Pie a la Bode
Jack Grabber hated birthdays. Not just his, but everyone’s, but especially his. Jack Grabber had such distaste for birthdays that he actually had no idea how old he was and often had trouble estimating the age of others. He had always assumed that he was between the ages of twenty and sixty years old. He was almost positive.
All this talk of birthdays and how old he may or may not have been worn tired on Jack. When heavy thoughts such as these stacked up, there was only one thing that could set him right.
Jack Grabber loosened his grip from the rag he was using to choke out the counterfeit king pin, Hansel Bode. Grabber had been after Bode for almost a year after a run-in ten months earlier when Grabber was declined at a surplus store for mega boats called “Got Yachts” when he attempted to purchase a boat with counterfeit cash, which he was able to trace back to a Mr. Hansel Bode, who as it turned out, had been behind the largest counterfeit ring in the history of the Southeastern United States.
Bode gasps for air, once and then again, longer and deeper than the first. Grabber throws the dirty blue rag to the floor and grabs his coat. Samir Godot looks up from a table in the corner; he’s been doing paper work while Grabber was getting answers. Grabber turns to Samir on his way out the door,
“I gotta go get some pie.”
“Aw, birthdays again? Jack don’t think about it.”
Grabber kept Samir on for more than one reason, but one of them was that deep down, Samir got him.
“Keep an eye on Bode for me.”
Samir nods and goes back to his paper work, but then barks,
“Jack, wait!”
Grabber turns around and leans in through the door frame, staring at Bode.
“What is it?”
“Whats a three letter word for “patisserie?”
Grabber averts his gaze from the man gasping for breath in the folding chair in the middle of the room to his friend, Samir, and smiles.
“Pie.”
Samir scribbles the word “pie” down, gets up and watches over Bode, who has now caught his breath. Samir circles him, looking back and forth between the criminal in his possession and the crossword he had been tackling for nearly two hours.
“You any good with words?”
Bode looks at him from under his brow and lets out a normal, steady breath,
“What’s the deal with the pie?”
Grabber approaches the large archway and heads through the doors of a gothic, upper west side Manhattan building. The heavy scraping of his metal soled boots are deafening in the empty hall. He approaches a small space on the left. The words, “Mai Pies” are etched in the glass on the door. He’s talking on the phone as he pulls out a set of keys.
“Thanks again, Jeanie. I know its Sunday and you’re not open, but I just really needed a pie and your pies are the best.”
Grabber fumbles with the keys until he finds the one he’s looking for, slides it through the grooves and turns the key to the left, a loud “click” announces to him that the door is now unlocked.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve made tons of pies before; I won’t burn down your shop. Hey, how’s your dad doing?”
Grabber walks in and looks around, he pulls the phone away from his ear as he looks in awe, surveying all the pie making gadgets.
“Yeah, well, you should probably get him buried then. Thanks again.”
Grabber hangs up and puts the phone on a metal wheelie cart near the entrance.
“Alright, what do we have here?”
Grabber peruses all the ingredients and starts pulling all the prep tables together to form one large surface. Throwing flour and prepping the crust, the base of the crust is getting bigger and bigger. It’s now six feet in diameter.
“Excellent.”
Grabber pre-heats the oven to four hundred and fifty degrees and hops back to the enormous crust.
“Perfect.”
Grabber’s cell phone rings and he reaches for it in his jean pocket. It’s not there. Then his back pocket, nothing.
“Looking for this?”
Grabber turns around. Hansel Bode is standing in the door way, holding Jack Grabber’s phone. Bode looks at the caller ID,
“Who’s Samir Godot?”
“How did you escape?”
Hansel Bode raises his gun at Grabber but not before Jack is able to fling the rolling pin across the kitchen, knocking the gun from Bode’s grasp. Bode charges at the six foot six man and leaps, but in one swift motion, Jack Grabber catches his enemy, flips him over his shoulder, setting him gently into the enormous pie crust. Grabber reaches across to the other side of the prep table, pulling the top of the pie dough across Bode like a flourery bed sheet and hurling the man pie into the oven with such force, the open oven door slams shut. Grabber jumps over the prep table, grabs two large metal pie spoons and bends them in a pretzel shape between the handle of the lower and upper ovens. Grabber flips the light switch on for inside the oven and watches Hansel Bode bake to death. Quickly the screams from inside the industrial sized oven fade into crackling pops of Grabber’s new yummy pastry. Grabber takes a deep whiff, flaring his nostrils above the oven door,
“Mmmmm. I wasn’t in the mood for Steak and Kidney pie, but I’m sure Bode wasn’t in the mood to chicken pot die today, either.”
Grabber looks around for someone to share his laughter with, but it was just him and the pie.