Wanted: Undead or Alive

We Call Him The Weiner Man

"Ew."

He cackled even harder.

Busia clarified. "His wiener isn't hairy, my dear. He is a hairy man with a habit of showing his wiener. I've seen it. It's actually rather impressive, considering he's not a man of great stature."

Oh, dear God. I wasn't sure the nice cars and fat paychecks were worth the image of my granny admiring wieners. I rubbed my eyes hard to try to make it go away.

"Wiener man's a monster?" the boy asked.

"We don't use that word," I said again.

"What kind of monster is he?" he asked.

"A wiener monster," Busia whispered, and they both busted a gut over that.

"You figure he's home?" I asked when they'd finally settled down.

"Oh, yeah. He always home," the boy said. "'Cept when he out showin' his wiener."

"Sometimes he shows it from his front porch, too," Busia added. "He's quite proud."

Best to get it over with and get back to figuring out the situation with Nick. "I just wanted to swing by since I was so close. Tell Jaja I love him, okay?"

"Of course, dear. Come back for the casserole if you get hungry. There will be plenty." She jabbed the dirt with her tiny shovel again. "Good luck with the wiener monster."

"You should probably stop calling him that," I said.

The kid scoffed. "Not a chance."

I returned to the car, slightly scarred from the conversation. At the corner, I took a right turn and stopped in front of the second house. It was, as all the houses in the neighborhood tended to be, nearly a hundred years old, on the small side, slightly lopsided, and badly in need of fresh paint. The yard was the antithesis of my grandmother's garden, but it still stood out from among its neighbors. Waist-tall weeds grew everywhere. Some sported bright wildflowers on the ends of their scraggly stems, and others tossed fluffy white seeds into the spring breeze. Thorny vines snaked along the earth and climbed up the northern side of the house. Devil's ivy spilled from cracked window boxes and fought for dominance in the space that must have once been flowerbeds on either side of the front steps. A single canvas and aluminum rocking chair sat on the rotted porch floor and Tobar Pesgrel occupied it.

His pointy blue hat was pulled down low over his forehead so that his extraordinarily bushy white eyebrows curled up over the brim. The bramble bush beard hid everything below his squinty eyes. His short, hairy, bare legs stuck out from the hem of his bathrobe. He clutched a shovel in his right hand.

I felt eyes on me from behind every window on the block. "Tobar Pesgrel?"

"That's me." Using the shovel like a cane, he struggled to his feet. The floorboards creaked ominously. "Did you come to see this?" He whipped his maroon terrycloth robe open to expose his stout little naked body to me.

I rallied every drop of determination in me and kept my gaze focused firmly on his eyes. "I work for The Recovery Agency. You missed your court date. I need to take you back in to make it right."

He waggled his hips from left to right. "Sure. You want to mess around first?"

"Gosh, tempting, but I'm on a real tight schedule."

With a shrug, he retied his robe. "Shame." He leaned hard on the shovel as he descended the steps.

This was going to be the easiest two hundred and fifty bucks I ever made.

When he was right in front of me, he stopped and squinted up at me. "I don't have to be handcuffed, do I?"

"I can't see why, if you're being cooperative."

He dug the fingers of his left hand into his whiskers and scratched. "I see." His gaze shot left and right. "Come on down here. I want to tell you something, and I don't want any of these nosy neighbors to hear it."

I leaned down.

He bonked me hard with the shovel, directly between the eyes, and I staggered back and landed on my butt. Stars flashed in my vision and my stomach rolled. I fought against my body's reaction and lunged forward, knocking the old creature to the ground. He squirmed onto his back and I pinned him down with my knees on his arms and one hand around his thick neck.

His eyes widened enough for me to make out their unique, color—like river clay. "Yeah, girl. Let's get rough. I like it that way."

Eesh. I yanked my stun gun out of my pocket and gave him a jolt strong enough to knock a horse unconscious. He grunted and moaned. It did not sound like a moan of pain. I upped the voltage and gave him a second shock and, at last, his eyes rolled up and closed.

Two hundred and fifty bucks was not enough.

I climbed off, wrestled him onto his stomach, restrained his hands behind his back, and hauled him into the back of the Navigator with much grunting and sweating. Two women in the house across the street stood smoking and watching like it was the afternoon show. When I slammed the door shut, one of them shouted, "You took that hit better than the big bald guy who was here last month. Well done, little girl."

Moose got beat up by the wiener man. That made my day a little better. I waved at the woman and circled to the driver's side of the car, only to find both hubcaps missing. Could have been worse. I drove past Busia and Jaja's house, beeping the horn as I went, and then left gang territory behind and headed east.

My head hurt, and my butt hurt, and I felt kind of dirty. I stopped at a red light and drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. What kind of a stupid system was I a part of, anyway? The filthy little creep in the back had been arrested how many times? And the judge always set bail and Nick always paid it and the gnome always skipped. We'd drag him back in. He'd probably serve thirty days for lewd behavior and then he'd be free to do it all again. Who made these stupid rules, anyway?

The light turned green, and I eased my foot down on the gas, aware that this vehicle would respond with significantly more power than my own.

Before my no-good-greedy-self-serving-asshole of a father left, he had imparted a few drunken bits of wisdom. One of them floated to the front of my mind as I took a left turn onto Sanfred Street. "Never forget the golden rule, kid. He who has the gold makes the rules." He'd belched and laughed like it was the funniest thing anyone had ever said.

Why was I thinking about that now?

He who has the gold makes the rules.

Who has the gold?

Benny.

I floored it and sped to The Agency to drop off the wiener man and collect my body receipt. "I'm going to keep the car for a bit," I told Mx. Landry.

"I would too, if I drove a POS like yours," they croaked back at me. "What happened to your head?"

"What?"

"You've got a bruise." They pointed to the center of their forehead, directly beneath the tallest part of their beehive hairdo. "Looks like a big arrow shape or something."

"It's nothing." Back in the car, I dialed Benny. "This is Agent Nowicki. I need to speak with you. I have a plan to catch the killer."