Grimm Tales (3 page)

As if on cue, Hannah Zambowser, swathed in a trim suit of gabardine blue, not looking at all bad for her age, bustled her trim grim gumption from the backroom, bellying it up to the bar. “You swappin' trade secrets, Georgie Porgie?” she said sweet as clenched teeth can pry. “Lotta fish swim funny in the river who bubble their blabber outta turn. Just for the
halibut
, I heartily suggest you keep your piehole zipper-zilched. You got that, pally?” She glared him, his ebullience and his cowlick down, leaned a perfunctory nod to the short hunkered mass o' lass guzzling her gimlet, with a curt “
Frieda
,” then hooted
“Hallllo!”
to the beanstalk bending over the worn Wurlitzer. “You findin' anything good on that old jalopy of a nicklelodeon, hon?”

“Machine don't take no cottonpickin' nickels, Ma. This one's eatin' all my quarters, but I took dibs on a tip I reckon was over lingered at table three, so I'm crankin' 'em out all right. There's a lotta oldies here. I kinda like that.”

* * *

Meanwhile…aboard the good party ship
Whammy Zammy
, the jazzed audience was slurping up a good time in a spellbound lollygag, tongues a'wag at the smooth dazzling antics of the main act, the man with the grin behind the silver sparkle of the Sweet Harmony Harmonica.
No shit
, Jake Piper on the poop deck, wowing them in wave after mesmerizing wave of mouth piping melodies to sweet somnambulance. Winding, weaving, wavering his way this way, that way, all the way around the floating pleasure palace, room after stateroom.

Piper took in details of decor and more. He'd started slow and easy, his hypnotic heritage mouthharp zinging vibes of “Rhinestone Cowboy,” which hopped up the minion nymphs of the jolly mean giant like grits on a sizzler. Scantily clad, if that, they pranced their fancy two-steps and bootie scooted their boogie to the obvious ogle of their southern captain's magnanimous delight. “Big Daddy! Big Daddy!” they called out in pretty squeals, arms all akimbo. “Come dance with me. Come dance with me.” And they sang along, all but one, when Jake Piper led them in song:

The keener of the temptatious twins from Miami, Pammy, seemed to be following everywhere his eyes were eyeballing. He noticed she'd noticed his notice of the ship's layout, but had she seen the way that gawdy red chandelier's pendants dangled? Something about the sheen was akilter, he'd bet his bottom GW. His eighty-watt smile shot out, the better to distract her roaming eyes. Focusing his hocusing, he came to realize her earbuds were attuned to iTunes instead of
his
tunes, thus blocking his penchant to mesmerize.

The no account debauched crowd went down for the count to an eight-count of the Sweet Harmony Harmonica's drowsy bluesy rendition of “Goodnight, Irene.” Last goodtimes gal standing was Pammy from Miami, ironically not sorry to see the party she'd been part of now over and out.
“If you snooze, you lose,”
she whispered, as Big Daddy and his preponderance of pretty playmates drifted down a lazy river.

Piper arched his left brow.

Pammy motioned her exquisitely tapered right index finger. Fetchingly so.

“You just going to stand there looking gorgeous and beckon, or is there destination to your reckon?”

“You going to follow me or just whistle Dixie with that dinky mouth harp?”

Lady had a point. Size mattered. He was behind her sashay all the way. All the way to the captain's quarters, where the swanky skirt showed she had predilection to her direction and was still several steps ahead. Pammy tiptoed with no teetering to her teal Jimmy Choos, pulling from an upper teak cabinet a creased sheaf of bundled papers, with a paper-clipped news clipping along for the ride.

Waving provocatively both the papers and her stance, “This what you came aboard looking for?”

“Could be. Why do you wonder?”

“Was wondering what's in it for me.”

“You anglin'?”

“Y'know, wise guy, I used to be Snow White, but I drifted, and drifting along, running this show how Big Daddy wanted it to go, got irksome in its day. So let's just say I'm bored and I'm the kind of gal who likes action. Matter o' fact, I'd like a bigger piece of some bigger action. Do
you
hold that attraction…Big Boy?
And—
fifty/fifty, that'll do nice to even the score I cipher you're in for.”

Piper couldn't hold back his amused grin. “Nice Mae West to your zest, and—sixty/forty,
if
, and that's a big IF, your presentation yields something good,
then
, kid—
then
you're in.”

“IF's a pretty big word for two little letters. Nevertheless, I indeed have what you need to succeed so no negotiations necessary, Mr. Piper. Y'all Jake with that?”

“As Jake as the day my mother named me. All right, Ms. perplexing Pammy from Miami, you've got style, you've got wit, now let's see you make the split worth both our whiles.”

Pammy smiled, the kind of smile that stokes kindling in the gut to flame a slow burn. She was sure selling the sizzle for her stake. She got right down to business, though, spreading the papers flat on the marble charts table. “Just twain us, says here, this ship belongs lock, stock and barrels to one Samuel Marx, signed over by his grandparents Clem and Clementine Marx. Ship's then duly registered and notarized in the great state of Texas as the
Samuel Clems
, and was charted for a coastal cruise. Big Daddy was the crook to hook up this ship with a river casino cartel in Baton Rouge.”

Piper followed her line-by-line finger pointings steadily. Her delivery was no nonsense, not so her perfume. That fair Windsong was wafting his mind to following
sees
.

She noticed his notice.
She continued, a little softer this time, “Now this recent newspaper clipping caught the eye of Big Daddy the day we refueled our Chris-Craft coming up the Gulf. He'd sent Tammy in to town for provisions and a smattering of the local post gazettes. This captioned photo shows Mr. Marx with his arm 'round the waist of one Hannah Zambowser, rather jovial, toasting bubbly. It seems they were embarking upon a new partnership voyage which steered clear of the deal that was supposed to come down. The article mentions—
here
, see, in the fourth paragraph down, that Mr. Marx had returned fit and flush from a recent junket to South Africa. Big Daddy, you see, is as good at simple math as he is at complex power structures, so he put those two and two and two together last week, when one of his crew's trawlers scooped a soggy Sammy from the sea on Saturday, saturated in a steel oil drum—”

“Oils not well that ends well?” cut in Jake, between two low long Piper whistles. Thinking double time about double-dealers he swiftly tallied his own summary. “So then he bluffed hard-hearted Hannah with surmisal blackmail?”

“
Jackpot, Dick Tracy!
But once I met her when we overtook the
Clems
, then took over the
Clems
, I didn't figure that grim bitch too gone for too long. Big Daddy's people pulled enough on her priors to scare her off awhile, while the painter signed off on the new christened bow name, but—well, call it woman's intuition, she didn't seem the type to be a bygone, closing curtains on a full disappearing act.”

“They do this transacting alone? You remember?”

“Got perfect recall here, Piper. Nope, she had with her a lurking grizzled fellow who kept just a shoulder's length to her shadows, patting his head a lot. Then there was a scrawny scrappy squawky gal, plus a quieter dumpy dame who distinctly seemed the only one of the lot with a full faculty of wits about her. As they were being unceremoniously escorted down the gangplank, Hannah hepped up, swiveled around and shouted about a sudden sentimental attachment to that tawdry red chandelier I saw you gaping at and spurted back to the starboard side. Big Daddy bellowed they should
get while their gettin' was good
, and Biff or maybe Jed held high a Glock .44 to echo his bellow the more. When the scrawny one screeched to see such a gun, the dish ran away from the goon. She latched on to Big Daddy's arm with no conceivable charm, and it was the rounder one who pulled her off and quickened some sort of half-curtsy about how they'd be moseying off now and not causing any trouble since decisions made were plans best played.”

“
That's
how she said it?”

“Exactly. My story, and I'm sticking to it. Though her eyes didn't look beat. They fired glint. Lucky for that bunch my sister Tammy chose just that moment to approach Big Daddy squooshing a tube of Bain de Soleil, turning her other cheek for assistance. Those rats scurried their sinking hopes off this ship, but as I said, I expected someone to come back. So, you with them?”

“
Not exactly.
But for the moment, I'm going to play this out nice and copacetic. Pick up the ransom, so to speak, and get outta Dodge.”

“You mean Hamelin.”

“More fun to say ‘Dodge.'”

She smirked. He smiled.

* * *

The cheap beer mug shattered to cheap shards when the barkeep of Hamelin's Hooligans turned back from the sink and saw the man at the bar who hadn't been there at all a second ago.

“Hello, George. My usual, and look sharp, man, watch your step there.” Piper turned left. Piper turned right. “The girls around?”

As if on cue, Hannah Zambowser, jaded in a linen pants suit, still not looking at all bad for her age, bustled her signature grim gumption from the backroom, bellying it up to the bar. “I've heard about you, Piper. Seems my daughters inquired of a small assist in a tiny family matter. George, a glass of absinthe.”

“It matter, that matter?”

“No matter. What do you have for me?”

“What you wanted. Thing is now, where's what you have for me?” Something about the squirmy glint to her eye as she took that first sip into absinthe making his coffers grow fonder, told him this hard broad wasn't going to play easy. Something told him too late. Something hit him hard, something like what cheap clunky bar glasses are still good for.

Pammy told him later it took three conks of those clunks from that lackey to knock him cold…two seconds for Hannah and George to search his jacket for the keys and title to the
Whammy Zammy
…and one sporty Maserati getaway car to zzzzzzzooooom the dastardly duo down to da docks. That's where those bird-brained canaries were lying low when the local constabulary escorted Big Daddy's parade to the paddy wagon. Charge floated before Judge Dan Yoob was grand river larceny.

All would've flowed well for Frieda, Trudy, Hannah and George if not for the sudden appearance of the son of Sammy, summoned from an earlier swift Google search as fast as a driving Piper's iPhone could app:
R-i-g-h-t-f-u-l—O-w-n-e-r
. Sonny, Sammy's son, FYI'd the bamboozled Zambowzers with a G-man at his side. Cross currents considered, this was interstate trafficking after all, and Sonny had educated himself well, watching a lot of late-night movies growing up without his dad's full attention.

The story doesn't end at the docks and Sammy sailing into the sunset of his heritage, which he did. Pammy had followed the instincts Jake gutted and
—

Here, let her tell it, her way
—

“Jake! Jake! Snap out of it, man. You'll be hit with worse in your life once
we
start adventure trails. I promise you never a dull moment, you big lug. Come on, we should get outta Dodge, too.”

Groggy, but with as big a dopey smirk as a not so big a dope can smile, Jake upped his sprawled ante to one elbow and one-fingered Pammy's puss into the smooch of his angled grin. “I've been wanting to do that a long time, ma'am. And it's Hamelin we want to get the hell out of, not Dodge.”

“You were right. Dodge
is
more fun to say.” Slender arms reached 'round Piper's pleased torso. “Here, let's get you closer to vertical.”

“So you can smooch me again?”

“So I can look you in the eye when I tell you you were right about a lot of things.”

“You planning on being around to tell me that a lot?”

“No. This could be the only time with me having the wilier wits to be the brains of this operation. But—”

“Wait. I have wits.”

“Wile wins.”

“Point taken.” He twirled one strand of one curl of the tangle making her shoulders all the more fascinating. There was a lot of fascinating going on, but something was pulsating at the edge of his subconscious. Maybe it was just the lump from the cheap beer mugs, but still, best to take a shot. “You said I was Mr. Right?”

“I said you were
right
. That you thought they'd stiff you once you distinguished the diamonds with the red spray job in the dining room of the ship of fools.”

“Didn't take Professor Plum with a candlestick to see the light on that clue, baby.”

“Geeeeez, who writes your material? So, I called in a favor, put a tail on you and made a side trip of my own to Hamelin's hometown Home Depot. They have one, you know.”