Motor Mouth

to sit, plus his head is facing the wrong way. He looks like something out of the
Exorcist
movie.” And then I saw the guns on the table. “I’m guessing those guns belong to Rodriguez and Lucca?”
    “Simon laid the guns on the table when they brought Rodriguez and Lucca in,” Hooker said. “And then everyone forgot about them. I’m hoping one of those guns was used to shoot Oscar.”
    Rodriguez started to list to one side, and Felicia propped him up on his elbow. “We put this guy here in case Officer Dummy is the first on the scene and can’t figure it out.”
    We all froze at the sound of gunfire.
    “Upstairs,” Hooker said.
    There was a loud crash, and then Rosa’s voice. “It’s okay,” she yelled down. “I got Gobbles, and he’s okay.”
    I went to the foot of the stairs. “What was the gunfire about?”
    “I had to shoot the lock off the bathroom door,” Rosa said. “I always wanted to do that.” Rosa had Gobbles by the back of the shirt, holding him up like he was a baby kitten. “He’s a little wobbly, but he don’t got any holes in him he’s not supposed to have. At least none I can see.”
    “I went outside with the garbage,” Gobbles said, eyes glazed, semi-babbling. “It had the turkey carcass in it. It was a real good turkey, too. Nice and moist. Everybody said so. I made a real good Thanksgiving. Everybody left, and I was cleaning up, and next thing I was in the trunk of a car. And then they gave me some kind of shot, and everything was whirly, and I don’t know where I was, and then I was back in the trunk. And when I was in the trunk, I saw Jesus. And the Virgin Mary. And Ozzie Osbourne.”
    “Must have been crowded in that trunk,” Rosa said.
    Rosa and I got Gobbles down the stairs and into the kitchen. We walked him to the middle of the room, and he spotted Rodriguez sitting at the table and totally wigged out.
    “You!” Gobbles yelled at Rodriguez. “I didn’t get any leftovers because of you. And leftovers are the best part. Everybody knows that. You don’t fuckin’ kidnap someone Thanksgiving night. I fuckin’ wait all fuckin’ year for those leftovers. I hate you. I hate you!” He grabbed the gun from Rosa, and he shot Rodriguez in the knee.
    Nothing happened. Rodriguez didn’t jump, didn’t bleed, didn’t blink.
    “You
do
know he’s dead, right?” Hooker asked Gobbles.
    “Yeah. I knew that.”
    “Feel better?”
    “Yeah,” Gobbles said. “But I surely would like a turkey sandwich.”
    I noticed a shoebox left on the table. Gucci. “Someone buys expensive shoes,” I said.
    Rosa picked the box up and looked inside. “Uh-oh.”
    Felicia, Hooker, Suzanne, and I looked over Rosa’s shoulder. There were two cylinders attached to a small electronic component with a clock counting down. Two minutes left on the clock.
    “Bomb!” we all yelled.
    Hooker grabbed the box, ran outside, and heaved it toward the water. It hit the dock, went into a skid, and exploded. We were all knocked back, and half the windows blew out.
    We didn’t waste any time getting off the property. Too much trouble to alley-oop over the wall again. We ran to the water’s edge, carefully stepped into the waist-high water, scooted around the protruding stucco wall, and dragged our soaked selves onto the bank on the other side.
    The white light from headlights and blue emergency strobes raced down the street and stopped in front of the gated house while we tiptoed across the backs of yards. We got to the Camry, squeezed six wet people and a big wet dog into the car, and Rosa drove off, down the street then across the causeway, toward South Beach.
    I had so much leftover terror my teeth were chattering and I was shaking.
    “D-d-do you think it will work?” I asked Hooker. “D-d-do you think they’ll connect Rodriguez and Lucca with the m-m-murders?”
    Hooker had his arms locked around me. “There will be a lot of unanswered questions,” he said, “but I’m hoping we left the murder weapon in the kitchen. I don’t see where the police can dispute a murder weapon loaded with fingerprints.”
    “Guess we know why they weren’t worried about leaving you behind,” Rosa said to Hooker. “They were going to blow you up.”
    “That charge was left in the kitchen, next to the gas cooktop,” Hooker said. “I’m guessing it would have blown
everything
up and probably burned the place down.”
     
    I woke up in the little bed in Felicia’s house. Beans was on the floor,