fowl play might have happened to a V-I-P billionaire, no damn president of a corporation or security dame would stop them this long; they'd want to get their pictures on TV and so-forth. So why ain’t the cops in here yet? Why are they still out there somewhere scrounging for doughnuts and so forth like nothing has happened up here?”

  “That’s just what I wanted to know,” said Fey, from the suddenly open doorway.

  “You all know far too much already,” said Tweed, from behind her. She and the short ugly gorilla that was with her held guns that pointed at both us and at Jane Fey! “Well, well; Jake Simon, I presume,” Tweed said to me, with a smirk. “At first I didn’t recognize you, little man. But then we had your apartment and office checked and you weren’t there, but a tiny guy that looked like you was here. That pretty much cinched it for me. It’s lucky for you that you were stupid enough to get distracted by sex and pizza, and that you forgot to keep quiet in here a few minutes ago when you mentioned that you don’t know what happened to Grisim, or we’d be trying to beat information out of you by now. I don’t know how you figured out that sex would restore your size; that was supposed to be a secret, wasn’t it Mick?” She nodded towards the short super-ugly gorilla, evidently Mick.

  Mick rolled his eyes and shook his head. “You talk too much and too much go wrong,” he rumbled at Tweed. His deep voice was as ugly as his looks, but it was getting easier to understand, as if he was learning better English even as we talked.

  Tweed’s skin color lightened up a couple shades and she stepped a little bit further away from her ugly partner. As she returned her attentions to me I had a feeling that she was scared of Mick, but was trying to stay in control of things anyway. “We had a bit of a shock when the pizzas got here, and even more of a shock when they disappeared. You came through the window and got them and the lunches, we finally realized. That was quite clever and unexpected, wasn’t it! Too bad you didn’t think to phone the police instead of ordering fast food though.”

  “Shi-i-it,” I muttered. Good point. I could have phoned Joe, even though I was pissed off at him for putting moves on Elaine. Of course the cops were supposed to be showing up at any moment anyway, so why would I call them? Besides, as a rule I wasn't big on calling cops.

  “We switched off the land-line phones in most of the seventh-floor rooms as a result,” Tweed continued, “even though your ledge crawling times are over-with. Mick still can’t figure the food angle, though.”

  Mick stepped in front of me. I decided to breathe through my mouth so I wou
ldn’t smell him as much. “Both food and poop be big mystery. You poop when you get small maybe, Mr. Jake? Then maybe get hungry when you get big?” he asked, with his garbage breath.

  “Yeah, so what if I did?”

  Mick shrugged his impossibly huge shoulders. “Make sense maybe, but it not be part of spell. Poop not be part of shrinking spell, and food not be part of getting bigger spell. Not need to do these things to get small or get big. So this poop and food business be big mystery to Mick.”

  Mick moved his ugly face even closer to mine. He stunk so bad I could taste it. “You shrink too much, Mr. Jake. You eat bags of food, then do sex and eat pizzas, and now you bigger, so me learn that food balance out poop in strange spell. Why? And how you know to eat food, Mr. Jake?”

  “Because after sex I was hungry as hell,” I admitted, as I struggled not to gag.

  Mick turned away from me to address Tweed, thankfully. “Him get too small, so Mr. Grisim maybe get too small too, too small to find. This is mystery, and how poop and food be part of spell is mystery. Is my spell but is not my spell. It be my spell changed, or another, new spell that feels like my spell. Why? How? Is big, big mystery.”

  Tweed and Mick moved us all into the living room, where two additional, very good-looking women with guns joined us. They also trained their guns on us. It looked like Fey’s whole damn security squad had sold her out to Tweed. Of course Tweed controlled the money, so that was only to be expected.

  As a result, the blonde security lead was more pissed off than ever. Fey was even cuter when she pouted. “So I was right,” she fumed. “You never called the police last night at all, did you Alicia!” she accused Tweed bitterly. She advanced towards Tweed with clenched fists, but got pushed back playfully by a laughing Mick. Mick was even uglier when he laughed. But I had the impression that short, wide, and ugly was holding back, being gentle even. He could have pushed Fey through a wall if he wanted to, he was that strong.

  Grog also glared at Fey. "Be good or I'll grind your bones to make me bread," the big guy roared, though he smiled as he said it, like maybe he was just kidding around too. Still, Fey backed off, and she looked about ready to throw-up, those two guys were so smelly, ugly and nasty.

  “Not yet, dears,” said Tweed. “We’ll take care of them later. There are other loose ends to address first.”

  “And then you’ll be getting rid of us,” I ventured.

  Short and ugly Mick again shrugged his huge shoulders. “Not what me plan, but Tweed say we need do it. So maybe you three disappear and your police think you all take Grisim away with you. Them not know that anyone be shrunk then. It be a good, good trick if you disappear?” He playfully poked me in the ribs and messed up Fey’s hair with his massive hands. The move knocked the wind out of me and almost cracked some ribs, but he laughed as he did it, like he was only messing around. “Sorry Mr. Jake, is not personal, is business, like you peoples say. Me be on great quest.”

  He stared deep into my eyes again. His own eyes were black, featureless pits. "You cop for money, Mr. Jake. Tweed tell me what that is. You do good work, to break spell. To find lost people be your job. Maybe you should work for me."

  He laughed again and turned towards Grog. “Watch them," he ordered. "Not hurt, but they not go out window for walks again. Me and Tweed got loose ends to tie up, as you peoples say." At a nod of his head he, Tweed, and the others exited the suite and locked the door behind them, leaving only Grog with us. I was impressed. Mick seemed to run the whole show, including even that smartass rich bitch Tweed. He was scary-ugly and strong, and had brains too. He had it all!

  “I knew there was something besides your slimy looks I didn’t like, Grog,” said Fey to the big guy that now watched us. “You and your crazy buddy Mick are behind this; not even Tweed would come up with all this herself. So now you’ve betrayed me, and our boss. How does it feel to be a traitor, Grog?” Fey asked bitterly.

  The big guy looked genuinely puzzled and hurt. “Not traitors; we be on great quest. Everything peoples do in this world need money, so Mick and Grog need money, so Mick sell magic. Not hurt bank boss man, only make him little bit small so Tweed fix him with kisses. Then Tweed give us money and help us do quest. Nobody get hurt, that be our plan.”

  Fay was so mad she could hardly talk. “Nobody get hurt? You murdered Grisim, that's what happened! Tweed will fix it so you’ll both go to jail, and Tweed will control all the money herself, you big ugly stupid traitor!”

  “Not traitor!” grunted the giant angrily as he advanced on Fey, clenching his huge fists but leading with his chin. “Mick and Grog be on most noble quest!”

  It was the opening that I’d been waiting for. I leapt forward and caught Grog square on the jaw, putting everything I had into a wicked right hook.

  He has supposed to drop cold, like they usually do. Unfortunately I was at less than half strength. So instead, the big ape smiled at me, showing-off brown-stained teeth with big rotten cavities and gaps. Then he grabbed the collar of my robe and with one hand lifted me clean off the floor, while he wound up to swing a ham-sized fist at me.

  Fortunately, the blow never reached me. Fey knocked the wind out of his guts from one side with a ferocious kick, while Elaine clobbered him over the head with a chair from the other. Brutally blind-sided by womanhood, poor Grog crumpled to the floor unconscious. I liked him much better that way.

  The three of us were left standing there, grinning at each other.

  ****