Disclaimer: I don't own Pokemon or the personalities and appearances of several featured characters.
"At Least It Can't Get Any Worse"
Chapter Three: A Match of Wits and Halfwits
The phone had only rung once, and it was just to let Nigel know that their rent was overdue again.
He noticed the giant wooden crate sitting in the middle of the apartment. Queequeg hadn't opened it. Sitting up, he glanced at the door, wishing for the millionth time there would be a sexy female client standing there.
He glanced back at the crate, taking up one fifth of the room's space.
Then he looked back at the door.
Then back at the crate.
Then the door.
... The crate was bigger than the door.
"Oi ..." He rubbed his temples, feeling another headache coming on. How Queequeg had done it wasn't even worth trying to figure out.
The unloaded delivery truck plodded through one of Pearl Town's many narrow, maze-like back alleys. Laurence checked the numbers on the scraggy buildings as he passed them. Once he was sure he'd reached the right address, he squeezed the truck in between a deserted warehouse and a high-class tavern. Their pickup was stashed in the tavern's basement, where many wealthy and shady individuals liked to discuss business in the morning and afternoon over drinks. Bribes to the police force made it safer for storage than the warehouse.
Laurence pulled forward a couple of feet, making sure the back of the truck was close to the basement door. He glanced at his pocket watch. He had thought it smart to wait exactly ten minutes before getting out to retrieve their shipment from the basement of the tavern. That way, if anyone was wise to their operation, it would give the perpetrator time to sneak a peek down the ally and expose themselves.
"Hey, Laurence ..." said Harvey in his vacant, dreamy way, "I'm not so sure I like what we're doing. Do you think it's safe?"
Laurence shook his head in mock disappointment. "Harvey, Harvey, Harvey," he said. "Of course it's safe. Those stony-eyed guys dressed in black are paying us a lot of money! AND," he added before Harvey could protest, "if we're being paid a lot of money, then it obviously means that this is an important job. And if the job is important, then that means we are important. And they wouldn't let something dangerous happen to a couple of important fellas like us, now would they?"
Harvey scratched his head. "Well ... I guess that makes sense ..."
"Of course it does. I said it didn't I?" Laurence patted his friend on the shoulder. "All you need to know is whatever I tell you, and you'll be fine. Now let's get to work."
He glanced in both directions to make sure they were clear both in front of and behind the truck ... so he was surprised to say the least when something plopped down on top of the truck. The tow deliverymen exchanged alarmed glances, then drew the guns they'd been given. Laurence fumbled with a box of bullets and dropped them all over the floor while Harvey stared at his revolver, wondering how to get the spinney thing to pop out.
Whoever had fallen onto their truck had evidently slid to the ground. They heard a scampering sound, a door being opened, more scampering as it faded away, followed by slower, heavier scampering coming back within earshot. They both jumped in their seats as a sudden weight was dropped into the back, jarring the vehicle on its suspension. They glanced at one another, nodded simultaneously, and scrambled out, tripping over their respective doorframes to tumble into the dust. Harvey's gun went off, and the sound of air emptying out of the front tire could be heard.
Reaching the back, they found the basement door to the tavern open, and coming up from it was a disheveled ragamuffin with a dirty trenchcoat and a red fez on his shaven head. He was hidden behind a dozen boxes (boxes that were supposed to be loaded by them) and was staggering under their weight. He dropped them into the back with the others.
The weight of the boxes jarred the truck's suspension again, causing Laurence and Harvey to wince. Harvey's gun went off again, and the shot was followed by the hiss of air escaping from one of the rear tires this time.
Queequeg dusted his hands off, glanced at the two armed deliverymen, then ran back down the stairs for another armful of crates.
"Who was that guy?" Harvey asked his companion. Laurence glared condescendingly at him. He brought his gun up and stood like a sentry before the doorway, ready to encounter the ruffian.
Harvey glanced from his more experience partner to his own gun and bent to examine it more closely. Suddenly, it went off a third time, causing Laurence to jerk his foot off the ground and start hopping about madly. Harvey watched his partner in crime bouncing around on one foot, and after a few seconds of thought, hid the gun behind his back.
No sooner had these events taken place than Queequeg came tramping back into the alley with another tower of boxes. Laurence turned on his one foot and pointed the gun at Queequeg as he set the crates down. "Alright mister ..." The weapon was unexpectedly knocked from his hand when the mute turned away from the truck. "Hey!" Laurence bent down for it, but as the mute charged back into the cellar for another trip, the fat man's foot was knocked out from under him in a burst of sand.
Laurence slowly rose to stand on wobbly legs, unable to tell if this whole thing was an accident caused by a moron, or a clever strategy being humiliatingly served to him by a tai-chi/judo expert.
"Um, do you need any help?" asked Harvey, still hiding his own gun out of sight.
"No, I don't need your help." Laurence fought his rising temper. "But as long as this crazy person is helping with our pickup, let's allow him to fill the truck, let him go on his merry little way, leave ourselves, and forget we ever saw him." He stuffed his gun back into his trousers. "And then shoot him."
Suddenly, there was a horrendous crash from the stairwell. Laurence hobbled over to the cellar door and peered down to see the bald man sitting at the bottom amidst scattered wooden crates. One of those crates was smashed open, its packing straw and contents lying all around the mute. Laurence grabbed his hair in two fists as the bald buffoon reached into the debris and picked up the item that had been contained in the crate.
It was a curious mechanism: cone-shaped, silver, and there were no moving pars on it. He shook it.
"Hey, don't do that! Stop!" Laurence thumped quickly down the stairs.
Queequeg looked up at him and grinned. He hopped to his feet, waved the item in front of him, and dodged around a cluster of wine barrels.
"Stop! Give that back, you!" Laurence grabbed for the silver cone, but the mute slipped away and kept it out of his reach while hopping up and down and whistling. He seemed to think it was a game.
"Hey, Laurence? What's going on?" Harvey hollered from outside. "Are you sure you don't need any help?"
"Yes, you nitwit, get down here," Laurence huffed as he made grabs for the cone. "This idiot just broke open one of the crates and he's fiddling around with a blasted BOMB right now!"
At this, the mute froze. Laurence also froze, reflecting on the information he'd let slip. The mute stared with realization at the cone he held, then slowly looked up and pointed an accusing finger at Laurence. Then, quick as a flash, he tucked the silver explosive device into a pocket of his trenchcoat and rocketed up the stairs that led to the tavern. Laurence gave chase with as much effectiveness as could be expected from a fat man with a hole in his foot.
The saloon above was dimly lit and full of quiet, serious conversation. It was overlain with soft jazz music that was loud enough to maintain privacy between tables, with help from the room's acoustics, while not making conversation difficult.
And then Queequeg burst in. He exploded from the door directly behind the bartender, who was setting a drink down in front of a man who wore glasses, had big bushy eyebrows, a big black mustache, and was smoking a big black cigar. Queequeg shoved the bartender aside and vaulted over the counter, grabbing the man's drink as he did so. He knocked it back and tossed the glass aside, whilst dodging around chairs, leaping over tables, and basically cutting a path of disruption from one end of the tevern to the other.
The man with the glasses and mustache turned around to watch the chaos. He glanced at his timepiece. "Well, the eleven-thirty is on time," he quipped. He turned back to the bartender. "It seems you have a serious rat problem in the basement." Realization caused his enormous eyebrows to shoot up. He yanked out his cigar and leaned forward. "No wait, it's not in the basement anymore, it's up here! But that's the problem, isn't it? Once you rat-proof your alcohol cases down there in the cellar, the rats have to come up here and steal from the customers instead!" He stood up. "It's an outrage! I, Lionel Q. Devereaux ... and by the way, that's 'Devereaux' with an 'ee-aye-yoo-ex' ... shall sue this place! That's right, I'll sue it into the dust!"
The bartender stared at him for a beat. "I'll get you another drink, sir."
The mustached man calmed down immediately. "That'd be swell, thanks."
Laurence, red-faced with effort and anger, burst through the door seconds later. His foot caught the top stair, causing him to topple forward and collide with the bartender just as he was bringing the mustached man a replacement drink. This time, it spilled right onto the man's suit.
Laurence pulled himself up by the edge of the counter and glared over it just in time to see his quarry barge out the front door and disappear.
The malcontent would-be customer dabbed at the single-malt scotch on his shirt. "Well, how d'ya like that? My wife already tells me I drink too much. All I've gotta do is come to ithis/i bar every day and I'll be sober in no time!"
Moments later, Laurence and Harvey's truck was pulling out from the shadowy crevices of Pearl Town's back alleys and into its semi-busy municipal streets. Laurence fretted as he drove along, honking irritably at those who didn't get out of the way fast enough. Although the delivery truck wasn't moving very fast to begin with, what with having two flat tires.
"Ohhh, if that guy finds out we lost one, we'll be in big trouble," he worried. "We'll need a good cover story. Like ... there were only twenty-three boxes in the basement. It was the supplier's fault! Yeah ... he'll believe that. Whose gonna miss one silly old bomb anyway?"
Harvey said, "Well, if I were giving out Christmas gifts, I'd sure like to know exactly how many—"
"Shutup!"
As they drove past the Zanzibar Hotel, the trenchcoated figure that had been hanging from the truck's undercarriage suddenly dropped onto the ground and rolled out from underneath the vehicle. Queequeg stood up, then was jerked back into the dust as the truck's rear tire rolled over the tail of his coat.
Once it was past, he stood up again and brushed himself off.
He stood in the middle of the street for a moment, watching the hired pair of witless smugglers drive into the distance. Before they were out of sight, he stuck his tongue out an shook his fist at them. Then he hefted his dangerous, black-market package up to the sunlight so he could examine it. It didn't look like anything special, and it didn't look very dangerous either. But still, it was the catch of the day. He darted inside.
Nigel awoke to a pair of hands furiously clutching at his collar. They were alternating between shaking his head forward and backward for two seconds, then thrashing it back and forth for three seconds. Nigel tried to block it out and stay asleep by employing some of the Zen-like skills he'd had to learn in order to deal with his step-brother. Then he remembered that the last time he'd played possum, Queequeg had resorted to blasting him with a fire extinguisher and throwing him out the window to wake him up.
Besides, when the guy needed his brother awake, it was usually something urgent. He yawned and pushed Queequeg's hands away. "Alright, alright, I'm awake, man. What's going on?"
His mute sibling hurried across the room and back while Nigel tried groggily to rub the sleepiness from his features. When Nigel's hands came down from kneading the drowsiness from his eyes, he found himself staring face-to-nosecone with Queequeg's latest emergency.
"Whazzat?" Nigel blinked and peered at it. As the sleep cleared from his vision, the object came into focus. And as the object came into focus, his thought process sharpened. And as his thinking sharpened, his brain, desperate to bring a resolution to the situation at hand, sent a very important message to his mouth: "Holy googlenheimer's pocket watch, it's a bomb! Where'd you get that?"
Queequeg immediately launched into a pantomime of the day's events. Dropping to the floor, he hobbled and crawled around, twisting his features first into that of a half-crazed-by-greed neanderthal, and then into a sad, whimpering one.
"Um ... Jekyll and Hyde?" Nigel guessed.
A ring appeared in Queequegs hands, which he stroked adoringly and held close to his shirt in a protective manner.
"Oh, Golem. Wait, Smeagle!"
Queequeg snapped his fingers, urging him to repeat the name.
"Uh, Smeagle ... Smeagle. Smeagle. I see not what this has to do with anything. You'd better have a point."
Reaching forward while Nigel continued to repeat the name, Queequeg began contorting the flesh around Nigel's mouth, twisting it to manipulate the sound he was producing. "Smeagle. Searrgle. Shmurrgle. Shmurrgle. Shmuggle. Shmuggle ..." Nigel got it and pushed the hands away. "Oh, smuggle!"
Queequeg hopped up and down.
"Jeez, you got this from smugglers? How?"
Tucking the warhead under his arm, Queequeg mimed a wild trip and crashed to the floor, rolling down the length of the room as if he were tumbling down a flight of stairs. Once he hit the wall, he got back up and hurried over to Nigel.
"You ... fell down the stairs with that thing?" Nigel asked incredulously. "Is it still dangerous?"
Queequeg shrugged, extracted a hammer from his coat pocket, and started whacking the explosive device with it.
"Whoa, WHOA! Knock it off! Now listen, we're going to need to tell the authorities about this, understand? I want you to take that thing and hide it somewhere in case anybody comes looking for it. That means bad guys. You do know what to do if bad guys come, right?"
His brother nodded. He pulled a mousetrap from his pocket and snapped it.
"That's ... right, I guess."
Nigel strode to the phone and shook his head in despair as he hefted the receiver up to his ear. "Bomb smuggling. Good thing this isn't as crazy as that time you came to me with your conspiracy about a secret genetics project going on in the desert."
Queequeg spared him only a glance as he tore stuffing out of a pillow to make a hiding place for the bomb.