"You, Freddie, workin for me and workin for some friends of mine. Light work, very easy, a little excitement every now and then. Good pay."
"I don't like to be an employee, that's always been a problem I had."
"That's too bad, Freddie, time you got over it. We got the idea you place a certain value on Peg here, and we got Peg, and we're gonna keep Peg, so that makes you an employee. So you'll get used to it."
"And what if I just say the hell with everything, and go someplace else? California, maybe."
"Gimme an address, to send the fingers."
"You can always shove them up your ass."
"Don't be silly, Freddie," Barney said, almost fondly. "You don't talk tough to me. And you don't leave Peg on her own, either, that's one of the nicest qualities about you." Off, he said, "Isn't it, Peg?" Back, he said, "She agrees with me. She's kinda counting on you, Freddie. So you come here, you come now, and you wear something so we can see you, and we give you the details of the situation."
Hogtie me, you mean. Other guys there, Peg said so, Barney didn't like her telling me that. Lean on me because they'll want me to do stuff I really and truly won't want to do. Peg's the hostage, and I'm the patsy, world without end. Don't even get to be visible again someday, so I could retire.
Well, screw that.
Aloud, Freddie said, "I want Peg sitting on the front porch, so I can see she's okay. All by herself."
"You know what'll happen, she decides to run."
"Yeah, we all know. If she's there, and she's okay, I'll come in."
"She'll come in with you."
"Okay, fine. After I see she's okay. I'll be there in twenty minutes."
"Peg tells me you're ten minutes away."
Oh, hell, Peg, what'd you say that for? Freddie said, "Did you ever know a woman with any sense of time?" Forgive me, Peg. "I'll be there in twenty minutes."
"Fifteen. If you aren't here, she loses a finger."
"Then make it the pinky on her left hand, she never uses that. I'll be there in twenty minutes," Freddie said. "And the first thing I'll do when I get there is count Peg's fingers."
And he hung up and ran.
53
Peg and Barney and one of the thugs had been in the chief's office for the phone call, there being two phones on the same line in that room, one of them cordless. Barney, using that one, had paced back and forth like a fat Napoleon all through the conversation, and when it ended he thumbed the phone off, slapped it onto the desk, and said to Peg, "Up."
She'd been seated at the desk, talking on the other phone there, and now she obediently got to her feet. She'd done what she could to help Freddie, so now it was up to him. If only Barney were less mean, less quick, and less maniacal. But he wasn't, so there you are.
Barney called, "Bring in the chief," and then started opening cabinets and closets, making small sounds in his throat that would have been humming if they weren't all on the same note. By the time Chief Wheedabyx came in, with a second thug, Barney had found a whole cache of handcuffs. They clacked like castanets as he motioned with them at the desk chair, saying, "Take a load off, Chief. Things are gonna slow down and get peaceful now."
The chief said, "This is going to end badly for you, you know."
"No, I don't know, Chief," Barney said. "But if you don't put the ass in the chair right now—"
"Language," the chief said, and sat in the desk chair.
Barney stared at him. "Language? Chief, I hope you never meet up with any bad guys." Picking out two sets of cuffs, handing them to the thug who'd been appointed the chief's monitor, he said, "One wrist to each chair arm. If he gets a call, you hold the phone up to his head for him. If he says anything you don't like, hang up and shoot him in the head. Then come tell me about it."
"Got it."
Turning to the first thug, who'd been with them during the phone call, Barney said, "Grab down those rolls of twine from the closet there, bring 'em along."
"Uh-huh."
"Come on, Peg."
She followed Barney out of the office, the thug with an armload of rolls of twine following her, as the chief was cuffed to his own office chair. He looked grim and heroic still, like Mount Rushmore.
In the hall, they met the third thug and the attorney, Leethe. Barney said, "We're moving."
Leethe said, "What's happening?"
"He's on his way. Look in the tall cabinet in there, second shelf, you'll see boxes and boxes of thumbtacks and pushpins. I want 'em on the ground all around the property, and in the doorways, and on the windowsills. You and Bosco do that." Meaning the third thug.
Leethe looked surprised and displeased. "Barney," he said, "do you think I'm one of your henchmen?"
"No, I think you're one of NAABOR's henchmen, same as ever. We got no time to stroke egos, Counselor. Freddie's on his way."
Leethe made a bad mouth, but he went away to do Barney's bidding, followed by the thug now christened Bosco, while Barney led Peg and the remaining thug out to the porch, where they found the usual country assortment of wood and wicker furniture. The sturdiest of these was a straight-backed wooden armchair, long ago painted dark green, which Barney now dragged across the gray-painted porch floor closer to the door. "Park it," he told Peg, and as she sat he turned to the thug with the armload of twine. "Give me one roll," he said, taking it, "and go out there and string me trip wires all around the property, tree to tree."
"Right."
The thug left the porch and crossed the lawn over to a big maple, where he went to work. Barney opened the roll of twine, knelt beside Peg, and tied her right ankle to one chair leg and her left ankle to the other. "Slip knots," he told her, using the porch rail to help lever his bulk back up onto his feet. "If you bend down to touch the cord, I'll give you a warning shot in the shoulder. When Freddie gets here, ask him to untie you."
Leethe and Bosco came out, hands and pockets full of little boxes of thumbtacks and pushpins. They walked around like Johnny Appleseed, sprinkling shiny sharp things on path and lawn, so that when Freddie got here he'd have to move very slowly, clearing all the tacks and pins out of the way of his bare feet, if he was barefoot, or have to wear shoes. In either case, Barney and the others would see him coming.
Barney went back into the house. Peg sat in the chair and watched the preparations continue, Leethe moving around the house to the left, Bosco and the trip-wiring thug to the right. From time to time, a car or pickup truck went by on Market Street, and there were some curious stares, but not many. There was always some sort of construction work going on in town.
Bart Simpson drove by, in a green Hornet.
Barney had his crew add coffee cups and silverware and other noisemaking things to his trip wires, and make sure every door and window except the wide-open front entrance was locked and blocked and defended by thumbtacks. Then they stripped blankets and bedspreads from the beds upstairs and waited just inside the open front doorway. The idea was, when Freddie stooped or knelt to untie the twine around Peg's ankles, they'd leap out and wrap him in bedding and tie him up and then talk to him.
Maybe it won't be so bad, Peg thought, Freddie working for Barney and the lawyer. Steady employment, low risk. Probably no health benefits, though.
It's hard to look on the sunny side when you're in a shit-storm.
54
Freddie walked back to the house. He'd seen the preparations as he'd driven by, and now he took a closer look. Trip wires to make jangly noises. Sharp things on the ground for his bare feet. No windows open, on this nice sunny day, so probably everything locked up except that invitingly open doorway beside Peg, sitting there on the front porch. Was that some kind of cord or twine around her ankles? Very nice.