The Shrinking Nuts Case Page 23

CHAPTER 22

  CASE CLOSED AGAIN, THIS TIME FOR GOOD

  The next morning, Mick and Grog were going home to Fairy Land, and they were taking most surviving elves, dwarves, and their monster buddies with them. Faced with Mick’s plan to close the gate, the creeps wanted to go home peacefully to their own world, even though Mick would be the new boss there. A lot of them of them seemed to be actually happy that Loranda was dead. I half expected the dwarves to dance and burst into a chorus of Ding-Dong the Witch is Dead, using their munchkin-like voices, but I guess they didn’t know that one.

  Mick and Grog were happy to be going home, but sad to be leaving us. As ugly and as much trouble as they were, I knew I’d sort of miss those two big lugs, but they promised to come back and visit us sometimes.

  Peachy.

  “You be troll friend forever,” Mick told me with a stinking gap-toothed smile, almost making it sound like a good thing. He and Grog had somehow gotten themselves nifty new tea shirts, overalls, and white fedoras; huge ones of course, to fit their elephant-sized bodies. They still had bare feet though; apparently they didn't like shoes.

  Mick reached down to gently touch the top of my head with a troll finger as big as my leg as he muttered a few unpronounceable troll words, and suddenly I was wearing a new white fedora myself! "Troll hat be gift from Mick," he announced. "We be friends forever!"

  Then and there I decided I would stick with wearing that white troll hat. What the hell. Maybe white did make better sense than brown. White was sort of a hat color for good-guys, and maybe good guys could win sometimes after all, and maybe that meant something, something special. Maybe wearing the troll hat would be good for my karma. Hey, I had to wear a fedora anyway. My Mom really liked guys like Pop that wore fedoras. Pop wore one to church every damn Sunday. Once I started wearing them I was hooked for life.

  The infamous gate to Fairy Land turned out to be just an area of fuzzy looking sand and sky in a little clearing near town, and nothing much to look at, since it was basically invisible. First the beaten elves, dwarves and even a couple of dragons and Cyclops scrambled through the gate gratefully and disappeared, and then we watched the grinning giant Grog and finally Mick the Troll King walk through it. As Mick walked through he looked back at us, smiled at us with his rotten teeth, waved bye-bye with a huge troll hand, and then finally snapped his huge fingers. With a clap of thunder he was gone, along with the fuzzy gate itself.

  I breathed a sigh of relief that they were gone, but I wasn't smiling.

  Afterwards, the surviving local mob guys were really good to us. Limos drove us to Phoenix, and we cleaned ourselves up at a fancy hotel. They gave each of us a fresh new set of clothes to wear; they gave me a classy dark mob suit, just like one of theirs. Prince got treated to clean litter, and shrimp and caviar to eat, the spoiled little bastard.

  “It was my idea, not Elaine’s,” Joe told me, during the limo drive to the airport.

  “What was?”

  “That whole thing to make it look like Elaine and I were dating was my idea.”

  “What the hell?” I managed.

  “To make you jealous, so you two would get married. You two are made for each other, I always figured. You just needed a little push, so I talked Elaine into it. When she blinked at me we were supposed to go into our act. That morning we met on the street near Grisim’s place she was blinking like crazy, so I kissed her.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I sat there with my jaw hanging open, thinking about it. Maybe if Joe and Elaine hadn’t performed their little drama, I wouldn’t be engaged to be married to her. On the other hand, if I wasn’t engaged to Elaine, maybe her family would have already gotten rid of me, mobster style. So maybe Joe actually saved my ass by kissing Elaine. Life is totally weird.

  “So are we OK, Jake?” he asked me.

  What a dummy. “Sure, Joe. We’re partners, right?”

  “Good, Jake. But you still owe me fifty.”

  I smiled. Me and him were back to normal.

  By afternoon, as we flew back to Jersey, news reports were coming in that the remaining elves and dwarves all over the country were in full retreat, thanks to the defeat of their Queen, the closing of the gate to their world, and a supply of good-old American garlic sent out from The Garden State, California, and some other garden spots. I figured that the remaining at-large little creeps and their Cyclops and dragon buddies would settle deep in the woods someplace, and make camping a little more exciting for Boy Scouts wearing garlic necklaces and carrying silver-bladed Swiss Army pocket-knives. A whole new line of scout merit badges would probably open up.

  On the radio we picked up a goofy up-beat newscast that said that the troll threat was over, followed by less clear statements that what had happened was under investigation, and that details would be broadcast when available. Fat furry chance! Mostly mob folks were involved, and they wouldn’t talk, and non-mob folks involved would know better than to talk, since mob folks were involved. The Feds, if they ever figured anything out, never told anybody anything anyway.

  Joe would keep quiet too, I figured, though I wished he could keep quiet during the flight home. The big bastard snored up a storm, only pausing once in a while to mumble in his sleep about me owing him fifty bucks.

  I noticed something as we flew back in the mob jet, between my own naps. Vinnie and Margie were getting really chummy. By the time we landed, they were engaged to be married, and talking about having a double wedding with me and Elaine! What the hell?

  They were really chummy with Prince too. “The cat likes both of us,” Vinnie told me, glancing at Margie, “and you and him ain’t always been getting along so good. If you want, we could take him off your hands, Jake. I’m pretty sure I could square the deal with Elaine and the Family, if you back it up.”

  The cat was on Margie’s lap at the time, purring up a storm as she scratched the lucky little bastard. With his sneaky little cat eyes he looked up at Vinnie and then at me, like he knew we were talking about him, which of course he probably did know, thanks to his mob-financed, genetically enhanced little cat brain.

  “I’ll tell you what,” I said. “It’s up to him. After what he did he’s a fucking hero, first class, and he’s entitled to go wherever the hell he wants to go. But I won’t mind so much if he comes home with me. I’m sort of getting used to the freaky little bastard.”

  Poor Vinnie. Marriage? On purpose? Was he crazy? Of all the nutty things I’d run across lately, this was the nuttiest. He hadn’t even tried her out yet, unless they pulled a fast one in the john on the airplane while I was napping, or had a quickie back in the desert, when they weren’t busy whacking elves and so-forth. Had Margie used white-witch magic on the poor slob, or just her womanly wiles? Were those both the same thing?

  Vinnie wanting a double wedding with me and Elaine wouldn’t make it any easier for me to get out of my own wedding either. I’ll tell you something though, Elaine was there at the airport with the Ford when we landed at Newark late that night and I was damn glad to see her. I wasn’t even mad at her about that thing with Joe I noticed. After all, she was a wow and a WOW and not a MOM, even though she wanted to be a mom. Maybe being engaged wasn’t all that bad. Maybe even being married would be OK. What a damn crazy thought!

  Was it love? How the hells do I know? But we kissed and hugged like we hadn’t seen each other for ages and I felt more happy than I could remember ever being before. Maybe it was love or maybe not, either way I was stuck with it so what did it matter? Whatever it was it felt good. So did being back in Jersey. Now don’t get me wrong: Arizona is OK, though weird, but I don’t ever plan on going west of Pittsburgh or south of Baltimore again. A guy has his limits.

  The MOMs King and Big Ma were there at the airport too, and they smiled and gave me hugs and whacks on the back, just like they did with Vinnie, like I was really one of them now. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but it looked like I was in their good graces, at least for the time-being. Better t
hat than being fish food at the bottom of a river or contributing to the New York skyline as part of a nifty new concrete building footing. Maybe if I was careful and caught some breaks I'd even live long enough to grow back my mustache. Hope springs eternal, that's my motto.

  As Elaine and I pulled away from the airport in the Ford with her driving and me riding shotgun, the damn cat leapt in through my open window, sank four sets of silver-tipped claws right through my new mob pants and deep into my legs, and sat his hairy, smelly butt down on my lap as he purred and stared up at me with his weird all-knowing cat-eyes. “Shi-i-it,” I commented astutely, through clenched teeth. But I let it pass.

  The End

  ****

  About the Author and Pending Novels

  My first published novel is Blue Dawn Jay of Aves, a traditional science fiction story of a distant planet inhabited by giant song-loving sentient birds that is being colonized by humans. It was written in response to my appreciation for birds, birders, music, and song. The birder in my family is my daughter Kristin, who teaches college in Queens, NYC; the music lover and most dedicated reader of the family is my daughter Kim, a school psychologist in New Jersey. I'm incredibly proud of both of them.

  In addition to Blue Dawn Jay of Aves and The Shrinking Nuts Case, two novels to be soon published as EBooks are as follows:

  Secrets of Goth Mountain began as a short story titled Cube. The novel involves ancient secrets kept hidden by the Goth family (including the hero Johnny Goth) and a reclusive Native American tribe. Mythic characters introduced in the short story If Einstein Could Fly are featured, with a unicorn named Pru playing a critical role. Secrets of Goth Mountain is being published at essentially the same time as The Shrinking Nuts Case.

  Government Men is a sequil to Secrets of Goth Mountain. Pru the unicorn again plays a critical role. It is the first written and the most complex and ambitious work. The unlikely hero is an inept DOD civilian scientist who leads an effort to save Earth from an impending alien-induced apocalypse. The large cast includes mythical, supernatural, scientific, and alien characters, as well as an unlikely reincarnation of the author. Perhaps still more unusual, the novel is also included within itself. Like The Shrinking Nut Case, Government Men was written as mostly a 'fun' whimsical novel, despite the threat of human extinction. It will be published sometime in early 2014.

  Several other novels are in various stages of creation, including a possible sequel to this one, if there is sufficient reader interest.

  For a diverse collection of twenty Twilight-Zone-like fantasy and science fiction short stories, see There Goes the Neighborhood; Earthly Fantasy/Science Fiction Short Stories.

  Gary J. Davies

  Mechanicsville, Maryland, January 2014