The Chronicles of Marr-nia (Short Stories Starring Barbara Marr) (9 page)

“You’re kidding me.”

“No.
 
Not kidding.
 
Very serious.
 
Opening a business is very serious work you know.
 
No time for idle banter.”

She tried to pull her head back into the store, but I stopped her.

“A business?
 
What business?”

“A sandwich shop.”

“Mom – Parkway Panache is right next door.
 
Why would you open a sandwich shop here?”

“Their bread is too stale and their sandwich names aren’t very original.
 
I can do better.
 
Okay.
 
Enough talk.
 
Back to work . . .”

There was no way I was letting her close that door.
 
“Not so fast – let me see this place.”
 
And with one swift pull, the door was wide open and I was marching in past my mother only to come face-to-face with the two people I’d thought had bit the dust back at the Colonial Arms.

“Master
Kyo
!” I couldn’t believe my eyes.
 
“Paula.
 
You’re not dead.”

Colt had followed me inside.
“Interesting twist.”

“If nothing else,” said Paula to my mother, “you’ve raised an observant daughter.
 
At least she’s saying my name right, for once.”

“Right,” I said. “Sorry about that.”

“You not here!”
 
Master
Kyo
shouted.

“I may not want to be here, but like the lady said, I am observant, and I am definitely here. The question
is,
HOW are you here?”

“No!
 
You not here!”
 
He was limping in circles around the very empty space and waving his hands wildly in the air over his head.
 
For a short little guy he sure could whip up some wind.

“Ruin everything!
 
Away!
 
Away!”

“He’s saying you shouldn’t be here,” Paula translated.

“We shouldn’t be here?” I yelled.
 
“We just watched your secret love hideaway blow up like a Roman candle on the Fourth of July, with you supposedly in it, so I wouldn’t be pointing fingers right now.”

“Love hideaway?
 
What are you talking about?”

“Your apartment.
 
We know about it.
 
Your husband knows about it.”

“Well, it’s not a love hideaway for crying out loud. And the explosion wasn’t our fault.”

“We on a missing!” screeched
Kyo
.

Colt had been assessing the space. “Whose fault was it?”

Paula rubbed her temples. “They knew about our set-up, so we snuck the girls out fast, late last night. We came back today to pack up their things and our supplies, when Master
Kyo
saw something that looked like bomb on a timer behind the couch. It was them.
 
Had to be.”

Set-up?
Girls?
And who were “They”?
 
I was bordering on a major breakdown.
 
“Mother, what have you gotten yourself into?”

“We on a missing!”
Kyo
shrieked again.

“We were watching that apartment all morning,” said Colt. “You both went in but never came out before that explosion tore the place apart.”

“We jumped out the back balcony.
 
Why do you think he’s limping?”

“Missing!
Missing!
Eeet
a missing!”

This Korean midget of a dictator was starting to ruffle my already irritated feathers. “What is he saying?”

“Barbara,” interrupted my mother.
 
“You need to understand.
 
We’re doing some very important humanitarian work here.
 
He’s saying we’re on a mission. This is already very dangerous – if they find out you’re connected to the FBI, it could make things much worse.”

There was that word again.
“They?”
I asked.
 
Who’s ‘they’?”

Before my mother could answer, a young girl with long dark hair came out of a back room.
 
She was followed by two more girls, one of them helping the other who was bent over and holding her very large stomach.
 
I was pretty sure two of them were the girls I had seen in Master
Kyo’s
office over a week ago.

“
Scuze
me, missus.
 
Maria very sick.
 
She need help – maybe hospital.”
 
The young girl who must have been Maria screamed out in pain.

“Uh oh,” said Colt, backing up.
“I don’t know
nothin
’ ’bout
birthin
’ no babies.”

“Oh Lord,” cried Paula, “this just keeps getting worse by the minute.
 
What are we going to do?”
 
Paula helped the young laboring girl to the floor against a wall.

“Mother, who are these girls?”

“They’re slaves, Barbara.
 
Slaves.”

“What?”

Another pain-filled scream from Maria was followed by the whooshing sound of the shop door opening.
 
Two young men, probably not much older than the three young girls, stepped inside, hands tucked suspiciously into their hooded jacket pockets.
 
Their black hair matched their menacing black eyes.
 
Black peach fuzz topped their lips.
 
Both sported red bandanas tied around their left thigh.
 
I didn’t think it was a fashion statement.

The tallest and scariest looking of the two spoke with an eerie sense of calm to one of the girls.
 
The words were Spanish. She wasn’t
so
calm as she listened.
 
Her eyes darted from him to my mother and then to Master
Kyo
, then back again to the intimidating duo.
 
Finally she replied, again in Spanish.

My hands had gone clammy and my legs felt like
limp
egg noodles.
 
I didn’t know exactly what was going on, but I knew I should be scared.
 
Colt kept looking out of the corner of one eye, while also assessing the situation with our two visitors, who had not moved from their position in front of the door.

More undecipherable Spanish dialogue exchanged between the two, while poor Maria and the other young girl wept softly.

“
Sofia
, what he
say
?” asked Master
Kyo
.

The girl had tears in her eyes.
 
“He says we must go with him.
 
They will kill us all if we do not go now.”

Master
Kyo
erupted again, his arms waving about in the air, punctuating his barely understandable words.

“No!
 
No!
 
Dis
not white!
 
I not let happen!”

Young man number two, who had been silent up till now, remained so while he pulled a very large and threatening handgun out of his pocket to let Master
Kyo
know that silence was probably a good thing.
 
Master
Kyo
got the point and shut up quick like.

Poor Paula looked like she was going to be sick.
 
I wasn’t feeling too whippy myself.

“
Sofia
– you can’t go,” said my mother.

“Mom, maybe they should work this out amongst themselves.
 
It seems like a domestic dispute sort of thing here.”

“Barbara!
 
You don’t understand.
 
These girls are slaves.
 
Forced prostitutes – they were kidnapped from their families when they were no older than
Bethany
and brought here to make money for these scum hoodlums.
 
Have you ever heard of the gang, MS 13?
 
Eventually they’ll just kill these girls when they don’t serve their needs anymore.”

Now I felt like I was going to be sick.
 
My
Bethany
was only ten. Not only had I heard of MS 13, but suddenly I realized why Howard was at the scene of the explosion.

My mother had worked herself into
a frenzy
and went off like a rabid dog on the two gang members, screaming a slew of Spanish words at them.
 
I had no idea what she was saying, but I was fairly sure she wasn’t reminiscing about her days as a showgirl in Vegas.

While she knows how to irritate the hell out of me, she is my mother, and my first instinct was to protect her.
 
As I moved in her direction, Peach Fuzz Number One grabbed me by the neck and shoved my face into the glass pane in front of me.

With my face squished against the window, one eye had a perfect view through a thin amount of
unobscured
glass.
 
Just on the other side stood my handsome Howard.
 
Certainly, I thought
,
 
he’d
brought half the FBI with him.
 
The problem was, had they come in time?
 
Actually, the bigger problem was, would I pass out while this pumped-up pimp choked the air out of me?
 
The room started to spin while screams filled the air and glimpses of Master
Kyo
, my mother and Colt shot in and out of my blurred peripheral vision.

Somehow, I managed to grab hold of two fingers that were wrapped around my neck, pulling them away so that more air could make it through my trachea.
 
Where was Howard with the troops?
 
Didn’t he hear the screaming?

I became more aware of some sort of wrestling match, and realized it was Master
Kyo
going all Korean crazy on Peach Fuzz Number Two.
 
Legs and arms were flying at lightning speeds.
 
I saw the gun fly through the air.
 

Meanwhile, if I wanted to maintain consciousness, I had to do something.
 
My Tae Kwon Do skills had been mediocre at best, but now was not the time to question ability.
 
Now was the time to do or be done.

With all of the awareness I could gather and all of the strength I could muster, I grabbed, pulled and kicked.
 
I kicked like I’d never kicked before.
 
Peach Fuzz Number One went down fast, grabbing his crotch the whole way down.
 
Turned out my far-flung foot had landed hard and square on the grisly gang member’s gonads.
 
Ouch.

Finally able to breathe, I regained my balance and looked up to see what was happening around me.
 
A quick check told me all I needed to know:
 
Master
Kyo
and Peach Fuzz Number Two were going at it, although it seemed PF was on the losing end of the battle.
 
Colt was crawling for the gun which was half-way across the room on the floor.
 
My mother and Paula were in the corner with Maria, who appeared to be in full blown labor.

Figuring I needed to get Howard and his crime-fighting friends in to stop the blood bath, I turned and pushed hard on the door, nearly falling out onto the sidewalk in front of the shop.
 
There stood Howard to my left, still standing like I had seen through the window.
 
What I hadn’t seen at that time, however, and which was now in clear view, was the mammoth man standing behind him, gun trained on his head. A tattoo ran along the right side of his face and his red bandana was wrapped around his thick, bald head. The monstrous goon seemed very pleased with his catch, and through the shit-eating grin he wore on his face, I could tell he was missing both top front teeth.

What I also saw were the four
Fairfax
County
police squad cars all poised in my direction, with uniformed officers next to them, aiming their own firearms squarely at Howard and his toothless shadow.

Instinctively, I put my arms in the air, even though I was innocent of any wrongdoing.

“Howard?”

“Barb.
 
Don’t move.”

“Am I allowed to pee my pants?”

“Can’t laugh right now.”

“Who’s your friend?”

“Meet Julio Jimenez.”

“He looks like a killer.”

“He is.”

 
“Are we going to die?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“You have a plan?”

“Nope.”

“That’s encouraging.”

“Barb.”

“Yeah?”

“I
– ”

Howard couldn’t finish his sentence.
 
He was interrupted by Peach Fuzz Number One, who had evidently recovered from my powerful punch to his privates.
 
Peach Fuzz
came
flying through the door, attacking me from behind.