Ready for a 'leap' of faith?
~~~
“Why are you following me?” I asked the redhead wearing stretch jeans, walking shoes, and a visor.
“I’m here to kill you.” She unzipped her fanny pack.
“Kill me! Why?”
“I’m just a contractor who does what she’s told but rumor has it you humiliated Gary Bandsaw Evanston’s wife.” She stepped closer. “One of us will get you eventually but if you come quietly, I’ll make it painless.”
“I’m seventy-nine-years-old. My PSA and cholesterol are through the roof. Might as well get it over with.”
She led me to the edge of a bridge and gestured toward the river below. My acid reflux backed up, tasting of butter chicken and garlic naan. Imagining a blade puncturing my chest and blood flooding my lungs, I got cold feet.
“You know, I still have a few things to do.”
“See you in a couple days.” She disappeared into the crowd.
***
“Her rabbit knocked over five rails!” I told Rick and Jamie. “How can the integrity of competitive hopping survive if I bend the rules just because a bunny’s handler is married to a mobster?”
“We have to get you out of here.” Rick stood. “Leave your car and cell phone. We’ll take you someplace safe and figure out what to do.”
I got in their beige Camry and we drove off.
“Let’s keep him under wraps for a few days.” Rick turned on his blinkers and took a left. “I’ll reach out to Evanston and try to smooth this over.”
“Bandsaw Evanston’s a psycho,” Jamie replied. “Lloyd’s only chance is witness protection.”
We rolled to a stop in front of an apartment complex. Jamie and I got out, waited to ensure no one followed us, and then crossed a courtyard lit by sodium lamps.
“Soon as I get back to the office, I’ll type up an application for the judge.” She handed me a key. “Apartment twelve.”
***
“So, all you have is that Gary Evanston’s wife cheats at rabbit show jumping.” The prosecutor for the Northern District of Illinois wore a dark suit with a gold tie that matched his pocket square and had a mole the size of Mount Kilimanjaro by his nose. “Hardly grounds for a federal case.”
“But these people are trying to kill me.” I looked at the desk to avoid staring at the prosecutor’s mole.
“With my limited budget, I can’t offer witness protection to anyone.” The prosecutor tapped his pencil on a legal pad.
“Why do they call him Bandsaw, anyway?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do?”
“Change your locks, install a security system, and maybe get a dog.”
“How about a Flemish Giant rabbit?”
“Do they bark?”
“Look, I barely escaped an assassin last night!”
“Assassin? What did he look like?”
“She had red hair, wore mom jeans, and got the job off a master list.”
“My God! She’s the PTA Killer.” The prosecutor fingered his mole. “Now that’s something we can work with.”
***
The little monsters from Sulfurville’s peewee soccer wouldn’t stay in line. Ricky knocked off Jason’s yellow hat and Clarence’s nose leaked more snot than the Hoover Dam’s spillways. To make matters worse, the acne-cream float was delayed. I gazed at the sky hoping a giant meteor would put the Sulfur Day parade out of its misery.
Federal Marshals gave me the alias Waldo Baldhead and stuck me in the sulfur capital of the tri-state area as payback because their sting didn’t work as planned. Instead of arresting the PTA Killer, two marshals ended up in the emergency room. Jimmy pulled down Jason’s pants.
“Cut it out!” I yelled. Clarence sneezed a gallon of adenovirus on me. “Thanks a lot.”
The paper mâché tube finally arrived in the bed of an F-150 and I herded the boys into the procession. When it was over, parents collected their brats at the fairgrounds and hurried off to sample deep-fried leeks, deep-fried Brussels sprouts, deep-fried egg yolks, and deep-fried broccoli. I tried my luck at ring toss and failed shooting targets with an air gun. The line for the Ferris wheel was too long so I entered the 4-H exhibit where the manure smell barely covered up the town’s hydrogen-sulfide stench. You can take the man out of show jumping but you can’t take competitive hopping out of the man so, of course, I browsed the rabbit exhibit. Among the unfortunate New Zealand Whites, raised for meat, I found an amazing Dutch rabbit. He was black and white with a blaze on his face. More importantly he had the long legs and a perfect body of a born champion.
“That one will make a tasty hassenpfeffer.” A man with a handlebar mustache filled out an auction card for the Dutch.
In witness protection, you’re supposed avoid contact with previous acquaintances but I couldn’t let this Olympian end up in a frying pan. I bid five-hundred dollars and placed my auction card in the box. No one would have to know.
***
The rabbit stuck his tongue out as I stroked his forehead before lifting him out of the cage in my bedroom. Naming him Harvey, Thumper, or Bugs would have been trite so I settled on Commadore Biscuit. After a month of training, he no longer struggled when I fitted him with a harness and he’d gotten used to walking beside me on a leash.
Today was the big day. Although Commadore Biscuit had jumped onto the couch, he hadn’t hopped in competition format. Would he choke? There was only one way to find out. I set a pillow on the living room carpet and walked toward it. No pressure. No pressure. I just needed him to walk beside me. I didn’t slow approaching the pillow and neither did he. He hopped and we kept on walking with no hesitation at all. We reversed course and he hopped again. He jumped two pillows and even three. I had a winner.
I heard a knock on the door and saw Marshal Gloria Tabor through the peephole.
“Just a minute.” I stashed Commadore Biscuit in the bedroom.
I noticed tooth marks on the baseboard and covered these with a pillow before answering the door.
“We were supposed to meet at Denny’s.” Marshal Tabor entered and looked at the pillow.
“Doing stretches for my back.” I gestured toward the kitchen. “Want coffee? I have instant.”
Marshal Tabor turned when Commadore Biscuit thumped his hind legs in the bedroom.
“Old building. Joists settle when the temperature changes. Let me get you that coffee.” I banged pots in the kitchen to cover the noise.
“You know this guy?” When I returned to the living room, Marshal Tabor laid out eight-by-ten photos of a corpse, wearing a bloody Easter bunny suit.
“Yeah, that’s Elwood Stewart.” I set down her cup. “His rabbit, Loki, won the nationals last year.”
“Made his living as a debt collector,” Marshal Tabor said. “Followed deadbeats around wearing a rabbit suit in an attempt to embarrass them into paying. We suspect Bandsaw Evanston is behind his death but couldn’t pin it on him. Remember to be careful.”
Commadore Biscuit thumped in the bedroom.
“Cream and sugar?” I asked.
***
After she left, I loaded a bong with medical marijuana before setting it on the coffee table. The feds wouldn’t approve but, hey, I’ve got glaucoma. What was I thinking? With a gangster murdering anyone associated with competitive hopping, I was a fool to get back in the game. Commadore Biscuit thumped when I opened the bedroom door.
“Sorry, buddy.” I coaxed him out with a strawberry and he joined me on the couch.
I lit up, inhaled, and held my breath. Commadore Biscuit thumped.
“Want some of this?” I took a hit and exhaled the smoke into his twitching nose. Commadore Biscuit crawled onto my lap.
I turned on the TV and switched the channel to ESPN, just me and my rabbit smoking dope on the couch. I expected football but, to my shock, the next story showed a Mini Rex hopping gates.
“This is Nobunaga, odds-on favorite to win the National Rabbit Hopping Competition in Las Vegas,” the announcer said. “I’m here with his owner, Sissy Evanston at the high-tech training camp near Argonne National Laboratory, where rabbits train in low-pressure chambers to increase endurance. Sissy, what first got you interested in competitive rabbit jumping?”
“As a child, I was infatuated with horses. What little girl isn’t?” Sissy said. “I watched dressage, steeple chase, show jumping and begged my parents to get me a pony. Of course, living on the south side of Chicago we couldn’t afford it. They got me a rabbit along with few gates as a joke but I fell in love with the sport.”
The interviewer reached out to the rabbit in Sissy’s arms and he bit her.
“Nobunaga’s a born competitor,” Sissy continued. “Sometimes we train ten hours a day and he shows no sign of quitting. Even after arthroscopic knee surgery, he couldn’t wait to get back on the course. We will settle for nothing less than gold.”
“What are the chances of competitive hopping becoming an Olympic sport?”
“The association is lobbying the International Olympic Committee. If it does, you can rest assured that Nobunaga and I will be on America’s team.”
Commadore Biscuit scratched with his front paws to demand another hit.
***
Lights flashed and bells rang as the slot machine vomited quarters. The winner fed her rabbit a raspberry in celebration. There were Holland Lops at blackjack, American Sables at the poker table, and Harlequins watching the roulette wheel spin. I collected my room key and took the elevator. Once in my room, I let Commadore Biscuit out of his cage before removing my disguise of wig, makeup, and padded bra. To minimize the chance of being recognized, I ordered a turkey sandwich from room service and spent the night watching HBO.
***
“This is Commander Biscuit?” the official asked.
“That’s Commadore Biscuit to you, buddy,” I replied.
“And you are?”
“Baldhead, Wendy Baldhead.”
“That will be fifty dollars.” He took the cash and handed me a pass. “You’re on course seven.”
I put the lanyard over my neck and entered an arena that was a Hugh Hefner wet dream of long ears and cottony tails. Purveyors of scratch pads, timothy hay, alfalfa pellets, pet feeders, rabbit houses, and chew sticks hawked their wares to all who passed. I found our course and joined twenty rabbits and their handlers. Since this was elite division, the course had ten knee-high gates. These consisted of vertical supports holding detachable horizontal dowels. Some supports were A-frames or semicircles forcing competitors to jump for length as well as height.
After the warmup, judges called the first competitor, a Rhinelander with a woman in sweatpants as its handler. Running on the rabbit’s left side, she directed it over the two-inch starting gate. They continued to three high gates. The Rhinelander jumped an A-frame but knocked a rail off its support. It would lose time for that. It cleared a three-foot pool of water but hesitated at X-shaped gate number nine. Its handler touched the rabbit’s bottom and he cleared the remaining gates for a respectable time of 11 seconds.
Other rabbits competed. Some were better. Some worse. A Belgian Hare turned around halfway and ran the course backwards. An English Spot hesitated on gate nine. Its handler picked it up and moved it back for a running start but the rabbit would not jump. This can happen with animals but, fortunately, not with Commadore Biscuit. We advanced to the semifinals.
***
Commadore Biscuit hopped the ninth gate and I walked him toward the tenth. Matching the clock to my pulse, I paused for a split second. He needed to get into the finals without a time that would shift the betting odds against Nobunaga. I touched his behind and he completed the course with a respectable time. The audience in formal wear applauded before guzzling more cocktails. Other semifinalists were good but not good enough. Somehow a New Zealand White made it to the semis but hesitated at two gates. A Mini Rex knocked down two rails.
After the competition, I stashed Commadore Biscuit in the hotel room and changed into men’s clothing. I took the stairs to the exit, walked up the Strip to Tiberius’ Palace, and approached the betting window.
“Ten thousand dollars on Commadore Biscuit.” I laid down the cash.
The odds were twenty to one in favor of Nobunaga. If I knocked him out of the competition, I’d pocket a cool two-hundred grand. Receipt in my pocket, I headed toward the exit. As I reached the revolving door, I felt a pistol in my kidney.
“Miss me?” the PTA Killer asked. “Don’t get cute. I can put a bullet in your back and disappear before your body hits the floor.”
She hustled me onto the Strip. A Toyota minivan pulled to the curb. I got in the passenger’s seat while she sat in back ready to splatter my brains over the windshield.
“You old enough to drive?” I asked the teenager behind the wheel.
He was scrawny with uncombed hair and a sprinkle of acne across his nose.
“I’m teaching my son the family business.” The PTA Killer addressed the driver. “Get on Lake Mead Boulevard. No one will find his body in the desert.”
“So, Dean and Ryan are going to Coachella,” the driver continued a previous conversation. “They’ll look out for me and I could even stay at dad’s place in Indio.”
“Nathan, we talked about this,” the PTA Killer said. “Your seventeen-year-old friends aren’t mature enough to take care of anybody.”
“You never let me do anything.”
“When you’re old enough to pay your bills, you can do whatever you want.”
Nathan pulled into an In-and-Out.
“What are you doing?” the PTA Killer asked.
“I want a burrito.” Nathan slammed the door and entered the burger shop.
“Teenagers!” The PTA Killer shook her head.
“How much are they paying you for this?” I asked.
“Not enough for the trouble you caused.”
“The perils of a private contractor. At least you can deduct mileage from your income taxes,” I said. “How much would I have to pay you to forget you saw me?”
“I have a reputation to uphold.”
“Two-hundred grand.” I reached toward my pocket and felt the muzzle against the back of my neck. “I’m just getting the receipt. If my rabbit wins tomorrow, it’s all yours.”
“That’s a big if.”
“What do you have to lose by waiting one more day?”
***
I pushed open my hotel-room door and found the rabbit cage open and Commadore Biscuit lying on the carpet next to a half-eaten bag of weed.
“No! No! No!” I dropped to my knees. “Hey buddy. Wake up.” I slapped his little face. What were you supposed to do for a rabbit overdose? Walk him around? Put him in a bathtub of cold water? Naloxone, or was that just for opioids?
He opened his dilated eyes, sneezed, and went back to dreamland. There was no way he’d be sober for tomorrow’s competition. My only option was to get out of there. I put on my disguise. No time for makeup or packing. I had to move. I opened the door and stepped into the hallway.
“Going somewhere?” the PTA Killer asked.
“Ice machine.”
“Where’s your bucket?”
“Oh, yeah.” I retrieved a bucket from the room.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll be watching over you.”
After filling the bucket, I returned to my room. Commadore Biscuit stared with glazed eyes like a psych patient who’d undergone electroshock therapy.
***
I set down Commadore Biscuit’s cage after joining the line of finalists outside the arena. Piranhas of fear nipped at my bowels and my eyelids felt like forty-grit sandpaper. With no way to run, all I could do was stall but I had little hope that my catatonic bunny would win.
“Excuse me, dear. Your collar’s crooked.” Marshal Tabor set down a cage next to Commadore Biscuit’s and straightened my collar. “There you go.” She picked up Commadore Biscuit and left me with a replacement.
I had no time to puzzle that out because the music started and competitors entered the arena.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome our first contestant Rubbles and his handler Richard Calahan,” the announcer said over the microphone. “Rubbles comes from Tempe, Arizona and is a Holland Lop weighing 4.5 pounds.”
Richard and Rubbles entered.
“Next up is Commadore Biscuit and his handler Wendy Baldhead.”
I carried the mystery rabbit’s cage into the auditorium and took my place by the starting gate. Three ESPN cameras were covering the action and more spectators crowded the seats than in the semis. I spotted actors, politicians, and old men with women young enough to be their granddaughters.
“And finally, please welcome the reigning champion Nobunaga and his handler Sissy Evanston.”
The crowd rose to its feet to applaud as Sissy, waving like British royalty, carried Nobunaga into the arena,
“Ladies and gentlemen, competitors will compete in random order. First up is IPA and her handler Norma Rockwell.”
Despite her name, the Checkered Giant’s handler had too many tattoos to inhabit a Norman Rockwell painting. At least she had a sense of humor because IPA is known for being hoppy. As for her rabbit, his muscles tensed and rippled before each gate as if drawing energy from the Earth. All that drama won the audience’s applause but drama eats time. The clock’s verdict was a dismal 10.8 seconds and knocking over a rail on the tenth gate cost him even more.
“Our next competitor is Commadore Biscuit and his handler Wendy Baldhead.”
As I removed the mystery rabbit from the cage, black hair dye smudged my fingers. I set him down behind the starting gate and he ran the course in 8 seconds with no false starts and no drama. Whoever this buck was, he was a professional.
A Lionhead hesitated on the fourth gate and came in at a disappointing 11.4 seconds. Next Nobunaga ran the course. Despite his handler’s lack of sportsmanship, the rabbit was an outstanding athlete but not as good as my mystery rabbit. He came in at 8.2 seconds.
“Please welcome our final contestant, Rubbles.”
Rubbles started off with an amazing jump of gate one. She flew over the next eight like a Lockheed U-2. Then, she hesitated at the final gate. The audience didn’t see it but I could. His handler made her pause. The feds had given me the win.
***
“You’re lucky we don’t throw you out of the program,” Marshal Tabor said as she escorted me to my hotel room. “From now on, you’ll stay in Sulfurville and keep a low profile.”
“And Commadore Biscuit?” I asked.
“He’s in rehab!”
“I don’t get it.” I stuck the keycard in the door. “What is this about?”
“Joint taskforce. Gary Evanston owes dangerous people money.” Marshal Tabor followed me into the room. “Depriving him of his wife’s winnings gives us leverage to turn him into an informant.”
I heard a pop as Marshal Tabor’s head erupted in a spray of gore.
“Time to collect my money.” The PTA Killer emerged from the bathroom holding a suppressed pistol. She wore magenta, Wumble Kids overalls and slip-on shoes.
After I changed into men’s clothing, she escorted me to Tiberius’ Palace where I collected my winnings and handed them over.
“Get in!” She pointed to the minivan outside the casino.
“I thought we had a deal.”
“There’s been a change of plan. Gary Evanston doubled the price on your head. He wants you alive.” She forced me into the passenger’s seat.
“I gave you my winnings. Isn’t that enough?” I asked as the assassin’s son pulled away from the curb.
“Do you know what college costs these days?” she asked.
“Mom, I don’t want to go to college. Why do I need to sit through a bunch of boring classes when I’m going to be an assassin like you?” Nathan said. “I’ll learn more about real life from a year in Europe. Dean and Ryan say we can sign on as deck hands in Ibiza and teach skiing on Mont Blanc.”
“I’m sick of Dean and Ryan,” the PTA Killer said. “You think you can wire a detonator without knowing electronics? You think you can make poison without studying chemistry? You’re going to college and that’s final!”
Nathan drove toward Summerlin and stopped in front of a two-story stucco house with a tile roof.
“Out!” The PTA Killer motioned with her pistol and escorted me through the front door.
“Well, well.” Gary Bandsaw Evanston got up from the leather couch. His eyes were cold as the Lambert Glacier and he was missing two fingers on his left hand. “Here’s the asshole who cost me five-hundred grand. I got some carpentry plans for you, my friend, and they won’t be pretty.”
“You’re forgetting something,” the PTA Killer said.
“Sure thing, doll.” Evanston handed her a stack of bills.
“Oh, by the way.” She pocketed the bills. “Cisero says hello.” She shot him twice in the chest before turning to me.
“Now we’re done,” she said.
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