Chapter 1

As soon as I pushed the big green door of the video room opened I could smell the rich mouth-watering aroma of heating GI Supreme pizzas. The food smelled so good, even having already eaten pizza earlier while sitting in my van, I had to stop after taking two steps to just enjoy the aroma of hot pizza for a moment. Around me, the early evening was apparent. Outside the barred window to my left, I got a quick glimpse of the darkening warehouse across the street. The building was partially lighted by the street lamp to west at the intersection just down the steep little descent Turpin Street followed, and that both the warehouse across the street, and this building straddled.

In the dimming shadows the top of the barred window, that was next to the fire-escape door in the brick wall between the archery corner and my gloomy guitar and electronics repair area, I saw an almost deep purple glow as the last of the early evening was giving way to the onset of full night and the competition from different sources of artificial lights around this mostly commercial neighborhood.

Turning away from the window, I saw Saloni in the lights from the kitchen ceiling and from the hood up above the prep island. She was across the hardwood flooring, past the privacy wall and the hardwood-clad structural support column. Saloni was sitting at the breakfast table facing our direction. She was leaning back in the four-o'clock chair. She had the black-and-white kitten up against her red tee shirt, with her left hand underneath the bottom of the fuzzy black and white ball of fur. It looked to me as if the kitten might be asleep against her chest with its white front paws up on Saloni's tee shirt. Raisha's youngest daughter was looking over into the kitchen toward the stove area listening to some one, and I could hear a woman's soft reassuring voice saying something.

Madhuri was behind me and I heard her take in a deep breath as she stepped through the doorway and then closed the wide green door behind us.

"Mmmm, pizza," Madhuri said to me as we started slowly toward the kitchen area and the source of the wonderful tangy cheesy-rich fragrance. "I'm hungry and that really smells good..."

"It sure does," I agreed.

"So, James ... I hope you don't want me to start calling you Dad, now that you are going to marry my Mother."

"Call me what ever you want, Snuggle Bunny," I told her and I watched for her reaction to the nickname that had just come out of my mouth earlier in the video control room. She just looked at me and grinned as we walked past the east edge of the privacy wall and moved along it toward the source of that wonderful aroma of hot pizza with the growing shadows of the Great Room to our right.

"So, do you and your girlfriends always go to the bathroom together when you have things to discuss?" I asked Madhuri. I was referring to the fact that about five minutes before back in the video control room, Aditi Tarviachabi had suggested to Madhuri's Mother and Jhoni that the three of them go to the restroom. The slim woman's request had broken the extremely awkward silent impasse after Madhuri had easily topped her revelation of how she had learned about sex, by sticking out and shaking her canary-yellow-clad bottom at Jhoni while asking my girlfriend if she saw anything she didn't like.

"Well, I'm not sure," the almost thirteen-year-old said to me, turning her dark eyes up toward her luxuriant eyebrows as if to think about it. "But, I'm pretty sure that is something we are going to study next year, in eighth-grade. This year, we're still going over getting good at just traveling in giggling groups of girls without any specific goals in mind."

"You don't say," I said with a chuckle, my eyebrows going up at her choice of words as well as her wit, as the two of us walked up to the breakfast table with Madhuri's younger sister sitting on the other side, holding the black-and-white kitten against her chest.

"Yes, I do say," Madhuri challenged me with her dark flashing eyes and her big grin. "You see, Missus Hazarika believes in a good alliterative education."

Okay, I told myself, just how smart is this Zalpuri daughter.

"Sure took you guys long enough in there," Saloni spoke up from across the table, looking us both over with her dark eyes. "Geesh, James," the younger girl said with a quick giggle, slowly shaking her head at me. "Who taught you how to button that shirt? It sure wasn't buttoned like that when I left, so you could go talk to Momma."

And I looked down at my blue work shirt and discovered one open button hole on the left side of my shirt and the top button in the hole underneath it. Damn, I told myself, I knew Madhuri was distracting me as I had started buttoning my shirt when she tried to tuck the tails of my pants in before I could stop her. I could feel my ears going red as Saloni broke out in full-fledged giggles.

I looked up at her and saw her giggling disturbed the sleeping kitten enough that it stretched its white-booted front paws further up her red tee shirt and arched its little white butt and black tail up over Saloni's left palm while it turned its black-and-white head to its left and yawned wide, inadvertently showing me a mouthful of its tiny sharp white teeth and pink tongue.

Bur-Ring... Bur-Ring ... the telephone on the kitchen wall began ringing, and I immediately turned away from the bright-yellow-clad Madhuri and the giggle-butt girl enjoying herself way too much at the breakfast table at my expense. And, these two girls are going to be my step-daughters, I reminded myself.

Miss Chatterjee stood with the back of her fluorescent fuchsia-colored sari to me, watching the stove and oven as I walked toward the ringing phone. But she turned her head and gazed over her left shoulder at me, her owlish-looking eyes tracking me as I approached the base-unit and receiver on the wall near the arch to the pantry-laundry room. As I reached for the hand set, Miss Chatterjee stepped back and then faced me. I saw she was wearing one of my long barbeque aprons she had to have found under the prep island. This one declared Kiss the Cook.

I extended the short antenna and pressed the Talk button before I lifted the receiver up to the right side of my head, "James here," I spoke into the phone feeling my ears were still warm from Saloni's embarrassing observation.

"Hey, Iggy Junior," I heard the voice of Ted Jigeasian call out to me from the receiver, "you still got a fax machine hooked-up to that phone number from the business card you gave me last Christmas?"

"Well..." I said, confounded by the question, " ... sure, Ted. What's up?"

"I was just looking at these old ammo boxes, over here at the house, James," Ted told me, his voice taking on a serious note as he spoke. "And I found a slip of old folded-over newspaper under the cardboard accordion divider when I tipped everything out to inspect the remaining bullets. You know, in the box that had seven rounds missing."

"You don't say," I responded, feeling the rush of adrenaline dumping into my bloodstream at Ted's revelation. And I recalled what was written on the old newsprint Jhoni and I found in the bottom of the blue aluminum case that had held the ammo boxes and the pistol:

Ha! Ha! The key to this heist is in the rounds fired, not the tales reported here from the mouths of liars!

The story on that side of the clipping had reported seven shots fired—one box was missing seven bullets. It flashed in my mind that the cryptic message had been a clue pointing to the ammo box; and, the clue Ted was calling me about finding. I trusted Ted completely, so I moved through the arch into the shadows of the pantry-laundry for some privacy before I asked him, "There doesn't happen to be something written on that piece of newsprint, by some chance?"

"If you can tell me what the message was written with," Ted chuckled over the phone, "you get bonus points..."

"Pencil," I shot back at Ted. "What does it say?"

"Well, if you want, I could just wait until Monday ... when I'm back over at the shop, you know..." Ted said in a slow drawl, " ... and send you a fax of the thing, that way you can read it for your own self."

"Old man," I chuckled into the phone, feeling the tension rising up inside me in spite of his good-natured teasing, "you are lucky my Daddy would hurt me if I every harmed a hair on your lame ass, because you surely don't have any on top of your head."

"Now, see here," Ted replied over the phone, "why ... that was just down-right cruel, James. Seeing as how I've never pointed out that you must be sterile. You know, shootin' blanks; what with all those ladies you must have screwed as a big old rock-and-roll star, and didn't manage to get one of them with child the whole time."

"Okay, Ted," I said into the phone with a long exhale, "I'll tell you everything I know about what is going on, when I bring my girlfriend Jhoni, and my fiancée and her two daughters up there to meet you. How is that?"

"What the Hell did you just say, Iggy Junior?" Ted asked me in a lively voice. "Did I hear you correctly? You've got a fiancée now—as well as that girlfriend I told Maude I want to meet and get to know? Already? I know you were mumbling some confusion about this Jhoni girl being from India and growing up in La-la land out there in SoCal and wanting you to live like some old Mormon with a couple of wives ... But, shit boy—it's only twenty-after seven. Nobody works that fast."

"What can I say, Ted..." I told the receiver with a grin forming on my lips, not able to keep myself from giving him another dig, " ... I have skills..."

"Yeah? Well, I've got hemorrhoids," Ted's voice announced to me over the phone and then he chuckled, "but you don't hear me bragging about 'em."

"Okay," I admitted, knowing I was out-classed by the master here, " ... do you believe in a love at first sight?"

"Yes," Ted laughed into the phone, "I'm certain that it happens all the time ... Hey, James—Maude loves the Beatles. But, if you say it's so, I'll agree to wait until I meet this new lady and decide for myself ... Say, does she know you've got a girlfriend, too?"

"Jhoni is the one who's been working to get us together," I said into phone while I became aware of the sound of ladies feet moving down the privacy corridor outside the hallway door and I indistinctly heard just the general sounds of their conversation, "if you can believe that. Anyway, what did the message say, Ted? I've got a house full of beautiful Indian women over here who are about to descend on the kitchen for hot pizza. I've got guests to be gentlemanly to."

"So, according to this Jhoni of yours," Ted asked me through the phone line, "what is your seasonal bag limit on wives before she is going to apply her soon-be-learned excellent shooting skills to bring your amorous hunting spree to a screeching halt?"

"Ted, I bow to your supreme come-back skills, okay?" I laughed into the receiver. And then, as an afterthought, I cried, "Uncle!"

"Thaaat's more like it..." Ted told me, " ... see, wasn't so hard to do, now was it? Got something to write with?"

"Wait a second," I told Ted as I turned back toward the archway where a clip-board was hung on a hook on the pantry-laundry wall directly behind where the phone base-unit was located. I had a pencil on a string hanging from the front hole of the clip. I switched the receiver to my left hand and got a hold of the pencil as I stood next to the wall.

Now I could hear the ladies out in the kitchen through the archway talking, and the sound of cabinet doors. And out of my left peripheral vision, I saw Miss Chatterjee, wearing my bit cooking mitts and opening the oven, holding a spatula in her left hand. Madhuri stood beside her in her bright canary-yellow sari with one of the cardboard pizza boxes, and I got the impression someone had removed the top from it.

"Okay, Ted," I said, turning to my right so I could block out all of the beautiful distractions, "shoot."

"That is my business," Ted chuckled. "Okay—the message reads: _When ever moving ... up or down..."

And I printed those words on the top sheet of the note pad clipped to the board as fast as I could, before I said, "got it, go on."

" ... right below your feet ... the next step ... will be found ... That's all that it says, James," Ted told me as I wrote the last of the message under the first line I had recorded. "So is this some kind of clue or something? You've had others?"

"I guess; and, apparently so," I answered Ted, putting the pencil at the bottom of the clipboard and letting it dangle from the string. I quickly scanned over the whole message; When ever moving up or down, right below your feet the next step will be found. This clue was an obvious statement; that on the face of it, would not have an obvious meaning until you figured out what it was referring too and found what ever it was alluding to.

Then it really hit me—that these two clues had not just been left behind by the individual who hid the pistol case behind the locker up in the elevator motor room. These clues had first been dreamed-up, and then had been planted by that unknown individual for what ever reason that motivated them to take the time to do it. And the fact that the first clue was included with a very nice pistol and two boxes of forty-five caliber ammunition inside a nifty metal case made me think that this was not just some 37-year-old practical joke.

But, I asked myself, they were clues to what? Some buried treasure, the loot from the robbery? I realized Ted was waiting on the other end of the telephone connection.

"Ted, sorry," I said to him, "I was thinking there for a moment..."

"No problem boy," Ted replied. "All us men are better off for occasionally taking the time to think, doncha know. Now, what have you dropped into my lap this time?"

Through the archway I could hear plates being put down on the breakfast table and on the granite counter top as well as the tinkle of silverware. I took a few more steps into the gloom of the pantry-laundry to distance myself from the distraction since I couldn't escape from the mouth-watering smell of hot pizza. My stomach growled.

"Okay Ted," I said into the receiver. "There was an old news-clipping from nineteen-forty-six in the bottom of that case that held the pistol. I'll bring it up so you can see it. One side had the lead of a story about Bugsy Moran pulling a robbery outside a Winters Bank over on the West Side. On the back was a line in pencil between the columns that said something like, Ha-ha. The key to this heist is in the rounds fired, not the tales reported here from the mouths of liars... And the funny thing was ... there wasn't any mention of Bugsy's gang shooting.

"But then Jhoni started reading the news account on the side of the paper where the message was written. And that story was about another robbery where shot were reportedly fired—seven as a matter of fact. But, you can read that news account for yourself, Ted."

"James Earnest Sitwell," my Dad's best friend told me through the phone, "you are becoming a mean little shit as you grow older ... You know how much I like a good mystery. Why don't you fax me that clipping so I can read it myself. Now."

"What, and you have to wait until you go back into the shop on Monday to get it out of you office fax machine?" I asked him. "You are going to wait that long?"

"Tell you what, James," Ted said in his wheedling voice that sounded thin over the phone, "I'll give you the family discount on all this training and stuff you gave me that big old deposit on. How's that sound?"

"Wait just a dog-gone minute here, Ted—you were going to charge me rube prices!" I immediately countered, trying to sound scandalized over the phone. "Ted, I always thought we were family already. What will my Dad say when I tell him about this?"

"Oh, all right—Uncle!" Ted sort of emphatically whispered over the phone line as if some one had walked into the room he was in who might hear what he was telling me. "Uncle! Uncle! Uncle! There are you happy—making an old man humiliate my own self like that ... All I can say, is there better be gold at the end of this trail, youngster. So, are you going to fax that thing up here tonight for me, or what?"

"I'll tell you what, Ted," I answered, "you and Maude come up to Mom and Dad's tomorrow to visit. Because I'm bringing this whole shootin' match of mine up there to make introductions so Mom can start getting use to this whole idea. I've got some business to attend to in the morning, but I'll call before we head out to give you an idea when it's safe to show up. Maude can help defuse Mom once she comes to her sense. You and Dad can sit back and butter-up my ladies—Jhoni claims to be a good cook. You and Dad like spicy hot food too, so maybe the two of you can get her to promise to make you some kind of curry or some other Indian delicacy."

"And you'll bring that news-clipping up, so I can read it?" Ted asked me.

"I promise," I said. "Jhoni will love telling you her side of the story, Ted. That way, you can start getting to know her. She is a very charming woman."

"If that's the case," Ted told me over the phone, "I could bring the two pistols up with me, I guess. I do want your Dad to see them. Heck, if you can promise nobody's going to try and use one on me, I'll bring a couple of boxes of ammunition for each of them. That way and me and your Dad can take that Jhoni of yours down to the river. We'll use the gravel cul-de-sac and I can introduce her to the basics of safe gun handling and let her squeeze off a clip from each pistol.

"And maybe that will get her thinking about using that nine you bought instead of her forty-five. But dang ... James, Stephie and I both think that forty-five shoots almost better than the nine. Once I checked it over after you left, you see, we took it down stairs and ran a couple of magazines through it. You are going to just love that pistol."

"Good, I'll take your word for it," I told Ted, " ... until I can decide for my own self."

"You see Iggy Junior," Ted's voice replied into my ear from the receiver, "your problem, is that you have never been all that good with you delivery when you are going for sarcasm. If you want to break into the pro levels—you've got to work on your timing. It is all about timing. Heck, I woulda thunk youda knowed that, being the big old rock-star you once was, sonny boy." And I could hear Ted cackle on the other end of the line.

"You can take me to school later," I informed him. "I can smell that they are taking the pizzas out of the oven, and I am hungry. I will call you tomorrow. Tell Maude she is going to have a great time at my folks. I think, with this announcement to my folks, we both can guarantee her that. Tell her what ever you want about what is going to happen, but at least ask her to try and act surprised. Okay?"

"Got it," Ted said and I could hear the smile in his voice through the phone. "Call me or we'll just show up about one. Don't go wearing yourself down to no old nub tonight, James; you are really going to need all your energy to keep your wits about you on this one ... Boy, howdy ... this is going to be something special. Well, good night."

"See you tomorrow, Ted," I told him and then heard the line go dead while hoping tomorrow wasn't going to be so special I didn't survive. I clicked-off the receiver and pushed the antenna back down as I turned around just in time to see a little black-and-white flash as the kitten scurried into the shadowy room and around under the wash tubs. I heard the sound of digging in kitty litter.

"Good kitty," I told the kitten.

"Spot! What are you doing now, girl?" I heard Saloni's voice approaching from the kitchen as she called out to the kitten. And a woman's voice called out to Saloni and I heard the girl's footfalls moving away from the archway.

So Spot, was what the kitten really wanted to be called, was it?—I thought. I guessed that was as good of a name as any; it wasn't as if the kitten was going to respond any better to the name Spot than it would to the name Cat. It was all I could ask that Spot was a clean animal, and the kitten already knew where its primary litter box was, so I was happy. And thinking of clean animals, I reminded myself, if the pizzas were nearly ready, then I should prove I was a clean animal too, and wash my hands. So making sure that that Spot wasn't underfoot, I stepped over to the small sinks beside the wash tubs.

I walked back into the kitchen and was surprised not to see any plates or silverware on the prep counter or on the breakfast table. However, to my left, the brightly outfitted Madhuri and Miss Chatterjee had the two fresh-out-of-the-oven pizzas back in their topless boxes and on the black-granite of the prep counter near the round beveled garbage opening. For a moment I watched as Miss Chatterjee wielded my big round pizza cutter as she sliced the pie she was working on into squares. Then I noticed the other pie had already been cut into eight equal traditional pie slices.

I heard low talking coming from my right not too far into the Great Room. I turned and saw Jhoni had marshaled the other ladies into moving all of the tableware over to the big dinning table. Now there were three place-settings on each side of the long table and one at each end. Two extra chairs from the breakfast table were across from each other in the center. The normal ladder-back chairs filled in the other six settings, with one each at the ends of the table.

Jhoni was over at the granite counter along the west wall. She had eight glasses on the counter top that I could see were filled with ice. There were three cans of Seven-Up on the counter, and my beautiful blonde girlfriend was in the process of carefully pouring Long Island Iced Tea into a third glass from the half-gallon bottle. I could see she had already filled two other glasses with the alcohol.

I walked to the end of the prep island that overhung the breakfast table and picked up the small bottle of my home-made red hot-pepper sauce from out of the wire basket condiment holder. I was aware that I was getting discrete looks from Aditi, Miss Upadrashta—or Uma, I guess—and Raisha, as the three of them moved around the counter and the table.

Well, actually Aditi was getting the roll of paper towels for the table; I really needed to get more paper napkins I told myself. Uma was in the process of placing the filled glasses of alcohol at different place-settings at Jhoni's direction. However, Raisha was just looking reserved and beautiful as she inspected her youngest daughter's hands near one of the ladder-back chairs at the southeast end of the dinning table. Saloni held her hands out in front of herself, palms up while nodding her head at her mother, making her black ponytail dance on the back of her red tee shirt.

"And what do you want to drink, James," Jhoni asked me, getting my attention as she capped the half-gallon of pre-mixed liquor and Uma began placing the cans of Seven-Up and those glasses on the table. "You are driving later, so you will not be drinking any of this."

"Ah, water is fine, thank you," I told her as I changed my direction from the dinning table and moved toward Jhoni and the counter, to retrieve an ice-filled glass to go fill with water.

"Saloni, please?" Jhoni asked the girl in her red tee shirt and black pants. Before I could get to her, my girlfriend turned and held out a glass of ice toward my fiancée's youngest daughter. "You know where to fill this; yes?"

"Yes, I do, Jhoni; and that water is really good," Saloni replied in a matter-of-fact tone that sort of surprised me as she took the glass from Jhoni. "Does anybody else want water?" the young girl asked in a projecting voice and she looked around at all of us, one at a time, while tilting the glass she held up in her right hand slightly from side-to-side as if to tempt anyone else's decision.

"Please, Saloni dear," Miss Upadrashta asked. She stopped and stood in her white blouse with her sleeves rolled to just below her elbows, and her charcoal skirt stopping at the tops of her cute knees behind and to the side of the chair at the north end of the long dinning table. She had just placed the last can of Seven-Up and its accompanying glass of ice at a place-setting on the dinning table.

When she saw me looking at her attractive dark temple-model features and body, she gave me a little satisfied grin and then nodded her head at me. I grinned back at her, feeling foolish.

"So," Jhoni announced as she handed Saloni the last ice-filled glass for her to also fill with water and sent the youngest lady off, back toward the kitchen area, "James, as head of the household, you will sit at this end of the table; the south end. Raisha, you will, of course, sit immediately to his right."

At the other end of the table I saw Uma's enchanting eyes go wide with surprise in reaction to Jhoni's placement of Raisha at my right, or maybe, I told myself, it was Jhoni's wording that did it. Just then Miss Chatterjee and Madhuri walked by me to the table, each carrying a low cardboard pizza box with a mouth-watering sliced pie inside and leaving such a delicious smell in their wake, that it made my stomach growl again. To cover for my stomach, I stepped behind my assigned chair and put my bottle of home-made red hot-sauce on the table near my place-setting. I felt crestfallen as both pizza boxes were place away from me on the other half of the dinning table.

"I will sit on his left," Jhoni continued with her seating plan, "Madhuri, you can sit your attractive young bottom down next to me, you'll see you are drinking Seven-Up, as well as your sister, who will sit across from you beside your Mother. And Rekha, please sit at that chair in front of you beside Saloni when she gets back with the waters. And Aditi you will be across from Rekha next to Madhuri, and Uma, you will be right there at the other end of the table."

We were all standing behind our assigned chairs; except for Saloni, who hadn't returned from her water filling mission. Around the table, there was an expectant air, also filled with the aroma of the hot incredible GI Supreme pizzas; so, I guessed that the bombshells Madhuri had dropped on her Mother's head, as well as the rest of us who'd been in the video control room at the time, had either been defused or somewhat absorbed into everyone's psyches—where each of us would deal with the information in our own ways during the coming days.

"And by the way, James, forgive me for not introducing you earlier." Jhoni said to me with a nod toward the other end of the table from her spot to my left, which caused her blonde bangs to partially cover her right eye. "James, I want to introduce you to our friend, Miss Rekha Chatterjee. And, Rekha, please overlook my tardy manners; this is Mister James Sitwell. As you know, James is being so kind as to provide me with a haven from my impending divorce. Which our friend Aditi Tarviachabi here, has so graciously agreed to handle for me, as my attorney. James, Rekha is one of our six personal loans officers at Serenity Savings and Loan Company."

"It is very nice to meet you," I told Rekha with a smile, nodding my head to her. "Thank you for taking time out of your weekend to help Jhoni and the other ladies with her move." And I found I agreed with my earlier feelings that Rekha was attractive, but now her large eyes and small nose didn't really make me thing of an owl. However, with the size of her brown eyes already, I bet she would have a great expression on her face that was something to see whenever she was really caught by surprise.

"I am happy to meet you, also, James," the tall, willowy framed young woman said to me, her fluorescent fuchsia-colored sari setting off her mocha-colored skin and brownish-black hair that curled down to her shoulders. "And I am always willing to help one of my friends whenever they need assistance. So, I hope you will become one of my friends. Most of the gentlemen friends or husbands of my girlfriends seem to either just pay attention to the other men, or want to monopolize their girlfriend's attentions whenever we are in a social situation. With you around to talk to me, I am hoping I won't feel such an outsider at social gatherings from now on."

"That is just because you don't have a boyfriend," Uma chuckled from the other end of the table in a liquid laugh to her friend standing on her left. "You could easily get one, you know, Rekha ... if you were willing to allow them liberties..." And with that statement, Uma looked from her tall fidgeting friend in her bright sari and down the table, were she caught my eyes, "James, please forgive our sweet Rekha, she is torn between—"

Chapter 2 »