Saturday, October 28, 2006

I gave Danny back his comic book...

the day he came home. I told him he owed me a fake hundred dollar bill. He had Jen photocopy five twenties all on one sheet of paper.

And I guess everything is okay now. I didn't mean to leave you hanging about Brian. He's moving kind of slow, but he's home and up and he comes into work now and again slowly picking up steam. But not too much, he is Weezer, you know.

Maricel clipped newpaper articles and burned copies of the TV news stories to disc to show her aunt that I was a great guy. I thought it showed I had one badass girlfriend.

But I think things may be getting back to normal. Whatever normal is around here.

I've got some new stuff up in the Ebay store. I think you'll be impressed. If you print the coupon off the website, you can get a ten percent discount on any action figure all of next month.

See you in the funny papers...
Simon Wolfe
Wolfe's Den Comics

Jen bullied him into talking to a surgeon...

about his arms.
"You're basically helpless as it is." She said. "Do you think a little mobility in your arms might come in handy."
Danny was tired and he gave in and he let them do tests. They're looking at doing after the first of next year. They want him to fully recover from being malnourishe and tourtured.
I used the press to get his wheelchair delivery on the fastrack. The sad story of his stolen wheelchair and the long wait for a new one played well in the media. He got a bunch of offers of monetary help, but money was something he had. I suppose that getting his Ibot delivered means some other poor guy or gal is without one. I hope that person hasn't been through anything nearly as awful as Danny.

I am so tired of hospitals...

I was sitting there holding his hand when Jen showed up...

He was scared, so freaking scared. Every noise terrified him.
"Should I leave you two lovebirds alone?" She said from the doorway.
Jen was skinnier since college and someone had taught her to wear makeup.
"Hop in." Danny said, his voice perking up. "Make a threesome."
"I don't want to be the filling in a dork sandwich." Jen relaxed a little as she realized she wasn't going to get pushed away. I let go of his hand and got up to give her the chair I was sitting in. Jen sat down and took his hand and pretty much didn't move from that spot again. She stayed with him all day and they couldn't even get her out at night. Sometimes she went over to his house and took a shower and worked on straightening the place up. We got a professional cleaning crew in there, fixed the elevator and did what we could to make the place seem like his house instead of the palce he was locked up. The cops got most of his books back. Donald and Susan had been hauling them off to storage in contemplation of taking them away in a truck. They thought it would draw attention if the parked a U-Haul at Danny's back door. Since they drained his bank account with a VISA check card and some forged checks, he really hadn't lost any money. They didn't make customers pay for fraud. Nothing was missing but his piece of mind...

The police got there pretty quickly I guess...

It seemed like it forever before I was done talking to the police and could just go to the damn hospital with Danny. It was very helpful when Ellen showed up to vouch for me. Even better than the kidnapping victim insisting I'd rescued him. FINALLY rescued him. Fatboy and Heather/Susan got a ride over to the hospital same as Danny. She had a slight contusion from falling into a wall and he'd had the living crap kicked out of him. I had some bruised ribs if anyone cares, but I'll be okay. Danny was sick with penumonia, malnourished and damn near crazy. And I was the only one there to look out for him.

Susan Jablonski had been sent over by a home health care agency to work as a nursing assistant and caregiver for Danny. But she and her shifty boyfriend had gotten other ideas. They knew Danny had money, so keeping him prisoner seemed like a great idea. They had quickly drained his checking and he had convinced them that there was just no freaking way to get to the principal without him going to a lawyer's office. Then Donald Holzinger (as fat blonde dredlocked boy was better known) had decided to find out if some of the comics were valuable. So he sold one worth more than a hundred grand to my cousin for a fake hundred dollar bill. When Susan had figured that the comics were kind of valuable, she got really pissed. Of course, then I showed up and started asking questions and ruined everything. Fake e-mails could only work for so long. There were a few of us who actually cared about Danny and would eventually insist on seeing him in person. They sold his wheelchair. Although this thing was so advanced it was known as a mobility system. The damn thing was great. He could go up a few stairs, raise up to reach things. So I had to figure out how to get a thirty thousand dollar wheelchairs that usually has a month or more wait delivered ASAP.

The headline in the paper said COMIC BOOK HERO. I was a hero and all for allowing my girlfriend to beat up a kidnapper. But Danny said to go for the publicity for the sake of the store and even talked to the TV stations which surprised me. The publicity absolutely freaked out the home healthcare agency. Which you'll noticed I didn't name because of the terms of the settlement. Without a word from Danny's lawyer, their insurance company was ready to pony up an undisclosed amount.

When I gave interviews, I always lied and said that Weezer was suspcious of the valuable comic book with a hundred dollar price tag and had purchased it so that we could track down the real owner. I can be nice, you know.

It was Danny...

Lying on the floor in absolute filth, surrounded by empty Slim Fast cans and water bottles. There was nothing in the room but trash and the windows had been covered with a dark sheet that had been taped over. But he was alive and thrashing about helplessly.
"Oh dear God." I said dropping to my knees beside him. "I thought I was going to find your mummified corpse."
"Get me out." He said. He had a couple of months worth of nasty beard growth and his yes were red and runny. He smelled like absolute hell.
"I'll get 9-1-1 and the cops..."
"No, just get me out." He gasped. It sounded like he had a good repiratory infection going. "I'll go crazy just drag me out of here."
"Where the hell's your wheelchair?" I asked.
"Said she sold it." He whined. That was not like Danny. "Just get me outside. I wanna go outside."
"Do it." Maricel said.
"I don't want to hurt you." I said looking around the room in complete disbelief.
"I might get parazlyed." He said. "I know I'm disgusting, but please."
I tossed her the phone. "Get 9-1-1." And I slipped my arms under his and hauled him up as best I could to start dragging him out.
"Took you long enough." He said.
"I'm a moron." I said. "Lucky for you Jen's a little smarter than me and my girlfriend is smarter than both of us. These stairs are gonna hurt. They busted the elevator."
"I almost wiggled away." He said. "Bolt on the outside of the door and broke the elevator. I don't care if it hurts."
"Hurt me, you dummy." I said. "You haven't lost that much weight on Slimfast."
Maricel was direct on the phone. "I've got an injured kidnapping victim. I need police and an ambulance." She said. "Where the hell are we?"
I gave her the address to repeat to the cops. She was a couple of steps ahead of me, so she saw the big fat dreadlocked jackass a second before I did. I was rounding the bend of the stairs with Danny in my hands. I was screwed.
Then my baby doll made the most bad-ass move I've ever seen. She dropped flat down on her ass reared back and kicked the SOB with both of her legs as hard as she could sending him backwards down the steps. Then she popped up, jumped over me and Danny and ran back upstairs. I let go of Danny on the landing and did something I never imagined I could actually do. I don't know if you've every heard of a Berserker Rage. But it's like that scene in X-Men 2 where Wolverine jumps onto a group of soldiers and just starts slashing. Well I jumped down the stairs onto Fat Guy. I figured he'd be a soft place to land and probably a little sore from being stabbed and kicked by my old lady. I can't punch for nothing, so I was scratching and biting like a little girl. I even pulled out one of his stupid blond dreds. He was hard to keep down, like a big bull elephant you'd managed to piss off instead of kill. He flipped us both over with his fat ass on top ready to beat the crap out of me. We rolled out onto the floor and I heard someone run, jump over Danny and land hard on the stairs. Then she came out literally swinging one of Danny's old baseball bats that he kept from college. She was going Al Capone in the Untouchables on him. Thought she only hit him once in the head. She screamed as she busted on his arms and legs and she was so damn fast, he didn't know what to do. I rolled out from under him and struggled to me feet just in time to catch Susan/Heather out of the corner of my eye. She was about to dive in like me. I snatched hold of her hair like the freaking sissy I obviously am and threw her back against the wall. I've never hit a girl, not even on the playground, but
I could have killed her for what she did to Danny. I probably should have helped Maricel, but I didn't want to get in between that bat and its screaming target. Danny had sort of slid down the stairs head first and he was lying there smiling.

Somebody took the key from under the flowerpot...

So I had to go to plan B and just pry open one of the kitchen windows. Not really that hard when you happen to know that the latches are missing from the kitchen windows and that somebody wanted to find hardware that matched the rest of the house before he let me put them on. It was during the course of bickering with Danny about hardware that I realized I needed a girlfriend. I climbed up on a garbage can and shoved my fat behind through the window and then I opened the door and let Maricel in. She thought I should have let her skinny self go in the window. But I thought I'd be manly and go first. I made a quick sweep of the downstairs and noticed that his comic room had been nearly cleaned out. But no body.
"Check this out." Maricel said nodding to the small elevator that had been installed to get Danny between floors. It was more of a chair lift than an elevator, really just big enough for his chair. The mechanism to operate it had been busted. It looked like someone had taken a hammer to it.
I went up the stairs with a knot in my stomach. Something didn't smell good, but I didn't think it was a corpse smell. Danny's bedroom was obviously being occupied by someone else. There was girl crap all over the place. Maricel had opened the door to a smaller room and she screamed out my name. My hands suddenly shook violently, but I got ahold of myself and got over there. What I saw was awful.

Maricel saw her first...

She grabbed me the arm and pulled me back behind a garage out of sight. Heather/Susan was putting a short box of comics into the back of a car. A full long box might have been a challenge for a woman to carry. She drove away and I turned to Maricel.
"I gotta get in there now. I don't know if the police will go in if I call them. They'll probably come knock on the door. I might be able to get Ellen..."
"Are you sure you want to go in?" She said.
"Cause I'll probably find his body." I said. "Yeah, I think I owe him that much don't I?"
"Can you get in?" She asked.
"I can get into an old house." I said. "If I give you my phone..."
"Screw that." She said. "I'm going with you. I'm not Betty Brant, I'm Lois Lane."
"I am so going to marry you." I said.
"Well, of course you are."

"I don't know..."

I told Maricel. I don't know if he got pissed and left town and somebody stole his comic book. But something isn't right. I'm looking at his email and it's stuff that really only Danny would say, but it's not right, I don't know why. I can't tell if he's mad or..."
"You want me to look at it?" She offered. "Maybe you're just too close. Why don't you make some coffee?"
So I did, the good stuff. I ground the beans, made the coffee and even frothed some milk.
"You're right." Marciel said. "And I think I know what you see. You have a separate file for his correspondence, I see."
"Right above you." I said.
"I'm searching his e-mails for some phrases, because what I see here is something I've seen a lot of over the years."
"What?" I asked.
"What things look like when you copy bits and pieces from other sources and try to stick them together without bothering to rework it. Basic plagarism, my darling. Only not on a school paper. And what do you know..."
"What?"I asked putting down a latte in what had become Maricel's Wonder Woman mug beside her.
"I found the source for this paragraph. Two year old message. And let's see about this little Wolverine reference. " She took a sip of her coffee. "Hell yes. This is cobbled together out of old messages. He didn't write these last three e-mails. No way, no how. Somebody just went back and cut and pasted."
"Hell." I said. "I'm so stupid."
"You're not stupid." She said.
"I was thinking about you, I was worried abou Brian. I didn't see it."
"One more thing." Maricel said and she opened the Google search engine. She typed in Heather Carver Toledo and came up with only Heather Carvers in other states. Then she asked what the common spelling of Jablonski was and put in Susan Jablonski Toledo. And that took her to Susan Jablonki's MySpace page with a big picture of the girl I knew as Heather Carver smiling back at me.
Internet genius that I am, I had never even bothered to frickin' google her.
Figuring that sweat pants and a T-shirt counted as dressed, I put my damn shoes on and picked up my phone.
"Screw it." I said. "I'm goin' over there."
"Give me a second." Maricel said. And in literally five of them, she'd pulled on a pair of jeans and was slipping on her shoes as we went. I called Ellen, because I thought she'd better be able to understand what the hell I was saying about Danny than if I started from scratch with a cop. I left a pretty frantic message as I walked. In the early morning darkness we cut across the playground of the school behind my store and over to the alley that ran behind Danny's house.

I could not sleep...

I wondered if Danny thought that somehow I knew about Jen. Maybe put her up to finding him since I was so big into my Internet romance. Jen couldn't sleep either, because I was looking at Danny's forum at five in the morning and she was there, too. I e-mailed her and asked if she thought he might think that somehow we were conspiring against him.
"Maybe." She answered. "He wasn't mad at you before he found out about me. He was just waiting for you to come over so he could show you something. He spent a freaking fortune on Detective Comics..."
"Thirty-eight." I said aloud before I read it. "Oh my God." I said it loudly enough to wake Maricel.
"What?" She came out of the bedroom in a panic.
"Something's wrong." I said.