Chapter Twenty-Three

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As I was racing back to the door, I could hear Kern shuffling around in the hallway, muttering curses under his breath and the slight squeak of a door hinge.

I opened the door and went inside again.  As I could tell from heartbeat and breathing, both Driver Dude and Bricky were still unconscious.

Ironically, Kern's powerful scent wasn't easy to track.  Most people left what I can only describe as a thin vapour trail of a scent in an area and perhaps some cloying splotches of their scent on objects they have touched.

Kern's odiferous stench didn't just linger in the air -- it suffused the air, drenched the entire area.  I suppose that the best way I can describe it is the difference between perhaps being able to smell the pleasant scent of a woman's recently washed hair as she passes, and if you're walking directly behind her, staying in the path of that scent even when a dozen or so steps behind.  That's the kind of scent that a normal person leaves behind as they move.

Then there's the scent that Kern left behind.  Rather than that straight line of scent hung directly behind the path, it was like someone had opened a container of Chlorine or rubbing alcohol in a small room.  The scent immediately spread to the far reaches of the room, infusing the room with its scent.

I had a friend back in college who was a chemistry major attempt to explain how scent molecules work.  He was highly intelligent but a somewhat cheeky sort of fellow and always liked to use low brow and "common man" sorts of analogies for explaining scientific concepts.

As he'd been explaining to me how the molecules of an airborne substance diffuse into a room, he began talking about molecular bonding on objects around.  Of course, none of this made sense to me -- I had been an Arts major and hadn't taken any science related classes since the 11th grade.  It was only after acquiring my unique wolf traits such as my super enhanced sniffer that I could fully appreciate what he had been saying because my nose could in a way "see" those scents he had been talking about.

Of course, I think that the only reason this particular scientific lecture stuck with me all these years was the low brow way in which he summed it up in a way for my non-scientific mind to grasp it.

"You fart," he had said.  "And it sticks to me."

Simple enough concept.  But frightening, too.  Particularly given Kern's uniquely raunchy smell.  The touch of the molecules of Kern's scent sticky to me in any way immediately turned my stomach.  But like my pal from college said, different scents diffuse and bond in distinctly different patterns.  And Kern's was that all consuming, all powerful scent that virtually "took over" a room.

In a nutshell, it made it hard to at first determine exactly where he'd moved -- particularly in such a small hallway.  And particularly since his struggle with me seemed to have made him sweat even more profusely than he always did.

So it hadn't been by scent that I knew Kern had moved through the doorway on the right hand side -- but rather, because I could hear his heartbeat and his heavy breathing immediately on the other side of the door.

I listened for the sound of other movement, of someone else, and could tell it was only Kern.  He was waiting on the other side of the door, perhaps to ambush me.

I then thought about the weapons the other two carried and wondered if Kern had retrieved one of them before moving on.  But I couldn't detect the movement of gun oil through the air.

Of course, like I'd said, Kern's scent kind of overpowered the hallway, so it was a bit difficult to pick out anything one hundred percent.  But I was pretty sure in my deduction that he hadn't taken a gun.

He was waiting, then, on the other side of the door to ambush me.  This told me that this door on the right must be the one leading to where Howard was.  I strained to pick up a scent trail from Howard, and thought I could detect one.  That at least told me I was on the right track.

I considered my options.  Kern was slightly wounded.  I was sure that the kick and punch I'd given him would have slowed the big beast of a man down.  Regardless of that, I figured I'd still be able to overpower him, move faster than him, and basically beat him in hand to hand combat.

Again, it all hinged, in my mind, on whether or not he had a gun.  I still wasn’t all that fond of the idea of being shot.  Sure, I healed quickly, but the gunshot wound still healing in my leg continued to issue forth a dull pain and I felt a few distinct throbbing pulses of pain at the thought of being shot again, and this time in human form when I would remember it.

I shuddered.

Then I reached for the door.  And as I did so, I could have sworn that the nasty, horrible smell of Kern was seeping through the door itself.  I knew the smell was creeping through the cracks on the top, bottom and sides of the door, and it continued to amaze me at how much stronger and more powerful it became with the minor amount of physical activity Kern had been through in the past few minutes.  Talk about an elevated body chemistry.

Pausing to gauge Kern's heartbeat and breathing, and attempting to wait until the moment he would be least prepared to jump me, I grasped the door handle and slowly attempted to turn it.

It didn't move.  The door handle had a lock on it and was locked from the other side.  Not that door handle locks were much to get past, but so much for a subtle entrance.

I sighed, stepped back and threw my shoulder into the door.

While I could hear the surprise in his heartbeat and the sudden intake of breath, Kern was obviously seasoned in physical combat and launched himself at my off-balance body as I teetered into the room behind the open door.

All three hundred pounds of him crashed into me and we hit the opposite wall hard enough to make a large body sized impression in the drywall.  Kern punched at my head, slamming it sideways into the drywall, punching through.

I ducked down, slipping out of the grasp of his meaty sweaty palm, and, with my hands both wrapped around his side, I attempted to head butt him in the stomach.

Huge mistake.

The physical proximity to this hulking mass of sweaty stink had a weakening effect on me.  Similar to what I would imagine taking a quick whiff of chloroform might have on a person.

But driving my head into his belly was about as pleasant as dunking my head into a barrel of sour milk.

My eyes began watering and I actually began to gag.

Kern hit me hard on the back, and while normally a blow like that wouldn't have done much, the extreme body odor was having a weakening effect on me, and I collapsed to the floor in front of him.

Sprawled on the floor, I slowly lifted my head, still dizzy with the overwhelming stench of the man.  His foot connected with my head and I blacked out for a moment.

I must not have been out for more than a few seconds, because the next thing I knew, Kern had hoisted me onto his shoulder.  I was still dizzy and disoriented, more from the nauseating proximity of the man's body odor than from the blow to the head I'd received; but I was still able to determine I was in the same spot he'd knocked me unconscious in.  Although awake, I feigned unconsciousness and let him carry me.

Admittedly, I'm not sure if I would have been able to fight him anyway, not with my nose pressed into the back of his suit, which smelled of stale farts and sweat on top of the constantly oozing smell of putrid odors coming off of him.

Kern started heading up a flight of stairs.

In the room ahead of us, I could hear the same raspy cough I'd first heard when we entered this building.

Kern opened a door, and a blast of cool, refreshing air from a larger space blasted us.  It wasn't much relief from the scents I was inhaling, but any breeze, any shift in the wind was like a giant bucket of ice water poured on a man who'd just crawled three hours through the desert.

From within the room I was also able to pick up a strong scent of Howard as well as a new scent.  One I imagined belonged to the voice I just heard.

"Jesus Christ, Cheesedick!  What the hell took you guys so long!"  His voice was a deep, throaty gravely kind of sound.  Kind of a cross between Clint Eastwood and Marlin Brando as, appropriately enough, The Godfather.

"We ran into some, er, problems," Kern said.

I was surprised at his response, particularly since he didn't utter a single curse word when speaking.  Not only that, but he spoke in a hesitant, nervous fashion, and he didn't react negatively to being called "Cheesedick" -- at least on the surface.  When the gravely voiced man who smelled subtly of menthol throat lozenges called him that, I detected the briefest whiff of bitterness off him and a slight elevation in his heart-beat.

He obviously didn't like the name, but seemed to weather it when coming from this guy.  That led me to believe he must be the Monty character these guys had mentioned earlier.  The group's ringleader.

"What kind of trouble?"

"Er," Kern began, but Monty cut him off.

"I said, what the fuck kind of trouble could happen?  I send the entire crew over there, along with you, the brick shithouse -- Lord knows you not only are built like one but you smell like one too."

Kern's bitter anger increased at this and his heartbeat started doing back flips, but he didn't seem to change posture or let on how angry he was about it; he must have been really used to hiding it.

There was a moment of silence.

"Well?" Monty said.

"Well, what?"

"I asked, what the fuck kind of trouble did you run into.  Let me guess.  It perhaps has something to do with the body you've got slung over your shoulders?"

"Yeah," Kern said.  "He, er, was following me when I got back to the car from the pickup.  Said he was Howie's biographer."

"So you what -- brought him along for a joyride with you?"

"No, he was followin' me.  We figured he might be on to us, so we took him with."

"And?"

"And when we get here, this budinski shows up, some friend of his, starts yaking our ears off just outside.  Wouldn't shut up, know what I mean?  We was standin' there just wantin' to get inside before anyone saw us, but he wouldn't shut his yap.  So we clocked him.

"When we was carryin' him inside, this joker who'd been nothin' but a scared little shit the whole time he'd been with us, gets some balls and got a few lucky hits on Bricky and Vince."

Ah, the driver's name was Vince.  It was good to know.  I'd been tired of thinking of him as Driver Dude.  Okay, so there I had it.  Kern -- or Cheesedick, still not sure what his real name was, they were both equally silly -- and Bricky and Vince and Monty.  There's nothing like knowing your assailants on a first name basis.

I was also amused how Kern failed to mention the fact that I got the better of him and that the "budinski" he'd mentioned was nowhere to be found when he woke up.  Perfectly selective memory.

Despite still being a bit fearful for my life, this certainly was an interesting dialogue going on between the two of them.  I'd written tons of conversation between bad guys before but had never realized it could be so banal yet entertaining at the same time.

I'd never try to pull off such an idiotic conversation in one of my novels.  I mean, who the hell would ever believe it; that or these guys.  It was startling.

"So where the fuck are Bricky and Vince?  And, more importantly, where the fuck is the laptop?"

"Er," Kern began, and his heart started doing triple and quadruple back flips.  He'd obviously completely forgotten about the laptop, the apparent whole purpose of this afternoon's little adventure.  "It's ah, it must be, er, back in the car."

Monty's voice cracked and broke as he screamed, apparently not capable of making higher pitched noises than an engine starting up.

"It's in the car?  In the fucking car?  Jesus fucking Christ, Cheesedick!  I'm beginning to think the shit isn't just soaked into that suit and pants, but stuffed in that fucking melon you carry around on those meaty shoulders and call your head.

"Put this joker down and get your fat ass outside and get the laptop."

Kern, whose anger continued to seethe inside of him, let me slip off his shoulder and to the floor.  I continued to feign unconsciousness as I fell.  And while I was able to take most of the brunt of the fall to the wooden floor with my left elbow and shoulder, it still hurt when my head hit the wood.

Falling to the ground brought with it an instant flashback from my time as a wolf.  Lunging through the air, overtop of a brick wall, the intense heat and burning of chasing prey burning inside.  Then, cut to lunging through the air, that same burning hunger of attack in heart, the dank, dark and musty smell of an alley as old faded brick moved by in the shadows.

The flashback again cut, this time to lunging through the air, tense and filled with fury, arching down with my fangs just a few hairs shy of the other wolf’s throat.  Our bodies slamming together and rolling as he broke free, turned and faced me.

The flashback was a quick one but long enough that I missed a few more words that Monty had spoken.  All I heard was Monty saying:  " . . . and wake up Bricky on the way back.  We can't do any of this without him.

"Think you can do that without fucking up, Cheesedick?"

I didn't hear Kern say anything in response.

But in that moment of snapping back to the current moment, I double focused my attention on the room -- it was certainly easier now that Kern's officious body odor wasn't in such close proximity to me; and the flashback seemed to help focus my sense memory back a bit closer to normalcy, partially overcome the throbbing and ringing of the concussion in my head from Kern's nasty kick.

I could detect the scent of a new distinct gun oil scent.  And Monty's anger.  And Kern's.  His was that bitter, deep, festering anger -- tinged with the essence of familiarity and comfort.  It seemed to me the bitterness and anger he felt wasn't new, but perhaps something that had wormed and festered in him for a long, long time.  That made me curious most of all.

From somewhere a bit further removed, perhaps another adjacent room and behind a closed door due to the faintness, Howard's own scent, coming with an intense fear, and if I wasn't mistaken, a very subtle whimper.

"Okay," Kern was saying and he was moving away from me, back in the direction we'd come from.

I couldn't believe it.

Kern was leaving the room?

Leaving me alone here with Monty? 

I imagined upon hearing that the laptop had been left in the car, Monty instructed my smelly friend to get his ass back outside and retrieve it.

I simply could not believe my luck.

The further Kern moved away from me, the more the sense of nausea and dizziness left me.  It wasn't that the room didn't still contain his putrid odor -- it was simply less overpowering and more manageable, like a raunchy fart that has started to diffuse in response to the frantic waving of a chorus of wildly pin wheeling arms.

As the door slammed behind Kern, Monty started grumbling under his breath.

"Fuckin' idiot dickhead, Cheesedick.  No good dummy shit for brains cock sucker.  Going to blow this whole operation.  Jesus fuckin' Murphy."  He went on mumbling under his breath and by the sound of both his voice and footsteps I determined he was moving away from me.

Chancing cracking open an eyelid, I saw he was pacing back and forth in front of a table with round steel legs and a set of blue seat padded chairs with matching legs.  Beyond that was a kitchenette area with a small stove, counter and refrigerator -- no, not so much a refrigerator as perhaps what one might have called it when this model was produced, an "icebox."

On the other side of the refrigerator was a closed wooden door.  Another couple of low whimpers came from behind the door, informing me this was the room they had Howard in.

Okay, so I knew where Howard was.  Now I had to focus on Monty, figure out the best way to get the jump on him.

He hadn't looked at me more than a few quick sideways glances as he continued to pace.  His steady stream of cursive mumbling continued.  He was a big man, like Kern, perhaps six and a half feet, with a thick head of hair and a large fat nose not dissimilar to Kern's large flat honker.  He wore a suit matching the members of his gang and he was stocky, but not nearly as large and ominous as Kern; but he walked in a similar fashion.  The deep crease of his eyebrows was also similar to Kern's and I immediately understood a bit more about the dialogue I'd just heard, as well as Kern's reaction to the insults.

It was possible that these two were brothers. 

I focused on his scent.  More masking menthol throat drops than anything, and his body odor wasn't as distinctly nasty as his brother's, but there was a subtle similarity in the smell coming off him.

So, yes.  Monty and Kern were very likely brothers.  It went far to explain the repressed reaction Kern had to the endlessly flying insults.

It made sense to the deep rooted reaction Kern had, after all.  I imagined that "Cheesedick" might have been the name his older brother Monty called him when they were kids.  As I'd suspected, life as a fat smelly kid had likely not been easy on my old buddy Kern -- and his kind older brother had likely been one of his worst critics.  Maybe not worst in terms of intensity, because the kids who knew their slang and taunted enemies least often harangued on them the most; but worst in terms of the fact that whenever Kern tried to escape from the schoolyard taunting and into the safety of his home, there was his older brother Monty, chiding him with the same taunt.  When he heard the very name "Cheesedick" it seemed to raise forth the bitterest type of anger -- the type of anger I associated with long term child-hood peeves.  The kind of anger I knew I only felt when I thought about my brother Randy, and the masterful way in which he could tease me like no other -- get completely under my skin like it was a talent he'd been born to perfect.

Yeah, only a brother could have that kind of effect on someone.

So Monty and Kern, then, were brothers.  Two brothers who had turned to a life of crime -- although I had to admit, I wondered at exactly how much crime they'd actually pulled off.  They didn't seem particularly organized -- at least not as organized as I'd originally perceived.  And there was clearly a lot of tension here.

Their entire scheme, as I had been able to determine, seemed geared towards keeping Howard under their thumb and potentially using him to gain access to some money or funds available from the company Howard worked for.  The fact Monty mentioned "the entire crew" when yelling at Kern told me this was likely it -- that I'd met every single member of the gang.

So this whole big plot of kidnapping Howard, the entire fiasco could really just be something that these clowns happened to pull off.

I had to remind myself again to not be too cocky -- that despite the disorganization, the infighting and current confusion going on, there were still four of them, they all bore weapons and they weren't at all nice people.  I had to remember their threat of killing all of us and that despite the fact I had an opportunity here, Howard

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