CHAPTER 18
JAILHOUSE ROCK
My first thought when I woke up was that I was dead. I felt dizzy, I hurt everyplace, and I thought there was an angel looking down at me. Could this be what death is like? I also felt cold and wet. Couldn’t be hell then at least, I figured, or it would have been hot and probably dry.
Plus, there was an angel staring down at me, smiling. That somehow didn’t seem too likely either. A moment later when things came into focus I realized it was the queen elf bitch herself, Loranda, staring at me with her big nasty eyes and grinning to show off her sharp, pointy fangs.
Other nasty stuff came into focus. I was laying on the floor of a Precinct cell in a puddle of water. Loranda’s nasty dwarf friend Quin was standing next to her holding an empty bucket. The little creep had thrown cold water over me, I realized.
“Hi Dopey,” I said to him, trying to smile. “How’s your little bitty chinny-chin-chin?”
I guess he didn’t like that much, because he kicked me in the ribs.
“No more playing around, Mr. Simon. Tell us where the troll is,” demanded the Elf bitch.
“I don’t believe in trolls, and I sure as hell don’t believe in dwarves.”
Dopey kicked me again. Probably not even hard enough to crack any ribs, but it still hurt like hell.
“You’ll have to do better than that,” I said, which was probably pretty stupid. He kicked me again, harder, and then several small hands pulled me up into a sitting position so that I faced the next cell. In it were Elaine and Margie.
“Jake,” said Elaine, “are you alright?”
“Sure Baby, I’m just dandy, how are you? They ain’t hurt you, have they?”
“Not yet,” said Loranda, “but that can change quickly.”
One of Dopey’s side-kicks unlocked Elaine’s cell and led a dazed looking Vinnie into it. Elaine started towards him, probably to give the big lug a welcoming hug, but then she stopped in her tracks and backed away from him when she saw the vacant look in his eyes. Margie recognized the danger too, and closed ranks with Elaine, and they backed away from him together.
“Elaine betrayed the Family, Mr. Veracruz,” said Loranda. “You know what you have to do.”
Big arms spread wide he advanced slowly on the women, his beady, hateful little eyes focused on Elaine.
I pulled myself up and over to the iron bars separating our cells, ignoring the pain, and reached through, but I couldn’t reach any of them. “Snap out of it Vinnie,” I said. Elaine was talking to him too, but he didn’t seem to hear either of us.
“Keep away from us, you bastard,” said Margie, her eyes flashing.
Vinnie paused for a moment and stared at Margie, as if uncertain.
“She’s an enemy of the Family too, Mr. Veracruz,” said Loranda, her voice rising. “If she gets in the way, get rid of her too.” Vinnie resumed his ponderous advance.
“You lousy bitch,” I shouted, and I lunged towards Loranda. Take out the elf bitch and Vinnie would be OK, I figured. But a half-dozen dwarf's gang tackled me to the floor, and then pulled me again into a sitting position such that I faced the other cell, where Vinnie had backed the women into a corner and was moving in ponderously for the kill.
“Tell me what I want to know, Mr. Simon,” demanded Loranda. “Where is the troll?”
Vinnie reached for Elaine but the women, hand in hand, tried to dodge him, and he ended up grabbing Margie by the arm.
“OK, OK,” I relented, “I’ll tell you everything. Call him off.”
“Vinnie, Vinnie, Vinnie,” Elaine pleaded, to no avail, as she pounded on the arm that held Margie, but her little fists bounced off, doing nothing. Margie gasped in pain, and also uselessly tried to beat him off. Vinnie meanwhile, reached for Elaine with his other hand.
“Stop, Mr. Veracruz,” commanded Loranda.
Vinnie froze like a statue.
“Get lost, Vinnie,” shouted Margie, as she kicked him hard in the jewels.
It had to hurt like crazy, but instead of doubling over, the big gangster released Margie and stood looking around as the women scrambled away to a neutral corner. “Where the fuck am I?” Vinnie asked, looking confused but normal. “Why are my balls sore?”
Several confused looking dwarves led the confused gangster out of the cell, and he went with them without resisting. The elves also seemed to be confused too. The elves and dwarves watched Elaine and Margie warily, as though they were suddenly afraid of them. Meanwhile Loranda and Quin watched and whispered to each other.
Something unexpected and significant had happened just now, but I couldn’t figure what it was.
“Where the fuck am I?” Vinnie asked again, as if he had never seen the inside of a jail before, as he was led away, out of sight and hearing range. The kick in the balls must have snapped him out of the elf spell, I figured.
One of the elves wearing a police badge pointed a revolver at Elaine. Another one held a gun to my head. So much for magic. The elves had learned some other tricks.
“Well, Jake Simon,” said Loranda, “where is the troll?”
“I’ll tell you what I know,” I said. “There was a little tiny troll in the bank vault, and he disappeared with the giant when you guys stormed the bank.”
I stopped talking, and Quin took the opportunity to kick me in the ribs again.
Loranda gritted her ugly teeth. “No, Jake, we want to know where the big troll is NOW.”
“How the fuck would I know that?” I asked.
Quin kicked me again.
Loranda shook her head. “Use your troll-given powers, you idiot! Close your eyes and look for him!” She was so angry she almost spit the words.
“Sure,” I said. “Hey, you’re holding all the cards, so I’ll try.” I closed my eyes and saw nothing but black. I tried to relax, so that maybe a vision would come. Then for just a second I thought that I began to see stuff in my head.
Then the dwarf kicked me again.
“Piss off!” I complained. If there weren’t a bunch of them holding me down I swear I would have gone after the little creep. “I was starting to see stuff and you just screwed it up! How the hell you expect me to do anything this way, with all these bastards holding me and kicking me? I ain’t used to doing this kind of stuff; you got to let me focus. Leave me alone for a little bit and I bet the vision will come back to me. It sure as hell ain’t going to happen this way.”
“All right,” said Loranda, after a few moments of thought. “But this is your very last chance, Jake Simon. Fail now and there will be dire consequences for both you and your friends.” She glanced meaningfully towards Elaine and Margie. “You have four minutes.”
They all trooped out of my cell and out of sight.
“Jake,” said Elaine. She was standing against the bars, reaching for me.
I pulled myself up and to her, grunting with pain, and we held each other tight and kissed through the bars. It hurt like crazy but it felt really, really good at the same time. Totally weird.
“Ah-hum,” said Margie. “Could someone explain what the hell is going on here? Is everyone going crazy? Where are the regular cops? Have those weirdoes really taken over the police in this town? And isn’t my part in this, whatever that was, totally over with, now that that little troll-thing is out of my vault? What do these characters want with me now?”
“All very good questions,” I admitted. “As far as we know, the elves and dwarves want to get their hands on the troll, so they grabbed all of us; you guys for leverage to force me into telling them where he is, and me because the troll cursed me such that I sometimes get visions about where he is. That’s how I knew that part of him was in your vault.”
“What happens when they get him?” Margie asked.
“We aren’t sure,” said Elaine. “Maybe they'll grab him and then all go home.”
“Hopefully,” I said.
“If you were the cursed one Jake, why did the little troll in the vault give me headaches and stuff?” Margie
asked.
“I still don’t understand that part either,” Elaine admitted. “Maybe he was raising such a ruckus that you could sense his presence. Have you ever had any psychic or mystical experiences before? Do such things run in your family?”
Margie shrugged. “My mom used to say that grandma was some kind of white witch. Before she died my grandma told me that I would grow up to be one too.”
“And?” asked Elaine.
“Are you serious? Fairy tales, that’s what they were telling me. I grew out of fairy tales years ago.”
I looked at my Timex. It had taken a licking, and was still ticking. “As interesting as all this is, I have only about two minutes left to get a fix on Mick. So let’s can the chatter for now, ladies.”
I pulled away from Elaine and stumbled over to my cell’s cot, sat down on it, closed my eyes, and tried to relax. Nothing happened. I lay down on the cot and closed my eyes again. Still nothing. My minutes slipped away. I noticed that my soreness was disappearing, and as it did, I felt my thoughts begin to drift.
Finally something, some sort of vision, began to seep into my sore head. I was walking down a street somewhere, Grog at my side. For some reason we were walking in the street instead of on the sidewalks, and cars were getting out of our way or stopping, and people were getting out of them and running away from us, shouting and screaming. The neighborhood looked familiar, but it was from a strange, elevated perspective. Mainly, everything looked smaller, except Grog, who was absolutely huge.
As I lay on the cot I started to hear other voices besides the shouting of my vision. Next thing, I was pulled off the cot onto the floor by a dozen strong little hands. I opened my eyes and wasn’t surprised to see Dopey and his crew, back again with the queen Elf bitch. “For the last time where is he, human?” she demanded. “Where is the troll?”
“You sure you want to know?” I asked, smiling.
Dopey wound up to kick me again, but he never got the chance. I could hear shouting outside, real this time, not through a vision, and also some gunshots, and then with a sound like a train crash something huge hit the outside of the building.
The impact knocked everyone but Loranda off their feet. Bricks, dust, concrete and steel were flying around the cell in big chunks that caught a few elves and dwarves with nasty results. Then everything was quiet.
As the dust settled we noticed that the cell wall on the alley side was lying in bits on the cell floor, along with my little dwarf friends and me. A massive troll that was elephant sized, and a giant-giant that was twice elephant sized, were looking down at us from the alleyway. Huge size didn’t do anything to decrease their ugliness, I noticed, though they did both wear nifty white fedoras, along with their big and tall tea-shirts and overalls.
“Hi Jake,” said a grinning Mick, with a voice like thunder. “You be OK? Me come get you.”
I stood up and dusted myself off. “I’m fine, thanks. Are you OK?”
“Me be fine too. You find little me!”
He reached down and touched me with his index finger. For a moment I felt my body tingle all over. “Now me have all troll powers back! Me and me be all one me, strong and troll-sized again! Grog strong too.” He glanced at Grog, who was also grinning ear to ear.
“Me be giant again!” thundered the big guy. “Me come to squash dwarves and elves.”
“There’s plenty of them here to squash,” I noted.
In fact, there were maybe a dozen each of dwarves and elves in what remained of my cell, picking themselves up out of the rubble and scrambling away from the two monstrous creatures that faced them. All except Loranda. She stood facing Mick and Grog calmly, with a bigger smile than theirs! “The prophesy is fulfilled!” she exclaimed.
“Not yet, Elf!” roared Grog. A couple seconds later a Precinct black-and-white, in Grog's big hands being used as a club, came smashing down towards Loranda. I scrambled further away from her, in a desperate attempt to not also end up as a casualty.
I need not have worried. The elf never so much as twitched, but there was a bright flash of green light that blew the car back into Grog's face, knocking him back into the alley, down, and half out of sight, where he lay motionless. The giant was down for the count.
Mick crouched and glared at Loranda hatefully, while his black eyes suddenly exploded with twin laser beams of blue light that shot towards the elf. "Die witch!" he shouted.
Loranda, laughing, returned the favor, as twin beams of green light shot from her own eyes and met and blocked the blast from the troll. Where the two sets of power beams met, half way between elf and troll, a blazing ball of swirling blue and green energy formed that was almost too bright to look at. It started out breadbox sized, but continued to grow, big as a recliner, then big as a SUV, and ever bigger.
I picked up a chunk of concrete from the floor and tried to brain the ugly elf-bitch with it, but was thrown back like Grog for my trouble by green-glowing energy. I tried simply throwing it at her and the green shield bounced it back at me, and I barely dodged it. This was apparently something that only the elf and the troll could settle.
They battled for what seemed like forever, pushing power against power, as the energy ball grew. Neither combatant was smiling anymore, as they each realized that the outcome was in doubt.
The troll seemed to have the upper hand for a while, pushing the ball almost to the elf, but then she rallied and pushed it back towards the troll. Meanwhile I still tried again and again to get at the elf, but got thrown back each time. Mick rallied again, and then the elf rallied. The cycle repeated itself a dozen times or more, but the energy ball gradually turned more and more green, and came closer to the troll each time, and it became apparent that Mick was gradually weakening and losing the battle.
"Ha!" shouted the elf bitch in triumph, as a bus-sized green energy ball finally completely engulfed poor Mick.
He stood there wide eyed for a few moments, arms and legs flailing spasmodically as he screamed in pain, while the green energy ball was apparently beating the heck out of him. Abruptly he was motionless and the energy ball faded away, as his limp body crumbled to the ground next to Grog. His poor fidora, no longer pristine white but singed mostly black and still smoking, lay beside the grimy and smashed flat hat of the giant. What a waste of hats.
"Dolandurus, miuscopus," chanted Loranda, as she pointed at the troll and giant. The two of them shrank down to human size again, and dozens of elves and dwarves, shouting and laughing with glee, came out of hiding to retrieve the ill-fated pair. There was no pile of poop either, I noticed, to go along with the shrinking. So much for Elaine’s silly conservation of mass theory.
"You've killed them, you bitch," I shouted as they grabbed me again too.
The elves were busy throwing glowing dust over the shrunken, motionless troll and giant.
"Of course not, stupid human," said Loranda. "After hundreds of years the first phase of our plan is complete at last. We tricked the troll into entering your world, opening the way for us. He was so dumb, it took him centuries, but we were patient. Now that we've captured him again, he will continue to provide a gateway between our worlds. Or should I say my worlds?" She laughed, showing her vampire-type teeth. "I don't think it will take more than a few years for me to take full control of your world as well as mine." As she talked, Mick and Grog, shrunk down to human size and unconscious but tied up with stout ropes, were carried away by a mob of grinning, jeering munchkins.
"That ain't gonna happen!" I shouted. I struggled to loose myself from the grip of the dwarves, but the little bastards had me good.
"Well, you certainly won't live to see it,” the elf queen told me. “When I defeated your troll friend I also destroyed any remaining protective spell he might have had over you, human. And I've had enough of you, Jake Simon, believe me I have. More than enough. You've far outlived your meddlesome usefulness."
She pointed at me and started to mouth-off some sort of mumbo-jumbo. I again tried to wriggle away
from the dwarves but I couldn’t budge. I had seen what she had done to Mick and Grog and figured I was a goner.
"Stop it! Leave us alone and get out of here, all you freaks,” shouted Margie, who was pointing at the elf queen with her arm extended outside the iron bars. “Leave here now. You won’t hurt anybody else today.” Her voice was loud, like she was yelling through an amped-up speaker system, and it must have been the fowled up lighting but she seemed to me to have black eyes and to be glowing, like she was all charged up and ready to burst.
At the same time Prince appeared from out of nowhere and sprang snarling and spitting onto Loranda’s head, all claws! The damn cat was maybe ten or twelve pounds, but I’ve seen smaller cats take out dogs bigger than that little elf bitch.
“Eeeeeeeee’” the elf screamed, as she grabbed the cat and pulled it off of her face. She tossed Prince to the floor and screamed again. I had a glimpse of angry, hate-filled eyes, and bloody scratches on too-white skin.
Then she ran away, along with the dwarves and the other elves. Even elf and dwarf bodies disappeared. I could say I was surprised, but I’d be lying. I’d seen so much weird shit by then that I was all wore out of being surprised.
In a matter of seconds only humans and the cat remained. The joint was soon crawling with dozens of cops and mobsters, including Big Ma and The King. Cells were opened and captives were freed. Everyone was themselves again, spell free, and laughing and hugging each other.
I sat on the floor where the fleeing dwarves had dropped me, gathering my wits, when the cat slowly picked itself up, then sauntered over to me and licked my face. His tongue felt like sandpaper, but I felt lucky to be able to feel it. I reached up and actually scratched the little bastard behind the ears. “Thanks cat,” I said. “You’re alright. I owe you big time.”
“Damn right,” said the cat, in my own voice. Freeky.
Vinnie appeared and gave me a hand up just as Elaine reached me. Then she was hugging me and I was hugging her, only partly to keep myself from falling over.
Lieutenant Marks appeared at my elbow, Joe Kebony in tow, just as Big Ma and Papa K also reached us. “Jake Simon! It figures! What the hell did you do to my jailhouse?” Then he noticed Ma and the King. His eyes got even bigger. They don’t often get VIPs in the Precinct. “Holy shits, it’s the mob! What the fuck is going on here?”
Zeke Feltstein appeared through the throng of cops and mobsters and planted himself in front of Marks. “Nobody answer any questions,” he ordered. “There are plenty of potential false arrest lawsuits at stake, lieutenant. I’d be very careful if I were you.”
“Yeah, take it easy, boss,” said Kebony to Marks. “They helped us regain control of the Precinct from the elves and dwarves.”
“Elves and dwarves? Are you crazy Kebony? And what’s that stink in here?”
Feltstein, Ma and the King pushed open their jackets at the top, exposing necklaces of garlic cloves.
“What the hell?” asked Marks. “Some kind of clearance sale on garlic at the food market today for mobsters and their lawyers?”
“What day is this, lieutenant?” asked Big Ma. “Do you know?”
“Why of course I know,” thundered Marks. “It’s Tuesday the third.” Then he looked uncertain. “Isn’t it?”
Ma shook her head. “Not even close.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Feltstein,” said Elaine, “why don’t you explain some things to the lieutenant. The rest of us all need to go home soon and get some sleep. Right Mother?” She hugged Big Ma.
Elaine was being bossy again, but I let it pass.
“Mother?” said Kebony, all bulgy-eyed and shack-jawed, looking at Elaine and then at Big Ma Falconie, and then back at Elaine again. “Holy shits!” He fainted.
We had lost, right? The elves had taken Mick and Grog, just as they said they had always planned. But everyone in sight was all smiles. Somehow the rest of us were still alive and the elves and dwarves were gone. So all in all, we were very happy about how things had turned out. Big Ma and The King hugged me like I was family already, when they weren’t hugging Elaine. Margie was holding Prince, and even over all the commotion I could hear the little bum purring. The little bastard was a fucking hero! Who would have ever figured that?
A mob guy handed me my Smith and Wesson and I was armed again.
When Joe woke up he was so befuddled he didn’t mention anything about me owing him a fifty, but otherwise he seemed to be OK. Soon cops would be arresting hookers and taking bribes again. Things were pretty much back to normal, and that was a good thing.
So what if everything hadn’t turned out exactly like we wanted? That’s the breaks. Mick and Grog were gone but I still had Mick’s two thousand and another big check due from Grisim and a small one from Margie. Things were looking up. Life goes on. Case closed, I figured. End of story, finally. We all went home. Elaine and I even got some sleep, eventually. Life was good.
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