Guns Will Keep Us Together (17 page)

We talked for a long time, through dinner, dessert and more drinks. Looking at the end of the table, I could see the kids were getting pretty tired. Diego and Todd noticed it too, because they volunteered to take them back to the hotel so that all of us cousins could hang out. Gin and Liv kissed their husbands and waved as they left.

"We should get out of here," Coney said, throwing a couple of crisp hundred dollar bills on the table. "How about a nightcap?"

Gin, Liv, Paris, Coney, and I headed across the bridge to Pleasure Island. We settled at a table in one of the clubs and continued talking. Then a bunch of songs from the '80s came on, and before we could respond, Gin and Liv ran squealing, to the dance floor.

"So, what brings you here?" Coney asked.

Paris popped another Mickey Mouse-shaped pretzel into his mouth, "A job. From the Council."

We filled Coney in on everything. When we finished, he leaned back in his chair and had another drink of his scotch.

"His name is Garth Stone, eh? Haven't met him yet. How are you going to approach it?"

Paris and I looked at each other and shrugged. "We kind of thought we were lucky just to get this far," Paris answered.

Coney looked toward the dance floor where Gin and Liv were dancing. I followed his line of vision and was horrified to discover all the moves I thought were cool in the '80s actually made me look like a spastic heron with rickets.
Karma Chameleon
was playing, and I realized that at my fiftieth high school reunion, a bunch of ugly, old people would be dancing to it and saying how timeless the music of our generation was. I shuddered.

"You said they don't know about the job?" Coney nodded towards our sisters.

I shook my head. "Paris and I would be smoked if they knew. They think we're here to bond with the kids."

Actually, Paris and I had toyed with the idea of getting Gin and Liv involved. But no matter how we looked at it, it just seemed to be a really horrible idea.

"Here's what I know," Coney said to us once the waitress laid down a new round of alcohol. "You'll never find him on his day off. The younger kids—interns—they run around the parks on their day off. I speak from some level of experience when I say that a thirty- or forty-something assassin won't do that. And since this zookeeper knew you were coming, Garth will be on the look-out. I'd suggest you deal with the costume."

"The costume? What do you mean?" Paris asked, sipping his Manhattan. I guess I never really noticed before that he drank like he was Angie Dickinson. Then I remembered he had a Pink Cadillac at dinner and decided I needed to talk to him about that later.

"I'd rig his costume to kill him," Coney suggested. "It's the only way I can think of to get the job done without doing it directly."

"How would you do it?" I asked.

Coney rubbed his chin. "I'd undo the lining of the neck on the headpiece and put about three wraps of det cord around the inside. Install the detonator, and attach the wireless device. Ensure it's turned on, and then close it back up. Use your cell phone to trigger the explosion. If you do it right, everything will happen inside the costume and with a muffled 'pop' he'll just fall over."

We looked at him blinking like those toads that need their eyes to swallow.

"You've thought about doing this before, haven't you?" I asked.

Coney smiled. "Oh, only about a thousand times. Those costume guys can be real dicks to us ride jockeys."

Gin and Liv joined us, and we spent another couple of hours laughing about the family. It was a definite source of amusement.

The night ended with us getting a group photo of our heads superimposed on Star Wars characters. Paris was Luke Skywalker, Coney was Han Solo and I had to be Chewbacca. Huh. Maybe it was a metaphor for the way things were going.

 After this, there was only one assassin left to take out. The trip made me realize how important Leonie and family were to me. I was pretty confident the Council would give us a lot of time off. Five hits in less than one month was the stuff of legends to the Bombays. Then I could sort everything out. Yes, things were definitely looking up.

 

 

 

Male Muppet:
Mah nah mah nah.

Female Muppets:
Doo doo, de doo doo!

Male Muppet:
Mah nah mah nah.

Female Muppets:
Doo doo doo doo!

Male muppet:
Mah nah mah nah.

Female Muppets:
Doo doo, de doo doo, de doo doo, de doo doo doo de doo doo doo doo doo!

~Sesame Street

 

 

Of course, things looked different in the cold light of morning than they had the night before. At least, this is what Paris and I thought as we stood in front of the costume department in the Magic Kingdom.

How did we find it? It wasn't easy. There are no maps to show the secret employee hideouts. And the slight hangover from the night before didn't really put Paris and me in the best mood. Eventually, Paris managed to find a bribable cast member. The one hundred-dollar bill and the elaborate story he gave Snow White about how he planned to propose to his girlfriend by surprising her in costume helped.

The entrance to the costume warehouse was cleverly disguised as a wall. We'd convinced the family to stop for a snack while Paris and I surveilled the place. After an eternity (Do you know it is nearly impossible to eat a batch of French fries very, very slowly? I was so hungry I practically ate my own fingers in the process.) the wall opened, and Buzz Lightyear popped out. Within seconds, he was mobbed by kids, and we had our answer.

Because we had no way of getting det cord, Coney volunteered to set us up. When we got back to our rooms that night, a comatose Louis slung over my shoulder, we found a Disney bag filled with everything we needed.

I nudged Louis awake, against his will, and handed him over to Todd with the lie that he wanted to sleep with their son, Woody. Whether they bought it or not, Liv and her husband accepted my boy wordlessly and tucked the two kids in together.

Paris and I waited until we heard everyone in the adjoining rooms go to bed before slipping into our Mission Impossible gear. We'd gotten too far to have Gin and Liv bust us just to borrow aspirin.

As we sat there silently in the darkness feeling like idiots, my mind started to wander. Before this trip, I'd never been to Disney World before. Sure, I knew it was hailed as the happiest place on earth, but when the plane landed in Orlando, I thought it would be just like any other theme park.

I was wrong—and I don't admit that very often. Something about the place from the minute we checked into our hotel told me to relax, have fun, that time didn't matter here. The kids whooped and hollered, and the adults all seemed to have this goofy grin on our faces. I started to think that for once, maybe the Bombay Family could be like any other family. Maybe we could pretend we were normal people. What would that be like?

 Of course then I remembered that we weren't like any other family on vacation to Disney World. We came here with a purpose other than meeting Mickey Mouse. We came here to kill him.

There were two ways to handle the situation. The Magic Kingdom was technically shut down for the night, but we knew there was a whole crew of employees who worked through the night to scrape gum off the ground, weed the flowers and basically make it look like there weren't 40,000 people there the day before. We could either disguise ourselves as maintenance people or sneak in. I didn't want to work that hard—so we donned our ski masks and black clothes for the job.

Breaking into the Magic Kingdom isn't as easy as you might think. But I'd hardly be professionally responsible if I divulged their secrets, so suffice it to say, Paris and I made it into the park and to the warehouse undetected.

I truly admire the way Disney World operates. Paris and I had planned on being there for several hours. That's how it usually works. We'd have to find the costume, confirm that Garth would be wearing it and when, and dodge staff.

That's why it was such a surprise to find a clipboard hanging from Mickey Mouse's suit with Garth's name on it as the first one to wear it the next day. The clipboard confirmed he would be in Toontown. Damn. Disney should branch out into the assassination business. They could lure bad guys to the park and take them out and clean up afterwards so no one would ever know. Maybe I should talk to Grandma about that—bring them on as a subcontractor.

"That was way too easy," Paris said quietly once we made it back to our room. He pulled off his stealth clothes and climbed into pajamas. I did a cartoon double-take. Were those sock monkeys on his jammies? How did I not notice this before? My amusement at all things Paris was starting to turn into concern.

"But maybe the Fates are cutting us some slack after the bear job." He added as he slid under the covers.

I ran my hands through my hair. "I hope so. I don't want to blow up the wrong guy tomorrow."

I looked in the mirror with curiosity. My reflection told me my cool was slipping away. My hair looked messy, not styled, and my eyes looked tired, not full of fun. This job was getting to me. And I couldn't wait for it to be over.

Paris rolled over in his bed. "We won't. It's all set. Then there's just one more." His breathing began to slow, and I realized he was asleep.

I also realized that I was bone tired. Maybe I was getting too old for this shit. No, I told myself, it's just having to kill so many people in so short a time. No one's ever had to do that before in the Bombay Family.

I'd never been the sort of guy who looked for answers in his life. To me, killing people was just something I was good at. I had no qualms with the assholes I took out. It helped that I knew they were inherently bad people. I slept okay at night.

Gin had a run-in with conscience when she hooked up with Diego. Taking down your bodyguard boyfriend's client will do that to you. Liv got off on taking out neo-conservatives. Paris didn't seem bothered.

Coney popped into my mind, and I thought that maybe the reason he was so drawn to philosophy was to find a way to make sense of it all. I never had much use for philosophy, unless it helped me score with some chick.

I rolled over and stared at the wall. This line of thought was stupid. Garth, Munch, Dutch and Lowe were assassins. They didn't have the family tradition we had, and as I'd learned with each of them—they were stone-cold killers, taking out innocent people. Hell, Garth had taken out a kid for profit! I hung on to that thought for a moment. They were killers.

But so was I. Christ, I thought, I'm getting nowhere with this. Stop analyzing! Just do the job and get the hell out of Orlando. One more job and our competition would be wiped out.

I thought about Coney and his pursuit of answers. Suddenly my shallowness didn't seem so stupid. Life in the Bombay Family was definitely better if you didn't try to face all your demons—even if he was a cute rodent wearing red pants and a killer smile.

 

 

 

"It happens sometimes. People just explode. Natural causes."

~Agent Rogers, Repo Man

 

 

 

Toontown was crowded, which was good. It's easy to get lost in a crowd. Unfortunately there would be a lot of witnesses too, but that couldn't be helped.

The whole family was waiting in line to see Mickey Mouse and Chip and Dale. And even though I should've kept my mind on the job, I had to wonder if anyone knew who Chip and Dale were. I mean, come on! I'm thirty-seven, and I barely remember their cartoons as a kid.

Louis, Romi, Alta, and Woody were waiting to see the damned chipmunks. Paris and I made sure they'd already met Mickey earlier, so they wouldn't feel robbed of that special experience when he imploded. If we'd rigged the shape charges right, there'd be a noise, and Mickey would collapse to the floor with no mess. We'd hustle the kids out so they didn't see the Garth soup inside the costume.

As we stepped up for the kids to meet the chipmunks, I nodded slightly at Paris. He, in turn, took out his cell phone and aimed it at the kids as if he was going to take a picture. Only he and I knew, that we were actually triggering the mechanism that would blow up a beloved Disney character/National Resources assassin.

Paris waited until Mickey was alone and pressed the button.

There was a muffled explosive sound, kind of like, "Ffffoooom," and the Mickey Mouse head shot into the air, hitting the ceiling. Mickey's body fell to the floor backwards, thankfully hiding what was left of Garth's head.

Some people noticed the noise; others didn't seem to register it. The Mickey head (Sans the ears—apparently they were blown off.) came down in front of Chip and Dale, who because of difficulties seeing through their costumes, thought some kid had thrown them a large beach ball. Thus, to my amazement and everyone else's horror, they started tossing the battered head back and forth.

The cast member who was handling Mickey screamed, and suddenly everything came back to the present. Paris and I faked shock as we dragged our family out of the barn and outside. Three of the kids looked stunned. Louis, however, was frowning. I didn't have time to worry about it as Paris and I hustled everyone onto the Lilly Belle train for our getaway.

The train seemed like a good idea when we planned it. It runs the perimeter of the park to the front entrance. No fighting through crowds, no walking. Easy right? We'd be out of Toontown before security arrived.

Do you know how slow that damned train is? I felt like an idiot, trying to get away from the scene of the crime on a vehicle that goes "toot! toot!" at four miles per hour.

Looking at everyone in the group, it seemed that the kids managed relatively unscathed. Diego told them that Mickey wasn't feeling well, so he fainted but was okay. Todd backed this up with a funny story about something including a rhinoceros and a Pomeranian. Romi and Alta bought it. Woody wisely kept his mouth shut, and Louis was staring at me.